Tim Lebbon - Coldbrook

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.