Before he’d left the house, he’d made sure the rifle was loaded with bullets meant to obliterate vermin and small mammals. Apart from the pellets he kept for clay pigeon shooting, they were the only bullets he had that could do real damage. This thing, however, was the size of a woman, and muscular with it. The expanding tip of the bullet could do some serious damage, perhaps enough for them to escape. As he squeezes the trigger, he notices the curves of the larger female and how the dark hair that spreads across her chest thickens to a line past her belly-button and ends in a curling mass of pubes. Despite his fear, an ache passes over his groin. Why had he expected it to be shaven? Because you’re a perv, Freddie. His sights centre on the woman’s temple, the thinnest part of her skull, the best place for the bullet to gain access to her raddled brain. He pulls the trigger just as the other thing pounces, intercepting the bullet’s trajectory. The rifle kicks back against his shoulder. Damn! That would have been a perfect shot! The wounded beast flops to the ground, dark hair covering its face, blood seeping from its throat. Freddie takes aim again as it writhes. Craig stumbles down the steep bank, his feet trawling through the earth. He loses his balance and slips until his body jars against a thin sapling.
The wounded beast shuffles backwards, a hand covering its damaged throat. Blood seeps through its fingers, its lips pulled back into a snarl, bare incisors an inch long. Freddie shudders as he aligns his sights on the blonde once more. As he squeezes the trigger, she – no, don’t humanize it – it - darts to the left, and disappears behind a trunk. The bullet shoots straight, splinters bark.
Kelly snarls as rage takes her. Lois lurches to her feet, scream high-pitched as she disappears into the woods. The Uncaught is there, down the hill. The pointing stick has his attention. She leaps from behind the tree and bounds beside the other male. She can smell him, smell his fear, and the scent of his underarms, and the musky delight of the soft places, his sex, his dark hole. Her mouth waters. She licks her lips. He is strong. Bigger than The One. The Uncaught one scrabbles on the ground, the long stick at his side, as she leaps again. Close now, she can see the hairs on the back of the new one’s neck. She can feel the heat of his body escaping from the collar of his jacket. She scans the area, her senses finely tuned. Within seconds she has judged the situation. The woman stands behind the man with the shining stick. She’s passing him something from the forest floor, it catches the light as he takes it. The stick lies broken and he stuffs the silver thing inside. She fears the stick. The other woman, the one that belongs to the New One, is on her knees, her voice grates against Kelly’s ears. In the forest, Lois chunters and chafes as her flesh mends. Stupid bitch. Stay away stupid bitch. Go back to Max. They are mine.
In the second that the Uncaught takes the silver things from the woman, Kelly leaps. She pounces down the slope, clawed feet anchoring her to the forest floor, and grabs the New One from behind. She is silent across the forest floor. Swift to embrace him. Her arm slides across his chest and she hauls him to her breast, dragging him up the slope, digging her free hand into the soil, into bark, taking him with her into the dark places of the forest, the hidden places. He struggles. She likes his strength, and aches for him to be hers. As they reach the top, she throws him to the floor and lunges at him, jaws open, saliva dripping to his pale, hairless flesh. Their eyes meet as she bends to him, and he screams until her fangs sink into the warmth of his neck. The pulse beats against her tongue and she licks the blood as it seeps into her mouth. He kicks and beats against her back. Screams break through her ecstasy and she pulls back.
The Uncaught appears over the brow of the slope, his stick pointing, scanning the forest. He can’t see them; hidden behind the bowing ferns, making their forever love. She looks down at the New One, her new one. His eyes are rolled back, the red blood already seeping across the whites. His chest heaves. Her mouth waters, hunger growls, and the urge to gnash and tear at his flesh bites at her. She resists. Keeping the Uncaught one in sight, she crouches and drags the New One to the deeper wood, to wait and claim him. On the other side, Lois howls, calls the Others and He.
The rifle kicks back against Freddie’s shoulder. He curses, aware that he’s shooting blindly into the forest, shooting at something that howls, something that moves too fast among the growing dark, something that makes his scrotum shrivel and his testicles retract. Judy’s screams, muffled by his helmet, ring through the woods, then disappear beneath the howls that fill them.
“Did you get it?” Hayley’s breath comes hard as she scrambles up the slope to stand next to him. “Did you?” Her voice is edged with despair. “Jesus, Freddie. What the hell happened? Let’s go. Just go. Just go.”
“He’s gone!” It had all happened so fast. One second the creature was laid on the floor and then in a blur, Craig was gone. His scream had curdled Freddie’s blood, but worse was the abrupt silence. The thing he’d shot had crawled back into the forest before he’d had time to reload and its screaming howl had turned his bowels to water. Hayley tugs at his sleeve.
“It’s calling. The one you shot is calling.”
“Calling?”
“Howls. That’s what they are. Wolves howl to call the pack.”
Freddie’s scalp creeps and his eyes flit among the ferns and trunks. The forest light is shifting to dark grey, further inside the forest the light has become shadow. “We’ll have to get out on foot. There’s no way we can escape this way on the bikes. They’re too heavy.”
Judy crouches against his bike, hugging her knees. If they were to survive, they had to gather their senses. He leans down to her, his face stern—now is not the time for kindness. “Judy. We have to get out of here.” She pulls her arms tighter around her knees. “Judy!” Sterner now. “Get up. There could be more of them coming for us. We have to-”
“I can’t ride that bike down there.” She gestures to the steep slope.
“Neither can I. We’re going on foot.” She remains curled against the bike. He tugs at her sleeve. “Move it, Judy! We can’t wait any longer.”
“Judy.” Hayley’s voice is gentler. “Please. Get up.”
Heart pounding and unwilling to wait, Freddie steps away. “I’m going. If you stay here, you’ll die. If you come with us then you could survive.”
She doesn’t move. Wind pushes through the trees, sending large drops of water pattering to the floor. Rain splashes against her cheek. She wipes at it then stands. With relief, Freddie moves away.
“What about our stuff?”
“Leave it. It’s just stuff. We can always get more.”
“He’s right. It’ll just weigh us down anyhow.”
He takes another step down the bank, gripping saplings then branches for support. Sure that Judy and Hayley are keeping up, he increases his pace and all three sidestep at a run down the slope. In the distance, the too near distance, a howl carries through the woods. Another voice responds, one that can only be a call from the thing he had shot. A wave of cold washes over him along with the urge to open his bowels. He takes a massive breath to release the tightness across his chest. Don’t shit your pants, Freddie-boy. Get a grip, and run!
15
As Freddie, Judy and Hayley run through the forest, Javeen steers the car up the road to the Institute. She’s anxious to reach the building before the afternoon sun has the chance to begin its descent. The attacks seemed to have settled into a pattern, she isn’t superstitious, doesn’t believe that the wolfmen’s appearance is linked to the moon’s cycle, but the creatures seem to have become nocturnal. No attacks have been reported as having taken place during the day; only in the haze-filled hours of twilight, during the night, or the earliest, still grey, morning. The howling fades to silence in the early hours. As she manoeuvres the car around yet another bend, and moves into a lower gear to manage the incline, she doesn’t feel safe—not at all, but neither does she have the creeping sensation of being watched.
A chop, chop, chop nags at the edge of her awareness as another bend loo
ms and she instinctively leans to the window and peers up to the sky. Andy leans forward too, and grunts his surprise. In the near distance, hovering above the Gothic turrets of the Institute, is a helicopter. It sways, turns ninety degrees, then lowers out of sight. Javeen pushes down on the accelerator.
“Slow down, Jav.”
“But that’s how we can get out of here.” She takes another bend, leaning into the door as stones scuttle beneath tyres.
“Pull over.”
She ignores him and shifts up a gear.
“Jav. Think for a minute. Whoever is in that helicopter, isn’t our friend.”
She slows.
“They could be.”
“You’re right,” he replies as she pulls the car to a stop. “But what if they’re not. What if they’re the ones who have fenced off the village. Whoever did that, knew what they were doing. Knew just how dangerous those things were.”
Javeen pulls the handbrake and slips the car out of gear then slumps back in her seat. Andy is right.
“We came up here to find out what was going on.”
“Did you just expect to walk in and talk to the Director?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think it through. I just knew I had to come up here and see if I could find out. Plus, I wanted as many of the vials of that drug they have for putting dogs down.”
“What use is that?”
“Well, apart from maybe using it on them, if one of us got bitten, we could … we could use it on ourselves.”
Andy is silent as he searches her eyes then shakes his head. “It won’t come to that Jav. We’re going to survive this. We’ll find a way out.”
“But what if we don’t?” The unrelenting horror of this morning’s discoveries, and realising that the villagers were being hunted even in their own homes, had chipped away at her reserves of fearlessness. She was strung out and tired, putting on a brave front, but being the stalwart local bobby for the villagers was wearing her down. “What if they,” she jabs a hand at the Institute, “won’t let us out? And what if we can’t escape from them?” She jabs her finger at the forest. Andy is silent again. Javeen runs fingers through her hair. “I think we still need to go up there … There’s plenty of light left in the day. We’ll go in on foot.” Andy shakes his head and glances at the trees with a flicker of apprehension. “Maybe there’s a phone in there that works. We could call out for help.”
Andy blows out a massive breath. “Alright PC Latimer. Get as close as you can.”
Javeen smiles, slips the car into gear, takes the rest of the hill at under ten miles per hour then pulls into a passing place just before the final bend and the Institute’s gates. She checks her watch. They had at least three hours left before the afternoon drew to a close.
As they approach the gates, keeping out of sight of the main entrance, a figure is standing beneath the stone arch of the main door. “That’s not Sam Fletcher,” Javeen quips comparing the gangly youth in his ill-fitting uniform who’d been at the gate when she’d visited the Institute to deal with the vegan extremists and the thick-set man dressed in khaki combats with a matching shirt, and complimentary black bullet-proof vest. In his arms he’s holding a rifle, a pair of binoculars hang around his neck. He is alert and, by the look of the way he’s holding the rifle, ready for action. As Javeen looks on, three figures walk around the corner, followed by another two soldiers, and disappear into the Institute.
“Did you see them? That was Marta Steward and Blake Duncan.”
“What about the other one?”
“No idea. I’ve never seen him before.”
“Something stinks, Javeen.”
For one moment she thinks Andy is referring to the waft of body odour coming from her armpits. “Sorry, deodorant has failed. It’s been a tough day.”
He manages a short laugh. “No! I meant them, although come to think about it, you do whiff a bit.”
The prickle of embarrassment stings at Javeen’s cheeks. “You’re a bit ripe yourself, mate.”
“Shh!” He pulls her back as one of the guards raises his rifle and steps out towards them. They wait, listening to the crunch of gravel underfoot until the footsteps move away and then the front door opens and clacks shut.
Andy peers around the stone pillar that secures the spiked iron gates. “We’re not going to get in this way. The gates are padlocked and there’s a guard at the door.”
“We can go along the fence until it opens out into the forest. The gate is only for show, it’s not fenced off all the way around the property.”
“Go into the forest, you mean.”
Javeen swallows. Yes! “We just have to follow the fence until we find a gap. There are other doors at the back and sides of the Institute.”
“Right.” Andy doesn’t move.
Javeen’s legs seem to be trapped to the ground. “Right.”
“You first then.”
Come on, Jav. Get a grip. “OK.” She glances over the gravel track through to the forest that covers the hillside. Inside, despite the day’s bright sunshine, the forms of rotted and moss-covered stumps sit in shade. All it needed was a bat to come flying down from one of the Gothic turrets and it would be the perfect setting for a classic horror; they already have the werewolves. Javeen pulls at her jacket, and stiffens her arms about her torso, instinctively making herself smaller. The entire forest floor is a sea of green mounds and hillocks.
The Institute’s stone wall runs from the tall pillar that supports its gate, and disappears into the forest. She can barely move forward, her feet want to turn, to run to the car.
“Come on, Jav.” Andy beckons, already several feet ahead.
Wait! Don’t leave me. A wave of panic. She shuffles forward, then strides to join him, aware that the sweat under her armpits is flowing again. Calm it, Jav. They’ll smell you a mile off! She shudders. Glances quickly at the forest, and a shiver runs down her spine. Perhaps they will smell her! Oh, God. Our Father …
She catches up with Andy, and stays close, as the wall ends and a fence of horizontal wires takes over.
“Here.” Andy stops beside the fence. Their position is adjacent to a wall of large bay windows on the ground floor, smaller rectangular windows line the upper floors.
“That’s Marta Steward’s office.” Javeen points to a window on the second floor, the only one with a light on. A man walks past the window then disappears from view.
“I thought you said there were doors here.”
“At the back. There’s one that leads into the café on the ground floor and another for the security and janitorial staff.”
“They won’t be open.”
“We have to try.” The security guard from the front door appears on the gravel, speaks into his radio, then walks back across the drive until he disappears. “Let’s go.” Andy slips a leg between two wires and begins to manoeuvre himself through the fence. Two more guards appear from the back of the building. He freezes as they walk along the side of the building, guns clasped. Although alert, the men don’t notice Andy, or Javeen at his side, and disappear around the corner to the front of the building.
“Fat lot of good those blokes are!”
At the rear of the Institute, the gardens open out to a wide expanse of expertly manicured terraces and then a lawn that ends where the forest claims the land. On the lawn the helicopter sits empty. Attached to the building’s imposing stone wall is a large, and ornate, orangery arranged with huge potted plants, round tables, and expertly mismatched chairs. At one table, a prettily flowered and fluted teapot sits at its middle, two cups with saucers sit by its side. Marta Steward leans to reach for the cup and lifts it with a slim wrist to her lips.
“Steward. I thought I saw her upstairs.”
“You did.”
Marta jerks, tea spills, and another figure walks into view.
“She’s jumpy.”
“So am I.”
The man sits down with a thud next to her and run
s his hands through his hair.
“Looks like he’s on edge too.”
“That’s Duncan Blake.”
“I recognise him. He was in the pub that night.”
“Yeah, when Billy put a bet on me.”
Andy nudges her with his elbow. “Not complaining, are you?”
“No. He’s a cheeky bugger though.”
As Marta lifts her hand, the cup visibly shakes. She leans forward, takes a sip, then rummages in her bag before lighting a cigarette. The man talks at her, she throws her hands in the air and strides to the door, swinging it open, the smoke from her lit cigarette winds into the air as she stands, one arm clamped to her belly, the other rigid at her mouth.
“She’s scared shitless.”
“Yeah, bet she doesn’t finish the fag.” Javeen whispers. Too many minutes are passing with them standing out in the open and her stomach rolls with a queasy and watery pain.
As predicted, Marta takes a couple of drags, blows the smoke out from her lungs in a rapid and billowing puff then pulls the door shut. Within a minute both Marta and Blake have disappeared from the orangery.
Bile swirls in Javeen’s stomach and her back burns. Why the hell had she suggested coming up here? They should be back in the village making preparations for the next assault. She checks the sky; still bright enough to make her wince. She tugs at Andy’s sleeve. “We go in or we get back to the car.”
He nods and without warning sprints to the glass door of the orangery, opens it, and slips inside. Javeen follows, breath caught in her throat, scanning the surrounding woods. Her heart thuds against her ribs as she runs with light steps across the tiled floor to the doorway where Andy beckons her. In the next second the door closes and she breathes a sigh of relief as the space darkens to grey, the only light in the cupboard coming from a small window at head height. The cupboard smells of orange zest and cinnamon and is stacked with packets of tea, cannisters of coffee, mugs, cups, and plates.
Caged: An Apocalyptic Horror Series (The Wolfmen of Kielder Book 2) Page 8