heart thudded, and he pulled the pistol from his belt and flicked off the safety catch. He still felt vaguely foolish holding a gun.
After a pause he moved on — and then he saw the Inquisitor. It was standing among a spread of chairs and desks, apparently set around the breach at random. Many of them were broken now, or perhaps rotted down into disrepair, and the Inquisitor seemed unaware. It was concerned with nothing but him.
Jonah put his hand in his pocket and held the soft round object. Then he turned and ran.
He was surprised to find that the building’s door was made of heavy wood with metal crosspieces, just like a church door at home. For these people, perhaps their breach had been a god, encased in a building of devotion and worship.
‘It is required that you accept.’ The Inquisitor’s voice echoed, but Jonah didn’t even turn around.
‘Fuck you!’ he shouted. Outside, a shadow rose within a mass of brambles. Not the Inquisitor. Jonah paused, lifted his gun and fired. The shape fell out of sight.
Moonlight revealed the landscape to him. Low-lying buildings dotted the surroundings like stone igloos, their curved roofs reaching down to the ground, and tall poles rose high above them. They supported complex frameworks of wire and mesh, and he thought they must be aerials. They might have looked like Neanderthals, but the people who had lived here had been at least as advanced as him.
Jonah wanted to stay to discover more, explore the remnants of this Earth’s art and culture, their amazing architecture, the sad story of their demise. But another shadow was coming at him now, long-armed and heavy- shouldered, shambling, and he waited until it was close enough before putting a bullet through its forehead.
Something tugged him onward, and the building behind forced him away. His skin tingled. Perhaps the Inquisitor was exerting some repelling influence on him. . but he thought not.
He thought it might be another breach.
Sad at everything he was missing here, Jonah started to run. ‘Not yet, you bastard!’ he shouted again, wondering how long it had been since words were last spoken here.
Other worlds beckoned.
6
The car stank of unwashed bodies — and fear. No one seemed to care. They wound the windows down and breathed in the fresh mountain air, and Vic didn’t understand how the views could still be so beautiful. Wasn’t the world stained now? Wasn’t it tainted? It took him a while to realise this was not the case at all.
Jayne was sitting behind Sean, leaning against the door and groaning in pain. Whatever weird disease made her immune — and she’d shown him her bite, wet and infected but not deadly to her — he wasn’t sure it was anything better. She was a pretty girl aged by her disease, face drawn and eyes pale with the knowledge of pain. She’d told them about the boyfriend she’d lost.
They passed people both living and dead, most of them still walking. The living would be at the side of the road, waving them down for help, shouting, begging. But everyone in the car knew they could not stop. They had no more room in the vehicle. Many people carried guns, and several times Vic heard shots behind them when they passed by, and once something struck the vehicle’s wheel arch like a sledgehammer.
There were many dead wandering this part of the Appalachians. They sometimes saw them on the slopes, sad pale shapes moving aimlessly until they saw the car, even though sometimes they might be a mile away. Others had remained close to the road. Marc called a warning whenever the station wagon was about to hit someone, and usually there was time to cover Olivia’s eyes. Usually, but not always. His daughter had stopped crying, and Vic hated what that might mean.
An hour into the journey, and maybe halfway there, they saw a roadblock on top of a ridge. Marc stopped the vehicle.
‘No way to go overland,’ Marc said.
‘Sure it’s a roadblock?’ Sean asked.
‘The road’s blocked,’ Marc said, his words slow with sarcasm.
‘Yeah, but is it intentional?’ Vic said.
Marc tapped his fingers against the wheel. ‘Why bother blocking the road? Zombies don’t drive.’
‘We could go back,’ Lucy said. ‘Find another way around. Somewhere safer.’
‘Nowhere’s safe,’ Jayne said. Vic had thought she was asleep — her eyes were still closed.
As Marc edged them forward again Vic let go of Lucy’s hand and pulled the M1911 from his belt.
‘Let’s not look too threatening,’ Sean said. He lowered his window and leaned his arm outside, casual, cool. ‘Vic, keep your piece handy. But out of sight. Marc?’
‘I’m just the driver.’ In the mirror, Vic was amazed to see Jonah’s old friend smile.
They rolled to a stop fifty feet from the roadblock. A couple of big trucks had been parked nose-to-nose across the road, and whoever had done it had chosen the place carefully. Rocks on one side and a ditch on the other made passing impossible.
A man emerged from behind the truck on the left: short, long hair, a gun in his hand. There was movement in the ditch to their right, and Vic saw three faces peering up at them.
‘You got any food?’ the man called.
‘I’m hungry,’ Olivia said, reminded of her rumbling stomach.
‘Nothing,’ Sean shouted back. ‘What’re you doing hanging around-?’
‘My family’s hungry,’ the man said. ‘Can’t go to the towns. Can’t go to houses. They’re
‘We don’t have any food,’ Sean said.
‘Thomas!’ a woman said. Vic tried to see past Sean and Marc but he wasn’t sure where the voice had come from.
‘Thomas,’ the woman repeated. Sean opened his door and slipped out, lifting his gun and pointing it at Thomas’s face.
‘Oh Jesus,’ Lucy whispered.
Vic wanted to get out but he was trapped between his wife and daughter on one side and Jayne on the other. He reached past Jayne for the door handle, and Marc hissed like an animal.
‘Stay inside!’
The two men pointed guns at each other. In the ditch, the three faces stared, terrified.
‘We’re not infected,’ Sean said. ‘And we have someone very important with us. Someone who might be able to help stop all this. We’re going to somewhere in the mountains, an underground bunker called Coldbrook, where it’ll be safe. There’ll be food and water and shelter for you and your family.’
Thomas held the gun as if it was hot, and Vic thought he’d probably never fired it before. It took only a few seconds for him to lower it, and from somewhere behind the trucks the woman called out a third time, startled and scared: ‘Thomas?’
‘Good,’ Sean said. He kept his gun raised and stepped forward, and for a second Vic thought he was going to shoot the man in the face. Then he’d kill his wife and kids and steal whatever they had, because survival was the only law now.
But Sean paused again. ‘One of those yours?’ he asked, nodding at the trucks.
‘Both.’
Sean nodded and lowered his gun. ‘Bring the one with the most fuel. Follow us.’ He clapped the man on the shoulder, then returned to the station wagon.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Vic muttered as Sean slammed his door closed again.
‘Nope,’ Sean said, ‘just some dude who doesn’t know shit about safety catches.’
They headed off with Thomas and his family following on behind.
Marc got out next time and talked to the people they saw, a group of three teenaged boys walking along the road and, amazingly, still alive. They carried automatic weapons and when he returned to the station wagon Marc
