‘Other than she’s stepped across into an alternate Earth that might be swarming with zombies.’
‘The one that came through was . . . a weak thing,’ Jonah said. ‘It walked slowly, not like the ones that have changed here. It looked like an animal.’ He thought that through, concentrating on something he’d had no time to dwell on until now.
‘But it still caused all this.’
‘Yes.’
‘And she’s there,’ Vic said. ‘Our ambassador.’
‘She’ll make a good one.’
‘Marc is quite a character,’ Vic said.
‘Has he beaten your stupid head in yet?’
‘I haven’t yet,’ Marc said, and Jonah smiled. He hadn’t realised the three phones were patched in.
‘Marc. Good to hear you. Vic might be useful for a while longer yet.’
‘Well, maybe he is. Let him tell you.’
‘Jonah,’ Vic said, ‘I’ve seen something on the footage. Has Marc sent you the passwords to this site?’
‘Yes,’ Jonah said. ‘But I haven’t had time to look.’
‘One of them doesn’t act like all the others. She just stands there, watching. An observer.’
Jonah held his breath and closed his eyes.
‘Jonah, you there?’
‘This observer – what does it look like?’
‘She’s lost an arm,’ Vic said.
‘And her stomach’s all fucked up,’ Marc added.
‘Her face?’
‘Well, she looks quite normal there. Expressionless, but then they’re all . . .’ Vic trailed off, because he did not need to finish.
‘Interesting,’ Jonah said. ‘Let’s see if we can find any more. Meanwhile, Marc, have you any thoughts?’
‘Sure. Get me to Coldbrook, let me through the breach, and I’ll get a sample of the disease from over there, compare it with however it’s spread and mutated in us, and maybe I can come up with something. Piece of cake. In the meantime, things are moving on apace. They’ve started bombing Atlanta, and it’s spreading fast.’
‘What have you been doing down there?’ Vic asked.
‘Just doing my best to survive,’ Jonah said. They arranged another call time in two hours, then signed off. Jonah put the phone down and breathed into the silence, and the wall screens flickered off.
He held his breath.
The lights went out as the power failed, and the laptop switched to battery mode, flashing a red-highlighted message:
Net connection terminated.
7
The aircraft was mostly silent, even though it was full, and many people were concentrating on their mobile and laptop screens. Jayne had taken a walk to the bathroom an hour into the flight, and the sight of so many people with their heads tilted down had been unsettling. The night flight passenger compartment was darkened, and the glow from screens and phones had formed islands of light across the cabin. People had been whispering, and one woman was crying. Bet none of them have seen what I’ve seen, Jayne had thought, and in the toilet she too had cried.
An old episode of Friends was playing on her seat-back screen, but Jayne saw none of it. The One Where They’re All Eaten By Zombies, she’d thought as the programme had begun, but she hadn’t found it in herself to smile.
The churu had started to settle in her joints and bones, and for the past hour she had been steadily massaging her hips and shoulders. The man beside her hadn’t seemed to notice, or if he had he’d not seen any reason to comment. Stranger things were happening. Worse things. She shifted in her seat and groaned as her hips flexed. The man glanced up, then down again at his netbook.
‘It’s the bites,’ he said. They were his first words since the start of the journey.
‘Bites,’ she repeated. The pain in her arm was a sharp slice down to her bone. It was a different pain from the churu – a wound rather than a blazing ache – and she concentrated on it because it was easier to control.