Coldbrook (Hammer) by Tim Lebbon Read Free Book Online Page A

need warning about this pitiful, bloody wreck. But Alex was leaning back on his knees with a terrible, disbelieving look on his face. One hand still aimed the pistol at Melinda, the other was pressed against his cheek and jaw where she’d bitten him. He leaned further back, legs bent almost in half at the knee now, head almost touching the floor, and the gun made a metallic
tink
as it dropped from his hand. He grew still.
    ‘Sir!’ another guard said, moving closer.
    ‘Back,’ Satpal said. ‘Stay back! Can’t you see . . .?’
    ‘See fucking
what
?’ Holly said, and then the cosmologist was at her side. She could smell the sweat on him, the fear. She wondered if she smelled the same.
    ‘She
can’t
be getting up,’ he said softly. And Holly knew that he was right.
No one leaks that much blood and lives. No one . . .
    ‘Sir!’ another guard shouted, the one that Alex had sent away to fetch dressings to tend Melinda’s wounds. He stood close to the breach floor now, staring down at the massive pool of blood and the figures at its centre: the intruder, motionless with most of his head missing; Melinda, sitting up fully now, one arm propping her as she tried to get to her feet; and Alex, hand fallen from his face, horribly contorted and motionless.
    ‘What the fuck do we do?’ another guard said. He was standing ten feet to Holly’s left, pistol aimed at Melinda, his face pale. ‘Sir, what do we do?’ Holly realised that he was directing his questions at Alex.
    The captain suddenly tensed, then raised himself back to a kneeling position. His mouth worked, but only a soft humming sound emerged from it. Holly could see his teeth through the wound in his cheek.
    ‘Shit,’ someone muttered. They could all see that the soldier’s movements were wrong.
    ‘We’re locked down in here,’ Holly said. ‘Two of you keep watch on the breach in case . . .’ She shook her head. ‘You.’ She nodded at the guard with the field dressings. ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘Neil.’
    ‘Neil, I think Alex is . . . is in shock.’ Alex was onhis feet now, swaying forward and backward and looking around the room. There was something about his eyes . . . They didn’t look shocked to Holly. They looked
different
. He looked at her, then at Satpal, then at the three other guards, two of them pointing guns at him. Blood spewed from his face, and Melinda was behind him now, a bloody, meaty mess who should have been . . .
    ‘Melinda?’ Holly said softly, between a blast of the alarm’s loud siren. But the biologist did not seem to hear, and her previously beautiful face was gone, home now to red.
    Alex hooted softly like a dove, a strangely beautiful sound. Then he ran at Neil, the guard holding the dressings, and Neil didn’t even manage to gasp before his captain shoved him backward onto a step and fell on him.
    ‘Shoot him!’ Satpal screamed, but neither of the other guards moved.
    ‘Oh dear God, what have we done?’ Holly said.
    ‘I can get us out,’ Satpal said, leaning in close to whisper his secret.
    ‘No. Lockdown.’
    Neil screamed. Alex was biting him, his head thrashing. The other two guards were shouting at each other and at their captain, but still neither of them fired.
    Holly glanced at the breach and the darkness beyond.
    ‘I can get us out,’ Satpal said again. Holly frowned. He snorted, then ran up towards the main doors.
    ‘We’re in lockdown!’ Holly shouted, and someone started shooting. She ducked down beside her desk, not sure where the gunfire was coming from or whether the workstation would shield her or not. The sound was horrendous, smothering the alarm, and she pressed her hands to her ears and cried out. When the shooting ended she looked up the terraced room at Satpal. He was doing something with the door control, sweat patches spreading from beneath his arms and across his back, and she thought,
No, Satpal, we can’t let them out
. He glanced back, caught her eye and then looked beyond