by Tim Lebbon
Must be them.
I’ve got the initiative . . . I’ve got the surprise . . .
Speedometer, forty. The Range Rover’s big, heavy, but is there really another way?
Is there?
Airbag.
Next had come the instant decision, and a second later the impact as he drove headlong into the Rover.
Now, pinned back in his seat, he knew he may have a few seconds grace. The berserkers had met Major Higgins, that much was obvious, and now the Major was probably a wet stain somewhere down on the valley floor. And those two Chinooks he’d seen flying over the motorway, maybe forty men packing everything they’d need to take down the berserkers? Well, there were the flames.
And there was the Range Rover.
The airbag was not deflating. It turned from white to red before his face, and Cole tasted blood, and panic settled in. He reached down around into his lap and found the .45 still wedged under his thigh. It took him a few seconds to work it loose, then a couple more to aim blind, hoping that the crash had not skewed his sense of direction.
He closed his eyes, opened his mouth and pulled the trigger. The blast was huge. His ears were still ringing as he opened his eyes again and watched the airbag deflating before him. He took stock quickly. His legs still hurt like fuck, which meant he probably hadn’t broken his back. Jiggled his ankles and felt the inside of his shoes, so no trapped feet. He felt as though he’d been thrown against a wall and had a gang of thugs set upon him with hammers and blowtorches while he was unconscious, but right now that sort of pain was good, because it meant that he was alive and conscious and not paralysed.
The windscreen had spiderwebbed, either from the impact or the gunshot. Cole popped his seatbelt and used the pistol to knock out the glass. It fell into his lap in diamond chunks, and dusk poured in.
The Mondeo was buried in the front of the Range Rover. The vehicles seemed to merge, and it was difficult to tell where one began and the other ended. Something hissed, something steamed, and Cole could smell petrol, potent and rank. The Rover’s windscreen had shattered and Sophia hung half-out, splayed across the bonnet. Her head was ruptured and leaking. Between Sophia and Cole, twisted into the buckled bonnet of the Mondeo, Lane.
Cole gasped.
Lane opened his eyes.
* * *
Tom sat up and shook his head. He’d been thrown against the back of the middle seats, and Natasha had tumbled to the floor at his feet. She groaned in his head, mumbling words that made no sense, and if he closed his eyes he saw jumbled images of what she had called Home. They were blurring now, flickering, as if delivered to him on a fifth generation videotape and viewed on a dodgy TV set. He could almost feel her belief and hope fading away.
None of them had been wearing seatbelts. He had been holding Natasha to his side as Lane drove them up out of the valley of death. Tom’s view through the rear door had been apocalyptic: the blazing wrecks of the two helicopters, the shell of the BMW still flicking with flames, the ruptured bodies scattered across the car park and piled against the front door of one of the closed units. The sun had gone down and the fires painted the ground red. Or perhaps it was blood.
And then their brief conversation that shattered hope, Steven in his mind, and the car had driven straight into them. Tom had seen Cole in the driver’s seat a split-second before the impact. The Range Rover’s headlights had turned his face white, and his eyes were wide and dilated with madness.
He hoped that Cole was dead.
Tom looked forward. Lane had been thrown straight through the windscreen and now lay twisted up on the Mondeo’s rippled bonnet. Sophia was halfway through, and there was a lot of blood. Dan had gone between the front seats and crashed into the dashboard. He was moving slightly, mewling like a hungry kitten, and Tom saw his wounds gushing fresh blood. There were fresh wounds, too; he was impaled on the gear-stick, shuddering as he tried to lift himself off. Sarah, exhausted from her recent fight, had bounced from the rear of Sophia’s seat and lay crumpled across the leather. She was not moving.
“Natasha, I think this is bad,” Tom said. She answered only with another moan, and more confused images of the Home it seemed she would never know.
A gunshot rang out, loud and frightening in the stunned silence following the crash. Tom ducked down, looking forward at the Mondeo. The doors were still closed, the windscreen was obscured, nobody moved. One of the vehicle’s headlamps still burned, and he could make out shadows and shapes around the cars. All of them seemed to be moving, and he wondered whether all the soldiers had been on those Chinooks, or if others had been sent here by road. Maybe there would be more shooting soon and that would be it. Maybe—
A hole appeared in the Mondeo’s windscreen, widening quickly as the shattered glass fell inward. It was Cole. His face was lit a devilish bloody red from the bridge of the nose down. His eyes widened as he saw Lane, not two feet away from him.
For a second the scene froze, and Tom thought that instant would be his last. Nobody moved or made a sound, and perhaps he’d had a heart attack, his last wretched second on this earth imprinted on his mind as his body seized and his mind prepared to fade away.
Then Cole thrust his pistol into Lane’s face and fired once, twice, again, and Lane’s head came apart.
Tom ducked down behind the seat and looked at Natasha.
Mister Wolf, she said, and he nodded.
“I have to get you out of here,” Tom whispered. “The others are in a bad way – still healing from the fight, maybe – and if he traps us in here we’re dead. I smell petrol. I’m going to open the back door and run with you. Are you ready? Maybe we can hide, or maybe we can make it back to the industrial estate. There are lots of guns down there.”
You’ve never fired a gun.
Tom shook his head. “It can’t be that hard.”
Here! Natasha said. There are guns in here! Sophia’s rifle, Lane’s pistol.
Tom nodded, mind running so fast he could barely keep up. He had to distract Cole first, then scramble over the seats, find one of the guns, figure out how to use it, find out where Cole was, shoot him before he was shot himself. Easy. “Easy,” Tom said. And he smiled. Because something was coursing through him and making him feel good. The wound in his back was a pleasant throb rather than a burning pain, as if he were getting a constant massage. His fingers and toes tingled, his senses seemed sharpened as the dusk’s light faded fast. Far from being terrified at what the next thirty seconds may bring, he was looking forward to them.
He smelled blood, and it was as sweet as wine.
More glass smashed, Cole grunted, and Sarah stirred in the seat in front of Tom. Dan was still whining as he tried to lift himself from the broken gear-stick. Sophia remained still and silent.
Several more gunshots, and this time they were directed into the Range Rover. Someone gasped in pain. A bullet blasted through the seat three inches from Tom’s head and shattered the rear window. Then he heard Cole’s curse and the metallic of a magazine being ejected.snick
“Now,” Tom whispered. “We won’t have long.” He shunted the handle on the rear door and kicked it open. “Run!” he shouted, dipping one foot out and scraping it across loose stones on the roadside. Then he turned, waiting until he heard Cole slip from the wrecked Mondeo and sprawl to the ground.
I love you, Daddy, Natasha said. Tom smiled, confused, touched, and heaved himself over the rear seat. He landed half-on Sarah and she lashed out with one hand, catching him across the face. He grunted. Felt blood oozing from the gash she had put there. Heard her low, throaty growl. He wanted to tell her what he was doing, but by the time he’d done that Cole would be behind the Rover. Then, maybe five seconds until he realised he’d been duped. Tom had created a make-or-break scenario for all of them; he could smell the petrol, and once Cole knew what was happening he could ignite the wrecked cars with one careful shot. He punched out at the girl berserker and forced his way forward between the front seats. Dan whin
ed louder, expecting help or trying to fight. Either way, his waving hands were ineffective. He was weak, still bleeding, and one of the wounds in the side of his head leaked something that was almost black in the subdued light.
Tom glanced at the empty driver’s seat; no pistol. Sophia was hanging across the bonnet, legs still in the passenger seat. In the foot-well behind her legs lay the rifle. He leaned forward, straining against the seats that held him across the hips, touched the slick metal, curled his fingers around the barrel, pulled it toward him. Dan was batting his head, fingers scraping his scalp and drawing blood. “Get off,” Tom whispered, but the berserker was mad, and Tom sensed dark, alien thoughts dancing at the fringes of his mind.
I hear Mister Wolf! Natasha said.
Tom started to panic. He pulled the rifle out between Sophia’s dangling legs. She coughed, then moaned, then growled when she felt the metal batting her knees on the way past. “I’m not against you,” he whispered, hoping his words would make it through. Dan still mumbled incoherently, and then Tom heard someone else muttering her way into his mind. Lane, the voice said, and it was Sophia. Lane . . . Lane?
Tom forced himself back and pulled the rifle after him.
He’s past the car now, Daddy.
Seconds . . . maybe only seconds. Tom sat up, turned around and rested the rifle on the seat-backs. There was a scope, but he had never used a gun, and he was afraid that if he looked through it he would miss things happening at the periphery. He had not yet seen Cole.
Sarah screeched out loud and lurched up for him.
“No,” Tom whispered, and he heard someone skidding to a halt on the road.
Cole stepped into the frame of the open back door, maybe twenty feet away. He was staring into the Range Rover, his face a dark mask of blood in the dim light, the pistol glinting in his hand. “Sneaky bastard!” he said.
Tom pointed the rifle and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened.
Cole ran at the Rover, lifting his pistol, and Tom saw the maw of its barrel growing to swallow him whole.
Daddy! Natasha said. The others were whispering at him now, pained and angry, raging, their thoughts so dark and confused that he could make no sense of them. He pulled the trigger, and once again nothing happened.
“Safety,” Cole said. He stood at the open door, aimed his pistol at Tom’s chest and shot him for the second time that day.
* * *
Tom fell back and his vision left him with a blinding flash, like a bulb brightening before finally burning out. He could not breathe. His chest felt heavy, as if his organs had turned to lead. For some reason he thought of Steven when he was six years old, waking one morning and creeping downstairs before he and Jo heard him, cooking them toast, buttering it, making tea with cold water and picking a rose from the back garden before bringing everything up on a tray. Happy Christmas, he had said, and though Christmas had been weeks away they had spent that morning laughing and playing and being everything a family was meant to be.
Tom’s body began to burn from the inside out. And as all senses receded to a point on the horizon of consciousness he smelled petrol and blood, heard a volley of gunshots, and then screams as flames licked at flesh.
* * *
As Roberts fell back another shape rose from the seat, grabbed the rifle, nudged the safety and fired off a shot. Cole felt the bullet singe the hairs on his left ear. He put two bullets into the shape – one of the young bastard berserkers, all grown up – and as it howled he snatched up Natasha.
So light! He almost stumbled as he picked up the berserker bitch. He’d been prepared for some weight, but there was hardly anything to her at all. It was like lifting a bundle of straw and twigs.
The shape rose again in the back seat, shaking like a wet dog, spraying the Range Rover’s ceiling with a fan of blood. Cole turned and ran, expecting at any second to feel a high velocity bullet tear out his spine. He zigzagged, feet scraping on the ground, and as he looked down at the bundle in his arms he let out an involuntary laugh. He had her! After so long, the greatest mistake of his life was about to be put right.
I’m dying, she said in his mind, I can’t move, I haven’t fed, I’m dying.
“Poor girl,” Cole said, laughing again. He should stop now, stand on her chest and put a bullet in her head, but he could still hear howling and commotion from the Range Rover . . .
. . . and he could still smell petrol in the air.
He turned. There were shadows dancing in and around the crashed cars. He dropped Natasha to the ground, braced himself and fired beneath the Range Rover. The third shot threw up a spark, the spark expanded into a wavering blue flame, and seconds later the vehicle’s ruptured fuel leads ignited. He turned and fell to the ground as the fuel tank exploded. Natasha had rolled to the edge of the road and he scrambled after her on hands and knees, not caring about sharp stones or the burning debris falling around him, concerned only with this berserker bitch whom he had spent years regretting not killing when he had the chance.
Don’t hurt me! she said, and he shouted, “You’ve changed your tune!” Another thumping explosion came from along the road as the Mondeo’s fuel tank went up. He was sure all these fireworks must be attracting attention, but he supposed it could have been only fifteen minutes since the first shots were fired down in the valley. Whatever, he did not have long. He would shoot the berserker now and run like fuck. Because however hot that fire, however weak those others were, he did not for a minute believe he had killed them all.
The sudden sense of his life coming to an end struck him hard. If he got them all – if their tainted blood was bubbling away within those flames – then once he killed Natasha, his life no longer held meaning. They would be dead, all of them, and his sense of purpose would be fulfilled. And what would he be then? Just another murderer waiting to be caught?had
For reasons he could not fully comprehend he picked up Natasha and ran.
He leaped over the ditch at the edge of the road and started climbing up out of the valley. The ground here was loosely landscaped, small trees spaced well apart with heathers and bracken growing in between. The going was quite easy, though his legs soon began to burn. His thighs felt as if they would swell and rip apart his jeans, but he had come to ignore that pain.
“Where are you?” he asked. “Where are you?” But the berserker girl was a bundle of skin and bones in his arms. Whatever was left inside – her personality, her tenacious life force – had gone away once more.
Cole paused and looked back down at the flaming vehicles. The fire lit up the road in both directions, but he could not make out any bodies, inside or outside the Range Rover. If some of them had gotten away they were in hiding . . . or coming after him.
He continued uphill, carrying the shell of Natasha with him. Knowing he should kill her. Feeling, somehow, that the time was not yet right.
* * *
Somebody was feeding him. Tom could smell fire and cooking flesh, feel fire of a different kind coursing through his body and melting everything he had ever known, every thought that tried to surface, in its conflagration. And yet it was the hunger that brought him around, lifting him up above the surface of unconsciousness that hid only dead depths beneath.
It felt as though he had not eaten forever, and he lapped up the food, chewing, swallowing, opening his mouth and waiting for the next morsel like a fledgling bird. There, there, someone said, and Tom was not sure whether they had spoken out loud or in his mind. He was uncertain of the voice. It sounded soothing but behind it lay anger, and something else. The voice sounded hollow. There, there.
“What . . . ?” he asked, unable to finish. Something crushed down on his chest and took away all his wind, and he gasped for long seconds as he tried to draw in another breath. One came, eventually, and he kept it light, in and out slowly, thinking that with every breath his insides would break.
Meat touched his lips, he opened his mouth and gulped it down, barely chewing.
<
br /> Natasha! He tried to sit up but the weight on his chest held him down. He opened his eyes. A shadow sat at his side, wavering as a fire cast it left and right.
“He has her,” the voice said.
No! Tom could not speak, but he thought this shadow heard him well enough.
“Sarah has gone after them, but it’s down to the girl now. She’s more than you know. This could be interesting.”
She’s just a little girl, Tom thought, and then he found his breath. “She’s almost dead.”
The shadow shook its head. “She’s almost alive.” And then it fed him some more.
* * *
Cole could hear the berserker coming.
If he kept going at this pace he would reach the access road first, then he had a mile to run before he was back onto the main road. And even then, there was no guarantee that anyone would stop for him. Not looking like he did, bloodied and battered and carrying a corpse.
“Where are you?” he asked again, and inside he wanted her back. He wanted to feel the nearly-dead girl in his mind, because her voice gave him purpose. He so wished to hear her, because his aim was to silence that voice forever as he should have done ten years before.
You were too cruel then, Natasha said, surprising him. He had not sensed her creeping into his mind. Perhaps she was hiding, down in his subconscious with the living shadow of his hate. Or maybe she had always been there.
“Cruelty’s childish,” he said. “I’m over it.”
Don’t you want to know?
Behind him he heard the sounds of pursuit. Feet slapping through the knee-high ferns that smothered the hillside. Hands pushing aside branches. The noises were coming closer, however hard Cole ran. And Natasha, light as she was, was slowing him down. He should shoot her here and now, three rounds to blow off her head, and then he could leave her for them to find. The final insult. They would be free again, but Natasha would be dead.
