Berserk

and shrubs. Hidden from the road she set him down and dropped beside him.

Tom had so many questions vying for attention that for a while he could ask nothing. The tang of meat was still rich on his tongue. His muscles burned, his veins carried fire around his body, and he was sweating so much he thought he must be seeping blood. But Sophia did not spare him a glance. He saw the burning cars reflected in her eyes, as if she were imprinting the sight on her memory.

'There is no home, is there?' he said at last. In his pain, his mind was an oasis. And in his mind loose ends were coming together, and understanding bloomed like a blood-red rose.

Sophia shook her head. 'Natasha's mother was always so protective,' she said. 'How you can protect someone by telling such lies, I never knew. We argued about it. We fought. But Natasha was her child, and really I had little say.'

'Home is where Natasha said you berserkers come from.'

Sophia chuckled, a surprisingly light sound against the continuing roar of flames. 'Berserkers come from Porton Down,' she said. Tom saw the truth in her eyes, and that truth lay in her humanity. He had seen her as a raging monster and a vicious killer, but now, eyes reflecting the fire of her son's and husband's funeral pyre, she was as human as he.

'They made you,' he said.

Sophia nodded. 'We were normal families. Lane was army, as was Natasha's father. They used science, and something more arcane, and they gave us our cravings. They made us monsters. And now Natasha has made you.'

Tom closed his eyes. 'I think she started yesterday. Cole shot me in the back. Natasha kept me alive.'

'And you her.'

'She wants me to be her daddy. But …'

Sophia stood and grabbed him beneath the arms once more. 'You'll survive. Now we have to get farther away from the road. There'll be police on the way, and more army. We'll be going soon.'

'Natasha?'

'She's fine,' Sophia said. She glanced up at the emerging stars and smiled. 'She's just given Mister Wolf his answer.'

'Steven,' Tom gasped. 'Steven! If there's no home, then where's my son?'

Sophia looked over her shoulder to see where she was going, avoiding his eyes. 'We buried him in a forest in Wales,' she said. 'He fed us for a while.'

Cole looked up. Sarah, the image of her parents, stared down at him. She held Natasha in her arms, and in the darkness the little girl seemed to be still again.

Sarah was pointing his own pistol at his face.

Cole opened his mouth to speak, but could not. His throat felt cold and exposed, and raising his right hand he felt the truth of that. He touched a part of himself he should never touch, and it sent a rocket of pain into his head. His hand came away slick and bloody.

'Please, you don't have to say anything,' Sarah quipped, but she was not smiling. 'I'm leaving you here. You're well hidden. They won't find you straight away. Too many bodies to scoop up first. Those bastards down there, and …' Cole saw the glitter of tears in the berserker teenager's eyes.

The little bitch had bitten him. Torn out his throat. And now she was not only not dead, she was more alive than she had been in years. He could not see her moving, could not hear her, but he felt her, rooting around in his mind and burrowing beneath the truth of everything he believed about himself. The streets of his subconscious were growing dark, and not because he was fading away. They darkened with approaching night.

'Natasha says you might want to know a couple of things first,' Sarah said. 'And I agree. It'll help you in your choice.'

Choice? The girl lowered the pistol. Cole reached, hand out, asking her for the gun or a shot to the head, he knew not which. Choice?

'They made her special,' Sarah said. 'That's why we had to get away, except we wanted Natasha with us. Her father had other ideas, but once we were out there was no way we could go back for her. We thought you'd killed her, Cole. We've spent ten hopeless years living between the lines, moving around, surviving. And now … this. Thanks to you, we berserkers have a chance again.' She knelt and reached out, thrusting her fingers into Cole's Tom throat.

He tried to scream, but he could only bubble blood.

'Nasty,' Sarah said. 'You should be dead. But lucky for you, they gave Natasha something no other berserker has. They made her fertile.'

Natasha spoke up then, a hoarse whisper eased somewhat by Cole's blood in her throat. 'They made me contagious.'

Sarah threw the pistol at Cole's chest. He gasped, caught it, aimed it right back at her.

'There's one round in the chamber,' she said. 'It'll hurt, but unless you're a very good shot, it won't kill me. Silver? You're behind the times, Mister Wolf. But now you have a choice. You think you're damned. But if you don't mind knowing the true meaning of the word, maybe we'll see you again one day.'

'I'll do it!' he said. 'I'm not afraid of dying. I'm going to Heaven.'

'Really?' Sarah asked, scoffing. 'Heaven? That's as real as home.' She turned and walked back down toward the burning cars, taking Natasha with her.

They left Cole out there in the night and took Tom with them, but Tom knew that they both faced the same choice. His, he supposed, was made easier, because his heart held nothing like Cole's unreasoning hatred. And he had Natasha to take care of him.

They hid in the valley for a while—the berserkers Sophia, Sarah and Natasha, and Tom, the man who should have been dead—and then when everyone else came in, they walked out. Police cars, fire engines, ambulances, army trucks, other unmarked cars, they all flooded into the shallow valley, some of them pausing by the burning cars, most continuing down to the industrial estate. The flaming wrecks of the Chinooks lit the way.

As they walked through the night, none of them heard a gunshot. But it could have been drowned in the roar of helicopters.

Sophia's revelations about the nature of the berserkers was more of a shock to Natasha than Tom. The girl became silent, shivering against him in the small car Sarah eventually stole to drive them to safety, and however hard he tried he could not find her in his mind. She had withdrawn into herself, just as the chance had come to reach out. He supposed that for her, ten years had never really passed. She was a child again, ready to live and learn and adapt to how the world truly was.

With Natasha gone his grief came in, rich and full and heavy. He cried, great shaking sobs for his dead wife and son. Jo was the love of his life. And Steven, gone for so long yet still there, a memory refreshed by the renewed hope Tom had harboured. He could not bring himself to hate Sophia and Lane for what they had done, and that felt wrong, because without that his rage had no direction.

Perhaps one day he would find one.

He cried also for what he had lost, because he had enjoyed life. Maybe sometimes he had thought it worthless, meaningless, vapid, but life was for living, and he missed the simplicity of that. A kiss on his wife's cheek in the morning, watching a pair of nesting birds whilst stuck in a traffic jam, the swaying of trees as a cold northerly wind brought snow, the smile on Jo's face when she came home to a meal he had cooked, the taste of wine, the feel of sunlight on his scalp, scraps of clouds catching the setting sun and promising a good day tomorrow. And that desire for a life in music, more distant than his dead son and yet haunting him with fading tunes.

'Where are we going?' he asked. 'North,' Sophia replied, and it hit him like the last line of a mournful song.

He had no idea what tomorrow would bring. Sunset had passed, leaving only pain and the taste of blood behind. Below all the pain he felt remarkably alive, but he sensed that life now had a whole new set of rules.

He should have been dead. But life was no longer just for living. He was with Sophia and Sarah and Natasha now—he was infected, as much a product of Porton Down as they—and he had fallen between the lines.

When she awoke, Natasha said, 'Daddy?' Tom gathered her up and held her to him, and he felt warmth in her flesh, welcomed the way her child's body shaped itself to his hug. Sophia glanced at him in the mirror, and though he saw tears in her eyes for her lost husband and son, he also saw something else. Neither she nor Sarah smiled— they were too tired for that, too overwrought, too exhausted from the healing process—but still he was sure. He