Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 1) Read online

  He briefly considered attempting to hot wire the car, then dismissed the notion as ridiculous. It looked deceptively easy on TV, pop a panel, twist some wires together, commence cruising, but Michael was certain it was anything but. In any case, simply attempting the manoeuvre would make noise, and draw Haycock straight to him.

  He could sit and wait, hope than something else caught Haycock’s attention or that he lost interest and wandered off.

  He raised his head above the dashboard again, and saw Haycock prowling around some ten feet beyond the bonnet. As Michael watched, the mutilated face lifted toward the sky, face wrinkling.

  He's sniffing, Michael thought, and felt an icy rush in the pit of his stomach. Surely he can't smell me?

  Michael had heard that blindness can increase the effectiveness of the other senses. He had no idea whether it was a myth or not, but surely loss of sight didn't instantly boost the sense of smell or hearing. The thought was crazy. What on earth was Haycock doing?

  Evidently Haycock’s sense of smell had not improved supernaturally, for he took two steps in the wrong direction, away from the car, and let loose a guttural roar of rage that made Michael's heart leap painfully against his ribs.

  Maybe he would just wander off...

  Michael's gaze lighted on Carl. His chest was still rising and falling, but weakly, irregularly. A bubble of blood escaped his lips, popping and running down over his cheek.

  To wait it out was to sit and watch Carl die.

  Michael shook his head.

  He would have to hope that Haycock would fall for the same trick twice. He popped open the glove compartment as silently as possible, and fished out a small book of local maps. All he had to do was open the car door quietly, and throw the book into the trees, away from the car and Carl, and then head in the opposite direction.

  Once he was out of the car, all he had to do was remain silent, and slip away. Use the killer's blindness against him. He began to feel a little more confident.

  Carl was off to the left of the car. If it were possible, Michael would tell his friend to hold on for his return as he passed him. He focused on the fallen man again, made sure he was still breathing. He was.

  Michael turned back to the right, to the driver side door, readying himself to lift the lock button as slowly and quietly as possible.

  And screamed when he saw Haycock’s bloodied face just millimetres away from the glass.

  Michael leapt for the passenger door even as Haycock reared his head back, before whipping it forward with a crunch into the glass. Cracks spread across the pane, but it held firm until the second blow. Haycock launched himself into the space, seemingly unaware of the shards that tore into his abdomen.

  Michael grasped for the passenger door lock with sweat-drenched palms, feeling it slip in his grip, and then the door was open, and he dove out, pulling his knees toward him as he felt fingers grasping at his boot.

  Michael was on his feet instantly, taking off toward Carl, throwing a look back over his shoulder at the car. Haycock was caught awkwardly in the window, struggling to pull himself into the car, apparently unaware that the quicker option would be to withdraw and run around the car.

  Michael slowed as he approached his fallen partner, and knelt, keeping his gaze fixed firmly on the man thrashing in the police car.

  "I'm going for help Carl", he whispered. "I'll be back, stay quiet okay? He can't see you so just stay completely-"

  Carl's eyes flew open, and Michael's mind went blank.

  The whites of his partner’s eyes were gone, replaced by a furious, livid crimson. The lids were stretched back, tearing, as the eyes seemed to swell to at least twice their normal size, seething in their sockets, looking like angry infections ready to burst.

  With a cry, Michael stumbled back, away from his partner, Haycock temporarily forgotten. As he watched, mouth wide in horror, Michael saw his partner claw at his own bloodied face, tearing out the malignant tumours that had once provided his vision.

  For a moment Michael was paralysed as his partner, thick blood oozing from the hole that Haycock's teeth had left in his neck, lifted himself to his knees. Only when Carl roared like a stricken animal and swung a hand violently through the empty space that Michael had filled just moments before, did the paralysis leave, taking with it all semblance of conscious thought.

  Dimly aware of Haycock finally exiting the police car to the right, and Carl lurching to his feet behind him, Michael put his head down.

  And ran.

  *

  When Rachel was ten she had become fascinated with the Olympic games held in sweltering Atlanta. The time difference meant that often when she woke during the long, glorious summer without school, she would make her way downstairs, head full of possibilities for a day of freedom, and find herself greeted by the sound of her parents, sitting together in front of the television at 8am, cooing over the amazing feats of endurance or skill.

  There was something unique about it. Maybe it was just her age, something to do with leaving the happy fog of childhood behind, or maybe it was the effect of seeing her parents so relaxed, happy and smiling, cheering on the country's athletes, instead of stressing about the day ahead. The chores that needed to be done; the bills that needed to be paid. For that one month, that seemed to stretch out endlessly before her, her house had the same intangible feel as the small cottages or chalets her parents had always rented on the North Welsh coast for week-long holidays each June.

  She hadn't ever paid much attention to sport before, whether on television or thrust in front of her face by eager PE teachers, and in truth, when that summer ebbed toward autumn, she never would again. By the time the next Olympics rolled around she was older if not necessarily wiser, and her head was dominated by thoughts of the boys in her class and fears that her body, somehow, was different to that of all the other girls, and they all knew it.

  Still, for that one month, she became obsessed, devouring all the amazing events that took place under the baking Georgia sun, before rushing out to try to replicate them in her garden or the local park, staying out for as long as the remnants of the summer sun would allow, before hurrying home through the gloom in a vain attempt to avoid her mother's wrath at her staying out so late and arriving home long after dinner had cooled.

  Her best friend at the time, Jeanette, had little interest in sport, and resisted Rachel's enthusiasm for several days, but Rachel knew she was the leader out of the two, and she knew that eventually Jeanette would follow her. It wasn't long before Jeanette was rushing over to the Roberts house each morning and they would watch together, before devising how to go about recreating whichever event had caught their attention.

  The feats of strength and speed were impressive, of course, and often got their young blood pumping, adrenaline coursing through them as their chosen favourite stumbled to a glorious victory or a noble defeat, yet it was the gymnastics that truly entranced the two girls.

  Watching the girls, barely older than they were, hailing from exotic-sounding places like Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia, as they twisted and contorted in a dazzling cascade of colourful ribbons, dancing across the screen with such poise and grace instantly made their minds up: they would become gymnasts.

  They immediately scurried out into the sunlight, practising handstands and rolls, twirling sticks tied at the end with string in place of ribbons, and squealed with glee when their motions reminded them of the otherworldly beauty they had seen on the TV.

  It was only natural that once they had conquered throwing and catching the sticks and colourful string, Rachel would suggest that they needed to up the ante.

  So it was that one early afternoon in August, Rachel found herself clapping hands in delight as she watched her friend walking the high beam.

  The wall they used wasn't quite narrow enough, of course, but it was high – maybe six feet off the ground – and dramatic enough that as Jeanette placed one foot confidently in front of the other, Rachel could almost
hear the roar of the capacity crowd.

  Jeanette beamed as she reached the end of the wall, her ten foot journey a raging success. She held her arms aloft, saluting the invisible crowd, accepting their rapturous cheers.

  “Do a turn!” Rachel squealed, and Jeanette nodded.

  It was as she turned, that brief moment where the difficulty curve suddenly shot up, where her balance was truly challenged, that it happened.

  For a moment Rachel felt as though a small, manic laugh might escape her lips as she watched her friend fall from the wall into the neighbouring garden. But then she heard the crashing glass. And the scream.

  When she climbed the boxes they had used as a makeshift ladder to get to the top of the wall and looked down at her friend, Rachel felt her head swim, and her stomach suddenly did not feel good at all.

  Jeanette had fallen straight into the plate glass greenhouse belonging to the the neighbours, the smashed shards tearing into her left leg near her hip, shearing it almost clean off.

  The horror of the moment would stay with Rachel forever, the sickening twist of fate, the way the world turned upside down in an instant. The way a brilliant summer's day could suddenly feel so very cold.

  There was so much blood, its metallic stench filling the air. Rachel screamed with her friend then, screamed until the neighbours and her father rushed into their gardens, their faces ashen as they saw little Jeanette torn apart in the wrecked greenhouse.

  The ambulance came promptly, and the doctors were able to sew the decimated leg back together. Jeanette, it turned out, would be fine. She limped for a while, and heights would make her uneasy for the rest of her days, but the physical damage was not as calamitous as it appeared.

  For Rachel though, things were never quite the same. She didn't speak much to Jeanette after that, and they slowly drifted apart, occasionally crossing paths in high school, their meetings marked by embittered stares and simmering anger that they didn't truly understand, and could never overcome.

  If anyone were to ask Rachel – and as a teenager rebelling more than most, they often did – what it was that caused her violent, rage-filled outbursts, she would struggle to put it into words, but the image of that day would float across her mind. That was the moment her childhood really died, the moment at which, on some subconscious level, she began to understand that life is like a fire: comforting, warming, nurturing, and ready to burn the instant you let your attention drift.

  All of those deeply buried emotions raced to the surface and delivered her a sucker punch as she looked at the pool of blood on the floor, the smear that led to her parents' basement. A blow hard enough to knock the air clean out of her, leaving her gasping, vision blurred by hot tears.

  The blood belonged to her father. She knew it instinctively, and felt a small pang of fearful shame as she acknowledged to herself that she hoped she was wrong, and that whatever misfortune had happened in the kitchen, it had happened to her mother instead.

  The knots in her stomach told a different story.

  The basement.

  Her eyes fixed on the door, on the bloody hand print that adorned it like a Christmas decoration from hell. The long, glistening smear of blood that led to it.

  Someone had been hurt, and had dragged themselves into the basement. Rachel knew that she should be thinking about the why of it: the obvious implications of an injured person retreating into a dark prison, rather than seeking out help, but for now all she could think was that it was Daddy's blood, and that there was a slim chance that he might still be alive.

  Hands trembling, she stepped carefully over the blood and reached for the handle of the basement door. The metal felt cool and familiar in her hands, and memories of all the times she had walked down the narrow stairs in the past, helping her mother with the laundry, flooded back into her mind, jarring her with their familiarity in this suddenly alien and hostile environment.

  For a moment she held the handle and stood still, head cocked slightly, straining to hear something beyond the door, hoping that she might hear her father's voice perhaps, calling faintly for help. Terror built up inside her, the fear at what she might see upon opening the door waging a silent war against her belief that her father was down there, injured, maybe dying.

  She threw the door open and found herself confronted by a black hole, as though the bright kitchen had opened a hungry mouth, ready to swallow her whole. The light from the kitchen illuminated a handful of bare concrete steps leading down, disappearing into impenetrable gloom.

  And now she could hear something. Soft, wet sounds. Sounds that could only be her stricken father struggling in the darkness, the liquid of his life spilling out onto the cold, hard floor.

  Rachel rushed forward blindly then, filled equally with fear and hope and desperation, clumsily and frantically traversing the steps into the basement, into the blackness.

  It was the smell that hit her first. The basement air was musty and old, sour smelling. And filled with another scent; something that took her all the way back to that summer's day and the smashed greenhouse, and the screaming: the cloying, coppery stench of blood.

  Then, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and the strange wet sounds were revealed, Rachel felt something snap in her mind, some important tether suddenly breaking.

  Rachel's first instinct had been right: it was her father in the basement, lying prone on the concrete, but he was not alone. Crouched over his fallen, lifeless body was the family's beloved friendly little terrier, Sniffer, his snout drenched in gore.

  Eating her father's face.

  She had a moment to take in the insanity, to feel it penetrate her brain and put down roots. A second in which to see the dog lift its head in her direction, to notice that there was something wrong with its eyes, something that the gloom of the basement would not quite reveal.

  A second to stumble backwards as Sniffer came for her, blood-soaked lips pulled back, snarling.

  *

  Michael hit the tarmac hard, putting his head down to the wind. Travelling.

  He had been a decent runner in school, not quite with that extra burst of speed that the select few of his peers that ended up running for the county had, but they would have been able to see him in their rear view mirror. A few years of little real exercise hadn't quite eradicated that prowess, and as he pumped his legs, feet smashing painfully into the road, he felt a certain confidence.

  The two horrors from the car park were following. He could hear the crashing feet and broken panting. For a moment he found himself questioning how they were able to target him so effectively – clearly they were blind, yet they were not aimless. Again he wondered if they were operating by smell, but the notion seemed ridiculous. These were human beings, not bloodhounds.

  He risked a look back over his left shoulder, and almost yelled out when he saw how close they were. The fog permitted visibility of fifteen feet, twenty at most, but Michael could see them clearly. Coming fast. And once again he noticed the strange, alien gait, the movement that seemed to belong more to the animal kingdom than the human world.

  He doubled his efforts, but already his heart was sinking. The air pumping through his lungs felt as though it were getting hotter, each new breath seemed to be filled with razors that rattled around painfully in his chest. He wasn't going to be able to keep this up. They were going to catch him.

  Michael made up his mind before he even realised there was an issue up for debate. The road offered him a clear path, a place to use his pace to its fullest, but it also made him a sitting duck, a target that could not be missed. What the road offered most was vulnerability.

  He veered off the tarmac and into the woods.

  As he crashed into the undergrowth, aware that he was making more noise but also hoping that the more difficult terrain would prove too much for his sightless pursuers, he was surprised to find his mind filled with thoughts of his estranged wife, of the way the marriage hadn't so much broken down as melted away. Each day a steady dimi
nishing, until one day, when you found yourself looking, you discovered there was nothing left to see.

  Things had been good with Elise, really good for a long time. She taught kids at the local primary school. She smiled whenever she saw him. She sang in the kitchen, little improvised verses that usually swerved into ridiculous territory and always made them both laugh.

  Even now, his heart ached as he thought about the way that smile had slowly disappeared, to be replaced one day with curt pleasantries, and finally with a stiff goodbye. The way he had known deep down that she hadn’t wanted to say that terrible word, that she hoped day after day that the man she had met would return. The way, in the end, she felt she had to.

  They had moved quickly in the beginning, getting a place together only a few months after they met, in clichéd fashion, following a chance meeting of their gaze across a smoky bar in the Cardiff City Centre. Marriage followed within a couple of years and a year later than that, while the glow of the honeymoon period still emitted a failing sliver of light, Elise had announced to him that she was pregnant.

  Michael felt it at the time, the dark realisation that having a baby was like papering over the cracks in shifting continents, but he always held out hope that one day something would click, some mysterious unseen machine would shift gears and the smile would return. Yet continents shift, and can not be stopped.

  The baby, their daughter, Claire, arrived like the word of God. A miracle that renewed their faith and promised a bright future. She meant everything to him, his heart swelling until it felt like it might burst every time he looked at her. For a time, things felt good again, but still, deep down, Michael knew. Knew that both he and Elise had become actors, playing roles. Saying the right things, doing the right things. But the actions were hollow, and there was no echo of them in their eyes.

  Eventually the script just...ran out, and there was nothing left to say, no way to improvise happiness.

  Elise finally left, taking Claire with her, returning to her parents’ home in Aberystwyth. It was a hundred miles, the distance between them. A hundred miles and a lifetime.