Coldbrook

‘Mummy, Daddy,’ Olivia said again, ‘there’s a man.’

‘He looks. .’ Lucy said, and she pointed, saying no more.

Along the road from where they’d come down, just past a marked parking area, two cars and a station wagon were parked on the grassy verge. A naked man had emerged from the shelter of the vehicles, crossed the road, and now he was running towards them, weaving through the trees growing across the slope.

‘Everyone together!’ Sean said. He pulled Jayne so that she stood behind the family.

‘Hide your girl,’ Jayne said. Lucy nodded, pulling Olivia down so that she sat huddled against her chest.

‘I. . I got this,’ Vic said, standing and pulling the pistol from his belt. He looks just like one of them, Jayne thought. Blood shone in his hair, and his face and throat were speckled with stuff that she didn’t even want to think about. He’d tried to wipe it off but had succeeded only in smearing it more thoroughly over himself.

‘Just keep your eyes open for others,’ Sean said. He walked forward to meet the man running at them, and Jayne knew that she should look away. This was something she’d seen before and had no wish to see again, but looking the other way made her feel vulnerable. She’d always been someone who was happier to face danger rather than turn her back.

She glanced back at the helicopter and saw Marc dropping from the cockpit’s doorway. He landed softly, rifle in one hand, blood smearing the other. She didn’t know how to act so she smiled at him. He seemed not to notice.

Sean waited until the man was a hundred metres away before he gave him two chances. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot you in the head!’ The man did not pause. ‘Say something!’ The man said nothing. Sean fired when he was twenty metres away and put him down with one shot.

Jayne breathed a sigh of relief, and then Marc was with them, standing shoulder to shoulder with Sean.

‘Good shot,’ Marc said.

‘Thanks. You okay?’

‘No.’ His voice was flat, cold. ‘Anyone else hurt?’

‘Bumps and bruises,’ Sean said.

Marc looked back at them, and he only glanced at Vic before his eyes settled on Jayne. He doesn’t want to see his lover’s blood, Jayne thought, and she felt an affinity with this man. They had both seen the people they loved violently killed.

‘Look! A little girl!’ Olivia sounded so excited, as if she was looking forward to having a playmate.

‘Down to the lake,’ Sean said. ‘Marc, you want me to. .?’ He held out his hand for the rifle, and Marc handed it over without a word.

They started down the slope, Lucy carrying her daughter, and behind them Sean shouted the same two warnings he had given the man. But Jayne could already visualise the ragged mess of the girl’s neck and chest. And soon her pretty pale face would be wiped away.

3

Vic stripped and washed in the lake, barely aware of his nakedness in front of the others, concerned only with cleaning the blood from his skin and hair. He submerged himself several times, and beneath the water the world seemed so much further away. The last time he went under he considered staying there, so he didn’t duck down again.

Marc stood up on the road, keeping watch. Sean was closer to the lake but he too turned in slow circles, keeping watch on the landscape, Marc’s rifle now in his hands. Vic’s pistol lay on the bank beside his wet clothing. The satphone was there as well, its volume turned up — he’d tried calling Holly and Jonah, but there’d been no answer. He tried not to think about that too much.

He’d washed the blood from his clothes as well as he could but the stains remained. He’d be cold and wet when he got dressed again, but he did not care. All he cared about was close by: the woman and the child who were watching him. Lucy was concerned, Olivia scared.

Jayne sat with her back against a smooth boulder, gently massaging her knees and hips, hardly seeming to notice her own tears.

Vic rubbed his hands together just beneath the surface of the cold water, and felt that they could have belonged to someone else.

A hundred miles, Gary had said as they were going down. On any normal day, it would take three or four hours in a car. But today it was a much greater distance. The irony did not escape Vic: the infection he had released had spread so quickly because modern communications had made the world so small, and as a result the world had become so much larger again.

He waded from the lake, feet slipping on slick stones beneath the surface, and for a moment he was a boy in Colorado again, swimming with his friends and building campfires to cook hot dogs and burgers.

Olivia, scared though she was, giggled at the sight of her naked, shivering father.

‘We need to check the cars,’ Marc said from up on the road.

‘But those things,’ Jayne said.

‘If there were more they’d have come. They’re driven. I see no intelligence in the fuckers.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ Sean said.

‘No. Stay here.’ Marc looked down the slope at Vic. ‘You okay now? You ready to use your gun if you need to?’

‘I’m fine,’ Vic said. I was covered with his lover’s brains. Not all of his shivering was due to the cold.

‘I’ll shout when it’s clear.’ Marc started along the road towards the three vehicles, the pistol grasped in his hand.

Vic struggled to pull on his sodden clothes.

‘You’re shaking, Daddy,’ Olivia said. She was so sweet, innocent, beautiful, that he wanted to pick her up and run with her until they reached somewhere safer than anywhere else.

‘You think Marc’s okay?’ Sean asked. He’d come down the slope to stand between Jayne and Vic’s family. The rifle looked heavy in his hand but he seemed hardly aware of it.

‘I don’t know,’ Vic said truthfully.

‘Well. .’ Sean said. ‘Jayne’s the important one here. She’s our reason for keeping going.’

‘He just saw his partner decapitated,’ Jayne said, struggling to her feet. Sean went to help her.

‘What’s that mean?’ Olivia asked. ‘And where’s that tall man Gary?’

Not so tall now, Vic thought, shocking himself by uttering a sharp laugh. He tried to turn it into a cough, but the others knew. Sean smiled. But it was a sad expression that conveyed understanding. Are we all going fucking mad? Vic thought. Then they heard a motor.

The station wagon swung in a half-circle around the other two cars and came their way. The offside wing was smashed and the bonnet crumpled, but the engine sounded fine to Vic. When Marc parked and slipped into neutral he gunned it.

As the engine’s roar echoed into the hills, he leaned from the driver’s seat. ‘Got a GPS. Couple of guns. Come on. Fuck, I can’t wait to see that mad old fucking Welshman again.’

They gathered their things and climbed into the vehicle. Sean flicked on the radio as Marc drove, scanning across the frequencies. Some stations were playing music on a loop. Here and there they found someone still broadcasting, ranting, crying, occasionally issuing instructions from a government that otherwise seemed conspicuously absent.

Elsewhere, all they heard was the sound of white noise.

4