Coldbrook

deteriorated she’d raised many thousands of dollars for the small town hospital where she’d spent her last days. She had been quite a character in town, pushed around in her wheelchair by her older brother, flaunting her baldness and the scars of unsuccessful surgery, demanding men’s shoes — just one from a pair — and holding them to ransom for charity. She’d taken Vic’s three times, and the last time it had cost him a hundred bucks to get it back. He’d had to collect it from her house, because she’d taken a sudden turn for the worse by then, dying five days later. He still visited her parents every time he was up in town. Her father worked for Coldbrook, though not in the facility — he was one of several accountants of theirs, responsible for dealing with their foreign investors. A good man, a friend to the Pearsons, he had changed since his daughter’s death, taking his work more seriously. There had also been rumours that he’d tried to take his own life, though no one wished to explore them too deeply.

I should tell David, Vic thought. He stopped the car to let a postman cross, raising a finger on the wheel in acknowledgement when he nodded his thanks. I should tell him, because they don’t deserve any more heartbreak. He drove on, and the atmosphere in the car was thick with tension. Even Olivia seemed to have noticed it; she’d closed her DS and sat staring out of the window, frowning into the sun.

They left the square and passed McCready’s, where Vic and his family had spent last New Year’s Eve. Old Walt McCready threw a big party every year, charging everyone ten bucks and laying on food, drink and entertainment until the early hours. Adults and kids alike remembered the party for months afterwards, for the quality of the home-catered food and the variety of drinks he’d ordered in for the evening. Vic remembered it most for the ten minutes he’d sat and watched Lucy dancing with some of her friends from town. He’d been gently drunk by then, and he’d realised that he loved his wife more than he ever had before. He’d even muttered a foolish New Year’s resolution to himself: Be better to her this year than you ever have. As they drove by he realised that he had now broken that resolution. He remembered their friends dancing and eating and laughing with them that night, and knew that he should warn them all.

Olivia sniffed behind him, and Vic realised his daughter was crying.

‘So?’ Lucy asked beside him, so cold, so afraid.

His guilt scoured deep into him. Before he could change his mind he brought the Rav4 to a halt and pulled out the satphone.

‘Honey, I just need to see how bad it is,’ he said, pressing Jonah’s speed-dial number as he spoke. By the time Lucy began to protest the call was answered, and the old bastard’s Welsh accent cut through the static.

4

‘Vic, you stupid bastard Yank, do you have any idea what you’ve done?’ The phone’s ringing had startled Jonah — he was standing at the viewing panel in the door, looking out at the deserted, silent corridor beyond — and his shouted response was partly in reaction to that shock. But it was also provoked by the words that had appeared on the little screen: Vic calling.

‘Jonah-’

‘Today I’ve seen people dying. Melina. Uri. And Estelle, she had her head. . it was. . because of you.’ He drew a breath, leaning against the door with one hand.

‘Jonah, where are you? How bad is it?’

‘Ah, fuck off, Vic,’ Jonah said, and he disconnected. His head was spinning, heart galloping, and he sat down gingerly on the edge of the desk. The palpitations made him cough, and for a moment he was sure the dizziness would increase and he’d hit the floor. Break a hip, he thought, and wouldn’t that be just fine? Survive all that and then break a damn hip? Wendy would have laughed at the irony in that, but then she always did have a skewed view of life. Bill Coldbrook had once said, The more we think we know, the more humble we should become, and how right he had been. Had Jonah’s own pride and arrogance caused this catastrophe? Perhaps.

Jonah dialled Vic back and the call was answered after the first ring.

‘Vic, don’t talk,’ Jonah said. ‘I’m not sure I want to hear your cowardly bastard voice right now, but you need to hear mine, and what I have to say. You need to know. Are you listening?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Good. I’ve seen people attacked and killed down here, and then get up again to go and attack others. I believe I might be the only one left who’s not either dead or infected. I’ve made some calls, sounded the alarm. And I’m alone in Secondary.’ He stared at the door for a moment, sure he’d seen movement beyond. But his view of the corridor outside stayed clear. Just shadows on my mind. ‘Whatever the contagion is, it’s spread by bites. It kills and infects its victims within a minute. I’ve seen people shot five times and still walking, unless they’re shot in the head. You have to shoot them in the head.’

Vic snorted, and it might have been a laugh.

‘Funny?’ Jonah asked softly. ‘You’re finding something amusing?’

‘No, it’s just-’

‘I said I didn’t want to hear your bastard voice, Vic. There’s nothing funny here. Nothing! I saw Estelle have her face bitten off. She fell and bled out, died. And then stood again, and attacked the only guard I believe was left alive. He. . he blew her head off. That time, she stayed down.’

‘You’re talking about zombies, Jonah.’

‘The notion’s make-believe. But what it implies fits.’

Vic laughed again, but there was desperation there, a hint of hysteria. And Jonah did not like that.

‘Pull yourself together, boy! Think of your family.’

‘I am thinking of my family. They’re here with me now. We’re on our way out of Danton Rock, but. . I heard shooting when I left the compound.’ Vic fell silent for a moment, and now Jonah did see movement through the door’s glass panel.

A face appeared there, so ruined that he could not possibly identify it, could not even tell its owner’s sex. It stared in at him with one good eye, pressed against the strengthened glass and smearing blood. It did not blink. He heard nails drawn across the metal door.

‘There’s one watching me,’ Jonah said, backing away from the door, and the truth of what he saw hit him hard. Don’t give up on me now, he thought as his heart lurched in his chest, and he closed his eyes to try and calm his body. The thing scratched some more.

‘One what?’ Vic asked.

‘One of them. If you could only see. I’m turning away, but listen to me. This is beyond fault or guilt now — that all comes later, and damn me if I won’t punch your lights out when I see you again. But I’m trapped down here. And there’s something I need to do, and something you must do, too. You’ve got to warn people. Visit the station there, speak to Sheriff Blanks. Tell him what happened, tell him everything I’ve told you. And tell him to shoot them in the head.’

‘Can’t you tell him-’

‘No, Vic! You’re the one who ran, and you’re out there now, boy. So that’s down to you, face to face. I’ve got to stop any more of these bastards getting out.’

‘And how the hell are you going to do that?’

‘Do you care?’ Jonah shouted. ‘Just do your part.’

‘Jonah. Everyone else?’

I don’t have to tell him, Jonah thought, but such cruelty was beyond him. ‘Holly escaped through the breach,’ he said. Then he disconnected, turned the satphone off, and went back to the window.

The face from hell was still there, pressed against the glass, staring at him: jaw moving slightly, tongue squashed, wounds not bleeding. ‘Because it’s dead,’ Jonah said, and he no longer found the idea ridiculous. You’re talking about zombies, Jonah. Yeah, well. What you see, you see, Wendy used to say when Jonah tried to impress upon her the question of scientific proof versus spiritual nonsense and he’d held her comment close to his heart.