He descended the staircase, stepping past the nightgown-wearing woman and almost slipping on the mess that her shattered skull had spilled down the stairs. Heart thudding, he closed the staircase door, gasped, and paused, raising the gun again as a shadow moved away in front of him. It slipped down a side corridor into one of the accommodation wings, seeming to flow rather than walk. An overhead light flickered and a shadow danced again. Perhaps that was all he had seen. Turning the corner quickly he saw nothing but empty corridor, and he hurried on.
Jonah used the laptop to open and close doors remotely, flipping to the other program so that he could use the CCTV cameras to see around the bends in corridors and check his route. He passed the offices and entered the canteen and common room, where pool tables and loungers were scattered around the large room. He’d sat in here often, drinking bad blended whisky from the small bar run by Andy. Jonah had seen the barman die. Andy would laugh and chat with those who spent most of their time in the facility itself – often Vic had been down here as well, even though he had his wife and child topside. For a while he had remained down here a whole lot more, and Jonah was well aware of the intense relationship he’d had with Holly.
The common room had been a place of laughter, but now a monster sat in one of its chairs. Sergey Vasilyev was a particle physicist, seconded to Coldbrook to share in their work and to contribute what he’d learned from research he had been undertaking in Saint Petersburg for the past eighteen years. Russia’s own version of Coldbrook had been mothballed due to the massive financial investment required, and Sergey had been invited to represent Russia at the Stateside complex. Some of Coldbrook’s backers had been uncomfortable with the Russian’s presence but Jonah had been adamant – as far as he was concerned, there were no secrets or borders when it came to science, and Sergey was the best in his field.
Now he sat in one of the leather loungers, watching Jonah with lazy eyes as the older man circled the room’s perimeter.
‘Sergey?’ Jonah asked, though he knew it was useless. It looked as if the tall Russian had taken a sustained burst of gunfire to his stomach and pelvis, and his legs hung at unnatural angles. He lifted one hand, as if to reach across the twenty-foot gap between them. His face was slack, his expression inhuman.
Jonah lifted the gun, then lowered it again. As he left the room he heard a low, sustained moan, and remembered the sound from the first time Sergey had tried proper whisky.
Just leaving a problem until later, he thought, but he could not bring himself to shoot the seated man.
Nerves tingling, limbs shaking even as he walked, Jonah made it to the short corridor leading to Coldbrook’s garage. He closed the door, saw no lock, and checked the systems on his laptop. There was no facility to lock this door automatically. Why? Why the hell enable corridor doors to be locked, but not the door to the garage? He almost shouted in frustration, but instead knelt with his back against the door and accessed the CCTV programme.
Perhaps the afflicted really couldn’t open doors. The two outside Secondary had been scratching at the door, not clinging to its handle. But maybe they’d known it was locked, and the scratching had been a sign of their frustration.