Coldbrook

3

They drove through the day, hoping to reach Cincinnati by sunset.

After Vic had told Lucy why and how it was his fault, she’d surprised him by softening a little. He could not be sure how either of them could guarantee it, but their spoken determination to stay together had inspired a measure of strength in him that had been lacking before. Instinct had driven him up and out of Coldbrook, but Lucy’s love went some way to driving his guilt back down. He had much to make amends for, but she knew why he had done what he’d done. In her eyes he saw that she understood.

Lucy drove some of the way, but Vic always felt more comfortable driving. And besides, for every mile of their three-hundred-mile journey he was considering roadblocks, state border controls, martial law, public panic, and the rule of chaos. In his pocket he carried his identification card, and in the car door beside his left thigh sat the M1911. If they came across trouble, he wanted to be behind the wheel.

Lucy had spent the first hour of the journey trying to call friends in Danton Rock on her iPhone. Her first couple of calls were answered, and Vic cringed as he heard her telling those at the other end that they should pack and leave immediately. ‘Forget the damn school fayre!’ she said to one of them and to another she whispered, ‘Something’s gone wrong down there and you shouldn’t hang around.’ But then her third call was cut off unexpectedly, and after that the whole cellphone network seemed to go down. She’d tried a dozen more numbers ten times each, including those of her parents and her brother. It was only as the last call connected and a heavy, loaded silence was the only answer to her desperate pleading that she put the phone down.

She’s beginning to understand. This is my fault, Vic thought. But Lucy said nothing more, and she did not try to call Danton Rock again. She said she wanted to save her phone’s battery.

They kept the radio on, turned down low so that Olivia couldn’t hear it. She was happy playing her Nintendo DS, and the chirpy jingles of the Keep a Puppy game provided a surreal theme to the stories they were hearing. As the day wore on and they drew closer to Cincinnati, Lucy moved over in her seat so that she could touch Vic. A hand on his thigh, arm around his shoulders, something that involved physical contact — he took as much comfort from it as she did.

‘You can’t blame yourself,’ she told him as they listened to a report about a huge fire in central Knoxville.

‘I can,’ he said. Lucy squeezed the back of his neck, and from the back seat Olivia started singing.

The radio reports grew in severity, until one channel said they were suspending their Sunday music programming to bring all the updates on the developing situation.

‘What’s a zombie?’ Olivia asked.

Lucy flicked the radio off and glanced at Vic.

‘Just a silly monster from the movies,’ Vic said.

‘No such things as monsters, honey,’ Lucy said.

They exited the freeway and pulled up outside a rest stop. Olivia whooped and hollered, delighted that they’d reached their holiday destination, and Vic looked at the trucks and motorbikes and dusty cars lining the parking lot, wondering at his child’s sense of imagination. Outside the car, stretching the several-hour journey from their limbs, Lucy stood close to Vic and entwined her fingers with his.

‘They’ll have the TV on in there.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Olivia will see.’

He bit his lip and watched his beautiful daughter skipping beside the car’s hood, singing softly to herself, so vulnerable and dependent.

‘It’s spreading quickly,’ he said.

‘Moving as fast as people can run,’ Lucy said.

‘Faster.’ Vic brushed a strand of her hair behind her ear, and she gave him a strained smile. He’d treasure any smile from his wife now as a gift.

‘Jonah hasn’t called,’ she said.

‘He’ll be busy.’ Lucy nodded slowly, rubbing an ache in the back of her neck. ‘Holly Wright went through,’ Vic said, not sure why he’d blurted that now. Perhaps she had been on his mind, beneath the fear for his family and what was to come. Perhaps leaving her behind was just another facet of his guilt.

‘Through the breach?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Where the thing that started this came from?’

Vic nodded, unable to answer. He felt a weight behind his eyes, and his heart was thumping fast. Don’t let me see that look in your eyes, he thought, remembering the dream of his sister and Lucy.

They ate, used the toilet, and left the diner as quickly as possible. As Vic drove, Lucy tried once again to call her parents in Los Angeles and her brother in Seattle. But the networks were still overloaded.

As she put the phone down once more, they passed by the sign for Cincinnati.

They met Marc Dubois where Jonah had arranged, in a private staff car park at the university. He was sitting on the hood of his car as they pulled up, and Vic saw him checking out their RAV4. In one hand he carried a satphone, in the other he held a cigarette. He did not smile but leaned in Vic’s window, breathing cigarette smoke over him. ‘One, two, three,’ he said, nodding at each of them without expression, and then he turned away and dialled his phone.

Vic glanced across at Lucy. She raised an eyebrow, then he opened the door and stepped out. His legs and arms were aching, both from the long drive and the escape from Coldbrook that had preceded it. He wished once again that he’d spent more time in that gym.

‘Marc Dubois?’ Vic asked, though he already knew who he was talking to. Tall gent, Jonah had told him. Should play basketball but he hates sport. Good-looking bastard. Looks like he should be a lady’s man, but he’d more likely go for you. Marc is a genius. You’ll like him, Vic. Eventually.

‘Jonah,’ the man said into the phone. His voice was low, slow and measured. ‘They’re here. All three.’ He nodded a couple of times, then half-turned and looked at Vic over his shoulder. ‘So you want me to kill him now, or later?’

Vic tried not to react.

‘Okay,’ Marc said. ‘Speak soon.’ He pocketed the phone and sat back gently on the hood of his car. ‘He said to kill you later.’

‘Doesn’t sound like Jonah,’ Vic said. ‘He’s usually one to act on the moment.’

‘Seems to think you might be able to help me first.’

‘Well. .’ Vic said, trying to size up this man. He gave nothing away. ‘I thought perhaps it was the other way around.’

‘You think?’ Marc asked. Then after a pause he offered a half-smile. ‘Just fucking with you. Here.’ He held out his hand and Vic shook it. ‘So, let’s meet your family.’

Lucy and Olivia were stepping from the car, and when Vic introduced them Marc produced a candy bar for Olivia.

‘You want to see some rabbits?’ he asked Olivia. She squealed.

‘Can I hold one?’

‘Oh, honey-’ Lucy said, but Marc interrupted.

‘Sure you can! One of them is called Olivia, and I’m sure she’ll love you.’

‘You’re just joking!’ Olivia said through her laughter.

Marc pulled a face. ‘You got me. I’m joking. She’s actually called Lady. But I’m not joking when I say she’ll love you.’

He looked up at Vic and Lucy, glancing back and forth as if sizing them up.

‘Jonah said-’ Vic began, and Marc cut him off.

‘You okay to drive?’ he asked Lucy.

‘Sure.’

‘Cool. Ride with me, Vic. Need to fill you in on a few things. My place is five miles up into the hills, and I want to get there by nightfall.’

‘Why?’ Olivia asked.

‘Because,’ Marc said, leaning in close to the little girl and putting on a spooky voice, ‘that’s when the monsters come out!’

‘Monsters? Like zombies?’

Marc stood again, staring down at Olivia from his great height. Then he turned and opened his car door. ‘Come on. Light’s wasting.’

‘Lady rabbit awaits,’ Vic said to Lucy, and he kissed his little girl before climbing in beside Marc.

The tall man drove in silence for a while. Vic positioned his wing mirror so that he could keep an eye on Lucy behind them, then he glanced several times at Marc. In profile he presented an intimidating picture — sharp nose, sloping forehead, bald head, lush beard, cigarette smoking in the corner of his mouth. His arms were long, his hands big. He might have been a wrestler or a boxer, rather than what he was. In any other circumstance but this, Vic might have felt comforted by his presence.

‘That old Welsh bastard really asked you to kill me?’ Vic asked, only half-joking.

Marc turned to look at him, staring for so long that Vic wanted to shout, Don’t forget you’re driving!

‘You have a nice family,’ Marc said. ‘Your daughter is delightful. Your wife’s pretty, but sad.’

Vic sighed and looked out of the passenger window. The RAV4 was following close behind and he wished he was still with them, singing with Olivia and holding Lucy’s hand.

Marc reached over into the back seat while still driving, rooting around for something. ‘Here. Thought I should show you this.’ He dropped an iPad into Vic’s lap and Vic winced when the corner dug into his groin.

‘What’s this?’

‘Open it, access the net. I’ll give you the website to look at.’ Vic did what he was told, then Marc read out a series of numbers and letters forming a website address. After that, a user ID and password.

‘What am I looking at?’ Vic asked.

‘Something you shouldn’t be.’

‘Whatever Jonah told you-’

‘Is true. I’ve known that man for over forty years. How old are you?’

‘Forty,’ Vic said.

‘Fucking kid. Listen here, Vic. I’m going to do the best I can, and you’re going to help me. But what Jonah told me. . I can’t just forget that. Can’t forget what a fucking stupid prick you were, wrecking every safeguard built into that place. Can’t forget what a selfish motherfucker you were, leaving them down there and escaping to save your own damn skin. I’m supposed to be working with you — it’s good that I know what a clumsy fucker you are.’

‘You don’t sound French,’ Vic said after a pause. The man intimidated the hell out of him, but he wanted to present some attitude, stand his ground. He was doing enough beating himself up as it was, without taking it from someone else as well.

‘Mother was from Quebec.’ Marc reached over and tapped the screen. ‘Now look. You got some catching up to do.’

Vic looked. The page was laid out in thumbnails, each with a brief description underneath. He clicked on the first, and watched.

Over the next fifteen minutes, while Marc drove and smoked silently and Lucy followed on behind, Vic watched a selection of videos that displayed just how bad things had become. They seemed to have been taken from many sources: hand-held hi-def video cameras; mobile-phone footage; images taken from press sites and news programmes; aerial views, probably from police or military choppers; and several videos that looked as though they’d been taken by a soldier’s gun- or helmet-mounted camera.

‘What is this site?’ Vic asked halfway through. He’d just watched a group of raging, blood-soaked people swept from a roadway by a huge truck with a cattle guard on the front, and then a dozen men machine-gunning them in a ditch. The camera shook as the shooting took place, and turned away when the first of the men lobbed in a grenade.

‘Military site a friend of mine gave me access to,’ Marc said. ‘There’s been some rapid response, as you can see. But the scope of this thing is huge. It’s spreading like ripples in a pond, except that they’re getting bigger and faster. It’s hit beyond Charlotte in the east, Atlanta in the south, and there are even reports from Nashville.’

‘All in a day,’ Vic said.

‘Yeah. A day.’

‘But we’re fighting back, right? The government? The military?’

Marc looked at him, another of those long stares that suggested he’d forgotten that he was driving.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But what do they think they’re fighting? No one believes in zombies.’

‘I don’t know-’

‘Think about it,’ Marc said, cutting him off again. ‘You’ve been listening to the radio. Heard the panic. The religious nuts saying this is the end, God’s will, Armageddon. The jokers suggesting that media panic is overblowing everything, it’s nothing but a bunch of fucking smacked-up college kids copying each other, japes and jokes on the scale of Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds radio broadcast. And the official statements tell us less than the radio jocks and the screamed eyewitness accounts recorded by ambulance-chasing reporting teams. Then there’re the fucking experts, names pulled off the shelves by radio and TV stations to be talking heads while the news guys go and have their make-up touched up. And none of these fuckers have a clue. Because they don’t have an open mind.’

‘But the army,’ Vic said. ‘The government.’

‘Yeah, there’s been shooting and Chinooks flying around. Who knows, they might have some fancy new crap which they can finally get to try out on some moving targets. You know Bill Hicks?’

‘No,’ Vic said.

‘Pull up G-Twelve!’ Marc chuckled, lit another cigar-ette and inhaled, and Vic went to open a window. But he thought better of it.

‘But the spread,’ Vic said. ‘That’s your field, right?’

‘Yeah,’ Marc said. ‘I’ve never, ever seen anything spreading as fast as this. It’s almost word-of-mouth speed, and that’s unstoppable by force. So we’ve got two hopes, and neither of them involves bullets and bombs. First, this thing dies out of its own accord. Whatever the contagion is — and others are working on that — it’s come from somewhere else. That place you and Jonah reached. Maybe. .’ He waved his hand, as if to pluck an idea from the air, and chuckled again. ‘The ghost of H. G. Wells will save us, and the cold virus will wipe this thing out.’ He took another long drag on the cigarette.

‘And the other possibility is a cure.’

‘Right. And that’s where I come in.’

‘And me?’

‘You?’ Marc said, glancing sidelong at Vic. ‘Jonah tells me you have a good mind. Sharp. A clear way of lateral thinking. Considering he thinks you’re a shit, he talked you up pretty good. So, you’re my gofer. I tell you jump, you jump.’

‘Great,’ Vic said, and he looked down at the iPad again, opening another file. Something was niggling at him. Something he’d seen, but not registered.

‘Yeah,’ Marc said. He lit a new cigarette from the stub of the old. ‘And when it’s all over and we’ve saved the world, then I get to kill you.’