Coldbrook

Thursday
1

Jonah’s head thrummed and the world swayed: someone was doing something to him, and he thought, He’s back.

Jonah wondered whether the Inquisitor had ever left. That first time had been before the plague came through, and perhaps Jonah was back there now, waking from a nightmare of the End of Days and succumbing to whatever had struck him down in his sleep. The dreams had been realistic — a culmination of his secret fears and concerns over what they were doing down in Coldbrook.

But it was not the Inquisitor kneeling above him. Drake was sweating as he manipulated something on Jonah’s chest. Behind him were the casting-field generators, the network of suspended pipes glowing and sparking slightly. How does that work? Jonah thought — and then he remembered Drake and the crossbow.

He drew a deep breath and the pain seared through him.

‘I’m almost done,’ Drake said. He knew that Jonah was awake, but he hadn’t even glanced at his face. ‘Keep still, or you’ll kill us all.’

‘Almost done. . what?’ Jonah breathed. But Drake ignored him.

Jonah closed his eyes again and tried to remember: the heat and humidity of the generator room; Drake’s insistence that something had to be done, something had to stop the Inquisitors’ crusade.

And then the man’s sad expression as he’d shot him in the chest.

My heart! Jonah thought, and though he still felt the familiar thuds of heartbeats and heard the whisper of blood through his ears, they seemed different. Strained — like a car that had burned off all its oil and was grinding its engine parts.

‘What have you done?’ he said.

‘I’ve made a trade,’ Drake said. He sighed and leaned back from where Jonah lay on the floor. He was looking him in the eye at last.

‘A trade?’ Jonah asked.

‘I’m sorry, Jonah. I’ve taken hope from you and given it to everyone else.’

‘And how have you done that?’

‘Don’t you know yet? Haven’t you worked out the only way?’ Drake was sweating, tense.

‘You’ve turned me into a weapon,’ Jonah said, beginning to understand.

‘I’ve been waiting for someone like you for years, Jonah! A final hope. I believe the Inquisitor will take you back to its own Earth to initiate you into its ways.’

Jonah touched his chest. ‘And when I’m there, I release the plague that you’ve implanted in me.’

‘You’ve seen it flitting in and out, ghostlike. I think what they do is part casting, part breach, but they travel with impunity and without fear of infection. To beat them, we have to get past that. Take the fight to their world.’

‘It won’t know what you’re doing?’

‘It’s not all-seeing, Jonah. Not everywhere all the time,’

‘You don’t know any of this for sure.’

Drake shrugged. ‘Isn’t all science a matter of best guess?’

‘No,’ Jonah said. ‘But. . that doesn’t mean you’re wrong.’ He tried to sit up, but Drake laid a strong hand on his chest.

‘Not yet,’ Drake said, hesitant. ‘So. . you’ll go? You’ll help?’

‘Have you left me with any choice?’ Jonah asked. He felt a sickening weight in his stomach, and was surprised to discover it was the fear of death. He’d never thought he would be afraid, not after seeing Wendy die, witnessing her grace and dignity. But now there was so much still undone.

‘No choice.’

‘You’ve made me a prophet of blood and fear.’

‘It’s what our Coldbrook has been about for years. All our tests on Mannan and we’ve never moved one step closer to a cure. But we have tested this controlled plague-delivery system on him, and over the years we’ve perfected it. We’ve watched, and waited, and planned for the arrival of someone like you. Someone courted by an Inquisitor. And, Jonah, you’re doomed anyway. Why not save the multiverse before you die?’

Jonah laughed. It hurt, but feeling pain was to be alive. ‘You make it sound so noble!’ he said.

‘Isn’t it? You’ve seen only a fraction of the castings. Most places we look, we see death and pain, and those furies waiting for any hint of life to return. We need a cure, yes, but part of that must be taking the fight to them.’

‘Help me up,’ Jonah said at last. ‘You know what, Drake? I’m an old man. I’ve got a dodgy ticker, which I’m surprised is still ticking after whatever the hell you’ve done to it. If you’d only asked, I’d probably have gone anyway.’

‘I had to make sure,’ Drake said softly. Jonah could see the obsession there. Perhaps part of it was revenge, but mostly it was a desire to make things right. Drake had been born after his world’s worst suffering, but he had witnessed that of so many others.

‘But I want to travel,’ Jonah said. ‘Through the breach where the disease entered your world.’

‘Why?’ Drake asked, surprised.

‘Because I want to see. Take it as. . a dying man’s wish. And the Inquisitor will follow me.’

Frowning, Drake nodded.

‘So how does all this work?’ Jonah said, touching his bare chest. As Drake began to explain, Jonah watched the shadows.

The Gaians of Coldbrook looked at Jonah as if he was some kind of Messiah, an irony that did not escape him. I’ve come to save everything, he could have said, and the crazy bastards might even have bowed down before him.

As he and Drake walked, Jonah thought about those he was leaving behind, Holly most of all. A precious friend, almost a daughter. She deserved an explanation and a goodbye, but he could give her neither. That made him sad. Soon he would exist only in Holly’s memories, as Wendy did in his own.

They approached the final door that Jonah knew led to the outside, and he grabbed Drake’s arm. The other man turned quickly, startled, ready for an attack. Jonah smiled and held up his hands.

‘You’ve already killed me, Drake,’ he said. ‘I just want to say something.’

‘Say it quickly,’ Drake said. He was looking behind Jonah, nervous and unsettled, and Jonah knew what he was looking for. He’ll be here soon, he thought, but not just yet. The Inquisitor needs me on my own. Because Jonah had plans beyond those that Drake had made for him.

‘I’ll do my best to carry this through, even though you took the choice from me. But you have to promise to help my friends. They’ll need access to Mannan and they might need protection. And they’ll do their best to come up with a vaccine.’

‘Of course,’ Drake said. ‘A cure is something I can never give up on.’

‘Holly will make sure — ’ Jonah began. Then a look that that chilled him crossed Drake’s face.

Jonah shoved him against the door. Drake grunted, wincing when his head was bashed back against the metal. ‘What have you done to Holly?’

‘Stopped her following you through. I didn’t want her involved, seeing what I had to do to you.’

‘Stopped her how?’

‘Moira stayed behind to tie her up.’

Jonah sighed, missing Holly even more. ‘Tell her. . tell her you asked me, and I agreed to all this,’ he said.

Drake nodded, and Jonah felt the respect between them growing again. Drake was a scientist and a ruthless man, ready to compromise his own morals for the greater good. Was that reprehensible or admirable? Jonah couldn’t decide. He didn’t have forty years of living as a survivor to influence his choices.

Drake opened the door, and cool night air sighed in.

Eight men and women came out with them into the darkness, and they walked silently towards the head of the valley. Though none of them spoke, Jonah could sense the respect they held for him. A few glanced his way now and then, as if to imprint him on their memories. Perhaps they’d tell their children and grandchildren of how they had seen the man carrying the Inquisitors’ doom in his heart.

After an hour walking through the night, he saw the bulky angles of a building on a shoulder between two mountains, several hundred feet below the ridge line and on the moonward side. It reminded Jonah of a coal mine on a hillside back home.

‘Jonah,’ Drake whispered, ‘is it following?’

‘I have no idea,’ Jonah said. ‘You said yourself, it’s not all-seeing.’

Drake glanced at him, worried.

Jonah smiled. ‘Yes, Drake. It’s following. Has been for a few minutes.’

They moved off again, climbing the ridge until they were level with the large structure, then cutting across the hillside. Shale slopes whispered in the darkness as they dislodged stones, and shapes scattered to hide in shadows as they approached.

Jonah slipped his fingers inside his shirt and fingered the small wound on his chest. It was two inches below his left nipple and towards the centre of his chest, and it felt more like a boil than an entry wound. Its head was smooth and warm to the touch, and hard — when he pressed it the nodule sank into his loose old-man’s skin but hurt only a little. If he took a deep breath, he could feel the small charge inside surrounded by fury blood. Before they parted company Drake would give him the trigger.

He felt curiously detached from the thing in his chest. It was not a part of him. If anything, it was a part of Drake’s desires and destiny, not his own.

At a silent signal the eight people spread out across the slope, four above and four below the point where they had stopped.

‘I’ll take you from here,’ Drake said. ‘There are traps.’

Jonah felt stares on him as he and Drake walked towards the building, but no one spoke. Perhaps they were so used to moving silently when they were outside that they could not bring themselves to say anything.

The last time Jonah glanced back, the people had merged into the shadows.

It took another few minutes to reach the structure and as they drew near Jonah could make out the haphazard nature of its construction.

‘They started building quickly around the breach. Then later, after The End when the survivors made their home in Coldbrook, they decided that further protection was needed. Walls and traps. Safeguards. It’s become something of a ritual for us to build some more onto this every three years.’ Drake pulled an object from his shoulder bag and handed it to Jonah.

‘And this will be the trigger,’ Jonah said.

‘Might feel strange to you.’ Drake placed it in Jonah’s hand. ‘Squeeze hard, and the pod beside your heart will burst.’ Warm, the size of a peanut, flexible, still Jonah sensed a solid centre to the item. He nodded and placed it carefully in his jacket pocket.

Drake led him inside. Jonah had no sense of leaving anything behind, perhaps because everything he had was already a world away.

They passed through a series of doors — most of them locked — passageways and arches, working their way deep into a labyrinth of concrete and rock. Drake took a route that was clear only to himself, and here and there he held up a hand and went about making their way safe. Some traps were basic: tripwires firing spring blades and primed crossbows; false floors above deep, spiked pits; hidden triggers that anything unaware could activate and which would bring spikes or blades or crushing rocks down upon them. Other traps were more mysterious to Jonah: slow-flowing waterfalls that Drake had to divert, their effect unknown; openings haloed by weak light, the air within sparking softly. Jonah wanted to ask about every single one, his scientist’s mind alert. But there was no time for investigation.

As they went deeper, they came across the first trap that had been triggered.

‘From here, it might not be safe,’ Drake said. He aimed his light into a pit. Jonah looked and saw an old scarecrow-like thing down there. It was impaled on several long, thin spikes, and now it squirmed at their presence, clicking in its throat. Its face jutted out, leathery skin stretched over a bony forehead. Drake fired his crossbow and stilled it.

‘Here,’ Drake said. He delved into his bag and handed Jonah his pistol. ‘I’ll guide you to the breach, and protect you. Beyond there you might need this.’

‘How far?’ Jonah asked, still looking into the pit.

‘Three traps.’

A shadow closed on Jonah and pulled back again. His Inquisitor, letting him know it was there. He sensed no alarm radiating from it, no fear that Jonah was running away. He guessed that it could follow him to the ends of the Earths.

They went on, and each of the other three traps held the remains of a Neanderthal fury. Two were dead, their heads ruined. The third was pinned against a wooden frame that had sprung from the wall and been pushed back by those that had come after. It lifted its head at they approached and Drake destroyed it.

Jonah was amazed once more at the fury’s decayed state. It was over forty years dead, yet it had still had the ability to move and the will to spread its disease. He experienced a moment of panic that made his heart flutter and caused him to lean against the passage wall.

They walked on and soon passed through a final doorway in a thick stone wall. The wooden door had been pulled to one side, its top hinge pulled away from the crumbling rock.

‘I’ll reset them all on the way back out,’ Drake said.

‘I know,’ Jonah said. And I’ll be committed to this. But he hadn’t for a second thought about turning around. This might have been forced upon him, but, though he could never believe in fate or destiny, his mind was set.

‘This is it,’ Drake said, and for the first time Jonah heard a weakness in his voice. Awe did that, perhaps. And maybe fear.

The breach was in front of them, set into the original hillside like a black diamond. Light did not escape it: it neither shone nor glowed. It was simply a blackness in the shadows thrown by Drake’s torch.

Jonah held out his hand to Drake, and they shook.

‘They’ll write poems about you,’ Drake said.

‘Poems? Christ. I’m Welsh. Give me a good song any day.’

Drake laughed sadly, not quite understanding. ‘Good luck, Jonah.’

Without another word Jonah passed through, and his greatest journey began.