Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 1) Read online

  He glanced over his shoulder again. They were still coming, not gaining on him, not falling away. Just relentlessly chasing him down. He couldn't tell how many, but the glance was enough to reveal he'd have no chance of fighting them off, even with a weapon.

  Despair threatened to overwhelm him. He saw the face of his daughter, tears running down her cheeks as her mother passed on the news that Michael was dead. The face of his wife, the woman he loved so much and had let slip away, and thought of all the time he had wasted. All the time he could have spent trying to talk to her, trying to let her know that the man she had fallen for was still within him somewhere, shackled, fighting for freedom.

  The rubble blocking the street was a hundred yards away now, closing at an impossible speed. Michael fixed his eyes on it. He would smash into it at full tilt, praying that his head would connect with concrete and spare him the terrible end that chased him, a death of tearing fingers and snapping teeth.

  And then he saw it. Light glinting to his left. The plate glass store front of Meg Jameson's little wedding dress shop. The decision was made subconsciously, Michael's mind realising that there was no time for debate. In this situation, there were no pros, no cons, only survival.

  Using his right hand to hold the bin lid up, offering at least some protection for his head, he twisted the handlebars with his left, and sent the scooter at full speed into the glass.

  The world exploded around him.

  Sharp pain sliced into him: his legs, his arms, his back. A bloody roadmap etched onto his skin through the uniform.

  And the world moved in staccato, a sequence of images captured in his mind, playing like a slide show: Glass showering over him like raindrops. The lid he had been using as a shield slipping from his fingers, crashing into a mannequin dressed like an angel. The scooter sliding away from him, continuing its journey into the shop counter, where it buried itself deep in the flimsy wood. His legs twisting painfully underneath him. The floor rising toward his face at alarming speed. His daughters face, eyes red and lined with tears, screaming at him to-

  Get up!

  And then, incredibly, Michael was on his feet again, oblivious to the pain, hurtling down a narrow passageway and shaking stinging sweat and blood from his eyes, smashing through the door that stood at the far end, and then out again on the streets, among the bodies, running for his life.

  *

  She could sense them, somewhere in the dark, somewhere close.

  The creature that had been Paula Roberts did not understand why the presence of the two creatures was different from the rest, nor why she felt so drawn toward them. All she knew was the boiling of her blood, the frantic thrumming of the cells that formed her existence, a terrible vibration that seemed to make her head spin.

  The blackness gave away nothing, and her ears, suddenly so sharp, so reliable, twisted this way and that, hoping to catch something on the wind, some answer that might abate the gnawing hunger that drove her. Here in this scent was something different, something that stood out, some inexplicable gravity that she felt compelled to obey.

  Maybe it was the consumption of these two creatures that would finally release her from the hunger.

  She reached out her bloodstained hands, finding only a solid object in front of her. They were there, right there. They should have been within her reach. So close she could smell them. The scent was so strong. Intoxicating, overpowering.

  She began to pound against the obstruction before her, roaring in impotent rage. She threw her considerable weight into it, oblivious to the pain as her soft flesh connected with it, frenzied.

  And then, as she charged into it, her ears picked up the sound of something beyond. A cracking. Groaning. The sound of something loosening. It was beginning to give.

  With a roar, she charged again.

  *

  Rachel peeked over the low wall that served as a boundary for the flat roof, and her heart broke.

  Jason was right. There, in the narrow alley below them, the one into which she and Jason had fled minutes before, stood their mother. Paula Roberts had a chunk of her arms missing, the forearm looking as though something had taken a bite out of it. What was left of her ragged dress was drenched in blood. When the wind caught the flimsy material it was pulled apart, revealing sagging, naked flesh underneath.

  Somehow this was the worst part for Rachel, worse even than the empty sockets where her mother's eyes had been. There was something so total, so final, about seeing her mother standing half naked on the streets, something that left Rachel in no doubt that this parent was as lost to her now as the one that lay unmoving in the basement of his house.

  She glanced at Jason, who was shaking his head as though answering a question, eyes wide and streaming with tears. He began to emit a low moan, and Rachel clapped her hand over his mouth, silencing him.

  In the alley, their mother was standing near the door that Jason had smashed open. As Rachel watched, she swayed, appearing almost drunk, her head swinging back and forth.

  Rachel tried to compartmentalise the horror of it, forcing the desire to scream into a dark corner of her mind.

  She wanted to look away, but some part of her brain was still functioning rationally, something that told her that they needed to know what they were up against, and so she forced herself to watch.

  Their mother began to move back and fore, small stumbling steps, moving in a circle, as thought trying to find something. Still her head was swinging around, and Rachel realised suddenly that she was sniffing the air, like a dog trying to pick up a scent. Her movements were becoming more frenzied, steeped in frustration, and then she roared.

  It was a noise that Rachel would never have believed could have come from her mother, a hoarse bestial scream of rage that made the hair on Rachel's arms and neck stand up.

  She realised that she was holding her breath, every muscle in her body clenched in terror.

  And then the pounding started. At first with her fists and then with her entire body, Rachel and Jason's mother began to attack the door that separated her from her children. Rachel thought of the broken lock, and the deadbolt. She prayed it would hold and cursed herself for not returning to barricade the door as soon as they had known the house was empty.

  A whimper escaped Jason's lips and the pounding in the alley below increased in intensity. Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, afraid to look, and heard one final, enormous bang, and then silence.

  When she peeked again, her blood ran cold.

  The alley was empty, and the door, weakened already by Jason's assault, had been smashed in.

  Their mother was in the house.

  "Oh fuck," she heard Jason say, the words reaching her as though from a great distance. "The ladder! We have to pull up the-"

  "No time!" Rachel screamed. "GO!"

  She grabbed Jason's collar and thrust him toward the boundary that separated the roof from that of the next building. There was a sheer drop on two sides, but the terraced buildings would allow them to run at least some distance before negotiating a path to the ground became a problem. Even as Jason began to move, the door to the attic burst open, and the bloodstained monster that had been their mother rocketed toward them, snarling.

  As Rachel turned, she felt fingers grasping at her hair and cried out in pain as it was torn out at the root. She hurdled the wall, landing on the tiled roof of the next building, almost losing her footing and scrambling forward on all fours, feeling the angle of the roof working against her. Jason was a few steps ahead of her, clumsily charging forward, each footfall loosening and cracking the tiles.

  Behind them, their mother was also scrabbling, oblivious to the drop that yawned below them, scampering across the tiles, clawing for Rachel's foot, missing by inches.

  And then it happened, as Rachel had known it must. Her foot hit a tile that betrayed her, slipped away, sending her crashing onto her belly.

  Her mother was on top of her in a heartbeat, face diving forward, and in th
at instant Rachel saw it all unfold: the teeth tearing into the flesh of her neck, snapping through tendon and artery, scraping on bone.

  She shut her eyes, trying to block out the vision, the horror of the woman who had brought her into the world savaging her like a rabid bulldog.

  And then she felt a heavy weight land on her chest, knocking the air out of her. The tearing teeth did not connect.

  Instead, when she opened her eyes again she saw her mother's body slumped on top of her, a sharp fragment of tile buried in her forehead, and her brother standing over them both, shaking, the honest, smiling eyes darkened and empty, as though the light that had powered them had simply been flicked off.

  Chapter 8

  Watching the monitor, the weak, jerky signal beamed from the police officer's uniform, Victor felt strangely stunned.

  It was an emotion he hadn't expected to feel. Indeed, he had long since thought that his emotions had simply faded away, victims of his long isolation.

  Of course, he had been able to visualise the way Project Wildfire would pan out, when finally it was activated. He had seen numerous movies, read numerous books, all featuring the kind of calamity which was now being played out just a few miles from his home. He knew that these cultural artifacts served as both a blueprint and a warning.

  It would be fast, and it would be brutal. It was the reason - well, one of the reasons - why he had built himself an underground home and turned it into a fortress. It was, after all, exactly what those running the project had done, retreating into the safety of the earth. It was all that could be done. The storm was inevitable. The best anyone could hope for was to shelter under an umbrella that would keep out the worst of it.

  Still, seeing it now, the savagery of the blood-letting awakened a feeling of deep, confused dismay within him.

  He had watched as the cop moved into the town on the little scooter in a state of heightened anticipation, like a child waiting for Christmas morning. And when finally the cop turned a corner and came face to face with the wildfire torching the town, Victor had not been disappointed.

  But then something odd had happened. The policeman, of course, would turn tail and flee. That was the only normal response. Hell, Victor half expected that he would find his way back to Victor's little spot in the woods, searching for a place to hunker down. Instead of this though, the grainy black and white picture had paused for a second, giving Victor ample time to see the full scope of what was happening on the streets, and then he had shot forward, going straight for them.

  Had the man decided to give it all up and let death have him? It made no sense to Victor. The irrationality of it, and anger burned in the pit of his stomach, along with something else, something he hadn't encountered for years. It felt like...shame, and it just angered him more.

  As the picture on the monitor weaved between the murderous arms that clawed toward it, Victor realised that this was no suicide attempt, this was movement with a purpose, a design that Victor could not comprehend.

  When the man turned the scooter toward the window and drove straight through it Victor was electrified, and when, after a moment of stillness the picture moved again, rising up and charging toward a closed door and out into an empty street, Victor was being pulled apart by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, the cop's heroics made him want to punch the air in delight, and on the other, he felt an enormous, implacable anger building within him, a rage so all-consuming that he nearly put his fist through the monitor.

  None of the policeman's actions made sense to him, and his lack of understanding made him feel stupid.

  The last time Victor had felt stupid, he had been a child of around ten. He had spent weeks one summer collecting spent matchsticks and, left to his own devices for much of the time while his father worked and his mother drank, he had retreated to his room, where he spent hour after painstaking hour carefully glueing them together, following the instructions in a modelling magazine one of his school friends owned.

  For days, the structure resembled little more than an angular mess but then, as Victor continued to work, the final model began to take shape before his amazed eyes: The Queen Elizabeth class Battleship Valiant, the ship his father had served aboard during World War 2.

  When it was finished, after the long, agonising hours spent waiting for the last dab of glue to dry, he had excitedly run to his father, grabbing the large, rough hand and dragging him to the bedroom.

  He had expected his father to be delighted, to grab Victor and hug him, congratulating him on the magnificent ship, that measured nearly two feet across. Instead, as Victor watched, his father's eyes seemed to mist up for a moment before fixing Victor with a cold, hard stare.

  You're too old to be playing with toys, his father had said, his voice laced with steel, and then he had balled up one calloused fist and smashed it down onto the model, severing the ship nearly in two.

  The tears had come for Victor then, spewing forth, uncontrollable, and his father strode away, shutting the bedroom door behind him with a bang, never once looking back.

  When the tears finally stopped, Victor continued his father's work: pounding on the remains of the ship with his small fists until it was just matches again, just a mess that needed to be cleaned up. With each blow, he vowed that he would never again let himself be so stupid.

  Victor blinked at the monitor, and realised his fists were clenched tightly enough to make his fingers ache.

  The building toward which the cop was now running revealed all: St. Davids' tiny police station. There was no great heroism or mystery to his deeds after all: he was just a man running for help. A man blissful in his ignorance and running in the wrong direction.

  Victor laughed aloud, a cruel, mirthless cackle that made some part of his personality, the part that long ago had tried to build something to make his father smile, cringe back into a dark corner.

  *

  Michael ran, a trail of spattered blood marking his passage. He wondered dully how much of the precious liquid he had lost, and how much there was left to lose.

  They were still coming after him, but the journey through the wedding shop had bottlenecked them, slowing the majority down, giving him a chance to put clear daylight between himself and his pursuers.

  Ahead the street was clear. Bodies lined the streets like gruesome monuments, cooling in the wintry air. They told the story of what had happened here, of what had swept through, and by their stillness they reassured him. The virus, the disease, whatever it was, moved like fire, burning up the resources in the area and moving on, leaving only death behind. He had feared that the town centre would be packed with the monsters, but there was nothing here left to kill. The only ones present now were the ones spilling out of the rear entrance of the wedding shop, the ones following him.

  The sign marking the police station hung over the street just ahead of him, lit like a halo. The building was small, but the doors were heavy, and solid. Once inside, he would be able to lock them and keep his pursuers at bay. Getting to the radio was all that mattered now. If he had to, he could lock himself into the station's single cell and stay there, like an exhibit at a deranged zoo where all the dangerous creatures roamed outside the bars.

  He hoped it wouldn't come to that, and knew from experience that silence was the most important part of evading the afflicted people that chased him. Eventually, surely, they would be pulled away toward other, more interesting prey, and he could think about exiting the station, and the town, and just how he was going to get to Aberystwyth before the infection reached it.

  There was no time for caution when he opened the door to the station. Now that he was on foot, the distance between himself and the murderers chasing him was narrowing rapidly. He threw himself inside, slamming the door shut behind him.

  A metal bar could be placed across the interior of the door as a security lock, and he heaved this into place, before sinking to the ground, gasping for air.

  Sitting on the hard floor, his back
against the heavy door, Michael felt rather than heard the frantic, enraged pounding of the creatures that he had eluded for the second time that day. The dizziness and pain swelled inside him, his headache now a constant, sickening thump, threatening to pull him into oblivion only for the shards of glass embedded in him to bring him back with their stinging bite.

  His uniform was drenched with his own blood, the fabric sticking to the wounds. His vision swam, and as the pounding on the door receded, fading in his ears like the chugging of a departing train, he allowed the darkness to take him.

  He dreamed again of betrayal, as always. A familiar friend that comforted and undermined.

  In his dream, he sat in a room, waiting for someone, someone he knew intuitively would never come. The dream was lonely, and frightening, the room he sat in darkened, with menacing shadows that loomed in the corners, shadows in which a hungry presence also waited, waiting for him to fall asleep.

  He was sitting on a small single bed, the only furniture in the room, next to a window. The curtains were pulled back, and the window seemed filled with a bright orange light, yet none of this illumination seemed to enter the room.

  The shadows lengthened.

  He had to stay awake, even though he knew that whoever he was waiting for, whoever was going to rescue him from the gaping maws that waited in the dark would never come.

  He rose from the bed and made his way to the door. Opening it, he saw a dark corridor, but there was a light at the end, a doorway. Leading to bathroom, flooded by a beautiful bright light, that chased away all the shadows. He stumbled toward the safety of the light, chased by the thickening darkness, his heart hammering and beads of sweat popping out on his brow, until finally, gloriously, he fell into the bathroom.

  Tiredness threatened to overwhelm him, tempting him toward the shadows, and he struggled to his feet, levering himself up against the sink.