Coldbrook

2

Jayne surfaced slowly from the churu coma, her senses coming alive as her pain grew. She felt as if she’d been torn apart and thrust back together again. The roar of the helicopter’s motor had stopped, replaced now with screaming and other, more terrible sounds. Something dripped. Someone cried, and it sounded like a little girl.

Jayne opened her eyes, and even that hurt. Groaning out loud, she lifted her hands and checked her body for wounds.

There was blood on the back of her head, but she didn’t think that it was hers.

‘Sean?’ she said, glancing to her left. Sean was gone. His safety straps were cut, and his absence seemed unnatural.

She closed her eyes, trying to process what she’d seen just across from her. Then she looked again.

The guy, Vic, was dead. Head flung back, from the chest up he was red. His mouth hung open, and blood dripped from between his teeth. His little girl was standing with her back to him, less than three feet from Jayne, tugging at her mother’s safety straps.

‘Hey,’ Jayne said.

The girl staggered a little, kicking something on the floor, letting out a wretched cry.

Someone screamed again, and the wrecked helicopter seemed to shake.

The woman — Lucy, Jayne remembered, the name coming to her even though she wasn’t sure they’d even been introduced — was whimpering as she wrestled with her straps.

‘Hey,’ Jayne said again. The woman looked up, her eyes wide. Her face was misted with blood, but it didn’t seem to be her own. She blinked a few times, glanced above and behind Jayne, and started moaning.

The little girl stood back and kicked the thing on the floor again. She froze, crying, and then a sharp metal snap signalled Lucy’s freedom. She snatched up her daughter and pressed her face against her chest before jumping through the hole where the cabin door had previously hung.

Jayne looked down at the thing on the floor and realised it was a head. Not Sean, not Sean, she realised, because this dead person was white. The head was smashed and the only reason Jayne managed to keep from screaming was that it was looking away from her. At least he’s safe now, she thought, and then she did scream.

The dead man opposite her lifted his head and looked at her.

‘No!’ she shouted. ‘No, he’s one of them, no, help me, help me!’

From somewhere behind her came more anguished screaming, and then she recognised Marc’s voice calling Gary’s name again and again.

Sean appeared in the doorway, streaks of vomit across his chin and down his chest. He climbed in, shielding Vic from Jayne’s view, and-

‘Get your gun out!’ she shrieked. He held her, leaning in and ignoring the vomit as he pressed close, whispering into her ear that it was all right, she was alive, alive!

‘He’s not one of them,’ he said. He half turned. ‘Vic! Vic!’

‘Yeah,’ Vic said somehow. Jayne struggled against her straps, pushing against Sean to move him aside so she could see. She’d heard Vic talking, but she had to see.

Vic’s eyes were a startling white against the blood and other stuff coating his face. He spat, retched.

‘No more puke,’ Sean said. He put one hand on Vic’s chest and brought a knife around, and for a moment Jayne thought he was going to put the man out of his misery.

Sean sawed and hacked at the restraining straps.

‘Your family,’ he said, and Jayne saw Vic stumble from the wrecked aircraft and fall to the ground outside.

‘Sean? I saw his head. I saw Gary’s head.’

Sean glanced down and then came for her, putting himself between her and what she didn’t want to see again. Behind her, Marc’s shouting had ceased, and now she could hear him whispering. She didn’t want to hear what he was saying.

‘Got to cut you out,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry you as best I can, but you can’t-’

‘Marc,’ Jayne said.

Sean glanced behind her. ‘Saying his goodbyes,’ he said, and he went to work on her straps. His eyes were wide, and she wondered what he had seen.

‘There,’ Sean said as the straps fell away from Jayne. She slid a little to the right, not realising until then that they’d come to rest at a tilt. He did not apologise as he slung her arm around his neck and lifted.

Jayne half turned as she stood, and she strained to see over her seat into the pilot’s cabin. Lights were still on across the control panels, the windscreen and its framing had vanished, and she could see Marc in silhouette, hugging his lover’s headless corpse. Stunned, speechless, she let Sean help her from the helicopter and down to the ground.

They’d crashed fifty metres from a road that skirted a large lake and had taken down several small trees in the process. Debris lay scattered across the rocky slope, and there were several deep gouges where the chopper’s rotors had struck and dug into the ground. Vic sat on a splintered tree, hands resting on his knees as he stared at the ground between his feet. His wife knelt next to him, and their daughter stood in front of them and hugged them both.

‘Mummy, Daddy,’ she said, over and over. ‘Mummy, Daddy.’ Jayne was pleased that the family was still together and when Sean eased her arm from around his neck she would not let him go.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

‘Can’t believe we survived that,’ he said, looking at the crashed helicopter and shaking his head. ‘How the fuck did we survive that?’

‘Mummy, Daddy,’ Olivia said again, ‘there’s a man.’

‘He looks. .’ Lucy said, and she pointed, saying no more.

Along the road from where they’d come down, just past a marked parking area, two cars and a station wagon were parked on the grassy verge. A naked man had emerged from the shelter of the vehicles, crossed the road, and now he was running towards them, weaving through the trees growing across the slope.

‘Everyone together!’ Sean said. He pulled Jayne so that she stood behind the family.

‘Hide your girl,’ Jayne said. Lucy nodded, pulling Olivia down so that she sat huddled against her chest.

‘I. . I got this,’ Vic said, standing and pulling the pistol from his belt. He looks just like one of them, Jayne thought. Blood shone in his hair, and his face and throat were speckled with stuff that she didn’t even want to think about. He’d tried to wipe it off but had succeeded only in smearing it more thoroughly over himself.

‘Just keep your eyes open for others,’ Sean said. He walked forward to meet the man running at them, and Jayne knew that she should look away. This was something she’d seen before and had no wish to see again, but looking the other way made her feel vulnerable. She’d always been someone who was happier to face danger rather than turn her back.

She glanced back at the helicopter and saw Marc dropping from the cockpit’s doorway. He landed softly, rifle in one hand, blood smearing the other. She didn’t know how to act so she smiled at him. He seemed not to notice.

Sean waited until the man was a hundred metres away before he gave him two chances. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot you in the head!’ The man did not pause. ‘Say something!’ The man said nothing. Sean fired when he was twenty metres away and put him down with one shot.

Jayne breathed a sigh of relief, and then Marc was with them, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sean.

‘Good shot,’ Marc said.

‘Thanks. You okay?’

‘No.’ His voice was flat, cold. ‘Anyone else hurt?’

‘Bumps and bruises,’ Sean said.

Marc looked back at them, and he only glanced at Vic before his eyes settled on Jayne. He doesn’t want to see his lover’s blood, Jayne thought, and she felt an affinity with this man. They had both seen the people they loved violently killed.

‘Look! A little girl!’ Olivia sounded so excited, as if she was looking forward to having a playmate.

‘Down to the lake,’ Sean said. ‘Marc, you want me to. .?’ He held out his hand for the rifle, and Marc handed it over without a word.

They started down the slope, Lucy carrying her daughter, and behind them Sean shouted the same two warnings he had given the man. But Jayne could already visualise the ragged mess of the girl’s neck and chest. And soon her pretty pale face would be wiped away.