Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

a long and complicated history with cigarettes and other toxins. She resolved to give them up, there and then. And it felt strange, the thought occurring. How unimportant, how small it seemed. But even in times like these, no one stopped being themselves. They just had to hide it better.

The cigarette disappeared in the grey water. Ada continued her story.

‘Forty-five years ago, the son left his parents behind. Got a degree. Made something of himself. Did everything he was supposed to do. Got married. Had children. Served his country. I knew him.’

Still the boat hummed.

‘He came back, eventually, he took them all back to meet his parents. And he never went out to the world again.’

She stared at the fog ahead.

‘Fifteen months ago, fishing boats caught sight of a fire out here. By the time a response could be made, most of the family were dead or dying, the animals too. Only the youngest daughter survived.’

They must be near, now.

‘What did the girl tell you?’ Cooper asked.

Ada ignored the question at first, only speaking after a long hesitation, a sudden straightening that suggested she’d seen something out there. She soon relaxed. ‘The marshes on the island were sewn with a novel strain of anthrax and quantities of amoeba known to assist with germination and replication. No animal vectors required. There was evidence of cultivation. Of an unsound character.’ She hesitated. ‘The daughter told us nothing.’

‘Why?’

‘She had become mute.’ They were nearing the shore now. Cooper could see boats out there. There were people, moving back and forth. Shapes manifested through the thick air. ‘We removed as much as we could. We committed to a clean-up operation months ago, as soon as we had the budget, a plan, at least . . . Signs were erected, warning travellers not to dock. And before you say anything . . . No one came out here, anyway. There was no risk of anything spreading, of person-to-person transmission. Other, similar sites had been left contaminated for far longer with no major incidents. They’re only spores.’

The boat drew to a stop.

‘I knew the man. He worked for the government, once. He worked with me. Not at the NCA. Before . . .’ Ada did not look at Cooper. ‘After the fire, the few officers involved were told as little as possible. Those who already knew the truth signed the Official Secrets Act. Why should anyone know?’

They put their masks on, plastic so clear and hard it might as well have been glass.

They stepped onto the dock.

‘I knew him. It’s why they called me.’

Ada looked ahead, not yet moving.

‘He was my friend.’

A thin, partially overgrown track led inland, the ground bulging into a slope. It was hard to see much else but the tall green conifers, and the fog that lay between them.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Floodlights had been erected outside the house. The people that passed them all wore the same hazard gear, the same masks; some carried supply crates through to the camp. Cooper kept looking around as they walked, but Ada focused ahead, resolute, unfazed.

Madness had engulfed this place, once. It did so still. Rusted shells of metal littered the building edges; black shadows burned around the doorways, like the blast-echoes of a nuclear explosion. The barns’ chimneys had shrivelled like crisp packets in microwaves. Empty red petrol tanks lay piled up in the overgrown grass. Plants long and thin and wide and short all thrived within the abandoned poison of a murder-suicide. Trees seethed past the cars, past the front porch.

Officers in biohazard gear conducted police grid searches, string and markers placed along the overgrown lot. Worlds superimposed themselves upon one another, morphing, merging, jostling to cement themselves in Cooper’s reality. The collapse of a man’s mind echoed down the years.

It led them to a tent up ahead.

A woman cried out beyond.

Others ran past them, but Ada led with a steady pace, only diverting a little from their path, the floodlights guiding their way through the numbing fog.

Up ahead, the source of the cry could be seen, had sat down on the ground, blood welling from a rip in her hazard gear, just above her knee. They’d later discover there were tools buried in the ground near the second barn. The woman had caught her skin against some twisted hooks in the soil. The course of vaccination treatment would take months; there had not been enough time to prepare everyone. She was brought to a hospital within the hour.

Ada passed Cooper, disappearing into the tent beyond.

Tables had been set up within, dead crows spread across them. In the centre of the makeshift room, there was a pit in the soil, a thick, stiff sack beside it.

‘We’ve provided what equipment we can,’ said Ada. ‘Discover what you’re able to discover. How they died. Who killed them. We want any DNA you can find, especially human. We photographed the scene as we found it; fourteen birds had identical copies of the letter stuffed into their beaks. The fifteenth, we left within.’

‘Fifteen?’

Outside, the work continued in near silence. Few talked. No one chatted.

Ada smiled, faintly. ‘Everything consumes itself, in the end.’ She turned to go. ‘We found Alec Nichols’s fingerprints on the letter wrappings. We need to know what else is in there.’

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Ada Solarin walked through the family’s home.

She had done so months ago. She’d seen the wreck of her colleague’s life. She’d seen what had become of her friend.

She and her past self, they went together. This place had not changed much, even across the seasons.

Bowing their heads beneath wooden beams.

Past it all, into the girl’s room.

A hole lay within the girl’s wall, beaten through from inside with great force, chunks of plaster and wood still on the floor below.

Through the hole she saw the treeline, close by.

There was anger in me once. I dreamt at times of being better. We killed to help and in helping I tasted something in me.

I have burned fires. I am awake and no one saw me and no