bullets behind it. The aim was bad, and they rattled against the industrial units and the parking bays before them.
Sophia looked at Tom curiously, then down at Natasha where she lay in his arms. 'Come with me,' she said. 'If you want to stay alive you do what I say when I say it, even if you think I'm wrong. Understand?'
'How can I trust you?' Tom shouted.
'We promised the girl we'd look after you.'
'That doesn't mean—'
'We keep our promises,' Sophia said, and her cool stare forbade him from answering back again. He nodded and followed as she ran for the open unit. Lane came along behind.
Tom could hear the tone of the Chinook's rotors changing as it landed somewhere out of view. He guessed there could be twenty or more battle-ready soldiers in there, ready to pour out, encircle the units, and take revenge for their many dead comrades.
He followed Sophia into the unit, past the piece of furniture the man and woman had been working on. It was an old table, restored and polished to a brilliant sheen, reflecting fire from outside. A bullet had skimmed its surface and gouged a foot-long oak splinter. 'We won't hurt you!' Sophia called. Lane's shadow fell on the table as he entered behind Tom.
The man and woman emerged from an office at the rear of the unit, arms held high, faces pale, eyes wide. The woman looked at what Tom held in his arms and her eyes went wider.
Sophia shot her in the face, and Lane shot the man twice in the chest.
Tom gasped and dropped Natasha onto the sawdust-covered floor.
The man went down hissing, drawing in one huge final breath, blood bubbles forming on his soaked T-shirt. Sophia stepped forward and shot him in the eye.
'Head shot,' she said to Lane. 'Head shot!' Lane simply shrugged.
'What the hell?' Tom said, but the two ignored him.
Daddy! Natasha said, and Tom looked down at where he had dropped the girl. She moved feebly on the ground. He bent to pick her up, tucking his hands beneath her body—it was not so cold now, no longer carrying the chill of the grave—and heaved her back into his arms. His back hurt. He bit his lip and groaned against the pain.
Sophia smirked at him. Tom turned away.
'Back door,' Lane said, and Sophia darted into the office at the rear of the unit.
Tom heard her throwing bolts and shifting furniture, and he frowned. Barricading us in? he thought. We should be running! The soldiers will be here in seconds, and they'll be berserk themselves, ready for revenge. Their mates are cooking out in that orchard. There won't be time for 'hands up and come out'
You forget so quickly, Daddy, Natasha said, nestled somewhere in his panicked mind. Trust them.
'Trust?' he spat, unable to help himself. He looked down at the dead man and woman, tears forming however hard he tried to gulp them back.
'The next couple of minutes could be our last,' Sophia said, emerging from the office. 'The last thing we need is unnecessary hindrances.'
'Don't try to explain murder to me!' Tom said. She looked away, sneering, and he swallowed hard.
A volley of bullets rattled into the wall beside them, spilling tools and chunks of masonry to the ground. Tom fell and crawled behind a fixed woodworking bench, dragging Natasha with him and making sure she was shielded from outside.
Lane fired several shots from his pistol, then ducked down as a sustained burst of machine gun fire slammed into the unit. The noise was tremendous. Bullets coughed gouts of concrete from the walls, tore apart the plasterboard wall of the office, struck the old oak table, ricocheted from the floor, pinged from the bulky metal woodworking tools. Tom covered his ears and waited to be shot. Natasha could not protect him from this. A ricochet would take off the top of his head, or the soldiers would get in here, blow him apart with a burst to the chest and head. He looked across at Sophia, and between them the man's body jumped and jerked as bullets struck him. Tom averted his eyes, not wishing to see the damage they caused. Even above the gunfire he heard Sophia laugh.
'What the fuck are these things?' he whispered, and Natasha allowed him his rage, holding back any response.
The gunfire ended. Tom's ears rang with the echoes. Lane and Sophia, hunkered down behind machines, swapped glances. Lane nodded. It was as if everything were going according to plan.
Someone started shouting. 'Lane! Sophia! You know there's no way out!'
Lane's eyes went wide with genuine surprise, and he coughed out a laugh. 'Major Higgins, is that really you? Haven't you retired and gone to play polo into your twilight years? You old goat, I can't believe they sent you after us!'
'Come out, Lane,' the man shouted.
'So where's Cole?' Lane answered.
'I have no idea!'
Lane gave the 'wanker' sign to Sophia, and she laughed and nodded, returning an imitation of fellatio. 'Sophia says you're a cock sucker!' Lane shouted, ducking as Sophia threw a chunk of masonry at him.
Tom could not believe the surreality of the scene. They were about to be machine-gunned to death—and he'd bet his life that these soldiers were from Porton Down, armed with silver bullets and a knowledge of what they were up against—and here were the berserkers making jokes.
Short memory, Natasha whispered. Remember Dan and Sarah?
Tom nodded. Yes, he remembered them. But what could two berserkers do against twenty armed, ready and vengeful soldiers? They would take a few with them perhaps, but not all.
Another burst of gunfire continued tearing the unit apart. Tom held onto Natasha, smelling her musty odour and feeling her tiny movements against his body. Something scratched at his chest and he pulled up, disgusted and amazed. Now? She wanted feeding now? But he looked at Sophia and Lane again, saw what was happening, and he understood why.
At last they were changing. Until now they had been under control, but Sophia was shaking, her legs quivering as they seemed to stretch out behind her, and Lane's eyes were closed, jaw thickening and lips cracked and bleeding. The berserker had dropped his gun and Tom looked at it, wondering whether he could reach it without getting his arm blown off. Probably not. But still, the option was there.
Lane turned to look at him, and his eyes were red. 'Hands off!' he said. Tom shrank back.
The gunfire broke off again, Higgins shouted, and that was when the first scream rose up from outside.
Tom was shaking. His toes tapped at the ground, his arms jittered where he supported himself on his elbows, and his body trembled as if in the throes of a virulent fever. He was sweating, too, dripping onto Natasha and speckling the smooth concrete floor. He tried to keep his eyes closed, but the images behind them were too painful to keep them shut; Jo lying dead across his lap, Steven as a boy, keen to play at soldiers. So he opened his eyes to escape those images, only to give himself more terrible sights to forever remember. The dead man had been struck by several bullets, and blood and insides had splashed up onto the wall behind him. The dead woman's leg had been blown off. Lane and Sophia continued to hide behind the woodworking machinery, still changing, making light of their predicament as the screaming rose in volume from outside.
More gunfire, but this time it was not directed at them.
And Tom was angry. It was an anger he had never felt before, not even ten years ago when he had first been told of Steven's death. He was not even sure where it came from, but he supposed it was a combination of everything that had happened to him, a livid stew made from Jo's death, Natasha's sad history, Cole's pursuit, the bullet still lodged somewhere in his back, the two dead people splayed across the floor beside him now, their blood filling tiny cracks and scrapes in the concrete, spreading out, forming a map of their pain. Their blood. Their blood.
Tom stopped shaking, stared at the mess on the floor and had a sudden desire to lap it up.
The screams and gunfire outside were joined by something else—roars and screeches that he recognised from Natasha's memories.
Daddy, she said beneath him, I still can't change. Her voice was so wretched that it pulled Tom back from whatever precipice he was leaning over. He raised himself up and looked down at the girl. Her mouth was bloodied,
