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

and behind her. His eyes opened wide.
    Holly raised herself and looked across the top of the control panel. Her computer screen had been shattered by a bullet. Past that she saw Melinda, bloody red Melinda, clawing at a guard’s face and chest even as he backed away from her, pulling her with him. He must have dropped his gun because he was now stabbing at her with a short knife, plunging the blade into her back again and again. It had no effect. Holly saw the terror in his eyes, and then the pain as her nails opened him up and her face pressed in to gnaw at the wounds.
    Alex was standing again, and another shape was pulling itself up the front of a solid desk beside him – Neil, the guard he’d attacked, hat knocked off, a smear of bloodacross one cheek, red patch spreading across his shoulder and down his chest. He held himself still against the desk, the fear gone from his face, and it was that more than anything that told Holly how little time she had left. The guard was no longer afraid. His mouth opened and his eyes grew dark as all expression left them.
    The last guard had climbed several steps and was making his way around Control to the main doors – and Satpal.
    ‘You can’t open that door!’ Holly shouted. ‘It’s a disease,
something
, and you
can’t
!’
    Satpal glanced back at her, and the guard paused behind a bank of desks to look as well. He was terribly young, perhaps no more than twenty, and his fear was that of a child.
Of course, he’s seen stuff that shouldn’t be, and that’s just the reason why Satpal
must not open—
    She heard the hiss as the door’s hydraulics engaged. Satpal took one last look back at her and then left Control, and the last that Holly saw of him was as he ran past the glass-block wall.
They can get out now
, she thought. She looked up at one of the cameras mounted high on the ceiling and wondered how many people were watching this. Jonah, almost certainly. Some of the others.
    Vic? Maybe.
    The guard tripped as he ran for the door. Alex and the other guard, changed now, were going for him,scrambling across desktops and leaping the spaces in between, both of them emitting that strange hooting sound.
    The alarm ceased, and in the sudden silence everything that Holly could hear was terrible.
    Melinda was advancing on her, dragging one leg because Alex’s bullets had shattered her hip.
    Oh sweet Jesus
, Holly thought, because she suddenly knew what she had to do. She looked up at the camera again and drew her hand across her throat, hoping that whoever was watching would understand. And she hoped also that they would have the courage to do what needed to be done. Satpal had betrayed himself. It was understandable, but it didn’t make things any easier.
If it weren’t for him
. . . she thought. If it weren’t for him, they could have sealed Control and gone about closing down the breach remotely from Secondary.
    But now that Satpal had somehow managed to open the door – through sabotage, or prior agreement with some of the maintenance engineers working here – they were
all
finished.
    Unless.
    Holly closed her eyes and breathed deeply, wondering if she could really—
    The young guard screamed, the sound suddenly becoming muffled as he slipped through the doors and out into the corridor. She looked just in time to see Alexgrab him, press him against the glass wall and bite into his throat.
    Oh God, don’t let me go like that, not like that, not
eaten.
    Melinda was close now, and the other guard also came for Holly, taking away any chance she might have had to consider more fully the threat she faced. In that instant her survival instinct took over. Instinct, and her scientist’s mind, because fascination still bubbled below the surface.
    She slapped her hand on the eradicator power button on her desk and sprinted for the breach. As Holly ran she had time to think,
What will it be like, walking in another Earth?
    Then she entered the space between.
7
    Secondary was