Coldbrook (Hammer)

by Tim Lebbon

  It was dark now, and Tommy was still lying dead in that car park. Mountain animals would be emerging from their hiding places, joining the shadows as they grew from the ground. She should never have left him there at the mercy of carrion creatures.

  Gasping a sudden, shuddering sob, she turned up the radio and scanned it to a talk station.

  ‘. . . seven times, and they jus’ tell me “please hold on, we’re busy an’ try an’ call back later”, but the guy was standin’ there, starin’ in my window with his throat gone and . . .’

  ‘. . . ask the Lord for help and forgiveness, sinners, because the time has come to count your sins, stack them against the unbreachable wall of His limitless compassion, and if you don’t seize the moment and bow down now the tide of death will sweep over you, and you’ll die without Jesus in your heart . . .’

  ‘. . . they don’t die, and if these psycho Rapture dudes realised that they’d be running like the rest of us. They don’t die. I saw one hit by a truck and dragged two hundred feet under the wheels, and when the trucker got out and went to check, the roadkill reached up and dragged him down and bit him. They bite. That’s what I’ve heard. I’m telling you, they don’t die, and what’re the authorities doing about all this? Just what are they . . .?’

  ‘. . . confused right now, but there do seem to be isolated incidents of violence occurring at this time. The situation is under review, and all our resources are committed to investigating the cause of this violence and protecting members of the public from these few individuals who seem intent on . . .’

  ‘. . . and my neighbour called, black guy, and the cop asked if he was white, ’cos if he was white he could help him, and told him there’s no brothers when it comes to the end of time, only the Lord and his children. And my neighbour’s the best Christian I ever met, and that motherfucker asked him if he was fucking white!’

  Jonah turned off the radio and closed his laptop screen, hiding the news site from view. The reports were sketchy, but there was no denying the proliferation of attacks. He didn’t need to hear any more because he knew it was out there in the world, and he was more responsible than that prick Pearson. Vic might have opened the way, but Jonah had welcomed it into the world. Maybe Bill really did know the risks in what we were doing. Jonah had read the old man’s diaries, witnessed the paranoia he’d been suffering before he died – he thought he was being watched, every minute of the day – but perhaps there was something more. Something he’d never been able to write down.

  It didn’t really matter any more.

  Jonah switched one of the screens to the single inner-core camera. He took a deep breath before looking, because what they had done danced along the fringes even of his understanding. He knew some of it, but not all, and he liked to tell people – financiers, employers, those who sought to question Coldbrook’s undertaking – that Coldbrook’s core was a sum of the minds and knowledge that had gone in to make it. But he had always known the truth. Bill Coldbrook had made the leaps of intuition to give them this, and then he had killed himself.

  Bill’s comments about the Core had enthralled Jonah decades ago and they still did now. It sat behind eight feet of reinforced fifty-newton concrete, a foot of layered lead, six inches of steel, nine inches of graphite, and the largest Penning-trap network ever . . . and yet what was inside was a world away.

  And Jonah opened his eyes to see.

  The glow was both there – and not there. Staggering energies danced within flashes of quark-gluon plasma, countless collisions gave the core a sea of possibilities. It felt as though he was seeing with his own eyes and also remembering the view from someone else’s, when the core containment was still being constructed and the core itself remained a dream. It was an incredibly disturbing experience, and the first time he’d ever seen it he’d told Bill that he was seeing inside Schrödinger’s box while the experiment was still under way. Bill had laughed, taken him to one side, poured a drink.

  What he saw existed in a fold between realities. It was beautiful. It was terrifying. And he shut off the camera, remembering what Holly had said the one and only time she had looked. It’s like seeing into the mind of God.

  ‘He’s having a nightmare right now,’ Jonah muttered, and he stared at his list. There were the names of a dozen people, most of whom he had not seen for many years. He hoped they could all help. He flicked on the radio again as he started dialling, keeping it low, a background theme to his culpability.

  ‘. . . might well be a form of rabies. No one has yet been able to run tests, but from the descriptions that have come in – somewhat glorified and exaggerated, I suspect – it seems that the attacker is possessed by some kind of madness, and the victim is quickly infected. I believe one commentator has referred to them as . . . zombies? Well, let me tell you, science completely precludes . . .’

  ‘We need to stop and rest,’ Lucy said.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You’ve been driving for hours.’

  ‘Really, I’m fine,’ Vic said. ‘Just a bit longer.’ Lucy had been scanning the radio, sometimes settling on a station playing sterile love songs, sometimes finding a news channel, occasionally encountering religious or talk shows where the theories were becoming more outrageous by the minute. Zombies, someone had said, and she’d snorted and scanned away. And, all the while, Vic had been absorbing the information and knowing for sure that it was ten times worse than anyone claimed.

  He remembered a few years ago when the terrible earthquake had struck the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Haiti had been devastated, but for a long time the only firm news coming out of the country had been from individuals on blogs, independent radio stations and mobile phones. Confusion had reigned about how bad the quake had been and how many were affected, and even fly-bys by the US Coast Guard had given only a vague idea of the power and severity of the quake. It had taken almost twenty-four hours for outside agencies to penetrate to the affected zones, and another two weeks before the full, terrible human cost had been realised. At the time it had shocked him that, in a world so interconnected through the media and various forms of instant communication, a tragedy such as the quake could have caused such confusion for so long.

  That was happening now, in the USA, and it was not a confined incident. But he could still hear that level of shocked confusion in most of the voices he heard, those of some of the newscasters most of all. How long until the big picture emerges? he wondered. He did not want to be anywhere near when he found out.

  The satphone buzzed. He’d plugged it into the cigarette lighter to charge, and now he plucked it up and checked the screen. Holly! But no, of course not. Holly had gone through. Glancing sidelong at Lucy, offering her a weak smile that she did not return, he answered.

  ‘Jonah.’

  ‘Vic. Where are you?’

  ‘Heading north on 75.’ He saw no reason to lie.

  ‘How far are you from Cincinnati?’

  ‘Two, maybe three hours. Jonah, are you okay?’

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘Of course I care!’ Vic glanced at Lucy. She was looking at him with something like pity. She signalled to the side of the road and mouthed at him to pull over. He nodded. ‘Hang on, I’m driving.’ He pulled over and switched off the engine. Olivia stirred in the back seat and then snuggled down again. Lucy leaned back to arrange their daughter’s blanket.

  ‘Do you have any idea what’s happening?’ Jonah asked, and Vic could picture the old bastard’s stern expression, his intelligent eyes narrowed to slits beneath the weight of his frown.

  ‘Probably far worse than anyone’s guessing,’ Vic said. A big truck powered by, rocking their car slightly.

  ‘The radio’s bad enough,’ Jonah said. ‘News is sketchy, and the eyewitness accounts are mostly hysterical. It’s spreading, and fast. Some people are almost treating it as a joke! And some of the websites I’ve glanced at . . . But anyway, that’s beside the point. There are people I’ve spoken to who might
be able to help us.’

  ‘Us?’ Vic asked. Lucy was looking at him, eyebrows raised, but he held up one hand.

  ‘Don’t you want to put this right?’ Jonah’s voice sounded strained, even through the static of the fluctuating connection.

  ‘You’d ask me for help?’

  ‘I’m not asking – I’m demanding. You need to fix this. There are things you know that will be invaluable to the people I’m sending you to, and—’

  ‘Sending me? You’re not sending me anywhere.’

  ‘So where are you going?’ Jonah asked. Lucy had already asked him that. Vic had not replied, simply shoving the question to one side with a succession of delaying moves: he was tired, let’s talk when we stop and eat, don’t worry so much . . .

  Where exactly were they going? If they reached Cincinnati and the chaos spread north, they could drive to Detroit, and head north from there: Canada was a ferry trip away. But after that? He’d only considered it briefly, unable to deal with anything other than getting his family to safety.

  ‘Somewhere . . .’ Vic said, and his voice suddenly faltered. ‘Somewhere safe.’ Lucy reached over and held his hand. She knew when he needed contact, just as she knew when he needed space, and that was another reason why he loved her so much.

  ‘I had a wife,’ Jonah said after a pause. ‘You know. I’ve told you. She was beautiful, and I’d have done anything for her. In a way, that’s what I still am doing.’ He paused, and Vic wondered, What have you been doing down there? ‘But you also have responsibility, Vic. Don’t you understand?’

  ‘Not really. I’m an engineer, not a friggin’ genius quantum physicist.’

  ‘The effort will need overseeing. To battle this thing, find a cure, stop it. We have our differences, but you know me and our work here better than anyone. And of the two of us, there’s more chance of you staying alive.’

  ‘What’s happening down there?’

  ‘Nothing good. Nothing that can be . . . undone.’ Jonah sighed, and Vic heard the rattle of computer keys. He’s only just hanging on. ‘So you’ll do it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Vic said. Whatever the truth behind the garbled radio news and witness reports, people were dead right now and they wouldn’t be dead if he’d stayed in Coldbrook. He could trace the guilt to earlier than that – to Jonah for okaying the final breach attempt, to Bill Coldbrook for applying his genius to such a project, and back down the line to human curiosity, the search for truth, the quest for a reason – but, however far back he went, the final fault was his.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything,’ he whispered to Lucy. She nodded slowly, and he knew she realised the gravity of what he had to say. And back into the satphone he said, ‘Jonah, I’ll do what I can. But on one condition, and this isn’t about me and it’s non-negotiable: my family stay safe.’

  ‘Of course,’ Jonah said.

  ‘I mean it! I’ll put myself at risk, but not them.’ He looked at Lucy, crying softly in the seat beside him. ‘Never them.’

  ‘Never them,’ Jonah said. ‘And that’s why, despite all this, you’re not a bad lad.’

  Vic coughed, a cross between a laugh and a sob. And the cars and trucks and buses passed them by, most of their drivers probably not even realising that they were going the right way. At the moment the threat was still cloaked in confusion, and perhaps people were always unwilling to accept the worst. But soon, very soon, there would be proper panic.

  ‘The man I’m sending you to is called Marc Dubois,’ Jonah said. ‘He’s a phorologist: studies disease carriers and the spread of epidemics. He’s one of the best in the world. He’s a good friend, and he’s at Cincinnati University. They’ve got a secure place there. He’s preparing it.’

  ‘What sort of place?’

  ‘Somewhere for times like this.’

  Jonah gave him Marc’s contact details, they finished their conversation, and as Vic disconnected he felt a moment of overwhelming shame. While he’d been running, Jonah had been working, doing his best to devise ways in which this horror could be controlled now that it could no longer be contained.

  ‘So are you going to tell me where we’re going?’ Lucy asked softly.

  ‘Cincinnati. But first I’ve got to tell you why this is all my fault.’ Vic stared through the windscreen. It had started to rain, and the stream of tail lights looked distorted. His wife held his hand, and he thought of Holly, realising that he had been a student of guilt for quite some time.

  ‘. . . all but abandoned, though rumour has it there were at least thirty mutilated bodies found around the small town. So what happened to the rest of the population of over a thousand inhabitants? Where are they? No one knows. And no one knows why the authorities have labelled reports of “the dead rising” media scaremongering, when it’s quite clear from diverse eyewitness accounts that many of these attackers have been shot down, burned, electrocuted, fallen from a great height, or been crushed, only to recover to attack again. And no one knows why at least fifteen churches in Tennessee have reportedly closed their doors to non-believers. Battening down the hatches for the Rapture? You better believe it. Listen out for the sound of Heaven’s horns, people. And no one knows quite why that man in Chattanooga decapitated his baby son and three daughters while his wife was at work, or why police used machine guns against rioting civilians in Highland Park. People from Chattanooga, get on that choo-choo first chance you get. And folks are starting to ask why the President has yet to make a statement, why National Guard convoys are driving left and right, unable to find their own assholes, and why towns in Georgia and South Carolina are seeing vigilante gangs shooting people in the streets and burning their bodies. No one knows anything, people. And that’s why I’m remaining on air 24/7 from now on, because as soon as Richie Brock knows something, you will too. Remember, my number is—’

  Jayne flicked the radio off and checked everything she’d laid out on her bed. Money, passport, purse, overnight bag, clothes. That was it. That was all she wanted to take, because everything else would remind her . . .

  She had called her cousin, forgetting that it was late in Britain. I’m coming to stay with you, she’d said, and she’d hung up as Jill had mumbled something through her sleepy confusion. At least she knew she was still there.

  The bite throbbed. She hated looking at it, because it reminded her again of what she should have become. She should be out there with them now, racing through the streets and looking for someone else to bite. But all she felt was sickness with the pressure of restrained grief, and queasy with pain from the familiar hated fires in her joints.

  They probably wouldn’t let her on a plane with her medicine.

  Maybe all flights had been cancelled.

  She wished she had a gun.

  Jayne slammed her apartment door. She had a rucksack over one shoulder, a purse over the other, Tommy’s key fob in her hand, and a fresh bandage wrapped around her cleaned and sterilised wound.

  ‘. . . in the head, this is what we’ve been told by email from someone calling themselves Wendy Coldbrook. “Shoot them in the head – I’ve done it, and it works.” So there you have it, folks. We’re being attacked by zombies! Crack out the bourbon, batten down the hatches, and get that survival plan you’ve been working on for fucking years into action. Whoop whoop! It’s Thriller time!’

  Jonah sat in silence at last, satisfied that he had at last been mentioned, but unable to listen to any more radio reports – confusion, fear, religious tirades, hysteria, ridicule – and overwhelmed by the mass of information pouring out onto the Internet. There were a thousand accounts, many of them undoubtedly made up, but among them he perceived a few that must be true.

  Perhaps some people would heed his advice.

  He needed to rest, although he was not yet alone. There was a sense of something else sharing Coldbrook with him, perhaps a fellow skulking survivor avoiding him, maybe other members of the afflicted that he had not yet found. But in truth it felt like neither of these. Twice over
the past couple of hours he had seen something that had sparked terrible memories. Once he had seen a shadow of something inhuman, slipping around a corner when he approached as if it had been repulsed by Jonah’s own shadow. And when he got to Control and tried to wedge the door closed – the locking system destroyed by whatever Satpal had done to it – he’d looked up into the glass wall, and his reflection had been wrong. The glass was misted by a strange fog issuing from the breach, so the image was unclear, but he had seen swollen eyes and a protruding snout, and bristles across his scalp holding glinting diamonds of moisture.

  My nightmare! A blink, and the image was gone. All the way back to Secondary, he was certain that he was being followed.

  Safely locked away again, Jonah breathed in deeply, listening to the sounds of his own body, feeling his weakening heart surging on in his chest. He’d sent Vic to Marc, and through the two of them he could focus all his attempts to find out how to stop this.

  It was not going to be easy.

  Coldbrook’s incredible achievement was tainted for ever.

  He stared at the screen offering a view into the breach chamber, thought of poor lost Holly, and wondered what would come next.

  Sunday

  1

  THERE IS A long, high wall surrounding the courtyard. In the courtyard, dozens of people are hustling to load a pile of green boxes into the luggage compartment of a huge bus. The vehicle is battered and filthy. The people appear worried but orderly. All except one woman screaming in French about judgement and sin, and whose loose robes appear to be soiled with her own madness. The others avoid the woman, but some glance at her with impatience, or anger.