Berserk (11 page)

At least the blood could aid his lie to Jo. A story was already forming in his mind.

He walked more slowly after the second tumble, partly due to fear of falling again, but mostly from sheer exhaustion. He had excavated a mass grave, fled across a moor with a corpse wrapped in chains, attacked a man trying to kill him, and now he was making his way back through the dark to potential safety. Maybe this would be a standard night’s training for a young soldier, but not for someone in their fifties, someone who had let fitness take a second ranking in his life, below food and drink and frequent bouts of self-indulgent misery. Events carried him on, even though he knew this was madness. Perhaps, he thought, he had never even left home.

He saw the fence from some distance away, glinting in the moonlight. Stars glimmered more powerfully than he ever saw back home. Here there was no light pollution to distort and lessen the stars’ impact, no stain of humanity on the skies, and ten thousand sources of ancient light were hazed across the heavens. Grateful though he was, Tom felt even more lost in time than ever.

He turned left and began to follow the fence toward the woods. He was not sure how far he had come, but even if he had neared the fence where Mister Wolf had climbed over, the woods would only be a few hundred yards further on. He could make that distance. He to. His arms were growing numb now, and his shoulders sang with pins and needles, circulation rebelling against the strain being put on his muscles. His legs were aching as well, and with every step his knees were becoming more rubbery, less certain of their soundness. If his legs buckled beneath him now it would be over, he would fall and not be able to get up again until he’d had a rest. And however long that lasted, it would be too long.
had

That feeling in his mind again, the sense of another consciousness, and Natasha said,
Keep going.

“I’m not sure I can,” he said.

You can, Daddy. Just think of me
. . .
think
. . .
aim your thoughts down
. . .

Tom looked at the shadow in his arms, but soon realised she did not mean that at all. The contact in his mind lulled him, whispered words that he did not understand but which had a calming quality all their own. If it was a lullaby, it spoke of little that he knew. If it was something else—

A spell? A hex?

—then he was simply glad it worked. The pain in his muscles grew distant without lessening, and the growing agony in his knees became more remote than his toes, so far away that it could not belong to him. He looked in and down, and Natasha’s presence was palpable.

Tom walked on. He kept the fence-topped bank to his right, moving away from it only where there were clumps of trees or heavy shrubbery barring the way. It may have been minutes or an hour later when he came to the small woods. He plunged straight in, unafraid of the dark—

Not while she’s here with me, in me, guiding me and comforting me.

—but cautious with his footing. He could so easily stand on a rock or step into a small hole, and would go his leg or
snap
pop
would go his knee. Natasha’s calming thoughts could do little to prevent his bones from breaking.

When he came to the crawlspace beneath the fence he became dizzy, swaying on his feet, skin suddenly cold with fresh sweat. He knelt and lay the bundle of bones and chains on the ground, then fell onto his hands and knees, retching but bringing up nothing but bile. He realised that he had not eaten or drunk anything for hours. He was dehydrated, hungry, and terrified.

“So can you stop me being thirsty?” he asked, shaking his head at the idea that he was talking to himself.

We have to go,
Natasha whispered, cool psychic fingers stroking across the inside of his mind. They were exploring there – he suddenly realised that, wondered why he had not seen it before – touching places that were dark to him, hidden ideas and memories long since consigned to the past.

“What are you—?”

awake,
We have to go, Daddy! Mister Wolf is up, the bad man is
and he’ll be coming for us soon!

“I threw his gun,” Tom gasped. The nausea had given way to an intense tiredness. Reality was more distant than ever. The only thing that kept him awake was the dead girl’s voice in his head.

He’s a killer. He’ll have more than one.

“Don’t call me Daddy,” Tom said. Natasha did not answer, and he pushed her across the ground toward the fence. The chains caught on ferns and trailing stems, and he pushed harder, hand flat against the firmness of her mummified skin. He dug in his toes, shoved, kicked, and eventually the body and chains slid down into the crawlspace, sliding against the slick soil and passing underneath the fence. Tom followed, one hand held out ahead of him to push Natasha through. It took only a few seconds to struggle to the other side and he stood immediately, picked up the bundle and stumbled back to the road.

The girl was silent, and her presence had retreated from his mind. He thought that maybe she was asleep, or whatever it is dead things do. He wanted to continue questioning her about Steven, but there would be plenty of time later. For now he was content to struggle through his exhaustion, welcome the madness that enveloped him—

I’m at home in bed, the doctor’s there, I’m drugged up, I’m dreaming, tasting and smelling and knowing things that can’t be real, but dreaming nonetheless.

—and make his way back to his car.

When Tom arrived at the vehicle he saw Mister Wolf’s Jeep parked a hundred yards further along the road. Too tired to think straight, he did not even consider trying to disable it, perhaps by slashing the tyres or ripping wires or pipes from the engine. It was simply there, ready to follow him, and that was how he perceived it.

Later, the possibility of that missed chance would haunt him. It could so easily have changed the heartache that was to follow. And later still, he would begin to wonder exactly where the dead child Natasha had been at that moment, when everything could have changed.

Tom put the body in the boot, collapsed into his car and drove away.

* * *

Cole lay in the darkened streets of his mind, mugged, attacked, unconscious, and the voice was coming from very far away.

Fuck you, Mister Wolf.

He twitched, feeling the damp ground beneath him. The voice echoed throughout the subterranean world of his mind, filling that space but only leaking out from a few badly sealed openings. Manholes that did not sit quite straight in their frames, perhaps. Old, rotted doors opening onto unused basements, which themselves held steel doors rusted open, leading down into darker places where forgotten memories and old guilt dwelled. She was calling him from far away, but still he heard.

We’re leaving now, Wolf-boy. You stupid shit. Call yourself a soldier?

Cole shifted, and the whole substructure of his mind moved with him. It flexed to allow the words entry and then clamped shut behind them. If he entertained those echoes they would become true. He could hear, but he did not have to listen.

And there was something else behind the words. A slippery intent, an unwanted invitation. Burying her voice away could not hide the way in which the words were spoken. Mocking. Scathing. Even deep in unconsciousness Cole knew that he had to follow the girl, and he knew that she knew.

He slowly began to surface. The cool pavement beneath him changed into the soft damp ground of the Plain. The dark building beside him turned into the rock from which Roberts had ambushed him. As his unconscious underground receded and hid itself away, Cole heard the voice again, dulled by distance instead of the divisions of his mind.

Goodbye! Goodbye, fucker!

Cole pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. The world swayed and threatened to tip him off. His head ached like a bastard, and there was a patch of dried blood above his ear, tight in his hair and crackling as he flexed his scalp. He touched it, feeling around the edges for any tell-tale softness. Painful, sore, and he would have a headache for days, but he figured he had escaped lightly.

Escaped.

“Little bitch!” he screamed. “Oh shit, how could I have been so stupid!”

The Plain was utterly silent at night. Even the occasional breeze gave little more than a sigh, and any animals abroad were embarked on a stealthy hunt for food. Cole cursed, winced at the thud of pain in his head, and heard a car starting up from the road.

Roberts. And he had Natasha with him, and they were leaving. Natasha – a berserker as mad and vicious as any – was leaving Salisbury Plain for the first time in ten years. And Cole knew where she would be going. She would take Roberts, lure him ever onward until she had what she wanted: her kin around her, and a chance to live again.

He did not waste any time looking for his gun. He had another in the Jeep and time, suddenly, was something that had taken solid control of his life. He stood, swayed, but urgency drove his pain down and fear gave balance.

“I’m coming for you, you little bitch,” he said to the dark. Nothing answered, but Cole had a sense that his words were heard. They were heard very well indeed.

CHAPTER FIVE

After half an hour of driving Tom had to pull over. He had begun to shake and he could not stop. He tried breathing deeply, but that only made his breath stutter, which in turn encouraged his shaking even more. He turned off the engine and reclined his seat, crossing his hands in his lap, hoping that he would calm down soon enough. The shaking was exhausting.

He was alone. Already he was wondering what he had put into the car boot. A dead girl wrapped in chains? Really? Or perhaps only a bundle of twigs and grass?

Natasha was silent on the matter. Tom’s mind jumped and danced with his body, slipping from belief to disbelief, terror to confusion. It skittered from reality to madness as well, though Tom did not know which was which. His feet knocked against the pedals and his hands jumped in his lap, knuckles rattling against the door on one side and the gear level on the other. He groaned, begged for it to end, but nobody was listening.

It took ten minutes for the shaking to die down. He supposed it could be shock. However much he tried to deny what had happened, he had grave dirt beneath his fingernails. And whenever he doubted he had heard a voice in his mind, the memory returned of the way it felt when Natasha was there. The intrusion was gentle yet definite, and when she withdrew . . . he felt so alone. Abandoned. Like a body buried alive, destined to spend eternity underground with only the true dead for company.

He suddenly remembered the man who had been chasing him, Mister Wolf, and he knew that the chase was still on. Tom had been at tonight! That in itself was almost beyond belief.
shot

He started the car and pulled away. He was still shaking, but it was little more than a hangover shake now. He was used to those.

The headlights carved a tunnel of light through the darkness, throwing back occasional reflections from pairs of eyes hiding away in the hedgerows.
Road kill,
Tom thought, and the word sent a shiver through him.

His thoughts turned to Jo and Steven. Everything happening now was all because of his love for them. Natasha’s suggestion that Steven could still be alive pounded at his mind, rivalling the pain from the back of his head. It drove him on. The possibility had, he supposed, enabled him to do what he had just done. He had come to the Plain hoping to find out where Steven was buried, and instead he had been told that he may not be dead at all. How trustworthy his source was he could not tell, whether it really was a living-dead girl from out of the ground, or his own mad hallucination. But the idea was all that concerned him for now. Exploring it would come later, when he arrived back at the cottage and opened the car boot. If he found Natasha in there, he could ask her the dozens of questions presenting themselves to him right now. If there was nothing but a pile of twigs, then he would have to question himself.

“She’s real,” he said, and from the boot came a single, distant thought in confirmation:
Yes.
Tom looked at his filthy hands on the steering wheel, felt the ache in his arms and shoulders, and from that moment on he was never in any doubt.

Acceptance was easy. Understanding could come later.

* * *

It took Cole three attempts to climb back over the fence. His fingers kept slipping on the dew-speckled metal, and he was still weak and dizzy from the blow to his head. It was the thought of what Roberts had taken with him that drove Cole on. He recalled her mockery from ten years ago; even when he was burying her in a hole in the ground there was mockery. Because she she was superior. She knew that was why she was being buried, hidden away, put down deep where she could be forgotten. And even though the future for her had offered only pain and suffering, she had taken comfort in that knowledge. Begged for him to kill her, yes, but with a smugness that ensured he had not.
knew

And now, after so long in the ground, her voice and its impact was louder than ever. Whereas before she had been able to touch, now she could shout. And beyond that, Cole thought, there could be even more. That time in the ground must have bled her senses, and bloated that strange ability all berserkers had to touch with their minds.

He could not let her go. She was mad. She was a berserker. And soon, now that she was back in the world, she would want to feed again.

“Coming to get you,” Cole muttered, sliding his hands up a fence post one at a time, pushing against his weight with his feet, sliding them up, hands, feet, “coming to get you, you little monster, freak, nightmare. Hear me? Do you hear me now, do you know my thoughts?” He thought she did not – she must have been too far away already – but it pleased him to think them. Fear had always been a good motivator. Add hatred to the pot and the brew is ferocious indeed.

Cole feared and hated Natasha in equal measures. To service both emotions, he had to kill her.