Neil hadn’t spoken in hours before he delivered the half-hearted quip on autopilot. And Gill had not minded that silence at all. Being alone with her fearful thoughts was bad; constantly turning over doomsday scenarios with other terrified soldiers was far worse, and all anyone had talked about since they fought off the infection was death.
They had been building the wall non-stop for a week, ever since the spread of the virus had finally been stopped, piling the structure higher and reinforcing it with everything they could find that hadn’t been nailed down. Three roads led into the centre of the garrison, and they barricaded each with vehicles and furniture and even bodies, walling themselves in. The centre of the tiny town had suddenly become their world.
Only snipers went beyond the wall, sneaking through the parked truck that served as the only gateway into the hastily-remodelled Catterick, and heading out to establish an outer perimeter. They only went because they had to. Someone had to. The thought of the Infected appearing without warning on their doorstep again was too terrible for anyone to contemplate.
The snipers had been given orders to engage at will. If they saw movement, they were to stop it forcibly. If they saw a lot of movement, they were to get the hell out and warn the remainder of the troops at the garrison.
The remnants of the army were clustered now around two main buildings: Harden Barracks and the medical centre. Thanks to its shape, they all called the ramshackle fortress they had built The Heart. Gill wondered if the name had stuck because the place offered them life, or because they all knew that a strike on The Heart would be a killing blow.
“I think we’re done here,” Gill said, hammering a final nail into a thick piece of wood and testing the result with a shove.
The makeshift wall didn’t move. If it came to it, it could be defended. But if the things attacked in large numbers, the wall simply would not matter. It was far from impregnable, and their numbers were not sufficient to cope with a large-scale attack. Either the wall would fall or the bullets would run out. Most likely the former. Much of the protection the wall offered, she suspected, was symbolic. There was precious little hope left in Catterick, so they had been forced to build some.
Gill jumped off the wall and landed heavily on the ground, and when she thought about returning to the others, her spirits continued to fall.
With the exception of the snipers, all of the survivors of the massacre at Catterick were crammed into The Heart; into one sweat drenched, claustrophobic space. The tension in the air was palpable. Gill felt like she was choking on it every time she took a breath. Maybe when it came down to it, The Heart was most aptly named because one day it would stop beating. The place would not need to suffer an attack; it was collapsing from within, weakening as confusion and indecision raged among people that had relied for so long on a defined command structure.
It had not taken long after the guns stopped chattering for the paltry amount of people that were left to divide neatly into two opposing factions; somehow humans found a route to conflict no matter what.
As far as Gill was concerned the factions could be summarised as those who still thought they were an army, and that they should somehow mobilise and get out there to defend the civilian public, and those, like Gill, who weren’t completely bat-shit crazy.
The army was gone. The public was gone. There was nothing left to protect, no one left to save. Gill knew it. Anyone who had not leapt feet-first into denial knew it. Any chance of continuing to function as they had before the apocalypse walked in had evaporated when the ranking system had collapsed, leaving one man with outdated symbols on his uniform with the chance to fill the resulting power vacuum. One man. The wrong man.
If history had proven anything, it was that when people were terrified and disorganised, they would happily let a monster rule them just to have someone prepared to call the shots.
The Heart was proving no different. Being away from the rotting centre and working on the wall was a blessing, no matter how concerned she might have been about what horror might approach from the other side.
Gill was just thinking that it would be nice if she could crawl back to one of the overcrowded dormitories they had set up in the two main buildings and fall into bed without being dragged into some heated debate when the object sailed through the air and landed at her feet with a wet crunch.
For a moment she stared at it, stupefied.
A human head. Tossed over the wall.
Like a medieval siege, she thought, and the notion seemed to form slowly in her mind, like all of a sudden she was having trouble thinking. She tried to turn her head, tried to search for some reassurance in Neil’s eyes, but for some reason she found that she could not move. And then she felt it: a crawling sensation, like insects had just hatched in her head and were scurrying about. She couldn’t recall ever having felt anything like it. Couldn’t, in fact, recall that part of her body ever feeling anything. Like straining a muscle you weren’t aware could be strained.
She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out.
Just liquid.
Warm and thick; clogging the back of her throat uncomfortably.
Her vision flicked off, like the plug that powered it had been pulled out abruptly.
Her last thought was not a thought at all. It was a smell, a fragrance that made no sense amidst the stink of blood and death that hung over Catterick. Fresh lavender, just like her mother always used to put all over the house. She was trying to understand that smell, trying to comprehend why she felt like a little girl again, when the muscles in her face began to spasm wildly and death took her.
*
With a shudder of pleasure, Jake pulled his hand out of the woman’s head and licked his fingers clean, shivering as the blood set his nerves alight. Her brain had felt wonderful. Moist, and firm. Fresh. He had enjoyed the tender caress before the squeeze.
Almost as much as he enjoyed the look on the man’s face as he watched Jake killing her, the sheer unadulterated awe of it; the distilled terror.
He enjoyed it so much that he didn’t kill the man.
At least, not right away. There was no one there to see Jake and alert the other creatures hiding away in their pathetic compound. He needed to taste the man's fear-soaked blood; needed it like his deformed lungs needed oxygen.
But there was always time for fun, so he ripped out the man’s tongue to silence his whimpering and then tried his hand at skinning. He had never skinned anything before, and he did a far from perfect job, but it was definitely fun. All the better for the fact that the man lived through it, gurgling like a baby.
When Jake finally tore off the man's head, he drank deeply, until his mind span, making him feel giddy.
When he was done, the urge to press on, to simply charge into the mass of creatures he felt milling around in the near distance, was almost impossible to resist. Jake had always had severe problems with delaying gratification. It was, he would freely admit, the only flaw in his character. Yet for the first time in as long as he could remember, he managed to suppress his desire to rush forward and begin killing.
This was clearly a military installation of some kind. They would be armed, and already he felt a slight twinge of fatigue as the unnatural movement of his muscles took their toll. It was taking him a long time to adjust to the rhythms of his new body: the extraordinary, explosive bursts of energy he was capable of came at a price. Like a cheetah, his fuel tank emptied quickly and left him vulnerable.
There was no point in rushing things. Better to pick them off slowly, better to enjoy the hunt as he always had even before the scientists in the underground base had turned his body into a glorious weapon.
There was much more fun to be had in terrorising the army garrison. Now that he was closer to them, he could taste the bitterness of their terror on every breath. They were scared of the Infected, even though Jake could tell there were none for miles around. The humans' fear was outdated. When Jake revealed himself their terror wou
ld multiply exponentially. An intoxicating shudder of anticipation rippled through him, right down there in the twisted DNA, and it felt almost as good as ingesting their blood.
He took the bodies of the two soldiers he had killed and arranged them precisely, and wondered how the terror among the soldiers might taste when they stumbled across his work and realised that the Infected - shambling, mindless critters that they were - were now the least of their problems.
When he was done, Jake strolled away from the place, congratulating himself on his admirable restraint. As he headed out into the dark, empty fields he tried to affect a cheerful whistle, but the noise that his deformed lips allowed out was more like a distant tuneless shriek.
He kind of liked it.
4
Welcome to my castle.
The words echoed and reverberated in John's head as he left the market and the Infected girl. Darren had offered assistance, smiling warmly as he said he could spare a couple of his men to help John and his friends carry their supplies up from the harbour. John had politely declined, even as the alarm bells rang in his mind.
My castle. My men.
John knew a threat when he heard one. He had heard plenty, and the worst ones were always delivered with a smile. The bizarre meeting with Darren had merely amplified the disquiet he had felt on approaching the castle. Something in Darren's eyes reminded John of the man that had led him into St. Davids. Jeff had been obsessed with structure and leadership. He had also worn a look of unhinged insanity in his eyes the minute the shit began to hit the fan.
Some men, John knew, were not born to lead others though of course that did not stop them. The military had been rife with men promoted solely because of their experience, with little consideration given to whether they might, in fact, be raving lunatics.
If finding an Infected girl tied up in the market like some grisly totem to ward off passersby had not quite been enough to persuade John that Caernarfon was bad news, Darren's smile and cold gaze had finished the job. The castle was trouble. Every fibre of John's being knew it instinctively.
As he wound his way back through the narrow streets, he wondered how he was going to break the news to the others that he thought they should turn the boat around and get as far away from Caernarfon as possible. His heart sank as he thought about Michael. Convincing him was not going to be easy.
As he thought about the crippled man, John noticed a small care home for the elderly nestled alongside a small square park, and he headed for it, hoping he might find a wheelchair for Michael, and trying to persuade himself that he was not going to use it to try to bribe the man into agreeing that they should move on. Either way, John would be damned if he was going to carry Michael around on his back as Jason had.
When he reached the building, he tried the door and found it swung open easily. He slipped inside, nerves racing, and pulled the small flashlight from a pocket, piercing the darkness with the narrow beam.
He saw the blood immediately, a vast pool of it that had leaked from the sad body of an old woman who had probably been waiting to die peacefully before someone came along and ruined that by ripping her throat out. John played the flashlight over her corpse for a moment. She still had her eyes. She had died human.
He crept forward and found two more bodies in a large communal room to the right. One of them appeared entirely unmarked, and it took John a moment to realise that the old guy had probably died of a heart attack when he saw the world descend into madness.
You got lucky, old feller, John thought. The woman who had died in the same room had not been so fortunate. Her guts had been ripped open, and a long slippery string of intestine sat across her lap. He wondered if the old guy had sat and watched his friend being shredded as his heart began to explode in his chest, and John knew the truth when he saw what the old man was sitting on. A wheelchair. He must have been powerless to move, doomed to sit and watch the horror up close. Wondering whether the explosive pain in his chest or the virus would kill him first.
"Sorry about this," John muttered, and he grabbed the lapels of the old man's jacket and shoved the corpse to the floor with a dull thud.
For a moment John paused to listen intently as the noise of the body hitting the floor reverberated through the silence. He expected to hear snarling and the thunderous approach of feet, but there was only deathly quiet.
It was somehow almost more disconcerting. How could Caernarfon be free of the Infected? Clearly they had been there. Where had they gone?
The question weighed heavily on John's mind as he pushed the wheelchair out onto the cobbled streets and made his way toward the dock. When he reached the rope tied to the harbour wall, he set the wheelchair aside and put all his strength into pulling the boat towards him.
Michael looked at him quizzically, as though he had expected to see John return with a horde of Infected at his back.
"We can't stay here," John said.
Michael's brow furrowed.
"Why?"
"Look, Michael, I want you to trust me on this. There are people in that castle. They don't need our help. I spoke to the guy running the show. He's a bad guy, Michael. I know it. They've got an Infected girl tied up in the town centre like a warning sign. We need to turn the boat around and get out of here. We need to find somewhere else."
"What about the Infected?" Michael said. "They've got one tied up outside the castle? Where are all the others?"
John shrugged.
"I didn't see a single one, other than her."
"That makes no sense," Michael said. "The virus didn't make it here?"
"Oh, it made it here alright," John muttered. "There's blood and bodies everywhere. It's just like Aberystwyth. Crashed cars, smashed windows. Plenty of places look like they've been burned."
Michael frowned.
"But there are none here now?"
John knew exactly where the conversation was going from Michael's tone, and he felt his spirits drop.
"No," John said. "But-"
"But you want us to leave so we can find somewhere that there are Infected?"
John sighed.
"John," Michael said. "I get it. You think this place is weird. You don't trust the people inside. Believe me, I don't either. Hell, I don't even trust you."
John looked up sharply, and Michael held his hands up in apology.
"I'm sorry, but I don't. I don't trust anyone. How could I? How could any of us - you included? But we have children here. We're exhausted. Injured. We have almost nothing in the way of supplies. Where else are we going to run to? Wherever we go, they will find us, and they will kill us. For whatever reason, all we have to deal with here is these people, who may or may not do us harm. I think at this point, I'd like to take the element of doubt over certain death."
John rubbed his forehead, his expression pained.
"We have a gun, John," Michael said in a low whisper. "We can hide it from them, make ourselves look helpless. That should be pretty easy, really. Just look at us. But if it comes to it, we can defend ourselves against people. I don't think our luck is going to hold up out there much longer."
He waved a hand at the dark countryside beyond the town.
"Do you?"
John stared at Michael for several long seconds.
Just go, John, he thought. If they want to stay, let them. Take the boat, and get the fuck away. You don't need to deal with this.
Torn by indecision, John stared at their expectant faces. A helpless cripple, an old woman, two kids.
Can you really leave them to fend for themselves?
John knew the answer immediately, knew it just as he had known that when it came down to a choice between himself and the other men that had landed with him in St. Davids, there had been no decision to make. Jeff had died so that John could live. Michael and his ragtag group were no different.
But then John's gaze fell on Rachel, sitting quietly at the back of the boat, her furious eyes burning a hole in the deck.
Fuck.
*
They slipped the rifle into one of the rucksacks they had managed to cling onto during their panicked flight from Aberystwyth. The weapon was too large, and the barrel protruded from the bag, but when John placed it on Michael's lap as he sat in the wheelchair, Michael contorted to hide it from sight. It would do.
"Don't worry," Michael said with a smile. "No one is going to feel threatened by the guy in the wheelchair."
John nodded, and his eyes narrowed a little. Michael had already caught John flat-footed once by portraying himself as a harmless victim. He suspected the trick would work again on the people in the castle, but he could not help wondering if it might work again on himself. Was Michael manipulating him, even now?
"Okay," John said, raising his voice a little for them all to hear. "This place doesn't feel right. Everyone stick together. Stay close. We go in, we thank them for taking us in, and we tell them we need to rest somewhere on our own, right? Don't let them separate us, no matter what. Agreed?"
For once, Michael simply nodded.
When they reached the huge door that barred the castle's main entrance, the heavy wood swung open to meet them, and John could not help but feel like he was stepping into the jaws of some monstrous, malevolent beast.
Darren was waiting for them with wide arms and a wider smile.
"Welcome," he said warmly. "I'm glad you decided to join us."
John stared around the castle with interest. He saw a couple of large fires, and small groups of people sitting in the glow of the flames to keep warm. Only a couple of them bothered to look up to study the new arrivals. None seemed to be speaking.
John's jaw clenched. Everything about the castle and the people inside seemed...off somehow. Under the circumstances, how could the people inside be anything but intrigued to see who was walking in the front door?
"As you can see, we have fires if you'd like to warm yourselves up, and there's food and water-"
Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) Page 4