Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) (15 page)

The final death by fire had been momentous, because that time he had thought ahead and procured an extinguisher. The only thing better than setting someone alight was putting them out, and letting them witness their melted flesh before setting them alight all over again.

Nothing, though, compared to the giddy high of stabbing. Nothing was quite so personal, so intimate, as driving a
blade deep into the guts of another human being and feeling their life throbbing away, pulsing over his fingers, gradually decreasing in power. Killing by stabbing was like a slow, controlled orgasm. Eventually, when he had refined his art, all his victims got stabbed, whether or not that was how he eventually ended them.

It had been three long years since Jake had killed, and the feeling of the hateful bitch’s life spilling across the shard of rusted pipe very nearly led to him soiling his trousers. He felt the small dark room spinning around him, and the delirium was almost like a sickness that he needed to cure, like he had taken some extraordinary stimulant and had to take the edge off. Trembling in his excitement, he peeled away the hospital issue trousers, removed the length of pipe from her neck, and did what needed to be done.

When he was finished, the haze of excitement that had lent the world a soft focus fell away and he turned his thoughts to his predicament.

The world – if the rest of it was anything like Rothbury and the surrounding areas – had been turned into a marvellous
playground, the primitive constraints of society removed. It felt like a gift that had been wrapped all for him, but it would all be for nought if he carried on running blindly from packs of mindless savages. Sooner or later – sooner probably – he would wind up dead. It would be a terrible waste of potential.

He stepped cautiously over the bodies in the doorway, peering with interest at the eyeless faces, and out into a cool breeze that delivered the faint smell of Rothbury’s cremation.

The creatures that had been swept downriver would be returning shortly, he was certain. This presented a problem: Northumberland was huge, and Rothbury stood miles away from the nearest population centre. He could simply set off in any given direction, but that would be as likely to get him killed as walking straight into the town centre. He needed a vehicle, he would need food. And knives, of course. There was nothing for it. He had to go to town.

Shopping always made him think about his parents. Not remember, since he had no memory of them. They had given up on him when he was barely five years old, apparently deciding that the best course of action for dealing with a difficult child was to take it to the centre of London, enjoying the anonymity of the crowd, and simply leave it there.

He remembered none if it; all he had of his parents was second-hand information. Nothing, unfortunately, that might lead him back to them, which ranked as perhaps his biggest regret. The things he would have liked to force them to do to each other before he finally ended them…

The story went that he had been discovered, wailing, by a policeman somewhere near Oxford Street, and thus began a long journey through the care system: a variety of homes and centres, all
white plastic and disinfectant; and foster families, most of whom developed Teflon skins, sliding away from him at the first sign that his ‘complex needs’ went way beyond anything they were equipped to deal with.

Finally there was one, who through sheer stubborn determination not to have
Jake become her first failure, clung to him like a magnet, doing her utmost to ‘cure’ him with platitudes and hugs and home cooking. Technically, she hadn’t been his first kill, but in his mind, she counted. Hung herself from a banister after he had wormed his way under her skin and into her psyche, and begun to work on her.

He had been sixteen. Old enough, he decided, as he watched her sad, bloated ankles swinging gently back and forth in the hallway, to
go out into the world and make his own way. And he
tried.
Sort of. He didn’t kill anyone for another six years, and then only when the thrill of rape and humiliation had worn thin.

He supposed the start of it all, that abandonment in the country’s busiest shopping
street, was the reason that crowds and town centres made him feel murderous, but deep down he knew that there had been a reason for his parents to dump him. He hadn’t been turned into the thing he became because of that rejection; they had left him there precisely because they knew exactly what he was. Knew it better than any of the trained professionals that came after. He had to give them credit for that, but it wouldn’t have saved them.

He breathed deeply, trying to catch the scent of blood on the breeze. And then, as he filled his lungs and the world seemed to pause for a second, he heard it.

A helicopter, flying low.

He craned his neck until he saw it, heading west, heading out into the National Park. When it was barely more than a speck against the clouds, he saw it begin to descend.

Weapons can wait
, he thought.
That is far more interesting
.

Checking to make sure nothing was ready to leap out at him
as he left the relative safety of the mill, Jake headed west.

*

“Swords,” John said hesitantly, expecting a snort of derision in response. There was none. Maybe for the group that now travelled north toward Aberystwyth, the outlandish had become the norm, and nothing could surprise them any longer. He wondered briefly if there would have been a different response if he had suggested that their best choice of weapon against the Infected might be heavy sarcasm.

Finally, Michael grunted his agreement.

They had been walking for a few hours now, creeping silently along the tarmac, straining their eyes for signs of movement and finding nothing. Michael sat on a small trailer they had found at the farm, which doubled as both a makeshift wheelchair and storage for their food and supplies. Jason towed the thing behind him without complaint, his eyes fixed on the tarmac; not seeing it.

After a while, they felt safe enough to murmur low fragments of conversation, and John was glad of it. Spending time in his own head only led to thoughts of Sullivan, and how
unlikely it was that he would ever get his hands on the smug old bastard.

Sullivan had been there when the suits at the base finally decided that their only option was to venture out into the world to try to close the chasms opening in their beloved project. It had been the old man who volunteered John for the task, no doubt. There were a few hundred men and women at the base with military training, all serving as glorified bodyguards for the
flabby, wrinkled idiots who’d caused the catastrophe. A small army, drafted unwittingly, and given no choice but to serve once the world went to shit. Any one of them could have taken John’s place on the doomed mission to St. Davids, and yet here he was.

Sullivan’s doing. The fucker had
appeased his daughter by bringing John into the fold, but he obviously understood that she held a candle for the man who’d saved her life on the streets of London, and his response had been to get John as far away from her – and as close to harm – as possible. Sullivan was manipulative enough that John even briefly wondered if he had somehow fabricated the problems Project Wildfire had run into just to get rid of him.

He grimaced, trying to force the memory of the old man to one side.

Swords, knives – anything that required getting up close and personal – would be of little use to Michael, John realised. At the moment, the man’s best weapon – better even than the rifle he cradled like a new born – was the three people accompanying him.

“When we touched down, we had the lot; enough weapons to make Al-Qaeda think twice. Assault rifles, explosives, grenades, flashbangs. All that shit did was put a big neon sign over our heads. Swords were what did the job. They’re quiet, they have reach, and they require almost no training. Maybe a
crossbow or a flamethrower would be better; I don’t know. But I do know we are far more likely to find some long fucking knives than one of those.”

John looked at each of them in turn.

“Any of you know Aberystwyth? Any places to get hunting supplies?”

Michael smiled grimly
at John’s question. “I don’t think we’ll be finding any swords there. I’ve been there a few times, and hunting isn’t exactly high on the agenda. It’s a university town. Cheap vodka: yes; swords:
no.
”

His eyebrows arched as a thought occurred.

“But there is a hardware supplies place near there, I remember that.”

John looked dubious.

“Kitchen stuff, tools, gardening. That kind of place. Chef’s knives,” Michael said by way of explanation. “Nothing three feet long I suppose, but we’ll be able to get cleavers, maybe skewers, machetes. Lots of things there that are designed for cutting.”

John nodded. It would have to suffice.

“And it’s a few miles outside of town, a retail park,” Michael continued. “A few minutes’ drive away from most the population. This all started pretty early in the morning, before that place would have even opened. If we’re lucky, it won’t be overrun.”

“Perfect,”
Rachel interrupted, keen to limit the conversation she feared carried further than they realised in the still air.

“Decision made.”

She rested the baseball bat on her shoulder, and thought about the designer coat she’d worn on her arrival at St. Davids, an item of rare value that she’d treasured. She had hoped it would be the first such item she could afford. It had turned out to be the last.

In a previous life, she’d loved nothing more than heading to malls and killing time dreaming about being able to
buy the goods that teased her from strategically-positioned windows.

Windows now smashed.

“Let’s go shopping,” she said with a grin.

*

Claire was good at puzzles, had loved them ever since she could remember, but the infatuation really took hold when her mother bought a tablet computer, which Claire had swiftly acquisitioned. At first her mother had always asked for the device to be returned when Claire was finished with it; eventually she had simply given up when she realised that Claire had played a canny hand, and Elise had been reduced to asking whether she could borrow her own computer.

Claire spent l
ong hours spent playing all the various free games she could get her hands on: she tried arcade games, driving games, even shooters. Nothing held her interest like the puzzle games that she was soon sinking her evenings into. Mostly variations on the classic
Match 3
theme.

The games required a quick mind. She studied the objects in the dimly-lit loft, and concluded that this situation required her mind to move like lightning. The skylight that illuminated her challenge was maybe ten feet above her head. She had no idea if it might open, or if she’d have to smash it somehow, but that was the
last level of the game; first there was groundwork to put in.

Moving as quietly as she could, gritting her teeth at every scrape and creak her progress made,
Claire began to stack the boxes in the loft, quickly determining which ones were beyond her ability to lift. She was lucky: one of the larger boxes, one she couldn’t even have moved never mind lifted, was placed directly below the skylight. That would be her base. Onto it she hefted two plastic storage crates. They were sturdy, they would take her weight.

Nodding to herself, she scurried to a dark corner, almost screaming as she ran into a large
spider web, feeling it drape across her bare arms and face like a veil. She hated spiders, and the thought that one might have been sitting on the web, and was even now scurrying about her person somewhere, running up her back –
in my hair!
– made her blood run cold, and she froze in place, brushing away the web as best she could.

The hatch leading up to the loft thumped as something below bumped into it, and all of a sudden spiders did not seem so terrifying after all.

She had just cardboard boxes to work with now, some of them damp and rotting, drastically reducing her options. Having her makeshift ladder fall apart underneath her would mean certain death. She swallowed painfully, trying not to let the images of her meeting the same fate as Bill dominate her thoughts.

She glanced back at the structure she was building.

Just a few feet higher
.

A
ll she needed was something the right shape, something light. Something that fit perfectly. Just like
Tetris.

Claire stared around the loft.

There was nothing. Just flimsy cardboard that would never support her weight, and heavy wooden crates that she had no way to move. Frustration built up inside her, and she felt the overwhelming urge to scream and cry.

Yet there were no adults here; no parents. Her crying would not yield a hug, and her screaming had long since stopped being effective as a means of getting what she wanted.

Don’t be a baby, Claire
. Her mother’s words, always delivered with a gentle smile, came back to her, and she sniffed softly, informing her nose that it was to stop running immediately.