“Where are we going?”
“Upstairs. First thing we need to do is get a look at what’s out there.”
Through the bar exit and into a murky corridor beyond: Claire saw several doors bearing universally-recognised stick figures representing man and woman. A wider door depicted a stick figure sitting on a wheelchair, and to the right of that, another door marked Staff Only. Bill pushed it open with a wrinkled hand.
Bill climbed the stairs in silence, which made the wheezing of the air travelling around his lungs all the more noticeable to Claire. She ascended behind him, slowing her steps to avoid crashing into the back of the old man.
Away from the open-plan bar area, the first floor of the pub looked much like any other house to Claire’s eyes; not too different to the flat that had been home to herself and her mother until only days earlier. Seeing the cheerful domesticity of the place, the snug-looking couch and the TV placed directly in front of it, the small kitchen area that still bore the signs of cooking – dirty dishes, a stained coffee mug, sent a powerful shudder of emotion through her, bringing tears to her eyes.
She hadn’t thought much about her mother, hadn’t really had a chance. Staring into the kitchen, memories threatened to overwhelm her. And then her leaking eyes alighted on an opened box of Crunchy nut flakes and she could choke back the sobs no longer. They escaped, huge and painful, making her slim shoulders heave, and then the old man’s arms were around her, warm and snug, the smell of stale liquor somehow comforting, and she buried her face in his stained sweater and let the emotion pour out.
*
Michael arched an eyebrow as Rachel led Jason and John back into the kitchen. He had half-expected the big man to be dead. How could he be bitten and not turned? He set the rifle down on the sturdy kitchen table, felt the tension in his shoulders that had built up as he had sat there alone with his thoughts and the weapon dissipate a little.
“What happened?”
Jason shrugged, held out his bleeding forearm.
“Got bit.”
Michael nodded, and found himself wishing that he had gotten a little more experience with the police in Cardiff. He could feel the group fracturing; the addition of John maybe, adding an extra level of stress to an already delicate and complicated relationship the three of them had been trying to forge in the fire of madness. Or maybe it was Jason himself: brooding, exuding menace. Slipping away into some dark place, towing Rachel along behind him.
Michael’s experience of questioning people – suspects – in Cardiff was limited, despite his one-time status as the station’s up-and-coming golden boy, and his lack of knowledge on how to get straight answers out of people was becoming problematic. He had been involved in two interrogations, but he hadn’t been asking the questions in either. He glanced down at the gun. The last time he had been questioned, he’d been tied to a tree with the business end of a firearm levelled at his face.
For the briefest of moments he found himself thinking about the shotgun, and how quickly it had compelled him to tell the truth.
I do have a gun.
Firearms were worse than useless against the Infected. But against humans, they would still hold their power to persuade. The rifle, he thought, conferred a certain level of authority. More than his uniform ever had. He cast the thought aside, but felt some part of it clinging to him like the smell of stale tobacco.
He had once been part of a team. A duo, at least. Two people pulling in the same direction until one day they stopped talking and all sense of direction was lost. He felt that same sense of helplessness now, of things slipping beyond his control. He knew instinctively that this ragtag group had to be pulled together, and fast.
“We’re as blind as those bastards out there,” he said finally. “No clue what we are dealing with. It’s going to cost us.”
Rachel blinked.
“The only way we get through this is by trusting each other,” Michael continued. “The only way. Anything anybody is holding back is going to get us killed. If John had this,” he lifted the rifle, “up there, then Jason would probably be dead now, and all because we’re operating in the dark. Any information any of us has got, we all need it. Anybody disagree?”
He looked round each of them slowly.
“Then I’ll start. I watched my partner get bitten, and a few moments later he was one of them. He was trying to kill me in about thirty seconds. Then I met Victor, and he told me, or at least hinted, that this…whatever this is, it’s man-made, and he had a part in creating it. He said something about his blood type being immune. It’s not much help, I don’t know what blood type he was, I don’t even know what blood type I am, but there it is. Rachel?”
Rachel looked at him for a moment, puzzled, and then spoke.
“Victor tortured and raped me for nearly a week.”
She kept her jaw up, mouth set firmly, delivering the words like a letter bomb, and stared Michael straight in the eye, waiting for a reaction that didn’t come.
“He didn’t tell me anything about this. Mostly he talked about his fucking bunker. But he did talk about how things were going to be…afterward. How his time was going to come. Nothing of much use unless you’re trying to determine whether Victor was a psychopath. He was.”
Her eyes dropped.
“But I do think I might know why the rats haven’t infected Jason. My mother’s dog had it, he was infected. He…killed my father. But my father died human. He didn’t turn. He dragged himself into the basement, but the dog just attacked and kept attacking, until I turned up, and then it tried to kill me. Kept coming even when it had a pitchfork in its back.”
She shuddered a little at the memory.
“So maybe my father was immune. Maybe Jason is too. Say they both had the right blood type, maybe. I don’t know. You’d get your blood type from a parent, right?”
She shrugged an apology.
“I’ve got next to no medical knowledge, nothing beyond bandaging a cut and taking antibiotics.”
Michael nodded. The desperate truth of her statement hung in the air for a few moments. None of them had any medical knowledge. Maybe there were few people left anywhere who did, scattered to the wind; their effectiveness blunted. And not just doctors, but people with all sorts of skills, talents that civilization had been built on. If the plague was as extensive as it appeared, humanity might have been set back decades. Centuries.
They were all thinking it. Michael could see it in their eyes. Don’t let them dwell on that, he thought, but found his own advice difficult to take. He swallowed.
“Okay, so we have to watch out for wildlife as well. It’s not exactly great news, but it might just save us. Anything else?”
“They’re not mindless. Not totally.” Jason’s voice, for once lifted above a mumble, made them jump. “My mother turned. And she came for me. For us.” He looked at Rachel, who nodded, her face ashen. “It was different, the way she acted, there was a huge pack of them in St. Davids and she peeled away and came straight for us. Broke into the house we were hiding in. It was like she could smell us, sense us, I don’t know. But she wasn’t just attacking whatever was in front of her. She was hunting us.”
The foundation of steel in Jason’s voice reminded Michael of his words in Victor’s bunker. Let’s go find your daughter. When he managed to lift himself out of the fog in his mind, Jason sounded less unstable. More dangerous.
Jason’s revelation sent sparks of recognition firing in Michael’s thoughts, like old sparkplugs trying to breathe life into an engine. He remembered the way one of the Infected had smashed through a car window to get to him. Remembered the way it had sniffed the air, tracking him like a bloodhound. Jason was right. These things weren’t just insane monsters. They moved with a purpose.
“I’ve seen them sniffing like that, hunting. I don’t think their sense of smell is anything supernatural. But their hearing is. It’s like they can detect noise and zero in on it from a distance. Almost like they use their hea
ring to see.”
“Like bats,” Rachel said.
Michael sighed. It was like an impromptu therapy session, everybody getting it all off their chest. But all it seemed to be doing was making the enemy feel that much more dangerous, and diminishing their hopes of survival. If it weren’t for Claire, Michael would have suggested they fortify the farm as best they could and just wait, living like silent monks in the hope that the world might change around them, reverting to something like normality. Even that, Michael thought, was a sort of suicide; the slow, hopeless kind.
The conversation had been useful though, and Michael had gotten exactly what he wanted from it, the information he truly needed slipping into the corner of his eyes, entering his mind through a side door. Underlining itself every time the name Victor was mentioned.
He turned a little, as much as his locked torso would allow.
“Your turn, John. Why don’t you tell us what you know about Victor?”
John’s eyes narrowed.
Chapter 7
So they know.
John had to give the policeman credit. He’d played the helpless cripple card to perfection, and even John had bought it. He gave himself a mental kick, even as he acknowledged the skilled way Michael had done it. It was as soft as being questioned at gunpoint could possibly get. John had barely felt the inquisition until the spotlight fell on him.
The memories had been returning ever since the name Victor had surfaced in conversation the first time. That was the loose thread, and as they had walked in the rain John had kept pulling at it, working it around like a tongue prying at decaying tooth, trying to root out the poison underneath.
It had come back to him when they entered the farm and the smell of death hit him; memories returning all at once, a download of information that almost made him stagger to his knees: the bunker, the bloodbath in the woods, the doomed helicopter ride. Project Wildfire. Sullivan.
Just thinking the old man’s name made an unnerving, cold rage wash through him. The old fucker had known, had been one of the guiding hands behind the insanity. And right now he was sitting safely underground in an expensive suit, sipping overpriced coffee and watching the world crumble. There’s profit in chaos.
John had kept quiet when his thoughts had returned to him. Because he knew what the world was now, and these three people were already as good as dead. They’d either drag him down with them or the big one would kill John himself.
One of his buddies in Afghanistan had survived once by playing dead. It got him home to his wife and kids. It stuck in John’s memory like barbed wire. Sometimes playing possum was the best way out.
The game was up now, though. He’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t even noticed the cop watching him intently. Hadn’t even thought about why the rifle Michael held so casually always seemed to be pointed vaguely in John’s direction. Hell, he’d even undertaken a bit of good old male bonding with him. Clever guy; maybe he’d even have a shot at survival.
If he had legs.
John had always known that lies and corruption provided the grease that kept the cogs of society turning. Maybe now, at least, Project Wildfire had had one positive effect: lying would get you killed.
Get me killed, he thought grimly, eyeing Jason’s massive form. The man was currently dormant; in standby mode. John didn’t know what would get the big man moving, nor did he much want to find out. Jason was untrained, clumsy. John might be able to take him if things went bad. Might.
Never a successful gambler, John decided not to roll that particular dice. The truth was almost certainly his best way out of the current hole in which he found himself. He let the act drop, registering the surprise on Rachel’s face as the confused, jittery body language was suddenly replaced by something with a little more zip. He felt sorry for Rachel, felt bad for misleading her. Girl had spark.
“I don’t know too much more than any of you. Hell, some of what you’ve just said is news to me.”
Michael nodded in satisfaction even as Rachel’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.
“You’re a part of this?”
“Easy, Tyson,” John said evenly, rubbing his sore jaw. “I’m no more a part of this than I was a part of the decision to spend a decade fucking up the Middle East. Yeah,” he said, looking at Michael. “Military. You got that right. Or at least I was.
“A few months back I landed a job driving for an expensive suit by the name of Fred Sullivan. He might be a part of this, I don’t know. I do know that he knew it was coming. Bought his way to safety, I imagine. That’s usually the way.”
“What safety?” Michael asked abruptly. “Is this happening locally? What about the rest of the country?”
“These people don’t think small, Michael, and neither should you. The real question is: what about the rest of the world?”
“You’re saying this is worldwide?” Rachel’s initial look of surprise had given way to outright hostility.
John grimaced, and his shoulders slumped.
“I honestly don’t know, Rachel. But I do know it’s countrywide, and I don’t see how an attack like this, by these types of people, would limit itself to the UK. If this were just happening here, the place would already be swarming with Navy Seals. The United Nations would be here offering us blankets. I was given no indication that would happen.
“And I don’t see any Navy Seals around here.”
“Will Smith isn’t coming to save us,” Michael said softly.
John snorted a laugh despite himself. “What? Will Smith the movie star?”
“Just something Victor said when he had me tied to a tree with a shotgun pointed at my face.”
“Hmph.”
“And what about Victor?” Rachel said suddenly. “For some lunatic rapist living in a hole in the middle of nowhere his name seems to crop up a lot.”
John nodded.
“And not just here,” he agreed. “Victor was a part of what they called Project Wildfire, but he got out years back. Ran, I think, and they just let him go. They knew where he was, roughly, thought he wasn’t worth bothering with I think, like he was a nobody, you know?”
John shrugged.
“And then, when all the backslapping was going on, all the bastards that did this sucking each other’s cocks, all of a sudden getting hold of Victor becomes the most important thing in the world.”
He raised his hands in a defensive gesture to ward off the questions scrambling to spill from Rachel’s mouth.
“I don’t know why. I wasn’t told. But I gathered enough to understand that Victor did something, messed with their little project somehow. He was a computer guy I think. Whatever he did, whatever he changed, they weren’t aware of it and they have no idea how to fix it. The people who did this aren’t in control anymore.”
“They opened Pandora’s Box,” Michael said quietly.
“Right. So the backslapping stops and they send out a team to retrieve Victor, I suppose they thought they could get him to reverse whatever he did, I don’t know. When we got there, Victor was already dead – I’m guessing that’s thanks to the big guy - and any useful intel in his bunker now belongs to the Infected.”
“So where’s the rest of your team?”
John fixed Michael with a stare, and Michael felt his cheeks redden.
“So in summary,” Rachel said bitterly, “some rich bastards decided they needed to get richer, so they fucked the world up, and hid out somewhere, waiting for it all to blow over…but they lost their grip, and now they’re as far up shit creek as the rest of us?”
“Pretty much.”
Rachel barked a laugh, harsh and bitter.
“Men,” she said despondently, with a shake of her tousled brown hair.
John thought for a moment about arguing the point, and letting her know that there seemed to be an equal number of women involved in the catastrophe, but he didn’t get the chance.
Outside the farmhouse, the rumbling of the thunder had faded away, only to
be replaced with another sound, something that made the skin on John’s arms crawl: hundreds of voices, humming as one. Getting closer.
Michael hefted the rifle again, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.
It was Rachel who approached the narrow window, curiosity overwhelming the fear she felt tightening every muscle in her body.
Peeking out, the blood drained from her face.
Outside, she saw a solitary figure, a member of the Infected, striding past the farmhouse. And then another. Another. And then there were hundreds of them, a river of sightless horrors washing past their door, marching in one direction like an army, heading north. A low, rumbling hum emitted from the group; a deep frequency that she could only just hear, and which made her teeth hurt.
The fragments of their conversation began to make some sense in her mind then, coming together slowly, all accelerated by a new piece of information that drenched her thoughts in cold terror:
They’re communicating.
They communicate.
Whatever the idiots in charge of the mess had intended no longer mattered. The result was stark, staring her in the face, hundreds of empty, seeping eye sockets gazing straight through her as they passed.
Maybe Project Wildfire was meant to reduce humanity to its knees so that a select few could profit. Maybe these things were meant to kill indiscriminately and turn on themselves, like a cleansing fire that would burn out when there was no fuel left.
That hadn’t happened.
What was marching past the window was a new species. Someone had got the math wrong, some bit of bad code on some obsolete screen somewhere. The creatures were evolving. Whatever their minds had become, they were now racing to catch the maturity of their cells. Outraged toddlers dropped into adult bodies.
All Project Wildfire had accomplished was to move humanity one step down the food chain. To provide an apex predator that existed solely to wipe humans from the face of the earth.
Maybe, she thought as she watched the creatures moving past, this is exactly what we deserve.
Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) Page 9