Chapter Ten

Cole tried to shove down the guilt, but it kept rising again to remind him it was there. He drove it into darkness but it dragged him with it, and that darkness was painfully familiar. It stuck to him like blood on cloth, and however much he tried to distract himself it was always waiting there for him.

I'm a good man, he thought, and the sun glinted from a splash of blood on the dashboard.

Deep in the underground of his unconscious he thought he heard a wail. He turned up the car stereo, wound down both windows, pressing his foot to the gas so that he had to concentrate more on taking sharp bends and small humps in the road. Yet still he heard the echoes, and they were not fading away. Everything you ever see or hear or taste remains in your mind, so it's said, only waiting to be retrieved. And he knew that all four people he had killed in his life—three of them in the past two days—were still inside him. He would meet them again. They would rise up and speak to him, and it was purely his strength or weakness, his doubt or conviction, that would see him through.

I'm a good man!

He only hoped that he found Natasha by the time that mental showdown came.

"Who have you found?"

Tom had stopped looking into the mirror. He had seen Natasha sitting up once, and that was enough. She held my arm when I dug her up, he thought, but up until now that had been a memory he'd kept shut out, weighed down, away from everything that was happening. Because there were only so many edges he could walk, and that was one from which he would surely topple.

Them, Natasha said in his mind. She had spoken just now, Tom was sure. The voice had been that of a child, but one that has seen too much; croaky with age, weak with decay, yet filled with excitement. Sophia, Lane and their children, the ones who escaped. The other berserkers! The ones Mister Wolf wanted dead, so he killed my family instead.

"They have Steven?" Tom's heart was suddenly light in his chest, skipping instead of beating. The car drifted into the centre lane, and a lorry driver leaned on his horn until Tom twitched the wheel and brought them back.

Probably, she said. They probably have him.

"You told me they did!"

I said there was a chance.

Tom frowned and looked in the mirror again, the girl's face frozen and inscrutable. She remained sitting upright. Her hair was wrapped into a solid muddied knot at the base of her neck. He should wash it for her. And really, through the haze of everything that had happened, he was not exactly sure what she had said about Steven. All he knew was that there was a chance, and right now that was enough.

"Where will they meet us? What will happen? How many of them are there?"

I'll tell you where to go and when to stop, Natasha said. And Daddy, don't be afraid. I'm here with you. You helped me, now I'll look after you.

"You can't move!" Tom said, wincing as his raised voice seemed to allow in the pain from his back. "You can't do anything. How can you protect me?"

I'm a berserker, like them, Natasha said, and then she was silent, the question obviously answered.

Tom drove on. The pain in his back—I've been shot, shot by a fucking gun, and the bullet's still in there sucking in infection, and I might be dying!—throbbing in time with his heartbeat, yet never bad enough to make him woozy or faint. Something Natasha had done was seeing to that. She had fed from him—whatever she claimed to the contrary, he knew that was what had happened—drinking his blood, taking strength from it, and giving him something back in return. There was no other explanation for how good he felt, considering all that had happened to him. She was taking care of him.

Stop thinking, she whispered in his head, stop worrying, drive on.

"Am I going mad?" he said, and Natasha withdrew to allow him his own mind.

He drove on. Midday came and went, and Tom slipped into some sort of daze, feeling the miles drifting by but having little recollection of the moments in between. He was tired, hungry and thirsty. He supposed veering into an almost hypnotic state was a defence mechanism.

The motorway swerved and swayed northward. He kept his speed to about sixty, and most cars and lorries swept by as they edged up toward eighty. A few people looked his way, but he did not return their stares. He was aware of pale faces pressed to windows, and only when their vehicles moved on did he glance over at them, catching brief glimpses of faces which all looked the same. Whether they saw Natasha or not he did not know, and he was not sure what they would make of her if they did. A dummy, perhaps. Or maybe they would see a scarecrow, or a pile of cloths, or a strange plant being transported south to north. None of them stopped, none of them swerved away from him in surprise, the drivers losing the steering wheel as they reached for their phones to call the police. They simply moved on, and he would never see them again.

He drove on, mind focused ahead, the events of the past day and night as hazy as a dream.

The landscape was wide and flat. Fields were being harvested, some of them already worked and left with stubble where their crops had grown. One or two had already been ploughed under, and Tom thought of the life that would rise from the turned earth. Clumps of trees were dressed in orange and yellow, sprouting from a carpet of colour where many dead leaves had already been shaken loose. The sun bore down on one wooded hilltop and it shone gold and ochre across the landscape, like a beacon to anyone seeking the true splendour of nature. Such beauty in death. Such colour in decay. Everything in nature had a reason, and Tom spent a while musing on why dying leaves should look so attractive. Dead animals' colours were dictated by rot; sour colours, non-colours. Natasha, back there in the rear seat… there was no colour to her, just greyness, browns, nothing striking at all. The colour of death for plants was much more pleasing. Coming up with no answer as to why this was, Tom was pleased. Nature should be enigmatic. It was not up to humankind to pretend to know nature, and it was not right that someone like him should know such secrets on a day like today.

He thought of his office, his desk, his room filled with dusty musical instruments at home. But that all seemed years and worlds away.

Occasionally, Natasha would stroke through his mind, only touching him briefly, and he saw the new strength in her. It pleased him, and frightened him. Will you be my daddy? she had asked, and he had never considered the consequences of his reply.

The traffic slowed, then stopped, and then began moving again at a crawl. A few minutes later they passed a lorry in the ditch, its driver sitting on the back steps of an ambulance chatting with paramedics while they gave him the once-over. He looked at the BMW as Tom passed by, and his gaze shifted from Tom to the backseat, his eyes flickering away, back again, away. A policeman standing in front of the ambulance looked as well, his eyes fixed on Tom until Tom looked away. They'll be looking for the car, he thought, and as he accelerated he looked up at a traffic sign spanning the motorway. Place names and road numbers made no sense, but he saw the small black specks of cameras above the signs, pointing both ways. Farther on there was a camera atop a tall pole, aimed directly down at the slow lane. And as distance lessened between the BMW and the camera Tom was sure the camera moved, tracking his progress, following him like eyes in a painting.

"They'll be looking for us," he said. Natasha did not answer, and he wondered where she was. Back with Cole, checking whether he was dead or injured? Or ahead with the berserkers she was taking him toward? He could not tell, and he would not ask.