Berserk

Chapter Three

"What did you tell him?"

"I've already told!"

"I don't believe you."

"Then why bother asking me again, Cole?"

Cole stared down at Nathan King, tied into a chair with his own Tom-up clothes. The idiot was still trying to play with him, string him along, and Cole did not have time for that. Not now. His purpose, stalled for a decade, was moving again. The last thing he wanted to be doing was beating information out of his friend, this useless ex-grunt. "You're wasting my time," he said.

King shook his head. "For God's sake, I told—" Cole's fist connected with his chin and flipped his head back and to the side.

King gasped, spat blood, and Cole stepped back so that he did not get splashed. "Think about what you're going to say to me next," Cole said. "Daz told me you went back to the pub to meet Tom Roberts. There's only one reason you'd have done that, and we both know what that is. So, for the last time … what did you tell him?" He massaged his knuckles and turned away.

King's flat was small and untidy. There were grubby hand marks around the light switches, cobwebs in the ceiling corners, and used fast food containers piled up beside the only armchair. Food was trodden into the carpet. Beer cans were crushed and thrown into one corner of the kitchen. He lived like an animal. Cole did not want to be here—he felt dirtied just breathing the air—but he needed more from King. More than just, "I told him it wasn't like the army said." In one way he was glad that King had spilled the beans at last, but he needed to know which beans and what flavour. It would do Cole no good at all storming blindly into the countryside in search of phantoms he had lost a decade ago.

"Cole …" King spat several times and a tooth tumbled from his mouth. "Fuck's sake, Cole, you knocked my tooth out! I don't see you for ten years, then you turn up and knock out my tooth? What's the point of that, eh?" He stared at the bloodied molar stuck on his thigh, shaking his head, and his whole body shivered.

Cole looked at the pathetic man strapped into the timber kitchen chair, and shame bled into his anger. "Sorry, Nath," he said. "Really mate, I'm sorry. But more than being sorry, I need to know exactly what you said to the old guy about his son. Exactly. Everything. He's left his house with his wife and I need to know why he's suddenly gone. I can guess where he's gone, that's no problem, because it's ten years ago this weekend. But Nath … I don't want to go down there blind and deaf, mate. I need to know how much you told him. I need to know everything he knows. And I'll hit you again if you continue to piss me around."

King hung his head, blood dripping into his lap. Tears followed, and the big man sucked back a sob. "Cole, it just came out," he said. "Steven Roberts was his son—remember Steve?—and the guy looked so sad, you know? So desperate for the truth. I thought it might help him to know. And I told him where to look."

"The grave?" Cole went cold. We left her chained up, wanting her to suffer, wanting her to be alive down there forever … "I'll meet you again" she said… "Holy shit, Nath."

"I didn't tell him anything about—"

Cole hit him again, and there was real feeling behind this one. "You twat! Why the hell would you do something like that. Does he know? Does he know about her?"

King shook his head, blood and saliva swaying from his chin. "Of course not," he said, tired and sad and scared. "You think I'd have told him about them? I don't even know all about them, or understand what I do know. And I don't want to think about them but I do, every night, I dream and scream and sometimes I think sharing the fear will reduce it, you know? But if you think I told him all that, you're mad."

"I am mad," Cole said. "Mad that they got away."

"The ones that got away …" King shook his head. "They're long, long gone mate."

Cole sat on the armchair and stared at King. He had been a good soldier ten years ago, and someone Cole could have trusted with his life. Now he was a fat shit, living like a pig, sitting in the chair and spilling his guts after a couple of punches. He stank. He had no respect for himself anymore, and no sense of responsibility about the secrets he knew.

"Did you tell him his son isn't buried there?"

King raised his head and stared at Cole, and Cole thought, Oh shit, he doesn't know, he really doesn't know.

"What are you on about?"

"They didn't all die, Nath. Some of them were taken away."

King stared over his shoulder at a past he had been trying to forget forever. "Poor bastards."

"Now you realise why I want to know exactly what you told him." But the words suddenly felt hollow in Cole's mouth, because really there was little point in going on. He knew as much as King could reveal—Tom Roberts had gone down to the Plain to look for the grave of his son—and the most important thing he had to do now was to follow Roberts, stop him, and if necessary silence him. Roberts knew too much already. The slightest risk of him opening the grave … that could not be allowed to happen. Not now. Not after so long, when most of the people who knew about the berserkers were dead, or mad.

"I showed him where to find the grave, and that's all. But Cole, you mean they took some of the guys with them? Who? Where? Why?"

"Where is what I've spent the last ten years trying to find out," Cole said. "And I think you know why."

King bowed his head. "Poor bastards," he said again.

Cole stood to leave. "Nath, you live like a pig. What happened to you? Why did you go this way? You could have sorted yourself out, got a decent job in security. Worked abroad, maybe. Why this?" He gestured at the filthy living room, encapsulating the whole of King's life with one wave of his hand.

"Seeing what I saw …" King said, but he shook his head and looked down at his bound arms and legs. "You leaving me like this?"

Cole put his hand on King's shoulder and squeezed. His old comrade. His old friend. "No," he said, and as King's shoulders relaxed Cole grabbed him around the head and broke his neck.

Outside Nathan King's second-floor flat, Cole stood for a while and held onto the landing balustrade. He was shaking. His hands were clawed, cramped, and his shoulders ached. He had not killed anyone for six years; he had never killed a friend. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, taking strange comfort in the city smells after leaving the reeking flat. Exhaust fumes and the stench of stale fat from fast food restaurants were preferable to the stench of King's decline. Memories flashed by, images of King and him ten years ago, young and brash and indestructible.

Working at Porton Down had been a much sought after secondment. The food and accommodations had been good, the security work interesting, and the local ladies had always been interested in men clothed in uniforms and secrecy. Days on the base were spent patrolling the perimeter, fixing fences, handling the dogs, guarding the gates and occasionally doing over reporters who made it their mission to "reveal breaches in security." Evenings were spent at local pubs and clubs, spreading wild tales without actually saying anything, and letting the local girls work off their fascination in the backseats of cars or on the moor behind the pubs. Cole, King and the others had revelled in the assignment. They were reliable men, good soldiers—that was why they had been chosen—but they were also more than aware that they had landed a cushy number. They worked hard at the security of the base, always aware that a true breach would likely result in them being sent back to their regiments, and put a lot of energy into their leisure time, too. The base had a good gym and ample countryside for running; they kept fit. They banked their extra wages. Rarely, if ever, did they question what was going on at the camp. They all knew of the facility's history, but they were army through and through. They understood the need for deterrent and retaliation, and none of them had any time for the occasional protestors who camped at the main gates, waving their placards and demanding the safe return of a bunch of bunnies or puppies.

Three months after starting there, he and King had witnessed the return of the berserkers from Iraq.

Cole opened his eyes and stared out across the park opposite the flat. A young mother was pushing a pram along a path, a toddler running beside her, aiming for the playground. The toddler, a little girl, ran on ahead, jumping onto the roundabout and waiting impatiently for her mother to begin pushing. The baby squealed in its pram as it watched its sister having so much fun. The mother, tall, red-headed and attractive, pressed the pram's brakes and pushed the roundabout, bending to kiss her daughter every time she spun by. The little girl giggled and the mother smiled.

They don't have a clue, Cole thought. He had just killed his friend for them. For their safety. For the little girl's future. That's what all this was about. After six years spent living in one bed-sit after another, drawing the meagre army pension they had awarded him after letting him go, picking up crappy, menial jobs as he watched for signs of the berserkers' reemergence, it had all come to this. He was convinced that he was doing right, and yet sometimes he had to remind himself, to reinforce his conviction.

Because Cole was not a bad man. Cole was a good man.

He had left the army six years ago, three months before killing Sandra Francis. They had refused to let him pursue the escapees, saying that they were gone and that was that. Gone back to wherever they came from, the brass told him. They'll not worry us now. But he had never forgotten the wagon that rolled in one June morning under cover of darkness, ROBINSON FRESH FOODS painted across its sides. The sounds he had heard from within had stayed with him forever. And later, seeing those things as they brought them out, his view of the world had changed in seconds.

The woman in the park reminded him of the scientist, Sandra. She had been attractive, her red hair hiding a stunning intellect behind Barbie doll looks. And that had been Cole's mistake. He had been a bigot, believing that it would be easy to persuade the truth from her.

What did you do to the girl?

I can't tell you.

What makes her special?

I cant tell you.

You have to—

No, I don't.

What was in the syringe? Did you help them, did you make them immune to the silver?

I can't tell you.

Did you help them escape?

A silence, long and loaded. And Francis never shifted her gaze from Cole's eyes.

You did. You did! Why? You have to tell me. Really, you do, because I need to know, and I'll find out one way or the other.

Then it's the other.

More talking, more pleading, but however tightly he'd tied her to the chair and however much he had threatened, Cole could not bring himself to torture her. And really, looking back on it, he believed that nothing would have made her talk.

Because she was scared.

Please, tell me or—

Or you'll shoot me?

And perhaps that had been her mistake: not believing that he would.

Cole marked this as the point when he had grown up. Leaving the army had turned his purpose into a private crusade. His shoulders had bowed under the weight of guilt and responsibility, and he spent many waking hours convincing himself that he was doing everything right. There were no voices, no jealous gods giving him their time, but there was God, present at every twist and turn of his life and listening to his fears and hopes. He knew what Cole was doing, and He knew why, but that did not make the remorse and doubt any less difficult to bear.

Cole let go of the balustrade and smiled as the woman glanced across at him. She smiled back, then went back to playing with her children.

I'm doing all this for them, he thought, patching any holes in his conviction. He had just killed a friend. He shook his head to dislodge the memory and it slipped down through the grates in his mind, under the skein of reality he had created over the past ten years, finding itself prisoner with so many other memories, ideals and discarded morals that he worked so hard to keep subdued. That false vision of reality kept them all hidden away. The memory would come back, he knew that, and would haunt him forever, just as the memory of Sandra Francis' death haunted his dreams. But even as Cole walked along the landing and down the external staircase, Nathan King became a man he had once served with at Porton Down, a fun friend, a good soldier. He was a million miles and ten years away from that corpse already cooling in the filthy flat.

Cole climbed into his Jeep. Salisbury Plain was about two hours away. He could be there by dusk.

For a long time, Tom could not move.

The corpse of the child still lay where he had found it, wrapped in chains and virtually buried in filth. It had been a girl; he could see her long hair (and hear her voice, that was a girl's voice), and she wore the rotten remnants of a dress. It may have been pink once, but burial had bled all colour to a uniform brown. Between the chains he could still make out the patterned stitching on the chest, flowers and butterflies and everything a little girl would love. It was a long dress, sleeveless, something for the summer, not this cool autumn day. Her leathery skin seemed unconcerned by the freshness in the air. Her face (it should be looking the other way, not at me, it shouldn't have turned to me) was a mummified mask of wrinkles, a dead young girl with an old woman's skin. The creases around her eyes and the corners of her mouth were deep, home to muck and tiny, squirming white things. Her mouth hung open, filled with mud. Her eye sockets were moist, dark, and not totally empty. The eyes sat like creamy yellowed eggs, waiting to birth something unknowable.

Her hand still touched his arm. He remained motionless, staring at the places where her fingers squeezed, the slight indentations in his skin, hairs pressed down, redness around where her fingers touched him because she was squeezing him.

Tom gasped, realising he had not breathed for many seconds. A breath shushed across the Plain, shifting grasses and setting a spread of nearby ferns whispering secrets. He could not take his eyes from the girl.

"That's not squeezing me, it's just touching me," he said, staring down at the hand. He raised his other hand, ready to lift her mummified arm and set it down across her chest. "I shifted her … she moved … her arm lifted and fell, all because I shifted her, all down to gravity …" He breathed hard between each phrase, trying to force away the dizziness that blurred the edges of his senses, determined to ignore the feeling that the corpse was about to move again. Every instant held the potential of another squeeze, another touch.

But her fingers are pressing—

Tom pulled away and the little girl's nails scratched his skin.

"No!"

The girl's body settled back into the mud, the chains holding her tight. They clinked as she shifted slightly—

Gravity, it's gravity.

Then a small slick thing slipped from a hole in her shoulder and scurried across her body.

Tom crawled backward out of the grave, pushing with his feet, pulling with his hands. There was no sign of Steven down there, not exposed at least, and he could not go back in to go deeper, he just could not. Jo would be frantic by now—it was mid-afternoon already and the sun was dipping to the west, ready to kiss the horizon and invite in the dark—and he suddenly realised just how many hours he had lost here. His shoulders and arms ached from the exertion, and his heart galloped hard.

"Oh Jesus God fucking hell," he moaned, closing his eyes and trying to understand what he had done. It was a moment of reason in madness, clarity in confusion, but the moment was chased away. He felt it leave, lifting its legs and sprinting from his consciousness as a strange voice forced its way inside.

Are you Misterwolf?

Tom's eyes snapped open. The child's corpse was shifting. He could not see actual movement, but the sinking sun reflecting from the moisture on its body was wavering, the reflections stretching up and down, left and right, repeating their rhythmic movements. As if the body were breathing.

No … no, not Misterwolf.

Tom was shaking, his eyes watering. He wondered whether it was that giving the corpse an illusion of movement.

"No," he moaned, filthy hands pressed to his face as if to squeeze out the truth. "No, no, no." He scrambled to his feet and backed away. His heels tangled in the outstretched legs of one of the excavated skeletons, and as he tumbled backward the voice came again, an invader in his own mind.

Don't leave me again, Daddy, not after so long!" It was wretched, this voice, and pathetic, and altogether terrifying.

Tom fell back into a skeleton's embrace. The impact shook its arms and they clanked against him. Bones cracked and crumbled. He screamed. It was a full, loud screech that hurt his throat, and the sound and pain brought him briefly up from the dark depths of disbelief that were pulling him down, drowning him. He found his footing again and backed away, treading carefully this time so that he was not tripped, stretching his legs back over the bodies he had dug up and laid out to view. He kept his eyes on what he could see of the corpse wrapped in chains. He could not really think about the chains, not yet. That was for later. Their reason for being there, their intention … that was for much later, when he was away from here and crying in Jo's arms, begging her to go home, continue their life, accept the lie and try to find their way with Steven's memory intact and unsullied.

Please …, the voice said in his head, and Tom screamed again. So cold … so alone … I hurt. It was the accent that terrified Tom the most. The words were bad enough, and their implications, but the accent was one he could not place, a smooth-flowing speech that he was sure he had never heard before. If he was imagining this voice, he could have never invented something he did not know.

"This is real," he said, and though she did not speak, he knew that somewhere in his mind the dead girl smiled.

Tom backed farther away, knelt in the heather and stared at the open grave. The bodies he had brought out were catching the setting sun. He could smell their decay, even this far away. Perhaps they would rot faster now that they were uncovered. Some were skeletons, others had traces of skin and flesh … and the little girl, with her wrinkled skin and those ping-pong ball eyes loose in their sockets …

Even from where he was now he could see her hand, resting across her chest and ready to grab again. "Tendons tightening," he whispered, "and muscles contracting, out of the cold ground at last, just something natural that's making her fingers move like that." He looked down at the scratch marks on his arm. Almost as if she didn't want me to go.

Those words, that accent, the idea that she was not as dead as the others. "That chain."

Steven, the voice said, and although he jumped, Tom did not stand and run. He should have. Any sane thought would have told him to run as fast as he could. But sanity seemed to be setting with the sun, inviting in its own breed of darkness.

"My dead son," he whispered to the air.

Not dead, Daddy.

"I'm not your daddy."

There were tears, the unmistakeable sound of sobbing inside his head. I know, the voice whispered at last, I just wanted to say it again.

"Not dead?"

You didn't find him, his skelington?

"No." She said skeleton like a kid, with a "g" in there. I wouldn't have made that up, would I? If I were imagining all this?

Then he's not dead. He's … gone.

"Gone where?"

Silence, loaded with potential. He could feel something in his mind, a presence remaining, hanging quietly back.

"I'm not talking to you," Tom said, shaking his head and standing.

Please—

"No, I don't mean I don't want to, I just mean I'm not. It can't be. This isn't happening." Tom turned to leave. He would abandon everything he had done for the sake of his mind; losing it would not help Jo, not on this anniversary of Steven's death. And he was dead. His son was dead. Thinking any other way would drive Tom mad. He smiled, almost laughed, wondering how true madness compared to what was happening to him now.

He pinched the back of his hand until his nails drew blood, then wondered what germs would invade his bloodstream from the muck on his skin.

"I'm going home," he said, setting out for the hole beneath the fence.

Not that way! Bad man, nasty man, big badwolf!

"I'm not hearing this."

This way, another way, please Daddy!

"I'm not your—"

He's come to kill you and—

"You can't know this."

A loaded silence again, filled with a promise of something incredible. I know so much more, the little girl said. And though she still sounded scared and panicked, her words held power and control beneath the surface.

"I'm leaving." But even as Tom set off across the Plain, he heard the distant sound of a car engine from beyond the artificial boundary bank.

That's him, the voice said, quieter and more controlled. He's a bad man. Very bad. He has only death in his head.

"And you have life?"

No, freedom. I don't want to be here anymore, Daddy. Please come and get me, pick me up, hold me and hug me and I'll tell you where to take us to be safe. The man's coming now! I can feel him. Misterwolf!

Tom heard the engine's tone change as the vehicle came to a stop. It rumbled on for a moment and then cut out. He strained to hear the car door opening and closing, but it was too far away. I could be doing this to myself, he thought, making this up to try to cover what I've done. He looked down at his filthy hands and clothes, tainted with soil from a grave. The back of his hand still bled. The blood was startlingly red against the mud drying across his pale skin. Autumn colours.

What would he tell Jo?

I'll help you find Steven, the little girl said. My name is Natasha.

"How do you know my son's name?"

It's at the front of your mind. And Jo, as well—

"My wife." In my mind … so what else does she see, know of me?

Please, take me out of here, out of the hole. Come and take me, and I'll show you what happened here. I can, you know. My real Daddy told me how. If you touch me I can show you, even though I'm …

"What?" Tom asked, scanning the fence for any signs of movement. "What are you? Dead? Dead and wrapped in chains?"

Wrapped in chains because I'm not dead, the little girl's voice said.

"Not dead?" Tom turned and looked back at the dark hole in the ground, the fragmented bodies arranged beside it.

Please, I'm very scared. And lonely. Take me, hold me, and I'll show you everything. And if you believe, I'll try to help you find Steven. Please!

"Why would you do that?" He was talking to the air, the Plain, the sinking sun, and yet already he was certain he would receive an answer. Tom felt peculiarly comfortable with his newfound madness. Perhaps acceptance was insanity in its purest form.

Because my Daddy loved me, and I think you love Steven the same way.

"Where is your Daddy?"

Daddy! the voice shrieked, and Tom winced as if he had been punched. Daddy is here! With me! He's here in these chains, and Mummy and my little brother, all dead now, with—

"With their heads cut off."

Natasha was silent for a few seconds, and Tom heard her sobbing again. They wanted me to be alive. Down here, alive, with all the crawling things. She sounded so vulnerable, so small, such a child.

"They?"

There's time to tell… but not too much. Not now. No time now!

Tom looked back over his shoulder at the mound, the small wood where he had found the crawl space beneath the fence, and he wondered how he could explain this new madness to Jo. He had always been the strong one, the one to comfort her when tears came and memories shadowed the present. Now, covered in mud and with the stench of old corpses on his skin, how could he possibly explain?

In the dusky light he saw someone climbing the fence.

It's him! Mister Wolf! Help me, please, don't let him put me back in!

Tom tried to imagine being buried alive, thrown down into the pit with all those bodies, surrounded by dead family. But the thought that galvanised him into action was the certainty that if he were discovered, he would never get away from here. He had uncovered a horrendous crime, a monstrous lie. Madness or no madness, he had to flee.

And whether Natasha was real or a made-up presence in his mind, she was about to take control.

Cole parked a hundred feet behind the other car. He remained in his Jeep for a few minutes, lights off, scanning the surrounding area for any signs that he was being observed. He kept reminding himself that this was a fifty-five-year-old office worker he was following, but caution had always been his way. It had saved his life more than once and now, so close to this place, his hackles were up.

He had not been here for ten years.

He stepped from the Jeep, shut the door quietly and rested one hand on the pistol in his pocket. Day was slipping into dusk, and he wanted to investigate Roberts' car before full darkness fell. This was a bad time of day to be sneaking around with one hand on his .45 … but yet again, he reminded himself of who he was following. Roberts was hardly going to be perched on a hillside with the cross-hairs of a .30-30 centred on the back of Cole's head.

Still …

Glancing left and right, Cole quickly made his way to the parked car. He approached from the passenger side, keeping well away from the vehicle, closing in only when he was certain it was empty. He tried the door. Roberts had left the car unlocked. Other things on his mind.

Yeah, his dead son.

Cole shook his head. There was no time for pity.

He climbed the bank and stood at the security fence, staring out across the Plain. Although he had not been here since that fateful day ten years before, he could still remember every detail about this place, every point of reference that would lead him to where the bodies were buried. To his right lay the small wood, to his left in the distance a slight hill that was already merging with the darkness, and in front of him, somewhere past the fence, would be the rock shaped like a rugby ball standing on end. He sniffed the air and remembered the scent of the moors, closed his eyes briefly and heard the familiar silence. Even the feel of the place on his skin and in his guts was something he still understood so well; that gravity, that sense of the raw power of nature sleeping here. He was back, and it felt as though he had never been away, as if every day of the intervening ten years had been wiped from existence. God knew he had lived that day in his nightmares enough times to make it last forever.

"God help me now," he muttered. "God help us all." He scanned the Plain, zeroing in on the approximate location of the grave … and there was movement. He looked to the side of the shape and saw it stand and walk, though whether it was toward or away from him he could not tell.

Now, suddenly, dusk would become his friend.

He set about climbing the unclimbable fence. Roberts had got in somehow—cut through the steel, found a hole—but Cole had no time to search for his point of ingress. He wanted this to be quick and easy, no long chase across the moors, just a brief sprint and a bullet to the back of the head. Though the prospect of killing again filled him with a sense of emptiness, it would not be the first time he had buried people out here.

Cole had spent a lot of his youth climbing mountains. Now he used techniques he had learned years ago to brace himself against the gap between two fence uprights—toes and fingers pulling and pushing in opposite directions, ankles and wrists burning, fingers and toes cramping—and slowly, gritting his teeth, he moved higher. Once he was within reach of the curved rails heading the fence he swung one foot up and hooked it behind a rail, pulling himself up and over. He dropped down on the other side and rolled, bringing the pistol out of his pocket and kneeling in one movement.

This low down he could see Roberts' shadow against the horizon. If he kept low enough he would be able to approach in this way, ensuring that he himself was not seen until the last moment. If Cole was very lucky—and very quiet—he would be able to shoot the guy without him even knowing what had happened. That would be best for both of them.

Then, away from here as fast as fucking possible. Even this close to the grave Cole's skin was crawling.

Can she get out? he thought. But no, of course not, not after so long. She'd be dead down there. Or if not dead, close enough. But she's still there. Still so close. And those others, their heads gone, but did we really know what we were doing? Did we?

"Fuck it!" Cole muttered. Bent low, he hurried toward Roberts.

He moved quickly across the Plain, passing the rock shaped like a rugby ball, not needing it now because he could still see the movement of his target. In maybe five minutes he would come close enough to risk a shot, but between now and then he had to keep his eye on Roberts. There was still an hour until the sunlight bled away completely—and tonight, with no cloud cover, there would be moon and starlight—but once he lost that shadow it would be difficult to find again. The need to get away from here was pressing on him already, trying to turn him and urge him back to the road. Every step he took closer to the grave felt heavier, as if he were running into air growing thicker by the second.

And he remained alert for any whispers in his mind.

Of them all, Natasha had been the one most adept at touching minds. Just a touch, a feel, a nudge, never anything more, but enough to know that she was there. Her psychic fingers were vile. It was like opening your mind to a sewer exhaust.

Even if she is still alive, she won't know were here.

In his mind, in the underground where he relegated those memories he was desperate to forget, something stirred. He ran through the streets above, dodging from idea to idea as he neared the central hub of his consciousness, that place where his whole life converged and found meaning. His concentration was complete, and the manhole covers and tunnel entrances were well sealed by his determination to do what was right. Each day he prayed to God, and each night when he slept the memories leaked out. Another prayer on waking usually put them back down. But now there were signs of life down there, an echo awoken from distant memory, a voice that stalked the tunnels and dark places, barely a whisper as yet but growing, growing, each echo from mossy walls or crumbling brick ceilings increasing rather than diminishing its strength.

Eventually he heard the words: What's the time, Misterwolf?

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Cole whispered as he ran. He knew that he should be utterly silent, that he was acting like an amateur. But there was something he had to cover up, a rising sound inside him that needed camouflaging. Was that her, actually talking in his mind, or had he imagined it? So he whispered while he ran, and his underground sang louder with the voice that he had prayed he would never hear again.

The smell told Cole that he was nearing the grave. It was damp, rich, a cloying sweetness, the stench of old rot and buried secrets laid bare. He knelt down, sniffed again, then started to breathe through his mouth. The whole area felt corrupt. The water soaking into the knee of his jeans could be infused with chemicals from their rotten bodies, and the air was rich with their stench. He was breathing in gases from their exposed corpses. Even the deepening darkness was slick and greasy.

He's opened the grave!

He had never expected it of him. He hadn't even thought that Roberts would find the grave's location; it had been chosen because it was away from any real point of reference, just another nowhere in a Plain of many such nowheres. But Cole now knew that this had already gone much further than he could have guessed, and for the first time since killing King he felt anger at him, not pity.

Stupid fuck! What was it with him? Why the hell start talking after so long?

Cole wanted so much to turn and run, but his whole life was centred on this place and what had happened here. He had always hoped and prayed that he would never have cause to return. He had never picked up the trail of the escaped berserkers, but he had tried continuously, never giving in. Not like the army. Their shunning of their responsibilities had been the main reason for his leaving and pursuing the escapees on his own. He was not unrealistic, or even superior, but he saw himself as the army's conscience. The fact that he was the only person who knew of his mission did not concern him in the least.

Perhaps one day when this was all over, he would write his memoirs. Get some people into trouble, topple a government. Perhaps one day.

Cole took in a huge breath and, letting it out slowly, stood and ran toward the grave. He remained bent low, the .45 held tight in both hands, finger resting against the trigger guard. His footfalls were gentle and soft on the springy ground, yet to his ears he sounded like a crippled bull. As he neared where he judged the grave to be—and as the smells grew stronger, the sense of foreboding richer and slick as blood—the voice burst up from his mental underground, echoing through his head and driving him to his knees.

Too late Mister Wolf! You can huff and puff, but I'm not home anymore.

Cole hissed and cursed, fell to his knees, trying desperately not to cry out. So loud! So powerful! He lowered the gun and realised only then what he was kneeling beside.

The first body was close enough to touch. It wore the remnants of military fatigues, and he could just see the glint of its exposed and cleaned dog tags. There were others next to it, laid out in a long, uneven line, on their sides or fronts or backs, limbs missing here and there, heads shorn from necks … and he had known these men. He reached out and touched the cool, slick skull of the body closest to him. Rich? he thought. Gareth? Jos? He had hoped to never see them again.

The girl had shouted at him, mocked him—And so strong, so alive!—but it could easily be a ruse to send him away.

He had to know for sure. He plucked a penlight from his pocket and flicked it on, playing the beam quickly across the bodies closest to him. He stood and walked the line, counting as he went, and when he came to the grave he jumped down into the hollow and kicked amongst the scattered bones and clothing. He knew whose remains he was rooting amongst now, and he bore them no respect. He kicked and stamped, glad to crush their deformities beneath his heels.

The girl was not here. Cole shook his head, moaning. No chains, no bones, no sign of her at all. One skull stared up at him, distended jaw hanging open as if preparing to laugh.

"I see your daddy," he said, "and I'm going to give him another one." Whether or not the girl sensed his words, Cole thoroughly enjoyed putting a bullet through the empty skull. It exploded into a shower of brittle bone. Nothing moist in there now, nothing preserved. Only in her. Of all the stupid things to do …

He climbed from the hole and set off in pursuit.

Cole had been the one to insist that the berserker girl Natasha should be alive when they buried her.

They had shot down the father and son with silver bullets, held their thrashing bodies while others cut off their heads with chain saws, and the little girl had stood and watched and cried just like a normal child. They all knew her by then—knew what she was—but still some of the soldiers had shown signs of pity. One of them even moved toward her, swinging his SA80 onto his shoulder and holding out his hands to pick her up. Natasha raised her head and stared at him with red-rimmed eyes, and it was Cole who saw the grin beneath the tears. She opened her mouth to say thank you, and to bite, and Cole put a silver bullet in her shoulder.

She fell back into the heather, thrashing, clawing at herself as silver burned into her flesh. Her tears turned to screams. The man standing before her seemed frozen to the spot, and Cole had to grab him and spin him around, shouting into his face to bring him to his senses.

"King! Don't let her get to you! Not now, not after all this! The others have got away, and we've been told to see to these, and that's what we're going to do."

"But—"King said.

"No buts. No fucking buts! We should have buried these things long before now, and you know it!" Still the girl was screeching, like a wounded pig awaiting the coup de grace. But Cole suddenly knew that he would not be the one to deliver it, and neither would any of the other men there. There was something better they could do for the little bitch. Something much more effective. More poetic.

They wrapped her in chains and secured them to the corpses of her parents and brother. It took six men to push the tangled bundle of living and dead into the hole they had dug. The three severed heads were thrown in after them, and Cole himself went down to make sure the chains were secure.

"Hey, Mister Wolf!" the girl shouted, and Cole winced at the fury in her voice.

"What is it Natasha?" he said.

"Please let me out, Mister Wolf! Please … I promise I'll be good." Her voice was suddenly weak, slurred, the silver acting as acid in her veins.

"Good like your friends? Good like Sophia and Lane?"

"That was them, not us! My mummy and daddy never did anything like that, never. We always just did what we were told."

"Is that all you did, Natasha?"

"Well …" her voice trailed off, sly and cool. "Well, maybe when we were taken away, sometimes we enjoyed ourselves a little … But never anything bad here." She was slurring again, doing the little girl act and adding her own pain to make it more realistic.

"I have my orders," Cole said, starting to climb from the hole.

"Kill me!" Natasha pleaded, quieter. "A silver bullet in the head. My mummy … Daddy … my brother Peter, my little baby brother! Why did you do that to them? Please let me be with them. Please Mister Wolf!"

Cole stood on the lip of the hole and glared at his men. They were terrified, enraged, pumped up by the day of violence. They had all seen so much—blood spilled, friends killed, chaos visiting the normally ordered atmosphere of Porton Down and polluting it forever—that they seemed to be dazed, stunned by the sudden visitation by death that none of them had ever dreamed they would witness. The autumn sun blazed down as if to burn the sights from their minds, but they would always remember this, all of them. They looked at Cole as if he could offer them answers.

He looked at the bodies piled in the back of the wagon. Men he had known, men who had been his friends. Flesh ripped from their bones. Bones chewed and broken. Skulls crushed. And not a bullet hole or knife wound among them.

He turned back to the grave and looked down into Natasha's pleading, pained eyes. She was as ugly and obscene as she had always been, and the tears inspired no pity in Cole. No pity at all. They only fueled the hatred that had been growing in him for years.

"You will be with them, Natasha. Always."

"Fuck you, Mister Wolf!" The words were shocking coming from such a young girl, such rage in a child's voice. But of course, Cole knew that she was no ordinary girl. She was a monster.

"Bury them," he said.

"I'll see you again," Natasha whispered as Cole turned and walked away. The words were a knife in his back, a promise that would haunt him forever.

As his men piled in the broken bodies of their friends and comrades, it took a long time for Natasha's screams to fade away to nothing.

Sometimes, years later, when he woke up sweating and shaking and feeling malevolent memories scurrying back into the underground depths of his mind, Cole wondered whether Natasha was still screaming, and what the mud tasted like in her mouth, and whether she would ever fall completely silent.