Coldbrook

5

The zombies surged by, and none of them had eyes for Holly. They were hideous. Many appeared unharmed and unchanged, apart from the blankness in their eyes and the sense of terrible purpose in their actions. Some had been wounded, and the injuries were many and varied — bullet holes, knife wounds, scrapes and gouges, burns, crush injuries, impact marks. Some were naked, some were in their nightclothes, others wore uniforms, suits, or casual clothing. The one thing that united them, other than the empty eyes, was the blood.

It was smeared across their mouths and jaws, their chins and throats and chests. These creatures had been biting, and they were seeking more.

Holly started backward, but Moira held her still.

‘Be calm,’ Moira said.

The zombies flickered from view, only to be replaced by more, and Holly realised that she was looking at a projection. The room was large and dim, the atmosphere heavy with moisture, and there were things in there that she could not comprehend.

The projection point of view shifted, turning to follow the path that the zombies were taking. The image splashed with something wet, and when it cleared she saw a long straight street, lined on each side with tall buildings. One of the buildings was on fire — people at the higher windows were shouting and waving. Their voices must have been desperate, but she could hear nothing. This was a vision only, and for that she was glad.

The street was jammed with zombies, and they were being cut down by gunfire from further along the street. Many of them stood up again and carried on running, or hobbling, or crawling if their legs or hips or spines had been destroyed. Many more — those shot in the head — stayed down.

The view suddenly shifted as whatever was observing this chaos climbed on top of an overturned car. And from higher up the sight was even more astounding.

The street was barricaded with a line of tanks parked side by side next to a Dunkin’ Donuts. Their big turret guns pointed along the street, but it was their machine guns that were doing the damage, raking left and right and making the air in front of them shimmer with heat and smoke. The silhouette of a helicopter gunship came quickly into view above them as it passed over the barricade and opened fire.

They were zombies, yet the devastation wrought upon their bodies was shocking. Holly wanted to turn away but found that she could not. She was riveted. She had the sense that she would have to see this eventually so she might as well go through with it now, see it all now.

The helicopter hovered over the street and its guns swivelled on their mountings. Glass shattered, raining down from the tall buildings, bodies were ripped apart, and then the helicopter turned towards her point of view, and Holly whined a little, trying to edge back.

‘It’s not happening here,’ Moira whispered in her ear.

The image flashed yellow, and then white, and then it became a pattern of falling snow on the air. Beyond the faded image, panting slightly where she lay on a clear fluid bed, a woman grasped at the air as if to hold the last drifting flakes.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Holly said.

‘Take a breath, Holly,’ Drake said. ‘And look around. This is the heart of our Coldbrook.’

Holly looked closer. The woman wore a simple robe similar to a hospital gown and lay on a large flexible bed that was moulded perfectly to her body. Above her, where the image had seemed to be projected onto the air, hung a framework of clear loose pipes. They looked like unobstructed flows of water, but Holly guessed they were held in place and shape by whatever forces contained the clear bed. Leading up from the framework into the ceiling were thicker pipes, dark and solid. Small sparks flared and died along them, leaving the surfaces and performing tight orbits before fading away. She stretched up to get a better look, but Moira touched her on the shoulder.

‘Don’t get too close.’

‘Is she the one who. .?’ the prone woman asked.

‘Her name’s Holly,’ Drake said.

‘That was my world,’ Holly said softly, pointing to where a vague haze still hung in the air. ‘So she was there, seeing it? My world?’

‘I’m so sorry, Holly,’ the woman said, and she averted her eyes as if ashamed.

‘What is all this?’ Holly asked.

‘Our version of what you called a breach,’ Drake said. ‘There’s more to see. Gayle?’ Drake asked.

‘About seventy miles north-west of here,’ the woman said softly.

‘That all came from what happened in Coldbrook?’ Holly asked. But no one answered, because they knew she was coming to terms with what she’d just seen.

‘We can show you more,’ Drake said, nodding towards the rest of the room. Heavy curtains hung as dividers, but beyond Gayle — the woman still lying meekly in front of her — Holly could now make out variations in the room’s lighting, and colours beyond those curtains.

‘More?’ she said. And though what she had seen was terrible, she nodded and followed Drake.

Spread throughout the large room were men, women, and some children, perhaps a dozen in total. Half of them were twitching in their fluid beds while images played in the air above them. The projection’s outer extremes would flex and bend, pipes leading up into the ceiling sparking and whipping from some unseen influence, and the sleepers were connected to the screens with more of those fluid connections, watery snakes squirming through the air. The remaining people lay in deep slumbers. They all looked exhausted, and Holly wondered briefly whether they were here against their wills. But Gayle had apologised to her, and she’d heard a level of admiration in Drake’s voice. Maybe these were the only people in Gaia’s Coldbrook who were able to do this. And whatever these devices were, they showed her how her own world was dying. Though the images were silent, she could imagine every scream of pain and roar of destruction.

She saw a field, crops trampled by hundreds of running people. In the distance she could just make out the first regular shapes of buildings, the only taller structure a church spire. They were running towards a small town.

Rushing through an indoor market, stalls crashing and crushed, jewellery and paintings, books and pots, sculptures and other craft items trampled into the floor, as sellers and customers alike were caught and bitten.

And then she saw the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. One of her favourite buildings, now it had bodies scattered on the lawns, windows smashed, and smears of blood across its light brown facade. People were rushing from the main entrance, and she knew what they all were.

It was then that Holly realised that these sights were viewed through a zombie’s eyes. Somehow, the people lying around her were seeing the downfall of her Earth through the eyes of monsters.

‘How does this work?’ she asked. ‘Where is your breach generator? I don’t understand.’

‘You walk into our world from another, and you don’t understand?’ Drake said.

‘But these things. . this technology.’

‘Quantum bridges. I’ve read my father’s notes, and he handed down most of his knowledge. Once they learned how to stabilise micro-black holes in the lab they could draw through gravity lines. You thought we were backward?’

‘No, no,’ Holly said. But perhaps she had in the beginning, just a little. She’d seen bows and arrows, basic clothing, and people living in holes in the ground.

‘Come with me,’ Drake said. ‘It’s best not to talk too much in the casting room. It’s tiring work, and sometimes to watch it can be. .’ He shrugged.

‘Draining,’ Moira said.

Holly nodded, feeling a surge of anger. But that faded quickly, replaced with a hollow hopelessness and a feeling of guilt that she was the one who’d escaped.

‘Please,’ Drake said, holding out his hand in invitation. ‘We’ll tell you what happened here. As much as we can, at least.’

‘As much as you can.’

‘We don’t know everything. It was before most of us were born.’

Holly shook her head. All the parts made sense, but together the big picture was a blur, a confused reflection of what she had seen happening on those strange screens. It all started here, she thought. That first zombie came from here.

And for Earth to become like Gaia was now the best she could hope for.

‘No one from here has ever travelled to an alternate Earth.’ Drake had just prised a door open and they stood in a ruined room, the concrete walls crumbled with damp, metal reinforcements rusted and protruding like rotten teeth. A series of glass pipes were strung horizontally across one wall, many of them holed and smashed. Furniture was simple and functional. The room was lit by several hanging oil lamps, though electrical wires protruded from holes in the ceiling.

‘So I guess I’m quite a surprise,’ Holly said. Neither Drake nor Moira answered, and she marked that as something to investigate further.

‘Coldbrook is all much like this, fallen into ruin,’ Drake said. ‘The black hole is supported deep beneath us, fed by artificial light. It doesn’t need any maintenance, though the containment is checked every few weeks. But to maintain the rest of the facility, so deep underground, seemed pointless.’

‘Even though you still have furies?’

‘You’ve seen them. After forty years, they’re slow-moving. Not really a threat unless you get too close. We maintain the areas we need, and that’s all.’

As they walked on, Holly remembered Melinda holding out her arms to welcome the stumbling figure and falling beneath it as the fury bit into her. ‘That’s how it happened,’ she said. ‘Someone got too close.’

They passed a glass wall and Holly experienced a pang of recognition. But beyond the wall was something very different from Control. A large room held several metal columns upon which sat the remains of glass spheres, five feet across and smashed.

‘What’s that?’ Holly asked.

‘My father said it was a broadcasting station,’ Drake said. ‘I used to play in there when I was a kid, until the spheres got smashed.’

But Holly was barely listening, because another possibility was niggling at her.

‘You were watching our world before we formed the breach,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Drake said.

‘How long before?’

‘It’s complicated,’ Drake said, cutting Moira off as she started to speak.

‘Try me. I’m a scientist. Couldn’t you have warned us?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’ They were in a wide corridor now. Plaster had fallen from the walls. Holly kicked out and sent a chunk of it across the floor. It struck the opposite wall and exploded in a shower of damp fragments. Drake stepped back, and Moira slipped a hand into her pocket. ‘Do you have some sort of Star-fucking-Trek non-involvement policy?’ Holly was starting to shout now, unable to stop the rage, sad and pointless though it felt. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you-’

Moira gasped. Drake shook his head.

‘Because we couldn’t,’ he said. ‘We can view through to your world, but not go through physically, never interact. You saw Gayle and the others — we call them casters. And yes, they were seeing through furies’ eyes. But they have no control over their host, other than their intrusion making it calm and observant. It’s remote viewing.’

‘How long have you been watching?’ Holly asked again, still shouting, stepping forward with her arm raised. Moira had taken something from her pocket.

‘Your world?’ Drake said. ‘Almost thirty years.’

‘Thirty years?’ Holly said, stepping towards Drake. ‘Thirty fucking-’ A sting in her neck, hands catching her and easing her down, and her last thought before unconsciousness was, They sent it through themselves. .