Berserk (15 page)

“Why—?”

can’t.
I
I’m not sure, not really, but the closer we get the more certain I’ll be. And it’s dangerous there. Very dangerous. If he’s still with them, they’ll be angry, and strong, and well-fed.

“Who are you on about? I don’t understand. I don’t understand any of this.”

They kept us hungry,
Natasha said. And then she drew back into herself and left Tom alone, alone with his dead wife and that already-familiar sense of abandonment.

* * *

Cole had never enjoyed killing. Those few occasions he killed – his old friend Nathan King recently, and the times before – had been out of necessity. King had died because he knew too much and he had started blabbing, but really it was all down to the berserkers. Cole had promised himself ten years ago that he would have to be as heartless, ruthless and vicious as them to catch the ones that had escaped or, ironically, to prevent them from being noticed. He knew that he could never truly match them, but he had tried. Through the doubt and the self-hate, he had tried.
had

After killing Sandra Francis six years before, Cole had cried. Curled up in bed the tears came, and he stood immediately, went to the kitchen and cut himself across the back of his left hand. The pain gave the tears a different reason, and the blood brought back memories that had given him some form of justification. If the scientist had talked, helped him, revealed everything she knew about what made Natasha special, perhaps he would have let her live.

Now, standing over the kneeling farmer and pressing the barrel of the .45 to the back of the man’s skull, Cole would have cheerfully seen the fool’s brains splatter his shoes.

“Fucking idiot!” he shouted. “It’s
early,
you should be in
bed,
not driving around the fucking lanes wrecking cars. Idiot.
Idiot!”

“I . . . I . . .” was all the farmer could say. He was shivering, sweating and crying. Instead of inspiring pity this only increased Cole’s anger.

“Stop stammering and tell me what you’re going to do about it. Tell me!”

The farmer had seen most of what had happened. The shooting, Roberts ramming the Jeep into the road, the blood on the woman’s legs where she lay across Roberts’ lap. Cole knew that he had hit her several times, and that was bad, that was wrong. But right now he was too enraged to feel sorrow or regret. Now, his blood was up.

I’m berserk!
he thought, and although the idea was horrific, it was strangely satisfying as well. “I’m almost as mad as them!” he said. Cole’s finger tightened on the trigger and he pressed the barrel harder into the farmer’s head. The old man swayed on his knees and then tumbled onto his side, crying and raising his hands to ward off the bullet. He could have been anyone’s father, probably had grandchildren, showed them around the farm, let them feed the chickens and play in the hay barn . . .

“That’s none of your business. Now listen, old man, this is way beyond your understanding. Got that? This has nothing to do with you, but you’ve seen me, and you’ve seen everything, and I have to tell you my finger’s about two pounds of pressure away from spreading your brains across the ground. Like that idea? You want me to air your head?”

“No . . . no . . .” He shook his head again, fat jowls catching on the slide, and Cole’s anger started to dissipate. Later, he thought that the old man’s obesity had saved him. He had actually looked funny down there, kneeling on the ground and shaking his head, blubbery cheeks going one way, neck wobbling the other. If he had not made Cole smile – unintentional though it was – he may well have never milked his cows again.

“You love the Queen?” Cole said. He almost smiled again, but then the thought of Natasha rooting in his mind came back to him, the sense of her intruding there, doing her own secret things down in the underground of his subconscious, and he thought maybe he’d never smile again. “You love your country, old man?”

The farmer nodded, eyes never leaving Cole’s.
I wonder what he sees there,
Cole thought.
I wonder if he thinks I’m mad? He has no idea
. . .

“I need a car,” Cole said. “That man you saw has taken something from Porton Down, and I have to recover it. And thanks to you, my Jeep’s fucked.”

Cole leaned back and took the gun from beneath the farmer’s jaws. Perhaps threat was no longer the way. “No, you’re not infected,” he said. “But that man had something in his car, something deadly, and he doesn’t even know he’s got it.” And if he did, would it make any difference? If he knew what Natasha could be, would it change anything that had happened? Probably not. People like that were selfish. Never saw the big picture. Didn’t understand the implications of what they were doing, and why. That was why Cole was here with his gun. His gun was one of the implications. If only he could get close enough to put a bullet into that shrivelled monster’s head.

“And they’ve sent you to catch him?”

“Something like that,” Cole said. The idea had crossed his mind of telling the relevant authorities about what had happened, but it fled just as quickly. Not now. Not after last time. They had made it quite plain that they didn’t give a shit about what they had done with the berserkers. It was down to Cole, and really it always had been.

The farmer stood and brushed himself off, and Cole urged him to walk on ahead. He was no threat – shambling old man probably couldn’t even raise his dick, let alone a fist – but Cole wanted him in front simply so that they did not have to talk.

He had some thinking to do. And to do so successfully he had to do something that made his skin crawl, his balls shrivel and his scalp tighten: he had to open his mind.

* * *

Cole taunted Natasha, and very soon she answered back.

Fucker
. . .
useless
. . .
think you can get me?
. . .
piece of shit
. . .
worm
. . .
fuck you, Mister Wolf
. . .

The words flew in from a distance, vague and almost unheard. Cole could barely feel Natasha’s slick, sick intrusion. They were more like echoes. She must have been a long distance away.

“Just keep walking.”
Holy shit, he thinks he’s in a fucking movie!

It was dawn now, and the sun was smearing the eastern hills with a palette of oranges and pinks. Cole loved to watch the sunrise, welcoming in the new day and wondering how different it would be. Each day offered renewed possibilities and a refreshed chance at life, and even in his darkest moments a spectacular sunrise could not help but touch him.

I wonder if Nathan’s been found yet,
he thought, and a flock of rooks passed across the sunrise, hundreds of them. Cole closed his eyes briefly and imagined he was one of them. He envied the animals their simplicity of life. Their main purpose was to survive and procreate; his own purpose was borne out of revenge. A particularly human trait, revenge. It served no aim. It was like a fox coming after the hounds.

He had lost his own meaning in their world.

Cole opened his eyes and brought himself back to the here and now. Back to the unnatural.

His objective was now divided. On the one hand, he could not let Natasha reach the other berserkers. He had gathered evidence over the years that she was different somehow, altered, experimented upon by Porton Down and . . .
improved.
That was the one word the scientist had used before Cole shot her.
Improved.
He had no idea what they had done to her, but he did know one thing for sure: it would have only been to make her more deadly. And once reunited with the others, she could well become too powerful for him to take on his own.

On the other hand, finding the escapees had, until today, been his prime concern. What he would do then he had not even considered, because the prospects were too terrifying. Call in the Army, perhaps. Give them the opportunity on a plate to clean up an old mess.

Or maybe after so long, he would go it alone.

The escapees had been silent for ten years. Cole scanned the news every day, always looking for signs that they had been active, but there was nothing obvious. Murder, death, missing people, all these happened, but not in any great numbers in any one place. Not in Britain, at least. If the monsters had gone abroad . . . well, he would know soon enough. If Natasha looked to be making for the ports or an airport, this would be a whole new game.

Either way, he had some fucking vampires to hunt and kill.

* * *

Even though they cut across fields it was still more than a mile. It took almost half an hour for the farmer to lead Cole to his farm, and ten times in the last ten minutes of their walk Cole daydreamed about putting a bullet in the fat man’s arse. Roberts and Natasha were getting farther and farther away, and every minute wasted meant that finding them again would be harder. Cole listened for Natasha, inviting her in, and her random words soon faded into distant mumbles, and then whispers, and after that he was uncertain that he heard anything at all. His subconscious told him that she was still touching him, her words so quiet now that they were shadow rather than voice, but he was sure that she was still there. Raving. Gloating. And luring him on . . .

. . . Luring him on, because that was the only way she would ever find the others.

“That’s it!” Cole said as they entered the farmer’s yard. A fat woman stood at the doorway to a run-down house and a tall youth emerged from one of the sheds, both of them staring at the farmer and seeing the fear in his eyes.

“Yes, that’s it,” the farmer said, pointing to the BMW. “I’ll get the keys. Er . . . you want me to get the keys?” He stood there in the cow shit and awaited Cole’s permission to leave.

Cole smiled. “Yes, the keys,” he said. He slipped the .45 into his jacket, hoping it had not been noticed but seeing in the fat woman’s eyes that it had. He looked from her, to the farmer, to the tall youth standing beside the steel shed. The boy held a shovel in his hands as if it could swipe a bullet from the air. Too many John Woo movies.

“What’s wrong, John?” the woman asked. Her voice was firm, the fear well hidden. Cole guessed that however surprised and scared she may be, she would stay in control. The boy, however, was already growing pale as realisation set in.

“I’m taking your car,” Cole said to the woman. “It’s a matter of national security.”
Damn, maybe
he’d
seen too many movies!
Instead of smiling he turned to the boy and stared him down.

“You’re not taking my car,” the woman said.

“Janet, he’s Army!” the farmer said, waddling across the yard, hands held out to his wife. Cole realised he had an ally in this man, someone for whom the extraordinary was a break from the mundane day-to-day. Never mind the woman he had seen Cole shoot, never mind the fate of the man who had crashed his way out of the cottage driveway. This was an adventure.

“Has he shown you ID?”

“No. But he has a gun.”

“Oh then he work for the Army!” The woman stared across the yard at Cole, glanced down at the pocket where he’d slipped the .45, then back up at his face.
must
What do you want?
her expression said, and Cole glanced across at the black BMW and shrugged.
That’s all.

“Is that a real gun?” the boy said.

“It’s real alright!” the farmer said, turning from his wife to the boy. Easier reaction there. Not so much hostility. “I’ve just seen a gunfight!”

This guy’s a gem,
Cole thought. The farmer had already forgotten that the other party in the ‘gunfight’ had not possessed a gun.

“Look, Janet,” Cole said, stepping forward with his hands held out from his sides, “I really do need your car, and I really am going to have it. I didn’t exaggerate in what I said, though I could have put it better. You’ll get the car back, and you’ll have a letter of thanks and some small reward for your troubles.” The woman’s expression hardly changed.
Hard bitch,
he thought. “You’ll get a new tractor, too.”

“He shot the tractor?” the boy asked.

Cole sighed and shook his head. This was getting more ridiculous by the minute! And then the woman spoke, and ridiculous turned to crazy.

“I don’t believe any of what you say. There’s a loaded shotgun on the wall three feet from me. You show me ID right now or I go for it.”

Damn, he didn’t have time for shit like this. Random thoughts began to fly at him, his own ideas coming together at speed, reacting to the trauma of the last few hours. He was not used to being confused, and he was not used to someone getting the better of him. Roberts had been at the nasty end of Cole’s pistol and yet he’d escaped, and now here Cole was wasting time arguing with a bumbling idiot farmer, his TV-addled son and the fucking Terminatrix!