Berserk

by Tim Lebbon

  She must have been crying for a long time. Her eyes were puffy and red, her face swollen and sore from the tears. Her mouth was turned down at the corners, as if the weight of her fears had been acting on her with a terrible gravity. She was still wearing the night-clothes he had left her in, and they were rumpled and creased, smelling vaguely of must and fear. I can smell the fear on my wife, Tom thought, and fresh tears came to his eyes.

  For a while, he forgot about the thing in the boot.

  “I’m so sorry, Jo,” he said, reaching out and hugging her back down to him. She shifted position so that she was sitting on his lap in the car, bent low, her head resting on his shoulder so that her hot face pressed against his neck and cheek once again. “I love you honey, really, I’m so sorry if I frightened you. Time ran away with me, just left me. And I got lost on the way home, and I didn’t know what to do, I had no idea what I was doing!”

  “You smell,” she said, “like mud and earth. You stink. You’re filthy! Oh Tom, I was so terrified that you’d never come back!”

  Tom’s idea about lying to his wife – about the car having a puncture, and him knocking himself out changing it – had fled the moment he saw her. In truth he had no wish to lie to her about anything, not any more. And with that certainty came a sense of excitement at what he had to tell her next. Steven, he would say, Jo, I really think he might still be alive. But he did not have the chance to speak. Jo hugged him tight, squeezing the air from him, keening like a dog welcoming home its long-lost owner. And Natasha, so silent for the whole journey, chose that moment to make herself known again.

  Daddy! she screamed, he’s coming! Mister Wolf is coming!

  Tom glanced past Jo’s head at the rear-view mirror and saw that Natasha was mistaken. Whether or not she could have spoken up earlier was something he did not think about until much later, but right then all he knew was that she was wrong. Mister Wolf was not coming; he was already here.

  The Jeep was parked in the drive entrance, blocking any hope of escape out onto the road.

  He’s here to hurt me, Daddy!

  The driver’s door was opening.

  Please don’t let him hurt me . . . it hurts so much already!

  And as Tom opened his mouth to speak to his wife for the last time, the shooting began.

  * * *

  To begin with, Cole was aimless. He drove simply because he had to drive. Sitting in his Jeep waiting for inspiration to hit would have felt even more useless than just driving for the sake of it. So he powered along country lanes, taking lefts, rights, or heading straight on at junctions, trying to imagine which way Roberts had come. He slowed down and turned his lights off intermittently, looking for signs of other car headlights in the countryside around him. There was nothing.

  He drove fast, because slow would have felt even more hopeless.

  Blood was pooling in his boot, squelching at every gear change. His jeans rubbed at the gash on his calf, and each contact was like the touch of a white-hot iron. He needed stitches, he knew, but that would have to wait. And the cuts on his hands were causing him more problems, the sliced left palm in particular. They smeared the steering wheel with blood, and every time he changed gear his hand slid around the gear stick, threatening to slip off. He wiped his hands on his jeans and jacket, but that only aggravated the wounds and exacerbated the bleeding.

  I’ve really hurt myself, he thought. Done some real damage.

  He drove on. At a T-junction he turned left without thinking, simply because there was nothing else to do. And inside, he searched for Natasha.

  She would not be out in the open, in those parts of his mind that he knew so well. She would be below. Down in the dark, hidden away, rooting around like the devious little bitch she was. So he hunted for her, running through the familiar streets of his consciousness, heading off down alleys he did not recognise. There was graffiti on walls, but he could not read it. Letters swam in and out of focus. He thought they were a language he did not know, speaking of things he could not understand. Much as this disturbed him, Cole was used to it. He often felt like a stranger in his own mind, and like everything else that was wrong with life, he attributed it to Porton Down.

  He sought further, deeper, inviting Natasha in even though he hated the sense of her in his head. Especially this Natasha, newly risen from the ground with a shout instead of a whisper.

  “How does the air feel on your skin, monster?” he said. “Are you lonely without the bones of your kin to keep you warm, vampire?” Like all berserkers she despised the word vampire, he knew, but it was more out of vanity than anything else. She hated for her berserker clan to be thought of as anything other than unique. “Wrinkled dry dead thing, crying like a baby when I chained you up with those vermin you called mother, father, brother.”

  A chuckle in his mind, not his. He did not feel her intrusion, but he knew that she was there, hovering slightly beyond. He drove on, trying to discern which direction the laugh had come from.

  “Laughing at what I did to you, Natasha? You won’t find it funny when I catch you this time. You think ten years was a long time in the ground, smelling your family rotting around you? Feeling their flesh grow cold, wet, fluid? Or . . . did you eat them to stay awake, just for a little while longer?”

  She laughed again, a sound so filled with confidence and hate that Cole slowed the Jeep, shivering. Fuck you, Mister Wolf.

  He came to a junction and turned left.

  “Still awake then, vampire?”

  I’m no vampire!

  “I bet you’re sucking the life out of that poor man already.”

  She was silent but still present, and Cole narrowed his eyes as he tried to put direction to the slithery touch now evident in his mind. He veered left and right on the road, striving to sense which way was closer.

  Warm, Natasha said.

  “I’m going to find you and kill you,” Cole said. “I’ll kill him, too.”

  Why should I care? the girl said, and Cole smiled when he heard the doubt in her voice.

  “Get out of my head!” He had to cover what he had heard, hold it to himself for whatever advantage it may yield him.

  I’m not in your head, Mister Wolf . . . I’m below it, down here rooting through all these things you want to forget. Would you like me to describe some of them to you now? Dredge up these memories for you to feast on? They’re all here, awaiting their fair showing. Here, this woman Sandra Francis, with her long red hair and—

  “Shut the fuck up!” Cole hissed. He swung the Jeep left into a narrow lane, and the sense of his mind being invaded grew warmer, wetter.

  Warmer.

  “You me to find you.”want

  There’s always fun in the chase.

  He pressed his foot down on the gas and flicked the headlamps to full beam, taking corners at a mad speed, careening into a high bank, wheels spitting mud and gravel as they squealed against protruding stones and away again, light dancing and vibrating across the road ahead of him as the Jeep bounced and jolted from side to side.

  Warmer still . . .

  Cole reached over and grabbed the .45 with his left hand, clicking off the safety and resting it between his legs. He fought with the steering wheel as the vehicle splashed through a deep puddle. A house flashed by on the left, whitewashed walls reflecting his headlights back at him. Its occupants were probably tucked up cosy in bed, unaware of what had passed them perhaps only a few minutes before. They were dull sheep, sleeping and working, breathing and eating, never questioning the realities they were brought up to hold as truth.

  Cole had seen things, done things. He knew that all such realities were lies, invoked because they painted comfortable pictures out of unnatural, unbearable paints. The truth was never easy to accept. It could drive a man mad. His own madness – his own unbearable truths – were buried deep. And he liked it that way. They spoke to him sometimes, but usually only in dreams, and he had become adept at forgetting his dreams.

  Sandra
with her long red hair?

  Cole shook his head, and the point of one of those hidden memories sank back down into safe impenetrable depths.

  very Ooh, warm now, Mister Wolf. Be seeing you soon. Don’t forget to have fun, because fun is what it’s all about. What else is there? Only death, and decay, and ten years of purgatory, you bastard. You’ll never win, Cole. Never!

  “What game are you playing?” Cole asked, but Natasha did not answer, and he suspected that she had fallen silent for now. Is it just this? he thought. Maybe it was a tease, and they went the other way. There’s no rule to this little bitch, no rhyme or reason.

  There was a hollowness in his chest at the thought of her being out, a void where hope had once existed. So many times over the years he had considered returning to the Plain, excavating the grave, pulling out Natasha’s corpse and finishing what he had started. But he was scared, and in denial. Even with everything he knew of the berserkers, he had believed that she would be dead. And that belief – that hope – had kept him away. That, and the certainty that unearthing a corpse that spoke to him would have driven him mad.

  Around the next corner a tractor blocked the road.

  Cole stomped on the brake and clutch, fighting the juddering wheel, the Jeep shuddering as the ABS kicked in, the farmer turning in his tractor, his face big and pale and comically shocked, mouth open and one hand coming up to protect his face against the two tons of metal hurtling toward him. Cole shouted and pressed the pedals harder, actually standing from the seat and bracing himself against the steering wheel. The tractor jumped forward as the farmer sped up, a reaction as useless as it was automatic. And the one thought that screamed out in Cole’s mind was, What the Hell is he doing out at three in the morning?

  The Jeep hit a pothole and was jarred to the left, burying its nose in the hedge. Cole was thrown forward, seatbelt locking across his chest and biting into his neck. It knocked the breath from him and, winded for the second time in an hour, he slumped back in his seat and gasped for air. The Jeep’s bumper had nudged the tractor’s big rear wheel, but only slightly. The farmer drove on for an extra few feet – as if afraid that the Jeep would leap ahead again, like an animal lunging at its prey – and then pulled over into a gateway.

  “You alright?” the man shouted, jumping from the tractor and waddling up the road. He was wearing a boiler suit and Wellington boots, and in the glare of the Jeep’s headlamps he looked like a lumbering puppet. Cole sucked in a breath at last and let out a hooting laugh, realising as he did so that he had been grasping the .45 so tightly between his thighs that he could feel bruises forming there already.

  “So do I just shoot this twat?” he muttered, laughing so hard that a string of snot shot from his nose. I’m losing it, he thought, too pumped up, too careless.

  The farmer reached the Jeep and held out his hand as if to open the door. But then he looked inside, and whatever he saw in Cole’s face caused him to move back a few cautious paces, eyes downcast. Dominant male, Cole thought, snorting again. He gave in to the laughter as he restarted the Jeep – it had stalled after striking the hedge – and by the time he scraped between the tractor and the far hedge he was guffawing almost beyond control. But it felt good – it felt like regaining control – so he let it come some more.

  “Nearly there!” he said, laughing again. “Nearly there for you, Natasha! I’ve been warming my gun so that the bullet’s not too cold when it goes into your skull.” His head hurt, his leg was stiff with dried blood, and every time he turned the steering wheel it felt as though blades were slicing into his hands. “Soon,” he said.

  Cole glanced once in his rear-view mirror. The farmer was already climbing back into the tractor, probably trying to get his story straight so he could tell his fat wife later on.

  Natasha was there then, probing his mind, seeing how close he was and withdrawing again. She left something behind, an echo of herself. To Cole it felt like fear. He smiled.

  He held the .45 in his right hand as he steered; dangerous, but he was unwilling to drop the gun now. If that had been Roberts’ car back there – and if he’d fumbled the pistol instead of clasping it between his thighs – he could have lost his best chance. So no more risks. Not now when he was so close.

  want And why does she me to find them?

  “She’s sick,” Cole said, “and mad. She’s been under the ground for ten years.” He expected a smart answer from the living dead girl, but she had truly gone.

  He looked left and right, searching for any gates to driveways, or narrow lanes, or parking areas. Roberts and his wife must have hired a cottage for the weekend, which would be good for Cole. No one else around to witness what was about to happen. If he was really lucky, the bodies would not be found for some time.

  A few minutes later he saw the glare of car headlamps through the hedge to his right and he slowed down, killing his own lights. Moonlight was enough to see by at this speed. There were sparse white clouds in the sky now, like smudged paint on a blank black canvas, the stars splashes. He lowered his window, saw the entrance to the driveway, turned off the engine and coasted to a stop between the gateposts, blocking any route of escape.

  The pistol felt good in his right hand.

  It was Roberts’ car. Luck had led Cole on—

  her, Luck and luck and Natasha, because she wanted me here.

  He wondered where she was, and guessed the boot. Roberts would not have wanted to put something like that – something old, mysterious, dead – on the back seat where anyone could see it.

  The car’s rear lights were still on, and there seemed to be a commotion in the driver’s seat. Cole squinted, glancing aside to allow his night vision to make out the shapes, and then he smiled. Perfect. He felt no thrill at killing, took no pleasure; it was a job well done that pleased him.

  This would be over very soon.

  Opening the door he heard a woman’s voice, raised and muffled, angry and relieved, and as his feet crunched down on the gravel he was glad she was making so much noise. This way, Roberts would not even hear the gunshot that killed him.

  The interior light of Roberts’ car was on, and Cole saw him look in the rear-view mirror, his eyes widening, mouth dropping open to shout a warning.

  “Shit!” The last thing Cole wanted to do was to hunt these people down. This had to be quick.

  He cupped his right hand in his left, braced his legs and started shooting.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tom had heard gunfire once before in the last twelve hours, but this was different. Out there on the Plain he had heard the blast and that was all – no bullet swishing by, no echo, no ricochet, no evidence of the shot other than the sound itself. Now it felt as though his whole world was exploding.

  It took him a few seconds to associate what was happening around him with the gun blasts coming from behind. As he looked in the rear-view mirror, the back windscreen shattered, misting and showering down in a thousand pieces. The mirror itself smashed, firing glass shards at his face, and a hole the size of his fist appeared in the front windscreen. Something hammered on the roof once, twice, as if someone had taken to the car with a sledge hammer. The whole vehicle shook. The passenger seat rattled in its bracings, and a puff of stuffing erupted from its front face. It drifted lazily down onto the mat as the car stereo and heating panel exploded in a shower of plastic, glass and wires.

  Jo had slumped down over his lap, hiding from the shooting. He could feel her shaking with fright, mumbling her terror, and he put his hand on her head to show her he was still there. She was wet with the sweat of fear.

  The noise was incredible. The various sounds of the car being destroyed around him—

  (Go back, go back!)

  —the explosive gunshots, much louder than he could have imagined—

  (Go back go back, now!)

  —and his own screaming, so loud and yet so detached from him that for a few seconds he wondered whether it was Jo.

  hurting Go back,
Daddy, back, back, he’s me!

  Tom tried to lean forward in his seat to offer less of a target, but Jo was heavy in his lap, still jerking and gasping from the shock of what was happening. Her legs protruded from the open door, the most exposed part of her, and he was terrified that one of them would catch a bullet.

  It hurts! Natasha screamed, and suddenly Tom realised what she had been saying, and why, and he knew that she was right. He turned the ignition key, slipped the car into reverse and slammed his foot on the gas.

  The shooting paused as the car stared to move, and Tom guessed that Mister Wolf was reloading. Good timing. He turned to look back over his shoulder just at the instant when the rear of his car struck the front grille of the Jeep, jerking him back in his seat. Jo pressed against his stomach and chest, and Tom gasped. He saw the man roll across the gravel and stand again, fumbling in his pocket with one hand and holding the gun with the other. For a second their eyes met. The man frowned, cocked his head to one side, holding Tom’s gaze. And then Tom saw the game of distraction Cole had been playing when he brought up the gun and aimed it at his head.

  The bullet exploded the seat’s headrest as Tom drove forward again. He braked quickly and reversed into the Jeep once more, careful to keep Jo’s legs safely clear of the impact. He felt hot metal glancing across the back of his scalp, opening up fresh wounds.

  Hurts, hurts!

  The car struck again and he kept his foot on the accelerator, wheels spinning in the gravel and sending small stones flying, the stench of the burning clutch filling his nostrils, the Jeep moving back now because the man had somehow, miraculously, left the parking brake off.

  The gun exploded again and again, punching holes in the car. Jo shook but Tom did not look down, could not, not now that there was the slightest chance they might escape.