Berserk (20 page)

“Someone will come,” he whispered.

Don’t care,
the girl’s voice said in his mind, following him as he sank, turning into an echo and then fading away altogether.

* * *

From the darkness came the sound of the sea, and then its salty smell mixed with the odour of blood, and then he saw the boat. The darkness never went altogether – it was there at the edges, threatening to bleed back in at any instant – but Tom viewed this memory from Natasha’s mind, and try though he might he could not pull away.

* * *

The four of them – Natasha, her brother and their parents – were in the same boat that had brought them to the house. It was powering across the waves, thumping and jarring as it leapt from crest to crest. They sat in the sunken well at its centre, unable to see anything but sky and the occasional splash of spray against the deep blue afternoon. The sun shone bright and aloof overhead.

The deck around their feet was awash with blood. Some of it was their own. They all bore injuries that should have killed them, and yet they seemed more alive than ever. The strange adaptations that had been evident in the house – the elongated limbs, distended jaws, lengthened nails – seemed to have receded, but the bullet holes and stab wounds were still visible. Some of these wept blood, but others already seemed to have stopped bleeding and scabbed over, especially her brother’s. There was a dark spot on his face and two on his neck where bullets had struck home, and now they were little more than heavy bruises. No signs of holes in the skin. No fresh blood. He smiled at Natasha. His pain was palpable, yet in the smile there was an adult knowledge as well, the calm certainty that everything would be alright. Even at this tender age, Peter knew that these wounds would not be the death of him.

of the blood was theirs. But most of it came from what they had brought with them.
Some

Huddled between where the berserker family members sat, three naked people cowered on the floor, wallowing in the mess. There were two men and a woman. One of the men had both hands pressed to his throat, trying to stem the tide of blood pumping from a ruptured artery, while the other man and the woman watched wide-eyed, afraid and yet unwilling to help.

Natasha’s little brother – he must have been maybe seven years old – left his seat. He splashed through the blood on hands and knees, and the three captives cowered back, the man without the ruptured throat keening like a pig in pain. Peter paused, growled at the whining man and laughed when he started to cry. Natasha’s mother and father watched with parental fondness, smiling past the pain of their own healing wounds. Peter suddenly darted to the bleeding man, pulled his hands away and took a long, deep draught of the dark red blood. Still on hands and knees he returned to his seat, glancing at the naked woman as he passed by. She remained silent, eyes downcast. Perhaps if she did not see them, they would not see her.

The writhing man grabbed at his wound again, pressing hard, starting to moan now as he felt death’s approach.

“You’re so greedy,” Natasha’s mother said. Her throat was raw from the scream of the hunt and the ravaging of flesh, her voice a knife on bone.

“Yummy,” the boy said, licking his lips and rubbing his stomach. Natasha laughed. Her father smiled at her and his son, then looked down at where the naked woman cowered. She was doing her best to avoid their gaze, legs and arms drawn in to make herself as small as possible. There were terrible bite marks down one side of her body, the skin ragged and torn.

“What’s wrong?” he growled. She ignored him. He kicked out, his heel catching her head and flicking it back. “What’s wrong?”

She looked up at last, defiant. “Fuck you,” she said, and they all laughed, and their laughs were deep and harsh.

Natasha looked down at her own bloodied body and drew her hands over the wounds. Each touch brought pain, but each pain brought comfort, because she would mend. None of them had been using silver bullets or blades. It had been quite a battle, and a good feed, but now she was tired and looking forward to getting back home. At least, thought of it as home. Her mother and father frequently spoke to her in her mind, telling her of another place entirely, and sometimes she dreamed of the darkness and the silence and the places where her kind may one day live in peace, as they had before. They had told her of Home, but there was a huge implied history to their discussions, a deep and rich past, though she had never probed further. She sensed that they were keeping her ignorant of many truths of berserker history for her own good.
she
The Man seeks to know everything,
they often warned, telling her to guard her thoughts.
He would know, and he would kill us all, because he’s not like the others. He’s different.
He sees the bad without the good, and he sees the differences between us whilst ignoring all the similarities. The Man hates us because we’re not like him. Sometimes, honey, that’s all a man needs to hate.

“We don’t really need to take anything back, do we?” her father croaked.

“There’s plenty for us when we want it at home,” Natasha said. “But still, there’s something exciting in taking it from the hunt.”

“Surely you’re not still hungry?” her mother asked. She was a thin woman, slight, and her skin displayed evidence of at least four healing bullet wounds.

“I’m always hungry,” her father said, glancing above Natasha’s head at something out of sight. He smiled, and even though his teeth were back to normal by now, it still looked like a snarl. “I’m a berserker. Eating people is what we do.”

Natasha turned to see what he had been looking at, who he had been talking to. Standing above her on the boat’s main deck, eyes bearing their own peculiar human hunger, a soldier watched the continuing bloodshed. The soldier whom her parents referred to as The Man.

To Natasha he was like a scary monster from a children’s book, and she called him Mister Wolf.

* * *

Tom snapped awake, panicking. He had no idea where he was. He looked around the car, expecting sea water to flood in at any moment, wondering why he could no longer feel the boat leaping from wave to wave. He could smell blood but there was no one else in sight, no one but the shrivelled thing suckered to his chest.

“No!” He pushed away, wincing as the pain roared in his lower back
. Cole. I saw Cole through Natasha’s eyes. Watching them, and enjoying it.
“Leave me alone!” he said.

Natasha rolled back against the leather seat. Wet blood glittered around her mouth. She did not move, but Tom sat up anyway, pressing his hand to his chest and feeling the warm trickle of blood running onto his palm and down his wrist.

No, Daddy,
she said,
it’s not like that, not always. And
never
for you. I’m trying to help you. Can’t you feel, can’t you sense the pain drifting away?

Tom pushed back against the front seats, staring at Natasha’s mouth as he heard her voice in his head. No, those lips were not moving. No, her limbs had not shifted position. She was propped against the back seat and there she remained. And yet his blood surrounded her shrivelled mouth, and the pain in his back from the bullet wound was a fist of fire twisting in his insides, its fingers flexing and reaching and tearing . . . but it was bearable. Awful, making him want to scream, but bearable.

Can you feel it? Fading away? Listen to me and it will get even better.

“How?” he asked. “Why? Am I in shock?”

Not shock,
Natasha said.

Tom almost laughed. Almost. “I’ve never been shot before. I shocked, let me tell you.”
am

Not shock,
she said again.
I’m feeling better, so you are too.

Tom glanced down at his chest, the lip of torn skin there that still dribbled blood into his opened shirt. “Have you been drinking my blood?”

Only a little.
Her voice was quiet and tentative, the voice of a child found doing wrong.

“You told me you weren’t a vampire.”

We’re not!
she said, more determined now.
They thought that at first. Especially him, Mister Wolf. Teased us with garlic and crosses and
. . . She laughed, a dry rustle that matched her physical appearance.
My mummy and daddy went along with it because it amused them. They did their best to sleep in the day and wake at night, even though it upset my brother and me, and Mister Wolf and the others thought they knew what they were doing. Funny. It was funny. Even the day they found out we were fooling them, it was funny.
She trailed off, as if that day were the last time she had found cause to truly laugh.

“I’ve been shot,” Tom said. “I’ve been
shot!”
He leaned forward over Natasha’s body and rested his forehead on the back seat, turning slightly so that he could look along the road at Mister Wolf. He was still lying half-in a ditch beside the road, an arm and leg splayed out onto the tarmac, the rest of him almost hidden from view. He was not moving. Tom wondered what Natasha had done to him, and how, but he thought he had a good idea; he had felt her dark psychic fingers exploring his own mind, and he had no doubt they possessed strengths greater than those he had already experienced.

We really do have to go now,
Natasha said.
He’ll be awake soon, and he’ll have more bullets.

“But I’ve been shot, I’m bleeding. I can’t drive like this.”

Listen to me, Daddy. If you listen to me you can do it.

“I think the bullet’s still inside.” He checked his stomach and abdomen, feeling gingerly for an exit wound, but he found none – only the pounding pain in his lower back, and the feeling of something being very wrong inside.
Is that just the bullet grinding around,
he thought,
or has it moved stuff in there?

We have a connection,
Natasha said, and Tom suddenly thought of her dried mouth clasped to his chest, his blood leaking into her desiccated body. The image was thrust into his mind, not conjured, held there for his inspection and turned by memories other than his. He sensed the blood flowing from beneath his skin, and felt it enter Natasha’s mouth. He could sense the draining from his veins, and taste his own blood upon another’s tongue. And wherever he looked, whichever way he turned, he felt calmed and soothed by the exchange. It was as if bad blood were being bled from him, taking pain along with it, and yet it was good blood when imbibed. Strength came to him, and something unknown seemed to stir in Natasha’s mind.

There,
Natasha said.
See?

“But I don’t understand,” he said, reaching around and feeling the ragged mess of his back. Blood still coursed between his fingers, and when he shifted a fresh flow warmed his skin.

You don’t need to,
she said.
It’s enough for now to accept it and let it help. We have to go.

“I don’t think—”

You can drive.

“I’m not sure—”

Daddy
. . .

Tom looked down at Natasha’s body, her face, eye sockets holding the shrivelled eyes like old raisins. And even though he saw no movement, he felt her smile.

Thank you,
she said.

From outside the BMW, above the rumble of the engine, Tom heard a groan. He looked across the road at Cole’s arm and leg, saw the fingers twitching and the foot dragging across the ground. “He’s waking.”

Natasha was silent but her smile remained in his head, the gratitude apparent
. I can’t let it end like this,
he thought.
Not here, and not now.
He moved slightly, waiting for pain to tear up his insides, but it was little worse than a bad toothache. A toothache the size of his entire lower body, true, but it was a rich, vibrant pain, not debilitating. He shifted some more, stepping carefully from the rear seat, standing, turning, closing the door and resting into the driver’s seat.
I’ve just been shot in the back and now I’m going to drive,
he thought, and the idea was so alien that it made no sense whatsoever, gave him nothing to grab onto. Here was Tom, entire life spent behind a desk, most daring exploits usually involving having four pints instead of two on Friday evening pub visits, who now sat covered in his own blood, a ten-year-old body talking to him from the back seat, an ex-Army killer lying twenty feet away, and his murdered wife in a car farther along the road.

There’s still Steven,
Natasha said then, and she knew exactly what to say to turn his mind back to the present.

Tom nodded, thought fleetingly of his young son playing soldiers in their back garden, and slammed the driver’s door.

Cole sat up in the ditch. He shook his head, putting his hands to his temples as if to contain his dizziness. Then he looked straight at Tom, and his expression was unreadable.

“You killed Jo,” Tom muttered. He reversed the BMW, went forward, back and forward again until it was facing along the road at his own battered car. His wife was in there, dead and cooling, Cole’s bullets still wrapped up in her organs and flesh.

Steven,
Natasha said again.

Tom nodded, gunned the engine and slipped it into first gear.

Cole stood on shaky legs. He still held the pistol in one hand, and the other delved into his jeans pocket and came out with a slim silver shape. A fresh magazine.

Tom thought of Steven laughing as he blew out the candles on his tenth birthday cake, and Jo ruffling his hair and smiling at Tom, her eyes as alight as those candles with the knowledge of the blessed life the three of them had together.

Steven,
the girl said yet again, and behind the voice in his mind was a sudden sense of promise and hope.

As Tom changed into second gear and pressed down on the accelerator, he swerved the car across the road. The offside edge caught Cole across the thighs and sent him spinning across the ditch and into the hedge. Tom looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the killer disappear in a shower of leaves and limbs.

The pain nestled at the base of Tom’s back, and Natasha stroked his mind, calming, soothing, telling him all the things he wanted to hear.