his chest dripping, and her body wavered continuously as if seen through a heat haze.
'What's out there? Just those two children?'
Dan and Sarah, all grown up now. Young and powerful and angry!
An explosion complemented the gunfire. Tom risked a look around the corner of the bench, the anger rising again, ready to drown him. He gasped and swallowed, making sure he could still breathe. His legs and arms ached from supporting himself for so long, his face throbbed, and the only part of his body that seemed not to hurt was his back.
Tracer rounds tore across the car park. The stolen BMW was a mass of flames and several bodies lay around it, their uniforms simmering and catching fire in the heat. One of them crawled feebly away from the flames, hair and fatigues smoking and then igniting.
A soldier darted past the front of the unit, and for an instant Tom wanted to run him down, punch him, tear at him until he died.
A shadow followed. A shadow that growled. The soldier's scream came from out of sight, but it did not last very long.
Two soldiers backed away across the car park, heading for the ivy-covered fence from where Lane and Sophia had first emerged. They took turns firing their weapons and reloading, and though panicked they seemed to have some level of control over their fear. One of them was covered in blood; it did not seem to be his own.
Tom looked at the blood, and saliva flooded his mouth. 'What's happening to me?' he said, but nobody answered. He looked at Sophia and Lane, and though the change had shifted their bodies from the norm, they seemed to have reined in their full berserker rage. Lane had picked up his pistol and inserted a new magazine, while Sophia was reloading the rifle with shells from her pocket. Neither of them looked at him or Natasha. For some reason, they seemed to have turned serious.
There was another burst of sustained gunfire and Tom glanced outside. The two soldiers were standing back to back, both shooting at things out of sight. Their magazines seemed to run out at the same instant, and a second later shapes darted in from both sides and tore into the men. Their screams were replaced by ripping sounds as the berserkers tore them limb from limb.
'Now, do you think?' Lane said.
'About now, yes,' Sophia answered. She turned to Tom. 'Join us?'
'Join you where, doing what?'
'We're going outside.' So saying, she stood, hefted the rifle and walked toward the front of the unit. She left strange footprints in the bloody sawdust. Lane followed her, crouched low, and Tom was left hiding with Natasha still squirming beneath him.
Take me with you, Daddy, she said, never doubting that he would go.
There was still shooting going on, though not as much as before. Men shouted commands, the crack crack of rifles was punctuated by machine gun fire, screams became less frequent, another huge explosion shook dust from the walls and ceiling and punched against Tom's hands and knees, Sophia's rifle sang out from nearby, a hail of bullets rattled through the unit and struck walls and machines, another shot from the rifle, and then one man started shouting, the same word again and again, 'Lane! Lane! Lane!'
'Major!' Lane said, as if greeting an old school friend.
I think it's safe to go now, Natasha said. Tom stood, picked up the girl and walked hesitantly out of the unit. He passed the oak table that had been shot to splinters. Shame. Jo had always liked oak, and …
A soldier lay several feet away, his stomach Tom out and his ripped throat still pulsing blood. Tom leaned his way as death exerted an unbearable gravity.
Not now, Daddy. Not yet.
Tom frowned, shook his head, and that was when he saw the man running toward them.
'You look frightened!' Sophia called out. The major came to a halt twenty feet in front of the unit. He was shaking, panting, one side of his face splashed with blood. He held a pistol in his left hand, but made no attempt to raise it.
'Lane!' the major shouted, though there was no expression on his face. He screamed the berserker's name yet again, and it was like the bark of a dog.
Tom glanced around the car park and took in the destruction. Five minutes ago the Chinook had landed and disgorged the soldiers, and now they lay dead across the concrete. Some of them were in groups of two or three, most were alone, insides steaming in the dusk. Several still moaned, hands raised to the sunset as if trying to hold it back for another day. The BMW still blazed. The first helicopter was a bonfire in the orchard, and from out of sight beyond a row of trees and shrubs another huge pall of boiling smoke and fire marked the demise of the second aircraft.
The major stared as if blinded by fear. The berserkers closed on him from two directions. They were no longer the children Tom had seen in Natasha's memories. Dan was as big as Lane and even more powerful, his naked arms and legs shimmering as muscles flexed and relaxed. Sarah was smaller but equally formidable. Her face had elongated, pulling back her eyes and hairline. It was covered in blood. Both berserkers growled and spat, and Tom could almost sense the combined thumping of their hearts, reveling in life in this place of the dead.
'Hold back,' Lane said quietly, and they sank to their knees and waited. Each of them held Higgins in their glare. The girl licked her bloody lips, tongue tasting the air like a snake's.
'Lane!' Higgins shouted.
'Eloquent as ever,' Lane said, and he suddenly growled and bent at the waist, stooping into an animal pose.
'Please!' Higgins said. He started shaking his head, eyes looking left and right at his dead men.
Lane straightened, his face changing. He was crying blood. He pointed his pistol at the major. 'I'm giving you the choice,' he growled.
'No, please Lane!' Higgins said. 'I have a son, a daughter. I have grandchildren! It's Janey's birthday in three days, what will she do without her granddad? What will she do? Please, Lane. Please.' He was crying now, a thin, slight man whose fatigues and rank did nothing to protect him from fear.
'I'm giving you the choice,' Lane said again, enunciating each word carefully through his stretching jaw, sprouting teeth.
'Sophia?' Higgins said, but there was no help there. She still held onto her rifle, but she was changing too, growling and grunting and snarling at the corpse of a soldier at her feet.
Lane pulled himself upright, seeming to exert a massive effort to do so. His arm wavered, and then lowered. He dropped the pistol. 'Your … last … chance,' he said, and the final word transformed into a roar.
Higgins looked at Tom for the first time, then down at Natasha nestling in his arms. 'You have no idea,' he said, and then he raised his pistol and shot himself through the mouth.
Lane and Sophia were upon him before his body hit the ground.
Tom retreated back into the unit as the berserkers took their fill. He carried Natasha with him and settled her in an old rocking chair, its re-upholstered seat and back Tom up by bullets. The chair moved for a couple of seconds, and then kept moving. Even above the sounds of ravenous feeding from outside, Tom could hear the subtle creaks of the girl's torso bending and stretching.
Daddy, she said, her voice uneven and strained. Daddy!
The chair rocked.
Tom felt sick, as if he had eaten a handful of uncooked meat. The taste in his mouth was one that never should have been there. He looked at his hands, but there was no sign of blood, and for that he was relieved.
Natasha did not look as though she could be alive—her face was frozen, hair still matted with mud, limbs and body dried and stiffened by time. And yet her joints had begun to work, and every small movement in one limb seemed to encourage movement in another.
The chair rocked.
She shifted as if every bone in her body were broken, a fluid motion that seemed to feed upon itself. Tom wondered whether now that she had started, if she would ever stop.
'What is it?' he said, but he knew, and she said, You know. 'I can't help you,' he said. 'I can't take you out there while they're—'
You don't need to take me out. Her mental voice was a pained whine, and her real voice came as a low rattle: 'Daddy …'
