Tim Lebbon - Coldbrook

Marc was right. They were running out of time.

‘Still want to slit my throat?’

Marc jumped a little, then sighed and rested back in the chair. ‘It’s not over yet. I said I won’t kill you until it’s over.’

‘Define “over”.’

‘Yeah.’ Marc stood and stretched, his joints creaking. The desk he’d requisitioned in Secondary was piled with printouts, the laptop stood open, and the satphone was plugged in to recharge.

‘So when will you be ready to begin?’ Vic asked.

‘I have begun.’ Marc pointed at the printed sheets. ‘I understand about thirty per cent of that.’

Vic flicked through papers, read lines here and there, saw formulae, tables, and some words he had never heard of — some of the phrases were in English and yet alien to him. He touched the laptop’s pad and the screen lit up, revealing a dozen unread emails. He saw that they’d come in over the past few minutes.

‘All these people are trying to help?’ Vic said.

‘It’s going to take for ever,’ Marc said. ‘It’s daunting. It’s scary how much I don’t know. I told Holly, and she didn’t seem to accept that very well. And there’s one thing I haven’t told anyone. About Jayne and Mannan.’

‘What’s that?’ Vic asked.

‘I think they need to mate. Conceive. I think it’s their child that might provide the cure.’

‘But that’s. .’ Vic said, aghast.

‘I know. Maybe years.’

‘I wasn’t even thinking timescale.’

‘You see my problem,’ Marc said.

‘Coldbrook won’t last,’ Vic said. ‘They’ll get in somehow. We’re taking a breather, but everyone in the garage is twitchy, listening to those things in the duct. Soon we’ll have to move again, and from then there’s only one way to go.’

‘I know that, too.’

Vic turned and looked at the blank screens, seeing himself and Marc reflected there. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ll tell them all tomorrow.’

‘Yeah,’ Marc said. ‘Everyone deserves a day of hope.’

Jayne surfaced slowly, eyes still closed, and she knew that Sean was still in the room with her. She felt his influence; she felt safe.

‘Hey, you awake?’ he asked.

‘Yeah. How’d you know?’

‘You’ve stopped snoring.’

‘I do not snore.’

‘Damn right you do. I thought it was an alarm, or something. Been banging the air conditioning, trying to get it to shut up. Dogs for miles around-’

‘Way to labour a point,’ Jayne said, and opened her eyes. Sean was sitting across from her, leaning back in a chair with his feet on a small desk. The room had belonged to a guy called Jonah who wasn’t here any more, and the others seemed to hold him in high regard. There were books on every surface, and an old photograph of an attractive middle-aged woman on the desk. Sean had been careful not to disturb anything.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘Six hours. Since we got in, pretty much.’

‘You slept?’ she asked, but she knew the answer to that.

‘Couldn’t.’ He shrugged.

‘So what’d I miss?’

‘That woman Holly came to visit. That’s all. I think everyone’s just. .’

‘Taking a breath,’ Jayne said.

‘Yeah. So how do you feel?’

‘Bit better.’ That was a lie. She didn’t feel better at all, but she found that she could move more easily than before, straightening her limbs, pushing herself upright so that she was leaning against the wall. Holly had given her some powerful painkillers, and she’d had a restful sleep. The light comas were more exhausting than staying awake through the pain.

‘So this Drake character,’ Sean said. ‘He’s sent two of his people back over. Through. Whatever. Sent them back to fetch the drugs that might help you.’

‘Marc is afraid that it’ll affect his experiments.’

‘And that’s what you are now? An experiment?’

Jayne smiled, and for the first time in days it did not hurt her face. ‘Sean, I owe you everything. Everything. And because I owe you, then I want a lot more people to owe you, too. I’m immune, and if Marc can make anything of that — a cure, a vaccine — you’ll be the one who helped save the world.’

‘Huh!’ Sean shook his head.

‘You’re so sweet,’ she said.

He didn’t look at her, and Jayne knew why. She could see his daughter in his eyes, sometimes even when he was looking right at Jayne herself. She wasn’t a replacement, not even an equal. Maybe they’d talk about it one day.

‘I have to do what I can,’ Jayne said. ‘I’ll take whatever Marc gives me, and give what he needs to take.’

‘Even if it means you’ll die?’ Sean asked.

‘Everyone dies.’

Jonah had never been to Italy. Wendy had always wanted to go, but for some reason something always got in the way. Usually his work. Now he was there, Roman sun warming his skin and the layer of matter that had been sprayed there through the doorway. If he looked up at the sky, with its wispy clouds and light blue depths, everything could almost be all right.

He was in line with his Inquisitor, and close-up he felt distant from all those other naked people. Some were distinctly human, others less so — higher-browed, taller, more heavily muscled. On distant Earths, along the string of universes, evolution had taken different tracks. As well as making them all appear vulnerable, the nakedness was also a barrier of sorts, making them ironically less than human in Jonah’s eyes.

Perhaps part of it was that he knew he would be killing them all — soon. All these people brought from their Earths and their Coldbrooks, perhaps the last of their lines, chosen by their Inquisitors to oversee the infection of a new world, and he would turn them all into zombies. He would be wiping out so much intelligence, so much rich ambition and original thought and probing philosophy.

So it was easier to look at the ground or the sky, or the looming, grand buildings that would witness the culmination of his and Drake’s plan.

The curved walls and grand columns around St Peter’s Square had been covered with small writing, and he was too far away to read it. Perhaps it was scripture, or this world’s perverted version of what scripture should be. Higher up he saw planes’ contrails crossing the sky, the aircraft themselves moving incredibly quickly. Objects that he’d thought at first were birds hovered over the square, flitting here and there, and they glinted where they caught the sun. He guessed that they might be airborne cameras, and he averted his stare in case someone perceived his intent.

Men and women in colourful uniforms — orange, yellow, blue — stood at seemingly random points around the square, both at the edges and close to the central obelisk and fountain. They were in pairs or small groups, chatting and lounging against statues or walls, but Jonah sensed their alertness. He had seen photographs of the Swiss Guard, and even in his reality their ceremonial role was only a small part of their purpose. He imagined that here they must be a full fighting force. He turned his gaze away from these people as well. Their casualness disturbed him.

Holly would have hated this place, with its bastardisation of all she thought of as pure and precious, and Jonah craved to discover what could have gone so wrong. Despite his lack of belief, even he could see that these devout souls had betrayed their philosophy and made themselves godless. Did they really think that they were performing God’s work? And how had this world’s beliefs become so twisted? One of their holiest places had been turned into a factory of death, and they continued praying at the site of their greatest blasphemy. He was sad that he would never know the truth and, even if he did, that it would soon die with him. He might have been part of one of the most ambitious experiments in history — Coldbrook, and its brave, doomed journey — but some things would always remain a mystery to him.