Coldbrook

7

Holly checked every CCTV camera that was still working at least three times, until she knew that she could wait no longer. A strange, heavy numbness had spread around her side, and she wondered whether she was bleeding internally. She balanced the danger of making her way to the garage against staying put, and opened the door.

She was fairly certain that there were at least three furies loose in Coldbrook’s corridors.

Are the keys still in the Hummer? Are there more furies loose in the garage area? Can they smell my blood? Will I pass out before I can even get there? There were so many variables and unknowns that Holly tried to thrust them from her mind, and concentrate only on what she knew: she had a job to do.

She worked her way slowly from Secondary, down the staircase, and towards the common room and garage beyond. Vic and the others could easily get down into Coldbrook, but that single parked vehicle crushed against the door was a problem. And a bleeding Holly offered the only chance that it could be moved. The weight of responsibility pressed down on her even as the pain spread and numbed her, and she felt a strange dislocation from her body.

A figure shambled around a corner ahead of her. One side of his face was black with dried blood. On seeing her he ran, uttering that mournful noise, alerting any other furies in earshot.

Holly leaned against the wall and raised her pistol. She fired and the bullet punched the fury in the chest. He jarred to a halt, and in that moment when he was motionless she aimed again and shot him in the face. He went down, rolled onto his side with his face against the wall, then grew still.

Her hearing dulled, breathing hard, Holly forced herself on. She kept the gun aimed at the motionless fury, not knowing whether they could feign death, not knowing even now whether they had the will to deceive. She realised that she must have known him when he’d been alive, but she didn’t think too hard about that. He had died almost a week ago, and now she had put him out of his misery.

A wave of dizziness caused her to slump towards the floor. She railed against it, bit her tongue, pressed the hot gun barrel against her cheek. But the numbness seemed to spread from her wounded hip and up through her chest and neck, distancing her senses and luring her towards darkness.

And though she knew that peaceful eternity was waiting for her in Heaven, now she wanted only life.

‘Fuck it!’ she shouted, clearing her senses with an outburst of rage. In the distance, from a direction distorted by echoes, she heard first one short hoot, and then another, both of them drawing closer.

It didn’t matter. She had the gun, and there was only one possible outcome. If Vic and the others can’t get down here, they might die. If they die, any chance at a cure is gone. If there’s no cure, my Earth dies just like all those others. The future depended on whether she could reach a Hummer, start it, and drive it a few feet.

It was so ridiculous that she might have laughed.

Left arm pressed across her stomach, her hand clasping the temporary dressing tighter to her right side, Holly started along the corridor again. She knew the complex well, not only the passageways and rooms but those spaces between and behind them where cable routes and plant rooms linked the facility together.

That was how she would beat the furies. Two left, but with her senses fading in and out she could not risk simply charging ahead blind. She had to balance speed with caution.

As she moved, something bothered her. A mistake. An idea that she had left herself open to danger. But she did not dwell too heavily on it, because that would divert her concentration.

Coldbrook was abandoned and run-down, and all but silent. There were only her footsteps, shuffled sounds whispering along a corridor stained with dried blood, scattered with items discarded in panic, the walls pocked with bullet holes here and there. And then there were the bodies.

They stank. The smell filled her nose. She tried breathing through her mouth, but that made it worse.

Pausing at the door of the common room, Holly held her breath and listened.

No footsteps. Nothing moved. Coldbrook’s lighting hummed softly, and deeper down was the constant presence of the core, a sensation more than a noise, betraying itself through the fabric of the place as it had ever since it had first been initiated many years ago.

As she reached for the door, her satphone rang.

‘Shit!’ Startled, she pulled her hand from her wound to go for the phone. Blood had dried against her hand and she ripped part of the padded trouser leg and tied dress away. The pain stabbed through her, and she dropped the gun.

Something banged against the other side of the door. It struck again and again, the lever handle flipping down and up, down and up. The fury was struggling to open the door, some fragmentary memory telling it what to do. Holly stooped for the gun, and then pitched forward as a fainting spell washed over her. Oh fuck, not like this, she thought, and as the door creaked open behind her she realised she had lost.

‘Fuck fuck fuck!’ she shouted — pure rage, pure hopelessness, the most defined and lucid moment of her life so close to its end.

The door banged against the wall. Footsteps. She rolled towards the sound and screamed, but the thing stayed silent. The fury tripped over her and struck the ground head first, thrashing like a landed fish for a few seconds as Holly scrambled aside, kicking against it, pushing against the floor until she sat against the wall and the gun was by her side. She grabbed it up and held it in both hands, and then the fury turned to face her.

Sugg. Their chef. A calm, quiet man, he’d spent most of his spare time birdwatching in the mountains above them. Now he looked relatively untouched apart from a terrible bite on his left hand. But Holly knew there was nothing at all human about him, and she shot him in the neck. He fell back, lifted himself again, and she fired into his head. This time he lay still.

Panting as she tried to retain consciousness, Holly realised that the satphone was still ringing in her pocket. ‘Oh Vic, for fuck’s sake,’ she breathed. As she plucked out the phone she heard several sets of running footsteps.

Moira must have released more than three furies.

Holly propped the phone between her knees and aimed along the corridor, back the way she had come. How many bullets?

The first person around the corner was Drake. He paused, took in the situation, then ran on. Moira came behind him, then several more Gaians. They were armed, sweating, grim-faced, and Holly thought they had been in a fight.

She did not lower the gun.

‘Take one more fucking step,’ she said, voice husky with threat.

Drake raised his crossbow and fired in one fluid movement. From behind him three more bolts blurred along the corridor.

Holly did not even have time to close her eyes before the projectiles struck home.

The fury staggered three more steps through the doorway, bolts protruding from her throat and face. Her mouth worked, and a high keening emerged, something like the strange hooting Holly had heard before. The woman who had been Sam — Coldbrook’s accountant, who had famously arrived at their last Halloween bash dressed as Carrie, complete with a drenching of fake blood — fell close enough for Holly to touch.

‘Any more?’ Drake asked.

Holly sat back against the wall and looked at him from under drooping eyelids. ‘Ask Moira,’ she said. And then they came close and she blacked out, allowing unconsciousness to claim her now that, perhaps, she was safe.

When Holly came to, Drake’s wife Paloma was kneeling beside her, tending her wound, frowning in concentration.

Holly hissed in pain and Paloma glanced up, obviously surprised that she was conscious.

‘Sorry,’ the tall woman said.

‘Right.’ Holly looked down at the gun in her hand. The phone between her knees had stopped ringing. She wondered if she was dreaming this, living a moment that never was as she sank deeper towards death.

‘Do I need to take your weapon?’ Drake asked. He was standing beyond Holly’s feet, between her and the huddled shapes of two dead furies.

‘Yeah. Probably. Fucker.’

Paloma grunted, something noncommittal and impatient.

‘I have to. . apologise,’ Drake said. He squatted in front of her, coming down to her level. ‘Moira was meant to tie you up, that’s all. When she came back to me she was mortified that-’

‘That she thought she’d killed me?’

‘Moira is in awe of you. And a little scared of you.’ Drake shrugged. ‘We all are.’

His wife unfolded a paper sachet and spread something on the knife wound, and Holly screeched at the sudden shattering pain. Paloma held her hand and squeezed softly, and then the pain faded as quickly as it had arrived.

‘It’ll settle soon,’ Paloma said. ‘The wound isn’t too deep, and I don’t think it’s damaged anything important.’

‘Other than me,’ Holly said.

Paloma’s smile was lopsided. ‘You know what I mean.’

Holly nodded her thanks and the woman stood, backed away, gave Drake room to move in closer. A couple more of his people stood further along the corridor, their backs turned. Holly could no longer see Moira.

‘Well, I suppose I should blow your head off first,’ Holly said. ‘You’re their boss, after all. What have you done to Jonah?’

Drake blinked uncomfortably but did not reply.

‘Is he dead?’ Holly asked.

‘No. Yes. Maybe. I don’t know yet. But it doesn’t matter, he’s-’

‘Doesn’t matter?’

‘He’s lost to us, Holly. And he’s a brave man.’ Then Drake told her where Jonah had gone, and why.

‘This world is his priority!’ Holly said, stunned. But even as she spoke she wondered at the truth of that. Since his wife’s death Jonah had spent his life striving to reach the multiverse, beyond this world. His priorities went farther.

‘He’s a complex man,’ Drake said, and in his voice she heard him saying, As am I. ‘By doing what he can to stop those bastards — something I’ve craved my whole life — Jonah might save everything.’

‘Or he might destroy the last place that’s protected from this plague,’ Holly said.

Drake inclined his head. ‘Perhaps. But they’re the last world worth saving.’

‘You can arbitrarily decide that?’

‘Yes, I can.’

Holly shook her head.

‘Holly,’ Drake said. ‘Jonah demanded that I come back. His parting wish — his demand — was that I should help you and your friends in your vain search for a vaccine.’

‘You think it’s in vain.’

‘You’ve seen Mannan. We’ve discovered nothing.’

‘But you’re not us.’ Holly went to stand, and Drake and Paloma tried to help her. She waved them away. Tucking the gun in her belt and grabbing the phone, she pushed herself up the wall, fighting weakness more than pain. She’d lost blood. But she still had her determination.

She looked down at herself. Bloodied trousers, bra on display, dress tied around her waist. ‘While I’m doing this, maybe you can find me some clothes,’ she said to Paloma. Then she headed into the common room, and Drake followed.

Moira was there, examining coffee machines and juice dispensers on the counter. The short woman glanced her way, but Holly did not acknowledge her presence.

In the garage there were two bodies lying beside the Hummer, and its windows were smashed. Jonah had fought to block the doorway when the plague had already spread, and it was with that realisation that Holly felt the first stab of sorrow. I’ll never see him again, she thought, and she remembered him laughing, talking about things she barely understood and drinking his precious whisky. A complex man, Drake had called him. He didn’t know the half of it.

The keys were still in the vehicle. Holly drove it ten feet from the doorway, wondering whether she was changing anything. Perhaps the fates of whole universes hung on what she was doing right then. Or perhaps nothing mattered at all.

‘That’ll need guarding,’ she said, pointing at the door as she walked back towards the common room. Drake nodded.

Moira was standing by one of the easy chairs where Holly had once sat and talked with her friends and colleagues. She had the look of a cowed dog seeking attention.

Pausing before her, Holly said, ‘Right, then.’

From the garage, soft hooting.

And then came the screams.