Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 1) Read online

  There were shops, of course, small butcher's and baker's, even a tiny all-purpose hardware store, but the truth of the matter was that if you were shopping in one of these establishments, you were likely no more than five minutes' walk from your front door, and frankly, it would take that long to navigate a car round some of St. Davids' more eccentric corners. It just wasn't worth it.

  Those with cars – and despite the reliance on them virtually everywhere else, a surprising number of the residents didn't bother with owning a car at all – were more likely to head away from the town. Even in this most rural part of Wales, a superstore wasn't too far away. Some twenty miles east in Haverfordwest, a giant, gleaming Tesco supermarket had opened a few months previously, and, as is the way with these out-of-town monoliths, it exerted a gravitational pull that could be felt for many miles. Buy one get one free is, after all, hard to resist.

  Of course, none of this mattered to the two occupants of the police car, who were obliged to crawl through the cobbled streets at least once a day, 'maintaining a visible presence'. Two hours to walk. Almost double that to drive.

  Michael had intended head through the middle of town early on, before lunchtime drew people out of their houses and onto the cobbled streets they treated as just another pavement, making progress for a car all but impossible, but Carl, his mind still clearly and unashamedly fixated on a fried breakfast that his wife would have gladly pistol whipped him for eating, had proved persuasive. They headed out toward the countryside.

  Where the centre of the city was cramped, creaking buildings obstinately clinging to the hills on which the town was built as though huddling together for warmth, the outskirts were much more expansive. Tiny collections of dwellings – often no more than three or four old farm buildings – were dotted for miles around, each proudly declaring itself a village in its own right, and the police car dutifully made its way around them all most days, though in truth that was more attributable to the boredom that was the default atmosphere of the police station than any conscientious work ethic.

  Of course, these checks never turned up anything. Sometimes the residents waved at the car, sometimes even signalling Michael or Carl to wind the window down and stop for a chat, maybe even a cup of tea. The most likely occurrence was, of course, getting stuck behind a tractor.

  This morning, however, as the car sailed through the roads towards Ralf's café and the promise of bacon and eggs, the roads were all but empty, and the mile and a half or so passed quickly, though not quickly enough judging by the rumbles of complaint emanating from Carl's stomach.

  "You hear that?" The big man sighed. "Cholesterol," he said with a derisive snort. "Hunger'll get me long before that does."

  Michael looked dubious. Carl had the physique of a man who could survive being stranded on an uninhabited island longer than most.

  They were on the beach road, and Ralf's café, a lonely sort of building set against a hill and with a view of a tiny sliver of ocean beyond, drew closer.

  "Try to hold on mate," Michael said "don't go dying on me now. We're so close."

  Carl snorted. "You're buying. And just for that, I'll be sure to have an extra-"

  He trailed off, as Michael eased the car to a stop in the small patch of gravel that served as Ralf’s car park. Michael was staring at the door to the café. Following his gaze, Carl suddenly moved breakfast down his list of priorities.

  The door was shut, and across the whitewashed panel beneath the glass and the faintly ridiculous Bar and Grill sign, was a long, red smear.

  "Is that...blood?" said Carl, unable to keep a note of wonder out of his voice.

  Michael's jaw clenched.

  "I'd say so." He stared for a few seconds, and felt an odd lurch in his stomach, a feeling like returning home to continue an argument.

  "Uh..what should we do?"

  It was a good question. There was something about the long, ragged smear that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Some relic of Michael's police training nagged at him, it's voice indistinct. In another time and place Michael would have suggested that they call it in, perhaps even call for backup. Here though, the truth was that there was no one to call. The single storey police station, barely big enough to house a couple of desks and a noticeboard, was home to a receptionist, a middle aged woman by the name of Glenda who specialised in making tea and conducting long, gossipy phone calls. What it did not contain, was anything that could remotely be described as backup.

  He scratched at his chin, lost in thought.

  "Okay," Michael said after a pause. "Stay here and call it in to Glenda. Tell her if she doesn't hear from us in five minutes, she needs to put in a call to Haverfordwest. Then follow me in.

  "Here." He passed Carl the car keys. "If this turns out bad, get out of here, get some backup."

  "You want to check it out on your own? That safe?" Carl's eyes were wide.

  Michael shrugged. "Just gonna take a peek. If there's someone in there waiting with a weapon, I'd rather we didn't both have our faces pressed up against the glass, you know?"

  Carl looked dubious. He was no expert, but this did not sound like standard procedure.

  Michael caught the look on his partners face, and forced a smile. "Hey, I'm sure it's nothing. Probably just Ralf cut himself trying something a little more ambitious than frying bacon is all. Don't worry, we'll get you fed yet." He slapped Carl's gut and got out of the car before he could protest, shutting the door behind him quietly.

  The door was about fifteen feet away. Michael crept toward it, muscles tensed, ears straining for any sound coming from inside the building. There was none.

  It was only when he was almost at the threshold that Michael noticed spots of blood on the path leading to the door, and felt his pulse quicken. He paused, and shot a glance back at the car. Carl was on the radio, his eyes fixed on Michael.

  Michael cocked his head to the side. Still no sound. Nothing at all.

  Michael thought about the multitude of American cop shows strewn across the television channels. Thought about some grizzled homicide detective approaching a closed door, gun in hand, ready to face the danger head on. On TV, the detective would kick the door open, pop three rounds into the perp's chest and head back to the station to get shouted at by his chief. Michael had a can of long-unused pepper spray and judgement that hadn't been called upon for so long it had probably rusted over.

  He reached for his belt and pulled the spray out of its holster, briefly wondering if the damn thing could possibly be out of date, and as much use as a can of deodorant.

  He took another step, and could now see that there was more blood than he had realised at first, a small pool of it gathered around the base of the door. The sight made him waver for a moment, and he felt his nerves getting the better of him.

  "Fuck it," he whispered, adrenaline kicking in, and stepped in front of the door, peering in to the dimly lit café.

  His eyes adjusted, pupils widening.

  Then he bent double and retched.

  *

  He ran.

  He loved to run.

  He very rarely got the chance, not to really run. Sure, there were times when he managed a jog, more often into what could best be described as a trot. Hardly ever an outright run.

  The main reason, of course, was her. She didn't like it when he ran, and he always got a telling off that left him feeling humbled, and fearful. And there were the obstructions, of course. Where he lived, it seemed to be all obstructions, all strange shapes and blockages. Pointless corners and walls that were sometimes there, sometimes not. No chance at all to run there.

  And of course, when he tried, the telling off was especially severe.

  When he was allowed to visit other places was when he could sometimes up the pace a little, but he had learned that he could only get so far before he was stopped suddenly, and painfully.

  It was torture. Because he wanted to run so very much. Things in the distance were always so mu
ch more intriguing, and he worried that by the time he got to them, they would be gone. Running was the only solution, and it was forbidden. It was a source of terrible frustration and confusion to him. He did not understand why it was bad to run, only that running had consequences. He hated the consequences.

  Now, however, he was running, and it was glorious. Flat out sprinting, and the feel of the wind pushing back his ears and the cold numbing his tongue was truly wonderful. Strangely, he found he suddenly did not care about the consequences. He only cared about the running.

  "Bad dog Sniffer!"

  She sounded distant, but there was no mistaking the words. The same words he heard most days, though this time there was steel in the tone, menace that could not be overlooked.

  It angered him, and that surprised him. Ordinarily that tone meant consequences. At the very least it meant that she would not fish into the paper bag of delicious treats today, and he would probably end up with nothing more to eat than the dry, tasteless pebbles that came out when he was bad dog. That was usually enough to stop him, but today felt different.

  He felt different.

  Felt something stirring inside him, something powerful and irresistible, something that felt oddly like it had been taken away from him and now returned. Something that made him whole.

  There was pain, too, a stinging incessant stabbing that began in his eyes and seemed to reach back into his brain, tearing at him, making him feel helpless and furious all at once.

  He stopped running, and turned to face his master. She approached, face red and puffing for air, and reached for the cord that he had snatched from her hands, the one that hurt his throat.

  When she was close enough, he put his head down, flattened his ears and stared into her eyes.

  And growled.

  Mrs Paula Roberts practically leapt backwards in surprise, and she had to admit, a little fear.

  Moments earlier, she had been standing in the tiny St. Davids police station, smugly telling that bitch Glenda Davis that she had very important information about a crime, and that no, sadly she couldn't tell Glenda anything about it, but felt she had to wait to speak to an actual police officer.

  The look on Glenda's face had been priceless. Mrs Roberts hated Glenda, hated her not just because she had once had the cheek to accuse Mrs Roberts' daughter of assaulting her son (assault! A playground scuffle, assault!) but more to the point, because Glenda was her only rival as the biggest gossip in town, and Glenda had an unfair advantage.

  How was Mrs Roberts to compete when Glenda's job was to answer the phone and have local scandal handed to her on a plate? Glenda got to know it all: who was drunk, whose husband had been fighting who. Even what what went on behind closed doors, even if a husband was beating up his wife! The very thought of it made Mrs Roberts shudder.

  Thankfully, the crime rate in the town was so low, so virtually non-existent, that Glenda Davis' gossip never truly even reached Defcon 3 status (Mrs Roberts liked to brand her gossip thus, perceiving that a Defcon 5 would get most people in the town murmuring and raising an eyebrow, while a Defcon 1 would provoke genuine outrage throughout) and now, deliciously, St. Davids had a genuine, honest-to-God Defcon 1 criminal event, and it was she who knew all about it. Not Glenda.

  Just thinking about it made her tremble with delight.

  The occasion however, had been ruined. Barely as soon as she had begun to gloat, intending to draw out Glenda's curiosity for at least 15 minutes, the woman's desk phone had rung, and she had put on an (impressive, Mrs Roberts had to admit) act of being shocked at some vital piece of news, before telling Mrs Roberts that she would have to leave, as Glenda had some important confidential police work to carry out.

  Her emphasis on the word important made Mrs Roberts seethe. She knew full well what that bitch was implying.

  As if that was not bad enough, when Mrs Roberts had planted her hands on her ample hips, preparing to tell Glenda Davis that she was going nowhere, thank-you-very-much, the damn dog had slipped its leash away from her grasp and bolted out of the door.

  And now, here she stood, panting and sweating in the misty morning, having been forced into an embarrassing, wobbling sprint by her own dog. Glenda would no doubt be laughing her obnoxious head off.

  The very thought enraged Mrs Roberts, and she glared at Sniffer.

  The dog was hostile, no doubt about it, its eyes levelled at her in a clear, confident challenge.

  She took a step toward Sniffer and faltered as the growl deepened. Then Glenda Davis's irritating, high pitched laugh resonated in her mind, and Mrs Roberts set her jaw, took a couple of shuffling, surprisingly agile steps forward, and grabbed the dog’s collar firmly. Sniffer writhed and growled, but there was nothing the little Terrier could do.

  Mrs Paula Roberts was not about to be made a fool by a tiny dog, no thank-you-very-much, not today.

  Hauling the wriggling Terrier, Mrs Roberts set off for home, determined that Sniffer would learn that Bad Dogs could contemplate the consequences of their actions tied to a post in the cold garden, and on an empty stomach.

  *

  "Mary mother of God," Carl said, his voice an awestruck whisper.

  They stood just inside Ralf's café, just inside a nightmare.

  The walls and floor of the café were painted with blood, an impossibly large river of which flowed from the body of Ralf, the owner, who appeared to have had his throat torn out by some wild animal. Ralf lay motionless in the narrow space behind the bar, while in the middle of the room was the body of Father Leary. A shard of porcelain jutted out of the dead priest’s stomach, but it was his face that Carl fixated on in horror: flesh melted into a shapeless mass that clung to his skull raggedly; eyes gone.

  The worst of it though, was at their feet, just inside the doorway.

  Carl stared down at the the decapitated head, and felt the few mouthfuls of muesli he'd forced down that morning trying to force their way back up.

  He stumbled backwards into the open air, and sucked in a huge lungful of oxygen.

  Michael had regained his composure, at least in part. "You called Glenda?" He asked, his voice flat.

  Carl, nodded, gasping for air. "Yeah," he managed through clenched teeth.

  "Good," Michael responded. "Think we're gonna need help with this one."

  "No shit."

  Michael stepped into the bar area, scanning the room. Pieces of smashed plate were scattered over the floor, and the bar stools were toppled, one with a leg snapped clean in two. He crept carefully around the smears of blood, careful not to move anything, and crouched next to Ralf's body. The man's flabby neck was torn apart, ripped rather than cut. He looked back at the shards of porcelain still dotted around the floor, and shook his head slowly.

  "Both dead, yeah?"

  Carl had stepped back into the café, and his voice made Michael jump. He didn't respond.

  "What the fuck happened here man? It's like something out of one of those movies you know? The clown ones, with the guy dying of cancer."

  Carl was babbling, and Michael tuned him out. Once upon a time, he had been trained for this, and there was a time he had expected he would be good at it. Looking at the shattered and obscured pieces of a picture and putting it back together. This picture was horrific, baffling, but there was also something wrong with it. He frowned, lost in thought.

  Carl's voice rattled on, approaching hysteria. "I mean, this ain't down town Los Angeles, you know? This is fucking St. Davids for Christ's sake. Who the hell is going to murder Ralf? And Father Leary! And that thing over there, my God, I-"

  "No murder weapon," Michael interrupted.

  Carl stopped mid-sentence. "huh?" He grunted. "The plate-"

  "Looks like that's what did for Father Leary alright," Michael agreed. "But this wound on Ralf's neck? No chance. See how it's all ragged and torn up?" He pointed at the chasm that had been Ralf's windpipe. Carl gulped.

  "That wasn't a sharp instrument, at least, not like this."
He pointed at the plate. "And what about her? Even if someone did that with a broken plate, where's the body?"

  Carl shook his head miserably, looking like he might be sick.

  Michael stood up straight, both knees clicking, the sound impossibly loud in the oppressive silence. He looked around the room again, searching for some weapon that he had overlooked.

  "See if you can spot anything Carl," he said. "Any sort of weapon that could have done this. But don't move anything, okay?"

  Carl nodded, and began to step gingerly through the room, crouching to look under the small dining tables.

  Michael swept his eyes around again, and they came to rest on Father Leary's body. Just maybe...

  He stepped around the blood and crouched next to the priest's corpse, hoping to to spot a glint of dangerous metal pinned underneath the body.

  No sign.

  Michael sighed in frustration. The scene made no sense at all. He shifted his gaze to the priest’s face, as though he might find the answer written in the dead man's eyes.

  And his stomach lurched.

  "Oh Jesus," Michael cried, stepping back quickly from the body as though it might explode at any moment, and almost slipping on Ralf's blood.

  "What? What is it?" Carl almost shouted the words, panic clear in his voice.

  "It’s...our murder weapon. Fucking hell."

  "Huh?" Carl said, moving to Michael's position. "Where?"

  Michael pointed wordlessly at the priest’s face.

  Carl followed the gesture, squinting, his eyes slowly widening in horror.

  The priest’s mouth was full of blood, and there, stuck in the gaps between his teeth, were strips of torn flesh and matted hair.

  Carl's ongoing battle with his morning muesli finally resolved itself loudly and messily.

  "He tore Ralf's throat out like a fucking dog," Michael said, his voice laced with wonder. "Killed his wife somewhere else, then brought her head here and killed Ralf. With his damn teeth."

  Carl choked, and spat bile onto the floor. "Doesn't make any sense," he moaned miserably. "Father Leary? The guy wouldn't harm a fly. Fuck’s sake, the guy would pray for the soul of someone who did harm a fly! How the hell does a man like that behead his own wife and rip out a man's throat? What is it? Drugs? Did he just lose his mind? He christened my neighbour’s baby a week ago! A week! Doesn't make any sense."