Berserk

Chapter Nine

Cole had not thought about his ex-wife for months. They had divorced soon after the berserker programme had been closed down, when Cole had buried Natasha and her family, and the others had escaped, and he had not seen her since. Sometimes he had to look at a photograph to remember what she looked like. He missed her sometimes, but it was always the idea of what she represented that he mourned the most: normality. A real life, with wife, kids maybe, and an existence other than the one he had led for the last ten years. His life was an obsession, and there was no room in an obsessive's life for anyone else. He had shut her out without even knowing it, and by the time he realised what was happening, she was gone.

He thought of her now, as Roberts aimed the stolen BMW straight at him, and it was because he could think of no one else who would give even a microscopic shit that he was dead.

Instinct probably saved his life. Unable to tear his eyes from Roberts's face—eyes wide, skin smeared with blood, hate painted red—Cole started to fall back, letting gravity lure him down toward the ditch he had only just climbed from. The car closed in, Cole pushed with his feet, and by the time the car's wing clipped his thighs he was already moving back into the hedge. The car gave him rough assistance.

His shout matched the berserker bitch's screech of glee in his head.

Cole's feet left the ground, and he tried to spin in the air to protect himself from the worst of the impact. All he succeeded in doing was presenting his face to the hedge instead of the back of his head, and he managed to bring up his hands as the spiky growth welcomed him in. The impact was relatively soft, but sharp. Branches pricked at his hands, cheeks, neck and chest, while his lower body landed awkwardly in the ditch, a protruding rock thumping his stomach and winding him. Dried leaves fluttered down around him, and something squealed and hurried away deeper into the undergrowth.

He waited until gravity had settled him down before slowly taking his hands away from his eyes. Lost them again, he thought, staring down into a pile of leaves and rabbit droppings. He remained still, sucking in a breath when he could, waiting for the pain of broken bones to kick in. The noise of the car striking him had been a dull thud instead of a crack, and he knew that pain was a fickle thing, sometimes shouting in with a roar, other times laying in wait until its target had begun to think themselves lucky. He had suffered enough pain—and dealt it, too—to know that he had a few more seconds yet until his fate became clear.

If he had broken a leg or arm, the chase was over. If he was merely bruised and winded … even then, Roberts would have a long headstart. Cole was not sure he could get away with stealing another car again so soon, especially looking as roughed up and bloodied as he did, Of course, he did not have to be so polite next time.

"Bitch!" he said, hoping to provoke some response. He imagined the berserker child chained to the headless bodies of her brother and parents, closed his eyes again and laughed at the image, projecting it as hard as he could lest she still hid in the underground of his mind. No secrets hatches opened, no darkened alleys spewed forth her rage, and Cole could only assume that she had left him alone for now.

What if I don't hear her again? he thought. He could try to follow, but without any clues he had no idea where they were heading. London? The coast? Farther north? Berserkers were excellent at hiding—the escaped family had shown that over the last decade—and without any leads at all, Cole would never find Natasha.

But he had shot Roberts, he was sure. Misty as his vision had been, head shrieking with Natasha's intrusion, he had seen the man stumble to the car after the gunshot, kept his eyes open long enough to see the first bloom of blood on the back of Roberts' jacket. And with a silver bullet from a .45 nestling in his back, he wouldn't get very far.

Cole's wife came to mind again. Tall, beautiful, never understanding, and he wondered where she was now.

Opening his eyes again he slowly pushed himself upright. The pain was merely terrible, nothing worse. He spat and watched his bubbly saliva and blood hanging on a small branch in the hedge. No bones ground together. There seemed to be nothing burst inside. He laughed. His head throbbed as if struck by a nuclear hangover, his face and neck bled from a dozen lacerations, but he had managed to survive being run over by the man whose wife he had killed earlier that morning.

He supposed he could consider himself lucky.

Brushing leaves and mud from his clothes, Cole looked around for the magazine. He had kept a grip on the .45, and it only took him a few seconds to locate the mag and click it home, loading one in the pipe. He felt happier like that, at least. If only he'd been able to put one of these silver bullets into that shriveled fucking bitch.

"Damn!" he shouted, finding another wound in the meantime. One of his teeth had somehow shattered, and parts of it were embedded in his upper lip and gum. He opened his mouth and let blood and speckles of tooth dribble out, leaning forward so that most of it missed his clothes. Don't want to ruin my look, he thought, snorting, trying not to laugh again because it hurt too much. He probed the broken tooth with his tongue, finding sharp points and cutting himself again.

"Fuck!" he spat, and a flock of starlings took flight from the field across the road. The cows stood there, still looking his way, calmed now after the gunshot. "Seen enough?" he asked. They stared, chewing their cud like nervous football managers. Damn, he was such a mess.

But not as much of a mess as Roberts. Dead wife, his life fucked, shot in the back, he surely couldn't go much further. However much the little bitch was urging him on, dick-stroking him in his mind, soothing and cajoling … he'd be bleeding. He'd be hurting. Someone like that couldn't go forever on adrenaline and fear alone. He was a normal guy, and he would grind to a halt. Cole had to make sure he was in the vicinity when that happened.

Climbing from the ditch, resting one hand on his thigh to push himself up, Cole realised that he had pissed himself.

That bitch!

A car came around the corner from the direction the BMW had taken. It was an old Mazda MX5, growling through a holed exhaust. Cole bet the owner thought that sounded cool.

He'd pissed himself. Probably when she'd screeched at him, invaded his mind, driven him down into his own darkness. It was her fault.

"You bitch!"

As the soft-top approached, Cole raised the gun. The car slowed, the driver wide-eyed and terrified, and in her face Cole saw the mockery of the berserk girl, the twinkle in her eyes every time she had called him Mister Wolf, the condescension in the gaze of someone so young.

He pulled the trigger.

He had meant to put a round through the canvas roof, but blood dripped in his eye as he fired. The car skidded to the right, just clipping the rear bumper of Roberts' abandoned car before nudging the field gate and coming to a halt. It rolled back slightly then sat there, engine still running.

There was no movement from inside.

"Shit," Cole whispered, the sibilance pricking his tongue on his ruined tooth. "Shit, shit, shit."

When he reached the driver's door and opened it and watched the woman's body tumble out onto the road, he tried to tell himself he would have had to kill her anyway. No way he could leave her here with a smashed up car and a body inside. She'd run, and find someone, and the police would have been onto him in hours, if not minutes. She was a brunette and looked as though she had been very attractive, just the sort of woman he sometimes tried to fuck when loneliness got the better of him. The bullet had popped neatly through the corner of the windshield and taken off part of her skull. Blood and brains dripped from the underside of the canvas roof and across the dashboard. Her skirt had ridden up to reveal skimpy black panties and pale, muscled thighs. She was a casualty, and it was people like her he was trying to protect.

Doing his best to reason away his second murder of the day, Cole dragged the woman to Robert's old car and piled her in with the other corpse.

He did not even bother flicking the skull splinter from the centre of the MX5's steering wheel before driving away.

Tom was numb. His body felt distant, and sitting in the driver's seat his head felt lower than his stomach. He could move his hands on the steering wheel and gear stick, his feet on the gas and brake and clutch, and he constantly twitched in the seat, subconsciously trying to find the pain that should be there. He had a feeling that the bullet was lodged somewhere close to his spine, but at least he was not paralysed.

He felt unattached.

And mentally his numbness had spread, a protection against what had happened that was as obvious as it was comforting. As he drove he dwelled on what the last twenty-four hours had brought to, and taken from, his life, and yet his mind only skimmed the surface. The digging, the body, the running, the shooting, the dying … all these flashed through his mind with the immediacy of fresh experience, and yet with the dimness of a faded dreams. He could smell the stink of the grave, but digging up those corpses seemed like someone else's memory. He could smell Jo and hear her yawn and see her brushing her hair, but she was someone from the past, an inconsequential part of his here and now.

He could feel Natasha inside, worming her way through his mind, exploring, calming, and he welcomed her in. Because she was protecting him. She was a drug that he needed so much, one that took away the pain and heartache and replaced it with one word, and one aim: Steven.

He drove slowly and sensibly, not wishing to attract attention. He could feel the tremendous damage his body had sustained—she could hide the pain and the immediate consequences, but not the knowledge—and some part of him worried about what the future would hold. Yet somehow he knew that he was safe, at least for now. Safe until they reached wherever it was they were going.

Steven, Natasha said from the backseat.

"Will he know me?"

I'm sure.

"Will I know him?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least she had not been waiting there for him.

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

"Where are we going?"

Tom glanced in the rearview mirror, raising himself so that he could see down into the backseat. Natasha was still where he had left her, a shriveled dead girl, but somewhere inside that carcass was the blood she had suckled from him. He wondered where it was and what good it had done her. She did not respond.

"I feel weak," Tom said. "It's almost lunchtime. I need to eat. I haven't eaten since …" Since before I dug you up, he wanted to say, but somehow it seemed impolite.

Natasha was still away.

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

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

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

He felt her return. She was wild, like a tornado falling from out of nowhere, touching down and setting the air reeling, the land vibrating, the whole world shaking with something that was either joy or rage. Perhaps both, Tom thought, because even then she was looking after him and there was no fear. Perhaps both, because for her I think perhaps they may be one and the same.

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

"I've found them," she said.