Coldbrook

7

In the end, they drove to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Tommy knew how much Jayne loved it up there, and the weather gave them a long, dry day of walking and picnicking, talking and being in love. He frequently surprised her with such gestures, and sometimes in his company she went for hours without being reminded of her illness. She’d forget herself under the spell of his kindness. He always waved off any comments, saying, It’s what you do for someone you love. But she always made certain that he knew how much she appreciated everything he did, and every small part of him, because she never wanted to take him for granted. And the gratitude was for herself as much as for him, a reminder of where she was and how important Tommy was to her well-being. If she didn’t thank him, she feared that she would lose her way.

She knew that she was lucky to have Tommy, and at least once each day she experienced a mortal fear of what would happen should that luck desert her.

Walking back towards Tommy’s battered old Toyota, holding his hand, Jayne’s discomfort was just beginning to grow as the sinking afternoon sun started to lengthen their shadows. The day was already a pleasing memory. Some days lived for ever; she never usually knew that when they were happening, but some time after she would realise that they had been among the best days of her life.

Jayne’s mother was still alive, somewhere, and the only time there was true tension between her and Tommy was when he suggested that they should get in touch. Didn’t you see her? she’d ask him, never quite shouting, never truly calm. You have no idea. No concept of what I went through before I met you. And he’d let it lie because he knew it would do no good. Jayne had made that very clear from the start; she was on her own, two thousand miles from where she’d been born, and her family had died with her brother. He’d been a small-time criminal, dragged into the LA gang culture and found dead at the age of seventeen with a bullet in the back of his skull and his genitals cut off. The coroner hadn’t been able to tell whether the mutilation was post-mortem, and Jayne had the impression that no one cared. One less gang-banger, one less headache for the LAPD. And when her mother had received the phone call she’d hung up, drunk another bottle of wine, and told Jayne later that evening when she arrived home from school.

Johnny’s dead, hon. Can you fetch your mother another bottle?

Why didn’t you call me!?

What good woulda that done?

Johnny!

He knew how it’d end up. I told him often enough. Now get your mother another bottle, hon.

Another bottle, and another, was the way it had been going, and the way it continued from then until Johnny’s sad funeral. Three fuckers had shown up an hour after the last mourners had left, when Jayne was still kneeling beside her only brother’s grave watering the soil with her tears. They’d sauntered past her and stood beside the grave, then pulled pistols and fired three quick shots as some sort of fucked-up salute. Jayne had stood to run after them, beat some sense into their twisted, drug-addled brains, but her legs had folded beneath her as her muscles cramped, driving wedges of pain into her brain. They’d laughed as they ran away, and she’d woken later with paramedics tending her along with the old lady who’d found her and was fussing around nearby.

Next day, she’d remained at home long enough to pack some clothes and steal a thousand dollars from her mother’s back-drawer stash. Then she’d called her school sweetheart Tommy and told him she was leaving LA to live with her cousin in Birmingham, England.

‘It’s been a lovely day,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

‘Only did it ’cos I want a blow job tonight.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Jayne laughed, and the freeing of tension lessened the pains in her neck. Complete relaxation is the key, one specialist had told her, while another had said Exercise as much as you can, gently and often. Walking in the hills with her love gave her the best of both options.

When Tommy had said he’d come with her, she’d seen a whole new future opening up. They’d got as far as Knoxville, fallen in love with the place, and stayed. On days like today she was living in that future, bright and secure as if she awaited the fate of a normal person, not someone destined to die young. The churu was an insidious beast, kept at bay by a morning massage while it ate away at her from inside.

‘No, I mean it,’ Tommy said, mock serious. ‘I need head. I’ll be sitting on the sofa, and you can have a floor cushion so you’re comfortable.’ He took a small tin from his pocket and extracted a ready-rolled joint. ‘Hands free.’ He tucked the joint in the corner of his mouth, a poor James Dean. ‘Then if you’re lucky, baby, I’ll return the favour.’

‘Nah. American Idol’s on tonight.’

The joint tilted groundward. ‘A man knows where he stands.’

‘Yeah.’ Jayne squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back before letting go to light up. She turned away to look down over the hillside towards the car park and the lowlands beyond. The trees cast complex afternoon shadows and in the distance she could just make out the haze of Knoxville. Closer by were several smaller towns they’d driven through on the way here, set in the landscape like diamonds on felt. She caught a whiff of pot and walked a few steps, trying to blink away the memory of Johnny. Usually she could successfully avoid dwelling on the past, even when Tommy’s smoke took her back home for a few brief, intense seconds. But today Johnny grinned at her and showed her his latest gang tattoo, a mark he’d got for robbing a drugstore the previous week. There was pride in his smile, and disgust in her voice as she chided him, though now she couldn’t even remember the words. Her memories were tainted by the alcohol haze of their mother as she breezed into the room, unaware of either of her children’s lives.

‘Sorry,’ Tommy said. ‘I know you don’t like it.’ He held her arm, having already inhaled most of the joint and stamped it out.

‘You know you never need to apologise,’ Jayne said, and she meant it. Tommy’s need and her own history were different animals, and if they ever met and fought that was her concern, not his.

The view was gorgeous. There were still twenty or more cars in the car park, their owners walking the hillsides or lighting barbecues in the picnic area a quarter of a mile to the north. She could see a few people down by the cars, hanging around the vehicles’ open doors as if to put off leaving for as long as possible. And she knew why. Maybe lots of people came to this beauty spot to escape something else, and the process of going back always dampened an otherwise bright day. Not everyone’s sad, she thought, and as ever that idea shocked her. Was she sad? She liked to think not, but sometimes her friend Ellie would have a glass too much wine and tell her she carried sadness around like a haze. Not a cloud, she would say, not like someone can see, but. . like heat haze. I see you through it and you’re distorted. Not the woman you want to be, but the woman you really are. Sad. Jayne would tell her to fuck off, then pour another glass for them both. But these infrequent yet serious statements from Ellie stuck with her, nestling in her subconscious to sabotage moments like now.

‘I’m not sad,’ Jayne said.

‘Well, good.’

‘I mean it. I’m not. We’re not.’

‘Hell, no!’ Tommy said. She saw the twinkle in his eyes from the pot, the lazy smile that he’d keep for the rest of the journey home, and longer if he smoked some more.

She grabbed Tommy and pulled him close, hugging him tight, tenderness beyond a kiss. ‘Take me home and let’s see about that sofa.’

‘Your wish is my command.’

‘As ever.’

They walked down the hillside holding hands, following a rough path that had been worn through the trees by thousands of feet over many years. The churu was biting in now, grating her knees and ankles and setting fires in her hips which would simmer and burn for the rest of the evening, but she was determined not to let it spoil the day.

From somewhere distant, a loud explosion.

‘What was that?’ Jayne asked.

‘Beats me.’ Tommy nodded towards the car park, two hundred feet downhill from them. ‘They heard it, too.’ People were standing still, and some of them were pointing north at the road that wound away from the car park and up towards the more heavily wooded mountains.

Jayne saw where the narrow road passed the car park before it was swallowed behind a screen of trees and a fold in the land. She felt a twinge of unease.

‘Backfire,’ Jayne said. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

‘What’s the matter, babe?’ Tommy could hear the strain in her voice, always could. With him she could never feign comfort when she was in pain. ‘It startin’ in early tonight?’

‘It’s not that,’ she said. A man had walked to the end of the car park and seemed to be on his mobile phone, and he turned to wave back at his wife standing by their car.

‘What’s he shouting?’ Tommy asked.

‘Don’t know,’ Jayne said. ‘Maybe there’s been a smash?’

‘Yeah, must’ve been.’

They walked on, still holding hands and moving a little faster now, eager to see what had happened even though Jayne didn’t really want to.

From behind the fold in the land to the north rose a wisp of smoke, dancing with the breeze. The wisp soon became thicker, and in seconds the smoke was dark and billowing.

‘Tommy. .’

‘Yeah. Come on.’ They moved faster, although Jayne couldn’t see what they could do. The guy with the mobile phone was running for the far end of the car park, and several other people were moving uncertainly in that direction. The emergency services would have been called, and to cause smoke like that a fire must have taken hold quickly. Maybe a fuel tank had gone up. Her heart thudded and, much as she had no wish to see, human nature drew her on. Everyone loves a train wreck, Tommy had once said when they were stuck in a traffic queue. A mile and an hour later, they’d passed a crashed car and two people being attended by paramedics.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tommy said, ‘that guy’s leaking claret!’

A man was stumbling along the narrow road towards the car park, emerging from behind the trees, and he seemed to be painted from head to foot in red. From this distance Jayne couldn’t be sure, but she thought he was bald and naked from the waist up, the dark red creases that might have been a pattern on a shirt looking more like terrible gashes across his shoulders and stomach.

‘Tommy,’ she said softly, and he turned to shield her from the sight, holding out his hands. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to go and help. You still got that first-aid kit in the trunk?’

‘Yeah.’ His eyes were wide with shock, and she could see that he was struggling to hold it together.

‘Let’s go, then,’ she said. ‘Looks like that cellphone guy’s going to reach him first, and. .’ She trailed off, because the blood-soaked man had fallen to his knees. He pitched forward just at the entrance to the car park, and there was an audible gasp from all observers when his head struck the ground.

The man with the cellphone reached the prone body, and he stood a couple of feet away with his hands held out from his sides. He looked around, as if searching for support, then knelt by the other man’s side.

The smell of burning filled the air now, and there was another thump as the unseen vehicle’s petrol tank went up. A billow of smoke rose beyond the trees, supported on a ball of flame.

‘Someone called the fire department and paramedics?’ Tommy shouted. He received a couple of positive responses, then he and Jayne reached the car park and ran to his old Toyota. She grimaced as she ran, the movements grinding pain into her hips and knees, but she was the lucky one here. She was not bleeding.

‘Tommy?’

‘I can look after him until the paramedics get here,’ he said, and she could see that he was shaking. It took three tries for him to slip his key into the lock, and when he glanced back at her she could see the shock in his expression. She nodded. He’d taken a basic first-aid course so he could look after her when she suffered her infrequent churu blackouts. Not quite comas, a doctor had told her, and she’d wanted to ask What the hell do you know?

The man was standing up. Jayne frowned, already seeing something wrong with the angle of his limbs as they pushed him upright, like a newborn deer just finding its legs, unfamiliar with gravity and light and everything in the world.

‘Tommy.’ She pointed.

The cellphone guy was still there, standing with the blood-soaked man. He reached out and not-quite-touched him, perhaps afraid of hurting him — he seemed to be covered with wounds, Jayne saw, slashed and holed and torn — or maybe afraid of what this meant. Because the man shouldn’t be standing like that. Even from a hundred feet away Jayne could see that the agony had slipped from his face, along with the open-mouthed panic. There was something else there now.

As she tried to identify it, he lurched against the cellphone man, slung one arm around the back of his neck, and bit into his scalp.

‘Shit!’ someone shouted, and Jayne thought, Yeah. A man shouted in shock. A woman screamed. A kid squealed for its mommy.

‘Jayne. .’ Tommy said, his hand still on the car door. ‘Jayne. .’

‘Someone help him!’ Jayne shouted. A car door slammed and a big guy with a long beard and long grey hair trotted past them. He was carrying a hunting rifle.

Cellphone guy screamed. It was a terrible sound in that tranquil place. The blood-drenched man pushed him away, ripping a chunk from his face and spraying the air with gore. It pattered down on the dry car park, but Jayne saw it painted on the air for ever, hanging there like a still from some horror movie. He chewed and spat, then turned to the car park.

Behind him the cellphone man had collapsed, and Jayne thought, If I was him I’d be running like hell.

The blood-soaked man stood silently. And then he ran.

‘Get in the car,’ Tommy said. He opened the door without taking his stare off the running man.

‘No, I’m not-’ There were more people running around the bend in the road from the direction of the unseen fire. Jayne counted five, and they were all wrong. Some were stained dark with dried blood. A young girl was wearing a bunny outfit, one leg ripped open. One man seemed to have lost an arm at the elbow, the remnants of clothing and flesh flapping as he ran. The only sound of their progress was the slap, slap, slap of feet on the road surface, and Jayne thought, They can’t all have been in the car.

The guy with the gun stopped and braced himself, lifting the rifle and aiming it at the running, blood-covered man. I don’t want to see anyone shot, Jayne thought, thinking of Johnny and how they said he’d been found. But the gunshot never came. The man seemed unable to pull the trigger, and the blood-drenched man barrelled into him and knocked him back off his feet. They struggled on the ground, the rifle held sideways between them, and as the attacker’s teeth audibly snapped at the big man’s face he used the gun to shove him aside.

The long-haired man stood, looking around the car park as if for help. And then behind him the cellphone man got to his feet, and Jayne could see the mess of his chin and throat.

‘In the fucking car, now!’ Tommy hissed.

‘You too!’

‘Jayne-’

‘The police will be here! You too!’

‘Look out!’ someone shouted, and the rifle guy spun around. He brought the gun up, and this time Jayne knew he was going to use it. But the blood-covered man took him down again, and moments later the cellphone guy reached them, and together they bit and clawed while the big man screamed like a wounded pig.

‘We need to go!’ Jayne screamed, eyeing the girl in the bunny outfit as she raced into the far end of the car park. The one-armed man followed, scattering the crowd ahead of him, some diving for their cars, a couple more running in panic with no thought of direction. Jayne started shaking uncontrollably, each shiver prompting stabs of pain from her burning joints. Her vision swayed and swam, darkening briefly, and she thought, Oh no not now not now.

A car started somewhere, then another, and she heard the screech of tyres as they sped away. She staggered to the door that Tommy had opened for her and fell in, pressing her head back against the seat. She bit her lip. Her vision cleared a little, and she saw that Tommy had slammed the door. Tommy, you should be in here with-

He moved in front of the car and looked along the car park, and a Mazda Miata struck him and flipped him over its hood. He rolled over the windscreen and spun in the air as the vehicle passed beneath him, his head striking first trunk and then the ground as it sped away. That woman had blood in her ear, Jayne had time to think, a heart-stopping detail, and then she processed what had happened.

‘Tommy!’ she screamed. ‘Tommy!’

Someone fired a gun, three times in quick succession.

Jayne cracked the door open and put her right leg out, hanging on to the frame to lift herself up. The fainting spell had passed but she felt so pathetically weak, and now Tommy needed her and there was no way she could let him down. No way. She stood away from the car, and the gun fired again. Across the car park, a Prius had its windscreen shattered by a stray shot.

People screamed and ran. Car engines roared. Someone was on the ground not far away, a young teenage boy, and a man was chewing at one bare leg. The boy screamed and kicked, but even though his other foot struck the man’s head and neck and shoulder, the attacker seemed unconcerned. It was the rifle man, Jayne saw. His beard had gone from grey to red. Another gunshot, and Jayne moved around the open door and leaned against the car’s wing.

A huge crash came from her right. The Miata had struck a station wagon at the car park’s entrance, but she was only concerned for Tommy. Everything else was too much information, and her brain refused to process it. Keeping it for later, she thought, and that was fine, because instinct had already told her that this had to be just her and him.

‘Tommy,’ Jayne said. He was twisting on the ground like a toy winding down.

Another gunshot, and from the corner of her eye Jayne saw a shape fall to the ground.

She started forward just as Tommy pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Blood flowed from his nose as if from an open tap, and he kept his left hand inches above the ground. His wrist’s broken, Jayne thought, and she imagined his one-handed massages for the next few weeks.

‘Tommy!’

‘Fuck. .’ he said, and she thought she’d never heard such a wonderful word. He knelt, then got one foot under himself.

‘Quickly!’

‘Yeah.’

Another gunshot, and for a second she could not understand what she had seen. Tommy slumped back to the ground — maybe he was ducking to dodge the bullets, making himself a smaller target. But his head had changed shape, and he’d lost part of himself on the gravel. Got to get that, Jayne thought, and then cold realisation froze her to the spot. She could not breathe. Tommy didn’t even twitch.

A man appeared in front of her, a little guy in shorts and a T-shirt that said I’m Spartacus. He was carrying a crying toddler under one arm and in his other hand he held a pistol. He was pointing it at Jayne.

‘Tommy?’ she said, and the man glanced at Tommy’s prone shape.

‘Get away from the car!’ the man said. He stepped past Tommy and came for her, the gun never wavering. ‘Get away from the fucking-’

The running woman struck him and pushed him down, crushing the little boy beneath both of them. The gun discharged and Jayne felt no pain, no punch. The woman was wearing shorts, walking boots and a light jacket, and Jayne remembered seeing her up on the hillside. Gorgeous day, she’d said, and as she passed them Jayne had nudged Tommy in the ribs. But hey, look at that ass, he’d whispered. Like a sweet peach. Now she had what looked like a brutal bite mark on one shoulder, clothing torn away, skin ragged, and she attacked the man like a wild dog.

The boy was screaming, trapped beneath his struggling father and the woman — the thing — biting into him.

This is not happening, Jayne thought, but she was a new Jayne once again. The Jayne who’d been walking with her love ten minutes ago had changed into the one seeing a car crash, and its results. And now she was Jayne on her own. Because Tommy was dead, and there was no denying that.

The man’s struggles weakened — the woman had bitten clean though his throat. Jayne could not comprehend the blood. His son — if that was who the boy was — was coated in it, still struggling, and the woman shoved the dying man aside as she reached for the child.

‘No!’ Jayne screamed, in denial at what she was seeing as much as against the woman’s obvious intentions. The boy soon stopped screaming.

The woman looked up. There’s nothing in her eyes, Jayne thought, and she edged back towards the open car door. It was the pain in her joints, the screaming agony in her jarred hips, that gave her the courage to live. It reminded her of her life and everything she had suffered, the trials she went through every day to see another sunrise and eat another meal. And as the woman stood, expressionless and cooing softly, and then came for her, Jayne stood sideways and swung the door wide open. It struck the woman’s thighs and sent her staggering back, giving Jayne time to get inside the car and swing the door closed.

They’re biting, not eating, she thought.

She tried to slam the door but the woman stuck her arm in the way. Jayne pulled, tugging as hard as she could, before easing the door back a little to slam it again, and again. She heard the crack of bone, but there was still no sound from the woman. She paused, looked up, and the woman grabbed her hand.

Jayne screamed for help. No one heard, or if they did they were too concerned with their own personal dramas. The woman heaved, and Jayne’s shoulder burned white-hot with agony as she was lifted towards the space at the top of the open door. There’s a smell, she thought, realising that the woman no longer smelled like a living person. She smelled like old clothes, damp and stale.

Jayne felt a sick coolness on her forearm, and then hot pain as the woman bit through her skin.

Unable to breathe, she went limp, and as the woman tried to adjust her grip Jayne fell across the seats and kicked out as hard as she could. The swinging door shoved the woman back against the neighbouring car. Jayne sat up and reached out, slamming the door closed, hitting the locking knob, crying out in victory and pain.

Her arm was bleeding liberally from the bite. I’ve got it, she thought, and then she saw Spartacus and his young son standing up in front of the car. They looked around, faces slack and eyes empty, paying no regard at all to their wounds or each other. Then they saw her through the windscreen.

She heard their faint, haunting call.

The woman who’d bitten her — the woman with a peach ass — pressed her face to the side window, staring in. Her mouth hung open, and her teeth were stained with Jayne’s blood.

They’ll keep punching until they come through the glass, Jayne thought, but the woman turned and walked away. Spartacus and his son went in different directions, and then they were lost from sight behind the neighbouring cars.

Jayne screamed. She knew that she should remain silent, stay down and out of sight, but she was a different Jayne now, and she was more afraid than she had ever been before. She could see Tommy’s body in front of the car, but knew that everything had moved on.

She put her left hand over the bite on her right forearm. The blood was warm and sticky. They’re just biting, passing it on, rabies or something worse. She waited for whatever was to come, wondering if she’d feel the switch between being her and being one of them, and thought about the zombie films that Tommy had liked so much, and the online discussions he’d entered into, arguing the case for running zombies. They’re hunters! he’d tell her, and she’d shake her head and mutter something about him being an overgrown kid.

Jayne kept her stare fixed on Tommy’s body, ignoring the other movements she saw in her peripheral vision, and plucked her mobile from her jeans pocket. As she tapped in 911, she wondered how the hell she could make whoever answered believe her when she did not yet believe this madness herself.

Her vision darkened and she felt a familiar faint coming on. Not now not now. . But she drifted away, and when she opened her eyes again an unknown length of time had passed. The sky was darker, the mountains above her lit by weakening evening sunlight, and three people were milling around the cars in front of her. All of them were shredded things, though none of the blood looked fresh. She thought they were checking the cars. Her vision swam once more and she rested her arm across her chest, bite on display, as the churu sucked her down again. .

In dreams there were dead fingers massaging her awake, leaving trails of slick, rotting blood across her hips.

She woke again, jerking upright and crying out as the pain scorched in from her stiff joints. Tears came and blurred her vision, and she wiped her eyes with her arm, forgetting the wound. It was red-raw and still trickling blood, and perhaps that was good. Cleaning the wound, she thought, so that I don’t change and start doing what those things were doing. And then she saw the little girl standing in front of the car.

Jayne gasped and sat up straighter. It was dusk now, maybe an hour since it had happened. Tommy was a shadow on the ground, and there was no sign of the three wandering people she’d seen before. They must have looked in on me. Maybe one, maybe all three, and did they stand there and stare as I slept?

The little girl wore her hair in a ponytail.

‘Poor kid,’ Jayne whispered, and her illness dragged her down once more into unconsciousness. Her cousin Jill called her across a stretch of water turned red with blood, reaching out but unable to touch. I was coming to see you, she said to Jill, but I stopped and found peace with Tommy, and Jill smiled in understanding and waved her urgently across the water. But I can’t, it’s dirty, I’m clean, and if I step in I might. .

But Jill shook her head. She beckoned to Jayne, and-

— when she woke up her feet were kicking in the footwell, her arms thrashing at the seat, and she was trying to swim. She shouted out again in pain, crying herself fully awake. Her head thumped with the remnants of unconsciousness.

Jayne gasped and took several long, deep breaths. No one and nothing moved around her. Tommy was still there, and the little dead girl had gone. Across the car park lay another body, its face turned away from her. Breathing hard, afraid of another blackout, she searched for her mobile phone. When she found it she dialled 911 again.

Sorry, all our operators are busy with other calls, please stand by.

‘What the fuck?’ Jayne muttered. She dialled again and got the same message. And again. Then she dialled Ellie’s landline and got her answerphone:

‘Hey, Ellie here, I’ve pissed off to my folks in Kentucky. No way I’m hanging around for this shit.’

Jayne cancelled the call, shaking her head and terrified of the falling darkness, dialled 911 one more time — and a woman answered.

‘Yeah?’

‘I’m. . something’s happened to. .’ Jayne said, and the tears came. ‘Tommy.’

‘We’ll have someone with you soon.’ And the woman hung up.

Didn’t even ask my name or where I was. Jayne stared at the phone, expecting the woman to ring back, willing help to come and someone to tell her everything was going to be all right. But the phone remained silent.

She started the car and eased forward, pausing beside Tommy’s body. Shadows lurked beneath and around the other abandoned vehicles, cast there by the setting sun. Maybe the infected ones were watching with their empty eyes.

‘I’m sorry, Tommy,’ Jayne whispered. She tried to remember the last thing she’d heard him say, and the final words she’d said to him.

As she pulled away from the car park she turned on the radio, and soon she realised why all those operators were busy.