Tim Lebbon - Coldbrook

He disconnected, but kept hold of the satphone. After so many congratulatory phone calls over the past three days, he would now be the one to spread the devastating news. ‘Contagion,’ he said, practising the word again, and then he dialled.

After breaking the news to three key people on three continents, Jonah switched off the satphone and watched another friend die. Though he tried to he could not close his eyes. He saw Andy tripped and then pushed against a wall in the electrical plant room, arms thrashing at the mutilated guard holding him there, Motorhead T-shirt slashed and torn and darkened with his blood, eyes wide with panic and terror and disbelief as the guard pressed forward and closed his mouth on Andy’s nose and ripped his head to the side. . and Jonah could not close his eyes. Here was his legacy, in blood. Here was the result of everything he had thrown himself into for years. The guard bit again and again, and then moved away to let Andy slump to the floor, dead.

It was only as Andy shoved himself upright again, half a minute later, that Jonah looked away.

The temptation to turn off the viewing screens was great. In his seventy-six years he had seen two dead bodies: his dear wife Wendy, prepared and laid to rest, her hair brushed the wrong way and her visage so painfully, terribly still; and Bill Coldbrook, his old friend and boss, whom Jonah had discovered hours after his suicide. Death was no stranger to him, yet it had always been distant.

But he berated himself for his cowardice. He was responsible for Coldbrook, and he had a responsibility for almost forty staff members down here, from the most talented scientist to the canteen cook. He had to keep watching the screens to see who would survive and where they would find shelter. After that. . he did not know.

Jonah kept two of the four screens focused on Control, one zoomed in on the breach, the other encompassing the whole room. It was a dead place. Since he’d locked himself in Secondary fifteen minutes ago he had seen no movement there, though his attention flickered back to those screens every few seconds, drawn by the breach. It looked so harmless. So benign.

What had come through now lay dead on the floor of Control, one of the few motionless bodies he could find. Others, like Andy, moved on, perpetuating the violence and hunting down those as yet untouched. Shocked and confused though he was, Jonah was a scientist, someone who had always retained his sense of wonder. And already he was analysing what he was seeing.

The bites stopped them, they fell, and then they rose again, usually within a minute. The infection — because that was what it had to be — changed them. Kills them , he kept thinking, but he was not certain of that yet. Not definite. Melinda, Satpal . . He shook his head. Perhaps the infection dulled pain receptors, did something to their sense of self, and drove them on through pain to. .

‘Jesus,’ Jonah muttered, because it seemed the horror would never end. There were no microphones on the facility cameras and silence made the carnage more shocking somehow. The picture flickered and settled on the canteen, apparently still and peaceful until a naked man pulled himself up on one of the dining tables, his throat a ragged mess, his chest scored by scratch marks, and ran quickly from the room.

The image flicked to the kitchen. There was no one there and no movement, and then there was a thrashing at one edge of the screen, someone moving just out of shot, their shadow thrown across the room by harsh fluorescents, and a spray of blood splashed across the previously pristine food-preparation surface.

The large garage area: unsettlingly still, three big vehicles sitting like soldiers awaiting orders. He scanned the image, trying to work out what was wrong with what he saw but unable to find anything. Just that it’s so still .

One of the accommodation hallways: no movement, but a heavy smear of blood along one wall, and something that looked like bloody clothing piled against a closed door. Jonah counted three out of eight doors that were still closed. There were no cameras inside the rooms. Invasion of privacy. He wished he could reach through and knock on those doors, but if there was anyone inside left alive they would surely not answer.

A second accommodation hallway: and the shock of what he saw made him flinch back in his seat. At the far end of the hallway, thirty feet from the camera, bodies thrashed and fought, maybe seven or eight of them. He saw the flash of several gunshots and one body flipped back. A man leaned from a doorway and aimed down at the body, shooting three more times. He retreated back into the room and the light changed as the door slammed, and then the body stood again and started throwing itself against the door. Its chest was a ragged mess. It wore a nightdress, and Jonah thought its foot had been torn apart until he realised it was a fluffy rabbit slipper.

Jonah changed views to a storeroom close to the gym. Estelle and Uri were huddled together in a corner, the guard who’d left with them crouching behind the locked door. Jonah could see their careful movements to ease pressure on bent limbs, their heavy breathing as fear refused to loosen its grip on them. Uri glanced up at the camera, then back at Estelle. He was holding her tightly. She held him too. Uri used to juggle during his lunch breaks to settle his nervous disposition, and Estelle had a quotation handy for most occasions. Jonah wondered what she would come up with for this one but he could see that she was silent.

He checked the list of camera locations displayed on the laptop before him and entered a code for the fourth screen. It was a view of the short storage-area corridor, and it was full of dead people.

Dead people , Jonah thought. Is that right? How can they be dead? They’re not fucking zombies, so they must be. .? But he had seen the damage inflicted on some of these people. Even if they were infected with a contagion that subdued pain and turned them into berserkers, they could not function drained of blood, or with shredded muscles or cracked bones, or-

Leave that for later , he thought.

There were seven people in the corridor and all of them were standing still. Their wounds flickered slightly on-screen: wet, open, but no longer bleeding. He knew all their names but tried not to think of them. They seemed to be listening, waiting. They knew what was behind the door.

In the storeroom, the guard seemed to be whispering to Uri and Estelle. Jonah wished he could hear, because he had a terrible sense of what was about to happen.

How the hell can I speak to them? he wondered. He tapped at the laptop, bringing up schematics of the facility and turning around to view them on the large wall behind him. He glanced at some of the folding chairs the guard had opened up, thought, There should be people sitting there now , and then tried to concentrate. Fire alarm? Lighting system? Anything he could control from here to give them warning, because the guard was growing impatient.

Jonah thought he might open the door.

‘Damn it, damn it!’ His heart fluttered and he coughed, and he cursed his advancing years . He’d never thought of himself as infirm, though he had never been one to deny the onset of age. Now, though, he wished he were a younger man. A younger man might leave the room with a makeshift weapon — a chair leg, or a strut from beneath the table — and try to fight his way down one level to the storeroom, stop whatever was about to happen. But Jonah didn’t think his heart would take it.

Besides, his was a greater responsibility. He glanced at the breach again and guilt weighed heavy on him. All that planning and all those precautions — and Control’s lockdown had still failed.