by Tim Lebbon
Past a low building, a length of the boundary fence and hedging was scorched and twisted, and beyond lay the gutted remains of a Chinook, its rotors slumped and its fuselage burned away.
Jayne leaned against Sean and rested her head on his shoulder, looking back the way they had come. Two of the trucks had been parked side by side across the gateway. She frowned.
‘Wasn’t there a Ford?’
‘That one didn’t make it.’
Zombies were running along the road that curved down the hillside and was obscured here and there by trees. The first few had already reached the low, hedged fence, and the Unblessed guys were walking calmly back and forth, shooting them as they started to climb. But there were many, many more.
‘The bus . . .’ Jayne said, and then darkness took her again. She threw her arms around Sean’s chest and sobbed again when she felt his hands close around hers.
‘Back with us?’ Sean asked. His voice sounded different: echoing, yet deadened. ‘Don’t struggle. I’m climbing down the duct with you, but the ladder’s narrow. It’s dark. Only two torches. So just trust me, and—’
‘Of course I trust you,’ Jayne said. Rope rubbed the skin of her back raw, but it was a different pain from that of the churu and she clung to it. It was the pain of damage, not the agony she had lived with for so long. And when she felt a dribble of blood running down her side, she traced its journey, fascinated.
From above came the muffled sound of gunshots.
‘How long . . .?’ she asked, her voice slurred.
‘We have to be quick,’ Sean said.
They descended further, and then there were more gunshots, this time from below. Sean stopped and leaned slightly out from the ladder, aiming a torch downward, and when Jayne looked she saw a deep, dark metallic throat maybe five feet across. The torch’s beam shook, and she could feel Sean’s sweat soaking through to her.
A head appeared below them, and she gasped. It’ll look up and see me, and know me, and then it’ll hoot and they’ll know where we are, and—
‘Is it clear?’ Sean asked.
‘Is now,’ the man said, looking up. It was Thomas, the guy they’d picked up at the roadblock.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah. One of them, hanging on to the ladder. And . . .’
‘And?’ Sean asked. ‘For fuck’s sake, and?’
‘And there are people down here with bows and arrows.’
Bows and arrows, Jayne thought. She closed her eyes and rested her head against Sean’s damp back.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet.’ He started climbing down again, and she could feel him shaking.
13
The pressure of memories was just as great, but none of them were Jonah’s own. He saw people he had never known, places he had never been, and the images gave the impression of being from some forgotten film discovered in an attic fifty years after it had been shot – scratchy, distant. Everyone he was looking at was dead, that was the only certainty. These were memories from other people and different worlds, and he wondered whether his visions would grow stranger and more remote the further he journeyed from home.
This string of universes, Jonah thought. It was a phrase that Bill Coldbrook had used to use. He’d imagined an endless thread tied in complex knots and wrapped in infinitely tight balls, each universe at a point along the string, every one overlapping every other. But perhaps there was a more regimented structure to reality, an order to the multiverse that could be called geography, one which followed that string. If I went on, and on, and on for ever, what worlds might I find?
He wondered if the Inquisitors would go on for ever. He shivered. And then he emerged from the breach, and what he saw was beautiful.
The landscape reminded him so much of the valleys and mountains around his own Coldbrook. The black breach behind him was nestled at the junction of two ridges on a shallow hillside. Beyond that, everywhere was wooded. The heart of the Appalachians was like this, a wild place, home to hard people and to animals that had never laid eyes on a human being. Jonah drew a deep breath and wondered what kind of life dwelled here.
There was no sign of anything man-made – no buildings, aircraft contrails, or straight lines – and it struck him that the breaches on each Earth were in remote places, beyond where humanity might have been aware of them even if those Earths had still been thriving. Breaches were evidence of a radical, daring science that the scientists had been keen to hide from view.
He started to walk, aiming downhill because that route was simpler, and soon he was swallowed by the forest.
I have almost seen enough, Jonah thought. Almost.
The trees were tall and healthy, mostly spruce and balsam fir mixed in with larger hardwoods, and the forest floor was home to swathes of bramble, blueberry and rhododendron shrubs. A heavier yellow fruit that he did not recognise hung in bunches from a broad-leafed plant, and for a moment he worried about trying it. Then he laughed and plucked one, popping it between his teeth and sighing at the warm sweetness.
Small blue birds flashed between tree boles, and from somewhere higher up Jonah could hear the cry of a hawk. Sugg could tell me if that was a goshawk or a red-tail, he thought. But Coldbrook’s chef was an incomprehensible distance from him now, and probably dead.
There might be wolves and bears, coyotes and cougars, moose and caribou, and perhaps animals that he had never seen or even dreamed of. And perhaps he would see some of them if he walked far and long enough.
Something down through the trees caught his eye, a shadow that he recognised, visible against a wall of deep blue flowers. Jonah approached at his own pace. The time had to come soon, he knew. And he had a sudden, panicked thought that for every second he stalled, another world fell to the fury infection.
‘I can’t know that,’ he said. Birds quietened around him, and something rustled through the undergrowth. How ironic it would be to die here, taken down by a wildcat or bitten by a snake, stung by a spider or mauled by a mountain bear. Ironic and tragic, because no one would ever know, in this universe or any other.
He rolled the soft trigger between his fingers, still in his pocket. It remained warm to the touch.
‘Accept,’ the Inquisitor told him. His voice came from beside Jonah, even though the shape he could see was at least two hundred feet away, visible past tree trunks and through the light camouflage of bushes and heavy ferns.
‘Fuck you,’ Jonah said mildly.
He saw the first evidence of what had become of this place. Perhaps it had been a fury, perhaps not, but the corpse, tied to a tree, was now little more than mouldy bones and scraps of leathery skin. No evidence of clothing, though the rope was wound and knotted with skill. He moved closer and saw that a spider had made its home in the cadaver’s skull. The arachnid was as large as an apple, and its web was an architectural wonder: some single strands were eight feet long and stretched in all directions. He had no wish to touch one; he didn’t know how fast the spider might move. But he had seen all he needed to. There was a small metal plate in the skeleton’s skull, and glinting on one wrist where both had been tied behind the tree was a watch.
Another dead Earth, and perhaps centuries had passed. He would never know when that watch had stopped.
Jonah moved on. This world had been darkened for him, and yet the beauty of the scenery seemed to bloom brighter. The flowers were wonderful, their scent subtle on the air; birds flitted from branch to branch, or plucked insects from the air, or gracefully rode thermals higher up; the tree canopy shifted and swayed, alive and kissed by the wind. And he would never be able to tell anyone about this.
I’ve seen more than any human ever has, he thought, travelled further, and to die right now would just feel like only one more step. But he still found comfort in the idea that had always kept him rooted – there were billions of stars in the galaxy, billions of galaxies, and perhaps infinite universes. He meant so little, and knew next to nothing.
The figure sto
od beside a fallen tree, flies buzzing around but never quite settling. The Inquisitor seemed to favour his left leg, his right shoulder was a hard scab of blood against his robe, and now that he was this close Jonah was sure he could see the end of a snapped-off crossbow bolt pinning the clothing there. The man swayed slightly, and steam rose from his strange mask and from vents in his bulbous goggles. There was so much that Jonah could ask, but he didn’t want to know.
‘I accept,’ he said, and the Inquisitor let out what might have been a sigh.
14
‘We are so fucking fucked!’
‘Hey, not in front of the kids,’ Chaney said.
‘The kids! The fuckin’ kids?’
‘Dude. Please.’ Chaney grabbed the biker’s arm and squeezed. Vic laughed out loud.
More gunfire, more falling bodies, more swearing, the smell of fear from where some of the kids – or maybe the adults – had pissed themselves, more screaming, more thudding of zombie bodies striking the bus and scrabbling for purchase, and five minutes ago when Vic had asked about ammunition Chaney had glanced at him without replying, his look answer enough.
‘Five more minutes,’ Vic said from where he was hunkered beneath the shot-up steering column.
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Chaney said.
Glass smashed, someone grunted. And then screamed.
‘Stay back, stay back!’ a biker shouted, and Vic did not look up. He was splicing three wires together, bypassing the ignition, and he had enough to concentrate on without—
‘Shoot her!’ the biker shouted.
‘But she’s Mrs Joslin, she’s our—’
Gunshot, splash, a body hit the bus’s floor, and the children’s screaming changed. It turned crazed.
‘Hurry up, dude,’ Chaney said, crawling over to kneel beside Vic.
‘I’m hurrying.’
‘I mean it.’
‘I’m hurrying! Every time you tell me to hurry I have to answer you, and that slows me down because I need to concentrate here, and—’
Chaney tapped his leg and stood, his gun blasting again.
The biker’s initial assessment of the state of the bus had seemed obviously correct but on closer inspection Vic thought he could fix it. Everyone was pleased to hear that. Scores of zombies now surrounded the bus, and more appeared from around the town every minute. Many more – perhaps hundreds – had gone in the opposite direction, following the others towards Coldbrook. How they chose which way to go, or whether they could perform any thought process that could be described as choosing, was something that troubled Vic. But he’d dwell on it later. Right now he was using Chaney’s bowie knife and a nail-grooming kit as impromptu tools, and the guts of the steering column were hanging above him. The shear bolt and retaining clips had been blasted apart, and these he could repair temporarily. The bigger problem was that the steering lock had been deformed and the starter was smashed. As he finished splicing the wires he touched them to another bare wire. They sparked, and the engine coughed.
‘Done?’ Chaney shouted.
‘Two minutes.’
‘Make it one.’
‘I’ll make it two!’
‘Make it one and a fucking half!’
‘Not in front of the kids, dude,’ Vic said, concentrating on the steering lock, wondering whether he could risk wedging Chaney’s blade in there to try and jimmy it straight, worried that it would snap off and lock the steering completely. As it was now, they’d have about seventy per cent of the steering capability, and to turn right would take a much longer, wider sweep.
But fuck it.
‘Done,’ he said. Chaney grabbed Vic’s belt and pulled him out, hauling him upright in one move and dropping him into the bloodied driver’s seat.
‘You got the duty,’ he said.
‘Fine.’ Vic had only glanced around briefly and what he’d seen was not good. Zombies crowded at the unbroken windows, smashing at them with fists and heads, falling away with bullets in their brains.
‘Out of ammo,’ one of the bikers said.
‘Then piss on them!’ Chaney shouted.
Kids screaming, the two adults remaining with them doing their best to calm them, and the most terrifying thing wasn’t the noise of gunshots or the screaming but the soft calling of the zombies. Weren’t they supposed to growl, or groan, or moan? And weren’t they supposed to eat their victims? But there were no supposed tos here. This was reality.
Vic once more touched wires to each other and this time twisted them together. The engine grumbled into life. It didn’t sound too happy about it. ‘Come on, come on, be a good girl,’ Vic said. He slid the gearstick into reverse and pressed down on the gas. The bus rocked and then moved, and in the mirror he saw several standing kids jolted to the floor. The gunfire lessened, and then the bus started bumping over fallen bodies.
‘Gross,’ Chaney said.
‘How much ammo you guys got left?’
‘Not much.’
Vic nodded and kept reversing, checking in the side mirrors and not slowing down when he saw zombies in his way. The woman cop with a fence post through her lay in the road, thrashing around like a beetle turned onto its back. Vic twitched the wheel slightly, then looked away. He hoped that she’d be grateful.
‘The bus turns left, but right will be a problem.’
‘Oh. I thought you’d fixed that?’
‘I did what I could, given the circumstances.’
‘Right. You think we’ll make it?’
Vic thought of the route down to Coldbrook, going over each stretch of road in his mind’s eye. ‘There’s one bad turn . . . but if I can bounce us off the banking . . .’ He shrugged.
‘Bounce us.’ Chaney stood beside him, shotgun held in both hands. ‘You seen Speed?’
‘The film?’
‘Yeah. These buses can do amazing things. Jump impossible gaps. Wheelies.’
‘Right,’ Vic said, and the two men laughed. It felt surreal to hear laughter in such a place. The ground in front of the police station was strewn with bodies, many of them still moving, and there was an open area where the bus had been parked. Rising slowly from a body heap was Sheriff Blanks. He still wore his gun, but not his hat. His left leg was crushed and he kept tilting in that direction before righting himself again, a constant sway-and-stumble. He stared at the bus.
Vic started forward and hauled the wheel to the left. Hope this holds, he thought as unsteady vibrations shook it.
‘Get the kids down,’ Chaney shouted back. ‘They won’t want to see this.’
The bus struck Blanks and knocked him back to the ground. Vic hoped that he’d smashed his skull, but there was no way to make sure, and no time. They ground over more bodies and continued in a tight circle, and Vic eased off the turn earlier than he would have normally. The bus straightened slowly, crossed the lawned area at the square’s centre, and then he aimed the vehicle for the road leading out of town.
With the bus mobile, the zombies didn’t stand a chance. A few faced them head-on, and Vic ran them over. Others leaped at the bus as it passed, some managing to grab onto frames where windows had been shattered. There were gunshots, but mostly the vehicle’s occupants saved their ammunition and let the things fall away behind them.
Vic saw people that he and Lucy had socialised with – town barbecues on the square, bowling nights, evenings at the pub – and there were others he recognised from their work in association to Coldbrook. He kept telling himself that they were no longer themselves. It worked, mostly.
Coming back to you, Lucy and Olivia. The thought drove him on. The steering wheel thudded against his hand as the wheels tried to take them in a different direction, and he could feel a terrible vibration through his feet from the steering column. His daughter and wife were warm and alive. He would touch them again. They’d made it to Coldbrook and were inside, safe, protected, waiting for him to return.
As they left Danton Rock he hoped the going would be easier, though it appeared that most of
the town’s inhabitants were leaving as well. Some were following the road, but most of them seemed to be taking a more direct route, crossing the hillsides and passing through the wooded areas between the town and the Coldbrook valley. As though they were being called.
There was a blue Ford on its roof beside the road.
‘One of ours,’ Chaney said. A man and child stood beside the car and at their feet was a woman’s body, still half inside the broken door. Two zombies walked past the car, and Vic thought, They can smell their own. The little girl ran at the bus. Vic accelerated and did not look back.
From behind him came the steady crying of traumatised children, and the deeper sobs of adults. Mrs Joslin’s body had been wedged beneath two seats, but her blood on the floor was still wet. The two Unblessed had taken seats, one at the rear of the bus and one halfway down. They stared stoically ahead, neither of them catching Vic’s eye in the big rear-view mirror.
‘This the right you mentioned?’ Chaney said.
‘Yeah.’ Vic edged the bus as far to the left as he could, then started a gentle right turn. As he’d guessed, the bend was tighter than the bus could take and inevitably they would hit the bank rising from the road on the left. But where he’d remembered a sheer bank it was actually shallower. Too shallow to nudge them off.
‘So . . .?’ Chaney said, holding onto the back of Vic’s seat.
‘Best sit down,’ Vic said.
A man stood on top of the bank, silhouetted against the sunlit sky. His tangled hair was a blood-soaked halo.
‘You’re sure this will—?’
‘I want to see my wife and daughter again,’ Vic said. ‘There’s no way that won’t happen. Make sure everyone’s holding on. Ten seconds.’
The bus’s left wheels left the road, rumbling across rough ground, and then they started climbing the slope.
Please don’t turn over, please don’t flip, Vic thought. But he didn’t know who or what he was asking.