Tim Lebbon - Coldbrook

Vic stripped and washed in the lake, barely aware of his nakedness in front of the others, concerned only with cleaning the blood from his skin and hair. He submerged himself several times, and beneath the water the world seemed so much further away. The last time he went under he considered staying there, so he didn’t duck down again.

Marc stood up on the road, keeping watch. Sean was closer to the lake but he too turned in slow circles, keeping watch on the landscape, Marc’s rifle now in his hands. Vic’s pistol lay on the bank beside his wet clothing. The satphone was there as well, its volume turned up — he’d tried calling Holly and Jonah, but there’d been no answer. He tried not to think about that too much.

He’d washed the blood from his clothes as well as he could but the stains remained. He’d be cold and wet when he got dressed again, but he did not care. All he cared about was close by: the woman and the child who were watching him. Lucy was concerned, Olivia scared.

Jayne sat with her back against a smooth boulder, gently massaging her knees and hips, hardly seeming to notice her own tears.

Vic rubbed his hands together just beneath the surface of the cold water, and felt that they could have belonged to someone else.

A hundred miles , Gary had said as they were going down. On any normal day, it would take three or four hours in a car. But today it was a much greater distance. The irony did not escape Vic: the infection he had released had spread so quickly because modern communications had made the world so small, and as a result the world had become so much larger again.

He waded from the lake, feet slipping on slick stones beneath the surface, and for a moment he was a boy in Colorado again, swimming with his friends and building campfires to cook hot dogs and burgers.

Olivia, scared though she was, giggled at the sight of her naked, shivering father.

‘We need to check the cars,’ Marc said from up on the road.

‘But those things,’ Jayne said.

‘If there were more they’d have come. They’re driven. I see no intelligence in the fuckers.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Sean said.

‘No. Stay here.’ Marc looked down the slope at Vic. ‘You okay now? You ready to use your gun if you need to?’

‘I’m fine,’ Vic said. I was covered with his lover’s brains . Not all of his shivering was due to the cold.

‘I’ll shout when it’s clear.’ Marc started along the road towards the three vehicles, the pistol grasped in his hand.

Vic struggled to pull on his sodden clothes.

‘You’re shaking, Daddy,’ Olivia said. She was so sweet, innocent, beautiful, that he wanted to pick her up and run with her until they reached somewhere safer than anywhere else.

‘You think Marc’s okay?’ Sean asked. He’d come down the slope to stand between Jayne and Vic’s family. The rifle looked heavy in his hand but he seemed hardly aware of it.

‘I don’t know,’ Vic said truthfully.

‘Well. .’ Sean said. ‘Jayne’s the important one here. She’s our reason for keeping going.’

‘He just saw his partner decapitated,’ Jayne said, struggling to her feet. Sean went to help her.

‘What’s that mean?’ Olivia asked. ‘And where’s that tall man Gary?’

Not so tall now , Vic thought, shocking himself by uttering a sharp laugh. He tried to turn it into a cough, but the others knew. Sean smiled. But it was a sad expression that conveyed understanding. Are we all going fucking mad? Vic thought. Then they heard a motor.

The station wagon swung in a half-circle around the other two cars and came their way. The offside wing was smashed and the bonnet crumpled, but the engine sounded fine to Vic. When Marc parked and slipped into neutral he gunned it.

As the engine’s roar echoed into the hills, he leaned from the driver’s seat. ‘Got a GPS. Couple of guns. Come on. Fuck, I can’t wait to see that mad old fucking Welshman again.’

They gathered their things and climbed into the vehicle. Sean flicked on the radio as Marc drove, scanning across the frequencies. Some stations were playing music on a loop. Here and there they found someone still broadcasting, ranting, crying, occasionally issuing instructions from a government that otherwise seemed conspicuously absent.

Elsewhere, all they heard was the sound of white noise.

Holly pressed her hand to her wound. She had never felt so hopeless. She sat in Secondary and scanned Coldbrook on the cameras that were still working; there was no sign that Moira was still there. And why should she have been? She’d stayed behind for long enough to put Holly out of action, then fled back through the breach to her own wretched world.

Holly had never found it in herself to trust Drake fully and at the time she’d put it down to the distance between their lives. Now she wished she had trusted herself. Because Jonah was dead, and she herself might well be dying. The dressing she’d found in Secondary’s first-aid box was already soaked through, and blood was pooling on the concave stool she was sitting on. Her behind was wet from it. Her vision was growing fuzzy. I’m losing too much , she thought, and decided to look at last.

Holly had always been terrible with blood, especially her own. Now she could smell it on the air. She groaned and the sound came from very far away.

But there was too much left to do for her to die. If she bled to death, Vic and the others might never make it inside alive. She had to make Coldbrook safe. Warn them, at least. Find out what route Vic had taken to escape, whether he’d left it open and if it was now a way for the furies to get in.

So she bit her lip and looked, dropping the sodden bandage and examining the wound. The knife had slid in just above her hip, perhaps skimming across her pelvic bone. She had no idea how deep it had gone, but the blood was still flowing freely. It was a neat incision.

‘Not too bad,’ she said, but she couldn’t know that for sure. She rummaged in the first-aid box and found another dressing. Pressing it hard against the wound, she tried to remember everything she knew about dealing with injuries like this. It all came down to one thing — she needed a hospital.

‘Shit outta luck,’ Holly whispered. On a wall screen in front of her a pale shape moved along a corridor.

She held her breath. Looked again. Two people she used to know were wandering aimlessly, covered in dried blood. On her way out, Moira had taken the time to open some doors.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Oh, you bitch.’ She glimpsed the satphone on the floor by the door. She’d thought it was safe in her pocket but it must have dropped out during her tussle with Moira. All she had to do now was reach it.

It took a couple of minutes to slip from the blood-drenched chair and move across to the phone. The wound hurt like fuckery, but Holly reached the door without fainting. She leaned against the wall and slid down it slowly, dropping to the floor and crying out as the wound flexed. Blood pulsed over her hand. Got to keep still for a while, let the bleeding ease .

She dialled Vic, suddenly desperate to hear his voice, to hear any voice. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed movement on the screens again, but this time she didn’t look. The idea of seeing this blasphemous mockery of death made her feel sick — she might be dead soon herself. But she had plenty of fight in her yet, and a powerful rage against Drake and Moira. And if Jonah-

‘Jonah!’ Vic’s voice said. ‘Jesus Christ, where the fuck have you been?’

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ Holly said, smiling despite herself.

‘Holly. .’ Vic said. She could hear background noise, wondered how close they were. They should have arrived by now, surely?