Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) (8 page)

But then he heard it; faint, getting louder. Snarling.

Shit.

He nodded at Deborah, and charged toward a gap in the trees that lined the road, grimacing as the pain in his knees resurfaced. There wasn’t much in the way of forest here, just a smattering of trunks and then rolling fields beyond. Nowhere to hide.

“Run,” he gasped at Deborah,
as he took off, running faster than he had ever thought possible, fuelled by terror. Even as he ran, he silently cursed his incarceration, feeling the lactic acid building up in his muscles almost immediately. His lack of fitness was going to get him killed. He would be the first person ever to die of cramp.

When he saw the steep drop approaching
and heard the rushing of water, he knew immediately that it was going to offer his only chance of survival. He pointed.

“The river!”

He veered toward it, neither knowing nor caring whether Deborah had heard him. The drop was about thirty feet. He was just slowing to think about the potential for damage in jumping into the fast-moving water when Deborah sped past him and hurled herself over the edge. Glancing behind him, Alex saw the reason why she hadn’t hesitated: the things were right behind him, fifty feet or less, closing
fast.

He jumped.

The water was freezing; it felt like it sheared off a layer of skin as he broke the surface. He felt his feet kiss the bottom, and was dimly aware that if it had been only a foot or two shallower, the drop would probably have smashed his legs.

The freezing liquid poured into his lungs, shocking his system, and he coughed
painfully, succeeding only in drawing in another watery breath. The world was spinning crazily, occasional flashes of the sky and the surface of the river being torn away from him as the current sucked him under again. Finally he succeeded in righting himself, and saw that Deborah was already pulling away from him, working with the water, powerful strokes sending her shooting along the river. All those hours spent at the gym suddenly seemed less cosmetic and more like essential preparation.

Alex was a hopeless swimmer; always had been. He thrashed and bucked, and ultimately
had no choice but to let the river take him wherever it wanted. He heard the splashes behind him; the things chasing them were pouring over the ledge above like lemmings, utterly oblivious to the drop, gradually filling the river. He redoubled his efforts, splashing crazily, fearful that he was only slowing himself down.

A couple of times he risked glancing back, and felt a fragile seed of optimism germinate: they couldn’t swim. Their thrashing and tumbling was even more chaotic a
nd directionless than his own. Contrary to all his expectations, he was pulling clear of them. Focusing all his energy on suppressing the panic, Alex tried to slow his wild movement, lending it some sort of rhythm, and soon there was clear daylight between him and his pursuers.

It was just as he began to think that maybe they were going to be alright after all that Alex realised the folly in his plan. In his terror he hadn’t even thought to consider which direction the river was flowing. It hadn’t been important then.

Now, watching in horror as Rothbury loomed closer, it suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world. At least until the river grew malevolent, and sent him crashing into a low-hanging branch, and Alex was yanked to painful halt as though someone had pulled the handbrake.

His eyes widened
in fright.

Over his shoulder, in the blind spot the branch
that had snared him would not allow Alex to twist and see, he heard a noise grow distinct from the roar of the water, getting closer. A noise that made him rage hopelessly against his restraints, as he had so often before.

Snarling.

*

The rain began almost apologetically, as though it were somehow embarrassed to
be returning to Wales yet again. A few drops at first, like warning shots, and then the heavens opened, the pregnant clouds above finally delivering, and the downpour began in earnest.

It fell on the small group of people making their way carefully along the road between St. Davids and Aberystwyth, plastering their clothes to their skin, washing away the blood and the filth accumulated across several days of sweat and terror. They trudged on, grateful for the noise the weather provided, for the way it masked their passage.

Across the fields and forests, over empty farms and emptied villages, the rain poured, running in rivulets that became streams, as though nature itself was trying to cleanse the earth of the horrors unleashed upon it.

All across the land, the sightless creatures lifted their faces to the heavens, the thrumming of the cold rain on their faces a mystery that they could not solve, and when the sky cracked, and a deafening peal of thunder shook the countryside, the creatures, as one, clapped their
blood-stained palms to their ears and shrieked in agony.

*

The rain fell on Jason like a cooling balm, but it did nothing to wash away his confusion. The others couldn’t see his mother, and that only made her presence there more terrifying.

Rachel had never had quite the same connection
with their mother, hadn’t needed it he supposed, she was strong enough to walk alone. Always closer to their father. But Jason, big, fragile Jason, he had always needed the security his mother provided.

So it was comforting
in some ways to see her walking alongside them, but frightening that she was naked from the waist up, and that her eyes had been gouged out, and of course that she had a piece of roof tile jutting from her forehead like an accusation.

She hadn’t said anything to him, hadn’t done anything other than walk alongside him, but Jason was
relieved in some ways that she was there. Glad he hadn’t killed her, though he knew she must be pretty pissed off with him: that tile looked
painful.

He avoided looking at her wrinkled sagging body, her
blood-stained breasts. They made feelings of shame and embarrassment squirm through him, and an overwhelming sense of sorrow: his mother was a proud woman. The thought that the residents of St. Davids would see her walking around in such a state would leave her mortified.

Jason had motioned to her to cover herself up a couple of times, figuring that maybe she wasn’t aware for some reason that she was walking around half naked, but on each occasion the empty holes in her face had simply glared back at him balefully, until he had averted his eyes.

When Jason had been small – or at least when he had been young – his mother had found him one day alone in his bedroom, sobbing. He hadn’t wanted to tell her, felt ashamed of the fact that he was being mercilessly bullied by kids half his size, but his mother’s talent for extracting information was legendary around the town, and when she brought her skills to bear on his young resolve, he had crumbled in short order.

The bullying wasn’t physical of course: Jason towered above everyone in his class, and even the most
short-sighted among his peers understood that if they moved him to genuine anger they stood little chance of emerging from a confrontation unscathed. No, it was psychological; insidious, leaving a far more indelible mark on him.

When his mother got the details she had marched to the school and straight into the head teacher’s office. The children in the corridors looked on, astonished, for
Mr Meredith was a scowling, ominous presence that hovered over the school like a malignant tumour, spreading fear throughout. His office was the scariest place of all: the lion’s den.

To Paula Roberts, Jim Meredith was simply the man she had once observed buying a pornographic magazine in a quiet newsagent’s on the outskirts of town. She had made her presence known to him, and left him in no doubts about
what she had seen when she glanced knowingly at the plain brown paper bag he clutched to his chest tightly. Information was power, and power was of no use unless the people you wished to affect knew you held it.

So when
Mrs Roberts had marched into Meredith’s office, it was the domineering head teacher whose face turned a sickly shade of green.

The children cowering outside couldn’t hear what she said to him, for she kept her tone low, crushed under the weight of the force she exerted on the words. They heard
Mr Meredith stammering and whimpering though, and when she stormed out of his office, the lucky few that saw through the door before it closed reported that Mr Meredith had officially ‘shit his pants’.

She was a formidable woman in life. In death, she became something altogether more intimidating.

Jason’s attempts to cling on to the world around him were becoming more strained; he felt as though he was being
stretched
. He remembered seeing a television show about black holes, and the way it was thought that if you were unlucky enough to be near one you would simply be pulled to pieces, the gravity affecting your feet many times stronger than that affecting your head, stretching your body out like wet dough until it snapped.

The stretching was bad enough when he saw her, the feeling of being slowly pulled into the space around him, like his mind was leaking. But just when he felt as though he might not be able to take anymore, things got considerably worse. She began to speak.

Jasssssssonnnnnn…

*

Claire jumped as the thunder rolled and ricocheted around the town above her, sounding impossibly loud. Her mother had taught her long ago to look for the flash of lightning and to count the seconds until the air began to rumble.
One second for each mile to the storm
she had said, and the words had comforted Claire, dulling the terror at the howling of the sky, as much by giving her something to focus on as by letting her know that the storm was not right upon her.

This time, locked in the cellar of the pub with the strange old man, Claire could not see the lightning flashing, but she knew the thunder must be close, maybe right above them. Never before had she heard it so loud: even down here, below ground level, the sound was like a furious god, unloading its rage on the sky.

She curled up even tighter, making herself as small as possible.

“Haw! Just a storm young lady, that’ll be the least frightening thing you’ve witnessed today I’d wager!”

Bill gave her a reassuring smile.

She
nodded, face whitening with the memory of the morning.

Bill flipped over an empty crate, lowering himself down onto it gently, with a sigh.

“My knees,” he said by way of explanation. “No one ever tells you to enjoy your knees at your age, you know.”

He leaned a little closer.

“Enjoy your knees, girl. Comes a time when you get to hating them, so enjoy ‘em while you can!”

Claire nodded again. Bill was confusing, but she was gradually warming to the idea that he wasn’t going to cause her any
harm. At the very least, he wasn’t going to try to eat her. Which made him the friendliest face she’d seen in nearly a week.

Bill chuckled, low and rumbling, the gravel in his voice twinned with the thunder above.

“Have you been down here since...
it
started?” Claire asked.

“I started off up there,” Bill said, pointing at the ceiling, “landlord gave up trying to evict me at closing time a while back, so I’m
part of the furniture and usually the first customer. He ran outside to see what was going on, I ran down here. You learn some things when you’ve been around as long as I have. Chief among them: don’t run
toward
danger.”

Bill plucked the
ring pull from a can of lager, took a long, deep draught, grimaced.

“Warm. Tell me your name then, girl.”

“I’m Claire,” she replied, her voice small.

“You live close by
, Claire?”

Claire nodded.

“And what about your parents?”

“My dad doesn’t live with us, it’s just me and mum. She…became one of those things.”

The cheery demeanour fell from Bill’s face.

“Sorry to hear that
, Claire. So you’ve been out there on your own?”

Claire nodded;
her expression downcast.

Bill grunted
as he placed the beer can on the ground.

“You got nowhere to go?”

She shook her head slowly.

“You know, when I was your age, I found myself out on the streets. War, see. I lived in London then. My old man had been an importer – fabrics and such, until he got called up. Just left one day, never came back. The war didn’t seem real then, seemed like just a load of politicians arguing about this and that, the way they do. Then the bombs started dropping.

“It’s a bit like that out there now, I think, people running around with nowhere to go, death on every corner. Only difference is the bombs ain’t made of metal now, they don’t explode.

“The bombs are things we can’t see. Can’t fight against, can’t run from. All those years ago it was all about who could build the biggest weapon. Now it’s whoever can build the smallest. And it’s all stuff your average man won’t understand: genes this and molecules that. You understand what I mean, Claire?”