Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4)

by Griffiths, K. R.

  Waiting.

  Only John moved.

  "Weapons," he snarled at no one in particular. "We need weapons."

  Michael caught John's arm in a steely grip, making him flinch.

  "Petrol bombs," Michael said. "Darren said they could make petrol bombs. They have bottles somewhere. And the fuel from the generator. Fire is our only chance."

  John nodded.

  "Where?"

  Michael looked at him blankly.

  John frantically searched the faces of the people around him, and saw the girl that Darren had sent to fetch them to meet him. Her face was the most haunted of all, and John knew as he looked into her eyes that she had been Darren's favourite, and he felt a stab of sympathy that he quickly shut down.

  "You," he yelled, jabbing a finger at her. "Where did he keep the fuel and the bottles?"

  The girl looked at him, eyes widening in fright.

  "Where?" He roared, and when she pointed at one of the towers on the opposite side of the castle, John forgot all about his injured leg and sprinted toward it.

  *

  To Nick, the atmosphere in the castle reeked of terrible familiarity, and he once again found himself staring up longingly at the chopper, and wondering if he might be able to get to it without anyone noticing. All hope was dashed when Shirley appeared in front of him, brandishing an honest-to-God broadsword.

  "Don't even think about it," Shirley rumbled, and tossed a heavy mace at Nick. Nick caught the ancient weapon and stared at it dumbly.

  "What am I supposed to do with this?" He stammered.

  Shirley grinned widely under his heavy moustache.

  "Fight," he said with relish, and pushed Nick toward the steps that led to the battlements.

  When Nick reached the top and saw what waited beyond the wall, he felt like his heart might drop from his open mouth.

  Thousands upon thousands of the Infected were flocking toward the castle, smashing into the wall below, crushing their brethren against the unforgiving stone. There seemed to be no end to them. Everywhere he looked, the winding streets of Caernarfon were filled by a torrent of the creatures, a wave of death rushing toward him with single-minded purpose.

  The urge to vomit was suddenly overwhelming.

  I'm standing in a castle under siege, he thought. Holding a mace.

  The notion made him feel a little like laughing and he might have, but for the fear that he might never be able to stop.

  He stared at Ray, standing a few yards to his right. The man was aiming the crossbow, but reluctant to fire. Only when he saw one of the Infected trying to scramble up the stone wall, and making it a few feet off the ground did he unleash a bolt into the thing's forehead.

  "Spread out, Nick," Ray yelled. "When they get up to the top, knock 'em back down."

  Nick stared at him.

  When?

  He stared down again, and saw that as the Infected at the front of the crowd were slowly crushed to death, the ones behind began to climb over the corpses. The tide was rising.

  Oh fuck, Nick thought, and then a petrol bomb flew across the wall to his left, landing on the Infected crowd and sending a pool of liquid fire across it. And then another.

  And then John was at his side, flaming bottles in each hand, raining fire down on the seething mass of horror below.

  More bottles arced over Nick's head, and he turned to see Michael and Rachel below, filling bottles with rags and generator fuel and passing them out to people. Michael was roaring at the terrified girls and the stunned bikers to get to the top of the battlements and defend themselves.

  It all felt like a dream, a strange, surreal vision that couldn't possibly be connected to reality. Until Nick saw a bloody hand reaching over the lip of the battlements and an eyeless face appearing in front of him.

  And then Nick swung the mace with all his might and felt the crunch and snap of bone as the terrible weapon connected, and he knew that it was all real, every last terrifying bit, and Shirley had been right. There was only one thing left to do. The thing he had avoided doing his whole life.

  Fight.

  *

  For a while there, John had thought it might actually work. But the Infected did not respond to fire in the way any other creature would. They didn't shrink back in fear from the wall of flame the petrol bombs had created. They simply charged into it, hurtling to their deaths, oblivious to everything except the prey they had been kept from for so long.

  And worse: the burnt, smouldering bodies of what John thought of as the first wave simply provided a ramp for the others to climb. Already some were reaching the top of the battlements, only to be knocked back by one of the people defending the place with ancient swords and clubs.

  It was only a matter of time before one of the Infected got across and broke their defences, and then the game would be up. One was all it would take to kill them all. John jabbed his knife through an eyeless face, sending it plummeting back onto the carpet of bodies below and stared about him blearily, wondering which of the people now fighting at his side would be the one to sink their teeth into his flesh when the time came.

  When the Infected broke all resistance, when the onslaught finally breached the castle, would it be one of the bikers that ripped their eyes out before pouncing on John? Would it be Michael? Rachel?

  Will I have to kill her myself?

  Will I even know I'm doing it?

  He saw the biggest of the bikers swinging a huge old sword into the neck of one of the creatures as it hauled itself over the wall; saw the blunt blade lodge deep in the creature's flesh and get torn away from the man's grasp as the thing fell away.

  We have to retreat.

  "We can't hold it," John roared, trusting that someone - anyone - was listening. "Get back to the main tower. Fall back."

  He saw the one dressed as a soldier streak past him first, followed quickly by the bikers and the handful of Darren's group that had made it up to the battlements. Below him he heard the pounding of feet as the rest of them turned and headed for the tower. He couldn't be sure if they had heard his cry, or had merely seen the thing that he had missed.

  There just hadn't been enough of them to hold the entire length of the wall. John should have realised it sooner. They never stood a chance of defending the castle. It was too large. The confirmation of the fact was right there.

  Streaking along the battlements toward him, snarling.

  Infected.

  He saw three, and for a brief, dreadful moment he prayed that they would continue running along the wall, straight at him. If they leapt down, the game was up.

  Even as he thought it he saw it happening, as one of them veered to its right, utterly oblivious to the drop, throwing itself down at the group of people retreating toward the tower. He heard the savage crack as the thing's legs met the floor, and had time to see Rachel sprinting toward it, brandishing a blade, and then he was rolling backwards, frantically evading the deadly lunge as the first of the two Infected still on the battlements reached him at full tilt.

  As he rolled, he swivelled his hips, employing a leg sweep that had always worked on humans. It was a move born of desperation. Bringing the teeth down towards him as he rose.

  The thing snapped like an animal; caught his jacket as it fell.

  Missed his flesh. Just.

  John stabbed down with his knife. Hard. He threw every ounce of strength gained during a life spent in battle into the thrust, and didn't even hear his own roar of triumph as the blade cleaved itself a new home in the thing's brainstem.

  His hand was already moving, grasping for his second knife.

  And finding the sheath empty.

  His knife was buried in the back of one of Darren's men.

  Kind of funny, John thought. He couldn't even remember the kid's name.

  The third of the Infected was throwing itself toward him, and time seemed to slow for John, and he realised the old cliché about your whole life flashing before your eyes wasn't true at al
l. It was just this one scene. This one hideous image, slowed down to a sickening crawl and intensified until it made his eyes hurt. It felt unbearably long.

  Gamble, John thought, and threw himself backwards off the wall.

  *

  Nick was the first to reach the top of the tower. Most of them were still on the ground floor, wailing and waiting for someone to tell them what to do. None of them seemed to realise that you didn't stop running until there was nowhere left to run.

  Nick wasn't going to wait. He knew exactly what to do. What he did best.

  He sprinted for the chopper.

  He would get the engine running. He would give them thirty seconds. Whoever made it to the top of the tower, he would save.

  Thirty seconds.

  He stabbed the controls and sighed in relief as he felt the steady vibration of the engine roaring into life.

  Nick was going to live.

  He stared at the mass of Infected that seemed to stretch out endlessly below him, and glanced at his wristwatch.

  Thirty seconds.

  *

  John tried to roll as he fell, tucking in his arms and legs, but he hit the ground hard. Breath exploded from his body and for a moment his vision flickered and blurred, like there was a bad connection in his brain somewhere. He saw the Infected creature land beside him, smashing into the floor knees-first, driving its legs up behind its head and snapping its spine in two. The thing's hipbone drove itself all the way from flesh out into the open air, and for a moment John dared to hope the fall had killed it.

  And maybe it had. But not instantly.

  The creature whipped its broken body over and threw an arm forward, dragging itself toward John even as its life steadily drained out onto the ground around it.

  John stared at it in horror and tried to drag himself to his feet; knew his stunned muscles were not working quickly enough.

  This is it, he thought, and shut his eyes.

  And opened them again when the rifle roared, and the top half of the creature's skull detonated.

  John sucked in a deep breath, and jumped as he saw a shadow fall over him, and a hand extended in front of his face.

  He grabbed Michael's hand and hauled himself up, almost screaming as pain lanced through his legs; grateful that he could still feel them.

  "Go," Michael said, and John realised they were the last two in the courtyard. He staggered toward the tower and heard the rifle roar again; didn't need to look to know the Infected were pouring over the wall now, flooding into the castle. The rifle roared a third time and then clicked, and John heard the whirring of Michael's wheelchair, moving behind him at pace, and knew he had run out of ammunition.

  They entered the tower almost simultaneously to a chorus of terrified screams and Michael slammed the door even as the first blows began to rain down upon it. He engaged the deadbolt and drew back, gasping for air as the door began to shake under the impact of frantic, thunderous blows.

  The door would hold for a while. It was thick wood locked by a heavy iron bar. Better yet, it was narrow. There was only so much force the mass of Infected could exert on it. But he didn't think it would hold indefinitely. There was only one way left to go.

  He pointed at the stairs, and the people crammed into the tower began to run toward them.

  John dragged legs that felt like they were burning in acid to the base of the stairs and began to climb, praying that the door would hold long enough for the chopper to ferry everyone away from the castle before it was completely overrun. He hadn't seen the pilot anywhere, but if it came to it, John would figure out how to fly the damn thing himself.

  Every step was a fresh bout of torture that felt like it would snap his shins in two, but he gritted his teeth and forged ahead, picking up as much pace as possible until finally he reached the door that led to the roof and burst through it and roared in impotent fury.

  The chopper was gone.

  21

  Well done Nick-yyyy, got away clean again.

  Nick grimaced as the chopper continued to lift into the air, and the castle below receded to little more than a grey dot. With the dark stain of the Infected swarming around it, it looked like the nucleus of a rotten cell.

  Got away clean, he thought, repeating the words his father's voice had just croaked in his mind. So why am I crying?

  It was not just the tears running down Nick's cheeks either; he could not stop the great, heaving sobs that rattled his chest and throat painfully.

  Because you're a cry-baby coward, Nick-yyyy.

  Nick squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn't getting away clean. He was getting away stained by the lives of at least thirty innocent people. Stained by the lives of Ray and Shirley; good guys who had helped him, and who he had left to die.

  The chopper began to lurch dangerously as the tears blurred his vision.

  "What was I supposed to do?" He sobbed.

  What you always do Nick-yyyy. You don't stop running until there's nowhere left to run.

  Nick blinked as realisation hit him.

  There is nowhere left to run, he thought. You keep running, or you stop and fight. Where is there to run to, that won't be exactly the same as this? Or worse?

  He thought of the monster that had attacked Catterick. If he hadn't been safe there, walled in and surrounded by the army, then nowhere was safe. There was no point in running, not any more.

  All of a sudden, Nick felt strangely euphoric, and a calm peace washed through him like a drug.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the drums of aviation fuel that filled the cargo hold of the fat chopper, and finally he knew exactly what he had to do. To kill a monster, you just needed the right equipment.

  That's the coward's way out Nick-yyyy.

  Nick slammed the pitch lever forward and sent the chopper into a delirious nosedive.

  "Fuck you, Dad," he said with a laugh, and then the chopper smashed into the narrow bridge that connected the castle to Caernarfon and everything went dark.

  *

  John watched in astonishment as the chopper hurtled toward the bridge, and he realised that the pilot was not a coward. Quite the opposite. But he was definitely a fool. Crashing the chopper into the Infected would kill many of them, but not enough to change anything, not unless the vehicle was carrying a powerful bomb. Even if he was trying to destroy the bridge and give the people in the castle a fighting chance, the chopper was unlikely to get the job done.

  When the chopper hit, John could scarcely remember a time when he had been more wrong about anything.

  The explosion was gigantic, decimating the Infected in a huge fireball that continued to grow as it mushroomed up into the sky. As the smoke began to clear, he saw that the bridge had been completely destroyed, cutting the force of the Infected in two. Many on the other side of the river plunged blindly into the water and were swept out to sea.

  John leaned carefully over the battlements, peering down at the base of the tower. The Infected that had surrounded it had collapsed to the ground, clutching their palms to the ears in agony as the deafening roar of the explosion rolled across them.

  He didn't have time to think. His legs were already moving, all thoughts of the pain in his shins forgotten. John charged down the stairs and into the great hall, and snatched a sword from the grasp of one of the stunned bikers.

  "Now!" John roared, and threw back the lock on the door. "Take them NOW!"

  He didn't wait to see their looks of confusion. There was no time for debate. He simply had to trust that they would follow his example.

  He charged out into the smoky air already swinging, smashing the blade through the hateful flesh, decapitating and killing in a frenzy of bloodlust, and after a moment he heard the others begin to emerge from the tower behind him one by one, gradually summoning up the courage to join him. Executing the Infected before they could recover their senses.

  John swung the sword until his arms ached; until merely holding the weapon became a problem for his fatigue
d muscles, and only when he heard Rachel screaming triumphantly at his side did he allow the blade to fall from his fingers, and to collapse to the ground in exhaustion.

  *

  When John came round, he found himself sitting on a carpet of lacerated bodies. It felt oddly familiar, and it took him a moment to remember the forest outside St. Davids. He wondered how many more times he might find himself drifting on a lake of blood and exposed organs. It wasn't, he thought, the kind of thing you wanted to turn into a routine.

  He glanced around. Some of the people left in the castle - to John it looked like there were about thirty of them, all told - were on their knees crying. He couldn't tell whether it was relief or shock that caused the tears; not even when he felt them coursing down his own cheeks.

  The rest were on the battlements. Even Michael had somehow got himself up there.

  Found someone else to carry you, John thought, but he let the bitterness drain away from him. In the end, he owed the man his life. One way or another, Michael found leverage.

  No one was swinging a weapon. No one was screaming. Somehow it almost didn't feel real.

  John hauled himself to his feet and groaned as the pain in his legs shrieked. It took him a while, but he made it to the top of the battlements, and the sight beyond lit a small, flickering flame of hope in his heart.

  The town was lost to the Infected, for the moment at least. The streets heaved with them, and John guessed there must still be hundreds out there. Maybe even thousands.

  But of the ones that plunged into the river, only a few made it across.

  Some can swim, John thought, and the revelation should have shocked him, but he was too tired to care. Or maybe the strange, evolving habits of the Infected had simply lost their power to surprise him. It didn't matter. The ones that made it all the way across arrived in small bunches, or alone. They could be dealt with easily enough. The wall slowed most down long enough for them to be killed. The sea would take care of the rest.