Dead Frost - 02 (13 page)

'So he doesn't like
people?' the woman asked, lighting a cigarette.

Colburn stopped
walking. 'What?'

She
took another long drag before speaking. 'For him to live this far
away from the rest of us, he can't
really
like us too much.'

Colburn opened his
mouth as he realised what the old bitch was getting at. 'Well, he
likes to make sure that he's tip-top so he can keep this place
running smoothly.'

'Wouldn't want him
to catch any of those poor peoples' colds.'

'No,' Colburn
replied, irritated. 'We wouldn't.'

He led her up a set
of stairs, and to be quite frank even he didn't have a clue what was
at the end of them. He just hoped that she didn't catch on before he
had a chance to do it.

'Why do you do what
he tells you to,' the woman asked. 'There's no law, not anymore, and
there sure as fuck ain't no military.'

Colburn bit his
lip; it was all he could do not to just turn and boot her down the
steps.

'Ma'am,
I do what he tells me to because someday, this shit is gonna come to
an end. When it
does
,
I want to be first up for a promotion.'

The
woman laughed. She didn't realise how close she came to a
size-twelve in the fucking forehead. 'You
think
you'll be remembered for your honour after all this...blows over.
You're even dumber than you look.'

Breathe,
Henry, breeeeathe...

They reached the
top of the stairs and Colburn took a right. It seemed to be the best
choice, since he had no idea if the door to the left was even locked.
It would have surely given the game away if he had tried to turn the
knob only to discover that the room was out of bounds.

At the end of the
corridor, there was a T-junction. Colburn turned left, once again
hoping that the building didn't betray him.

It didn't matter
now; they were probably far enough away from the others for him to do
what he set out to do.

'You
think that prick Victor's gonna recommend you for a promotion if the
virus somehow miraculously stops?' the old woman asked. 'He hasn't
got a heart, that man, so I wouldn't
―
'

The
hand grabbed her around the throat. Henry
Colburn
had moved so fast – spinning on a dime – that
she
was still mid-sentence when her words were cut off.

'You
fucking
bitch
!'
he hissed, tightening his grip, hoping that she hadn't had time to
take a deep breath before he caught her. 'Die...just fucking...
die
!'

She dropped to her
knees, her eyes threatening to pop from their sockets. The colour
drained from her at first, and then she was darkening, turning purple
with asphyxiation.

Colburn couldn't
look at her choking face; he closed his eyes and wished that she
would stop making such godawful noises.

Her cold, bony
hands were trying to prise his away from her neck, but she was old,
and had hardly any strength. Any moment now she would go limp, and
that would be it. He squeezed with everything he had, hoping that
she fell still because he didn't think he could take much more of it.

And
then he was staggering backwards, with no idea what was happening.
Everything was a blur, apart from the sudden stinging sensation on
the front of his face. His nose felt as if it had been completely
removed,
although that might
have just been his mind playing tricks on him.

He was on his
knees, and still falling, when the fog cleared and he could see
straight again. By then it was too late. The fire-extinguisher hit
him full-on again, this time just above the right eye.

The last thing he
saw before the darkness took him was a little girl holding a
vintage-looking doll.

*

'I told you, Mommy!
I knew the man was going to hurt her.'

'Yes, you did,'
Susie said trying to help Maggie Cox to her feet. 'And I apologise
for not listening.'

Kelly smiled,
smugly. It was the first time – ever – that her mother
had said sorry for anything, and she had been wrong on so many
occasions.

'Is she okay?'
Kelly asked, clutching Jezebel to her chest. 'If she dies, Mommy, I
think I might cry.'

Despite
the old-lady's gaunt appearance, she was
heavy.
Perhaps it was the fact that there were bones poking out just
beneath the surface of her skin, and Susie didn't really want to hurt
her any more than she already had been.

She
managed to pull Maggie across the corridor and leant her up against
the wall. She was conscious, but struggled to breathe properly.
Fuck knows what would have happened if they had been a few seconds
late. Well, Susie knew that the woman would be dead, without a
doubt, which is why she had followed so closely, although not
too
close; there was no point putting her life and the life of her
daughter at risk, too.

'The bad man tried
to choke her to death,' Kelly said, taking a step towards the prone
body of Henry Colburn.

'Come away from
him!' Susie cried. 'The bad man is only having a little sleep. I
don't want you anywhere near him when he wakes up.'

Kelly grinned.
'He's not sleeping, Mommy. You smashed him in the head with a
fire-extinguisher. You knocked him out good and proper.'

'Well,' Susie said,
rubbing the side of Maggie Cox's face to try to calm her down.
'Whatever, just don't go near him.'

Kelly ran her
fingers through Jezebel's hair and stepped towards the breathless old
lady leaning up against the wall.

'Are you okay,
now?' Kelly asked.

Maggie stared
towards the little girl with confusion, and then at her mother. By
the time she went back to Kelly, she seemed to have put two and two
together.

'That sonofabitch
tried to choke me!' she gasped as she spotted the motionless figure
of Colburn in the middle of the corridor. 'Murder me...tried
to...I...'

'Just take it
easy,' Susie said, beckoning Kelly just a little closer, a little
farther away from the unconscious psychotic soldier on the floor.
'Everything's going to be okay.'

'Do you really
believe that?' Maggie Cox said, rubbing at the redness around her
throat.

Susie
Bloom, for once in her life, didn't have an
answer.

*

She ate biscuits
for dinner, washed down with some form of appleade. It was possibly
the best meal she had ever had – at least it felt like it.
After about an hour of touring the museum – it was amazing; she
never knew history could be so enchanting – she made her way
back to the dinosaur room, the place where she had left her backpack.
Her machete, though, that went with her everywhere. She was safe,
for now, but that didn't make her stupid. If there was one thing she
had learnt since the outbreak, it was that lackadaisical was simply
another word for “lunch”.

The
wind howled outside, which unnerved her a little. At first she
thought it was the creatures; they had a tendency to call to each
other in a strange moaning vernacular. Once the hackles disappeared
from the nape of her neck, she gave herself a stern talking to. It
felt good to speak; she had almost forgotten the sound of her
own
voice, and as the first words escaped her lips she thought the voice
belonged to somebody else.

Somebody much
older.

The
dinosaur-room was warm, and lit only by a chandelier that could be
altered via a dimmer-switch on the east wall. She purposely kept it
low; there was very little sense in advertising her presence to all
and sundry. She was far enough from the main road not to draw any
unwanted attention, but again that didn't warrant complacency on her
part.

With her stomach
still full from the combination of chocolate biscuits and fizzy soda,
she settled down with a pamphlet that she had procured.

As she delved
into the history behind The Black Death, she couldn't help but feel
that something was about to happen.

Something
abhorrently bad.

If
she'd known then, as she sat with a tattered
manual
in her lap and an aching tummy, just how terrible, she would have
moved a lot quicker. As it was, she had very little time to do
anything about the
impending
horrors.

The wind kicked
up a notch outside. For a moment, the windows clattered so violently
in their frames that she thought they were going to implode,
showering down shards of glass and letting all of that terrible snow
into her warm domain.

Howling wind was
one thing, but she was certain that there was something moaning
alongside it.

And she was
right, as a few seconds later she heard it again; a deep, guttural
groan that could only mean one thing.

She launched to
her feet, half-digested biscuit threatened to fill her throat, but
she managed to keep it down. Panicking, she reached around to her
back, to where the machete was strapped. She released it and began
to swing it through the air – whoosh...whoosh – like a
pro-baseball player awaiting the ball that would either be a home-run
or strike three.

The moan came
again, and it was close. In the corridor, perhaps. Just outside the
door.

She
knew she was fucked. Glancing around the
room,
here eyes darting each and every way, she tried to find somewhere to
hide.

If there was one
of them, she would have been able to take it. Of that she was
certain. The trouble was, they didn't travel alone. If there was
one, there was bound to be another, maybe a whole horde of them. The
chances of her making it out of the dinosaur-room alive would be next
to nothing if the numbers were too high.

It was something
she didn't dare thinking about.

She raced across
the room, almost tripping over a faux sabre-tooth tiger rug.

The creature
moaned again, and this time something replied. A female...another
creature, which already depleted her chances of survival.

There
was a door, one of those that you need to push a long, silver bar in
order to get through. Printed on it in red lettering were the words
STAFF ONLY –
KEEP OUT.

In a way, she
was the only staff left in the place; she had maintained it for long
enough to consider herself a fully-fledged employee.

She pushed the
bar and slipped into the darkness. It was a store-cupboard, or
something of that ilk. She felt long sticks behind her, poking at
her like skeletal fingers. These, of course, were mops and brooms
and other cleaning implements that she had no knowledge of. She
kicked something and heard the sound of water sloshing around.
Whoever had mopped last had forgotten to empty the old water out of
the bucket.

I might have to
drink that, she thought, and then banished it from her mind as it
didn't bear thinking about.

As she pulled
the door shut – click – she heard the main door to the
dinosaur-room fling open, followed by the hellish conversation of at
least two creatures.

She closed her
eyes; tried to put herself somewhere else – anywhere else –
but it was difficult to drift into her happy place with those things
only a few feet away, destroying the little bit of happiness that she
had recently found in the museum.

Was this really
happening?

She
wasn't sure. It felt like a dream, like one of those really bad
nightmares she had suffered a few
months
before the virus took everybody that she cared about.

But it was real;
of course it was. Life, reality, was one big nightmare now. There
was nothing distinguishable between bad dreams and waking hours, not
anymore.