Coldbrook (Hammer)

by Tim Lebbon

  ‘I have no idea,’ Jonah said. ‘You said yourself, it’s not all-seeing.’

  Drake glanced at him, worried.

  Jonah smiled. ‘Yes, Drake. It’s following. Has been for a few minutes.’

  They moved off again, climbing the ridge until they were level with the large structure, then cutting across the hillside. Shale slopes whispered in the darkness as they dislodged stones, and shapes scattered to hide in shadows as they approached.

  Jonah slipped his fingers inside his shirt and fingered the small wound on his chest. It was two inches below his left nipple and towards the centre of his chest, and it felt more like a boil than an entry wound. Its head was smooth and warm to the touch, and hard – when he pressed it the nodule sank into his loose old-man’s skin but hurt only a little. If he took a deep breath, he could feel the small charge inside surrounded by fury blood. Before they parted company Drake would give him the trigger.

  He felt curiously detached from the thing in his chest. It was not a part of him. If anything, it was a part of Drake’s desires and destiny, not his own.

  At a silent signal the eight people spread out across the slope, four above and four below the point where they had stopped.

  ‘I’ll take you from here,’ Drake said. ‘There are traps.’

  Jonah felt stares on him as he and Drake walked towards the building, but no one spoke. Perhaps they were so used to moving silently when they were outside that they could not bring themselves to say anything.

  The last time Jonah glanced back, the people had merged into the shadows.

  It took another few minutes to reach the structure and as they drew near Jonah could make out the haphazard nature of its construction.

  ‘They started building quickly around the breach. Then later, after The End when the survivors made their home in Coldbrook, they decided that further protection was needed. Walls and traps. Safeguards. It’s become something of a ritual for us to build some more onto this every three years.’ Drake pulled an object from his shoulder bag and handed it to Jonah.

  ‘And this will be the trigger,’ Jonah said.

  ‘Might feel strange to you.’ Drake placed it in Jonah’s hand. ‘Squeeze hard, and the pod beside your heart will burst.’ Warm, the size of a peanut, flexible, still Jonah sensed a solid centre to the item. He nodded and placed it carefully in his jacket pocket.

  Drake led him inside. Jonah had no sense of leaving anything behind, perhaps because everything he had was already a world away.

  They passed through a series of doors – most of them locked – passageways and arches, working their way deep into a labyrinth of concrete and rock. Drake took a route that was clear only to himself, and here and there he held up a hand and went about making their way safe. Some traps were basic: tripwires firing spring blades and primed crossbows; false floors above deep, spiked pits; hidden triggers that anything unaware could activate and which would bring spikes or blades or crushing rocks down upon them. Other traps were more mysterious to Jonah: slow-flowing waterfalls that Drake had to divert, their effect unknown; openings haloed by weak light, the air within sparking softly. Jonah wanted to ask about every single one, his scientist’s mind alert. But there was no time for investigation.

  As they went deeper, they came across the first trap that had been triggered.

  ‘From here, it might not be safe,’ Drake said. He aimed his light into a pit. Jonah looked and saw an old scarecrow-like thing down there. It was impaled on several long, thin spikes, and now it squirmed at their presence, clicking in its throat. Its face jutted out, leathery skin stretched over a bony forehead. Drake fired his crossbow and stilled it.

  ‘Here,’ Drake said. He delved into his bag and handed Jonah his pistol. ‘I’ll guide you to the breach, and protect you. Beyond there you might need this.’

  ‘How far?’ Jonah asked, still looking into the pit.

  ‘Three traps.’

  A shadow closed on Jonah and pulled back again. His Inquisitor, letting him know it was there. He sensed no alarm radiating from it, no fear that Jonah was running away. He guessed that it could follow him to the ends of the Earths.

  They went on, and each of the other three traps held the remains of a Neanderthal fury. Two were dead, their heads ruined. The third was pinned against a wooden frame that had sprung from the wall and been pushed back by those that had come after. It lifted its head at they approached and Drake destroyed it.

  Jonah was amazed once more at the fury’s decayed state. It was over forty years dead, yet it had still had the ability to move and the will to spread its disease. He experienced a moment of panic that made his heart flutter and caused him to lean against the passage wall.

  They walked on and soon passed through a final doorway in a thick stone wall. The wooden door had been pulled to one side, its top hinge pulled away from the crumbling rock.

  ‘I’ll reset them all on the way back out,’ Drake said.

  ‘I know,’ Jonah said. And I’ll be committed to this. But he hadn’t for a second thought about turning around. This might have been forced upon him, but, though he could never believe in fate or destiny, his mind was set.

  ‘This is it,’ Drake said, and for the first time Jonah heard a weakness in his voice. Awe did that, perhaps. And maybe fear.

  The breach was in front of them, set into the original hillside like a black diamond. Light did not escape it: it neither shone nor glowed. It was simply a blackness in the shadows thrown by Drake’s torch.

  Jonah held out his hand to Drake, and they shook.

  ‘They’ll write poems about you,’ Drake said.

  ‘Poems? Christ. I’m Welsh. Give me a good song any day.’

  Drake laughed sadly, not quite understanding. ‘Good luck, Jonah.’

  Without another word Jonah passed through, and his greatest journey began.

  2

  Jayne surfaced slowly from the churu coma, her senses coming alive as her pain grew. She felt as if she’d been torn apart and thrust back together again. The roar of the helicopter’s motor had stopped, replaced now with screaming and other, more terrible sounds. Something dripped. Someone cried, and it sounded like a little girl.

  Jayne opened her eyes, and even that hurt. Groaning out loud, she lifted her hands and checked her body for wounds.

  There was blood on the back of her head, but she didn’t think that it was hers.

  ‘Sean?’ she said, glancing to her left. Sean was gone. His safety straps were cut, and his absence seemed unnatural.

  She closed her eyes, trying to process what she’d seen just across from her. Then she looked again.

  The guy, Vic, was dead. Head flung back, from the chest up he was red. His mouth hung open, and blood dripped from between his teeth. His little girl was standing with her back to him, less than three feet from Jayne, tugging at her mother’s safety straps.

  ‘Hey,’ Jayne said.

  The girl staggered a little, kicking something on the floor, letting out a wretched cry.

  Someone screamed again, and the wrecked helicopter seemed to shake.

  The woman – Lucy, Jayne remembered, the name coming to her even though she wasn’t sure they’d even been introduced – was whimpering as she wrestled with her straps.

  ‘Hey,’ Jayne said again. The woman looked up, her eyes wide. Her face was misted with blood, but it didn’t seem to be her own. She blinked a few times, glanced above and behind Jayne, and started moaning.

  The little girl stood back and kicked the thing on the floor again. She froze, crying, and then a sharp metal snap signalled Lucy’s freedom. She snatched up her daughter and pressed her face against her chest before jumping through the hole where the cabin door had previously hung.

  Jayne looked down at the thing on the floor and realised it was a head. Not Sean, not Sean, she realised, because this dead person was white. The head was smashed and the only reason Jayne managed to keep from screaming was that it was looking away from her. At least h
e’s safe now, she thought, and then she did scream.

  The dead man opposite her lifted his head and looked at her.

  ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No, he’s one of them, no, help me, help me!’

  From somewhere behind her came more anguished screaming, and then she recognised Marc’s voice calling Gary’s name again and again.

  Sean appeared in the doorway, streaks of vomit across his chin and down his chest. He climbed in, shielding Vic from Jayne’s view, and—

  ‘Get your gun out!’ she shrieked. He held her, leaning in and ignoring the vomit as he pressed close, whispering into her ear that it was all right, she was alive, alive!

  ‘He’s not one of them,’ he said. He half turned. ‘Vic! Vic!’

  ‘Yeah,’ Vic said somehow. Jayne struggled against her straps, pushing against Sean to move him aside so she could see. She’d heard Vic talking, but she had to see.

  Vic’s eyes were a startling white against the blood and other stuff coating his face. He spat, retched.

  ‘No more puke,’ Sean said. He put one hand on Vic’s chest and brought a knife around, and for a moment Jayne thought he was going to put the man out of his misery.

  Sean sawed and hacked at the restraining straps.

  ‘Your family,’ he said, and Jayne saw Vic stumble from the wrecked aircraft and fall to the ground outside.

  ‘Sean? I saw his head. I saw Gary’s head.’

  Sean glanced down and then came for her, putting himself between her and what she didn’t want to see again. Behind her, Marc’s shouting had ceased, and now she could hear him whispering. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying.

  ‘Got to cut you out,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry you as best I can, but you can’t—’

  ‘Marc,’ Jayne said.

  Sean glanced behind her. ‘Saying his goodbyes,’ he said, and he went to work on her straps. His eyes were wide, and she wondered what he had seen.

  ‘There,’ Sean said as the straps fell away from Jayne. She slid a little to the right, not realising until then that they’d come to rest at a tilt. He did not apologise as he slung her arm around his neck and lifted.

  Jayne half turned as she stood, and she strained to see over her seat into the pilot’s cabin. Lights were still on across the control panels, the windscreen and its framing had vanished, and she could see Marc in silhouette, hugging his lover’s headless corpse. Stunned, speechless, she let Sean help her from the helicopter and down to the ground.

  They’d crashed fifty metres from a road that skirted a large lake and had taken down several small trees in the process. Debris lay scattered across the rocky slope, and there were several deep gouges where the chopper’s rotors had struck and dug into the ground. Vic sat on a splintered tree, hands resting on his knees as he stared at the ground between his feet. His wife knelt next to him, and their daughter stood in front of them and hugged them both.

  ‘Mummy, Daddy,’ she said, over and over. ‘Mummy, Daddy.’ Jayne was pleased that the family was still together and when Sean eased her arm from around his neck she would not let him go.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘Can’t believe we survived that,’ he said, looking at the crashed helicopter and shaking his head. ‘How the fuck did we survive that?’

  ‘Mummy, Daddy,’ Olivia said again, ‘there’s a man.’

  ‘He looks . . .’ Lucy said, and she pointed, saying no more.

  Along the road from where they’d come down, just past a marked parking area, two cars and a station wagon were parked on the grassy verge. A naked man had emerged from the shelter of the vehicles, crossed the road, and now he was running towards them, weaving through the trees growing across the slope.

  ‘Everyone together!’ Sean said. He pulled Jayne so that she stood behind the family.

  ‘Hide your girl,’ Jayne said. Lucy nodded, pulling Olivia down so that she sat huddled against her chest.

  ‘I . . . I got this,’ Vic said, standing and pulling the pistol from his belt. He looks just like one of them, Jayne thought. Blood shone in his hair, and his face and throat were speckled with stuff that she didn’t even want to think about. He’d tried to wipe it off but had succeeded only in smearing it more thoroughly over himself.

  ‘Just keep your eyes open for others,’ Sean said. He walked forward to meet the man running at them, and Jayne knew that she should look away. This was something she’d seen before and had no wish to see again, but looking the other way made her feel vulnerable. She’d always been someone who was happier to face danger rather than turn her back.

  She glanced back at the helicopter and saw Marc dropping from the cockpit’s doorway. He landed softly, rifle in one hand, blood smearing the other. She didn’t know how to act so she smiled at him. He seemed not to notice.

  Sean waited until the man was a hundred metres away before he gave him two chances. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot you in the head!’ The man did not pause. ‘Say something!’ The man said nothing. Sean fired when he was twenty metres away and put him down with one shot.

  Jayne breathed a sigh of relief, and then Marc was with them, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sean.

  ‘Good shot,’ Marc said.

  ‘Thanks. You okay?’

  ‘No.’ His voice was flat, cold. ‘Anyone else hurt?’

  ‘Bumps and bruises,’ Sean said.

  Marc looked back at them, and he only glanced at Vic before his eyes settled on Jayne. He doesn’t want to see his lover’s blood, Jayne thought, and she felt an affinity with this man. They had both seen the people they loved violently killed.

  ‘Look! A little girl!’ Olivia sounded so excited, as if she was looking forward to having a playmate.

  ‘Down to the lake,’ Sean said. ‘Marc, you want me to . . .?’ He held out his hand for the rifle, and Marc handed it over without a word.

  They started down the slope, Lucy carrying her daughter, and behind them Sean shouted the same two warnings he had given the man. But Jayne could already visualise the ragged mess of the girl’s neck and chest. And soon her pretty pale face would be wiped away.

  3

  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 car
s,’ 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.