concentrated she would only have picked up one word in ten. So she set his steaming coffee down in front of him and took a seat, accessed the Net, and sipped her own mug as she surfed news sites. The taste of coffee, so familiar and usually comforting, seemed strange against the things she saw.
The BBC World News site was still being randomly updated, movie clips and photographs now seemingly uploaded by members of the public. And no news was good news. Governments were falling, communications were failing, and humanity’s timeless ability to wreak destruction upon itself was being put to the test in a variety of ways. The UK were firebombing several of their main cities, recycling Second World War tactics in an effort to wipe out the furies. China was using biological weapons against their population, killing tens of millions in vast swathes in an attempt to protect a billion. Russia continued to defend its borders, even though the plague was rife across the country from east to west. Small wars flared, larger wars threatened, countries joined forces, others attempted to isolate themselves and ride out the storm alone.
‘We’re running out of time,’ Holly said softly, and Marc threw the phone onto the desk.
‘Fuck,’ he said. ‘Fuck fuck fucking hell.’
‘What?’
‘Time!’ Marc leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face, covering his eyes as if to shut himself away from the views on the large screen. Holly switched them off. She had seen enough herself.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Not good.’
‘I thought you were gathering information, getting people involved. This network of friends you and Jonah have around the world.’
Marc laughed. ‘Yeah. Net’s already glitchy, and it’s going to go down eventually. You know that, don’t you? It’s way overloaded, and servers will crash. Bash, back twenty years.’
‘So. .’
‘So I’m going to do my best. I am. But it’s going to take me months, or years, and-’
‘We probably don’t even have days!’ Holly gasped.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘But at least we have Jayne and Mannan,’ she said, desperate for any shred of hope.
‘Yeah.’ Marc nodded at the laptop. Holly turned the screen to face him. Marc accessed his mail account, the printer in the corner started whispering, and he dialled the next number.
She left Marc in Secondary and paced through Coldbrook, afraid that if she stopped she would not be ready to run when the danger broke through. Perhaps she would never feel safe again. She wished she could see Vic. But he and his family had retreated to his old room, they needed their peace, and she was the last person to deny them that.
Surrounded by more people than she had ever seen in Coldbrook, Holly felt so alone.
She walked along the short corridor and passed through the common room to the garage area. Even before she opened the door and saw the unsettled expressions of the two guards — Moira and Hitch — she heard muffled hooting echoing from the plant room.
‘They just won’t shut up,’ Moira said.
‘Spooky fuckers,’ Hitch said. His voice wavered. He held a pistol ready in his hand.
Marc was right. They were running out of time.
2
‘Still want to slit my throat?’
Marc jumped a little, then sighed and rested back in the chair. ‘It’s not over yet. I said I won’t kill you until it’s over.’
‘Define “over”.’
‘Yeah.’ Marc stood and stretched, his joints creaking. The desk he’d requisitioned in Secondary was piled with printouts, the laptop stood open, and the satphone was plugged in to recharge.
‘So when will you be ready to begin?’ Vic asked.
‘I
Vic flicked through papers, read lines here and there, saw formulae, tables, and some words he had never heard of — some of the phrases were in English and yet alien to him. He touched the laptop’s pad and the screen lit up, revealing a dozen unread emails. He saw that they’d come in over the past few minutes.
‘All these people are trying to help?’ Vic said.
‘It’s going to take for ever,’ Marc said. ‘It’s daunting. It’s scary how much I don’t know. I told Holly, and she didn’t seem to accept that very well. And there’s one thing I haven’t told anyone. About Jayne and Mannan.’
‘What’s that?’ Vic asked.
‘I think they need to mate. Conceive. I think it’s their child that might provide the cure.’
‘But that’s. .’ Vic said, aghast.
‘I know. Maybe years.’
‘I wasn’t even thinking timescale.’
‘You see my problem,’ Marc said.
‘Coldbrook won’t last,’ Vic said. ‘They’ll get in somehow. We’re taking a breather, but everyone in the garage is twitchy, listening to those things in the duct. Soon we’ll have to move again, and from then there’s only one way to go.’
‘I know that, too.’
Vic turned and looked at the blank screens, seeing himself and Marc reflected there. ‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ll tell them all tomorrow.’
‘Yeah,’ Marc said. ‘Everyone deserves a day of hope.’
3
Jayne surfaced slowly, eyes still closed, and she knew that Sean was still in the room with her. She felt his influence; she felt safe.
‘Hey, you awake?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. How’d you know?’
‘You’ve stopped snoring.’
‘I do not snore.’
‘Damn right you do. I thought it was an alarm, or something. Been banging the air conditioning, trying to get it to shut up. Dogs for miles around-’
‘Way to labour a point,’ Jayne said, and opened her eyes. Sean was sitting across from her, leaning back in a chair with his feet on a small desk. The room had belonged to a guy called Jonah who wasn’t here any more, and the others seemed to hold him in high regard. There were books on every surface, and an old photograph of an attractive middle-aged woman on the desk. Sean had been careful not to disturb anything.
‘How long have I been asleep?’
‘Six hours. Since we got in, pretty much.’
‘You slept?’ she asked, but she knew the answer to that.
‘Couldn’t.’ He shrugged.
‘So what’d I miss?’
‘That woman Holly came to visit. That’s all. I think everyone’s just. .’
