Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) (5 page)

They hurrie
d to the window and looked down. The ground beneath Dr Jackson’s office looked empty. It was a fair drop, but Alex figured as long as they landed correctly, bending their knees at just the right time, they stood a good chance of making it without injury.

Alex waited impatiently as
Deborah fumbled with the lock. When she finally got the window to swing open, a muffled chorus of screams drifted in on the biting morning air.

“Okay
, we’re going to go,” he said, “Lower yourself from the window, hang from the sill and drop. Make sure you bend those knees when you land, or your thighbone will be having a party in your belly. Okay?”

She nodded, whimpered. He saw her eyes tearing up.

“Listen,” he said, grabbing her narrow shoulders and putting his eyes directly in front of hers, “You can do this. We both can. Fifty yards to the car park and we’re out of here, and the police can deal with whatever the hell is happening here, okay? You’ll be fine.”

Another thump on the door.
Heavier. It sounded like there was more than one of them out there now, trying to break through.

Deborah nodded, and brushed the tears away, and then to Alex’s surprise, she hauled herself up and out the window without another word, and dropped. He was impressed, had
expected persuading her to take a good deal more effort. The yelp as she hit the ground below might have been a problem, but he didn’t waste any time thinking about who – or what – she might have drawn the attention of, or even if her bones had made the journey in one piece. Instead, he swung a leg over the sill, let his weight drop down onto his hands, and gravity did the rest.

He fell facing the building, and time seemed to freeze for a moment as he moved past one of the ground-level windows and saw the bloodbath in the main hall. He had time to think that no one at Moorcroft was
that
crazy and then the ground met his feet, knocking all the air from his lungs.

The pain in his knees was excruciating; white-hot. He hadn’t listened to his own advice, had forgotten to bend.
Gritting his teeth to stifle the curse that begged to be screamed aloud, he tested his joints and a powerful rush of relief surged through him. Nothing vital seemed to have broken in the fall, and he hauled himself up and set off after the doctor as fast as his protesting knees allowed, praying that she hadn’t reached the car and decided to flee without him.

When he rounded the corner into the car park he almost yelled out in relief: she was in t
he car, turning over the engine and flicking open the passenger door for him.

I owe you one, Doc.

He leapt into the car alongside her as the engine roared into life.

“Did you see…?” She started to ask, but he just nodded at the road ahead.

“Drive.”

Deborah floored the accelerator and the car
lurched forward, swerving wildly, shooting toward the exit. Alex jammed in his seatbelt and grabbed the dashboard.

“Hey, slow, slow
. We’re clear. ”

Deborah gasped out a terrified breath that appeared to have been held in for some time, and lifted the accelerator a little.
When he was certain she wasn’t going to crash into the first object she happened across, Alex focused on the wing mirror. Several of the lunatics had left the asylum, smashing through windows, tearing after the car through the grounds. He watched them recede until he could see them no more.

“Oh my god, what am I going to do?”

Deborah sounded a little hysterical. Alex aimed for a reassuring tone.

“It’s ok
ay, you’re safe.”

“Safe?”
She flashed a wide-eyed look at him.

“Ah,” he said as understanding dawned on him. “You’re fine, Doc, I’ve never hurt anybody remember?”

She snorted.

“It’s not
you
I’m worried about Alex. It’s
him.
”

*

“We’ve got food.”

Michael kept his voice
deliberately low, so low he wasn’t even sure the figure in the woods would be able to hear it.

In the end it
had been an executive decision: Rachel was still frowning, apparently unable to decide what to do about the company they suddenly had; Jason was simply staring into space. Michael couldn’t even guess at what dilemma the big man was trying to solve, but he didn’t think it had anything to do with whoever was out there in the trees.

The three of them were traumatised, in shock most likely, and Michael knew from experience that
trauma led to bad decision making. He remembered watching, rooted to the spot in a blurred memory, as a woman whose husband was trapped in a burning house in Cardiff, back when he had been involved in actual police work, had suddenly turned on the men in uniforms, the ones that she perceived as simply standing and watching her beloved spouse burn.

The woman had launched herself at them, lost in fury, striking and scratching at the police, and for all the understanding they had tried to show, they had been forced to
throw her in the back of a van, even as her husband escaped through the back door with injuries no worse than smoke-scarred lungs. Bad decisions.

Michael knew two things: firstly, there was safety in numbers. The creatures had a serious weight advantage, and any extra body that might even up the score a little was something they had to consider. Secondly, whoever the figure in the woods was, it was definitely not one of
them.
Because it wasn’t currently trying to tear them all apart.
They
were attackers, not stealthy watchers.

At his words, Rachel looked at him sharply. He nodded
reassurance to her.
It’ll be ok.

“You must be hungry, we mean you no harm. Join us.”

After a few moments the bushes rustled, parting enough for Michael to make out cautious eyes peering at him. Michael was reminded of his attempts to befriend a stray cat that had visited his garden years before. It had been wild, terrified; snapping and hissing at his attempts at friendship. But it had also been starving. Eventually survival instincts would always overcome fear.

Michael smiled broadly at the slowly parting bushes, hoping the combination of dirt, blood, sweat and fear that must have been etched on his face didn’t make him look manic.

The figure stepped from the trees. A man, bare-chested and shivering. He was tall, athletic, injured: Michael saw a deep wound on his shoulder that seemed to be oozing blood and looked like it needed stitches. What really caught his attention though was the man’s face: it was obvious he’d been through some horrific ordeal – Michael wondered briefly how many people there were left out there who had not – but it wasn’t fear written across the man’s features. It was confusion.

“Come, sit down,” Michael said. “We’ve got all
the elements of a healthy breakfast right here: sausage rolls, biscuits. I think there might even be some liquor.” He grinned, and felt his nerves ease a little when the smile was returned.

The man sat near the fire, accepting a half-eaten packet of biscuits with a nod of thanks.

“Who are you people?” He asked, his voice gruff, and the words brought on a short coughing fit. Michael could see the soot on his body now, mixing with the blood to form a sort of paste, and he had a bad burn that ran around the left side of his waist and across his back. Fire. Michael thought about the explosion they had heard in the night.

“The man with the biscuits is Michael,” Rachel said, and Michael was gratified to hear her tone: she had obviously reached the same
conclusions as he had. “The mountain over there is my brother Jason. I’m Rachel.”

“I’m…” the man started, before trailing off.

Rachel saw the break in the man’s eyes then, saw a feeling of loss and bewilderment that took her straight back to that rooftop, and to Jason, a bloody roof tile in his hand. She felt sympathy well up for the stranger despite herself.

“Were you in St. Davids?” She asked gently.

The man’s eyes clouded.

“I…don’t know. I don’t remember anything before a few hours ago. I came to in some wreckage, like a plane had crashed, there were bodies everywhere, and then these…
people
…chasing me.” His voice faltered.

“You don’t know your name?” Michael asked.

The man shook his head. “Not for sure. I had this in my pocket,” – he fished out a small strip of plastic, similar to a credit card – “So I suppose I’m John Francis, but I don’t know. Don’t even know if these are my trousers.”

He snorted, and then chuckled, and then suddenly they were all smiling. Even Jason’s mouth seemed to curve a little. Rachel grinned, put a hand over her lips to
stifle the laughter, and gradually, mindful of the noise they were making, silence was restored.

“
A world so fucked that a man can’t even be sure whose trousers he is wearing
,” Michael intoned sombrely. John fixed his trousers with a morose stare and nodded glumly, and then there was no stopping it.

Michael’s words, the impeccable deadpan delivery of them, drove Rachel
over the edge first; giggling until her sides ached. Michael caught the infection next, and his wheezing laugh just drove her on, tears streaming down her face, tracing a path through the caked-on dirt and blood. John’s bewildered face poured fuel on the hysteria and then he was laughing too, shaking his head.

And then, even as Rachel’s eyes filled with tears, some part of her mind was trying to process an alternative thought:
Jason’s getting up
and then she was screaming, her thoughts suddenly slogging through wet sand as she watched her brother snatch up the knife and pipe he had used to devastating effect the previous night, and he was turning to face the horde of infected that burst from the line of trees and tore toward them, snarling.

Rothbury’s
relevance had faded around seven hundred years before the infection finally killed off its stubborn resistance. Once a burgeoning market town, located on the banks of the river Coquet, with excellent transport links to larger towns, it had been a hub for the wool trade. Technological progress quickly left the town behind, rendering it quaint; just another small collection of historically interesting buildings for ramblers to peer at as they followed a walking path set out by the National Trust.

It had a population of just two thousand, many of them farmers
, and virtually no crime at all, despite being the de facto home to almost all of the UK’s most violent offenders of the past three or more decades.

It had taken Alex and Deborah a little under fifteen minutes to travel the distance between the hospital and the town. En route they had seen precisely one car. Almost fatally
not
seen it, given the speed the thing was travelling. The car hadn’t stopped after the near-collision, and Alex, still gripping the dashboard, felt something in his gut begin to roll around, an intuition that wanted an attentive audience.

When they reached a small parking area on the hill overlooking Rothbury, he regretted not listening. The town was still the best part of a mile away, but they were close enough to see it.
Rothbury had suffered extensive damage, as though a small war had broken out there. Several of the buildings were smouldering, and the handful of cars they could make out on the roads looked to have been involved in collisions.

Deborah stared at Alex, and then back at the burning town.

“What happened?”

She sounded very young suddenly, and very afraid. Alex felt a stab of sympathy.

“Uh…terrorism?

A pained look
contorted her features, and she put the car in gear and headed toward the town without a word.

Realisation dawned.
Of course. She lives here. Lived.

‘Home’ was the last word Alex would have used
to describe Rothbury as they approached the edge of town, Deborah slowing the car to a crawl, and finally they saw it up close.

The town was a bloodbath. The entire population looked to have spilled onto the
streets simultaneously, and then proceeded to tear each other apart.

Alex stared at it in w
onder as they entered from the west. There were bodies everywhere, walls and cars stained dark with blood. He saw a severed head sitting atop the bonnet of a Toyota like a grisly hood ornament, the thing’s eyes fixed in terror on some horror that had long since departed.
What did you see?
Alex thought, and lifted his hand, placing it on Deborah’s arm.

“Stop here.”

“I need to get to my parents’ house, it’s not far.”

“Stop
here.
” A little bit of steel poured into the mould, a touch of
him
in the tone. She stopped.

“We’re barely in the town,”
She began, but he lifted a hand to silence her.