Coldbrook (Hammer) (42 page)

‘Amazing,’ Jonah said.

‘It’s all amazing,’ Drake said, his back still turned to Jonah. ‘So you see why we have to win? All those Earths, gone. All that wonder, knowledge and industry, hope and ambition. All that art. You understand why we have to fight?’

‘Of course,’ Jonah said.

‘Good, Jonah. Good.’ Drake turned, lifted a small crossbow, and shot Jonah in the heart.

Vic follows his sister through the ruined streets, and Jayne is staring at him from every window, every open door. There are cars slewed across the roads, resting on deflated tyres and with their windows slicked with
something wet and mossy on the inside. A few have burned, and their stark black skeletons are now home to weeds that wave in the breeze.

As Charlotte approaches the door in the house that he always knows but never should, a noise thuds in from all around.

‘What?’ a disembodied voice asks.

Charlotte knocks on the door and it swings open beneath her fist, letting out a wafting shadow that quickly grows and shelters the sun from view, and his dead sister turns to him, with her perfect skin and lifeless eyes.

‘We’ve been leaking fuel,’ Charlotte says, ‘and the gauge is fucked. We’re running on fumes.’

Vic’s eyes snapped open and he gasped. The shadow fled. ‘Daddy?’ he heard in the distance, and Olivia was tapping his arm. He lifted his right headphone and leaned down. ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘Okay, sweetie. Hang on.’

‘How the hell are we leaking fuel?’ Marc shouted.

‘I don’t know!’ Gary said. ‘Ricochet back at the airport. Gremlins.’

‘How far are we from Coldbrook?’ Vic asked, feeling a little like a kid sitting there in the back:
Are we nearly there yet?

Nobody answered for a few seconds. Sean was awake and alert, but silent. For the first time Vic noticed that
he’d tucked his pistol into his waistband, shifting it from the holster at the small of his back. More comfortable, probably. Jayne seemed to be asleep.

‘Hundred miles,’ Gary said. ‘But we’re going down now.’

‘Crashing?’ Sean asked. He’d braced his leg in front of Jayne’s, and her eyes were still closed.

‘Controlled descent,’ Gary said.

Lucy hugged Olivia between herself and Vic, the little girl picking up on the panic filling the cabin even though she could no longer comprehend what most of them were saying. Vic looked at Jayne and she was staring at him from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Sean tried to protect her without squeezing her too tightly.

‘We’ll be okay,’ Vic said, leaning across to Lucy and forgetting that everyone could hear.

‘I love you,’ she said in response. It took his breath away.

Vic nodded, because saying it back would have sounded as empty as he still felt.

‘Going down in the mountains,’ Gary said.

Sean caught Vic’s eye, and they both understood the dangers that would soon be stalking them.

Gary swore. The aircraft’s motor started coughing, shaking the whole fuselage. As their controlled descent changed into something that was under little real control, Vic held his family and thought of Holly and what she
might have witnessed. And the simple truth was that he wanted to see her again. The idea felt like a betrayal when he had his wife’s head resting against his, their daughter crying between them. But he could not shut her from his mind.

‘
Now!
’ Gary said, and that was their only warning. They struck the ground violently, the floor punching up so hard that Vic thought his ankles had fractured. Jayne’s eyes snapped fully open and she stared at him. The helicopter bounced, tipped to the left, and then rolled up and over its nose as the rotors slashed at the ground.

The fuselage ruptured. Someone screamed. As Vic squeezed his eyes shut and held on to his family, his life, something warm splashed across his face.

‘So what did you feel when you came through?’ Moira asked. The question surprised Holly. It was the first time that the other woman had spoken in ten minutes, and the silence between them had become heavy.

‘I . . .’ Holly shook her head, glancing away from the laptop screen at last. Moira was watching her intently. Her, not the screen showing scenes of chaos and horror. For a while, Holly had believed that the silence was the result of a shock felt by both of them.
Was she watching me all the time?
‘It was strange.’

‘I’m just wondering if it’s the breach that does that, or crossing the veils,’ Moira said.

‘What’s the difference?’

‘The veils are just . . . there,’ Moira said. ‘Natural divisions. The multiverse has them because that’s the way it is, the way it developed. But the breach is unnatural. Man-made. You’ve messed with physics, assaulted the solidity of the veils and, by punching a hole in the multiverse, maybe you’ve caused injury.’

‘How can you even guess at that?’ Holly asked, interested and even a little offended. ‘You were born after everything went wrong. You weren’t part of the experiment.’

‘Everyone at our Coldbrook has learned about the science of the End. We’ve had to, so that we can continue living there. Kathryn Coldbrook’s books and diaries are still there, and there’s a whole library of memory casts from before.’

‘So you’re blaming
us
? Saying that we should have never done it?’

‘You can see the results,’ Moira said, nodding at the screen.

Holly looked again. It was a YouTube video clip from London, and it showed the South Bank ablaze, bodies swimming into each other as they were swept down the Thames, and smoke rising from some sort of firefight on Tower Bridge. The film had been taken from inside
the Tower of London where, according to the voice-over, thousands of people had taken refuge. Holly had never been to London.

‘You don’t seem moved by this,’ Holly said. She hit another website, where a French reporter was filming herself standing at the head of a street somewhere in Toulouse. Smoke rose in the distance, and people streamed past her, their flight fuelled by terror.

‘I’ve seen it all before,’ Moira said.

‘This is my world,’ Holly said. She felt numb, bitter, scared.

‘Yes,’ Moira said, ‘and you see why we have to do something.’

‘Do what?’

‘Whatever we can.’ Moira closed the laptop cover gently, leaning in closer to Holly. The warm aroma of whisky hung on her breath.

‘I’m concerned only with survival,’ Holly said. ‘And with trying to stop this before it gets worse.’

‘There’s a bigger picture,’ Moira said. Anger simmered beneath her calm, gentle voice. ‘
Much
bigger.’

‘Really?’ Holly said. ‘Then God help us.’

Moira froze. ‘You dare mention
Him
?’

Holly stood and went to the back of Secondary, where she’d dropped two toolkits before checking over the computer systems. She picked one of them up. The Internet had drawn her in, compelled by the need to know, but
now she felt was chilled by a fear of something closer.
We don’t know these people at all
, she thought.

‘Jonah’s already gone,’ Moira said.

‘What do you mean?’ Holly spun around to confront her. The woman was standing closer, frowning uncertainly as if she regretted what she’d said. She held both hands behind her back. Holly stared, but Moira gave nothing away.

‘What have you done?’ Holly asked, advancing on her. Moira backed up against the desk. The screens on the wall behind her showed a silent, unkempt Coldbrook, and Holly had a brief but startling thought:
I wish nothing had changed
. If they’d never succeeded with the breach the original team would still be down here together, working, debating, arguing. And Vic would still be here, his gentle flirting with Holly a constant thrill for both of them. Any flirting could become a match to touchpaper, and she had always lived in hope.

‘Holly, I need you to sit down.’ Moira nodded at one of the chairs, then brought her left hand around from behind her back. She held a rough-handled knife.

‘What?’ Holly asked. ‘Are you
threatening
me?’

‘Not a threat.’ The other woman brought her right hand around, holding a tight coil of thin, strong twine. ‘Sit down, Holly. Please. It’s only for a while, just to ensure you don’t try to—’

Holly snatched at the twine. Moira pulled it away,
and while doing so she lifted the knife in her other hand, its gleaming point catching the light from the viewing screens.

‘Please don’t fight!’ Moira said, uncertainty in her voice for the first time.

Holly lowered the tool bag slightly, swinging it by the handle and bringing it around swiftly towards Moira’s head while stepping to the left and reaching for the twine again. Moira leaned back but the bag struck her across the left cheek with a metallic
clunk
, and she grunted. Holly felt something punch against her stomach.

She gasped and dropped the heavy bag. It struck her right foot, and for a moment that pain was dominant. Then she felt a warm flush across her hip, and the chill wash of real agony. And blood.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not.

Epicurus

JONAH’S HEAD THRUMMED
and the world swayed: someone was doing something to him, and he thought,
He’s back.

Jonah wondered whether the Inquisitor had ever left. That first time had been before the plague came through, and perhaps Jonah was back there now, waking from a nightmare of the End of Days and succumbing to whatever had struck him down in his sleep. The dreams had been realistic – a culmination of his secret fears and concerns over what they were doing down in Coldbrook.

But it was not the Inquisitor kneeling above him. Drake was sweating as he manipulated something on Jonah’s chest.
Behind him were the casting-field generators, the network of suspended pipes glowing and sparking slightly.
How does that work?
Jonah thought – and then he remembered Drake and the crossbow.

He drew a deep breath and the pain seared through him.

‘I’m almost done,’ Drake said. He knew that Jonah was awake, but he hadn’t even glanced at his face. ‘Keep still, or you’ll kill us all.’

‘Almost done . . . what?’ Jonah breathed. But Drake ignored him.

Jonah closed his eyes again and tried to remember: the heat and humidity of the generator room; Drake’s insistence that something had to be done, something had to stop the Inquisitors’ crusade.

And then the man’s sad expression as he’d shot him in the chest.

My heart!
Jonah thought, and though he still felt the familiar thuds of heartbeats and heard the whisper of blood through his ears, they seemed different. Strained – like a car that had burned off all its oil and was grinding its engine parts.

‘What have you done?’ he said.

‘I’ve made a trade,’ Drake said. He sighed and leaned back from where Jonah lay on the floor. He was looking him in the eye at last.

‘A trade?’ Jonah asked.

‘I’m sorry, Jonah. I’ve taken hope from you and given it to everyone else.’

‘And how have you done that?’

‘Don’t you know yet? Haven’t you worked out the only way?’ Drake was sweating, tense.

‘You’ve turned me into a weapon,’ Jonah said, beginning to understand.

‘I’ve been waiting for someone like you for years, Jonah! A final hope. I believe the Inquisitor will take you back to its own Earth to initiate you into its ways.’

Jonah touched his chest. ‘And when I’m there, I release the plague that you’ve implanted in me.’

‘You’ve seen it flitting in and out, ghostlike. I think what they do is part casting, part breach, but they travel with impunity and without fear of infection. To beat them, we have to get past that. Take the fight to their world.’

‘It won’t know what you’re doing?’

‘It’s not all-seeing, Jonah. Not everywhere all the time,’

‘You don’t know any of this for sure.’

Drake shrugged. ‘Isn’t all science a matter of best guess?’

‘No,’ Jonah said. ‘But . . . that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.’ He tried to sit up, but Drake laid a strong hand on his chest.

‘Not yet,’ Drake said, hesitant. ‘So . . . you’ll go? You’ll help?’

‘Have you left me with any choice?’ Jonah asked. He felt a sickening weight in his stomach, and was surprised to discover it was the fear of death. He’d never thought he would be afraid, not after seeing Wendy die, witnessing her grace and dignity. But now there was so much still undone.

‘No choice.’

‘You’ve made me a prophet of blood and fear.’

‘It’s what
our
Coldbrook has been about for years. All our tests on Mannan and we’ve never moved one step closer to a cure. But we
have
tested this controlled plague-delivery system on him, and over the years we’ve perfected it. We’ve watched, and waited, and planned for the arrival of someone like you. Someone courted by an Inquisitor. And, Jonah, you’re doomed anyway. Why not save the multiverse before you die?’

Jonah laughed. It hurt, but feeling pain was to be alive. ‘You make it sound so noble!’ he said.

‘Isn’t it? You’ve seen only a fraction of the castings. Most places we look, we see death and pain, and those furies waiting for any hint of life to return. We need a cure, yes, but part of that must be taking the fight to them.’

‘Help me up,’ Jonah said at last. ‘You know what, Drake? I’m an old man. I’ve got a dodgy ticker, which I’m surprised is still ticking after whatever the hell you’ve done to it. If you’d only asked, I’d probably have gone anyway.’

‘I had to make sure,’ Drake said softly. Jonah could see the obsession there. Perhaps part of it was revenge, but mostly it was a desire to make things right. Drake had been born after his world’s worst suffering, but he had witnessed that of so many others.

‘But I want to travel,’ Jonah said. ‘Through the breach where the disease entered your world.’

‘Why?’ Drake asked, surprised.

‘Because I want to see. Take it as . . . a dying man’s wish. And the Inquisitor will follow me.’