Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) (13 page)

“
I’ve got next to no medical knowledge, nothing beyond bandaging a cut and taking antibiotics.”

Michael nodded.
The desperate truth of her statement hung in the air for a few moments
. None
of them had any medical knowledge. Maybe there were few people left anywhere who did, scattered to the wind; their effectiveness blunted. And not just doctors, but people with all sorts of skills, talents that civilization had been built on. If the plague was as extensive as it appeared, humanity might have been set back decades. Centuries.

They were all thinking it.
Michael could see it in their eyes.
Don’t let them dwell on that
, he thought, but found his own advice difficult to take. He swallowed.

“Ok
ay, so we have to watch out for wildlife as well. It’s not exactly great news, but it might just save us. Anything else?”

“They’re not mindless. Not totally.” Jason’s voice, for once lifted above a mumble, made them jump. “My mother turned. And she
came for me.
For us.” He looked at Rachel, who nodded, face ashen. “It was different, the way she acted, there was a huge pack of them in St. Davids and she peeled away and came straight for us. Broke into the house we were hiding in. It was like she could smell us, sense us, I don’t know. But she wasn’t just attacking whatever was in front of her. She was
hunting
us.”

The
foundation of steel in Jason’s voice reminded Michael of his words in Victor’s bunker.
Let’s go find your daughter.
When he managed to lift himself out of the fog in his mind, Jason sounded less unstable. More dangerous.

Jason’s
revelation sent sparks of recognition firing in Michael’s thoughts, like old sparkplugs trying to breathe life into an engine. He remembered the way one of the Infected had smashed through a car window to get to him. Remembered the way it had sniffed the air, tracking him like a bloodhound. Jason was right. These things weren’t just insane monsters. They moved with a purpose.

“I’ve seen them sniffing like that, hunting. I don’t think their sense of smell is anything supernatural. But their hearing is. It’s like they can detect noise and zero in on it from a distance.
Almost like they use their hearing to see.”

“Like bats,” Rachel said.

Michael sighed. It was like an impromptu therapy session, everybody getting it all off their chest. But all it seemed to be doing was making the enemy seem that much more dangerous, and diminishing their hopes of survival. If it weren’t for Claire, Michael would have suggested they fortify the farm as best they could and just wait, living like silent monks in the hope that the world might change around them, reverting to something like normality. Even that, Michael thought, was a sort of suicide; the slow, hopeless kind.

The conversation had been useful though, and Michael had gotten exactly what he wanted from it, the information he truly needed slipping into the corner of his eyes, entering his mind through a side door.
Underlining itself every time the name
Victor
was mentioned.

He turned a little
, as much as his locked torso would allow.

“Your turn, John.
Why don’t you tell us what
you
know about Victor?”

John’s eyes narrowed.

So they know.

John had to give the
policeman credit. He’d played the helpless cripple card to perfection, and even John had bought it. He gave himself a mental kick, even as he acknowledged the skilled way Michael had done it. It was as soft as being questioned at gunpoint could get. John had barely felt the inquisition until the spotlight fell on him.

The memories had been returning ever since the name
Victor
had surfaced in conversation the first time. That was the loose thread, and as they had walked in the rain John had kept pulling at it, working it around like a tongue prying at decaying tooth, trying to root out the poison underneath.

It
had come back to him when they entered the farm and the smell of death hit him; memories returning all at once, a download of information that almost made him stagger to his knees: the bunker, the bloodbath in the woods, the doomed helicopter ride. Project Wildfire.
Sullivan
.

Just thinking the old man’s name made an unnerving, cold rage wash through him.
The old fucker had
known
, had been one of the guiding hands behind the insanity. And right now he was sitting safely underground in an expensive suit, sipping overpriced coffee and watching the world crumble.
There’s profit in chaos.

John had kept quiet when his
thoughts had returned to him. Because he knew what the world was now, and these three people were already as good as dead. They’d either drag him down with them or the big one would kill John himself.

One of his buddies in Afghanistan had survived once by playing dead. It got him home to his wife
and kids. It stuck in John’s memory like barbed wire. Sometimes playing possum was the best way out.

The game was up now, though. He’d been so preoccupied he hadn’t even noticed the cop watching him intently.
Hadn’t even thought about why the rifle Michael held so casually always seemed to be pointed vaguely in John’s direction. Hell, he’d even undertaken a bit of good old male bonding with him. Clever guy; maybe he’d even have a shot at survival.

If he had legs
.

John had always known that lies and corruption provided the grease that kept the cogs of society turning. Maybe now, at least,
Project Wildfire had had one positive effect: lying would get you killed.

Get
me
killed
, he thought grimly, eyeing Jason’s massive form. The man was currently dormant; in standby mode. John didn’t know what would get the big man moving, nor did he much want to find out. Jason was untrained, clumsy. John might be able to take him if things went bad.
Might.

Never a
successful gambler, John decided not to roll that particular dice. The truth was almost certainly his best way out of the current hole in which he found himself. He let the act drop, registering the surprise on Rachel’s face as the confused, jittery body language was suddenly replaced by something with a little more
zip.
He felt sorry for Rachel, felt bad for misleading her. Girl had
spark.

“I don’t know too much more than any of you. Hell, some of what you’ve just said is news to me.”

Michael nodded in satisfaction even as Rachel’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.

“You’re a part of this?”

“Easy, Tyson,” John said evenly, rubbing his sore jaw. “I’m no more a part of this than I was a part of the decision to spend a decade fucking up the Middle East. Yeah,” he said, looking at Michael, “Military. You got that right. Or at least I was.

“A few months back I landed a job driving for an expensive suit by the name of Fred Sullivan. He might be a part of this, I don’t know. I do know that he knew it was coming. Bought his way to safety
, I imagine. That’s usually the way.”

“What safety?” Michael asked abruptly. “Is this happening locally? What about the rest of the country?”

“These people don’t think small, Michael, and neither should you. The real question is: what about the rest of the
world
?”

“You’re saying this is worldwide?”
Rachel’s initial look of surprise had given way to outright hostility.

John grimaced
, and his shoulders slumped.

“I honestly don’t know, Rachel. But I do know it’s countrywide, and I don’t see how an attack like this, by these
types of people, would limit itself to the UK. If this were just happening here, the place would already be swarming with Navy Seals. The United Nations would be here offering us blankets. I was given no indication that would happen.

“And I don’t see any Navy Seals around here.”

“Will Smith isn’t coming to save us,” Michael said softly.

John snorted a laugh despite himself. “What? Will Smith
the movie star?”

“Just something Victor said when he had me tied to a tree with a shotgun pointed at my face.”

“Hmph.”

“And what about Victor?”
Rachel said suddenly. “For some lunatic rapist living in a hole in the middle of nowhere his name seems to crop up a
lot
.”

John nodded.

“And not just here,” he agreed. “Victor was a part of what they called Project Wildfire, but he got out years back. Ran, I think, and they just let him go. They knew where he was, thought he wasn’t worth bothering with I think, like he was a nobody, you know?”

John shrugged.

“And then, when all the backslapping was going on, all the bastards that did this sucking each other’s cocks, all of a sudden getting hold of Victor becomes the most important thing in the world.”

He raised his hands in a defensive gesture to ward off the questions scrambling to spill from Rachel’s mouth.

“I don’t know why. I wasn’t told. But I gathered enough to understand that Victor did something, messed with their little project somehow. He was a computer guy I think. Whatever he did, whatever he changed, they weren’t aware of it and they have no idea how to fix it. The people who did this aren’t in control anymore.”

“They opened Pandora’s Box,” Michael said quietly.

“Right. So the backslapping stops and they send out a team to retrieve Victor, I suppose they thought they could get him to reverse whatever he did, I don’t know. When we got there, Victor was already dead – I’m guessing that’s thanks to the big guy - and any useful intel in his bunker now belongs to the Infected.”

“So where’s the rest of your team?”

John fixed Michael with a stare, and Michael felt his cheeks redden.

“So in summary,” Rachel said
bitterly, “Some rich bastards decided they needed to get richer, so they fucked the world up, and hid out somewhere, waiting for it all to blow over…but they lost their grip, and now they’re as far up shit creek as the rest of us?”

“Pretty much.”

Rachel barked a laugh, harsh and bitter.

“
Men
,” she said despondently, with a shake of her tousled brown hair.

John thought for a moment about arguing the point, and letting her know that there seemed to be an equal number of
women involved in the catastrophe, but he didn’t get the chance.

Outside the farmhouse, the rumbling of the thunder had faded away, only to be replaced with another sound, something that made the skin
on John’s arms crawl: hundreds of voices, humming as one. Getting closer.

Michael hefted the rifle again, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

It was Rachel who approached the narrow window, curiosity overwhelming the fear she felt tightening every muscle in her body.

Peeking out, the blood drained from her face.

Outside, she saw a solitary figure, a member of the Infected, striding past the farmhouse. And then another. Another. And then there were hundreds of them, a river of sightless horrors washing past their door, marching in one direction like an army, heading north. A low, rumbling hum emitted from the group; a deep frequency that she could only just hear, and which made her teeth hurt.

The fragments of their conversation began to make some sense in her mind then
, coming together slowly, all accelerated by a new piece of information that drenched her thoughts in cold terror:

They’re communicating
.

They communicate
.

Whatever the idiots in charge of the mess had intended no longer mattered. The result was stark, staring her in the face, hundreds of empty, seeping eye sockets gazing straight through her as they passed.

Maybe Project Wildfire was meant to reduce humanity to its knees so that a select few could profit. Maybe these things were meant to kill indiscriminately and turn on themselves, like a cleansing fire that would burn out when there was no fuel left.

That hadn’t happened.

What was marching past the window was a new species. Someone had got the maths wrong, some bit of bad code on some obsolete screen somewhere. The creatures were evolving. Whatever their minds had become, they were now racing to catch the maturity of their cells. Outraged toddlers dropped into adult bodies.

All Project Wildfire had accompli
shed was to move humanity one step down the food chain. To provide an apex predator that existed solely to wipe humans from the face of the earth.

Maybe
, she thought as she watched the creatures moving past,
this is exactly what we deserve. Maybe our evolution always came with an expiry date
.