Coldbrook (Hammer) by Tim Lebbon
About the Book
THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT HAS CHANGED
THE REASON IS COLDBROOK
The facility lay deep in the Appalachian Mountains, a secret laboratory called Coldbrook. Its scientists had achieved the impossible: a gateway to a new world. Theirs was to be the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, but they had no idea what they were unleashing.
With their breakthrough came disease, and it is out and ravaging the human population. The only hope is a cure, and the only cure is genetic resistance. An uninfected person amongst the billions dead.
In the chaos of global destruction there is only one that can save the human race.
But will they find her in time?
About the Author
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had over twenty novels published to date, as well as dozens of novellas and hundreds of short stories. Recent books include The Secret Journeys of Jack London: The Wild (co-authored with Christopher Golden), Echo City, The Island, The Map of Moments (with Christopher Golden), and Bar None. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for International Horror Guild, Shirley Jackson, and World Fantasy Awards.
Fox 2000 recently acquired film rights to The Secret Journeys of Jack London, and Tim and Christopher Golden have delivered the screenplay. Several more of his novels and novellas are currently in development, and he is also working on TV and movie proposals, solo and in collaboration.
Find out more about Tim at his website www.timlebbon.net.
Prologue
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
Wednesday
SIX HOURS AFTER forging a pathway from his own reality to another, Jonah Jones closed his eyes to dream. But he doubted that sleep would come. His mind, Bill Coldbrook had once told him, was far too busy dancing. The moment he laid down his head he always knew whether the night would usher in a few blessed hours of rest or a long wakeful period of silence, as he stared at the patterns that darkness painted on the ceiling and thought about what might be.
Tonight he no longer needed to dwell upon what might be. It was time to think further ahead than that.
We did it! he thought. We bloody well did it! He’d left a night light burning in his small room as always, and it cast a subtle background illumination as he lay with his eyes closed. He watched the arbitrary shifting of his eye fluids, blood pulsing, and wondered just how random anything could be.
He’d wanted to remain in Control, close to the breach. And he’d stood his ground even when Holly sat him down, asked him to drink a glass of water, and mopped up after his shaking hand spilled it. He’d seen the glance she swapped with Vic Pearson – the sort of concerned look a daughter and son might share for their failing, elderly father – and it had galvanised him, driving him to his feet in denial of what he already knew. He had been awake for thirty hours by then, and at seventy-six years old his body was beginning to flag far behind his startling mind. So eventually he had relented and promised that he’d sleep, and dear Holly had threatened to check in on him every hour.