Berserk

'There you are,' he said. He drove on, heart racing, pain from his legs keeping him alert, silently calling to Natasha.

And eventually she answered.

We need to turn west.

'Is this nearly it? Is it almost over? I can't be your daddy forever, not like this. You don't need me forever.'

I need you now. And even if it does only last days, what you've done for me will be a lifetime. Just because we may not be together, that doesn't mean you won't still be my daddy. Just like you and Steven. You never stopped believing, did you? You never stopped being there for him?

'I still don't know if Steven is alive or dead.'

Natasha paused again, that telling silence. We need to turn west.

Tom glanced across at her body beneath the old blanket. She seemed to have shifted slightly, as if making herself comfortable, though it could have been the movement of the car shuffling her corpse down in the seat. He had seen her moving, he had listened to her speaking, yet still he found it difficult to believe. 'Is Steven as alive as you?' he asked.

I don't know, Natasha replied.

Tom turned off at the next exit. The road curved up and away from the motorway and joined an A-road, aiming west toward where the sun was melting into the horizon. He thought of them driving that far—reaching for the sun—and though the idea was foolish, it felt right. They were heading toward impossibilities. Natasha was leading him out of the world, and he was following willingly. Because however much she said she needed him, Tom knew it was Natasha doing the leading. It always had been. If he turned the car around now and headed back south, he guessed he would be dead from his bullet wound by sunset.

The road curved through the countryside, passing between low hills and bare fields. Trees and hedgerows caught the sun and burned slowly in its dusky glare, their leaves licking at the air with each breeze. Tom loved autumn. It was a time of death and decay, but also a time of survival. Plants shed their flowers and retreated beneath ground for the winter. Squirrels stored nuts in secret caches to see them through the harsh weather. And though dead leaves spiraled down to rot, their cousins would bloom again in a few short months. Autumn was beauty in death, the future in decay. Tom wondered what Natasha thought of it, this autumn that was her spring.

'Will you become alive?' he asked.

I already am alive.

'You know what I mean. Will you move? Will you … grow? Change? Fill out?'

You've seen me move and you've heard me speak. It hurts when I do both, but it feels good as well. It reminds me what being alive means.

'What does it mean?' Tom asked, and as the question left his lips its import struck him like another bullet. What does it mean? It was a question that he had asked many times before, both out loud, and more often silently. He would often lay awake at night, watching shadows expand across the bedroom ceiling as the moon phased across the sky. The shadows were slow; they had plenty of time. The question would pose itself again at the strangest of moments, and he was never quite ready for it, never prepared to suffer its weight. It would send him into a daydream of confusion, or a spiral of depression. Not because he could not find the answer—he guessed that nobody ever could, not really—but because he believed any chance he had of even guessing was long since past. He was growing old without really knowing what life meant for him. He despaired at that, and the despair only served to cloud his thinking more.

Now, though… for the first time in decades, he believed that the possibility of truly considering the question would soon be open to him. Here he was surrounded by life, death and whatever lay in between. Over the past two days he had been living and witnessing extremes—Jo's death, Steven's life, and his own battle to forge on whilst understanding neither. And here beside him the antithesis of logic: a living dead girl. A human, but a berserker. A child, but one with such old wisdom. An innocent who had done so much bad.

It means so much, Natasha said.

'I'm not sure …'

Being sure of that is what completes your life.

'But you're so young. Just a girl. How can you be sure?'

I've had a lot of time to think about it.

Tom closed his eyes, but he could not imagine ten years beneath the ground.

It's not far now, Natasha said. Lane tells me there's an industrial estate a couple of miles farther on. It's small, secluded. We'll wait for them. They'll be there soon.

'And then what?' Tom asked.

Then they'll take me home.

'And me?'

You'll be fine, Natasha said. I'll make sure. I'll look after you. And there it was, the admission, the proof that it was Natasha who was in control. She went away, withdrawing from his mind and leaving him alone.

Tom drove on, even less sure of the meaning of his life than ever.

You've nearly lost us, the little bitch was saying. You're too far away. Always been too far. Too stupid to find Sophia and Lane, too stupid to kill me, and now you're going to lose, and you'll be worth even less than you think. You'll be worth a spit from my mouth, a shit from my arse. You'll be worth nothing, Mister Wolf, and nothing is what you'll get.

Cole did not answer. That she was talking to him, luring him on, was good enough for him. He was used to her ranting and raging—he'd heard it ten years before, and even though it was now all in his mind, he was already used to it again—and he was happy for her to continue, lose control, even though his prime instinct was to cringe away from the unnatural monster. He felt her down in the dark places, stalking his mind as if looking for somewhere new to surface. Perhaps she would drag up another pseudo-ghost to try to scare him. The echoes of Lucy-Anne's dying voice still haunted him, false though they were. He pictured her pale thighs and black panties, shook his head to clear the image, heard Natasha giggling in the caverns of his mind. Bitch! he thought, and he felt her brief spurt of anger.

He smiled. And she was luring him on. He questioned why, but did not let that stop him. Nothing would stop him. Cole nursed the .45 in his lap, silver rounds nestling in the magazine.

'These are for you,' he said. 'Every single one of them for you.'

Couldn't do it before, won't do it this time.

'I will,' he said, 'without a doubt, without a twinge of guilt, and without an ounce of regret at never knowing how the boffins at Porton Down changed you.'

Natasha was silent, her presence huge; speechless.

'So, I know something you didn't think I knew,' he said, smiling.

I'll tell you more, she said. I'll tell you all of it, if you want to know. Do you want to know, Misterwolf?

'Fuck you!' he said, and Yes, he thought, yes, I want to know.

I'd tell you what they did, if only you could catch me, Natasha said, laughing as she pulled away.

How Cole wished he could fire a bullet after her retreating mind.

The others, Lane and Sophia and their children … he was trying not to think about what had happened before. It got in the way too much. It obscured his purpose, threw up a roadblock between him and the bitch he was after, and he did his best to keep that past down in the underground with all the other ghosts. Yet he could not shake the memories of their escape from Porton Down, and the things he had found afterwards. The syringes. The strange drugs. The antidote to the silver that Sandra Francis had made for them.

His only way to skirt past the roadblock was to believe that their antidote had worn out.

Five miles from the motorway Natasha told Tom to turn again. A minor road curved down into a shallow valley, ending at the entrance to the industrial estate Lane had told her about. It was five thirty when they arrived there, and they drove into the main car park against the flow of traffic. Most people were leaving for home, and a few scattered lights remained on in several buildings. The sun had settled in the west and spread an orange glow across the hilltops. Sunlight caught stray clouds and lit them like Chinese lanterns. The car park quickly emptied until there was only the BMW and two other cars. One industrial unit still had its roller door open, and a man and woman were working on a large piece of furniture inside. Their radio gave dusk a classical theme.