Coldbrook

6

Holly rose from her nightmare -

God help me, where did that come from? That thing, Melinda, the blood and screaming. . Jonah’s hopeless gaze through the window. And the breach-

— and for a moment before she opened her eyes she believed that Vic was lying beside her. The narrow bed moved as he stirred, and she reached out to touch him, wondering why she couldn’t feel his warm naked body pressed close to hers. They were all given single beds in their quarters, and sharing had always been a cramped, sweaty affair. But she had liked it. Waking to Vic, sometimes she believed they could be together.

Her hand closed around something cool and gnarled, and when she opened her eyes she saw a wooden pole slipped through the stretcher’s canvas hoops, and remembered where she was.

The realisation struck her with a jolt, unreality flooding in as she struggled to find sleep again. Back to sleep, escape this nightmare, and Vic’s waiting for me if I can only close my eyes and get back to sleep!

The stretcher shook as those carrying it negotiated uneven terrain, and Holly opened her eyes once again. A thud of pain throbbed through her head. She tried to sit up. Something clicked nearby-

Their fingers, that’s how they communicate, I saw that just after-

— and the stretcher was lowered to the ground. She felt the rough ridges and contours of this place pressing through the canvas, spiking her buttocks and hips, and her elbow where she propped herself up. Memory flooded in as she looked around at the people who had saved her.

The arrow had struck the crawling woman just below the left eye, the impact sounding like wood striking wood, flipping her head back and to the side. She’d slumped down on the ruin, and suddenly people were all around Holly. She had not seen them moments before, and wondered whether they had been hiding or had been tracking her since she’d emerged from the breach. She’d barely had her wits about her then, after the violence she had seen. None of this is real, she’d thought.

But then a man and woman had approached her, and behind them were six more. They’d all carried weapons: bows and arrows, and crossbows. Most wore their hair braided tight to their scalps, and their clothes were loose and rough and all but colourless. They were utterly silent. Holly heard no breathing, no rustle of leather-bound feet through the long grass, no clink of metal on metal as they moved. And they seemed to communicate entirely by sign language, an incomprehensible twisting, clicking and flexing of fingers, shifting of hands, and facial expressions that might have been a background to whatever they ‘said’.

She’d looked at the dead woman, now nothing more than a dried husk, and wondered whether there were more. One on its own might have been bad luck, she’d thought, but two means there must be more.

The man had lifted his crossbow and aimed it at Holly’s face, two fingers held to his lips. He and his female colleague walked slowly around her, looking her up and down, making her feel distinctly uncomfortable. The others stood back, at least two more aiming their weapons in her direction.

And then she’d realised what this was — the first meeting between different universes. This might be a version of Earth, but she was here from somewhere else. Jonah had said It’s exactly where we are and a trillion light years away. Holly had felt the muscles in her legs turning to water.

‘Thank God,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you. My name is Holly Wright and-’ She’d seen the look passing between the man and woman — shock, surprise, fear — and then. . a faint whistling, like something sweeping quickly through the air. Then nothing else.

As if inspired by the memory, another wave of pain passed through her head. She groaned, lifted her hand and touched the tender bump just above her right ear. It was like setting a burning brand against her scalp. She winced and shivered as the pain lanced into her back and right shoulder. Closing her eyes, she wished it away. Hit me over the head, she thought, and she wondered how indifferent they were to hurting or killing her. Here I am in another world, and-

There was a slight change in the light beyond her eyelids. Someone was squatting beside the stretcher, she sensed them there, and when she looked a woman was kneeling beside her. She was maybe thirty, black, short and muscled, attractive in a wild sort of way, and Holly’s first thought was a surprising Vic would love her. That made her smile. . and the woman smiled back.

‘Wh-?’ Holly began. But the woman moved quickly, pressing two fingers to Holly’s lips and shaking her head.

Holly nodded her understanding and the woman took her hand away. She made several simple hand signals, one eyebrow raised. Holly shrugged and shook her head. The movement set the pain roaring once again. She cringed. The woman, appearing confused, pointed to the stretcher and to Holly. Then she stood.

Four of them lifted the stretcher and carried Holly across the top of the hill.

For the first time she was able to take in her surroundings. The tumbled building with Exit carved on one stone was gone, but it was possible that she was now further along the same ridge. She remained propped on both elbows, and they seemed unconcerned at what she saw, only what she said. Maybe they’re mute, Holly thought. Haven’t ever heard anyone speaking. It seemed likely, and that produced a feeling of disappointment that she could not shake. Had they really breached into a primeval world where language had barely advanced beyond a few hand signals? But she thought about the way the man had been shaping his hands again, the fingers splayed and clicking, and it seemed easily as advanced as sign language back on her own Earth. The stretcher was rough but serviceable, and their weapons had proved their effectiveness. Surely they were as developed as her.

Holly looked beyond the people to the landscape they were travelling across. The sun was fully up now, and if seasons matched between the worlds she judged it to be early afternoon. There was a light cloud cover that smudged the sun into a yellowed pastel shade, and streaks of colour hung low to the horizon like a forgotten sunset. They were beautiful, but disquieting.

On a hillside far across the valley, picked out by diffuse sunlight, she saw more ruins.

Holly squinted and shielded her eyes, her right eye throbbing with pain. She tried to work out exactly what she was seeing. It could have been an exotic rock formation, limestone corroded by wind and rain into elaborate and misleading shapes. But she thought not. There was an intimation of regularity, though some of the higher structures had obviously fallen, the remains of their walls pointing skyward and piles of broken masonry at their bases. It looked like a collection of structures that had been smudged by a giant hand, their sharp edges blurred and order destroyed.

Close to one wall sat the skeleton of what might once have been a car.

Holly wished she could go closer, but the people were heading down from the ridge into the heavily wooded next valley, and soon the ruin was hidden from view. Was that a car? she wanted to ask, because the possibility meant so much. One fallen building with an ‘Exit’ sign was puzzling enough but two fallen buildings, the rusted remains of a vehicle, bows and arrows, and shrivelled people rising from beneath undergrowth. .

She looked at the people, smiling as the short woman who had tended her glanced at her. The woman smiled back distractedly, scanning all around as they walked. The others seemed alert as well, including the two people walking on ahead who had to concentrate on their route. Apart from the four carrying her stretcher, everyone else constantly looked left and right, sometimes turning and walking backwards for a few steps as if expecting to be ambushed at any moment.

Holly didn’t know what this meant, but none of it seemed good.

She was amazed at just how silently they were able to move across the ground, and how quickly. Their feet were clad in leather, tied tight so that no loose flaps struck at the ground. They picked their way instinctively, avoiding loose rocks or fallen branches or twigs, and when they traversed a steep slope there was only the slightest whisper of undergrowth. Birds sang all around them, crickets scratched messages from their hiding places in tall ferns, something whistled low and continuously far away, and once Holly heard the patter of small, fast footsteps as an unseen creature fled the party. It was almost as if the land hardly knew that they were there.

The jacket worn by the man holding the stretcher’s front right handle had some sort of design on the back. It was a rough garment, its edges frayed and its seams held together by heavy stitching. Whatever was drawn on or sewn into the material had blended into it due to grime and time. Holly narrowed her eyes, squinting as a pulse of pain thrummed through her head once more, then looked away. She could not make it out.

The group paused abruptly and lowered the stretcher to the ground. Her carriers each unslung their primitive weapons — a bow and arrow, a crossbow, a short spear, a heavy spiked mace on a chain — and the several others arrayed around them hid behind trees or ducked into the waist-high ferns. The woman looked over her shoulder at Holly and held her hand out flat, pressing it down.

They waited like that for some time, motionless and silent. When Holly started feeling pressure on her bladder she closed her eyes and tried to will it away. She needed to pee but the feeling wouldn’t become urgent for a while.

A bird landed nearby, the size of a blackbird but with a dull orange chest and speckled white wings. One much like this had been killed by the eradicator and stored in the breach containment area, and Holly thought of Melinda and what had become of her. She’d been passionate about her work, and sometimes when they’d shared a drink and a chat together in the common room or each other’s quarters Melinda had been almost unable to contain her excitement about what they were doing.

She held out her hand, hoping that the bird might hop across to her. But it flew away.

One of the two men further ahead stood and ran, crouching, into the forest, disappearing in moments. No one reacted, or moved. The woman looked at Holly again and pressed her fingers to her lips.

Holly nodded, suddenly afraid. I want to be back in Coldbrook, she thought. And then a shape appeared through the trees higher up the hillside and slightly ahead of them. It might have been a ghost, a human figure standing motionless while the breeze made waves of its tattered clothing and hair. The hair was long and clotted with mud and leaves. Holly held her breath, and the moment stretched into a painful stillness.

The pressure on her bladder increased and she shifted position, her clothes scraping across the stretcher’s rough canvas. Her pulse thumped in her head and lit up the pain there again — and then she saw the shape’s head turn, as if sniffing the air. Then it started moving, slowly passing between the trees and swishing through the heavy green ferns, coming right at her.

A whisper in the distance, and then the shape fell with something protruding from its head. The man who had run into the forest minutes before emerged behind the fallen creature. When he reached where it had fallen he pulled a machete from his belt and hacked down once, hard. Then he came back down to them, following the same route that the shambling creature had been taking. When he was closer he held up one thumb — an amazingly human gesture, which produced a shocked gasp of surprise from Holly — and they set off once more.

I want Jonah, Holly thought, shivering even though the day was growing warmer. I want Vic. The pain in her head was growing into the worst headache she could remember, and she wondered whether the blow to her skull had damaged her more than she knew.

They reached the valley floor. It was only sparsely wooded here and they followed a track that ran alongside a stream. It was barely a trickle, though its route was marked by a deep gulley with sheer sides, and Holly guessed it must be prone to flooding. The landscape was terribly familiar, its features like an elusive memory. Beside the track at irregular intervals stood the vertical trunks, thin and grey, of what looked like amputated trees. She thought perhaps they were birch or some similar species, but every one was broken off within a few feet of the ground. She stared at each of them as they passed, and then just as they turned from the track that might once have been a road she realised what they were. Telegraph poles.

‘I know this road,’ she whispered, and the woman glanced back at her. Holly thought she’d be scolded but the woman’s face seemed less severe now, and the rest of the party seemed to be moving more casually. A couple of miles south of Coldbrook, old mountain track, upgraded to cater for the Appalachians’ increasing tourist trade. And now. .

As they approached a small ravine that joined the valley they passed through more ruins. Holly propped herself up and took notice, because that word from the tumbled pile of rubble where these people had found her kept echoing back: Exit. She hoped that the ruins might tell her more. But their plant-clogged windows only prompted endless questions.

Passing into the ravine, Holly looked up at the sloping sides and the segment of sky above. It was darker in here, and she doubted whether the sun’s rays ever penetrated this far. The ground was marshy, and a dozen small waterfalls trickled down the sides. Their sound was soporific, and as she closed her eyes she felt the pain easing slightly. To sleep now. .

But she needed to pee — more urgently now — and to find out where she was. And most of all she had to work out how to get back to Coldbrook.

Something clanked, metal on metal, cutting through her daydream, and it was so loud and sudden that she cried out. Set in the ravine’s side was a metal door, its frame an uneven wall of solid concrete. Layers of rust camouflaged the door, but as it swung open she sensed that it was more solid and secure than it looked.

Several people emerged, and it was the last one to come out who commanded her attention. He was tall and thin, and he carried no weapons. A child stood behind him, a little girl, peering around his legs at Holly, fascinated. The tall man was pale, like an underground thing. Their leader, she thought, and she smiled softly at wherever that idea had come from. The little girl smiled back. Holly was already starting to suspect that she had been wrong in her assessment of these people.

The woman who had been at Holly’s side stepped forward, and she and the man briefly touched hands. He never for an instant took his stare from Holly. He was sizing her up.

‘She came through,’ the woman said, and Holly caught her breath. She could communicate with these people. Her eyes went wide and she could feel tears prickling their corners. She looked around at the others — still silent, watching. Then she stood up slowly from the stretcher, biting her lip against the pain singing through her skull. She smoothed down her clothes and opened her mouth to speak, but thirst had dried her voice.

‘So I see,’ the man said, and there was something about the voice that Holly recognised. This all felt suddenly dreamlike, and for the first time in her life she put the cliche into action and pinched the back of her hand. But she did not wake up.

‘How do you feel?’ the man asked.

‘Head hurts,’ Holly said. ‘And I need to pee.’ She almost smiled. What an auspicious introduction to another world.

‘Sorry about your head,’ the man said. ‘Precautionary. We’d been watching, and we didn’t know quite what to expect.’ He stood to one side as if allowing her to pass, and the little girl fled back through the doorway.

‘In there?’ Holly asked. From inside she smelled the faint hint of cooking meat, and heard the distant jangle of music. And then she saw the small logo on his jacket — three intersecting circles, their overlapping areas shaded black. She recognised it from the back of the jacket of one of her rescuers.

And she recognised it from home.

‘In there,’ the man confirmed. ‘Welcome to Coldbrook.’