Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) (2 page)

When the engine chugged and died, drowned in gore and bone, three more had burst from the trees
, alerted by the noise, sightless faces swinging in the gathering gloom like flashlights, tracking down their location by sound alone.

For a heartbeat, Michael, Rachel and Jason had sat
and watched, frozen like cornered animals. It was Jason who reacted, slipping from the car without a word, snatching up a length of pipe and a wicked-looking knife from the stash of weapons they’d gathered from the ruins of St. Davids.

Michael watched
with a slack jaw as the big man manoeuvred himself in front of the car, casting a cursory glance at the once-human wreckage decorating the front bumper, before putting his head down and bolting toward the three Infected.

Three pairs of emptied eye sockets swivelled toward the noise of his approach, but too late. Jason reached the first
of them already swinging, the pipe smashing into the temple of the creature with a cracking sound that travelled through the still evening like gunfire. Even as that one fell, the knife rose, burying itself in the abdomen of the second, tearing up and through, and effectively disembowelling the shrieking creature.

The third of them was on Jason in a blur, leaping atop his shoulder, teeth aiming
for the man’s thick neck but clamping down only on pipe; shattering. Jason shoved hard, sending the creature to the ground, and brought the pipe down from high above his head, all the way from the clouds to the ground, destroying the thing’s skull against the concrete with a loud
crack
.

Noise
.

They would
be coming.

Jason’s giant form loomed over the
caved-in remains, barely flinching as Rachel tried to turn the ignition and the car responded with a phlegm-drenched cough.

“Out,” she said, and opened her door. She was halfway out of the vehicle when she paused, and Michael knew that his useless legs had just entered her thoughts.

She leaned back in, flushing a little, and started to help Michael with the task of getting his dead weight out of the vehicle, calling to her brother for help. It took Jason a moment to respond. That’s how things were with Jason, ever since he’d been forced to save Rachel by killing their mother. After that, he’d operated on a different wavelength, a frequency that wasn’t visible to either his sister or Michael, like ultraviolet.

They’d abandoned the car then, making their way into the woods without
speaking, Jason hauling Michael on his back. Michael stared sadly at the foldaway wheelchair that sat in the rear of the car. He had hoped to limit the burden his presence would put on Rachel and Jason, to at least be mobile, but the world had other ideas. Wheelchairs were of little use if you happened to find yourself running for your life in a dark forest.

All three of them took
whatever they could from the supplies they had stacked in the car, various items raided from the dead streets of St. Davids. Weapons. Water. A little food. Michael had heard of the rise of ‘prepping’, people stockpiling goods for the troubled times they believed the human race was headed for. Hell, he’d seen it first hand in the bunker he’d spent the past five days in, but when it came down to it, he had little idea what items would be most valuable to him now.

It was frustrating, that constant sense of confusion, and Michael tried to tell his nerves to cut him some slack. No one, after all, could possibly have known what was coming. Only the most paranoid could have prepared for the complete destruction of civilization.

As he tucked a bottle of water into a pocket hurriedly, he wondered if all those paranoid preppers were out there now, hiding away in bunkers as Victor had, torn between smugness and dismay at being proven right so comprehensively.

Somehow, he doubted it. Whatever they had been expecting - war, economic collapse - would have come with some sort of warning sign. The insanity that had befallen South Wales, and presumably everywhere else, had been virtually instantaneous. No amount of preparation would suffice when the apocalypse dropped from nowhere into their laps.

He grabbed their only gun from the back seat, a battered old hunting rifle that was one third weapon and two thirds antique, and which, thanks to the noise it made and the fact none of them had the first idea how to shoot it with any degree of accuracy, was likely as useless as the wheelchair. At least against
them.

Every step through the woods felt like walking through
the minefield they had traversed outside of Victor’s bunker, ground gained inch by petrified inch, every cracked twig and rustling leaf sounding impossibly loud in the thick, silent air. The forest felt alive, crackling and fizzing with the potential for violence. Michael, useless legs hanging limply from Jason’s broad back, sent his eyes left and right relentlessly, scanning the gloom for signs of movement, of pursuit.

The dark woods gave up nothing, save for swaying branches and
the whispers of the leaves. Until a noise stopped them in their tracks: an aircraft engine, distant but increasing in volume, heading toward them.

Before Michael could even think about the possibility of a rescue service flying over the area, the
noise of the engine died in an enormous explosion. The sound drained the blood from his face. Every one of the infected for miles would have heard it. He had no idea whether that meant they would be drawn away from the three figures silently traversing the woods and toward the downed aircraft, or whether the entire area would be overrun. 

In either case, there was nothing to be done other than press on
, furtively searching for the signs of movement that would bring about their violent deaths.

Finally, the
trees thinned and they found themselves at the coast, steep cliffs dropping down into the crashing waves of the Irish Sea.

“This will have to do.” Michael said
softly. “At least they can only come at us from one direction.” He nodded back at the woods.

Rachel nodded
, and shrugged off the small rucksack she carried on her back. “And if they come at us, we’ve got a way out.”

She stared for a moment at the lethal drop, and met Michael’s eyes with a challenging gaze.

“I’ll go out on my own terms.” She said quietly, her voice even. “It won’t be like
that
.”

Michael stared at the firm set of her jaw, the clear, confident gaze, and nodded. She was right, of course. It was just that she was the only one who’d say it
aloud.

“We should rest here awhile
.” Michael said.

Rachel nodded, scanning the surroundings.

“Do we risk a fire?”

Michael’s brow furrowed.

“I think we have to. They are blind so at least the light won’t draw them here. The smell might, but it is freezing. We won’t last long out here without heat anyway.”

Rachel rubbed her freezing limbs. Michael was right.

“I’ll get some wood.”

It was Jason who spoke, the first words they had heard him utter since they left St. Davids. His voice was low, flat, and almost robotic. He set Michael down on the floor and strode into the forest without another word.

Michael fixed Rachel with a meaningful stare. She shrugged.

“At least he talks now. It’s progress.”

Rachel thought of the look on her brother’s face after he had saved her from their demented mother by driving a shard of roofing tile into her brain, of the way his eyes looked suddenly broken and empty. Tears stung her eyes. Jason was here, alive, but some part of Rachel feared that she would never see her little brother again.

“He killed those things without even blinking
, Rachel.”

“And?
He saved us.”

“Yes, but-” Michael trailed off, let the matter drop. She was right. Bathed in the crimson of the blood-soaked headlights, Jason had looked remorseless
and terrifying to Michael as he despatched the three infected creatures. It had been chilling, but maybe it was just a sign that Jason had adapted better than anyone to the new life that had been forced upon them.

Michael stared down at his useless legs. The ground was freezing, but the dead appendages didn’t convey that information to his brain.
Won’t convey anything ever again
, he thought. He stared into the dark woods, lost in black notions that filled his troubled mind.

Rachel searched her pack for the food she knew she had stashed in the bottom.

“Pastries, biscuits, some chocolate,” she murmured to herself as she emptied the contents.

All cold, all loaded with sugar. None of the food she’d grabbed would do anything to quell the feeling that her body temperature was slowly and inexorably dropping, bu
t at least it was high in calories. They’d be moving on foot now, that much was obvious. They would welcome the energy the junk food offered, but it was only a short term solution.

Maybe that’s all the world is now
, Rach. Short term solutions
.

She glanced at Michael, staring blankly into the woods. The crippled man was wary of Jason. She understood it, felt it too a little
despite herself, but Jason was still her little brother. The gentle soul she had always known must still be in there somewhere, submerged under muscle and shock. The alternative, the possibility that this lifeless clone of her brother was all that remained, made her ache with sadness.

Her thoughts were broken by the snapping of twigs, and her heart lurched, hammering away at her chest until she saw her brothers hulking form emerge from the trees, arms weighed down by an unnecessarily vast amount of wood for a fire. She smiled.
He’s still in there.

They doused the wood with a little lighter fluid and set it alight, huddling close to the flickering flames, wrapped in every item of clothing they had brought. For a long time, no one spoke, all of them on full alert, ears straining for any sound, any indication that the fire would bring death upon them.

Eventually Rachel allowed herself to relax, and focused on wishing that the thin tendrils of smoke curling up from the fire might be laced with nicotine.

Awkward silence settled on them. Conversation of any kind seemed ridiculous, unless it formed around the one thing no one wanted to discuss. In the end, it was Rachel who broke the spell.

“What are we dealing with here?” She whispered, glancing from Michael to Jason and back. Jason prodded at the fire with a branch, staring into and through it. Whether he had heard her, Rachel had no idea.

“I mean.
Uh...what? Zombies?”

She f
lushed as she uttered the word, yet the scornful smirks she half-expected did not appear.

Michael’s brow knitted. He thought of Victor, the maniac that had imprisoned them in St. Davids. Of the way the man had hinted at being part of some organisation
or group that had manufactured the disaster, of the lunatic’s constant references to film.
“This is not a movie.”

He caught her dubious expression.

“We’re all thinking it, Rachel, and I think it is right, sort of,” Michael said. “But not quite. It’s an infection, they transmit it with their bite, and when you’re infected you’re nothing more than a killing machine.”

Michael’s eyes clouded over a little as he remembered that crazy scooter ride, a demented journey into the hellish centre of St. Davids, the t
inny whine of the little engine; the horrific landscape of bodies torn to shreds passing under the thin wheels.

“So far, so
Night of the Living Dead,
but this isn’t the
undead
,” he said, his voice thick. “Their bodies are still completely human, vulnerable, just like us. It’s like it’s their minds that have been corrupted, like their humanity has been erased, or something. I don’t know.”

“They
die, just like we die.” Jason’s low, rumbling monotone cut through the night.

Michael stared at the big man’s unfocused eyes in the gloom, searching for some reassurance, finding nothing
but that vacant
not-quite-there
look. Without even looking, he could feel Rachel’s gaze drilling into him. He settled back, rested his head on a rolled up t-shirt, and had time to think that he had never seen the stars looking so vibrant and clear before sleep took him.

*

Rachel watched as Michael’s eyes closed, and his breathing became deep and regular. Exhaustion and anxiety battled for her attention, and the latter was winning.

Throughout most of her life, the correct path had always seemed obvious to Rachel, and her mind, once made up, usually wasn’t for swaying. School, university, employment: she chose the sensible path and only a low tolerance for the idiocy of people around her, and subsequent ill tempers ever led her astray.

The sudden and apparently total collapse of the world, following hard on the heels of the collapse of her attempt at a life in London, left her feeling rudderless. Yet she had a nagging sense that following a recently-crippled man on a quest to find his almost-certainly dead daughter did not represent the sensible choice.