by Tim Lebbon
“I’m so far away,” she said, her voice surprisingly loud. She rested her elbows on her knees, her head on her forearms, and then she saw the single word carved into a smooth rock at her feet.
Exit.
The word seemed to pin Holly to the rocks. She glanced to the left, and saw that another of the seemingly random stones had a sharp, regular edge. She hadn’t looked for it before, but now she could see.
Exit.
She heard movement behind her, sliding, slithering, skin over wet stone. And as she stumbled from her perch and turned around she realised that she was not alone. The thing was rising from beneath thick vegetation atop the stones, lifting through twisted roots, parting leaves. It looked old and withered, similar to the man in Control, except this being had once been a woman. And she wore the scrappy remnants of clothes.
As the gaunt thing reached out something flicked at Holly’s hair, whistling past her ear, and an arrow buried itself in the woman’s face.
SUNDAY
1
Just before dawn on the day when the world changed for ever, Jayne Woodhams wished that she could die. For her it was not an unusual thought, and neither was the anger that followed.
“Okay, babe,” Tommy said. “It’s okay.” And she groaned some more because it never was.
Dawn made the Knoxville skyline beautiful. Their second-floor apartment looked out over Fort Dickerson Park, and the Appalachian Mountains were silhouetted against the sky by the new day emerging from beyond. Such beauty sometimes held Jayne entranced and gave her every reason to live, but some mornings—like this one—it passed her by. The first pains of the day forbade beauty, and today the agony seemed worse than usual.
Tommy knelt beside her on the bed. He’d thrown back the covers even as she stirred, and now he was slowly massaging her feet and lower legs, working the feeling back in, pressing away the nightly muscle paralysis that her condition brought on. A year ago they’d seen a consultant in Cleveland who’d told her to wake every hour and exercise for five minutes. That had reduced the pain by maybe a fifth, but she spent her life exhausted, and the tiredness brought on a more fiery discomfort later in the day. Two years before that, a herbalist in Nashville had prescribed a paste to be applied to her worst-affected parts every night before bed. For three weeks Tommy had followed the herbalist’s instructions, mixing the gloop and smearing it across her lower legs and knees, elbows, shoulders and hips. There had been no obvious change, and at the beginning of the fourth week Tommy had shown her the weeping sores between his fingers from where he was having an allergic reaction to something in the paste. Medicines, muscle relaxants, hypnosis, acupuncture, a hydrotherapy bath, and more: they had gone from consultant to doctor to quack in their search for something that would ease her pain. And, in the end, they had learned to trust themselves.
Jayne slept badly, woke in agony, and Tommy was there every morning to massage her back to life. In the last six years, since she was sixteen and he fifteen, there had been perhaps twenty mornings when he had not been there to welcome in the dawn—and its pain—with her. His devotion had precluded college, and a job which meant frequent travelling, and he had settled into an easy, unfulfilling office job just so that he could be with her. She’d protested every step of the way, but her protestations made him angrier than she had ever seen him. They had soon stopped. I’ve never done anything I didn’t want to do, he’d told her, as if that made the limiting of his life for the sake of hers more acceptable.
She felt his hands moving up towards her knees and winced in readiness.
“Knees now. Ready?”
“No.”
“Here we go.”
“Touch me there and I’ll fucking kill you, you fucking torturer.”
“Big talk.” Tommy started working the area around her knees with his fingertips, a steady pressure to start with, growing harder and stronger as he plumbed the depths of her pain.
Jayne gritted her teeth, but she had long ago given up trying to hold back her tears.
Though treatment of her condition had varied with everyone she had consulted, at least three doctors had agreed upon a name: churu. One of them told her he had never seen a case, and that when he researched it he found only sixteen recorded cases. He said he was surprised it even had a name. It was a condition of the brain and nervous system. No one knew where it originated, or why it happened. Of the previous sixteen cases, the oldest to die had been a man in Argentina—at the ripe old age of twenty-six.
“I’m going to rip your fucking head off!” she growled as Tommy ground his thumbs around the tops of her knees. She had never loved him so much.
Tommy, grim-faced as ever at the pain he caused, worked on while Jayne lived through it. It usually took half an hour before she could sit up on her own, but this morning she felt stiffer than usual, and even flexing her arms and turning her head sent bolts of pain through her body. The sun would be up and the streets outside buzzing before she felt even half-human.
After her knees, he moved on to her hips, grinning as he pulled up her nightshirt.
“Helpless before me,” he cackled, running his hands up her inner thighs.
Jayne kneed him in the side, grimacing at the flaring pain but finding his gasp worth it. “Later, slave,” she said, “if you perform your duties well.” She settled again, hips on fire, legs now merely simmering after Tommy’s ministrations, but she could never feel angry at him. Not after what he had done. He was a young guy devoted to a young woman in an old woman’s body, a woman who could sometimes barely walk, who could well be dead in the next few years. Every morning she woke up and wished for death, and Tommy was there to save her life.
“Thought we could go down to the park later,” he said, working his thumbs across her hip bones as his fingers pressed beneath. “Picnic, couple of books, bottle of wine.”
“Feeling all horny now you’ve spent half an hour touching me up?”
“Always horny,” Tommy said.
Jayne frowned as he worked harder around her hips, but as his hands moved on the pain was lessening to a background glow, and movement returned. It was as if he brought her back to the world every morning, and sometimes she laughed at people’s perception of their relationship. Everyone saw Jayne as the strong one—the sufferer, the fighter—but Tommy was the rock to which she clung.
“Park sounds good,” she said.
He sat back on his haunches and she saw the beads of sweat on his brow. He swept his long hair back from his face, blinking faster, and she knew he wanted to get finished.
“I’ll do my shoulders,” she said.
“Sure?” He pretended to be hurt, but she could read him so well. He never complained, but that didn’t mean that he enjoyed this morning ritual. She could hardly blame him. And she saw, and understood the need. He was her addiction.
“Sure.” She reached up with her left hand and started massaging her right shoulder, biting back a gasp at the pain it caused her. No one could tell her why the churu affected muscles around joints more than anywhere else. One of the more honest consultants had said that it was such a rare disease. Certainly no one really knew much about it, and no one was willing to spend the money to research it. He’d finished with, If what you’re doing works for you, keep doing it.
Well, fuck them.
“Okay,” Tommy said, standing beside the bed, stretching, watching her, when all he really wanted right then was to go out into the small kitchen. “Well, I’ll have a smoke, then.”
“Okay. Thanks, babe.”
“Don’t call me babe.” He delivered the familiar line with the usual sternness, then breezed through to their kitchen. Moments later Jayne heard the scratch of a match and Tommy’s satisfied sigh, and soon after that the first whiff of pot hit her. He’s started rolling them ready the night before and he’ll have two before we leave the apartment, she thought. But she couldn’t judge him. It was only pot.
She worked at her shoulders, left and right, and soon she
would be able to rise, shower and dress. Sunday was her favourite day.
2
It was vital that Jonah should alert the surface about what was happening. He was berating himself for not having done so sooner. Those afflicted—or infected, which was how he was viewing them now—were secure down here with Coldbrook closed down, but the news must be broken.
The project’s influence spread across the globe. Two thick tentacles reached out to the US and UK governments, their funding for Coldbrook hidden away through complex paths of finance and banking, two-decade-old signatures on yellowing sheets of paper in files in locked storerooms, and his call would reach those countries’ security agencies in a matter of minutes. And then there were links that were less substantial finance-wise though perhaps stronger in their commitment. These led to private individuals and organisations, ranging from billionaire entrepreneurs who gifted their money to fund their appetite for amazing things to oil barons and shareholding companies with high-risk portfolios, their real object hidden from bond holders by an almost insanely intricate web of investments.
Jonah’s call would cause a huge splash, and that splash would make waves. By the time he hung up, people across the world would be woken, called out of meetings or interrupted on their yachting holidays to be told that Coldbrook’s recent astounding success had been followed by catastrophic failure. Jonah knew of the safeguards in place down here because he had insisted on many of them himself. But he had no idea what measures had been set up beyond these walls and a thousand miles away. His call might piss off investors or start an avalanche of military intervention, and he would have influence over neither outcome.
I’m going to die and stay down here for ever, he thought. But, right now, for ever did not concern him unduly.
Satphone in hand, he swivelled in his chair and briefly examined the schematic on the wall behind him. Yellow lights indicated where internal lockdown measures had taken place, and the light over Control’s door was blinking. Failure. But Satpal’s escape was no longer important. What was important were the red lights, showing Coldbrook’s outer containment. All remained steady but one: a ventilation duct.
That one also blinked.
Jonah stood up from his chair and walked closer. His eyes weren’t what they used to be and perhaps they were watering, causing the image to flicker. But no: the light was flashing. He tapped the vent reference code into his laptop and read the information presented there. All three dampers had been closed and their mechanisms destroyed, as expected.
“Malfunction,” he muttered looking back at the light. “Melting caused a short. Has to be.” But he had not seen Vic Pearson on any screen, in any room, dead or alive—or walking the line between.
“Vic, I hope you haven’t done something stupid,” Jonah said, and he dialled Coldbrook’s above-ground administration and guard block. The call rang several times before it was answered.
“Asleep on the job?” Jonah asked as soon as he heard the click of connection.
“Not at all, no,” a voice said, flustered. “Who is this?”
“Jonah Jones. Is that Rick Summerfield?”
“Yes, professor. Er… it’s early.” Jonah felt a shred of relief. Summerfield was a manager rather than a scientist, but he and Jonah had always seen eye to eye, and he possessed that spark of imagination and wonder that made him a true part of Coldbrook like many others. He saw not just an experiment but something more meaningful. Jonah closed his eyes.
“You haven’t seen that we’re in lockdown?” he asked.
“What? Why? There’s nothing… hold on.” Jonah heard keyboard keys being tapped and the rustle of Summerfield pulling on headphones. “We’re showing nothing. All boards clear up here.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Jonah said. He knew that the small surface compound—four buildings, a car park and a perimeter fence—was linked into Coldbrook’s network, but something must have gone wrong. He didn’t know how recently the systems up there had been checked, and the ongoing endless modernisation of the facility’s IT equipment often favoured the subterranean area where the real work was done.
Unsettled, Jonah watched the three flashing LEDs as he continued. “Rick, something came through.”
“What something?”
“It doesn’t matter. Patch in to email and I’ll send you what you need to see. But… we have to sound the alarm. You have the protocols, a list of who to contact.”
“Yes, I have it here. But the breach was stable! Everyone’s probably still celebrating, Jonah.”
“Something came through. People are dead. Maybe everyone.” There was no response to this, only a shocked gasp. “Except… before you do that, I need you to check the ventilation-duct housing on the services block.”
“Why?”
“I can’t find Vic Pearson. I’m afraid he might have made a break for it.”
“It’s fine,” Summerfield said. “I can see the cover from here, it’s intact, and Vic wouldn’t—”
“Will you just check the bastard for me!” Jonah said, anger creeping into his voice. It was shock and grief that were causing it and he reined it in. “Sorry, Rick. Please check. For this old Welshman.”
“Okay, hold on.” He heard mumbling in the background as Summerfield used a walkie-talkie, then he was back online. “Moore’s going to look right now.”
“It’s a contagion,” Jonah said. “Something I’ve never seen before. Never imagined. I’ll send the info but access the security cameras for the last hour, if you can. You’ll see. All of them. It’s horrible.” He trailed off, shaking his head as if Summerfield were in the room and could see him.
“Jonah?”
“All of them, dead—but not lying down.” And he had stated the truth of it at last, though he could not understand.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.”
“Melinda? Satpal? Holly?”
“No,” Jonah whispered. He sat down and stared at the breach on the screen. What’s she doing now, and where, and is it even now for her? “Not Holly. She went through the breach.”
“Holy shit,” Summerfield said.
“I know. Wherever she is now—”
“I can see Moore at the duct housing,” Summerfield cut in. “He touched the maintenance hatch and it fell off. It’s open, Jonah.”
Vic, Jonah thought, what the hell have you done? But he knew. Vic Pearson had stayed true to everything he believed in—his family.
“Close it,” Jonah said urgently. “Rick, seal that hatch, weld it, bury it in fucking concrete but—”
“Oh, hang on. Someone’s…”
“Rick?”
“It’s… it’s okay, it’s Alex. He looks—”
“Rick!” Jonah shouted. “Tell Moore to get back, tell him—”
Jonah heard the distant rattle of gunfire, and then silence, and then Rick Summerfield screamed, “Oh my fucking Christ.”
“Rick? Rick!” But Rick had gone. Jonah closed his eyes but he couldn’t think straight. Got to contain it, keep them in, maintain the perimeter. Already he could hear the static-filled thumping and smashing of glass, as somewhere directly above him the disease spread itself.
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, Motörhead 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…