Coldbrook

4

‘Vic, you stupid bastard Yank, do you have any idea what you’ve done?’ The phone’s ringing had startled Jonah — he was standing at the viewing panel in the door, looking out at the deserted, silent corridor beyond — and his shouted response was partly in reaction to that shock. But it was also provoked by the words that had appeared on the little screen: Vic calling.

‘Jonah-’

‘Today I’ve seen people dying. Melina. Uri. And Estelle, she had her head. . it was. . because of you.’ He drew a breath, leaning against the door with one hand.

‘Jonah, where are you? How bad is it?’

‘Ah, fuck off, Vic,’ Jonah said, and he disconnected. His head was spinning, heart galloping, and he sat down gingerly on the edge of the desk. The palpitations made him cough, and for a moment he was sure the dizziness would increase and he’d hit the floor. Break a hip, he thought, and wouldn’t that be just fine? Survive all that and then break a damn hip? Wendy would have laughed at the irony in that, but then she always did have a skewed view of life. Bill Coldbrook had once said, The more we think we know, the more humble we should become, and how right he had been. Had Jonah’s own pride and arrogance caused this catastrophe? Perhaps.

Jonah dialled Vic back and the call was answered after the first ring.

‘Vic, don’t talk,’ Jonah said. ‘I’m not sure I want to hear your cowardly bastard voice right now, but you need to hear mine, and what I have to say. You need to know. Are you listening?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good. I’ve seen people attacked and killed down here, and then get up again to go and attack others. I believe I might be the only one left who’s not either dead or infected. I’ve made some calls, sounded the alarm. And I’m alone in Secondary.’ He stared at the door for a moment, sure he’d seen movement beyond. But his view of the corridor outside stayed clear. Just shadows on my mind. ‘Whatever the contagion is, it’s spread by bites. It kills and infects its victims within a minute. I’ve seen people shot five times and still walking, unless they’re shot in the head. You have to shoot them in the head.’

Vic snorted, and it might have been a laugh.

‘Funny?’ Jonah asked softly. ‘You’re finding something amusing?’

‘No, it’s just-’

‘I said I didn’t want to hear your bastard voice, Vic. There’s nothing funny here. Nothing! I saw Estelle have her face bitten off. She fell and bled out, died. And then stood again, and attacked the only guard I believe was left alive. He. . he blew her head off. That time, she stayed down.’

‘You’re talking about zombies, Jonah.’

‘The notion’s make-believe. But what it implies fits.’

Vic laughed again, but there was desperation there, a hint of hysteria. And Jonah did not like that.

‘Pull yourself together, boy! Think of your family.’

‘I am thinking of my family. They’re here with me now. We’re on our way out of Danton Rock, but. . I heard shooting when I left the compound.’ Vic fell silent for a moment, and now Jonah did see movement through the door’s glass panel.

A face appeared there, so ruined that he could not possibly identify it, could not even tell its owner’s sex. It stared in at him with one good eye, pressed against the strengthened glass and smearing blood. It did not blink. He heard nails drawn across the metal door.

‘There’s one watching me,’ Jonah said, backing away from the door, and the truth of what he saw hit him hard. Don’t give up on me now, he thought as his heart lurched in his chest, and he closed his eyes to try and calm his body. The thing scratched some more.

‘One what?’ Vic asked.

‘One of them. If you could only see. I’m turning away, but listen to me. This is beyond fault or guilt now — that all comes later, and damn me if I won’t punch your lights out when I see you again. But I’m trapped down here. And there’s something I need to do, and something you must do, too. You’ve got to warn people. Visit the station there, speak to Sheriff Blanks. Tell him what happened, tell him everything I’ve told you. And tell him to shoot them in the head.’

‘Can’t you tell him-’

‘No, Vic! You’re the one who ran, and you’re out there now, boy. So that’s down to you, face to face. I’ve got to stop any more of these bastards getting out.’

‘And how the hell are you going to do that?’

‘Do you care?’ Jonah shouted. ‘Just do your part.’

‘Jonah. Everyone else?’

I don’t have to tell him, Jonah thought, but such cruelty was beyond him. ‘Holly escaped through the breach,’ he said. Then he disconnected, turned the satphone off, and went back to the window.

The face from hell was still there, pressed against the glass, staring at him: jaw moving slightly, tongue squashed, wounds not bleeding. ‘Because it’s dead,’ Jonah said, and he no longer found the idea ridiculous. You’re talking about zombies, Jonah. Yeah, well. What you see, you see, Wendy used to say when Jonah tried to impress upon her the question of scientific proof versus spiritual nonsense and he’d held her comment close to his heart. What you see, you see.

‘Right, then,’ he said, looking at the door window but talking to himself. ‘Let’s see how I can get out of this one.’ He returned to the desk and turned his back on the door, tilting the laptop screen so that he could not see its reflection, and accessed two programs. Some of the afflicted had escaped — Alex the guard captain, at least — but the more he could keep down here with him, the better. They’d be contained, and when the time came to start testing antidotes there’d be a supply of captive subjects.

‘When that time comes,’ Jonah muttered, feeling a chill at the prospect. This was a condition seeded in the other Earth. How would anyone here have a clue how to combat it? And if it spread. .

After his calls, help would be on its way. But there was no saying what form that help might take.

The scratching at the door became more agitated and Jonah glanced back. There was another face pressed against the glass panel now. Uri. He seemed undamaged, but his eyes had changed. No more laughter or jokes in there. He stared in at Jonah, and Jonah wondered what he saw.

‘Damn it!’ He turned away again and checked to see if he could do what he had planned. It had been a passing thought but, the more he considered his options, the more likely it seemed to be the only possibility. Better than staying trapped in here, at least. Secondary had always been considered a backup location for control of Coldbrook, not an emergency one, and it was as basic as that consideration warranted. There was access to all systems, air conditioning in case of lockdown, and a small cupboard with dried foods and water to last eight people for two days. There was a small bathroom, but nowhere to sleep.

It also had a gun cabinet. Only in America, Jonah had commented to Bill Coldbrook several times during the construction of the facility. They don’t have gun cabinets at CERN.

Don’t they? Bill had replied, and a raised eyebrow had silenced Jonah.

The guns had always been the part of Coldbrook that troubled Jonah most. The argument for them was solid enough, but that didn’t mean he had to like them. If and when they did eventually succeed in their experiment, then through and beyond the breach chamber would be another Earth, perhaps with its own geography, flora and fauna. And perhaps with people. There was no guarantee that anything through there would be friendly, but no certainties otherwise, either. He hated the feel, sight, and smell of guns, but he also grudgingly saw the logic behind their presence here. Should’ve built this thing in the Welsh mountains. Safer, and would’ve brought some money to the valleys, he’d once said to Bill, and Bill had countered with, And you really think the British government wouldn’t station an SAS platoon there?

Jonah left his desk and went to the gun cabinet, entering his ID code into the electronic lock. The door popped open with a gentle click. Inside, two pistols hung on clips, and a shotgun was strapped in one corner. There were two boxes of shotgun shells, and a dozen loaded magazines for the pistols. He had not fired a weapon for seven years, when Vic had taken him to a range a mile outside Danton Rock. After an hour of shooting Vic had declared, If I asked you to shoot at the sky I’d lay good odds that you’d miss. Jonah had taken it as a compliment.

He plucked a pistol from its clips and, after a few moments pressing and prodding, the magazine slipped out. It was fully loaded, so he pushed it back in until it clicked into place. The pistol had a safety built into the grip, he remembered, so he’d have to squeeze tight when he was shooting, and he had to make sure he aimed for-

‘What the bloody hell am I doing, Wendy?’ It had been a long time since Jonah had spoken to his dead wife aloud. Hearing her name startled him, and he felt a weight in his chest as he thought of her easy smile and intelligent eyes. He laughed out loud, looking at the cool alien object in his hand, thinking how ridiculous this all was. ‘Hey, Wendy. . Jonah Jones, action hero. Think I’ll be the next Richard Burton?’ His voice sounded loud and flat in the large room, and he glanced back at the door to remind himself where and when he was.

The two faces stared back, and he was sure the scratching sound got louder when he looked at them.

The longer Jonah stayed here, the more difficult his next step would be. He had to go. Now.

‘Got to stick to my guns,’ he said, but all humour had left him. Can I really shoot someone? He thought of everything he had seen and decided that yes, he could. He had to. ‘You’re already dead.’ The faces held no expression, and he wondered if they could hear him when he spoke, or would feel anything when he shot them.

Jonah sat down and took several deep breaths. He scanned the viewing screens, checking his route from Secondary down to the next level, then past the offices to the garage area. He remotely locked several corridor doors, watching on the screens as their door closers operated. On the staircase that he’d have to descend there was a body, lying on its front and with its head pointing away from him, and he could see no movement. It was a woman, her nightgown pulled up around her chest and soaked in red. He was glad he could not make out who it was.

He’d have to be cautious there, just in case, though from what he had seen of the afflicted-

Not dead, I can’t call them the dead, and calling them zombies. .

— he didn’t think they could scheme or plan. They could not play dead.

Jonah went into the bathroom and urinated, leaning against the wall, supporting himself with one hand and staring into the mirror above the toilet. An old man stared back, and he felt shocked at the image. Seventy-six was the count of his years, but his mind was as vivid and sharp as it had ever been, his heart and soul immersed in Coldbrook and the wonders he was determined it would one day reveal. Ageing was for people who spent mornings at bridge clubs, afternoons strolling in the park with walking groups, and evenings fussing over dinner and deciding what to watch on TV. The fact of his approaching death crept up on him sometimes, surprising him with how close it had come, but he was so involved with his work that mortality seemed to be for everyone else. But now he looked into the face of someone who had seen terrible things, and who had seen death in unreal forms. He had always felt at ease with the prospect of his own demise, but Coldbrook had become a travesty of its original purpose. And a deadly one at that.

Back in Secondary’s main room he unplugged the laptop, checking that it still had its wi-fi connection, then moved to the door. With his other hand he held the gun down by his side, safety catch off, hand clasping the grip, finger on the trigger.

In the head, he thought, and this close up the faces looked less human than ever. Realising he had both hands full he put the laptop down, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. Got to think clearer than that. He rested his hand on the door lock, took a few deep breaths, then clicked it open.

They seemed to hear the sound of the lock disengaging. The scratching became more frantic, and they called to each other softly, a haunting hum. Jonah watched for a moment, to see if they remembered how to open a door. The handle flicked down, but they did not depress it fully. Gun ready, Jonah pressed the handle down and opened the door.

A hand came through. Fingers opened and closed, grasping. The little finger was shredded and hanging, though no blood dripped from it. He pulled back as another hand came through, this one with painted fingernails and a diamond ring shining obscenely amid dried blood. The door swung open and he stepped back, raising the gun and sighting on the woman’s head. Two afflicted pushed into the room together, squeezing through the door and reaching for him. Their previously expressionless faces now held a tension that pulled their mouths open and widened their dark eyes.

Their hooting calls could have been tuneless singing, and they smelled like mouldy, wet clothing.

‘Wait, wait, hang on,’ Jonah said, retreating until the backs of his legs hit the control desk. Although he had the gun raised he could not pull the trigger. Shooting someone in the head, seeing the damage it could do, was beyond his comprehension. ‘No, wait, stay back and let me-’

A hand swiped across his face and he jerked his head back, wrenching his neck and feeling a fingernail scrape across his nose. He kicked out and shoved the bloody-faced woman back, but Uri was beside her and he pressed forward, slower, his actions much more controlled.

There was flesh between Uri’s teeth, and a clot of blood and blonde hair was stuck to his chin.

‘No, we should talk, you need to sit down and-’ Jonah stammered.

Uri’s face changed as his mouth fell open, lips and cheeks wrinkling into a silent growl, and it was the silence that threw Jonah. On the viewing screens he had seen carnage and shooting and blood, and he had played his own imaginary soundtrack to those sights. He had been wrong. These things were not ravenous slavering animals, not growling roaring things, but something else entirely.

He lifted the gun quickly, its barrel striking Uri’s chin, causing is head to flip up, Jonah tucked in his elbow and raised the gun higher — it was only inches from his own face when he fired. The explosion was deafening. His hearing faded instantly, driving all his senses inward for what seemed like minutes but must have been only seconds. When he opened his eyes again there was dust drifting from the ceiling and Uri was slumped against the open door, slowly sliding down to the floor, his head a ruin. And the woman was coming for Jonah again, her mutilated face stretching horribly as her jaw seemed to unhinge, teeth glaring in the wet red mask. The shot’s recoil had jarred Jonah’s shoulder, but he brought the gun up again and held it in a two-handed grip at arm’s length this time, closing his eyes as the woman’s forehead struck the barrel. He pulled the trigger, then squinted through the smoke at her thrashing on the floor. He shot her again and again. The gunshots sounded distant, though the recoil forced him against the desk. His ears started ringing as his hearing returned, though beyond the ringing there was only silence and his own panting and groaning, and the gasps as he tried to spit gun smoke from his mouth.

The woman was motionless. Her head was shattered, spilling out a mess of gore. Blood seeped, and Jonah gagged, but he had to look again. It did not gush. No working heart to pump it, he thought. Uri was slumped against the open door, chin on his chest, displaying the exit wound on the back of his head just above the neck. Blood and brain matter ran down beneath his collar, but again there was no excessive bleeding.

I shot two people, Jonah thought, but he found himself feeling surprisingly calm. Although his ears were still ringing the stillness seemed a comfort to him. I gave them peace. I helped them. He nodded as he knelt, holding on to that thought. The woman’s leg was stretched out and her shoe hung off. He touched the top arch of her foot, blew on his hand and touched her skin again. She was cooler than she should have been, her skin paler. She was someone from the kitchen. He had eaten food that she had cooked, and had thanked her for it. Now she was dead.

‘Bloody hell.’

He moved backwards until the desk stopped his progress again. He stared, chilled by the bodies’ presence. But he had opened the door for a reason. He had to move on. There would be dangers, and part of his scheme relied on pure luck. But it meant taking action. Standing here returning cold dead stares was not meaningful activity.

Jonah dragged the corpses outside, wanting to keep Secondary clear. As he grabbed the laptop and closed and locked the door, he did not take his eyes from the two motionless cadavers. And even as he turned a corner to reach the staircase, he kept glancing back. Though they did not follow him, he knew they would pursue him in his dreams.

He descended the staircase, stepping past the nightgown-wearing woman and almost slipping on the mess that her shattered skull had spilled down the stairs. Heart thudding, he closed the staircase door, gasped, and paused, raising the gun again as a shadow moved away in front of him. It slipped down a side corridor into one of the accommodation wings, seeming to flow rather than walk. An overhead light flickered and a shadow danced again. Perhaps that was all he had seen. Turning the corner quickly he saw nothing but empty corridor, and he hurried on.

Jonah used the laptop to open and close doors remotely, flipping to the other program so that he could use the CCTV cameras to see around the bends in corridors and check his route. He passed the offices and entered the canteen and common room, where pool tables and loungers were scattered around the large room. He’d sat in here often, drinking bad blended whisky from the small bar run by Andy. Jonah had seen the barman die. Andy would laugh and chat with those who spent most of their time in the facility itself — often Vic had been down here as well, even though he had his wife and child topside. For a while he had remained down here a whole lot more, and Jonah was well aware of the intense relationship he’d had with Holly.

The common room had been a place of laughter, but now a monster sat in one of its chairs. Sergey Vasilyev was a particle physicist, seconded to Coldbrook to share in their work and to contribute what he’d learned from research he had been undertaking in Saint Petersburg for the past eighteen years. Russia’s own version of Coldbrook had been mothballed due to the massive financial investment required, and Sergey had been invited to represent Russia at the Stateside complex. Some of Coldbrook’s backers had been uncomfortable with the Russian’s presence but Jonah had been adamant — as far as he was concerned, there were no secrets or borders when it came to science, and Sergey was the best in his field.

Now he sat in one of the leather loungers, watching Jonah with lazy eyes as the older man circled the room’s perimeter.

‘Sergey?’ Jonah asked, though he knew it was useless. It looked as if the tall Russian had taken a sustained burst of gunfire to his stomach and pelvis, and his legs hung at unnatural angles. He lifted one hand, as if to reach across the twenty-foot gap between them. His face was slack, his expression inhuman.

Jonah lifted the gun, then lowered it again. As he left the room he heard a low, sustained moan, and remembered the sound from the first time Sergey had tried proper whisky.

Just leaving a problem until later, he thought, but he could not bring himself to shoot the seated man.

Nerves tingling, limbs shaking even as he walked, Jonah made it to the short corridor leading to Coldbrook’s garage. He closed the door, saw no lock, and checked the systems on his laptop. There was no facility to lock this door automatically. Why? Why the hell enable corridor doors to be locked, but not the door to the garage? He almost shouted in frustration, but instead knelt with his back against the door and accessed the CCTV programme.

Perhaps the afflicted really couldn’t open doors. The two outside Secondary had been scratching at the door, not clinging to its handle. But maybe they’d known it was locked, and the scratching had been a sign of their frustration.

Breathing heavily, Jonah viewed the garage through its three cameras. One of them did not react to prompts, but the other two swivelled to order, giving him a panning view of the whole area. He saw himself hunkered down by the door, an old man hiding in fear. The three vehicles seemed untouched, and he saw no shadows that should not be there. Behind the parked vehicles to his left was the access door to the air-conditioning plant room. It was open. He flipped the laptop windows again to the security program but this door also was manual only.

‘Damn it!’ he whispered. At the sound of his own voice, he felt tears welling up and his throat constricting, and as he tried to stand his legs gave way and he slid down the closed door until he was sitting again on the cold floor. The shakes came harder than before, and his vision blurred. His joints ached. He wiped his eyes angrily but more tears came, and he tried to remember the last time he’d cried. He sometimes woke from dreams with tears in his eyes, but he had not cried while awake for some time. ‘But I’ve never shot anyone before,’ he whispered, and his voice shook. He laughed softly and let the tears come, because there was nothing else he could do.

Jonah cried for a couple of minutes, not caring, what the tears were for. If he wept for those he had seen die, then they deserved this meagre tribute. And if he shed tears over those he had shot, then perhaps that might purge some guilt.

But even as his weeping ceased and he managed to calm his shivers, with every blink of his eyes he saw scenes of devastation that were sensations rather than images, intimations of chaos and death that filled him with a sense of deep, primeval dread. And as he rested his head back against the door and tried to resolve what to do next, the handle above him started to move down, then up again.

He stood and ran, legs shaking beneath him, his heart protesting with stutters and missed beats. The laptop almost slipped from his hand and he grabbed it just in time, pressing it against his chest. If he had a choice of what to drop it would be the gun, not the laptop. Battery won’t last for ever, he thought, but he was not thinking about for ever, or even the next few hours. This was minute-by-minute stuff.

The handle snapped down with a different sound as the catch clicked open. The door behind him banged open just as he reached the Hummer’s driver-side door. Regulations said that keys were to be kept in the vehicles, but they also said that cameras should be regularly serviced and that communication routes to the surface should be maintained at all times. Rick Summerfield had not heard any alarm, and the third camera in the garage did not react to prompts. Someone’s head’s gonna roll! Jonah thought as he stepped up and pulled the door open.

The keys were in the ignition, a Darth Vader key-fob hanging below. He climbed in, slid the laptop across the front seats and slammed the door behind him.

Something hard struck the vehicle on the other side.

Jonah jumped and stared into Sergey’s face. The physicist’s eyes were wide and staring, his lips drawn back in a grimace. He must have dragged himself through the garage door after Jonah, lifting himself on the door handle and thereby opening it, and climbed onto the Hummer’s step. Now he held on to the passenger-side door handle and tugged. Spittle flecked the glass, Sergey’s hair shook and tangled, and behind him Jonah saw a shape darting through the open door. This second shape joined Sergey on the step, scratching at the glass with long, delicately painted fingernails. Jonah did not even look at her face before starting the Hummer.

The engine roared to life, startling Jonah but causing no let-up in his attackers’ efforts to open the door. They’re fast. And they can open doors, even if it’s only by accident. Remember that. He shoved the big vehicle into gear and then swung it around to the left, clipping one of the SUVs and tearing off its bumper. It was a long time since he’d driven anything. He stamped hard on the brakes, bracing himself against the steering wheel as the dead woman disappeared below the Hummer’s door frame. Sergey hung on, tugging, tugging, his teeth still bared. His actions spoke of a need beyond understanding, but his eyes were dead windows onto the void.

Jonah backed up slowly, using both wing mirrors to judge his approach, trying to ignore the raving thing shifting back and forth to his left. He felt the gentle knock of the plant-room door being shoved closed, and even though it was moving slowly the final impact of the heavy vehicle against the wall jarred him in his seat. He revved some more, lifting the clutch but sensing no more backward movement. It was done. Whatever had passed through that way was not coming back, and nothing else could enter.

The woman jumped up at the passenger-side window, scratching at the glass rather than tugging at the handle. Jonah looked down into his lap, twisting his hands and remembering the time almost fifty years before when Wendy had slipped the ring onto his finger. Then he turned in his seat, held the gun in both hands and shot the woman through the window. She flipped back out of sight and he scooted over the seats, looking down to make sure he’d fired straight.

She slammed into the window again, glass starring and then tumbling into the cab in a hundred diamond shards.

Jonah kicked himself back, aimed again, and shot her in the face. This time she didn’t get up. He edged over and looked. She lay on the concrete floor, arms flung back, dead eyes staring at the ceiling, a neat hole in her forehead.

‘Good shot,’ Jonah said, and his immediate future was suddenly, awfully clear. There was the laptop, through which he could scout his path through the facility, remote-locking doors to secure certain sections. There was the gun in his hand, spare loaded magazines in his pocket. And there were the zombies.

He might be here for days, or weeks. He might be here for ever.

Turning in his seat and telling himself the thing at the driver’s window was no longer Sergey Vasilyev, Jonah lifted the gun once more.