Coldbrook

Tuesday
1

If Wendy had come back to him as one of those things, Jonah would have understood. It would hardly have been a surprise — he’d seen them kill, he had shot some himself, and the images of their grinding teeth and rupturing skulls were imprinted for ever on his mind. His waking nightmares made him terrified to sleep. And if she had returned as the Inquisitor, he would have understood that as well. The Inquisitor was in his mind now, and sometimes Jonah believed that thing was steering his every action, subconsciously or not.

But Wendy came back as herself.

I’d never let you put that gun to your head, she said, sitting at the foot of his bed. Jonah knew that she was not real, yet he welcomed her here with him, reaching out and not quite touching. She seemed unaware of his distress, or his need for contact. She looked vaguely disapproving, as she had on those few occasions when he’d returned home after having drunk too much.

‘But I don’t know what else to do,’ he said.

There is always another way. You told me that when I was so ill, and I wanted to talk about-

‘No!’ Jonah said. He had never entertained the thought of helping her on her way, had never permitted her to talk about it. Many times since then he had felt the guilt of that, and had dreamed about the agony he might have saved her from.

You’re not in that much pain, Wendy said, scolding. So don’t you dare let yourself consider that now, Jonah Jones. There is always another way.

Jonah blinked and Wendy disappeared.

Got to get away, he thought. The gun sat on his bedside table, solid evidence of his despair. But he would not betray Wendy with such thoughts again, and even now they felt distant and alien to him, the remnants of a dream rather than of any real desire to end his own life.

How could he? After all this, after what they had done, how could he ever consider taking the easy way out?

Jonah stood and slipped the gun into his belt. He felt watched at every moment — turned quickly, saw shadows at the periphery of his vision, heard breathing identical to his own — but there was no reason to believe that the Inquisitor was always there. Jonah had to believe that he was not.

What the Inquisitor was, why he was here, what he wanted of him. . these were questions whose importance were secondary to Jonah’s survival. He could remain here and accept what this thing was doing to him, or he could leave. The choice was stark — and simple.

Jonah left his small room, carrying the heavy flashlight that illuminated the whole corridor ahead of him. He headed away from Control to begin with, slipping into the canteen area where the smell of food starting to rot was already evident. He could hear movement — scratching, shuffling, the gentle caress of material against metal — and he wondered how those creatures he’d locked in the walk-in refrigerator could know that he was here. Entering the huge pantry, he selected some dried food. Tins would be too heavy, and he’d be able to add water to the sachets.

Where am I going? he wondered, but though the voice was his own he tried to ignore it for now. One thing at a time. ‘Jesus, I could do with a shower before I go,’ he said aloud, and he actually giggled. It felt good — but it sounded desperate.

There were canvas bags beneath the canteen counter, used to collect plastic and tins for recycling on the surface. One would be enough. He dropped the sachets inside, added a few small bottles of water, then returned to the common room and lifted the small bar’s flap. He’d all but finished the Penderyn whisky and the next best thing was a bottle of Jameson’s. Sighing, unscrewing the top, taking a long swig. As it burned its way down he remembered that thing’s image.

‘Fuck off,’ Jonah said. ‘Just fuck off!’ The sounds of movement from the canteen became more frantic, as did their calling. If he left those afflicted in the walk-in fridge for ever, would they always move? The thought was horrific, but he had seen that wrinkled, shrivelled creature that had come through and killed Melinda, and he recognised its age. In ten years or a hundred, whether or not he remained down here, others might venture down to discover where it had all begun, and they might hear the movement of creatures trapped behind the doors he had locked. .

‘If there’s anyone left,’ he muttered. Since the power had gone out, he’d had no way of following what was happening on the surface. He was delaying what needed to be done, and he knew why — he faced a terrible dilemma.

He could go back through the garage, move the Hummer, and climb up through the ventilation shaft. Follow in Vic’s footsteps, retracing the route this terrible contagion had taken.

Or he could go through the breach.

Jonah smiled. He took another drink, then screwed the lid on and placed the bottle in the canvas bag. There was no decision to be made. He was a scientist, after all. And perhaps the next couple of hours would see him and Holly reunited, and the culmination of his lifetime’s dreams manifest around him.

Jonah knew that he could do nothing more here.

The Inquisitor was waiting for him twenty metres from Control. Jonah dropped the bag and heard the clunk of glass hitting concrete. Don’t break, he thought and fire throbbed in his head. He kept hold of the flashlight and shone it directly at the man who turned, beckoned him to follow, and then disappeared into a perpendicular corridor.

Picking up the bag, Jonah smelled the stench of spilled whisky. The bag leaked. Good Irish dripped across the floor, the sachets of dried food were swollen from the fluid, and Jonah felt a terrible sinking feeling in his gut when he realised how unprepared he really was.

‘Oh, bollocks to it all,’ he said. The gun heavy and useless in his belt, Jonah held on to the wall and swung around into the side corridor, home to a plant room and three storage rooms. It was barely twenty feet long, and at its end stood something that brought Jonah up short, winding him. He tried to breathe, but it was as though the air was gone from Coldbrook. He tried to rationalise what he was seeing, make sense of it, and though the true meaning was clear he could not yet accept it. It would take the Inquisitor and its deft touch to make him accept.

It would take surgery.

It was not a table, or a chair, but something in between. Hanging on hooks suspended from shadows were the elements of Jonah’s new face-to-be: bulbous eyes; a snout; a bristled film to cover his own scalp.

‘It is required that you accept,’ the Inquisitor said.

‘No,’ Jonah said.

‘You will never die.’

Jonah managed to laugh, because the Inquisitor spoke as if he was offering something attractive.

‘Fuck off!’ Jonah could not help looking at those other objects, wondering what they were. He guessed that they belonged inside him.