Berserk

by Tim Lebbon

  Steven, Natasha said from the back seat.

  “Will he know me?”

  I’m sure.

  “Will I know him?”

  Natasha paused, and Tom sensed something that may have been surprise. What daddy doesn’t know his son?

  Tom blinked slowly, eyelids heavy. They were on a dual carriageway now, heading north, and he stayed in the slow lane, watching lorries and cars and motorbikes pass them by. “I only knew him ten years ago,” he said.

  Natasha fell silent, and Tom guessed that she had gone somewhere else.

  He thought of what he had watched her doing when she lent him her memories. Why the Army had deemed it necessary to send in the berserkers, he could not fathom. There had been lots of people and lots of guns, yes, but surely one single bomb could have wiped out that drug den as easily as four berserkers? Perhaps it was political. Perhaps it had been a test. But then Tom thought of the faces he had seen through Natasha’s eyes, and he realised the truth: it was all about fear. Whoever those unfortunate people had been in business with would find them at the house, or what was left of them, and their minds would be stricken with the terror of their discovery.

  Fear. It was a powerful commodity. He wondered just how much it had backfired on the staff of Porton Down, and why. And much as he felt a trace of that fear as well, he hoped that Natasha would soon show him what had happened there.

  The girl was still away. His mind was his own – still hazy, distant from the pain that should be ravaging him, but his own – and Tom concentrated on driving. He had no idea where they were going. But he thought that when they finally arrived there, Natasha would let him know.

  * * *

  Cole waited for Natasha’s scream to come in again. His mind felt clear for now, but he knew that there were depths, unplumbed hollows beneath the streets where his darkness ran deep. Anything could be hiding down there. As he drove he strolled the byways of his mind, peering into darker alleys, always wary to shift manhole covers or venture into tunnels in case he found her waiting for him. He had always feared that he would. And in a way she was always with him, a nightmare that he had never quite been able to put down.

  The steering wheel was slippery with blood. The CD player oozed Tori Amos; Cole had not bothered to turn it off. The car stank from one of those air fresheners that smelled worse than wet dog or cigarettes, and it was burning the inside of his nose and giving him a headache. He found the little plastic turtle stuck to the underside of the dash, ripped it off and threw it from the car. He kept the window down, cleared the air, and now he could only smell blood. That was fine.

  His trousers were still wet from where he had pissed himself; he could smell that, too. His hand and calf still dribbled blood from where he had cut them climbing the fence. His legs hurt from the BMW impact, his left much worse than the right, and he feared that soon the bruising may prevent him from driving. His head thumped and throbbed, pulsing with nightmare echoes from the roar Natasha had driven into him, so loud and powerful that it had forced him down into his own dark subconscious.

  At least she had not been waiting there for him.

  Cole ignored the aches and pains and drove on, not knowing where he was going, simply aiming in the direction Roberts had taken. And much as he hated the prospect, he knew that once again he needed Natasha to slink into his mind if he were ever to find her again.

  * * *

  “Where are we going?”

  Tom glanced in the rear-view mirror, raising himself so that he could see down into the back seat. Natasha was still where he had left her, a shrivelled dead girl, but somewhere inside that carcass was the blood she had suckled from him. He wondered where it was and what good it had done her. He repeated his question, but she did not respond.

  “I feel weak,” Tom said. “It’s almost lunch time. I need to eat. I haven’t eaten since . . .” Since before I dug you up, he wanted to say, but somehow it seemed impolite.

  Silence. Natasha was still away.

  The road had turned into a motorway. He kept his speed down, wondering about stolen cars and number plates and police cameras, but there was nothing he could do about that right now. He had a bullet in his back and a body in the rear seat; stealing another car was hardly an option. Besides, he would not know how to do it. He was just an office worker.

  Tom hummed a tune that he did not know for a while, but then he recognised it as a song he had written before Steven’s death. Something about race, and bigotry, and acceptance. He could not remember the words, but he found himself tapping out the drum beat on the steering wheel and remembering how the guitar strings had felt beneath his fingertips. It felt good. For a few minutes, it took him away.

  “There’s an exit coming up,” he said. “Natasha? Where do we go from here? How long do I drive? What happens now?” That last question was directed as much to him as the berserker girl he had taken out of the ground. What happens now?

  He felt her return. She was wild, like a tornado falling from out of nowhere, touching down and setting the air reeling, the land vibrating, the whole world shaking with something that was either joy or rage.

  Perhaps both, because for her I think perhaps they may be one and the same.

  In the back seat, with a crackle like a fistful of sticks being twisted together, Natasha sat up. And Tom heard her true voice for the first time.

  “I’ve found them,” she said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Cole tried to shove down the guilt, but it kept rising again to remind him it was there. He drove it into darkness but it dragged him with it, and that darkness was painfully familiar. It stuck to him like blood on cloth, and however much he tried to distract himself it was always waiting there for him.

  I’m a good man, he thought, and the sun glinted from a splash of blood on the dashboard.

  Deep in the underground of his unconscious he thought he heard a wail. He turned up the car stereo, wound down both windows, pressing his foot to the gas so that he had to concentrate more on taking sharp bends and small humps in the road. Yet still he heard the echoes, and they were not fading away. Everything you ever see or hear or taste remains in your mind, so it’s said, only waiting to be retrieved. And he knew that all four people he had killed in his life – three of them in the past two days – were still inside him. He would meet them again. They would rise up and speak to him, and it was purely his strength or weakness, his conviction or doubt, that would see him through.

  good I’m a man!

  He only hoped that he had found Natasha by the time that mental showdown came.

  * * *

  “Who have you found?”

  Tom had stopped looking into the mirror. He had seen Natasha sitting up once, and that was enough. She held my arm when I dug her up, he thought, but up until now that had been a memory he’d kept shut out, weighed down, away from everything that was happening. Because there were only so many edges he could walk, and that was one from which he would surely topple.

  Them, Natasha said in his mind. She had spoken just now, Tom was sure. The voice had been that of a child, but one that has seen too much – croaky with age, weak with decay, yet filled with excitement. Sophia, Lane and their children, the ones who escaped. The other berserkers! The ones Mister Wolf wanted dead, so he killed my family instead.

  “They have Steven?” Tom’s heart was suddenly light in his chest, skipping instead of beating. The car drifted into the centre lane, and a lorry driver leaned on his horn until Tom twitched the wheel and brought them back.

  Probably, she said. They probably have him.

  “You told me they did!”

  I said there was a chance.

  Tom frowned and looked in the mirror again. The girl’s face was frozen and inscrutable. She remained sitting upright. Her hair was wrapped into a solid muddied knot at the base of her neck. He should wash it for her. And really, through the haze of everything that had happened, he was not exactly sure what she had said about Steven. All he k
new was that there was a chance, and right now that was enough.

  “Where will they meet us? What will happen? How many of them are there?”

  I’ll tell you where to go and when to stop, Natasha said. And Daddy, don’t be afraid. I’m here with you. You helped me, now I’ll look after you.

  “You can’t move!” Tom said, wincing as his raised voice seemed to allow in the pain from his back. “You can’t do anything, how can you protect me?”

  I’m a berserker, like them, Natasha said, and then she was silent, the question obviously answered.

  Tom drove on. The pain in his back—

  (I’ve been shot, shot by a fucking gun, and the bullet’s still in there festering in infection, and I might be dying!)

  —throbbing in time with his heartbeat, yet never bad enough to make him woozy or faint. Something Natasha had done was seeing to that. She had fed from him – whatever she claimed to the contrary, he knew that was what had happened – drinking his blood, taking strength from it, and giving him something back in return. There was no other explanation for how good he felt, considering all that had happened to him. She was taking care of him.

  Stop thinking, she whispered in his head, stop worrying, drive on.

  “Am I going mad?” he said, and Natasha withdrew to allow him his own mind.

  He drove on. Midday came and went, and Tom slipped into some sort of daze, feeling the miles drifting by but having little recollection of the moments in between. He was tired, hungry and thirsty.

  The motorway swerved and swayed northward. He kept his speed to about sixty, and most cars and lorries swept by as they edged up toward eighty. A few people looked his way, but he did not return their stares. He was aware of pale faces pressed to windows, and only when their vehicles moved on did he glance over at them, catching brief glimpses of faces which all looked the same. Whether they saw Natasha or not he did not know, and he was not sure what they would make of her if they did. A dummy, perhaps. Or maybe they would see a scarecrow, or a pile of clothes, or a strange plant being transported south to north. None of them stopped, none of them swerved away from him in surprise nor losing the steering wheel as they reached for their phones to call the police. They simply moved on, and he would never see them again.

  He drove on, mind focussed ahead, the events of the past day and night as hazy as a dream.

  The landscape was wide and flat. Fields were being harvested, some of them already worked and left with stubble where their crops had grown. One or two had already been ploughed under, and Tom thought of the life that would rise from the turned earth. Clumps of trees were dressed in orange and yellow, sprouting from a carpet of colour where many dead leaves had already been shaken loose. The sun bore down on one wooded hilltop and it shone gold and ochre across the landscape, like a beacon to anyone seeking the true splendour of nature. Such beauty in death. Such colour in decay. Everything in nature had a reason, and Tom spent a while musing on why dying leaves should look so attractive. Dead animals’ colours were dictated by rot, sour colours, non-colours. Natasha, back there in the rear seat . . . there was no colour to her, just greyness, browns, nothing striking at all. The colour of death for plants was much more pleasing. Coming up with no answer as to why this was, Tom was pleased. Nature be enigmatic. It was not up to humankind to pretend to know nature, and it was not right that someone like him should know such secrets on a day like today.should

  The traffic slowed, then stopped, and then began moving again at a crawl. A few minutes later they passed a lorry in the ditch, its driver sitting on the back steps of an ambulance chatting with paramedics while they gave him the once-over. He looked at the BMW as Tom passed by, and his gaze shifted from Tom to the back seat, his eyes flickering away, back again, away. A policeman standing in front of the ambulance looked as well, his eyes fixed on Tom until Tom looked away. They’ll be looking for the car, he thought, and as he accelerated he looked up at a traffic sign spanning the motorway. Place names and road numbers that made no sense, but he saw the small black specks of cameras above the signs, pointing both ways. Further on there was a camera atop a tall pole, aimed directly down at the slow lane. And as distance lessened between the BMW and the camera, Tom was sure the camera moved, tracking his progress, following him like eyes in a painting.

  “They’ll be looking for us,” he said. Natasha did not answer, and he wondered where she was. Back with Cole, checking whether he was dead or injured? Or ahead with the berserkers she was taking him toward? He could not tell, and he would not ask.

  Miles rolled by, and Tom’s strange daze continued, allowing in the details of everything around him but casting recent events into something of a dream. Sometimes he remembered his dreams, mostly not, and this one seemed to be fading as every minute and mile passed. The memories were still there, but the feelings and emotions were not. The last day of his life was turning into a movie. He thought of Jo, dead in their car, and she was an actress he had once known. He should have cried at that – he tried to force a tear – but a new model Mini cut him off and made him swerve, and his cursing dried up any sobs that might have come.

  When Natasha next spoke, almost an hour after Tom had last heard from her, her voice made him jump and let go of the wheel. He grabbed it again quickly. The sudden movement had stirred the pain in his back and Natasha came in, calming fingers in his mind, easing the pain away. How she did it he did not know; he was simply thankful.

  I’ve been talking with them, she said. They’re coming for us, all of them. They’ll tell us where to meet, and then they’ll take me Home.

  “Steven?”

  Yes, they have Steven.

  Tom began to cry. The tears were sudden, hot, streaming from his eyes and blurring his vision. He shook. “I need to stop,” he said, “just for a while. I need the toilet, and food and drink.”

  Of course, Daddy, Natasha said. Her voice broke and she paused, as if expecting him to say more about his son.

  But Tom did not ask. Right now, weak and in pain, he was not sure he really wanted to know.

  * * *

  He composed himself enough to drive the three miles to the next service station. He pulled off and parked as close to the main building as he could, partly to remain inconspicuous, but mainly because he had no idea how far he could walk. He sat for a while, gasping past sobs, forcing the tears to stop because they would attract attention. If the police caught him now, there would be no future. Natasha would be taken away and buried again. He would be arrested and charged with God-knew-what. And Steven . . . he would remain wherever he was now, doing whatever he was doing.

  That was what Tom did not want to know. Not yet. After the memories Natasha had shared to show him her story, he had begun to fear that his son would perhaps be better off dead.

  “I need to leave you for a while,” he said. “I’ll cover you with my jacket. You don’t look . . .”

  Don’t worry, you can tell me, Natasha soothed.

  “Well, someone would have to come close to see what you are.”

  Do what you need to do, but please come back soon. We’re so close, and they can help me.

  “Who are they? How many of them are there?”

  Four, she said. That’s all who survived. Lane and Sophia, and their children Dan and Sarah. And you’ll meet them soon enough.

  Tom sighed and rested his hands on his thighs, ready to get up. It was going to hurt. No matter what Natasha was doing to him, this was going to hurt. And then he realised one vital factor he had totally missed, and cursed his stupidity.

  He had been shot. His jacket, shirt and the back of his trousers were caked in blood. His collar, too, from the head wound that still throbbed. He was still covered in muck from excavating the mass grave yesterday. He was a fool who would not get ten feet before someone noticed him.

  “Oh, Natasha—”

  I can help, she said.

  “How?” Even now he sometimes forgot her psychic fingers in his mind, probing his t
houghts, hearing him as he heard her.

  I can make them look away.

  “They’ll still notice, I don’t understand—”

  But I can only do it if you take me with you.

  Tom sat silently at that, shifting the mirror and staring back at the girl. Her wrinkled face returned the stare, no smile, no movement. Perhaps sitting up had drained her strength.

  He looked around the car: foot-wells, glove compartment, turning cautiously in his seat to glance at the back seat. There was nothing he could use to cover her. He would need his jacket for himself – it was bloodied and holed, but not as bad as his shirt – and he could see nothing else. And then he remembered the boot. When he had searched it for tools he had seen an old blanket, spread across the floor in a vain attempt to keep it pristine.

  “Not pristine any more,” he said, smiling. There was blood everywhere, front and back, and grave-dirt was ground into the leather seats.

  All he had to do was leave the car, walk around to the boot, open it, retrieve the blanket from beneath the tools and anything else that might weigh it down, return to the rear door, lean in, wrap Natasha’s corpse and carry it into the service station. And then he would have to rely on her to help, in whatever way she could. I can make them look away, she had said, and the sense of her in his mind made him believe that.

  Piece of cake.

  Taking a few deep breaths, Tom looked around. There was a small car parked next to him, its owners absent. A few people milled outside, smoking or drinking or talking into their mobile phones. No one seemed to be looking at him in particular and, more importantly, he could see no sign of any police nearby. He touched the door handle and looked in the mirror at Natasha. The door opened with a portentous click.