Berserk

by Tim Lebbon

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I’m so sorry.”

  The baby cried, and so did Cole. He had never been haunted before.

  * * *

  Tom drove on, observing the speed limit. His breathing was shallow; he expected any deep breaths to burst his wound and set the blood flowing again. He felt so delicate.

  Natasha was away. She had been gone for ten minutes, and he hoped she was talking with the other berserkers, finding out where they would meet. Tom did not think he could go on for much longer. He drove toward the light of Steven’s life, leaving behind the darkness of Jo’s death. That darkness would fall again, and when it came it would be hard and heavy and difficult to accept. But for now Jo was somewhere away from here, a loving memory that he was reserving for later when things were better. Natasha had done something to help him with this; that made him uncomfortable, yet accepting. For now.

  The present pulled him on and he went with the flow.

  Beside him, like a bag of shells being shaken, Natasha giggled.

  * * *

  Lucy-Anne giggled. It was a grotesque sound and Cole tried to ignore it, but it was insistent, reverberating through all the dark places of his mind and echoing into the streets of his psyche. He could not escape himself, and that was where Lucy-Anne was. Inside. In him. him, because of what he had done to her. Her giggle seemed misplaced but he was not in a state of mind to really dwell on that.With

  The baby was still screaming, and Cole knew he had to stop. He could not go on like this; guilt would not let him, and neither would the pulsing headache the kid’s screaming was giving him. The question was, what could he do? He could not just pull over and leave the baby by the side of the motorway, and to exit would lose him precious time. He was still only assuming that Roberts had driven north with Natasha, and now that Major Higgins seemed to have abandoned him, he could think of no real way to trace them. Higgins would likely have at his disposal the police with road cameras, patrol cars, aerial surveillance. Cole could rely on nothing more than Natasha’s occasional mockery in his mind to locate her.

  He needed her to come to him again, let him know how far and fast they had moved. Though the idea of inviting her yet again into his mind was ghastly, he could think of no other way. Besides, she would have good company in there.

  The ghost of Lucy-Anne presented itself again and Cole cringed, trying to see past the image floating across his mind like a shadow over the sun. He saw through her but could not ignore her presence. She was there again, and now he could see her face as well, her ruined head spilling blood and brains over her clothes, her thighs, her legs propped wide in the same way he had seen her spilled from the driver’s seat of the MX5. She was inviting him in and he could not pull away, could not avert his eyes as she pulled her underwear aside, and he knew why she was doing this. He had thought fleetingly that this was the sort of woman he liked to fuck, and perhaps she had died right then, at the exact moment of his thinking that. She had grabbed onto that thought and was using it now to tear him apart.

  “Shut up!” he screamed at the crying baby.

  Lucy-Anne giggled again, a ragged sound as if she were gargling razors. She slipped away and retreated under ground, leaving only the smells and tastes behind.

  Cole breathed deeply, opening the window to try and purge the taste of a dead woman’s pussy from his mouth.

  “No!” She was not doing this. He was doing it to himself.

  The baby still cried.

  The sun glinted on the pistol on the seat beside him, a precise piece of engineering unhindered by human doubt.

  She came at him yet again, approaching from behind and wrapping her limbs around his mind in a grotesque parody of animalistic lovemaking. She ground her dead self against his imagination and raped it, giggling all along, forcing tears from Cole’s eyes at the rancid black guilt he felt. Without thinking he reached for the gun and fumbled it, cursing as it slipped from his hand and back onto the seat.

  And just what had he intended doing with it?

  He thought of Natasha.

  And then she was in his mind, had been there all along, her face wrapped up with that of Lucy-Anne’s, her wicked intentions clear even as she performed a grotesque dance with the false mannequin of a dead woman’s ghost.

  “Get the fuck out of my head!” Cole shouted, hating the little berserker bitch even more than he had before. She had fooled him into seeing a ghost, and there was only one reason why she would have possibly done that: entertainment. “Get out, you little bitch!”

  Temper temper, Mister Wolf, Natasha said. You’ll upset the baby. The smell and taste of the dead woman vanished suddenly, replaced by the stench of nothing. Cole had never smelled emptiness, and he suddenly wished for the stink of the dead woman again. However manufactured, and whatever terrible guilt it conjured, at least it was better than this. But this is your life, Natasha said. Nothing. Empty. And soon, utterly pointless.

  “Not pointless when I catch you and kill you,” he said.

  Well, you’re getting much warmer, she said. Keep coming . . . keep coming, Mister Wolf. Everyone’s dying to meet you again. She left, emptying his mind, and he gasped at the sudden sense of being set adrift. Her leaving dragged away all remnants of the faux ghost, and for that he was glad. But rather than relief he was filled with sadness, a realisation that his life was empty, had been, and would be forever.

  “It’s you doing this to me, Natasha,” he said, and the baby suddenly stopped crying as if in agreement.

  Cole looked in the rear-view mirror, stared into the baby’s eyes and saw the wonder of potential alight in there. In his own eyes, the fresh glint of determination. “For you,” he said, talking to this new human now, not the filthy bitch berserker. “For you I’m doing all this. And you know that, don’t you?” The baby stared, seeing only Cole’s eyes in the mirror, and its lower lip pulled down as it prepared to cry again. “Don’t cry,” Cole said. “Not yet. Not until I’ve finished. Then you can cry for me, or cry for all of us. There’ll be nothing in between.”

  Shaking, filled with a renewed purpose, Cole drove on.

  * * *

  “What were you laughing at?” Tom asked.

  Natasha remained silent and still beside him. He had heard nothing since that gruff giggle, and it had taken a few minutes to find his nerve again after that. It had sounded so adult, and so unlike Natasha.

  His question unanswered, he drove on. It felt as though he had been driving forever. Yesterday he had woken to begin his drive out onto the moors, last night he had travelled though the dark with the body of a girl in his boot, and today he had been fleeing the bullets of the madman who had buried her, come back now to finish the job. His back ached, not just from the gunshot wound but also from simple road fatigue. He could not go on forever, and Natasha had promised him that this journey would be over soon.

  After that . . . he was not sure.

  He passed a police car parked on the hard shoulder. He glanced down at his speedometer – eighty, ten miles per hour over the limit – and watched in the mirrors for the flashing blue light as the car came in pursuit. But it remained parked where it was, fading quickly behind him. Everyone on the road seemed to be going as fast or faster than him. Perhaps the police were waiting for someone special.

  “They’d have a field day with me,” he said, smiling without humour.

  Not far now, Natasha said. They’re on their way, all of them. They’ll meet us in two hours.

  “Where?”

  A pause, now familiar, one that displayed uncertainty. I don’t know yet.

  “Tell me about yourself,” Tom said, and the statement surprised him as much as Natasha. Yet those few simple words seemed to open doors. After everything he had been through with this strange girl, everything she had done to him and shown him, his own statement of curiosity marked a vital change in their day. The imminent threat of Cole was still there, but now there was also the comfort of company.

  Well
. . . She paused, and Tom could sense her confusion. He heard her shifting in her seat slightly, perhaps uncomfortable. He did not look. He was still uneasy at the fact of her body coming back to life. I’ve shown you so much already, she said. He felt her draw back in his mind, a diminishing presence that gave him room. No probing fingers now, no questing thoughts. She was releasing her touch, remaining there only to talk to him. It was as if that simple question had inspired a newfound respect for the man who had rescued her.

  “You’ve shown me, but why can’t you tell me? You asked me if I would be your daddy. I saw what happened to your real father, but I know nothing about him. And really I know nothing about you. Other than thinking you should be dead.”

  I’m a berserker, being buried—

  “I know that, but I don’t understand what it means. Tell me, Natasha. I’m tired. Talk to me. Keep me awake until we get to Lane and Sophia. I reckon everything will change again when that happens, and we might not get a chance to talk again like this.”

  Like this, he had said. Alone. Intimate. But he guessed that by the end of this day, the two of them would likely never talk to each other again, ever. And he knew that she knew too.

  * * *

  My father was a good man. Berserkers are old, they live a long time, and Daddy was almost a hundred when Mister Wolf killed him.

  I cried when Daddy died, but I wasn’t given time to mourn for him properly. I’m just a little girl . . . and that’s so unfair. When I was buried I cried myself dry. I don’t think I’ll ever cry again, even when I’m whole. I don’t think I can.

  are Berserkers and humans, I know you wonder about that, I’ve seen it in your mind. Berserkers humans, just different. They’re made differently, but Mummy always said that doesn’t mean they can’t live together. And for thousands of years they did. They still do, in fact, because there are thousands of us all over the world. Or so Mummy told me. I don’t really know for myself, because Porton Down is all I can remember. When you dug me up and took me away, that was the first taste of freedom I’d ever had.

  But sometimes I think Mummy lied. Sometimes I think there’s just us, and we’re freaks, and maybe we were never truly born at all. I’m alone, but that idea makes me lonelier still.

  So we lived together, people and berserkers, though they were ignorant of us for a long time. Then my parents were caught along with Lane and Sophia. I often asked them how that happened, and where, and why, but most of the answers were kept from me. The only reason for that is Home, the place where berserkers used to live that was beyond the eyes of normal people. A place underground, with almost everything we needed to survive. If I knew all about it and where it was that would put me in danger, and put Home in danger. It was a safe place then and it’s still safe now. I think that’s where Lane and Sophia went with their children: Home. And I hope that’s where they’re going to take us. It’s so close I can almost taste it.

  Things feel different now, Daddy. Now that Mister Wolf has come back, things feel very different. I hope they can go back to how they were years ago, before I was born . . . but I’m not sure they can. We’re known now, you see. People know of us. And as Mummy told me, it was always being unknown that made it easy for us to survive.

  The berserkers took people, sometimes. You know that. I understand what that may mean to you, but it’s the way we lived, the way nature made us. You take pigs and cows and sheep; we took people. At least we keep murder for food within our own species. Lane and the others must have been doing that these last ten years, but maybe not much, and maybe not near Home. We’ll see, they’ll tell us. And then there’s . . .

  Natasha trailed off, falling into that uncomfortable silence that Tom was growing to understand. She had things to say that she did not wish him to hear.

  “And then there’s Steven,” he said, finishing for her. “Food for them. Fresh food. Kept in their Home like so much fodder.”

  Don’t sound bitter, Daddy.

  “He’s my son!” Tom cried, and a spear of pain bit into his back. Is that you? he thought. Is that you punishing me, Natasha? “And I’m not your daddy. You saw him shot. I saw that in your memory, and however much you try to shut it out it’s still there, fresh and clear.” The pain stayed away, but Tom felt as if he were balancing on the edge of a lake of agony. Only Natasha’s mind held onto him, and were she to let go he would drown.

  You said you’d be my new daddy, she said, her voice hitching, dry sobs taking the place of breaths. Tom remembered how the young Steven made him feel like the worst father in the world with one tear, and Natasha had the same gift. Maybe all children do. Too small to protect themselves, they manipulate the emotions of adults to do so.

  “I will,” Tom said. “I am. You’re like a new baby, aren’t you? Birthed up from the ground, growing, learning? And what was the first thing you saw?”

  You.

  “Me.” She stroked his mind and the pain in his back went away, shoved down with the true memories of the past day. It would be back, along with Jo, and when that time came the pain and grief might well kill him. But if he had Steven in his arms by then, perhaps he would be able to fight through them both.

  * * *

  It took Cole another half an hour to realise the enormity of what he was doing. He’d stolen a car, yes, but he’d stolen someone’s baby as well! The little girl had dropped off to sleep, lulled by the motion of the car, and for that he was glad. But he kept the rear-view mirror twisted down, and he continued to check that she was alright. The crying had ceased, Natasha had left him alone and dragged the imaginary ghost away with her, and Cole was on his own. It gave him time to think.

  He passed a police car parked on the side of the motorway, glanced in his wing mirror, certain that it would come after him. He watched, drove, watched, glanced at the sleeping girl . . . and when he looked back one last time the police car had lurched onto the motorway, lights flashing and smoke clouding up the air behind it from screeching tyres.

  “Oh shit, here we go,” he muttered. He had not considered what he would do if it came down to this – not really – but the gun was still a clinical weight on the seat beside him, ready to give Natasha her medicine. He could not let anything get in the way of that.

  The police car was gaining rapidly. Cole considered trying to get away, but that would never happen. The longer the chase went on, the more reinforcements they would call. More cars, a helicopter, road blocks, and he would be a rat in a trap, unable to escape however determined he was, however big his gun. Best to confront them as quickly as possible, hand over the kid and . . . what? Kill two policemen? Shoot them in cold blood so that he could get away and, perhaps, finish what had started ten years ago?

  “All for you,” he said to the baby’s reflection. The image of the dead woman flashed before him again and he gasped, but this time it was only his own memory dredging up the filth Natasha had put before him. He pushed it from his mind and signalled his intent to pull over onto the hard shoulder.

  Maybe it’ll go by, maybe they’re after someone else, on another call. Maybe I’ll be that lucky. But the patrol car slowed behind him and, lights still flashing, pulled over and parked twenty feet behind his car.

  “Not long to go now,” he muttered. “Not long and it’ll all be over. The bitch will be dead and hopefully Lane and Sophia, too. Not long until the end of the day. End of the day.” He had to think quickly. He could see the two policemen as shadows in their car, one of them talking on the radio, checking registration number and—

  And they’d know he had a gun.

  “Why wait?” he asked. He looked once more in the mirror at the sleeping baby, then threw open his door, grabbing the pistol as he went.

  He walked quickly toward the patrol car, carrying the gun at his side and not yet aiming it. Last thing he wanted was some vigilante motorist deciding to nudge him into the ditch at eighty miles per hour, and brandishing a gun at a police car in broad daylight beside the motorway would be just the ti
cket.

  The policemen kept their windows up. He didn’t care. On the passenger side he shot out the front tyre, took a few more steps, shot out the rear tyre, and only then did he tap the pistol against the glass. The policeman’s face was inches from the gun and he looked terrified, pale and sweating, his shirt sticking to his chest and shoulders.

  “Open!” Cole shouted. He knew they could hear him. “Open up now!” He turned the gun so that it was aiming straight through the glass. The policeman’s eyes opened wide, as if trying to look far enough into the barrel to see the round that would kill him. “Three seconds!” Cole shouted, and the door clicked open.

  Cole stepped back and motioned the man out. The policeman climbed from the car and kept his back against it, never once taking his eyes from the pistol.

  “Driver, out this side,” Cole said.

  “Where’s the baby?” the driver asked. He climbed across the front seats and stood slowly next to his partner. He looked less shaken and more in control, and Cole knew that this was where his trouble could come from.

  “In the car, asleep,” he said. “I didn’t know she was in there when I took the car. Now listen, both of you. This has the potential to go very wrong, but I don’t want it to. There’s a simple rule for both of you to remember over the next couple of minutes, and if you do, everything will go down fine: I have a gun, and you don’t.” The driver glanced down at the weapon briefly. His partner’s eyes never left it. “You!” Cole said. The passenger looked up, eyes still wide. “I want you to take off your radio, and your mate’s, and stomp on them.”