Shock (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 2) (5 page)

And then Daley died, which proved
to be the best day of his life.

He’d been frozen in place
holding a half-full bucket of feed when he saw the strange man tearing across the field toward the farm. A scream caught in Daley’s throat when the figure got close enough for him to see the blood, the ghoulish empty eye sockets. Shocked, he had barely flinched even when the creature had clamped its teeth into his forearm, chewing its way down through flesh to bone.

Daley had stood in a daze as one of the farm’s dogs, an old
Alsatian by the name of Bruce, leapt onto his attacker, knocking the sightless man to the ground. While the two of them writhed on the floor, all fur and blood and teeth, Daley simply wandered away.

A pressure began to build behind his eyes, something that felt like needles were being sl
owly slipped into the retinas. As the pain became unbearable, filling every fibre of his body, Daley finally understood what he had to do. Digging his nails into the soft whites and tearing the cancerous orbs out of their sockets felt like the most natural thing in the world. It felt like being born.

As the synapses in Daley Williams’ mind began to reorganise themselves, old connections
snapping only to be replaced, one last conscious thought passed through, insistent enough to linger like a lens flare:
find Dad.

When the creature that Daley Williams became was done on the farm, when every one of the presences that it perceived only as
other
had been dealt with, it began to wander. Ever increasing circles around the farm, into the forest beyond.

The walk was directionless, utterly devoid of intention, just a progression
of nature, like water slipping downhill.

Until the
noise.

The noise was close, very close. Muffled, and yet loud enough to Daley’s ears that it might as well have been a jet engine
bursting into life at his side. It was a hideous affront, filling him with pain.

Daley charged at the noise, crashed into something hard that bounced him away, and
landed him on the floor a few feet away. Got up. Charged again. Got up.

At the third attempt, Daley Williams crashed through the obstacle with a sharp crack, and suddenly found himself in the a
ir, falling, landing in a heap.

Now there other noises.
Noises that made something in Daley Williams scream until his head hurt. And then he could smell them, and the creature that had been Daley Williams was up on its feet, charging forward, roaring.

*

Just a kid
, John thought as he scrambled clear of the ladder and swept up one of the knives from the kitchen counter, burying it in the charging thing’s forehead.
That was somebody’s fucking kid.

S
creaming above, getting closer. Fucking Ash had killed them all.

Screaming behind now:
Jeff, finally giving up on the struggle to keep his mind intact. Ash was still on the ladder, looking up, all blood drained from his face, John peered down at him, mouth open, and no idea what words were going to fall out.

And then it hit him.

The well
.

Suddenly, the thing that had seemed off about this place was glaringly obvious: Victor had built it to defend against
humans.
Against intelligent beings with the desire and the patience to get in. He had to know that sooner or later such an attack would succeed, no matter how many traps he placed in the forest above.

He had a
nother way out.

The human brain can simultaneously c
arry out millions of calculations. At that precise moment in time John’s brain only needed to process one. There were three men in the bunker. There was no way three men were going to get out. But two might stand a chance, if something bought them a little time. Or some
body
.

His body was already performing the manoeuvre
before his mind gave it the green light: feet moving by muscle memory, the sole of his right firmly planted, the sole of his left snapping through Jeff’s knee, sending the Captain crashing to the ground.

“Go!” John screamed at Ash, “Down!”

For a beat Ash stared at him, dumbstruck.

Jeff’s screams of pain filled the tiny space.

“GO!”

Ash’s face disappeared down to the level below.

John ignored the ladder, dropping down to the next floor, trusting his knees to take the impact, taking off again before his joints could even send a word of complaint to his mind; sprinting across to the next hole before Ash could get to it, leaping down again.

Above him, John heard Jeff’s scream of pain
and fury become something altogether more unsettling, something twisted, almost inhuman in its unbridled terror.

The well was covered by a large wooden slab. John grasped it and heaved
; every muscle in his body working in perfect, panicked harmony, sending the thing crashing to the floor with a solid thud.

And there it was, salvation dropping down into the earth.
A ladder, dropping some twenty feet to an opening in the wall of the shaft. A passage. The way out. John felt giddy with relief. He leapt onto the ladder and slid, feeling the thing tremble as Ash’s weight hit it above him.

And then he was
off the cold metal and in the dark passage, as blind as the poor bastards now filling the bunker above them, but still moving forward.

Behind him, John heard the
familiar metallic
snick
, and suddenly the soft light emanating from Ash’s lighter pushed back the blackness. The lighter had not been the reason John had picked Ash, of course, but it proved a handy bonus.

The two men stopped for a moment, listenin
g. Nothing had entered the well shaft behind them. If they remained silent, there was every chance the creatures would stumble around up there forever without ever discovering their escape route.

John examined his
new surroundings: a narrow passage cut into the rock. The first few feet were clearly manmade, smooth and straight. Beyond that, the dim light revealed a more natural-looking path, a narrow space between sharp, jagged walls.

John motioned to Ash to pass him the lighter, put a finger to his lips, an
d waved at the pilot to follow.

They moved slowly, for what felt like an eternity, until at l
ast John realised he could feel a cool breeze on his sweat-drenched face. Moments later, he heard the rumbling roar of the ocean, and then he could see it: the exit, a faint light cast by the moon revealing an opening. A way out.

When they emerged into the moonlight, the two men found
themselves on a tiny pebble beach, barely more than 15 feet in width, almost entirely concealed from the ocean by towering rocks to either side, and home to something that took John by surprise.

“Son of a
bitch
,” he breathed.

A boat.
Victor’s contingency. John felt like laughing out loud. They had travelled all this way to catch the lunatic and his paranoid mania and obsessive planning might just have ended up saving their lives.

The boat was moored to a steel rod driven deep into the beach. John clambered aboard
, pulling the wet rope with him. It had an engine, the use of which he dismissed instantly as too noisy. They weren’t going to make for the open sea, just for the next spot at which they could make land. The boat was a bonus, but the helicopter remained the real prize.

After a moment’s search, John found what he was looking for under one of the low seats tha
t ran port and starboard: oars.

Further investigation revealed something else: a flare gun. John tucked it into his waistband, comforted to be once again in possession of something with a trigger.

“Grab an oar, Ash,” he said. “We’ll go out around that rock.” He pointed to the rock to the right of the beach. “First chance we get, we’ll get back on land, get back to the chopper and get the fuck out of here.”

Ash nodded.

I’m the leader now
, John thought.
Shit.

The boat was heavy, and they made slow progress with the oars, straining to manoeuvre it through the narrow entrance to the beach, muttering low curses of frustration. The tide was working against them, quickly draining the strength from John’s arms.

He caught Ash looking at the controls to the engine and burned a glare into the pilot’s eyes until Ash turned away, his face flushed.

It took them a long time, maybe as much as an hour, to finally get the boat out onto the open water and clear of the beach. The
going got a little easier then; with less chance that they would strike sharp rocks the two men were able to put in smooth, powerful strokes to drag the boat, inch by inch, through the rolling water.

The cliffs were steep for a
long way, but John could see their destination in the distance, a drop in the rocky walls to a level that would allow them to leap from the boat back onto land. They would be losing the boat, trusting to chance that there would be no welcome party waiting for them, but it seemed like the only spot available. John pointed at it, returning Ash’s nod of understanding.

It took them another thirty minutes,
long enough that when they made the jump back to land, John’s arms were aching so much he was unsure he still had the strength to haul himself back up over the rocks. When finally he dragged himself back onto flat land, he crashed onto his back, panting as quietly as he could, eyes scanning the woods around him for signs of movement.

It took him a moment to see it, the shuffling shape in the woods, maybe fifty yards distant. As he focused on it, he saw that it was not alone.
There were other shapes out there in the dark, stiff-moving and aimless, blundering blindly through the forest. He counted five. There would be more.

Shit.

Ash hauled himself up over the edge of the rocks, eyes widening in surprise as John clamped his palm over the pilot’s mouth. John’s eyes narrowed and he nodded his head toward the figures in the distance.

John pressed his mouth to Ash’s left e
ar, breathing the words softly.

“You know the way to the chopper from here?”

Ash nodded; his face pale. He pointed to the east.

“We go slow, and
silent.
”

Ash nodded again.

It would have been a risky plan anyway: they had probably a couple of miles to travel and rough terrain to cross in the darkness. Still, John had hoped it would prove slightly more successful. As it was, the two men had barely crept forward a few yards when the tide drove the boat into the rocks behind them with a sharp bang.

John didn’t bother to turn toward the figures in the distance to check whether they had heard; the creatures seemed to have preternatural hearing. The ‘plan’ such as it wa
s, unravelled like worn fabric.

“Run!”

John put his head down and sprinted. He was quicker than Ash, but he was gratified to see the pilot keeping pace with him, bounding over shrubs and branches, his speed a product of unhinged terror.

Behind them,
John could hear the now-familiar crashing and shrieking of pursuit. He didn’t look back. There was nothing to be done about the chasing pack: the true danger lay in the possibility of them running headlong into another group. He saw nothing, kept charging forward until his lungs felt ready to burst.

He was pulling ahead of Ash now, and he risked slowing a little to look back. The pilot, to his credit, wasn’t far behind. Of more concern to John were the shapes he could make out further back: more of them now, crashing through the trees, some falling, and bouncing back to their feet almost
instantly to give chase.

He remembered the weapons he had lost in that first chase.
The sword. Ridiculous as he had felt the weapon to be, he would have given anything to feel that cold steel in his hands now.

Ash had closed the gap; John focused on the way ahead, leaping over a rock that threatened to put an end to things, and then suddenly the trees thinned and he burst into the clearing,
unaware of the hysterical laugh that burst from his lips.

The cho
pper sat where they had left it, untouched.

Behind
him, Ash screamed in triumph, the sight of his beloved helicopter apparently pouring extra fuel into his engine. The pilot took off like a sprinter, and John could almost swear he heard the man cackle as he closed the gap.

John reached the chopper fractions ahead of Ash and leapt
inside; his eyes immediately landing on the objects that made his heart feel like dancing.

Secured to a rack on the far wall of t
he chopper he saw something that might just give them a chance: M27 assault rifles.

John snatched o
ne up, slamming in a full clip.