Coldbrook

4

This time the dream staggers rather than flows, shifting from one scene to the next like a damaged film missing random frames. And Charlotte stalks the suburbs of Vic’s guilt.

This is my dream I can change it I can make it better.

Charlotte chuckles. The dream flickers, and then they are outside the strange place that always feels like home. Vic tries to run, but he is on his hands and knees, his fingertips melting into the hot road. Charlotte knocks on the door and Lucy answers.

No, he tries to say. Charlotte turns to laugh at him or show him her dead eyes, but it is not Charlotte at all — it is Holly standing there dead before him and mocking his remorse.

‘Holly!’ he shouts, shocked that he had found his voice at last. ‘No, Holly!’

Her mouth falls open and she-

— Vic snapped awake, Olivia crying beside him, and Marc looked back at him from the cockpit.

Shit shit shit, he thought, blinking quickly but not really wanting to close his eyes again. He was afraid that she would still be waiting there behind them.

He looked over Olivia’s head at Lucy, and his wife was just turning away. ‘Lucy?’ She didn’t hear him, and though he took a deep breath he did not speak again. He remembered the end of his dream and what he’d been shouting, and wondered whether he had scared them all with his yelling out of Holly’s name.

Even though the light was weak and the helicopter shook, he could not mistake Lucy’s expression when she’d turned away from him — the heavy eyes, her sadly etched mouth. So Vic hugged his daughter, accepting her innocent, uncomplicated love and wishing his could be like that.

He looked from the window and saw a landscape fired by a red-palette dawn. Red sky in the morning. . he thought, and Olivia snuggled into his embrace. He remembered Holly, not as she had been in his dream but as he had known her at the height of their affair. Never demanding, never intrusive, their few tentative conversations about being together properly had always been initiated by him, and she had never forced the issue. In her silence he had read the truth — she had wanted it more than anything.

But he’d never truly considered leaving Lucy, and when she had fallen pregnant his and Holly’s relationship had stopped without either of them needing to say anything. He could remember each intimate detail, every sigh and position from the last time they had made love, but he had no idea whether either of them had known it was going to be the last time.

Gary was flying quite low, and as the minutes ticked by it became easier to see the truth of what had happened below them. It also became harder for Vic to reach out to Lucy and try to explain. Her expression as she’d turned away should have prompted him to reassure her, but it had scared him too much. So he looked at the ruin outside and wondered how it could have spread so quickly.

The rolling landscape was speckled with individual homes and groups of buildings, and every few minutes they passed over larger townships. Fires were burning, many small, a few large, probing up at them with smoky fingers — accidents, people protecting their homes, authorities burning bodies on pyres that got out of hand. Some of the smoke was grey and light, some heavy and dark and thick, and he had no desire to understand the difference.

‘Daddy?’ Olivia shouted against the helicopter’s roar. She was fidgeting against him again. Vic gazed down at her. Lucy was looking at him now and something in her expression seemed to have relaxed.

‘I need to pee,’ Olivia said.

Vic nodded, and smiled at Lucy. She didn’t smile back, but the mistrust had gone from her eyes. Perhaps she’d thought it away, or maybe she’d simply discarded it because of everything else that was happening.

Vic slipped on his headset and asked, ‘Gary, where are we?’

‘Baltimore’s close. Airport in about thirty minutes.’

‘Sorry, I slept,’ Vic said.

‘Need the rest,’ Marc said, turning and looking over the facing seats at the family. ‘Don’t worry, honey, you can pee soon.’ He smiled at Olivia and touched his microphone. Lucy got the message and took off Olivia’s headset.

‘What?’ Lucy asked.

‘Everything’s buggered,’ Gary said. ‘Air-traffic control’s working so hard to avoid collisions that, they don’t have time to answer anything incoming. And since we’re approaching a bloody massive airport I’d like to know what’s happening there.’

‘I guess we can just assume it’s batshit,’ Marc said. ‘I don’t think Baltimore airport’s going to be fucking around with passport control right now.’

‘I’m feeding radio just to my headset,' Gary said. ‘I haven’t even told you this. .’ He reached across and held Marc’s hand, clasping it tightly. ‘Two passenger jets collided above Washington. Three more above Chicago airport, and I’ve heard of at least four others going down. And there are rumours about military jets shooting down anything that ventures out over the Atlantic.’

‘Our air force is shooting down passenger planes?’ Lucy asked, shocked.

‘I didn’t say our military,’ Gary said. They fell quiet at that, and Vic reached across to touch Lucy. For a moment she seemed to stiffen, but then she squeezed his hand.

Vic soon grew tired of looking down and seeing what was becoming of the world, so he looked to the skies instead. That was not much better. In the space of the half-hour it took them to reach Baltimore airport, they saw several smaller helicopters, three fast jets, and at least a dozen military helicopters, some of them Chinooks with vehicles slung beneath them. Their bellies were probably full of soldiers. Most of the army’s choppers seemed to be flying north.

‘Attack or retreat?’ Marc said, and no one risked a response.

Olivia’s desperation grew intense, and in the end Lucy fluffed up a blanket and sheltered her while she peed into that. The smell filled the cabin. No one commented, and Vic felt an intense gratitude to the other two men for that.

‘Airport’s close,’ Gary said, his voice quieter than before. ‘Better come see.’

Vic and Lucy crouched forward, and Olivia went with them, holding their hands. She felt cold to Vic, and he tried to remember the last time they’d eaten or had a drink.

The sun was a pale smudge on the horizon directly ahead of them, veiled by the massive spread of smoke that stained the eastern sky. It reached high into the air, and thousands of feet above them the spreading cloud was smeared with a dirty sunrise. At the base of the column of smoke was the glow of distant flames.

‘That’s the airport?’ Lucy asked.

‘Yeah,’ Gary said. He flicked a switch and spoke into his microphone, the words inaudible to the others. Vic tried to read his expression from the side but it was inscrutable.

‘She must be dead,’ Lucy said.

‘No,’ Marc said.

‘How can you know?’

‘I can’t,’ he said, never once looking away from the smoke and flames. ‘But if there’s even a remote chance that she isn’t, then it’s our duty to search for her.’

‘And put my daughter at risk?’ Lucy asked. Vic felt a swell of pride.

‘Absolutely.’ Marc turned around and smiled at the little girl who was unaware of their conversation. ‘Absolutely. This woman could save a billion other kids.’

Lucy snorted and looked away. He’s right, Vic thought. It’s gone so far so quickly, and if she is dead then maybe everyone is dead.

‘Honey, we’ve come all this way,’ Vic said. He meant from Cincinnati, but when Lucy smiled he thought back to the very first time he had set eyes on her, when he had fallen for that smile.

‘I’ll go in upwind, from the south,’ Gary said. ‘But it’s still going to be bad. I’ll do a flyover. You all need to be looking, because I’m going in low and all my attention will be focused on not hitting anything.’

‘What are we looking for?’ Lucy asked.

‘Anyone alive.’ Marc had produced a gun from his bag and placed it casually across his lap. Vic saw Olivia’s eyes straying that way. They went wide.

‘Where’s your gun, Daddy?’ she asked.

He thought of every way he could answer that: how to protect her, to shield her. But he realised that he was still thinking safe thoughts, from a time when safety was a very different thing. Baseball matches were cancelled, Oprah was not on air, and the schools were closed today.

‘It’s here,’ he said, pulling the M1911 from his belt. ‘And Daddy uses this to make sure that no one ever, ever hurts you.’

Olivia nodded, her eyes still wide.

Gary flew them in at about five hundred feet, curving across the southern part of the airport and keeping away from the blazing terminal buildings. Small explosions were erupting in there all the time, terrible flowers of flame and smoke, and the eastern concourse was also ablaze. Several large airliners burned fiercely in islands of fire and wrecked fuselages. Vic hoped they had been empty when they’d exploded but realised that it probably didn’t matter.

‘If they were trapped in a plane they might have left by now,’ Vic said. ‘Who’d want to stay here?’

‘Someone who had to,’ Lucy said. ‘Gary, swing around again, take a wider sweep further from the fires.’

Vic raised his eyebrows at Lucy, surprised at her sudden involvement. She offered him a nervous smile, resting a protective hand on Olivia’s leg.

‘Further from fire sounds good to me.’ The helicopter banked and curved around to the south.

‘What did you see?’ Vic asked. But Lucy was frowning, shaking her head.

‘Something that didn’t register,’ she said. ‘But it’s bugging me.’

The stench of smoke already filled the cabin. Olivia coughed. She seemed more scared than before, and Vic guessed it was to do with the sudden flurry of activity. Until now the little girl had been sitting with her parents on a long helicopter ride, and maybe it had even been exciting for her. Now there was smoke and fire, and a burning airport.

‘It’s okay,’ Vic said, pressing his mouth to her ear.

‘There,’ Lucy said. ‘That plane down there, close to the grass verge. Furthest one. See it? Do you see?’

‘I see it,’ Marc said. ‘But what am I looking at’

‘Not the plane,’ Vic said, understanding at once. ‘Gary, take us lower.’

‘Oh, shit,’ the pilot whispered. He had seen it as well.

They hovered two hundred feet away, maybe a hundred feet off the ground, and countless eyes turned their way.

‘Must be a thousand of them down there,’ Vic said.

They surrounded the aircraft, most of them motionless, a few sitting or lying down because of the damage done to their bodies. They all turned their heads to watch the helicopter, and some were now walking their way, a few of them running.

Though they were well off the ground Gary took them a little higher.

Vic saw a couple of battered police vehicles and noticed that one of those running at them was a big man wearing a torn uniform. His face had gone, replaced with a dark mask of dried blood.

Olivia had pressed her face against Vic’s side and he held one hand to the side of her head, just in case she peeked. He wished someone would screen his eyes from the view as well.

‘They’re just waiting there,’ Lucy said.

‘Maybe they’ve got nowhere else to go,’ Gary suggested.

‘Or maybe they know that someone’s alive in there,’ Marc said. ‘Look!’ He pointed, and Vic saw the faint flicker of a weak light being turned on and off inside the plane. ‘Gary, any way we can signal them?’ Marc asked, and Gary swung the helicopter left and right three times.

‘Okay,’ Lucy said. ‘So.’

Many of the shapes were below them now, looking but not reaching up, aware in some animal way that they could not touch the helicopter yet knowing that there were people inside. Vic could see their faces, devoid of emotion. He could see the dried blood. They were dead but walking, and they wanted to bite his family.

‘Fuck them,’ Vic said, his voice shaking. ‘Fuck them all. We put down and shoot them, and then get to the plane and-’

‘How many bullets do you think we have?’ Marc asked him, a note of sarcasm in his voice.

Gary lifted them a little higher and swung in a circle around the besieged jet. The zombies watched.

‘What if we land a few hundred feet away?’ Vic said. ‘Sit there, wait for them to come at us. Then take off and land back here.’

‘No,’ Marc said. ‘We can’t assume that whoever’s inside will know what we’re doing. We don’t know if they’re hurt. And if it is the girl we’re after and she has been bitten. .’

‘Are we just going to let her on board?’ Lucy asked. ‘Without checking?’

‘No,’ Vic said. ‘No way.’ He stared at Marc when the tall man looked back. He squeezed Olivia tighter.

‘Fine,’ Marc said. ‘Gary, got a rope or a ladder in this thing?’

‘Yeah.’

Vic swallowed hard. What the fuck? But something had to be done. His legs ached from inaction, and his heart throbbed with the need to make amends. To Lucy and his daughter, for deeds unspoken; and to everyone else. I’d be dead if I’d stayed in Coldbrook, he thought, but ‘if’ was no defence.

‘Where is it?’ Vic asked.

Vic sat in the helicopter’s open doorway, gripping the door’s handle with both hands while Gary manoeuvred closer and lower. Beneath them the hordes were stirring, some of them now even reaching up, unlike before, as though to snatch the helicopter from the sky.

‘This is as low as I go,’ Gary said in his earpiece, and Vic took a look down. They were hovering above the aircraft’s wide wing, and either side of the wing he could see what awaited him if he slipped and fell. The zombies’ hands, clawed and ready to rip and tear. Their open mouths, showing expression only with the bloodied teeth they contained. Marc was strapped safely into the seat beside him, ready to lean from the doorway and give him covering fire with his rifle. Shoot me if I fall, he wanted to say, but Lucy still had her headpiece on, sitting behind him in the cabin and shielding Olivia from the roaring, smoke-laden wind.

‘Won’t be long,’ he said instead, and he and Marc locked stares. Marc nodded once. Maybe he already knew what his responsibilities were.

Vic kicked the coiled rope ladder from the door. It unfurled and landed on the wing, much of it still rolled up. He looked at the aircraft again, and at the faces watching from the window of the emergency door leading onto the wing. They looked as nervous as he felt.

He turned around onto his belly and eased himself out of the door. As his feet found the ladder Lucy’s words surprised him, soft as a breeze in this storm.

‘Come back to us.’

‘Put the coffee on,’ he said, but he could not look at his wife and child again. Not until he was back.

Vic started to climb down. When he was a kid he’d had a tree house in his grandparents’ garden. Something straight out of Huckleberry Finn, his grandfather had claimed, but Vic had always seen himself as Calvin and the tall childhood friend he hadn’t thought about in thirty years had been Hobbes. ‘If you could see me now,’ he said, and he wondered what had become of Hobbes and where he was. As kids, they had both negotiated the rope ladder up to the tree house with ease, and his grandfather had said that such a thing was like riding a bike. All about balance and confidence. But they hadn’t had a buffeting wind to contend with, nor a motor roaring so loud that the noise felt like a physical impact. And if they’d fallen there’d only have been cuts and bruises, and fallen leaves clinging to their clothes.

Hand over hand, ever cautious, Vic descended from rung to rung. He glanced down when he thought he was almost there, to find he was only halfway down.

‘Bloody cold out here,’ he said, and he heard Marc laugh in his ear. But no one else replied. This action was all down to Vic, and keeping his concentration tightly focused was paramount. There could be no distractions.

A gust of wind set him swaying. He clung on tight and closed his eyes, stomach lurching as he felt himself swinging through the air. He looked up again and saw Marc looking into the cabin, then back down at him.

‘Sorry!’ Gary said. ‘The fire’s whipping up a windstorm. Don’t want to hurry you, but-’

‘Yeah,’ Vic said. As he started down again Marc’s voice crackled through his earpiece.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck. Vic, you got trouble.’

‘What?’

‘Down. Look down.’

Vic looked down. The drifting helicopter had dragged the rest of the ladder from the wing, and now it was unfurled all the way to the ground. And the things were already trying to climb up it.

The first one was the tall cop, his face bitten off, teeth bared because he had no lips.

‘Hold on!’ Gary said. ‘I’ll swing around and-’

‘No time,’ Vic said softly. ‘Can’t risk them catching me. They’re not worried about dying.’

‘Oh, Vic,’ Lucy said, but he did not reply, did not even want to give voice to his despair. He had seconds, and every one of them had to count.

He glanced up. Marc leaned out of the doorway, aiming the rifle down.

‘Vic, I can’t see past you.’

‘I’ve got it. Gary, hold that fucker still!’ He turned sideways to the ladder and threaded his left arm and right leg through, bending his elbow and grabbing a rung above him, pulling his knee around the rope, and tugging the gun from his belt with his right hand. It slipped in his palm, and he cried out as it almost fell from his grasp.

‘Fuck!’

The faceless cop was a dozen rungs below him and scrambling up the rope ladder, hands and feet missing every third or fourth rung, one eye gone, the other bloodshot and burst, and Vic had no idea how he could see or sense anything.

He clasped the gun tightly, aimed down at the cop’s bloody face and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened.

‘Safety!’ Marc screamed in his ear, and Vic flipped the safety lever with his thumb and pulled the trigger again.

The cop’s head flipped back and bits of it spattered down across the white wing below them. He held on for a few seconds, a woman in a bright floral dress tearing at his feet and trousers in her frenzy to get past him. Then he fell back into empty air and took her with him. They both struck the leading edge of the massive wing and spun into the manic crowd below.

The rest of the ladder was clear.

‘Fucking hell,’ Marc said. ‘Lucy, he’s fine. Fucking hell.’

‘Couldn’t put it better myself,’ Vic said. He hung there for a moment, not daring to move in case his thundering heart shook him from the ladder. He didn’t deserve to fall after marksmanship like that.

Thirty seconds later he was on the wing, pulling the ladder back up before more of the zombies could climb it. And twenty feet away the emergency door in the fuselage swung open. He crouched down and aimed the gun, and the man who emerged held up his hands, displaying his own gun tucked into his belt.

‘You the sky marshal?’ Vic shouted.

‘Yeah. But who the hell are you?’

‘Wyatt Earp.’ The woman who emerged after the man grinned, glancing up at the hovering helicopter. ‘Wyatt Earp, that’s who he is. Come to restore justice to Zombie Town.’

‘Gotta admit, that was some shooting,’ the sky marshal said.

Vic started shaking. He sat down heavily on the wing before enjoying the contact as the man and woman shook his hand and helped him up. He told them to go first because he had to pull himself together before climbing again. The two men watched the woman’s slow climb, and Vic was aware enough to notice the bandage on her arm.

‘She was really bitten?’ he asked.

‘She was,’ the other man said. ‘Seconds away from getting her brains bashed out by the passengers.’

‘And what happened to them?’

The man heard him but didn’t answer. Neither did his expression change. He watched as the woman reached the top of the ladder and was helped into the helicopter before he spoke again.

‘That’s some girl,’ he said. ‘That really is some girl.’

We’ll see, Vic thought. Then he pointed at the ladder, pleased that his hand was no longer shaking. ‘After you.’