Coldbrook

very different from Control. A large room held several metal columns upon which sat the remains of glass spheres, five feet across and smashed.

‘What’s that?’ Holly asked.

‘My father said it was a broadcasting station,’ Drake said. ‘I used to play in there when I was a kid, until the spheres got smashed.’

But Holly was barely listening, because another possibility was niggling at her.

‘You were watching our world before we formed the breach,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ Drake said.

‘How long before?’

‘It’s complicated,’ Drake said, cutting Moira off as she started to speak.

‘Try me. I’m a scientist. Couldn’t you have warned us?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’ They were in a wide corridor now. Plaster had fallen from the walls. Holly kicked out and sent a chunk of it across the floor. It struck the opposite wall and exploded in a shower of damp fragments. Drake stepped back, and Moira slipped a hand into her pocket. ‘Do you have some sort of Star-fucking- Trek non-involvement policy?’ Holly was starting to shout now, unable to stop the rage, sad and pointless though it felt. ‘Why in God’s name didn’t you-’

Moira gasped. Drake shook his head.

‘Because we couldn’t,’ he said. ‘We can view through to your world, but not go through physically, never interact. You saw Gayle and the others — we call them casters. And yes, they were seeing through furies’ eyes. But they have no control over their host, other than their intrusion making it calm and observant. It’s remote viewing.’

‘How long have you been watching?’ Holly asked again, still shouting, stepping forward with her arm raised. Moira had taken something from her pocket.

‘Your world?’ Drake said. ‘Almost thirty years.’

‘Thirty years?’ Holly said, stepping towards Drake. ‘Thirty fucking-’ A sting in her neck, hands catching her and easing her down, and her last thought before unconsciousness was, They sent it through themselves. .

6

Vic Pearson watched his wife and daughter sleeping, and when Olivia woke up he stayed with her and they talked.

‘Mommy said I can’t watch TV.’ Bleary-eyed from sleep, Olivia was still as sharp as a button. With her mother asleep in the big bed, she was now working on her father. But there was no joy there.

‘It’s broken, honey,’ Vic said.

‘It wasn’t broke after you left to talk to the men. Mommy was watching it, and it made her cry so she turned it off. I heard shouting.’

‘The TV set’s OK,’ he said, ‘but the place they send the signals from is broken.’

‘Huh,’ Olivia said, looking suspiciously at him. ‘You’re lying.’

‘Olivia!’ But he couldn’t get angry with her.

‘They send those pictures from all over, not just one place. Davey in school told me. His dad’s an astronaut and he sees everything.’

‘That’s how Davey knows everything, then,’ Vic said, nodding wisely.

‘I guess,’ Olivia said. ‘I need to pee.’

‘Go ahead, honey.’

Olivia stood up from her creaking camp bed and crossed to the small en suite bathroom. She turned on the light and left the door open a crack, glancing through it at Vic as she so often did at home. He forced a smile and she smiled back.

Some of the national channels were still broadcasting normal programmes — he’d scanned through to see Seasame Street, an endless loop of Frasier, and a daytime soap he couldn’t identify — but most local channels were filled with the news. One bulletin showed a towering pall of flames and smoke rising above Chicago airport, where three passenger jets had collided. Vic didn’t want Olivia seeing the truth.

He sighed, and Lucy stirred. He leaned down and kissed her, smelling her stale breath and confusion.

‘Oh, Christ,’ his wife said as she remembered. She raised herself on her elbows, then glanced across at the bathroom. ‘She okay?’

‘Yeah. Wants to watch TV. I won’t let her, and we left her DVDs at home.’

Lucy sat up and hugged her legs to her chest. Vic wanted to lean in to her, but he wasn’t sure that would be welcome right now.

‘What’s left of home?’ Lucy asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Our friends,’ Lucy said. ‘Mark, Sarah, Steve, Peter? What about them, Vic? Are they all dead? And our house? I locked the doors but do you think. .?’

‘Home is wherever we are,’ Vic said, eager to snap his wife out of this.

Lucy looked at the bathroom door again. Water was running in there, and Olivia was humming a tune that Vic could not identify. Coldbrook is your home, Lucy had told him, sometimes angry, sometimes just acknowledging what they both knew.

‘But if Jonah wants you to do something, go somewhere?’

‘Then I’ll take you with me.’

‘And if it’s dangerous?’

Vic blinked, hating the vulnerability in his strong wife’s eyes.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘I think it’ll be dangerous everywhere.’ His gaze turned to the bathroom door and he saw Olivia through the gap, singing to herself in the mirror and fluffing up her sleep-flattened hair. Bad hair day! he’d say to her sometimes. If only that was all they had to worry about now.

He thought of his daughter dead, and hooting that dreadful call.

‘Has it reached here?’ Lucy asked. Vic nodded, and she seemed to strengthen. She’d always been scared of possibilities — Olivia being hurt, Vic getting ill — but was more capable than him at handling certainties.

‘Mommy,’ Olivia said, leaving the bathroom and turning off the light behind her. ‘Are we going to die?’

‘We’re not going to die because Daddy’s friends are here to help us,’ Lucy said. ‘There are some poorly people out there who need helping, but once they’re all better we’ll be able to go back home. Okay?’

‘Will we catch what they have?’

‘No,’ Vic said.

‘Because we’re behind the fence?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh. Okay.’ Olivia jumped on the bed, and Vic leaned over and tickled her, and Lucy bent forward and started tickling her daughter as well. The little girl squealed with delight and squirmed from the bed, picking up a drawing pad and flopping down on her own bed.

The phone by the bed rang. Vic snapped it up. ‘Developments,’ Marc said. ‘Communications room, now.’

‘This is now?’ Vic asked, staring in disbelief at the laptop screen.

‘Constantly updating,’ Marc said. ‘Margins of error, but. .’ He waved a hand.

It doesn’t matter, Vic thought. Whatever margin of error you apply to this. . it doesn’t matter.

He knew well enough that the contagion had reached Cincinnati, but the extent of spread elsewhere was shocking. The red smudge on the screen had turned into a widening, deepening stain on the map of the USA. The solid red mass covered much of Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North and South Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana and