“Barry. What are you going to do?”
“We’re leaving.” Belinda, his wife, butts in, pulling her coat around her, slipping her arm through her husband’s.
“Come with us, Tilly.”
The wife frowns. She always had been a jealous woman. If she only knew what she and Barry had got up to when they were teenagers! Has he told her about their relationship? Is that why she’s jealous? Does it matter?
“We’ll leave at two pm.” He says decisively. “That’ll give us time to pack up a few things.”
“We’re going to stop with relatives in Newcastle until this all gets sorted out.”
Barry rolls his eyes. “Let’s just get out of the village. Susan may not have room for us. We can go to a hotel.”
His wife nods. “Or even go on holiday. I’ll pack out passports.” Her worried frown has turned to a smile as she looks beyond Tilly’s shoulder to the road ahead and their house. “We could do with a holiday.”
“I’ll follow you, then.”
Allan Jenkins leans in from behind Belinda’s shoulder. “Leaving at two, did you say?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Mind if I tag along.”
“No. Please do.”
A small crowd gathers around Barry and Tilly and for the next ten minutes the villagers discuss the practicalities of leaving as a convoy. Some want to head north to the Scottish border, whilst others want to head south and onwards towards Newcastle and the midland counties. Allan Jenkins decides that an impromptu visit to his daughter in Spain is essential to relieve his wife’s stress. She clings to his arm, jittery, her eyes flitting about the treeline.
As Tilly makes her way home, twenty-five villagers have agreed to travel in convoy in seven cars to the southern border, and she has decided to ask Mavis, who doesn’t drive and whose husband died last year, if she would like to accompany her. She can’t leave the woman behind, she’s more family now than her own. Living in the isolated village, raising their daughter without her own mother around - God rest her soul - it had been a godsend to be taken under Mavis’ large and generous wing. She’d become a surrogate grandmother to her daughter – thank goodness she was away at university – and almost a mother to Tilly as well. Stuart hadn’t bonded quite so well, but he was a taciturn old goat anyway and didn’t even bother with his own mother. Not that she could blame him—Mrs Pamela Patricia Stangton was just as taciturn as he was – like mother, like son.
By two o’clock. Tilly has packed an overnight bag complete with toiletries and checked that she had her purse. She has also checked the oil and water levels in the car. There are sandwiches, biscuits, a flask of tea, and another with hot water, coffee, mugs, and all the fruit she’d bought last week. She has emptied the fridge and put all the perishables in the bin. The door is locked, the curtains drawn, and Mavis is in the front seat wrapped up warm with her favourite woolly hat. In short, the car is ready for an escape. She pulls the door open and slides in behind the wheel.
Mavis is quick to speak.
“Kane Barley said that Kathy Oldfield had told him that the wolfman that attacked Jim Kendrick had fangs and dragged him off into the woods as though he were a ragdoll.”
“Uhuh. Didn’t she say it was Max Anderson?” She turns the ignition.
“And Emily said he was hung like a donkey.”
Tilly snorts. “Emily said that?”
“Aye. She’s getting a bit crude in her old age.”
“Well, she is over eighty. I’ll forgive her.”
Mavis pulls the blanket closer over her legs. “Do we have anything to defend ourselves with, if we get cornered by this well-endowed and hairy beast?”
Tilly can’t help but burst out laughing. “Mavis!”
“Tree loppers perhaps.”
“Mavis!” Tilly creases with laughter, squeezing her legs together, glad that she’s got a fresh panty liner on. Things down there hadn’t been quite so reliable as they should be since the birth of her daughter. “You make everything better. Do you know that?”
Mavis’ turn to chuckle. “I try my best. They say it was Max Anderson; no wonder Laura always had a smile on her face.”
Spittle flicks to the steering wheel as Tilly bursts with laughter.
“But in all seriousness, if there is a maniac on the loose out there, well-endowed or not, we should have something to protect ourselves with.”
Mavis is right. What do they have? “Give me a minute.” Tilly steps back out of the car and heads for the garage. Five minutes later she returns with a selection of Stuart’s tools. He was fastidious about keeping his shed in order, and everything had a place. His obsession with its organisation had driven her nuts, but on this occasion, she was thankful; the tools were easy to find, clean, and very – where necessary – sharp.
As she slams the door shut, having selected a weapon each for them to carry, and laying the remainder in the boot, Conrad Shelby and then Amy Carmichael pass in their cars. Conrad’s backseat is piled with what looks like duvets and pillows, whilst Amy’s is filled with her children. Tilly slips into gear and pulls out of the driveway, joining the small convoy as it leaves the village. Mavis looks to the trees nervously. She grips Stuart’s chisel tight and rubs her thumb along its length.
“You alright, Mavis?”
“Yes, of course. Just hoping for a sighting.”
Tilly laughs. “You’re incorrigible, Mavis.”
“I try my best.”
The women laugh for a moment then fall silent. Tilly presses the radio to on. The crackling of untuned radio waves fills the car. She attempts to tune it whilst keeping an eye on the road. Silence is interspersed with white noise. Mavis remains patiently quiet as Tilly sighs, frustration mingling with an edge of fear; she really couldn’t bear to be blocked from the outside world like this. The severing of communications, whether it was voices from across England on the radio, or the movement of images on the television has made her feel hemmed in—as though they were all trapped in a bubble. The feeling was only compounded by having not being able to talk to her daughter; their daily chats were one of the highlights of her lonely days. The talk of the roads being blocked off had only increased that sense of isolation and she’d begun to appreciate the claustrophobic’s anxiety at being shut in, even though there were wide-open spaces all around her.
She switches the radio to off, biting back her unease. Ahead four cars lead the way, Conrad Shelby at the front. With him at the helm, she could rest a little easier; he was a true leader, a former Wing Commander in the Royal Air Force, and still carried himself with the innate confidence of a man of that position, despite having being retired for the past nineteen years. Tilly has a secret crush on him - fuelled by the man’s uncanny resemblance to an older version of Cillian Murphy - that she barely even admits to herself. That he shared a name with one of the actor’s more intensely appealing characters was a joy that she hugged to herself.
Behind, the convoy of cars has grown. “Looks like most of the village is leaving!”
Mavis twists to look back down the road. “There must be at least twenty cars behind us.”
“Good! They’ll have to let us past the roadworks.”
“They will. And if they won’t let us past on the road, then we’ll just have to go around them.”
“I certainly hope so. I wouldn’t want to have to go through them.”
“Perhaps they’ve already finished the work on the roads. Afterall, there were only a few potholes on that stretch.”
The women continue to chatter until the road seems to disappear into a bank of trees as the road winds downwards. The car in front slows, its brake lights burning red. Tilly slows with a lurch, apologises as Mavis jerks forward, then stops. The car in front has come to a standstill. Beyond, the cars have stopped at the point where the road descends once more into the forest. Across the road is a barricade of steel panels that stretches from one side of the road to the other.
“What the very hell
is that?”
“A ruddy great fence!”
The driver’s door of the car in front swings open, along with the doors of the other cars. Conrad Shelby is standing, hands on hips staring at the huge steel structure.
“Come on, Tilly. Let’s go and find out what’s happening.”
“But, shouldn’t we leave it to Conrad?” Tilly’s innards are suddenly queasy.
“Not on your Nelly!” Mavis retorts. “I want to know exactly what’s going on. You don’t find that out by cowering in the car.” Mavis was a resilient woman, becoming feistier with age. “Come on gal. Let’s go.”
Obedient, Tilly steps out of the car and quickens her pace to keep up with Mavis’ stride.
5
Conrad scans the forest and the road, checking for any sign of movement. All is quiet, seemingly normal, apart from a dirty great metal fence sitting across the road and stretching into the trees either side making an evacuation impossible. He wasn’t convinced of the wolfman hypothesis – it was too outlandish to be true – but that there was someone, or a number of people, attacking and killing the villagers he is of no doubt. PC Latimer’s report of the destruction of the police team in the woods, and the further testimonies of attacks, had convinced him that he should lead the villagers out of the area until the police had apprehended the attackers. He had even mulled over the possibility of it being a peculiar terrorist attack; serial killers, after all, weren’t known to work in groups, although it wasn’t wholly unheard of.
“What on earth is this, Conrad?”
“It’s a blockade.”
“Obviously, but didn’t Latimer say there were barriers with workmen?”
“She did.”
“This isn’t any kind of roadblock I’ve seen before and there are no workmen.”
Conrad walks up to the fence. It reaches for at least another seven feet above his six-foot three frame. He taps. Solid. Massive bolts hold down the steel panels. He fingers them. It’s not the first time he’s seen such a structure; Nogales, Arizona, in 2015. He’d visited the US in his role as security consultant. After leaving the forces, he’d earned three times the money working in the private sector.
“Whoever put this up has no intention of letting us pass.” He peers through to the road on the other side. More construction was taking place, but the workmen were temporarily absent.
“Who the hell put it here?”
Someone with government backing, enormous influence, and perhaps military collusion. “I don’t know.”
Tilly steps beside him. “There’s a sign bolted on the other side.” She points to the edges of a white metal panel.
He pulls out his phone and swipes at the screen. That communications between the outside world and the village had been cut off for the past days was deeply concerning, but at least his expensive piece of technology wasn’t completely redundant. He clicks the phone’s camera on and holds it, lens upwards, through the barrier, and clicks.
Pulling it back, his scalp creeps and his belly knots.
“What does it say?”
He clears his throat. This is serious. “It says, ‘Biological hazard. Contaminated land. Entry prohibited.’”
“What?”
Other villagers have gathered now, and a group of at least fifty people is crowding to listen.
“Biological hazard! What does that mean?”
“Contaminated land? Has there been an accident? Isn’t that what they say when they find anthrax or something, or nuclear waste? We don’t have that around here!”
“They found anthrax years ago further south. They took it out of the area at night by train so no one knew.”
“What? Here?”
“No. In the north midlands, in a town near the Humber Bridge. They didn’t put a sodding great wall up and trap people on the land though.”
“We’re trapped?”
“Looks like one of those border walls they put up to stop migrants.”
“How can we be migrants? We live here.”
“Tsk! We’re not. I just said it looks like one.”
Conrad blocks out the excited chatter, focusing on his next step. Something was dreadfully wrong. Someone was attacking and killing the villagers in a most savage manner and they had now effectively been imprisoned along with him, or her. He needs - they need - to find out who is behind it, but making sure the gathered evacuees are safe has to be his number one priority.
“Everyone back in your cars.”
“But we’re supposed to be evacuating!”
The sun is beginning to drop in the horizon, the trees casting their shadows over the clearing, turning to black behind a lowering apricot sky. He checks his watch and, as he does so, notices the marks in the road and adjacent grass. Bullet marks. He scans the grass. Blood. Latimer had been telling the truth. Someone had been shot here. Shot perhaps wasn’t the correct word. From the spray of bullets and the blood on the grass, the body must have been shredded. There is no evidence of a body though, and he’s thankful for that. The area had been cleaned up. There were the marks of bullets but no casings, or remnants of flesh. He scans the fence once more, thankful now that whoever erected it is no longer here, and moves back to his car. Among the trees, a figure moves.
His heart palpitates. “Everybody back in your cars.”
Tilly, still at his side, catches his glance towards the forest. A mewl catches in her throat, and she grabs his sleeve. “Did you see it?”
“Tilly, would you please return to your vehicle?”
“But there was something in the trees. I saw it.”
“Just a deer, I think. It’s hard to see anything in the trees now.”
“But-”
Sweat is beginning to dampen his underarms. The sun is setting, visibility reducing in the winter’s twilight. “We can’t get through this way. It’s best if we turn around.”
“Back to the village?”
“Yes, back to the village.”
As Tilly turns from him, Mavis guiding her towards the car, he scans the forest again. Another figure moves among the trees, and then another. He makes an effort to focus in the diminishing light. Multiple figures seem to flit among the dark tree trunks. He turns his attention back to the evacuees. Cars have pulled up politely, one behind another. Many are too close for an easy, unimpeded, three-point turn and rapid escape. He makes a quick calculation; getting them to turn around won’t be too difficult if the car at the end moves back first. He turns to the group, ushering them back to their cars, requesting that the cars at the back move first, as the creeping sensation of being watched crawls over his neck and across his shoulders. From the other side of the fence, a vehicle comes into view through its bars.
Amy Carmichael tugs at her son’s arm as she ushers him back to the car. Her daughter stands close to her side.
“I need a pee, Mum.”
“You’ll have to wait until we get back to the village.”
“We’re going back?” Her daughter’s voice carries the pith of anxiety. She huffs. “There’s no wifi there, Mum,” she whines.
“Not now, Jasmine,” her mother retorts and turns her attention back to her son. He tugs at her grip on his sleeve.
“Mum! I need to pee. Now!”
“There are no toilets here, Caleb.”
“I can pee in the trees. You say to do that when we’re on a walk.”
Amy glances at the crowds of people and the darkening tree-line. “That’s when we’re on our own. There are a lot of people here.”
“Do it behind the car,” Jasmine offers.
“No way!” His turn to look at the gathering of villagers. “I don’t want people seeing my tackle.”
Jasmine snorts. “There’s nothing to look at.”
Caleb huffs. “I’ll go to the trees.”
Amy checks around. The villagers are either returning to their cars or standing in groups, some obviously riled, debating about what to do next. Karen Jenkins is in tears – nothing new there – and F
light captain – or whatever – Conrad Shelby is standing with a smaller group pointing at the cars, and giving commands. A few people seem to be staring into the treeline fifty feet to the right. “OK,” she relents. “Go over to those trees.” She points to the other side of the road where the trees are about thirty feet away. “But be quick,” she shouts to his back as he runs towards the large pines. “We’ll be in the car.”
Amy takes another step closer to the car and is knocked against a front bumper as a woman runs blindly past. She grunts as dull pain moves through her thigh muscle. A hush descends. Instinctively casting a glance towards the villagers, she follows their gaze to the treeline. Among the trees, hugging the shadows, but easy to discern, are the distorted figures of numerous - what in God’s name are they? - creatures. She peers for a second, squinting for a clearer view, her head spins with confusion. She recognises one as a still curvaceous, but oddly deformed version of her beautiful friend Kelly. She swallows. Kathy had said that Kelly had been bitten, but surely to goodness there was nothing on this earth that could cause such a hideous transmogrification so quickly. She’d seen hideous diseases that destroyed bodies, deformed their victims into monsters, but nothing that could act so quickly, they took years. The thing shifts and dances among the trees and ferns, hopping from foot to foot in agitation. What is it waiting for? Caleb! She twists to see him, catching sight of his back still to her, obviously relieving himself against the ferns. She glances back to the creatures among the trees. They were waiting—anxiously, excitedly, each one stepping in and out of the shadows, among the trees, squatting, hopping, cackling. Her skin crawls at the noise of their shrieking chatter. Each of them is naked, or partially clothed with remnants of cloth, some with ripped t-shirts, or jeans that were nothing more than a waistband and a shred of denim. A thin layer of dark hair lies over their skin, very much thicker between their legs. Heart palpitating, she grabs Jasmine’s sleeve in a slow motion and urges her to step to the car.
Caged: An Apocalyptic Horror Series (The Wolfmen of Kielder Book 2) Page 3