Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) (25 page)

All of a sudden, Nick felt strangely euphoric, and a calm peace washed through him like a drug.

He glanced over his shoulder at the drums of aviation fuel that filled the cargo hold of the fat chopper, and finally he knew exactly what he had to do. To kill a monster, you just needed the right equipment.

That's the coward's way out Nick-
yyyy.

Nick slammed the pitch lever forward and sent the chopper into a delirious nosedive.

"Fuck you, Dad," he said with a laugh, and then the chopper smashed into the narrow bridge that connected the castle to Caernarfon and everything went dark.

*

John watched in astonishment as the chopper hurtled toward the bridge, and he realised that the pilot was not a coward. Quite the opposite. But he was definitely a fool. Crashing the chopper into the Infected would kill many of them, but not enough to change anything, not unless the vehicle was carrying a powerful bomb. Even if he was trying to destroy the bridge and give the people in the castle a fighting chance, the chopper was unlikely to get the job done.

When the chopper hit, John could scarcely remember
a time when he had been more wrong about anything.

The explosion was gigantic, decimating the Infected in a huge fireball that continued to grow as it mushroomed up into the sky.
As the smoke began to clear, he saw that the bridge had been completely destroyed, cutting the force of the Infected in two. Many on the other side of the river plunged blindly into the water and were swept out to sea.

John leaned carefully over the battlem
ents, peering down at the base of the tower. The Infected that had surrounded it had collapsed to the ground, clutching their palms to the ears in agony as the deafening roar of the explosion rolled across them.

He didn't have time to think. His legs were already moving, all thoughts of the pain in his shins forgotten. John charged down the stairs and into the great hall, and snatched a sword from the grasp of one of the stunned bikers.

"Now!" John roared, and threw back the lock on the door. "Take them NOW!"

He didn't wait to see their looks of confusion. There was no time for debate. He simply had to trust that they would follow his example.

He charged out into the smoky air already swinging, smashing the blade through the hateful flesh, decapitating and killing in a frenzy of bloodlust, and after a moment he heard the others begin to emerge from the tower behind him one by one, gradually summoning up the courage to join him. Executing the Infected before they could recover their senses.

John swung the sword until his arms ached; until merely holding the weapon became a problem for his fatigued muscles, and only when he heard Rachel screaming triumphantly at his side did he allow the blade to fall from his fingers, and to collapse
to the ground in exhaustion.

*

When John came round, he found himself sitting on a carpet of lacerated bodies. It felt oddly familiar, and it took him a moment to remember the forest outside St. Davids. He wondered how many more times he might find himself drifting on a lake of blood and exposed organs. It wasn't, he thought, the kind of thing you wanted to turn into a routine.

He glanced around. Some of the people left in the castle - to John it looked like there were about thirty of them, all told - were on their knees crying. He couldn't tell whether it was relief or shock that caused the tears; not even when he felt them coursing down his own cheeks.

The rest were on the battlements. Even Michael had somehow got himself up there.

Found someone else to carry you
, John thought, but he let the bitterness drain away from him. In the end, he owed the man his life. One way or another, Michael found leverage.

No one was swinging a weapon. No one was screaming
. Somehow it almost didn't feel real.

John hauled himself to his feet and groaned as the pain in his legs shrieked. It took him a while, but he made it to the top of
the battlements, and the sight beyond lit a small, flickering flame of hope in his heart.

The town was lost to the Infected, for the moment at least. The streets heaved with them, and John guessed there must still be hundreds out there. Maybe even thousands.

But of the ones that plunged into the river, only a few made it across.

Some can swim
, John thought, and the revelation should have shocked him, but he was too tired to care. Or maybe the strange, evolving habits of the Infected had simply lost their power to surprise him. It didn't matter. The ones that made it all the way across arrived in small bunches, or alone. They could be dealt with easily enough. The wall slowed most down long enough for them to be killed. The sea would take care of the rest.

He h
eaded toward Michael and Rachel, leaning over the battlements with Pete and Claire. If it hadn't been for the bloodstains, John might have been able to imagine them as just another family taking in the sights at the castle.

"Wasn't sure if you made it," Michael said
as John approached.

"Guess I got lucky," John said, and Michael smiled at that, and nodded wearily.

"So, you have your castle," John said. "And here's your army, for what it's worth." He gestured to the group of thirty or so people gathered in the castle's courtyard below. "So now what?"

Michael frowned, but it was Rachel that answered.

"Now we fight back," she said. "We know how to hurt them. Now
we
are the virus, and we will spread from here."

Her eyes glittered with intent.

"Let's go make some
noise.
"

Jake awoke with a roar of triumph building in his throat.

Deep in the syrupy dark, after unconsciousness had taken him, he had once again felt the strange connection with the distant intruder in his mind. Exactly as he had when he had escaped the underground base, only stronger this time. For a moment the connection had built toward a blinding intensity, burning with the brightness of a dying sun.

He knew exactly where the intruder was, and exactly how to get there. He would move through the countryside like a rocket-propelled train, and he would taste the strange old woman's oddly-familiar blood in a matter of hours.
Minutes.

Even as Jake had blacked out
after fleeing from the strange weapon that had damaged him at Catterick, he had retained the presence of mind to bury himself under debris, nesting like an animal; hiding away from the world in his vulnerable state. With a grunt, he flung the heavy slabs of concrete that had served as a protective blanket away from him and rose into the morning light. He was so excited by the prospect of heading south that he paid no attention to what was around him. No attention to the activity his extraordinary ears picked up.

"My, look how you've grown!"

A familiar voice behind him. Jake turned and his misshapen jaw dropped in astonishment.

"You've been a very naughty boy,
Misters
McIntosh."

Jake laughed; a low, rumbling sound that heaved with menace.

"Did you come here to die, old man?"

Fred Sullivan grinned broadly and lifted a crooked finger.

Four strange, square devices had been placed around Jake's resting place. He hadn't seen them. Not until it was too late. On Sullivan's signal, the things hummed into life and slammed agonising blasts of low-frequency noise through Jake, making every cell of his body shriek in agony. He dropped to his knees in anguish, paralysed by the wall of sound, locked into an invisible prison.

Jake
's vision pulsed and blurred and throbbed as he drifted helplessly on a river of pain. He saw the old man in the silver suit strolling toward him, his expression jovial.

When he was close enough for Jake to breathe in his musky scent, Sullivan leaned in
until the bristly hairs of his moustache scratched against Jake's cheek.

"I did
warn
you that we were not amateurs, Mr McIntosh," he hissed into Jake's ear. "I'm afraid you ran away before we were quite finished with you. The scientists are having a little problem with your blood, so they tell me."

Sullivan shrugged.

"Turns out they need more of it."

Sullivan chuckled, and signalled again as he strode away.

Moments later a helicopter began to descend above Jake, lowering a huge steel cage over him. Jake seethed in agony and impotent rage as he watched tiny figures attaching the hateful sonic weapons to the bars of the cage, before sliding a sheet of thick steel underneath him, trapping him like a spider in a jar.

The terrible noise beat at him, sapping his energy, and he felt himself slipping backwards into the dark
, sinking like a weighted corpse.

Fred Sullivan beamed as he watched the abomination slip into a coma. Tracking him down had been tiresome and time-consuming, but it was, Fred decided, all worth it. Just for the look on McIntosh's
vile face. Fred knew a thing or two about priceless treasures. That look was up there with the best of them.

"Shall we return to base, Sir?"

Sullivan stared thoughtfully at his new head of security.

"I think not," he said. "Best to take him where he can't do any harm, and I've had rather enough of watching this
clusterfuck up close. The fleet is waiting in the North Sea. Take him there. I'll follow."

Fred watched the chopper lift into the sky
, hauling the cage underneath it, and felt his hair begin to whip against his forehead as his own ride landed on the grass behind him.

The UK was lost, for the moment
at least, and it was likely that
Wildfire
had collapsed in much the same fashion across the entire globe. It was a setback, but hardly a time for panic.

After all
, Fred thought,
a good businessman should always be able to adapt to unforeseen...mutations in the market
.

As the chopper lifted Fred up into the sky, he smiled at his own pun. Project Wildfire had failed spectacularly.

But it was hardly the end of the world.

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