Coldbrook (Hammer)

by Tim Lebbon

  Once again he tucked the small ball between his teeth and cheek: warm, flexing. Ready to bite.

  They followed the flow of people towards the opening that led to sunlight and blue sky, and alongside the staggering architecture, beautiful painted ceilings that would put the Sistine Chapel to shame, and sculptures that seemed to exude a life of their own, Jonah noticed signs of the advanced technology that he knew existed here – floating lights, glimmering laser-fields, and prayers relayed into his mind without sound. The prayers’ tone made him queasy. They shimmered with righteousness.

  Unabashed at his nakedness, Jonah and his Inquisitor approached the opening at the end of the hall, and the wide stone arches framed Jonah’s first view out onto this new Earth. For a second the sun was blinding, a comforting warmth on his skin and a prickling distraction in his eyes. But after he had blinked a few times he could see, and he was perhaps not as surprised as he should have been. He’d been prepared for this, after all. And perhaps, having already seen wonders, he had been numbed against more.

  He had seen St Peter’s Square a hundred times on television and in newspapers, but little had prepared him for its sheer size and splendour. An atheist all his life, still Jonah had found great beauty and splendour in religious architecture – some of his favourite buildings were cathedrals and churches, and while others were looking at the cross on the wall, he would be wondering at the tunnels, bodies, treasures and mysteries buried beneath his feet.

  The square was filled with Inquisitors and their charges. They formed several lines on either side of the Vatican Obelisk, which was topped with a globe, the Earth beautifully wrought in coloured, textured metals. The lines moved forward quickly, the head of each disappearing inside a large structure built on the steps below St Peter’s Basilica. This was something else that Jonah had never seen: an intricate marble-clad building with a gold-domed roof, three main entrances onto the square, and smaller openings leading directly onto the Basilica steps. From here the line of naked, smooth-skinned people was directed up the steps and into the Basilica. Guided by their Inquisitors – in some cases helped along physically – their naked skin was stained with free-flowing blood, and even from this distance he could see that their faces looked wrong – noses snoutlike, eyes bulbous. The steps beneath them were stained black with old spilled blood, the marble having absorbed it over however long this had been happening until it looked as if the Basilica itself was bleeding, black blood running down into the square where worshippers had once sought to gather. These new worshippers were unwilling, and torture was their introduction into the ways of this world.

  ‘Soon you will meet the Holy Fathers, and your acceptance into our Church will begin,’ the Inquisitor said.

  Jonah smiled, and nodded. And he knew at last when his time would be.

  Friday

  1

  COLDBROOK WAS FULL again, its air thrumming with fear, people hustling urgently from place to place, and Holly could feel the pressure of danger beyond the walls and above the ceilings. There was little sense of safety, and no feeling that they could stop running. This pause was a breath between screams.

  More Gaians had been brought through to help guard the facility, and the adults – the Unblessed, and the others who’d come in with the convoy – were taking it in turns to eat and rearm. The bikers had lost their leader, but Hitch had said they were all part of a new gang now: survivors.

  Many of the children slept, or curled up silently on chairs and beds brought into the large common room. None of them would sleep on their own, and no one would force them. There were twenty-four children in Coldbrook now, twenty of whom were without parents. They all had stories to tell. Holly didn’t want to hear any of them.

  Jonah was gone, Holly had barely seen Vic since his return, and she was more exhausted than she’d ever been in her life before. Her wound hurt, though the bleeding had stopped. And each time she blinked she saw Paloma’s head coming apart and splashing across Drake’s face. You didn’t save me, you saved Paloma, Drake had told her. But she could not help wondering what he saw each time he blinked.

  As she arrived back in Secondary, Marc was talking French on the satphone, and even if Holly had concentrated she would only have picked up one word in ten. So she set his steaming coffee down in front of him and took a seat, accessed the Net, and sipped her own mug as she surfed news sites. The taste of coffee, so familiar and usually comforting, seemed strange against the things she saw.

  The BBC World News site was still being randomly updated, movie clips and photographs now seemingly uploaded by members of the public. And no news was good news. Governments were falling, communications were failing, and humanity’s timeless ability to wreak destruction upon itself was being put to the test in a variety of ways. The UK were firebombing several of their main cities, recycling Second World War tactics in an effort to wipe out the furies. China was using biological weapons against their population, killing tens of millions in vast swathes in an attempt to protect a billion. Russia continued to defend its borders, even though the plague was rife across the country from east to west. Small wars flared, larger wars threatened, countries joined forces, others attempted to isolate themselves and ride out the storm alone.

  ‘We’re running out of time,’ Holly said softly, and Marc threw the phone onto the desk.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fuck fuck fucking hell.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Time!’ Marc leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face, covering his eyes as if to shut himself away from the views on the large screen. Holly switched them off. She had seen enough herself.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘I thought you were gathering information, getting people involved. This network of friends you and Jonah have around the world.’

  Marc laughed. ‘Yeah. Net’s already glitchy, and it’s going to go down eventually. You know that, don’t you? It’s way overloaded, and servers will crash. Bash, back twenty years.’

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘So I’m going to do my best. I am. But it’s going to take me months, or years, and—’

  ‘We probably don’t even have days!’ Holly gasped.

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘But at least we have Jayne and Mannan,’ she said, desperate for any shred of hope.

  ‘Yeah.’ Marc nodded at the laptop. Holly turned the screen to face him. Marc accessed his mail account, the printer in the corner started whispering, and he dialled the next number.

  Will it really all go? she wondered. A world with no Net, no phone communications . . . and then she knew that yes, it would, because this had all happened before. Earth was following in Gaia’s footsteps.

  She left Marc in Secondary and paced through Coldbrook, afraid that if she stopped she would not be ready to run when the danger broke through. Perhaps she would never feel safe again. She wished she could see Vic. But he and his family had retreated to his old room, they needed their peace, and she was the last person to deny them that.

  Surrounded by more people than she had ever seen in Coldbrook, Holly felt so alone.

  She walked along the short corridor and passed through the common room to the garage area. Even before she opened the door and saw the unsettled expressions of the two guards – Moira and Hitch – she heard muffled hooting echoing from the plant room.

  ‘They just won’t shut up,’ Moira said.

  ‘Spooky fuckers,’ Hitch said. His voice wavered. He held a pistol ready in his hand.

  Marc was right. They were running out of time.

  2

  ‘Still want to slit my throat?’

  Marc jumped a little, then sighed and rested back in the chair. ‘It’s not over yet. I said I won’t kill you until it’s over.’

  ‘Define “over”.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Marc stood and stretched, his joints creaking. The desk he’d requisitioned in Secondary was piled with printouts, the laptop stood open, and the sat
phone was plugged in to recharge.

  ‘So when will you be ready to begin?’ Vic asked.

  ‘I have begun.’ Marc pointed at the printed sheets. ‘I understand about thirty per cent of that.’

  Vic flicked through papers, read lines here and there, saw formulae, tables, and some words he had never heard of – some of the phrases were in English and yet alien to him. He touched the laptop’s pad and the screen lit up, revealing a dozen unread emails. He saw that they’d come in over the past few minutes.

  ‘All these people are trying to help?’ Vic said.

  ‘It’s going to take for ever,’ Marc said. ‘It’s daunting. It’s scary how much I don’t know. I told Holly, and she didn’t seem to accept that very well. And there’s one thing I haven’t told anyone. About Jayne and Mannan.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Vic asked.

  ‘I think they need to mate. Conceive. I think it’s their child that might provide the cure.’

  ‘But that’s . . .’ Vic said, aghast.

  ‘I know. Maybe years.’

  ‘I wasn’t even thinking timescale.’

  ‘You see my problem,’ Marc said.

  ‘Coldbrook won’t last,’ Vic said. ‘They’ll get in somehow. We’re taking a breather, but everyone in the garage is twitchy, listening to those things in the duct. Soon we’ll have to move again, and from then there’s only one way to go.’

  ‘I know that, too.’

  Vic turned and looked at the blank screens, seeing himself and Marc reflected there. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ll tell them all tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Marc said. ‘Everyone deserves a day of hope.’

  3

  Jayne surfaced slowly, eyes still closed, and she knew that Sean was still in the room with her. She felt his influence; she felt safe.

  ‘Hey, you awake?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah. How’d you know?’

  ‘You’ve stopped snoring.’

  ‘I do not snore.’

  ‘Damn right you do. I thought it was an alarm, or something. Been banging the air conditioning, trying to get it to shut up. Dogs for miles around—’

  ‘Way to labour a point,’ Jayne said, and opened her eyes. Sean was sitting across from her, leaning back in a chair with his feet on a small desk. The room had belonged to a guy called Jonah who wasn’t here any more, and the others seemed to hold him in high regard. There were books on every surface, and an old photograph of an attractive middle-aged woman on the desk. Sean had been careful not to disturb anything.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’

  ‘Six hours. Since we got in, pretty much.’

  ‘You slept?’ she asked, but she knew the answer to that.

  ‘Couldn’t.’ He shrugged.

  ‘So what’d I miss?’

  ‘That woman Holly came to visit. That’s all. I think everyone’s just . . .’

  ‘Taking a breath,’ Jayne said.

  ‘Yeah. So how do you feel?’

  ‘Bit better.’ That was a lie. She didn’t feel better at all, but she found that she could move more easily than before, straightening her limbs, pushing herself upright so that she was leaning against the wall. Holly had given her some powerful painkillers, and she’d had a restful sleep. The light comas were more exhausting than staying awake through the pain.

  ‘So this Drake character,’ Sean said. ‘He’s sent two of his people back over. Through. Whatever. Sent them back to fetch the drugs that might help you.’

  ‘Marc is afraid that it’ll affect his experiments.’

  ‘And that’s what you are now? An experiment?’

  Jayne smiled, and for the first time in days it did not hurt her face. ‘Sean, I owe you everything. Everything. And because I owe you, then I want a lot more people to owe you, too. I’m immune, and if Marc can make anything of that – a cure, a vaccine – you’ll be the one who helped save the world.’

  ‘Huh!’ Sean shook his head.

  ‘You’re so sweet,’ she said.

  He didn’t look at her, and Jayne knew why. She could see his daughter in his eyes, sometimes even when he was looking right at Jayne herself. She wasn’t a replacement, not even an equal. Maybe they’d talk about it one day.

  ‘I have to do what I can,’ Jayne said. ‘I’ll take whatever Marc gives me, and give what he needs to take.’

  ‘Even if it means you’ll die?’ Sean asked.

  ‘Everyone dies.’

  4

  Jonah had never been to Italy. Wendy had always wanted to go, but for some reason something always got in the way. Usually his work. Now he was there, Roman sun warming his skin and the layer of matter that had been sprayed there through the doorway. If he looked up at the sky, with its wispy clouds and light blue depths, everything could almost be all right.

  He was in line with his Inquisitor, and close-up he felt distant from all those other naked people. Some were distinctly human, others less so – higher-browed, taller, more heavily muscled. On distant Earths, along the string of universes, evolution had taken different tracks. As well as making them all appear vulnerable, the nakedness was also a barrier of sorts, making them ironically less than human in Jonah’s eyes.

  Perhaps part of it was that he knew he would be killing them all – soon. All these people brought from their Earths and their Coldbrooks, perhaps the last of their lines, chosen by their Inquisitors to oversee the infection of a new world, and he would turn them all into zombies. He would be wiping out so much intelligence, so much rich ambition and original thought and probing philosophy.

  So it was easier to look at the ground or the sky, or the looming, grand buildings that would witness the culmination of his and Drake’s plan.

  The curved walls and grand columns around St Peter’s Square had been covered with small writing, and he was too far away to read it. Perhaps it was scripture, or this world’s perverted version of what scripture should be. Higher up he saw planes’ contrails crossing the sky, the aircraft themselves moving incredibly quickly. Objects that he’d thought at first were birds hovered over the square, flitting here and there, and they glinted where they caught the sun. He guessed that they might be airborne cameras, and he averted his stare in case someone perceived his intent.

  Men and women in colourful uniforms – orange, yellow, blue – stood at seemingly random points around the square, both at the edges and close to the central obelisk and fountain. They were in pairs or small groups, chatting and lounging against statues or walls, but Jonah sensed their alertness. He had seen photographs of the Swiss Guard, and even in his reality their ceremonial role was only a small part of their purpose. He imagined that here they must be a full fighting force. He turned his gaze away from these people as well. Their casualness disturbed him.

  Holly would have hated this place, with its bastardisation of all she thought of as pure and precious, and Jonah craved to discover what could have gone so wrong. Despite his lack of belief, even he could see that these devout souls had betrayed their philosophy and made themselves godless. Did they really think that they were performing God’s work? And how had this world’s beliefs become so twisted? One of their holiest places had been turned into a factory of death, and they continued praying at the site of their greatest blasphemy. He was sad that he would never know the truth and, even if he did, that it would soon die with him. He might have been part of one of the most ambitious experiments in history – Coldbrook, and its brave, doomed journey – but some things would always remain a mystery to him.

  Perhaps, as with people, there were some realities where evil was endemic.

  The stone paving beneath Jonah’s feet had been smoothed and grooved by the passage of countless feet, and he wondered just how long this had been going on.

  A flurry of movement further along the next line caught his attention. A tall middle-aged woman stepped aside from her Inquisitor and spun around, kicking out at its head. She missed, though the Inquisitor had not appeared to move. And in the blink
of an eye she was gone. The seemingly relaxed guards sprang into action, grabbed her arms and legs, and dragged her away. She started shouting, but one of them thrust something into her mouth. Blood splashed. Cut out her tongue, Jonah thought, and he, like all the others, turned away.

  He rolled the ball in his mouth, the trigger that held the key to this twisted place’s doom.

  For all of you, he thought.

  Jonah would be dead within minutes. And his solitary regret was that he would not stay down.

  5

  Holly had told Drake that she needed to be alone. She knew that he hadn’t believed her, but he’d given her the time. So she’d retreated to her small room, closed the door, sat on the bed, and for a while she’d dreamed that everything was as it had been.

  Inaction made her twitchy, so she plugged in the laptop on her small desk and flipped it open, and three minutes later she was patched into the Coldbrook security camera network. She scanned the facility for a minute or two, avoiding what she really needed to see.

  ‘Please God that it’s not as bad as I think,’ she said. The first three cameras were out, their systems blown, and she gasped as the image from the fourth surface camera appeared.

  There were hundreds of zombies in the compound above. Perhaps even thousands. The image was silent, but Holly could see that most of them were motionless mannequins standing or sitting, facing in random directions. Now and then their mouths would change shape as they made their hooting call. Some were burnt, mutilated, darkened with dried blood, and others looked almost untouched. Both extremes were horrific in their different ways. She pressed the key to swivel the camera, and it swept the compound from left to right. Fires still burned in the destroyed trucks close to the entrance, and she froze the camera on the school bus backed against the ventilation duct. The vehicle was packed full of furies, and the duct housing was almost buried beneath bodies. The image moved, shimmered and shivered. She imagined them packing the duct itself, scores of zombies piled in there so that those at the bottom were crushed beneath their weight.