Berserk

I hear Mister Wolf! Natasha said.

Tom started to panic. He pulled the rifle out between Sophia's dangling legs. She coughed, then moaned, then growled when she felt the metal batting her knees on the way past. "I'm not against you," he whispered, hoping his words would make it through. Dan still mumbled incoherently, and then Tom heard someone else muttering her way into his mind. Lane, the voice said, and it was Sophia. Lane … Lane?

Tom forced himself back and pulled the rifle after him.

He's past the car now, Daddy.

Seconds … maybe only seconds. Tom sat up, turned around and rested the rifle on the seatback. There was a scope, but he had never used a gun, and he was afraid that if he looked through it he would miss things happening at the periphery. He had not yet seen Cole.

Sarah screeched out loud and lurched up for him.

"No!" Tom whispered, and he heard someone skidding to a halt on the road.

Cole stepped into the frame of the open back door, maybe twenty feet away. He was staring into the Range Rover, his face a dark mask of blood in the dim light, the pistol glinting in his hand. "Sneaky bastard!" he said.

Tom pointed the rifle and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Cole ran at the Rover, lifting his pistol, and Tom saw the maw of its barrel growing to swallow him whole.

Daddy! Natasha said. The others were whispering at him now, pained and angry, raging, their thoughts so dark and confused that he could make no sense of them. He pulled the trigger, and nothing happened again.

"Safety," Cole said. He stood at the open door, aimed his pistol at Tom's chest and shot him for the second time that day.

Tom fell back and his vision left him with a blinding flash, like a bulb brightening before finally burning out. He could not breathe. His chest felt heavy, as if his organs had turned to lead. For some reason he thought of Steven when he was six years old, waking one morning and creeping downstairs before he and Jo heard him, cooking them toast, buttering it, making tea with cold water and picking a rose from the back garden before bringing everything up on a tray. Happy Christmas, he had said, and though Christmas had been weeks away they had spent that morning laughing and playing and being everything a family was meant to be.

Tom's body began to burn from the inside out. And as all senses receded to a point on the horizon of consciousness he smelled petrol and blood, heard a volley of gunshots, and then screams as flames licked at flesh.

As Roberts fell back another shape rose from the seat, grabbed the rifle, nudged the safety and fired off a shot. Cole felt the bullet singe the hairs on his left ear. He put two bullets into the shape—one of the young bastard berserkers, all grown up—and as it howled he snatched up Natasha.

So light! He almost stumbled as he picked up the berserker bitch. He'd been prepared for some weight, but there was hardly anything to her at all. It was like lifting a bundle of straw and twigs.

The shape rose again in the backseat, shaking like a wet dog, spraying the Range Rover's ceiling with a fan of blood. Cole turned and ran, expecting at any second to feel a high velocity bullet tear out his spine. He zigzagged, feet scraping on the ground, and as he looked down at the bundle in his arms he let out an involuntary laugh. He had her! After so long, the greatest mistake of his life was about to be put right.

I'm dying, she said in his mind, I can't move, I haven't fed, I'm dying.

"Poor girl," Cole said, laughing again. He should stop now, stand on her chest and put a bullet in her head, but he could still hear howling and commotion from the Range Rover … and he could still smell petrol in the air.

He turned. There were shadows dancing in and around the crashed cars. He dropped Natasha to the ground, braced himself and fired beneath the Range Rover. The third shot threw up a spark, the spark expanded into a wavering blue flame, and seconds later the vehicle's ruptured fuel leads ignited. He turned and fell to the ground as the fuel tank exploded. Natasha had rolled to the edge of the road and he scrambled after her on hands and knees, not caring about sharp stones or the burning debris falling around him, concerned only with this berserker bitch whom he had spent years regretting not killing when he had the chance.

Don't hurt me! she said, and he shouted, "You've changed your tune!" Another thumping explosion came from along the road as the Mondeo's fuel tank went up. He was sure all these fireworks must be attracting attention, but he supposed it could have been only fifteen minutes since the first shots were fired down in the valley. Whatever, he did not have long. He would shoot the berserker now and run like fuck. Because however hot that fire, however weak those others were, he did not for a minute believe he had killed them all.

The sudden sense of his life coming to an end struck him hard. If he had got them all—if their tainted blood were bubbling away within those flames—then once he killed Natasha, his life no longer held meaning. They would be dead, all of them, and his sense of purpose would be fulfilled. And what would he be then? Just another murderer waiting to be caught?

For reasons he could not fully comprehend, he picked up Natasha and ran.

He leaped over the ditch at the edge of the road and started climbing up out of the valley. The ground here was loosely landscaped, small trees spaced well apart with heathers and bracken growing in between. The going was quite easy, though his legs soon began to burn. His thighs felt as if they would swell and rip apart his jeans, but he had come to ignore that pain.

"Where are you?" he said. "Where are you?" But the berserker girl was a bundle of skin and bones in his arms. Whatever was left inside—her personality, her tenacious life force—had gone away once more.

Cole paused and looked back down at the flaming vehicles. The fire lit up the road in both directions, but he could not make out any bodies, inside or outside the Range Rover. If some of them had got away they were in hiding … or coming after him.

He continued uphill, carrying the shell of Natasha with him. Knowing he should kill her. Feeling, somehow, that the time was not yet right.

Somebody was feeding him. Tom could smell fire and cooking flesh, feel fire of a different kind coursing through his body and melting everything he had ever known, every thought that tried to surface, in its conflagration. And yet it was the hunger that brought him around, lifting him up above the surface of unconsciousness that hid only dead depths beneath.

It felt as though he had not eaten forever, and he lapped up the food, chewing, swallowing, opening his mouth and waiting for the next morsel like a fledgling bird. There, there, someone said, and Tom was not sure whether they had spoken out loud or in his mind. He was uncertain of the voice. It sounded soothing but behind it lay anger, and something else. The voice sounded hollow. There, there.

"What?" he asked, unable to finish. Something crushed down on his chest and took away all his wind, and he gasped for long seconds as he tried to draw in another breath. One came, eventually, and he kept it light, in and out slowly, thinking that with every breath his insides would break.

Meat touched his lips, he opened his mouth and gulped it down, barely chewing.

Natasha! He tried to sit up but the weight on his chest held him down. He opened his eyes. A shadow sat at his side, wavering as a fire cast it left and right.

"He has her," the voice said.

No! Tom could not speak, but he thought this shadow heard him well enough.

"Sarah has gone after them, but it's down to the girl now. She's more than you know. This could be interesting."