He needed her to come to him again, let him know how far and fast they had moved. As ever the idea of inviting her into his mind was ghastly, yet he could think of no other way. Besides, she would have good company in there.
The ghost of Lucy-Anne presented itself again and Cole cringed, trying to see past the image floating across his mind like a shadow over the sun. He saw through her but could not ignore her presence. She was there again, and now he could see her face as well, her ruined head spilling blood and brains over her clothes, her thighs, her legs propped wide in the same way he had seen her spilled from the driver's seat of the MX5. She was inviting him in and he could not pull away, could not avert his eyes as she pulled her underwear aside, and he knew why she was doing this. He had thought fleetingly that this was the sort of woman he liked to fuck, and perhaps she had died right then, at the exact moment of his thinking that. She had grabbed onto that thought and was using it now to tear him apart.
"Shut up!" he screamed at the crying baby.
Lucy-Anne giggled again, a ragged sound as if she were gargling razors. She slipped away and retreated underground, leaving only the smells and tastes behind.
Cole breathed deeply, opening the window to try and purge the taste of a dead woman's pussy from his mouth.
"No!" She was not doing this. He was doing it to himself.
The baby still cried.
The sun glinted from the pistol on the seat beside him, a precise piece of engineering, unhindered by human doubt and faults of the mind.
She came at him yet again, approaching from behind and wrapping her limbs around his mind in a grotesque parody of animalistic lovemaking. She ground her dead self against his imagination and raped it, giggling all along, forcing tears from Cole's eyes at the rancid black guilt he felt. Without thinking he reached for the gun and fumbled it, cursing as it slipped between the seats and thudded to the floor in the back of the car.
And just what had he intended doing with it?
He shook his head and grabbed a tight hold of the steering wheel, so tight that his knuckles whitened and fingernails pressed into his palms, drawing blood. It dripped onto his trouser legs, the warm drops hitting his wounded thighs. They were stiffening even more from where Roberts had run him over. More blood dripped.
He thought of Natasha.
And then she was in his mind, had been there all along, her face wrapped up with that of Lucy-Anne's, her wicked intentions clear even as she performed a grotesque dance with the false mannequin of a dead woman's ghost.
"Get the fuck out of my head!" Cole shouted, hating the little berserker bitch even more than he ever had before. She had fooled him into seeing a ghost, and there was only one reason why she would have possibly done that: entertainment. "Get out you little bitch!"
Temper, temper, Mister Wolf, Natasha said. You'll upset the baby. The smell and taste of the dead woman vanished suddenly, replaced by the stench of nothing. Cole had never smelled emptiness, and he suddenly wished for the stink of the dead woman again. However manufactured, and whatever terrible guilt it conjured, at least it was better than this. But this is your life, Natasha said. Nothing. Empty. And soon, utterly pointless.
"Not pointless when I catch you and kill you," he said.
Well, you're getting much warmer, she said. Keep coming… keep coming Mister Wolf. Everyone's dying to meet you again. She left, emptying his mind, and he gasped at the sudden sense of being set adrift. Her leaving dragged away all remnants of the faux ghost, and for that he was glad. But rather than relief he was filled with sadness, a realisation that his life was empty, had been, and would be forever.
"It's you doing this to me, Natasha," he said, and the baby suddenly stopped crying as if in agreement.
Cole looked in the rearview mirror, stared into the baby's eyes and saw the wonder of potential alight in there. In his own eyes, the fresh glint of determination. "For you," he said, talking to this new human now, not the filthy bitch berserker. "For you I'm doing all this. And you know that, don't you?" The baby stared, seeing only Cole's eyes in the mirror, and it's lower lip pulled down as it prepared to cry again. "Don't cry," Cole said. "Not yet. Not until I've finished. Then you can cry for me, or cry for all of us. There'll be nothing in between."
Shaking, filled with a renewed purpose, Cole drove on.
"What were you laughing at?" Tom asked.
Natasha remained silent and still beside him. He had heard nothing since that gruff giggle, and it had taken a few minutes to find his nerve again after that. It had sounded so adult, and so unlike Natasha.
His question unanswered, he drove on. It felt as though he had been driving forever. Yesterday he had woken to begin his drive out onto the moors, last night he had traveled through the night with the body of a girl in his boot, and today he had been fleeing the bullets of the madman who had buried her, come back now to finish the job. His back ached, not just from the gunshot wound but also from simple road-tiredness. He could not go on forever, and Natasha had promised him that this journey would be over soon.
After that… he was not sure.
He passed a police car parked on the hard shoulder. He glanced down at his speedometer—eighty, ten miles per hour over the limit—and watched in the mirrors for the flashing blue light as the car came in pursuit. But it remained parked where it was, fading quickly behind him. Everyone on the road seemed to be going as fast or faster than him. Perhaps the police were waiting for someone special.
"They'd have a field day with me," he said, smiling without humour.
Not far now, Natasha said. They're on their way, all of them. They'll meet us in two hours.
"Where?"
A pause, now familiar, one that displayed uncertainty. I don't know yet.
"Tell me about yourself," Tom said, and the statement surprised him as much as Natasha. Yet those few simple words seemed to open doors. After everything he had been through with this strange girl, everything she had done to him and shown him, his own statement of curiosity marked a vital change in their day. The imminent threat of Cole was still there, but now there was also the comfort of company.
Well … She paused, and Tom could sense her confusion. He heard her shifting in her seat slightly, perhaps uncomfortable. He did not look. He was still uneasy at the fact of her body coming back to life. I've shown you so much already, she said. He felt her draw back in his mind, a diminishing presence that gave him room. No probing fingers now, no questing thoughts. She was releasing her touch, remaining there only to talk to him. It was as if that simple question had inspired a newfound respect for the man who had rescued her.
"You've shown me, but why can't you tell me? You asked me if I would be your daddy. I saw what happened to your real father, but I know nothing about him. And really I know nothing about you. Other than thinking you should be dead."
I'm a berserker, being buried—
"I know that, but I don't understand what it means. Tell me, Natasha. I'm tired. Talk to me. Keep me awake until we get to Lane and Sophia. I reckon everything will change again when that happens, and we might not get a chance to talk again like this."
Like this, he had said. Alone. Intimate. But he guessed that by the end of that day, the two of them would likely never talk to each other again, ever. And he knew that she knew, too.
My father was a good man. Berserkers are old, they live a long time, and Daddy was almost a hundred when Mister Wolf killed him.