Tim Lebbon - Coldbrook

‘Body shuts down. Dead.’

‘Well. .’ Marc said, and Vic saw the first glimmer of doubt.

‘So you produce an inoculation — what about those who are already infected?’

Marc raised his eyebrows. ‘Not our priority, sad to say.’

Vic rested his head back against the sofa, changing the subject. ‘So who does the chopper on the roof belong to?’

‘A friend of mine.’

‘You’re shitting me.’

‘No, really,’ Marc said. ‘I do have friends.’

‘I should tell Jonah I’m here,’ Vic said. ‘Update him. See what he’s doing down there. He said he was alone, the only survivor.’ And I worry for him , Vic wanted to say. But after everything he’d done, that sounded so trite.

‘Jonah’s a hard motherfucker,’ Marc said. ‘His father worked in a coal mine, he ever tell you that? Fifty-two years. And every day of Jonah’s childhood, his father said he was working down there so Jonah didn’t have to do the same thing. His sense of worth comes from that, and his honour, and a lot of his attitude. Then when poor Wendy died. .’ Marc shook his head and poured more bourbon. ‘Something on your mind?’ he asked.

Vic frowned and looked around the room, trying to grab hold of the thought that had been circling his consciousness for the last half an hour. Marc’s perception was sharp and, though they hadn’t exactly hit it off, it felt good to be around someone he couldn’t hide anything from. It meant that Marc was in control.

‘Something’s bugging me,’ Vic said, closing his eyes and rubbing them.

‘Your trip up here? Radio reports? Something you saw on the way?’

‘Jesus!’ Vic said. He closed his eyes and had it. So obvious ! ‘They were completely still.’

‘Huh?’

Vic jumped up and pointed to the computer. ‘Those images, that military site. Bring them up again.’

‘You saw something I didn’t?’ Marc said. But he tapped at the computer and brought up the site, and Vic reached past him and clicked on a film clip taken from a low-flying helicopter. They both watched for a couple of minutes, neither of them commenting, and Vic was starting to think he’d been imagining things. Then he saw it.

He leaned across Marc and hit pause.

‘Here,’ he said, pointing at one of the zombies in the crowd of afflicted people. ‘A woman. She’s lost an arm and has abdominal wounds. Run over, maybe. But while all the others are running and doing whatever they can to reach. .’ He pointed below the screen, where a crashed camper van was out of shot. ‘ She ’s doing something different.’

He hit play again. The woman stood motionless. The only movement was her head, turning left and right as a dozen other zombies raged past her, running as fast as their injuries would allow towards the camper. Some of them fell as the occupants of the crashed vehicle fired, then she too crumpled.

‘Didn’t see a bullet hit her,’ Marc said.

‘That’s because she wasn’t shot. She was watching, that’s all. Observing.’

‘Why?’ Marc asked.

‘Don’t know. Pacifist zombie?’

‘Call Jonah,’ Marc said. ‘Tell him. I’ll patch in on my phone.’

As Vic dialled he thought, This has only just begun .

Jonah shut and locked the door, though he knew it would do no good. He had been visited before — the dream on the day they made breach, and afterwards. Doors were no barrier.

Bill Coldbrook had killed himself without explanation. Jonah remembered finding the old man hours after it had happened, walking into his room and seeing the stillness that seemed so unreal, and the expression of peace on his face and. . escape? Perhaps that’s what it had been. There had been no note, but the old man’s dying expression had said it all.

Not just me , Jonah thought, and the idea was terrible. That bastard has been here before .

He wrote down each vision he had been shown. Some might have been of this Earth, though he thought not. He tried not to consider for now the reason why he had been shown because that was not something he could discern from a set of notes. But he did not trust his old man’s memory. And the visions — they looked more real when written down. More firm.

‘What the fuck is going on here?’ he muttered, welcoming the sound of his own voice. The silence had become too loaded. He sat in his chair in Secondary, staring at the screen showing the breach and its containment field, and a flicker of blue arced across the screen as the eliminator fried a small creature. Elsewhere, the rest of Coldbrook was still and silent, except for the rooms where he had trapped the afflicted. He flicked past these places slowly, fascinated and horrified.

The assault had left him feeling violated. The man’s touch had been uninvited, but more disturbing than the physical intrusion had been the emotional one — those images placed in his mind, not only showing him scenes of horror, but leaving them in his memory. He shivered, and vowed that next time he would fight harder.

The satphone rang, startling him from his thoughts. He snatched it up and took a few deep breaths.

‘Vic,’ he said.

‘Jonah. We’ve reached Marc, safe and sound. You okay?’

‘Fine,’ Jonah said.

‘All quiet there?’

‘All quiet.’

‘The breach?’ Even over the grumbling connection he could discern Vic’s true meaning.

‘Nothing,’ Jonah said. Vic was silent for a while, but Jonah could hear his breathing. ‘Vic, there’s no reason to believe that anything bad happened to Holly.’

‘Other than she’s stepped across into an alternate Earth that might be swarming with zombies.’

‘The one that came through was. . a weak thing,’ Jonah said. ‘It walked slowly, not like the ones that have changed here. It looked like an animal.’ He thought that through, concentrating on something he’d had no time to dwell on until now.

‘But it still caused all this.’

‘Yes.’

‘And she’s there,’ Vic said. ‘Our ambassador.’

‘She’ll make a good one.’

‘Marc is quite a character,’ Vic said.

‘Has he beaten your stupid head in yet?’

‘I haven’t yet,’ Marc said, and Jonah smiled. He hadn’t realised the three phones were patched in.

‘Marc. Good to hear you. Vic might be useful for a while longer yet.’

‘Well, maybe he is. Let him tell you.’

‘Jonah,’ Vic said, ‘I’ve seen something on the footage. Has Marc sent you the passwords to this site?’

‘Yes,’ Jonah said. ‘But I haven’t had time to look.’

‘One of them doesn’t act like all the others. She just stands there, watching. An observer.’

Jonah held his breath and closed his eyes.

‘Jonah, you there?’

‘This observer — what does it look like?’

‘She’s lost an arm,’ Vic said.

‘And her stomach’s all fucked up,’ Marc added.

‘Her face?’

‘Well, she looks quite normal there. Expressionless, but then they’re all. .’ Vic trailed off, because he did not need to finish.

‘Interesting,’ Jonah said. ‘Let’s see if we can find any more. Meanwhile, Marc, have you any thoughts?’

‘Sure. Get me to Coldbrook, let me through the breach, and I’ll get a sample of the disease from over there, compare it with however it’s spread and mutated in us, and maybe I can come up with something. Piece of cake. In the meantime, things are moving on apace. They’ve started bombing Atlanta, and it’s spreading fast.’

‘What have you been doing down there?’ Vic asked.

‘Just doing my best to survive,’ Jonah said. They arranged another call time in two hours, then signed off. Jonah put the phone down and breathed into the silence, and the wall screens flickered off.