Berserk (13 page)

A chuckle in his mind, not his. He did not feel her intrusion, but he knew that she was there, hovering slightly beyond. He drove on, trying to discern which direction the laugh had come from.

“Laughing at what I did to you, Natasha? You won’t find it funny when I catch you this time. You think ten years was a long time in the ground, smelling your family rotting around you? Feeling their flesh grow cold, wet, fluid? Or . . . did you eat them to stay awake, just for a little while longer?”

She laughed again, a sound so filled with confidence and hate that Cole slowed the Jeep, shivering.
Fuck you, Mister Wolf.

He came to a junction and turned left.

“Still awake then, vampire?”

I’m no vampire!

“I bet you’re sucking the life out of that poor man already.”

She was silent but still present, and Cole narrowed his eyes as he tried to put direction to the slithery touch now evident in his mind. He veered left and right on the road, striving to sense which way was closer.

Warm,
Natasha said.

“I’m going to find you and kill you,” Cole said. “I’ll kill him, too.”

Why should I care?
the girl said, and Cole smiled when he heard the doubt in her voice.

“Get out of my head!” He had to cover what he had heard, hold it to himself for whatever advantage it may yield him.

I’m not in your head, Mister Wolf
. . .
I’m below it, down here rooting through all these things you want to forget. Would you like me to describe some of them to you now? Dredge up these memories for you to feast on? They’re all here, awaiting their fair showing. Here, this woman Sandra Francis, with her long red hair and
—

“Shut the fuck up!” Cole hissed. He swung the Jeep left into a narrow lane, and the sense of his mind being invaded grew warmer, wetter.

Warmer.

“You me to find you.”
want

There’s always fun in the chase.

He pressed his foot down on the gas and flicked the headlamps to full beam, taking corners at a mad speed, careening into a high bank, wheels spitting mud and gravel as they squealed against protruding stones and away again, light dancing and vibrating across the road ahead of him as the Jeep bounced and jolted from side to side.

Warmer still
. . .

Cole reached over and grabbed the .45 with his left hand, clicking off the safety and resting it between his legs. He fought with the steering wheel as the vehicle splashed through a deep puddle. A house flashed by on the left, whitewashed walls reflecting his headlights back at him. Its occupants were probably tucked up cosy in bed, unaware of what had passed them perhaps only a few minutes before. They were dull sheep, sleeping and working, breathing and eating, never questioning the realities they were brought up to hold as truth.

Cole had seen things, done things. He knew that all such realities were lies, invoked because they painted comfortable pictures out of unnatural, unbearable paints. The truth was never easy to accept. It could drive a man mad. His own madness – his own unbearable truths – were buried deep. And he liked it that way. They spoke to him sometimes, but usually only in dreams, and he had become adept at forgetting his dreams.

Sandra with her long red hair?

Cole shook his head, and the point of one of those hidden memories sank back down into safe impenetrable depths.

very
Ooh,
warm now, Mister Wolf. Be seeing you soon. Don’t forget to have fun, because fun is what it’s all about. What else is there? Only death, and decay, and ten years of purgatory, you bastard. You’ll never win, Cole.
Never!

“What game are you playing?” Cole asked, but Natasha did not answer, and he suspected that she had fallen silent for now.
Is it just this?
he thought.
Maybe it was a tease, and they went the other way. There’s no rule to this little bitch, no rhyme or reason.

There was a hollowness in his chest at the thought of her being out, a void where hope had once existed. So many times over the years he had considered returning to the Plain, excavating the grave, pulling out Natasha’s corpse and finishing what he had started. But he was scared, and in denial. Even with everything he knew of the berserkers, he had believed that she would be dead. And that belief – that hope – had kept him away. That, and the certainty that unearthing a corpse that spoke to him would have driven him mad.

Around the next corner a tractor blocked the road.

Cole stomped on the brake and clutch, fighting the juddering wheel, the Jeep shuddering as the ABS kicked in, the farmer turning in his tractor, his face big and pale and comically shocked, mouth open and one hand coming up to protect his face against the two tons of metal hurtling toward him. Cole shouted and pressed the pedals harder, actually standing from the seat and bracing himself against the steering wheel. The tractor jumped forward as the farmer sped up, a reaction as useless as it was automatic. And the one thought that screamed out in Cole’s mind was,
What the Hell is he doing out at three in the morning?

The Jeep hit a pothole and was jarred to the left, burying its nose in the hedge. Cole was thrown forward, seatbelt locking across his chest and biting into his neck. It knocked the breath from him and, winded for the second time in an hour, he slumped back in his seat and gasped for air. The Jeep’s bumper had nudged the tractor’s big rear wheel, but only slightly. The farmer drove on for an extra few feet – as if afraid that the Jeep would leap ahead again, like an animal lunging at its prey – and then pulled over into a gateway.

“You alright?” the man shouted, jumping from the tractor and waddling up the road. He was wearing a boiler suit and Wellington boots, and in the glare of the Jeep’s headlamps he looked like a lumbering puppet. Cole sucked in a breath at last and let out a hooting laugh, realising as he did so that he had been grasping the .45 so tightly between his thighs that he could feel bruises forming there already.

“So do I just shoot this twat?” he muttered, laughing so hard that a string of snot shot from his nose.
I’m losing it,
he thought,
too pumped up, too careless.

The farmer reached the Jeep and held out his hand as if to open the door. But then he looked inside, and whatever he saw in Cole’s face caused him to move back a few cautious paces, eyes downcast.
Dominant male,
Cole thought, snorting again. He gave in to the laughter as he restarted the Jeep – it had stalled after striking the hedge – and by the time he scraped between the tractor and the far hedge he was guffawing almost beyond control. But it felt good – it felt like
regaining
control – so he let it come some more.

“Nearly there!” he said, laughing again. “Nearly there for you, Natasha! I’ve been warming my gun so that the bullet’s not too cold when it goes into your skull.” His head hurt, his leg was stiff with dried blood, and every time he turned the steering wheel it felt as though blades were slicing into his hands. “Soon,” he said.

Cole glanced once in his rear-view mirror. The farmer was already climbing back into the tractor, probably trying to get his story straight so he could tell his fat wife later on.

Natasha was there then, probing his mind, seeing how close he was and withdrawing again. She left something behind, an echo of herself. To Cole it felt like fear. He smiled.

He held the .45 in his right hand as he steered; dangerous, but he was unwilling to drop the gun now. If that had been Roberts’ car back there – and if he’d fumbled the pistol instead of clasping it between his thighs – he could have lost his best chance. So no more risks. Not now when he was so close.

want
And why does she
me to find them?

“She’s sick,” Cole said, “and mad. She’s been under the ground for ten years.” He expected a smart answer from the living dead girl, but she had truly gone.

He looked left and right, searching for any gates to driveways, or narrow lanes, or parking areas. Roberts and his wife must have hired a cottage for the weekend, which would be good for Cole. No one else around to witness what was about to happen. If he was really lucky, the bodies would not be found for some time.

A few minutes later he saw the glare of car headlamps through the hedge to his right and he slowed down, killing his own lights. Moonlight was enough to see by at this speed. There were sparse white clouds in the sky now, like smudged paint on a blank black canvas, the stars splashes. He lowered his window, saw the entrance to the driveway, turned off the engine and coasted to a stop between the gateposts, blocking any route of escape.

The pistol felt good in his right hand.

It was Roberts’ car. Luck had led Cole on—

her,
Luck and
luck and
Natasha,
because she
wanted
me here.

He wondered where she was, and guessed the boot. Roberts would not have wanted to put something like that – something old, mysterious, dead – on the back seat where anyone could see it.

The car’s rear lights were still on, and there seemed to be a commotion in the driver’s seat. Cole squinted, glancing aside to allow his night vision to make out the shapes, and then he smiled. Perfect. He felt no thrill at killing, took no pleasure; it was a job well done that pleased him.

This would be over very soon.

Opening the door he heard a woman’s voice, raised and muffled, angry and relieved, and as his feet crunched down on the gravel he was glad she was making so much noise. This way, Roberts would not even hear the gunshot that killed him.

The interior light of Roberts’ car was on, and Cole saw him look in the rear-view mirror, his eyes widening, mouth dropping open to shout a warning.

“Shit!” The last thing Cole wanted to do was to hunt these people down. This had to be quick.

He cupped his right hand in his left, braced his legs and started shooting.

CHAPTER SIX

Tom had heard gunfire once before in the last twelve hours, but this was different. Out there on the Plain he had heard the blast and that was all – no bullet swishing by, no echo, no ricochet, no evidence of the shot other than the sound itself. Now it felt as though his whole world was exploding.

It took him a few seconds to associate what was happening around him with the gun blasts coming from behind. As he looked in the rear-view mirror, the back windscreen shattered, misting and showering down in a thousand pieces. The mirror itself smashed, firing glass shards at his face, and a hole the size of his fist appeared in the front windscreen. Something hammered on the roof once, twice, as if someone had taken to the car with a sledge hammer. The whole vehicle shook. The passenger seat rattled in its bracings, and a puff of stuffing erupted from its front face. It drifted lazily down onto the mat as the car stereo and heating panel exploded in a shower of plastic, glass and wires.

Jo had slumped down over his lap, hiding from the shooting. He could feel her shaking with fright, mumbling her terror, and he put his hand on her head to show her he was still there. She was wet with the sweat of fear.

The noise was incredible. The various sounds of the car being destroyed around him—

(
Go back, go back!
)

—the explosive gunshots, much louder than he could have imagined—

(
Go back go back, now!
)

—and his own screaming, so loud and yet so detached from him that for a few seconds he wondered whether it was Jo.

hurting
Go back, Daddy, back, back, he’s
me!

Tom tried to lean forward in his seat to offer less of a target, but Jo was heavy in his lap, still jerking and gasping from the shock of what was happening. Her legs protruded from the open door, the most exposed part of her, and he was terrified that one of them would catch a bullet.

It hurts!
Natasha screamed, and suddenly Tom realised what she had been saying, and why, and he knew that she was right. He turned the ignition key, slipped the car into reverse and slammed his foot on the gas.

The shooting paused as the car stared to move, and Tom guessed that Mister Wolf was reloading. Good timing. He turned to look back over his shoulder just at the instant when the rear of his car struck the front grille of the Jeep, jerking him back in his seat. Jo pressed against his stomach and chest, and Tom gasped. He saw the man roll across the gravel and stand again, fumbling in his pocket with one hand and holding the gun with the other. For a second their eyes met. The man frowned, cocked his head to one side, holding Tom’s gaze. And then Tom saw the game of distraction Cole had been playing when he brought up the gun and aimed it at his head.

The bullet exploded the seat’s headrest as Tom drove forward again. He braked quickly and reversed into the Jeep once more, careful to keep Jo’s legs safely clear of the impact. He felt hot metal glancing across the back of his scalp, opening up fresh wounds.

Hurts, hurts!

The car struck again and he kept his foot on the accelerator, wheels spinning in the gravel and sending small stones flying, the stench of the burning clutch filling his nostrils, the Jeep moving back now because the man had somehow, miraculously, left the parking brake off.

The gun exploded again and again, punching holes in the car. Jo shook but Tom did not look down, could not, not now that there was the slightest chance they might escape.

“Come on!” Tom screamed, and the Jeep rolled from the driveway and back out into the road.

Jo jerked on his lap and then lay still. Tom looked down and saw a blossom of blood on her back, spreading slowly outward from a ragged hole in her dressing gown. “Jo?”

Footsteps, running on gravel.

He kept his foot on the gas.

Another engine roared and a tractor ploughed into the side of the Jeep, shoving it several feet along the road with a screech of tyres and the howl of breaking metal.

“Jo?”

There was room now to reverse between the Jeep and tractor – tangled together as if they had rolled off the production line as one – and the gatepost, and as Tom saw Mister Wolf standing directly in front of the car, levelling his pistol, he spun the wheel and ducked down over Jo. Two bullets thudded into his seat. He felt the warmth of Jo’s blood on his cheek where he was pressed against her back. Her legs and the open door snagged the gatepost and then flipped free again. The car hit something, scraped by, and Tom sat up in his seat, blood and tears dropping from his chin and cheeks as he twisted around and reversed quickly up the road.