by Tim Lebbon
The farmer began to shake his head. The pistol’s slide snagged his jowls and they bulged with each shake.
“Better start talking,” Cole said.
“Who . . . who are you?”
“Army.”
“That man . . . that woman . . .”
“That’s none of your business. Now listen, old man, this is way beyond your understanding. Got that? This has nothing to do with you, but you’ve seen me, and you’ve seen everything, and I have to tell you my finger’s about two pounds of pressure away from spreading your brains across the ground. Like that idea? You want me to air your head?”
“No . . . no . . .” He shook his head again, fat jowls catching on the slide, and Cole’s anger started to dissipate. Later, he thought that the old man’s obesity had saved him. He had actually looked funny down there, kneeling on the ground and shaking his head, blubbery cheeks going one way, neck wobbling the other. If he had not made Cole smile – unintentional though it was – he may well have never milked his cows again.
“You love the Queen?” Cole said. He almost smiled again, but then the thought of Natasha rooting in his mind came back to him, the sense of her intruding there, doing her own secret things down in the underground of his subconscious, and he thought maybe he’d never smile again. “You love your country, old man?”
The farmer nodded, eyes never leaving Cole’s. I wonder what he sees there, Cole thought. I wonder if he thinks I’m mad? He has no idea . . .
“I need a car,” Cole said. “That man you saw has taken something from Porton Down, and I have to recover it. And thanks to you, my Jeep’s fucked.”
“Dear God, am I infected, is that it?” the farmer asked. “Please, not me, not my children.”
“You know of the place, then?”
The farmer nodded.
Cole leaned back and took the gun from beneath the farmer’s jaws. Perhaps threat was no longer the way. “No, you’re not infected,” he said. “But that man had something in his car, something deadly, and he doesn’t even know he’s got it.” And if he did, would it make any difference? If he knew what Natasha could be, would it change anything that had happened? Probably not. People like that were selfish. Never saw the big picture. Didn’t understand the implications of what they were doing, and why. That was why Cole was here with his gun. His gun was one of the implications. If only he could get close enough to put a bullet into that shrivelled monster’s head.
“And they’ve sent you to catch him?”
“Something like that,” Cole said. The idea had crossed his mind of telling the relevant authorities about what had happened, but it fled just as quickly. Not now. Not after last time. They had made it quite plain that they didn’t give a shit about what they had done with the berserkers. It was down to Cole, and really it always had been.
“Are you a special agent?”
“What, like James Bond?”
The farmer smiled, but it dropped quickly at Cole’s cool expression.
“I need a vehicle,” Cole said. “As you so kindly wrecked mine, perhaps you’d be able to lend me one?”
The farmer nodded. “My farm’s a mile away,” he said. “I have a car, you can borrow it but will I get a receipt?”
Cole brandished the gun again casually, and the farmer nodded, his eyes wide and amazed.
“You’ll get your car back,” Cole lied.
The farmer stood and brushed himself off, and Cole urged him to walk on ahead. He was no threat – shambling old man probably couldn’t even raise his dick, let alone a fist – but Cole wanted him in front simply so that they did not have to talk.
He had some thinking to do. And to do so successfully he had to do something that made his skin crawl, his balls shrivel and his scalp tighten: he had to open his mind.
* * *
Cole taunted Natasha, and very soon she answered back.
Fucker . . . useless . . . think you can get me? . . . piece of shit . . . worm . . . fuck you, Mister Wolf . . .
The words flew in from a distance, vague and almost unheard. Cole could barely feel Natasha’s slick, sick intrusion. They were more like echoes. She must have been a long distance away.
“I’m not finished yet,” he mumbled, shouting it with his mind, but he did not think she heard.
“What?” the farmer said.
“Not talking to you.”
“You talking to HQ, eh?”
“Just keep walking.” Holy shit, he thinks he’s in a fucking movie!
It was dawn now, and the sun was smearing the eastern hills with a palette of oranges and pinks. Cole loved to watch the sunrise, welcoming in the new day and wondering how different it would be. Each day offered renewed possibilities and a refreshed chance at life, and even in his darkest moments a spectacular sunrise could not help but touch him.
I wonder if Nathan’s been found yet, he thought, and a flock of rooks passed across the sunrise, hundreds of them. Cole closed his eyes briefly and imagined he was one of them. He envied the animals their simplicity of life. Their main purpose was to survive and procreate; his own purpose was borne out of revenge. A particularly human trait, revenge. It served no aim. It was like a fox coming after the hounds.
He had lost his own meaning in their world.
Cole opened his eyes and brought himself back to the here and now. Back to the unnatural.
His objective was now divided. On the one hand, he could not let Natasha reach the other berserkers. He had gathered evidence over the years that she was different somehow, altered, experimented upon by Porton Down and . . . improved. That was the one word the scientist had used before Cole shot her. Improved. He had no idea what they had done to her, but he did know one thing for sure: it would have only been to make her more deadly. And once reunited with the others, she could well become too powerful for him to take on his own.
On the other hand, finding the escapees had, until today, been his prime concern. What he would do then he had not even considered, because the prospects were too terrifying. Call in the Army, perhaps. Give them the opportunity on a plate to clean up an old mess.
Or maybe after so long, he would go it alone.
The escapees had been silent for ten years. Cole scanned the news every day, always looking for signs that they had been active, but there was nothing obvious. Murder, death, missing people, all these happened, but not in any great numbers in any one place. Not in Britain, at least. If the monsters had gone abroad . . . well, he would know soon enough. If Natasha looked to be making for the ports or an airport, this would be a whole new game.
Either way, he had some fucking vampires to hunt and kill.
* * *
Even though they cut across fields it was still more than a mile. It took almost half an hour for the farmer to lead Cole to his farm, and ten times in the last ten minutes of their walk Cole daydreamed about putting a bullet in the fat man’s arse. Roberts and Natasha were getting farther and farther away, and every minute wasted meant that finding them again would be harder. Cole listened for Natasha, inviting her in, and her random words soon faded into distant mumbles, and then whispers, and after that he was uncertain that he heard anything at all. His subconscious told him that she was still touching him, her words so quiet now that they were shadow rather than voice, but he was sure that she was still there. Raving. Gloating. And luring him on . . .
. . . Luring him on, because that was the only way she would ever find the others.
“That’s it!” Cole said as they entered the farmer’s yard. A fat woman stood at the doorway to a run-down house and a tall youth emerged from one of the sheds, both of them staring at the farmer and seeing the fear in his eyes.
“Yes, that’s it,” the farmer said, pointing to the BMW. “I’ll get the keys. Er . . . you want me to get the keys?” He stood there in the cow shit and awaited Cole’s permission to leave.
Cole smiled. “Yes, the keys,” he said. He slipped the .45 into his jacket, hoping it had not been noti
ced but seeing in the fat woman’s eyes that it had. He looked from her, to the farmer, to the tall youth standing beside the steel shed. The boy held a shovel in his hands as if it could swipe a bullet from the air. Too many John Woo movies.
“What’s wrong, John?” the woman asked. Her voice was firm, the fear well hidden. Cole guessed that however surprised and scared she may be, she would stay in control. The boy, however, was already growing pale as realisation set in.
“I’m taking your car,” Cole said to the woman. “It’s a matter of national security.” Damn, maybe he’d seen too many movies! Instead of smiling he turned to the boy and stared him down.
“You’re not taking my car,” the woman said.
“Janet, he’s Army!” the farmer said, waddling across the yard, hands held out to his wife. Cole realised he had an ally in this man, someone for whom the extraordinary was a break from the mundane day-to-day. Never mind the woman he had seen Cole shoot, never mind the fate of the man who had crashed his way out of the cottage driveway. This was an adventure.
“Has he shown you ID?”
“No. But he has a gun.”
“Oh then he work for the Army!” The woman stared across the yard at Cole, glanced down at the pocket where he’d slipped the .45, then back up at his face. must What do you want? her expression said, and Cole glanced across at the black BMW and shrugged. That’s all.
“Is that a real gun?” the boy said.
“It’s real alright!” the farmer said, turning from his wife to the boy. Easier reaction there. Not so much hostility. “I’ve just seen a gunfight!”
This guy’s a gem, Cole thought. The farmer had already forgotten that the other party in the ‘gunfight’ had not possessed a gun.
“Look, Janet,” Cole said, stepping forward with his hands held out from his sides, “I really do need your car, and I really am going to have it. I didn’t exaggerate in what I said, though I could have put it better. You’ll get the car back, and you’ll have a letter of thanks and some small reward for your troubles.” The woman’s expression hardly changed. Hard bitch, he thought. “You’ll get a new tractor, too.”
“He shot the tractor?” the boy asked.
Cole sighed and shook his head. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute! And then the woman spoke, and ridiculous turned to crazy.
“I don’t believe any of what you say. There’s a loaded shotgun on the wall three feet from me. You show me ID right now or I go for it.”
“Janet—”
“You don’t want to do that, Janet,” Cole said, drawing the .45 again. “What do you think this is, a movie?”
“No, I don’t watch them. This is me protecting my property and my family.”
“You go for it and I’ll shoot the boy first.”
Damn, he didn’t have time for shit like this. Random thoughts began to fly at him, his own ideas coming together at speed, reacting to the trauma of the last few hours. He was not used to being confused, and he was not used to someone getting the better of him. Roberts had been at the nasty end of Cole’s pistol and yet he’d escaped, and now here Cole was wasting time arguing with a bumbling idiot farmer, his TV-addled son and the fucking Terminatrix!
He did not have time . . .
Natasha is drawing me on because while I’m still hot after them, Roberts will keep on going . . . I take this BMW and that fat bitch will be on the phone to the police in seconds . . . I could kill them. Slurry pit. Be ages before they were found . . . And just what is it Natasha has? How is she ‘improved’?
The woman was glancing back and forth from him to the boy. Cole looked at him, back to her, then to the farmer. “Oh for fuck’s sake!” he said. He put the gun back in his pocket. “You – John – go and get me the car keys and I’ll be on my way.”
“Don’t you move, John!” the woman said. She had edged back into the doorway and reached inside the room, and Cole expected her to bring out the shotgun at any moment. Then he’d have two choices – run, or shoot her. That was somewhere he didn’t want to get to. Ten seconds ago I was thinking about killing them and throwing them in the slurry pit, wasn’t I? Wasn’t I? But unless something changed very soon, that’s just where he would be. Run, or shoot.
“Shit.” Cole looked around the farmyard, saw a herd of cows looking out from a barn with sad faces. Back to the woman. She was farther into the house now, and maybe her hand had already found the gun. The boy stared at his mother, wide-eyed. John, the fat farmer, turned in circles, seemingly at a total loss.
And every second Natasha grew farther away.
Cole pulled the gun and shot one of the cows.
The herd panicked, perhaps more at the blast of the gun than because one of their number was thrashing on the floor of the shed, its skull ruptured and pumping blood into the shit-covered yard.
From the house Cole heard the clatter of the dropped shotgun. Janet disappeared inside.
“John, get me the car keys,” Cole said, already running across the yard. He guessed he had a few seconds before the woman gathered her senses. The reality of the gunshot would have muddled her mind. The sight of the cow dropping and sprawling in its own bloody shit had been enough to send her running, and Cole knew from experience that people unused to violence took time to react to it. Even if she had gone for the phone, her hands would be shaking too much to use it.
He leapt straight up the steps into the kitchen, almost tripping over the dropped shotgun, carrying on through to the hallway where he found Janet fumbling with the phone. He snatched it from her hand, dropped it and shot the connection box from the wall at her feet. The gunshot deafened him, and he barely heard her scream. She stared at him wide-eyed and petrified, and yet there was still a glint of defiance in her eyes, a look that said, I’m scared shitless, yes, but give me a minute and you’ll regret ever having found this place.
Cole believed her, and he could not help but be impressed. This is the sort of person I’m fighting to help, he thought, and the realisation was yet more validation for what he was doing, and what he had already done. He heard the crack of Nathan’s neck and the woman scientist pleading for her life a second before he shot her, and he saw justification for those actions in this woman’s hearty defiance.
He showed her the gun, waved it once in front of her face and then left the house, picking up the shotgun and plucking a set of car keys from a hook by the back door.
The farmer and his son were standing together by the BMW, staring wide-eyed at the doorway. As Cole emerged the farmer muttered something unintelligible, tears coming to his eyes.
“I shot the phone box from the wall,” Cole said. “To be honest, I think it would take more than a silver bullet to kill your missus. Now, I’m going. I’m guessing you have mobile phones, or another phone elsewhere in the house, but I’d really appreciate it if you held off using it to call the police. I won’t waste time pleading with you, but I’ll say this: I could have shot you all. I could … have shot … you all. That way I’d ensure that I got away, and it would give me a lot more time to catch the man I’m after. And the more chance I have of catching him the better it is. For everyone. Am I getting through? Comprendé?”
The farmer nodded, eyes still wide.
“I should be talking to your wife,” Cole muttered. He nudged the farmer aside and pressed the remote locking button. The BMW opened up to him, he climbed in and started the engine. Smooth. Fast. But he’d have to dump it within the hour.
Shame.
“When will we get—?”
“The cheque’s in the mail,” Cole said. Then he slammed the door and screeched away, spraying cow shit from beneath the wheels.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Those echoes of Natasha had been too remote, she had offered no clues, and Cole had no idea which direction to take. Logic dictated north-west, back toward Wales and Roberts’ home. But something else nagged at Cole, and the more he thought about it the more elusive it became. He headed north, listening out for Natasha,
willing her to come back to him with her taunting faux-child’s voice, hating the idea of her in his mind but knowing that it was the only way to track her. The fact that he now believed she wanted him to follow changed nothing. She would slip up, or Roberts would make a mistake, and Cole would only need the slightest opportunity to put a bullet in the bitch’s head.
He threw the farmer’s shotgun into a field beside the road – it was too difficult to hide – and the .45 was back in his pocket. The magazine was reloaded. The near miss at the cottage had angered him, but he was doing his best to put that anger to good use. He was trying not to think of the woman he had killed that morning. She had been in the way, that was all.
None of this was his fault.
“She didn’t improved,” he said. “She felt feel dead.” Natasha and her chains had knocked him out on the moor, and even though he had not seen her in the darkness he had felt her, a damp, slick thing, filled with no signs of life at all. Cold. Wet. She had been below ground for ten years. Cole could still remember putting her there, the cries for mercy that turned into screams of rage as the soil was piled in on top of her. I’ll see you again, she had said.
I’m a good man, he thought for the thousandth time, and he pictured the farming family he could so easily have left weighted down at the bottom of their slurry pit.
And then it came to him. Not dwelling on what was nagging him brought it home; her voice, when it was loud enough to hear, had come from the north-east. He was not certain how he knew this but the knowledge was welcome, and undoubted. When he had picked up her voice on the way to the farm something inside had clicked, a direction-finder that he was unaware he even had. Turning his head left and right now did nothing, but when he heard her again, he would be sure.
At the next junction he turned right and headed east, reading a map book as he drove, trying to find a road that lead north-east.
