Tom nodded, thought fleetingly of his young son playing soldiers in their back garden, and slammed the driver's door.
Cole sat up in the ditch. He shook his head, putting his hands to his temples as if to contain his dizziness. Then he looked straight at Tom, and his expression was unreadable.
"You killed Jo," Tom muttered. He reversed the BMW, went forward, back and forward again until it was facing along the road at his own battered car. His wife was in there, dead and cooling, Cole's bullets still wrapped up in her organs and flesh.
Steven, Natasha said again.
Tom nodded, gunned the engine and slipped it into first gear.
Cole stood on shaky legs. He still held the pistol in one hand, and the other delved into his jeans pocket and came out with a slim silver shape. A fresh magazine.
Tom thought of Steven laughing as he blew out the candles on his tenth birthday cake, and Jo ruffling his hair and smiling at Tom, her eyes as alight as those candies with the knowledge of the blessed life the three of them had together.
Steven, the girl said yet again, and behind the voice in his mind was a sudden sense of promise and hope.
As Tom changed into second gear and pressed down on the accelerator, he swerved the car across the road. The offside edge caught Cole across the thighs and sent him spinning over the ditch and into the hedge. Tom looked in the rearview mirror and saw the killer disappear in a shower of leaves and limbs.
The pain nestled at the base of Tom's back and Natasha stroked his mind, calming, soothing, telling him all the things he wanted to hear.
Chapter Nine
Cole had not thought about his ex-wife for months. They had divorced soon after the berserker programme had been closed down, when Cole had buried Natasha and her family, and the others had escaped, and he had not seen her since. Sometimes he had to look at a photograph to remember what she looked like. He missed her sometimes, but it was always the idea of what she represented that he mourned the most: normality. A real life, with wife, kids maybe, and an existence other than the one he had led for the last ten years. His life was an obsession, and there was no room in an obsessive's life for anyone else. He had shut her out without even knowing it, and by the time he realised what was happening, she was gone.
He thought of her now, as Roberts aimed the stolen BMW straight at him, and it was because he could think of no one else who would give even a microscopic shit that he was dead.
Instinct probably saved his life. Unable to tear his eyes from Roberts's face—eyes wide, skin smeared with blood, hate painted red—Cole started to fall back, letting gravity lure him down toward the ditch he had only just climbed from. The car closed in, Cole pushed with his feet, and by the time the car's wing clipped his thighs he was already moving back into the hedge. The car gave him rough assistance.
His shout matched the berserker bitch's screech of glee in his head.
Cole's feet left the ground, and he tried to spin in the air to protect himself from the worst of the impact. All he succeeded in doing was presenting his face to the hedge instead of the back of his head, and he managed to bring up his hands as the spiky growth welcomed him in. The impact was relatively soft, but sharp. Branches pricked at his hands, cheeks, neck and chest, while his lower body landed awkwardly in the ditch, a protruding rock thumping his stomach and winding him. Dried leaves fluttered down around him, and something squealed and hurried away deeper into the undergrowth.
He waited until gravity had settled him down before slowly taking his hands away from his eyes. Lost them again, he thought, staring down into a pile of leaves and rabbit droppings. He remained still, sucking in a breath when he could, waiting for the pain of broken bones to kick in. The noise of the car striking him had been a dull thud instead of a crack, and he knew that pain was a fickle thing, sometimes shouting in with a roar, other times laying in wait until its target had begun to think themselves lucky. He had suffered enough pain—and dealt it, too—to know that he had a few more seconds yet until his fate became clear.
If he had broken a leg or arm, the chase was over. If he was merely bruised and winded … even then, Roberts would have a long headstart. Cole was not sure he could get away with stealing another car again so soon, especially looking as roughed up and bloodied as he did, Of course, he did not have to be so polite next time.
"Bitch!" he said, hoping to provoke some response. He imagined the berserker child chained to the headless bodies of her brother and parents, closed his eyes again and laughed at the image, projecting it as hard as he could lest she still hid in the underground of his mind. No secrets hatches opened, no darkened alleys spewed forth her rage, and Cole could only assume that she had left him alone for now.
What if I don't hear her again? he thought. He could try to follow, but without any clues he had no idea where they were heading. London? The coast? Farther north? Berserkers were excellent at hiding—the escaped family had shown that over the last decade—and without any leads at all, Cole would never find Natasha.
But he had shot Roberts, he was sure. Misty as his vision had been, head shrieking with Natasha's intrusion, he had seen the man stumble to the car after the gunshot, kept his eyes open long enough to see the first bloom of blood on the back of Roberts' jacket. And with a silver bullet from a .45 nestling in his back, he wouldn't get very far.
Cole's wife came to mind again. Tall, beautiful, never understanding, and he wondered where she was now.
Opening his eyes again he slowly pushed himself upright. The pain was merely terrible, nothing worse. He spat and watched his bubbly saliva and blood hanging on a small branch in the hedge. No bones ground together. There seemed to be nothing burst inside. He laughed. His head throbbed as if struck by a nuclear hangover, his face and neck bled from a dozen lacerations, but he had managed to survive being run over by the man whose wife he had killed earlier that morning.
He supposed he could consider himself lucky.
Brushing leaves and mud from his clothes, Cole looked around for the magazine. He had kept a grip on the .45, and it only took him a few seconds to locate the mag and click it home, loading one in the pipe. He felt happier like that, at least. If only he'd been able to put one of these silver bullets into that shriveled fucking bitch.
"Damn!" he shouted, finding another wound in the meantime. One of his teeth had somehow shattered, and parts of it were embedded in his upper lip and gum. He opened his mouth and let blood and speckles of tooth dribble out, leaning forward so that most of it missed his clothes. Don't want to ruin my look, he thought, snorting, trying not to laugh again because it hurt too much. He probed the broken tooth with his tongue, finding sharp points and cutting himself again.
"Fuck!" he spat, and a flock of starlings took flight from the field across the road. The cows stood there, still looking his way, calmed now after the gunshot. "Seen enough?" he asked. They stared, chewing their cud like nervous football managers. Damn, he was such a mess.
But not as much of a mess as Roberts. Dead wife, his life fucked, shot in the back, he surely couldn't go much further. However much the little bitch was urging him on, dick-stroking him in his mind, soothing and cajoling … he'd be bleeding. He'd be hurting. Someone like that couldn't go forever on adrenaline and fear alone. He was a normal guy, and he would grind to a halt. Cole had to make sure he was in the vicinity when that happened.
Climbing from the ditch, resting one hand on his thigh to push himself up, Cole realised that he had pissed himself.
That bitch!
A car came around the corner from the direction the BMW had taken. It was an old Mazda MX5, growling through a holed exhaust. Cole bet the owner thought that sounded cool.