"Do you think this place has a dungeon?" Pete said in breathless excitement.
"Of course it does," Claire said. "It's a castle isn't it? It even has a moat. There's bound to be a dungeon."
Claire looked at Gwyneth for affirmation.
"I've no idea," Gwyneth said with a smile. "But it could have. It's certainly old enough. But that's just the river, not a moat. A moat would surround the whole castle. Moats are man-made."
Pete's face lit up, and for a moment he looked ready to burst with excitement.
"Can we go see it? The dungeon? And the battlements?"
Gwyneth frowned.
Michael had asked her to watch the children, but he hadn't said anything about keeping them locked up in the tower until he returned.
She glanced around the room. It was barren and featureless, just a circle of cold stone and steps leading upward. It was no wonder the children were getting restless.
"I don't know if that's a good idea, sweetheart," she said. "We should probably wait until the others return before we start exploring the place. It might not be safe for us out there. If Claire's dad comes back and finds her gone, he'll worry himself to death, won't he?"
Pete looked devastated.
Gwyneth smiled sadly.
She had a child once. A little boy. She hadn't seen him reach the age Pete was now. Thinking about him still made a part of her heart ache, a part that felt like the wound there had only happened yesterday, and it might never heal.
"Tell you what," she said. "I think we can at least climb this tower and see what the battlements look like, how about that? And later on, once the others are back, we'll go find the dungeons okay? Promise."
She smiled broadly as Pete brightened and leapt to his feet.
Gwyneth took a moment to haul her old limbs upright.
"I want you both to stay close to me, though. Deal?"
Pete nodded furiously, and Claire rolled her eyes a little at the boy's eagerness.
"It is safe though isn't it Mrs Blake?" Claire said. "I mean, you can't feel any of the crazy people out there, can you?"
"No dear, I can't. Can't feel anything at all as a matter of fact. And I thought I told you to call me Gwyneth? Now come on."
She ushered the children to the foot of the winding stair, and kept her face low as they rushed past her, so they wouldn't notice her troubled expression.
The truth of it was that Gwyneth could not feel that familiar itch that indicated the presence of the infection nearby. But she could feel something. Something that troubled her deeply. Something far away, yet faintly connected to her somehow, in some way she did not understand.
She told the others that what she could feel when the Infected were near was their rage, and it was true. Whatever was out there though, it did not feel like the Infected.
But she felt its rage, and the enormity of it terrified her.
*
"What do you mean it's her?" John said. "How is that possible?"
"How is any of this possible?" Darren snapped. "I said I would give you all the answers I could. That one, I can't. We found her in the middle of the road. Thought she was just sitting there, crying. Only she wasn't crying, she was ripping her eyes out, just like they do. She was bitten. Infected. We were about to kill her when she started talking. Whatever she is, she hasn't turned into one of them."
John exchanged a troubled glance with Michael and Rachel, and hoped they understood the meaning in his gaze.
Don't mention Gwyneth.
"She is something else," Darren continued. "And whatever it is, they don't like it. She acts like...repellent. As soon as we got her on the bus they dropped back, and they've stayed back ever since. But more of them seem to come every day."
"So she's human. She is...immune somehow," Michael said flatly. "Why do you have her tied up out there like an animal? Why not bring her in here?"
Darren shook his head.
"Two reasons," he said. "One: whatever this effect she has on them is, it doesn't extend very far. A few hundred yards. If she were in here, they'd be in the town, and for the moment the town is our only source of food and supplies, and even that won't last long. And two: whatever she is, she certainly is not human. Not anymore. She's not worth the risk."
Michael could feel anger begin to radiate from Rachel, like her rage was beginning to increase the temperature of the air around her.
"How long can this place hold out?" He asked hurriedly, anxious to move the conversation on before Rachel got involved.
Darren shrugged.
"As long as that girl is alive, I suppose," he said. "We are planting vegetables, as you saw. Building shelters. We have stockpiled some weapons. Nothing too lethal unfortunately, but we can fashion petrol bombs using the fuel from the generator if we need to, and there are plenty of blades here if we do need to defend ourselves against attack. Hopefully more people will join us, just as you did. We can go on looting the town for supplies until they run out. After that, your guess is as good as mine."
"It's not sustainable," Michael said. "You must see that. Everything hinges on a sick girl that you've got chained up in freezing weather, and you don't even understand what this effect she has on them is. You have to fight them. Clear them away before they find a way to get to the walls of this place. Once that happens, once this place is under siege, it's just a matter of time."
Darren nodded.
"Of course," he said. "But our numbers are small, and not many people are willing to go out there and start executing the Infected. No one wants to get close. We're not certain that they won't decide that they can tolerate the girl's presence after all if we get too close and provoke them, or if we'll expose ourselves to infection just by being there. If you have any suggestions as to how we go about killing thousands of them, please, be my guest."
Michael sighed.
"It's the same thing we have experienced everywhere," he said. "No clue what we're dealing with. Maybe you're right, and the best thing we can do is wait it out in here. Eventually the Infected have to starve, right? They don't eat, that we've seen. At least, not beyond whatever they bite off us."
"Exactly," Darren said. "For now the castle is our only card and we have to play it. Wait until the situation changes. Hope the thing in the market doesn't fall down before the Infected do."
He shrugged.
"I'm glad you agree."
Michael shot a glance at Rachel, whose face was slowly turning bright red. He saw her jaw clench and unclench, and hoped she understood the look he sent her way.
"Right," Michael said. "I guess we could use a little time to process this, and besides I have an even more pressing need. Do you, by any chance, have a doctor here?"
Darren smirked.
"Afraid not," he said. "Why? Are you sick?"
His eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Not sick," Michael said. "Just...I need some help with these."
He gestured at his useless legs.
"Oh," Darren said in a faltering voice.
Bingo, Michael thought. The world hasn't changed so much that disability has lost its power to make some people squirm.
"We have a science teacher from the local high school," Darren said. "I'm afraid she is the nearest thing we have to medical knowledge now. She has done a decent job patching some of us up, though to say she's not fond of needles is an understatement."
"That will be fine, she might be able to help," Michael said. "Can I talk to her?"
"Of course," Darren said, and led the way to the tower entrance. "And maybe John and Rachel, you two could help with a supply run into town? Should be no danger of course, but a few of the guys will be heading out soon, and I'm sure they could use your help. The more food we can get back here to the castle, the better we'll eat, after all."
He smiled warmly.
John glanced at Michael and Rachel, and gave a curt nod.
"No problem," he said flatly.
Michael stared at Darren as he exited t
he tower. The old guy was doing an excellent job of separating them from each other. For a moment he wondered if John and Rachel would be okay, and almost laughed. If anyone was vulnerable, it was likely to be the helpless cripple left alone in the castle full of strangers. John and Rachel could take care of themselves just fine.
Rachel dropped back and made a show of pushing Michael's wheelchair. When Darren was far enough ahead, she leaned in close.
"What are you doing?" She hissed. "You're not actually trusting this lunatic?"
"I don't think he's a lunatic at all," Michael whispered, and winced at Rachel's sharp intake of breath. "I think he's something far more dangerous. I think he's a pragmatist, and he's had a taste of power and wants more. He'll cut any of us down to keep his hold on this place. As for what I'm doing, I'm not entirely sure yet, but I'll tell you one thing."
He lifted his chin and stared into Rachel's troubled eyes.
"If we're staying in this castle, it won't be under Darren's command."
Rachel's eyes glittered.
*
The tower looked to have five levels. The first couple had clearly been used as part of the tourist attraction: the rooms were presented as state bedrooms, preserved to look exactly as they must have, back when the castle had been in use in its previous life. Gwyneth saw ornamental mirrors and heavy wooden furniture that reeked of age and opulence, all cordoned off behind a polite rope that encouraged tourists not to get too close, or to touch the precious antiques.
Small plaques were dotted around the rooms, giving potted histories of the objects and the historical names that had once occupied the rooms. On one, she saw a description of a fabulous four poster bed that lay beyond the cordon, which claimed that the lumpy mattress was a far cry from the modern versions that offered cushions of springs or foam. The mattress, the plaque stated, might have looked plush, but would have been highly uncomfortable to sleep on.
Hmph, Gwyneth thought, remembering the night she had just spent on a cold stone floor and the paralysing ache in her old joints when she awoke. Of course the tower had been pitch black then, without the light streaming through the narrow slits that served as windows, and Michael's wheelchair made it impossible for him to ascend the stairs, but still she couldn't quite stifle a mirthless chuckle at their failure to investigate whether the upper floors might have offered more comfortable living accommodation.
She stared at the bed, draped in expensive-looking fabrics.
Dibs.
Both Pete and Claire seemed fascinated by the old rooms, and Pete especially seemed overjoyed that the barriers that had prevented tourists from touching the historical treasures beyond were now effectively meaningless. He cooed and grinned as he ran his hands over the ancient surfaces and ornate decorations.
Above the two floors that held the immaculate bedrooms, Gwyneth opened a door to find an old armoury, filled with wicked-looking weapons from a bygone era. Maces and pikes and broadswords, some encased in glass display cabinets. She let the children look, but told Pete not to touch anything there in case it was dangerous. Pete looked a little crestfallen, but nodded, and Gwyneth rubbed his shoulder affectionately. He was a good kid. They both were. Claire moved around the rooms of the tower wide-eyed, but Gwyneth could see the intelligence in her gaze, and she imagined the girl was probably picturing the tales she had read in storybooks being played out between the old stone walls.
Gwyneth took a last look at the weapons. Most looked old and fragile, the swords mostly appeared to have been blunted by age, but she had a suspicion that John especially would be interested in the contents of the room.
The final floor was just a short curving corridor that led to a door which presumably opened out onto the roof, and another door set into the wall that must have been the entrance to a small circular room that comprised the top floor of the castle. Pete rushed forward and tried the handle, but was disappointed to find that one locked.
"Never mind," Gwyneth said. "It's probably empty. That one over there should lead out onto the battlements. Try that. But be careful!"
She lifted her voice as Pete scampered forward, followed by Claire, and opened the door rushing out into the morning air and a breathtaking view of the town below and the crashing waves that tried in vain to reach the stone walls.
Gwyneth was just about to join them when she heard it.
A soft shuffling noise.
Frowning, she put her ear to the thick wood of the locked door and listened intently.
There it was again, another shuffling, getting louder. Closer.
When the shuffling ended with a soft thump on the other side of the door, and a low, muffled moan, Gwyneth nearly screamed in surprise.
She tried the handle, just to ensure Pete had not been mistaken.
He was not.
Someone had been locked in the room at the top of the tower.
Gwyneth's eyes flicked to a small cubbyhole bored into the wall next to the door, and the heavy iron key that sat inside it.
As if in a dream, Gwyneth reached for the key and slid it smoothly into the lock, twisting it and feely the vibrations of the heavy click in her bony hand as the lock disengaged.
She gave the door a gentle push, and it swung halfway open before hitting something on the other side and stopping with an abrupt thump.
It took Gwyneth a moment to process what was on the other side of the door. When finally she did, she put a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.
10
The wall exploded.
Nick saw it, but he had trouble comprehending it. They had spent a week laboriously piling up everything they could find at the centre of Catterick, creating a perimeter that stood around twelve feet high. Even the most pessimistic of people - and there were plenty of them, hadn't argued with Hopper's logic in creating the wall. It was the one thing that made them feel vaguely safe.
It wasn't meant to be torn apart like wet tissue.
One moment the pile of cars and debris that they had used to build the wall was standing, and several armed men were perched atop it, rattling metal into the fields beyond, the next moment it was...gone, radiating outwards in all directions, sending a cloud of deadly shrapnel across the crowd gathering behind it.
Nick watched, stupefied, as several of the figures that had manned the wall hurtled through the air like ragdolls, and felt a crawling sensation ripple across his skin as he saw something else, something that moved almost faster than his eye could catch, snatching them out of the air and slamming them into the ground where the wet sacs that had been their bodies exploded against the tarmac like children's water bombs.
He saw one of them caught mid-flight and ripped in two and the pieces flung apart; a man's torso suddenly separated from his legs by eighty feet in the blink of an eye.
He froze.
When he had been a young boy of around seven or eight, Nick had been delivering newspapers to earn a pitiful of money that amounted to buying a couple of comics and some chocolate each week, only to be confronted by a snarling, snapping dog that seemed, to his young eyes, to be roughly the size of a small horse.
He hated delivering to the houses that had dogs. There were five on his route, mostly small, yapping dogs that bounded excitedly around his ankles, but usually made him afraid that their playfulness was going to translate into his ankles getting savaged.
There was one though, that always made him sweat even before he approached the driveway that it sometimes inhabited. Most of the time the huge black pitbull was nowhere to be seen, yet still the mere possibility of its presence induced a state of dizzying fear in him.
The fear always proved unfounded, until the day that he opened the gate and saw the dog, and realised too late that it wasn't chained up. When the beast had hurtled toward him, a cannonball of teeth and muscle, Nick had frozen, torn between horror and shame at the warm wetness spreading across his legs and the terror at the raging approach of the dog.
Time had seemed to slow almost to a sto
p as his mind raced onward, supercharged by the rocket fuel of blind panic, urging his muscles to do something; anything.
He'd been bitten then. Not too badly, hardly even enough to break the skin. Barely more than a nip that the owner of the dog nonchalantly described as playful, but for that moment, as the jaws of the thing closed around his calf, Nick had felt all-consuming, paralysing terror. He gave up the newspaper deliveries that day, and didn't manage to walk anywhere without casting fearful glances around him, expecting an attack, until he was in his late teens.
As he watched the people around the wall begin to erupt in impossible fountains of blood and gristle, one after another, like dominoes falling at terminal velocity, Nick was for a moment just an eight year old boy again, rooted to the spot, his mind blanked by a mortal fear of a monster that was far worse than a savage dog; something beyond his comprehension that made him feel small and vulnerable.
Again his mind raced as his muscles locked up, and he followed the unfolding massacre in mute horror. Whatever had charged through the wall shrieked as it moved, and Nick couldn't be sure if that was the thing's voice, or simply the astonishing speed at which it moved, like water shot from a cannon; a liquid blur that poured through its next victim, tearing and dissecting, before the previous body had even hit the ground.
Nick implored his muscles to move, to give him some sort of a fighting chance, but the ballet of death was dreadful and hypnotic, and he couldn't look away.
What is it?
For a half-second the creature paused, and Nick got the impression the slowing of the atrocity was nothing to do with the creature needing to stop the assault. It was humanoid; huge. Blood-soaked. It's face was misshapen but from the look in the thing's dead eyes, Nick got the impression it had stopped for a brief moment to enjoy the swirling vortex of death it was creating, like a tourist pausing to take in the sights.
Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) Page 9