Berserk

Chapter Six

Tom had heard gunfire once before in the last twelve hours, but this was different. Out there on the Plain he had heard the blast and that was all; no bullet swishing by, no echo, no ricochet, no evidence of the shot other than the sound itself. Now it felt as though his whole world was exploding.

It took him a few seconds to associate what was happening around him with the gun blasts coming from behind. As he looked in the rearview mirror the back windshield shattered, misting and showering down in a thousand pieces. The mirror itself smashed, firing glass shards at his face, and a hole the size of his fist appeared in the front windshield. Something hammered on the roof once, twice, as if someone had taken to the car with a sledgehammer. The whole vehicle shook. The passenger seat rattled in its bracings, and a puff of stuffing erupted from its front face. It drifted lazily down onto the mat as the car stereo and heating panel exploded in a shower of plastic, glass and wires.

Jo had slumped down over his lap, hiding from the shooting. He could feel her shaking with fright, mumbling her terror, and he put his hand on her head to show her he was still there. She was wet with the sweat of fear.

The noise was incredible. The various sounds of the car being destroyed around him—Go back, go back!—the explosive gunshots, much louder than he could have imagined—Go back go back, now!—and his own screaming, so loud and yet so detached from him that for a few seconds he wondered whether it was Jo.

Go back, Daddy, back, back, he's hurting me!

Tom tried to lean forward in his seat to offer less of a target, but Jo was heavy in his lap, still jerking and gasping from the shock of what was happening. Her legs protruded from the open door, the most exposed part of her, and he was terrified that one of them would catch a bullet.

It hurts! Natasha screamed, and suddenly Tom realised what she had been saying, and why, and he knew that she was right. He turned the ignition key, slipped the car into reverse and slammed his foot on the gas.

The shooting paused as the car started to move, and Tom guessed that Mister Wolf was reloading. Good timing. He turned to look back over his shoulder just at the instant when the rear of his car struck the front grill of the Jeep, jerking him back in his seat. Jo pressed against his stomach and chest, and Tom gasped. He saw the man leap away to one side, roll on the gravel and stand again, fumbling in his pocket with one hand and holding the gun with the other. For a second their eyes met. The man frowned, cocked his head to one side, holding Tom's gaze. And then Tom saw the game of distraction Cole had been playing when he brought up the gun and aimed it at his head.

The bullet exploded the seat's headrest as Tom drove forward again. He braked quickly and reversed into the Jeep once more, careful to keep Jo's legs safely clear of the impact. He felt hot metal glancing across the back of his scalp, opening up fresh wounds.

Hurts, hurts!

The car struck again and he kept his foot on the accelerator, wheels spinning in the gravel and sending small stones flying, the stench of the burning clutch filling his nostrils, the Jeep moving back now because the man had somehow, miraculously, left the parking brake off.

The gun exploded again and again, punching holes in the car. Jo shook but Tom did not look down, could not, not now that there was the slightest chance they might escape. He could smell something other than the clutch, something that must have been the sweet tang of a gun growing hot.

"Come on!" Tom screamed, and the Jeep rolled from the driveway and back out into the road.

Jo jerked on his lap and then lay still. Tom looked down and saw a blossom of blood on her back, spreading slowly outward from a ragged hole in her dressing gown. "Jo?"

Footsteps, running on gravel.

He kept his foot on the gas.

Another engine roared and a tractor ploughed into the side of the Jeep, shoving it several feet along the road with a screech of tires and the howl of breaking metal.

"Jo?"

There was room now to reverse between the Jeep and tractor—tangled together as if they had rolled off the production line as one—and the gatepost, and as Tom saw Mister Wolf standing directly in front of the car, leveling his pistol, he spun the wheel and ducked down over Jo. Two bullets thudded into his seat. He felt the warmth of Jo's blood on his cheek where he was pressed against her back. Her legs and the open door snagged the gatepost and then flipped free again. The car hit something, scraped by, and Tom sat up in his seat, blood and tears dropping from his chin and cheeks as he twisted around and reversed quickly up the road.

He was sobbing, blinking fast, trying so hard to keep his eyes clear so that he did not bury them in the hedge. More gunshots followed him, but he did not care now, would not care if one of them struck him in the neck. At least then he could hold Jo one more time before he bled to death.

There's still Steven, Natasha said.

"Shut up!" Tom shouted. He aimed the car around a bend and steered its smashed rear into a gateway, knocking the gate from its iron moorings. It fell slowly, as if wanting to remain standing. He saw dawn blurring the night in the east. Jo's blood ran warm on his legs. He twisted the wheel and drove forward, away from the cottage and the Jeep and Mister Wolf, who wanted so much to kill him.

Me, Natasha said, it's me he wants to hurt, Daddy, not—

"I said shut up!" Tom screamed, and two wheels churned briefly along the grass verge before he regained control.

Jo was still and silent, and he could see now that the bullet in her back had not killed her. How could it, when there was so little left of the back of her head from those first few shots?

He touched her there, hoping that somehow, as he drove, he could share in his dead wife's final thoughts.

Tom was aware that he was dreaming, but that awareness gave him no control. He had slipped from a chaos of nightmarish images into this almost filmic episode, and though he could feel the sudden outside influence that drove this—it was more like a memory than a dream, yet one that someone else was remembering for him—he could do nothing to steer or influence its course. He sensed that it would be bad. He tried to close his ears, his eyes, but he was asleep, and dreams paid little heed to external senses.

Besides, it was fascinating, like a car crash or a train wreck. He had to watch. And it distracted his mind from … from … something awful that he could no longer quite remember.

"It's good to forget, for a while," said the man in the boat. He looked straight at Tom and smiled, a pained expression that showed far too many teeth. "But you'll always remember again in the end. Watch now. Remember."

Asleep, his dreams hijacked by Natasha's memories, Tom watched.

The man in the boat was not alone. There were four of them, two adults—a man and a woman—a young boy, and Natasha, through whom Tom was viewing this memory. They were all dressed in similar grey-green clothes, almost militaristic. The adults sat stony-faced, but the boy seemed excited, forever standing and being told to sit again, babbling and being hissed at to remain silent. He was panting like a puppy at play. The adults seemed to speak to him without moving, and Tom heard whispers in his mind.

"Almost there," the man said out loud. His legs were jerking up and down, feet tapping the deck beneath them. His hands clasped at his thighs. He turned to the woman next to him, his wife, and smiled, and kissed the side of her face. "Remember, it's not us doing this," he whispered. She turned away as if she could not face him, and looked across at her son. He did not echo his parents' apparent sadness. The boy was standing again, keening as he jumped up and down on the spot, hands twisting the legs of his plain trousers into tight knots. His eyes were changing colour.

A voice came from elsewhere, dull and distant and lifeless. You leave no one, it said, and a shape stood above them, blurred against the skyline.

Try as he might Tom could see nothing outside the cockpit where the family sat. They were totally enclosed. The only reason he knew this was a boat was because Natasha's memory told him so, and the only way he could be certain of the movement was by the shadows of the radar mast gliding up and down across the cockpit as the boat dipped and peaked the waves. The little boy was running back and forth now, four steps left, four steps right, and the movement must have been blurring him in memory because his arms seemed to be growing in length, his legs thickening. It was as if Natasha's memory in Tom's mind was slipping, and its images were slurring.

"Peter … ," the woman said, but she trailed off when the man put his hand on her arm. The boy's eyes shone as if they caught the sun.

One minute, the distant voice said, and the shadow of the speaker rose and fell across the woman's face as the boat traversed another wave. She turned and looked directly at Tom—at Natasha—and smiled a smile he remembered his mother giving him so many years ago. It spoke of unquestioning love, and a motherly instinct to protect.

The man leaned to the side and spoke to the woman. She shook her head, both angry and scared, and he held her closer and spoke again, keeping her still so that she could hear everything he had to say.

Then he let go, pulled away and began to blur.

Tom tried to draw back. Something had changed here, a sudden jump in the reality of things that he should not be seeing. And yet he was prisoner to this dream, a passive viewer of Natasha's memory being played out in his own head, and he was trapped here watching and hearing, tasting and smelling the truth of history. He tried to close his eyes but was already asleep. He would have turned away had he any control. Instead, he saw the family go berserk.

The voice rose into a shout, its words indistinguishable from the snarls and screams coming from the cockpit. The young boy Peter was on his hands and knees now, fingers and toes clawing at the timber decking and leaving deep scores in its surface. The slashed wood shone bright in the sun. He shook his head, and spittle and blood flecked the deck around him. The adults seemed to speed up, their movement jerky, as if this were a movie with every third frame removed.

The view flipped onto its side and began to vibrate as Natasha fell to the deck.

I don't want to see this, Tom thought, and Natasha said, No, but you need to. And it's only just begun.

Ten seconds, the vague voice said, and Natasha looked up at the shadow looming above them. Its stance showed fear. Its voice held awe. Its hands were weighed down by a blocky, heavy object that could have only been a gun.

What are you showing me? Tom thought, but there was no reply, because this was pure memory once more. As the boat thudded onto a beach and a high door in its bow fell open onto wet sand, he became a part of it.

The rest of the dream, the memory, the nightmare came to him in brief glimpses, each of them more confusing than the last, and more terrifying. To begin with Tom could make little sense of the individual images, but the memories viewed through Natasha's eyes combined to evoke a sense of impending action, and a distinct emotion: dread.

Natasha ran onto the beach behind the adults and her younger brother Peter. The sands were deserted, a beautiful golden spread marred here and there with blots of driftwood or seaweed drying in the merciless sun. At the head of the beach where the dunes began, maybe fifty yards away, sat a huge house made of glass and steel, an architect's wet dream sparkling with daylight and holding mystery behind its shaded windows. There were several cars parked beside the house, none of them worth less than fifty grand.

Several people stood around the house and hunkered down on its balconies. They flashed. It was only as Peter flipped onto his back and writhed like a landed fish that Tom realised the flashes were gunshots.

A blur here, like film forwarded sixteen-speed, the images distinguished only by their redness.

They were in the house. It was light, airy, ultramodern, all steel and slate and glass. The father was holding a woman against a wall and emptying her chest cavity onto his feet. Heart, lungs, shattered ribs slopped out, their impact smothered by somebody else screaming. He bit at her lower jaw and tore it away, and as he turned Tom saw just how much he had changed.

Blur.

Natasha was running along a corridor. It turned left and right, doors flashing by on either side, but it was blood that laid the trail she was following. Another turn and she came across the crawling man, mangled leg dragging behind him like a gutted fish. The man collapsed on the floor and turned, attempted to raise a gun, but one slash of Natasha's claws ripped his hand apart, sending the weapon spinning against the wall in a rain of blood. He screamed, Natasha leaned in, and there was a howl that can only have come from an animal as the memory turned red.

Blur.

Peter was in the kitchen, thrashing at a body on the floor. He leaped onto it, screeched, flaying with his hands and feet, jumped off, landed on the work surface, turned to look at Natasha, opened his mouth wide—his mouth, filled with too many teeth and meat and a scream that was not possible—and jumped onto the body again. His head shook and tugged and the body slid across the tiled floor, leaving bits of itself behind. It was barely recognisible as human, other than its clump of blonde hair matted with brain. Peter jumped off again and came at Natasha, but there was no panic, no fear, only a primal sense of sibling love.

Blur.

Some people—the survivors—had locked themselves into the basement. Natasha's parents were down at the door trying to tear through, but it was steel-lined, and their claws and teeth screamed on the metal leaving only shiny slashes behind. Peter was a few feet away trying to dig through the wall. Natasha loped down the steps to join her family, leaving bloody footprints behind.

Blur.

The door stood open now, and there was shooting, and Natasha's mother was dancing against the wall as a man emptied an Uzi at her. None of the bullets seemed to be hitting her; chunks of plaster blew out, shards of concrete block rattled to the floor, and when the magazine was empty she stopped dancing. And growled.

The man cried out as Natasha's mother ripped into him, and then through him.

Screams came from the basement. Natasha plunged into the darkness to join in the final slaughter.

Tom screamed himself awake. Sunlight blazed in through the shattered windshield, and for a moment he thought he was on that beach, perhaps facing the house of steel and glass and waiting to see what would emerge from it. He screamed again, his memory of the nightmares rich and fresh—he could taste the blood, smell the guns—and then someone whispered to him, calming, soothing.

Don't worry, don't cry, it's all memory.

"It's not mine!" he said, turning in his seat to see Jo lying in the back. When he had finally stopped he managed to push her from his lap out onto the road, then haul her up into the backseat. He had scraped her legs doing so, and there were speckles of black tarmac in the scratches. He had tried to pick them out, crying the entire time.

Jo stared at him through half-closed eyes. The blur of his own tears seemed to make her cry.

There's more, the voice said, more to see.

"I don't want to."

You must, Daddy, if you want to know me.

"I don't! Since I found you everything's … just …" He slumped back in his seat, wretched, hopeless. Hospital, he thought, police, but somehow both seemed futile.

It's not my fault, Natasha said, her voice breaking in his mind. He felt her in there, her awareness melded with his own, and his tears were for both of them.

Tom climbed from the car and took a look at it for the first time. He had driven for an hour after Mister Wolf's attack, lost in a blind panic, treading the waters of grief as Jo cooled across his lap. How he had not crashed he had no idea, because he could recall little of the journey. He must have passed through other villages, and yet he could remember nothing of observers reacting to the ruined car and the dead woman in his lap. Perhaps because he did not see them meant that they could not see him.

The car was a wreck. It was a wonder that it had driven anywhere, such was the violence that had been wrought upon it. The sides and rear were buckled and dented, all the windows smashed, and more than a dozen bullet holes perforated the chassis. The driver's door and the rear door were speckled with Jo's blood. It was not obvious, there were no great smears or splashes, but Tom knew what he saw. His dead wife's blood. On their car. On the car he had driven for an hour, with Jo dead across his lap.

He fell to his knees and buried his face in his hands, Natasha's bad dreams fading to be replaced by this, his own living nightmare.

I'm hurt, Daddy, Natasha said, and Tom glanced up at the boot of the car. It was crushed and buckled from where he had repeatedly struck the front of the Jeep.

"Good," he whispered, and he meant it. "And I'm not your daddy. That man … that thing is your father, not me." He tried not to focus on any one image from the dream.

You rescued me, she said, sobbing. You found me. You birthed me from the earth, and you're as close to a daddy as I have. I'm only a little girl. I'm only—

"You're that thing from my dream!" He shook his head, as if doing so would rearrange and resolve the images that had invaded his troubled sleep. "What are you? What were you doing?"

There's more for you to see before I can explain, Natasha said, voice hitching as her sobs dried up. But now Mister Wolf will be coming. He hasn't finished. He wants me dead, and you as well because you're helping me. He wants every' one dead. He was human once, but he lost all that, and now he's just a bad man.

"Human?" Tom said, tipping his head back and staring at the brightening sky. He was not entirely sure what that meant.

We have to move on, the voice said, quiet and considered. We have to go, because of Steven.

"Where is he?"

The blunt question must have surprised Natasha because she fell silent for a few seconds. Tom could still feel her in his head, but the sensation stilled like a held breath.

I can't tell you, she said.

"Why?"

I can't. I'm not sure, not really, but the closer we get the more certain I'll be. And it's dangerous there. Very dangerous. If he's still with them, they'll be angry, and strong, and well fed.

"Who are you on about? I don't understand. I don't understand any of this."

They kept us hungry, Natasha said. And then she drew back into herself and left Tom alone, alone with his dead wife and that already familiar sense of abandonment.

Cole had never enjoyed killing. Those few occasions he had killed—his old friend Nathan King recently, and the times before—had been out of necessity. King had died because he knew too much and he had started blabbing, but really it was all down to the berserkers. Cole had promised himself ten years ago that he would have to be as heartless, ruthless and vicious as them to catch the ones that had escaped or, ironically, to prevent them from being noticed. He knew that he could never truly match them, but he had tried. Through the doubt and the self-hate, he had tried.

After killing Sandra Francis six years before, Cole had cried. Curled up in bed the tears came, and he stood immediately, went to the kitchen and cut himself across the back of his left hand. The pain gave the tears a different reason, and the blood brought back memories that had given him some form of justification. If the scientist had talked, helped him, revealed everything she knew about what made Natasha special, perhaps he would have let her live.

Now, standing over the kneeling farmer and pressing the hot barrel, of the .45 to the back of the man's skull, Cole would have cheerfully seen the fool's brains splatter his shoes.

"Fucking idiot!" he shouted. "It's early, you should be in bed, not driving around the fucking lanes wrecking cars. Idiot. Idiot!"

"I … I … ," was all the farmer could say. He was shivering, sweating and crying. Instead of inspiring pity this only increased Cole's anger.

"Stop stammering and tell me what you're going to do about it. Tell me!"

The farmer had seen most of what happened. The shooting, Roberts ramming the Jeep into the road, the blood on the woman's legs where she lay across Roberts' lap. Cole knew that he had hit her several times, and that was bad, that was wrong. But right now he was too enraged to feel sorrow or regret. Now, his blood was up.

I'm berserk! he thought, and although the idea was horrific, it was strangely satisfying as well. "I'm almost as mad as them!" he said. Cole's finger tightened on the trigger and he pressed the barrel harder into the farmer's neck. The old man swayed on his knees and then tumbled onto his side, crying and raising his hands to ward off the bullet. He could have been anyone's father, probably had grandchildren, showed them around the farm, let them feed the chickens and play in the hay barn …

"I … I …," he continued to say.

Cole knelt next to him and pressed the gun up under his chin. "I said, what are you going to do about it?"

The farmer began to shake his head. The pistol barrel 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 is 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 gun barrel, 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 shriveled 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 for 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 down, and Cole urged him to walk on ahead. He was no threat—the 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 while he was thinking 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, Misterwolf …

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 way 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 would not help but touch him.

I wonder if Nathan's been found yet, he wondered, and a flock of rooks passed across the sunrise. Cole closed his eyes briefly and imagined he were 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 the 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 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 with distance into 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 shadows rather than voice, and 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 rundown 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 noticed 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 must 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. 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 high 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 leaped 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. The gunshot deafened him, and he hardly 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 on the way.

The farmer and his son were standing together by the BMW, staring intently 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 guess 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 get 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? Comprendez?"

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.