Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) (20 page)

Now, his mind leapt through the memories, processing them even as he saw John shifting his weight downwards, arming the strike he was preparing to deliver to the second man’
s knee; computing outcomes as he felt Jason shrugging out from beneath him, snapping into action like an automated sentry.

There would be noise. But John and Jason would kill the
strangers, and Michael saw from their faces that they were only attacking through fear. If they started killing the survivors they met, there would be no turning back. He had to stop it. Michael raised the rifle, pointing the barrel at the ceiling, forefinger cradling the trigger.

*

Claire tilted her head by fractions, until the street came into view. There were hundreds of them standing there, humming, all of them seeming to crowd around one that stood above the rest, humming at them, conducting them like an evangelist.

*

And fired.

*

The humming stopped, cut short by something Claire couldn’t hear. The creature she thought of as the conductor roared and leapt to the ground and then the whole mass of them charged south as one, hundreds of them filling the winding streets; a seething river of flesh and teeth.

The roar of the rifle made them freeze.

Michael was on the floor, where Jason had dropped him as he stumbled blindly toward murder. Jason had already killed for him once, and the repercussions had damaged the poor bastard’s mind, perhaps irrevocably. Michael wouldn’t allow it to happen again.

The
people that had burst through the doors screaming wildly in terror they hoped they’d disguised as threat all stared at the gun in horror.

“You’ve killed us all,” the one with the knife embedded in his shoulder grunted through gritted teeth. “Every one of them for miles heard that.”

“And
you
heard that,” Michael snapped. “We die killing
them
. Not killing each other. Is that hard to understand? In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re an endangered species. Maybe fighting each other isn’t the wisest course of action. Does everybody get that?”

He wondered then if he
would have to raise the rifle again, half expected that his words would need the reinforcement of weaponry. Felt a little like weeping when he sensed the tension among them begin to dissipate.

The faces of the
strangers were fixed on him. He felt Rachel’s gaze on him too. Even John turned to stare at him, and Michael realised suddenly that the man’s military background didn’t automatically confer leadership skills. Only Jason didn’t meet Michael’s gaze. His eyes remained rooted on the distance, staring at something only he saw.

They crave someone to tell them what to do
, Michael thought, surprised. They hadn’t just lost their homes; their loved ones. They had lost authority, and for many people, that would be a loss almost as grievous.

“One of the shops in this
place must have a basement, somewhere we can lock down. We need to find it
fast.
”

“They all do,” one of the strangers said, a paunchy man in office wear.
“Stockrooms, maintenance areas.”

Michael felt like punching the air.

“Then the hardware store it is,” he said grimly.

*

Alex McIntosh awoke to a slow, insistent pain that sat in a sort of stasis; muted. Like a throbbing drum heard through the walls of a neighbouring building. He knew instinctively that when he moved, the beat would move uptempo. He opened an eye cautiously and let the surgical white of his cell flood in, and the pain lurking in his head kicked down the walls and played the chorus.

He groaned, lifting a hand to block out the light until his eyes adjusted, and the sight of the unfamiliar clothes, and the blood on his hands
and unfamiliar needle marks on his arm told him that all was most definitely
not
well.

Fucking coward
.

It had always been the same, waking from the strange stupor of being placed on autopilot
by Jake for any period of time. Waking almost always meant finding himself waist deep in trouble. Or blood.

Alex’s
earliest memory of awakening from one of the strange semi-comas induced by Jake’s presence was a blurry smear of an image, located somewhere in the days surrounding his sixth birthday. Alex had returned to the world in the garden of his first foster family, and had discovered that he was humming the tune of
Happy Birthday
, and his hands were buried wrist-deep in the still-warm corpse of the neighbours’ cat.

It was just the start of a series of terrifying awakenings.

Jake, as Alex had learned painfully over the years, truly wanted to interact with the stranger renting space in his mind. Alex often wondered if the reason Jake was such an unrelenting monster was down to him, and that burning desire for communication. Maybe Jake had decided that was the only way to convey his impotent fury at the intrusion: to ensure that wherever Alex awoke, he was likely to find himself mired in horror. There was no mistaking the intent of Jake’s messages.

Sometimes it had been awaking in horrors like the cat, but those situations soon ceased. Jake, Alex guessed, had simply decided that those experiences were too much
fun
to share. Instead, Alex found himself sprung from his internal prison whenever there was trouble. If a situation couldn’t be resolved by violence, Jake simply removed himself from it.

The pain in Alex’s head snapped him back to the present. His head always ached when he was handed the reins, as though the flipping of the internal switch made some fundamental changes to his brain chemistry, like long-learned neural pathways were breaking and remaking themselves over and over.
This pain was different though, and the waves of nausea he felt as he sat up told their own version of events. He had been knocked unconscious, and now he was sitting in a padded room, all brilliant white light bouncing off the surface of a pure white cell.

The situation was depressingly familiar, and yet the cell looked nothing like the converted-mansion affairs at Moorcroft.
This cell was small and perfectly formed, shimmering with newness. The door was barely there, built almost invisibly into the wall. The entire ceiling was a square LED light, save for a small black rectangle in one corner, behind which, Alex assumed, there lurked a surveillance camera. The bed and toilet – the only furnishings – grew almost organically out of the floor, giving the impression that the room had been carved from a single block of plastic.

Alex pulled his
feet up onto the bed and hugged his knees, looking up sharply as the door yawned noiselessly and three men entered, looming over him, making the cell feel suddenly claustrophobic.

He blinked in surprise. Two of the men were dressed a little like SWAT officers, though their uniform bore no insignia.
The third man, flanked by the others, was dressed in a lab coat. Alex focused on the two officers; on the assault rifles they kept only a twitch away from activity.

“Jake,” the man
in the lab coat began, as though winding up to deliver a rehearsed speech.

“No. Alex.”

The man in the lab coat – short, a little tubby, balding, snapped his mouth shut and stared, apparently disappointed.

“Alex,”
the man repeated, and the word came out as a sigh.

“Where am I?”

The balding man tutted. “Not as important a question as
who
you are, I’m afraid. We don’t want you. We want
him.
”

Alex felt his stomach drop as the words wormed into his mind.
He could see no potential way for them to get at Jake that didn’t involve matters turning very bad.

“We’re trying to recreate something, you see.
Something that someone wanted very much to happen. But they are not around, and you are. But we need the real you.”

Alex felt hot anger burn
ing on his skin.

“I am the real me,” he snarled.

“I suppose that’s a matter for philosophical debate. But I’m afraid we disagree, and we’ve got guns.”

The man turned on his heel and strode to the door, which slid open for him. The two armed men followed, and as the door closed, Alex heard him utter two words that made his
nerves sing even though he had no idea what they meant.

“Get Ripley.”

Left alone with his fractured thoughts, Alex searched his memory, and as was usual whenever he tried to see what Jake had seen, came up with unfocused images, snapshots taken by a shaking camera: Dr Jackson. A helicopter. Blood.

Nothing that provided any useful insight
, beyond reaffirming that Jake was utterly insane. He remembered the terror of being chased by the horrors that had attacked Moorcroft and Rothbury, remembered the clammy, shuddering certainty that he had been about to die, the overwhelming sense of panic. And then darkness as Jake took over.

With no idea how much time had passed, Alex began to wonder about the world as he had left it. How widespread was the plague that had afflicted his
corner of Northumberland? The north? The country? The
world
?

The cell was, apparently,
soundproof: he got no warning that the door was about to slide open, and a burly man strode in, waving a dismissive hand behind him, as though he was telling someone outside to stay put. He moved into the room with an almost tangible confidence that made Alex shrink.

The man grinned widely.

“Told you it would be fun,” he said, and clouted Alex across the ear. The gesture was oddly paternal, making the pain it delivered seem surprising.

Wincing, Alex turned his head back to face the man, and got clouted again.

The grin widened.

Alex opened his mouth to speak, and again the man’s palm smashed into his ear. He stared at the man for several long seconds, and opened his mouth again; got clouted. When he again met the man’s gaze, he kept his mouth firmly shut.

“Good,” Ripley said. “Four slaps. You believe I once had a guy who lasted
sixteen
?” He shook his head with a sad smile. “Never could figure out if he was defiant or stupid. But you’re smart. Only four slaps.”

He clouted Alex again, grinning.

“Make it five. So, I speak, you listen. We have your file. We have some
doctors
,
” -
the word emerged laced with contempt, “here that believe they can talk you into doing what we need. And I’ve been told that there are subtle things we can do with the lights and with your…facilities here.”

He looked around the cell derisively.

“Things that might induce
your other self to appear, given time. Such methods do work, I’ve seen it, and they are broadly considered
humane
, comparatively.”

He sniffed, and his face wrinkled in distaste.

“But I am impatient. And something of a traditionalist.”

He brightened.

“And torture just
works.
”

He grabbed the collar of Alex’s sweater and dragged him to the floor, marching toward the
door, hauling Alex behind him like a sack of meat. When Alex began to struggle, he found the man’s fingers locked in place like rusted deadbolts; immovable, and then he was out of the cell and in the corridor, and the two armed men reappeared, and Alex felt his legs being lifted from the floor, and he screamed helplessly.

*

As they ran to the hardware store, past darkened storefronts and an empty doughnut cart that made her stomach growl, Rachel caught the look that John shot at her, the subtle nod of the head in Michael’s direction, and she understood.

Michael was the reason they were heading toward Aberystwyth, and extreme danger. It was a thought that had occurred to her more than once, and on each occasion she had dismissed it. Michael was, literally,
dead weight, and leading them on what was in all likelihood a fool’s errand.

She shook her head, and glared at John as he ran beside her.

Claire Evans might well be dead, and Michael might well be an anvil around their necks. It didn’t matter. To her their direction of travel was the only option; all other roads led to monstrous destinations.

It hadn’t even occurred to
Rachel to question why John was still with them when he was clearly capable of looking after himself. Even if she had pondered it, the surprising answer may not have presented itself.

She was breathless by the time they reached the hardware store, and saw the flashlights suspended on string tied to
shelves laden with paints and brushes. They had just entered the store that they’d been staring into minutes earlier, she realised. The dangling lights were the distraction that had given the three strangers that now ran with them the chance to sneak toward them unnoticed.