Lane jerked as if punched. He slumped forward and then sat upright again, stilling himself, ignoring the second burst of machine gun fire as it blasted into the ground between him and the BMW. The tube on his shoulder coughed and spat its deadly load.
Tom fell across the front seats and gathered Natasha beneath him. He could still sense her confusion as a massive explosion brought daylight back again. The car shook as if shunted by a juggernaut. Its windows smashed inward, a blast of warm air sizzled the hairs on the back of Tom's neck, and something thunked against the car's roof. For a second he thought they were being machine-gunned, but then he realised that pieces of the helicopter were raining down.
He sat up and leaned around in his seat, looking back.
Two hundred yards away, a giant burning mass dropped from the sky. It struck the ground in an orchard beyond the car park, crushing trees, sending ripe apples tumbling to the ground, burnt black and dry. One rotor continued to spin, fanning the flames. The other had speared off into the dusk. There was another explosion, even larger than the first, and the shell of the aircraft bulged outward and scattered itself across the orchard and approach road. The flames were so bright that Tom had to look away. The fire caught in the trees and grass, fuel spilling and sending rivers of flame to carve their course.
"Holy fucking shit," Tom muttered.
"One down," Lane said. He stood, threw aside the SAM launcher and ran to the car, leaning in past Tom as if he were not there, searching for Natasha. He pulled the blanket aside and laughed. "There you are!" he said. "Christ, take a look at you! Sophia, have you seen this?"
The female berserker barely glanced at Tom as she looked into the car. Then she smiled. "You look well, Natasha," she said.
"She's been buried for ten years, how the hell do you expect her to look!" Tom said.
Lane, leaning into the car, looked at Tom for the first time. Their faces were barely six inches apart. He glanced up and down and seemed to take in everything about Tom in a second. "And what the fuck do you know about it?" he said.
Lane seemed like a normal man. Strong, large, capable of protecting himself, but normal. Tom saw no changes, none of the strange mutations he had seen in Natasha's memories of her own family. Perhaps the berserkers were enjoying this. Or maybe Natasha's recollections were … skewed. Tom did not like that doubt, but he could not help entertaining it. He had not been expecting them to be carrying weapons—in the girl's memories they had killed with tooth and claw—but he realised quickly how foolish that assumption had been. As deadly as they were when the rage was upon them, tooth and claw would be little protection against modern military hardware.
He wondered whether the army had made that same foolish mistake.
"Here comes the other one!" Sophia said.
Lane withdrew from the car. Tom opened the door, grabbed Natasha and climbed out, standing beside the two berserkers. They're so strong! Natasha said in his mind. So adapted! So powerful! I never knew, in the few hours I've been speaking with them I even guessed—
Will they still help us? Tom asked in his mind.
Oh yes, Natasha said, and her voice was soothed by a mental smile. They may mock me and discount you, but I still have something they want.
"What?" Tom asked, but the girl fell silent.
The second Chinook roared over the blazing remains of the first, turning hard left and heading away, spitting bullets behind it. The aim was bad, and they rattled against the industrial units and the parking bays before them.
Sophia looked at Tom curiously, then down at Natasha where she lay in his arms. "Come with me," she said. "If you want to stay alive you do what I say when I say it, even if you think I'm wrong. Understand?"
"How can I trust you?" Tom shouted.
"We promised the girl we'd look after you."
"That doesn't mean—"
"We keep our promises," Sophia said, and her cool stare forbade him from answering back again. He nodded and followed as she ran for the open unit. Lane came along behind.
Tom could hear the tone of the Chinook's rotors changing as it landed somewhere out of view. He guessed there could be twenty or more battle-ready soldiers in there, ready to pour out, encircle the units, and take revenge for their many dead comrades.
He followed Sophia into the unit, past the piece of furniture the man and woman had been working on. It was an old table, restored and polished to a brilliant sheen, reflecting fire from outside. A bullet had skimmed its surface and gouged a foot-long oak splinter. "We won't hurt you!" Sophia called. Lane's shadow fell on the table as he entered behind Tom.
The man and woman emerged from an office at the rear of the unit, arms held high, faces pale, eyes wide. The woman looked at what Tom held in his arms and her eyes went wider.
Sophia shot her in the face, and Lane shot the man twice in the chest.
Tom gasped and dropped Natasha onto the sawdust-covered floor.
The man went down hissing, drawing in one huge final breath, blood bubbles forming on his soaked T-shirt. Sophia stepped forward and shot him in the eye.
"Head shot," she said to Lane. "Head shot!" Lane simply shrugged.
"What the hell?" Tom said, but the two ignored him.
Daddy! Natasha said, and Tom looked down at where he had dropped the girl. She moved feebly on the ground. He bent to pick her up, tucking his hands beneath her body—it was not so cold now, no longer carrying the chill of the grave—and heaved her back into his arms. His back hurt. He bit his lip and groaned against the pain.
Sophia smirked at him. Tom turned away.
"Back door," Lane said, and Sophia darted into the office at the rear of the unit.
Tom heard her throwing bolts and shifting furniture, and he frowned. Barricading us in? he thought. We should be running! The soldiers will be here in seconds, and they'll be berserk themselves, ready for revenge. Their mates are cooking out in that orchard. There won't be time for "hands up and come out"
You forget so quickly, Daddy, Natasha said, nestled somewhere in his panicked mind. Trust them.
"Trust?" he spat, unable to help himself. He looked down at the dead man and woman, tears forming however hard he tried to gulp them back.
"The next couple of minutes could be our last," Sophia said, emerging from the office. "The last thing we need is unnecessary hindrances."
"Don't try to explain murder to me!" Tom said. She looked away, sneering, and he swallowed hard.
A volley of bullets rattled into the wall beside them, spilling tools and chunks of masonry to the ground. Tom fell and crawled behind a fixed woodworking bench, dragging Natasha with him and making sure she was shielded from outside.
Lane fired several shots from his pistol, then ducked down as a sustained burst of machine gun fire slammed into the unit. The noise was tremendous. Bullets coughed gouts of concrete from the walls, tore apart the plasterboard wall of the office, struck the old oak table, ricocheted from the floor, pinged from the bulky metal woodworking tools. Tom covered his ears and waited to be shot. Natasha could not protect him from this. A ricochet would take off the top of his head, or the soldiers would get in here, blow him apart with a burst to the chest and head. He looked across at Sophia, and between them the man's body jumped and jerked as bullets struck him. Tom averted his eyes, not wishing to see the damage they caused. Even above the gunfire he heard Sophia laugh.
"What the fuck are these things?" he whispered, and Natasha allowed him his rage, holding back any response.
The gunfire ended. Tom's ears rang with the echoes. Lane and Sophia, hunkered down behind machines, swapped glances. Lane nodded. It was as if everything were going according to plan.