Coldbrook

5

Vic follows his sister through the ruined streets, and Jayne is staring at him from every window, every open door. There are cars slewed across the roads, resting on deflated tyres and with their windows slicked with something wet and mossy on the inside. A few have burned, and their stark black skeletons are now home to weeds that wave in the breeze.

As Charlotte approaches the door in the house that he always knows but never should, a noise thuds in from all around.

‘What?’ a disembodied voice asks.

Charlotte knocks on the door and it swings open beneath her fist, letting out a wafting shadow that quickly grows and shelters the sun from view, and his dead sister turns to him, with her perfect skin and lifeless eyes.

‘We’ve been leaking fuel,’ Charlotte says, ‘and the gauge is fucked. We’re running on fumes.’

Vic’s eyes snapped open and he gasped. The shadow fled. ‘Daddy?’ he heard in the distance, and Olivia was tapping his arm. He lifted his right headphone and leaned down. ‘I’m scared,’ she said.

‘Okay, sweetie. Hang on.’

‘How the hell are we leaking fuel?’ Marc shouted.

‘I don’t know!’ Gary said. ‘Ricochet back at the airport. Gremlins.’

‘How far are we from Coldbrook?’ Vic asked, feeling a little like a kid sitting there in the back: Are we nearly there yet?

Nobody answered for a few seconds. Sean was awake and alert, but silent. For the first time Vic noticed that he’d tucked his pistol into his waistband, shifting it from the holster at the small of his back. More comfortable, probably. Jayne seemed to be asleep.

‘Hundred miles,’ Gary said. ‘But we’re going down now.’

‘Crashing?’ Sean asked. He’d braced his leg in front of Jayne’s, and her eyes were still closed.

‘Controlled descent,’ Gary said.

Lucy hugged Olivia between herself and Vic, the little girl picking up on the panic filling the cabin even though she could no longer comprehend what most of them were saying. Vic looked at Jayne and she was staring at him from beneath half-lowered eyelids. Sean tried to protect her without squeezing her too tightly.

‘We’ll be okay,’ Vic said, leaning across to Lucy and forgetting that everyone could hear.

‘I love you,’ she said in response. It took his breath away.

Vic nodded, because saying it back would have sounded as empty as he still felt.

‘Going down in the mountains,’ Gary said.

Sean caught Vic’s eye, and they both understood the dangers that would soon be stalking them.

Gary swore. The aircraft’s motor started coughing, shaking the whole fuselage. As their controlled descent changed into something that was under little real control, Vic held his family and thought of Holly and what she might have witnessed. And the simple truth was that he wanted to see her again. The idea felt like a betrayal when he had his wife’s head resting against his, their daughter crying between them. But he could not shut her from his mind.

‘Now!’ Gary said, and that was their only warning. They struck the ground violently, the floor punching up so hard that Vic thought his ankles had fractured. Jayne’s eyes snapped fully open and she stared at him. The helicopter bounced, tipped to the left, and then rolled up and over its nose as the rotors slashed at the ground.

The fuselage ruptured. Someone screamed. As Vic squeezed his eyes shut and held on to his family, his life, something warm splashed across his face.