The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  The Kielder Strain

  Rebecca Fernfield

  The Kielder Strain

  Rebecca Fernfield

  Redbegga Publishing

  Copyright 2019 Rebecca Fernfield

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  THE KIEDLER STRAIN is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Rebecca Fernfield

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  A World Torn Down series

  The Road to Ruin

  The Savage Road

  The Outcast’s Journey

  The Path to Destruction

  The Route to Justice

  Blackout and Burn series

  Days of Fire

  Nights of Fire

  Land of Fire

  Town of Fire

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Epilogue

  A Request

  Never Miss Another Book

  About the Author

  For my family.

  1

  Kielder Forest

  Thursday, November 18th, 9.15 pm

  The urge to run drives Anita deeper into the forest. With no idea of direction, and no sense of time, all she can hear is her own rasping breath and the pounding thump of her pulse. A cloud of white breath billows in the light from her torch as she shines it into the trees. A small clearing lies ahead. She searches for a path and any clue to a way out.

  A branch cracks nearby and she freezes. Stay still. Stay calm. She flicks the torch off. If she doesn’t move, perhaps it won’t find her. Heart hammering in her chest, she waits. And listens. Why hadn’t she gone with the others? Because you’re stupid, Nita! Stupid!

  Something moves in the tree overhead. With a flap of beating wings, a bird, black against the dark blue sky, erupts from its branches, flies over the clearing and disappears beyond the canopy. The stars, without the pollution of light, fill the sky with sprays and pinpricks of brilliant silver.

  She listens, keeping her own body still. Nothing moves—at least nothing large moves. She waits a few moments more; perhaps it has finally stopped following her. She flicks the torch back on, and steps out into the clearing. Cold creeps along the collar of her jacket, brushing her neck.

  If only she’d gone to the Institute with the others she’d probably be safe in bed by now, tucked up in the sleeping bag with Jamie. She grits her teeth. Jamie. It was all his fault. Why had she ever listened to him? Because you’re an idiot, Nita. That’s why. She tightens her eyes, feeling the quick, terrified, beat of her heart. She swings the torch around the clearing. There is no evidence of a path, and without a path she will be trapped in the woods until morning. She’s an idiot—just like her mother had said. An idiot who has no idea about what it takes to make it in the real world. An idiot who got herself thrown out of university because she was too easily led and is now on a slippery slope to exactly nowhere. She clenches her jaws and forces her mother’s nagging voice out of her head. She has to get back to the campsite or risk hypothermia, or is it hyperthermia? Whichever, it will be an unbearably cold and wet night if she didn’t.

  Pulling the jacket zipper to beneath her chin, she sits on a fallen trunk and shines the torch to its root-ball. It sits at least eight feet high at the edge of the woods. Yesterday, when they’d trekked through the forest so that Nate could make a map of the feasible routes to the Institute, she’d looked through the trees. The forest floor had seemed ancient with its massive upturned roots and wind-blown trees hidden beneath thick blankets of emerald green moss. Nothing moved among the ferns growing in the dappled light. Nothing crept among the moss-covered and rotting trunks. That had seemed odd to Anita. She’d expected birds of prey to be perched in the branches, squirrels running up and down trunks, launching themselves from tree to tree, and deer jumping from behind the undergrowth startled by the walkers invading their home. But there had been nothing; a dead place. Perhaps it was because the trees were pines? It was a man-made forest after all. She huffs; Man poisons everything.

  Wood snaps. She swings the torch in the direction of its noise, and scans the area of light. Nothing moves. The wind blows cold against her face and a branch falls somewhere in the forest with a crack. She wipes at her nose with her sleeve as the tip begins to sting and her teeth to chatter. Spots of rain tap against her jacket and wet her lashes. Rain is the last thing she needs! Standing, she points the torch along the length of the fallen tree. Its root creates an overhang, a place she can sit and get at least some protection from the coming storm. Rain spatters against her cheek as the wind picks up and she runs with head bowed to the dead root-ball. Crouching beneath the overreaching fingers, she pulls her hood up, hugs her knees and waits.

  The torchlight flickers, its batteries waning. “Shit!” She taps the torch against her palm. It brightens, flickers, then brightens again. She switches it off in an effort to save it for when he comes close again. He must be a lunatic. Who, in their right mind, would chase her through the forest and torture her likes this? As her eyes adjust, the dark clears and the outlines of the trees, though black, become visible against the night sky. Everything is grey, or black. Only the sky is an expanse of midnight blue speckled silver. As the minutes, then hours, pass, her eyes grow heavy and, despite her fear, she falls into a fitful sleep. She wakes to the crack of rotten wood.

  Instantly alert, heart pounding, her eyes open. Daylight has filtered through the night and the clearing is washed a dark grey.

  Snap!

  Anita scrabbles against the root-ball and searches the grey space. Something moves between the trees at the edge of the clearing and disappears.

  A flash of light drags her attention from the figure to the other side of the cleari
ng. It flickers as it moves between the trees. She scrambles forward.

  “Hey!” Her throat is dry, the call barely audible.

  The light disappears as it moves deeper into the woods.

  “Hey!”

  She scrambles from beneath the overhang, scraping her forehead against a sharp root, and sprints, chasing the light as it disappears then reappears among the branches.

  A dark figure moves across the clearing, caught at the edge of her vision, and she pushes harder to reach the light. As she crashes into the forest, she can hear nothing but her own harsh breaths and the rasp of the branches as they scrape against her jacket. The light is even further away.

  “Hey! Stop. I’m here.”

  Footsteps pound behind her. Sharp pine needles scratch at her face and catch at her hair. She raises an arm as protection. As she runs deeper into the forest, a dark figure draws parallel, a single tree between them. She darts to the left, stumbling, running blind, thrashing her arms to force the branches to part.

  Her foot catches at a root rising above the forest floor and she falls. Pain shoots across her kneecaps as they knock against more worming roots and her hands slam flat against the cold dirt. She scrabbles against the earth and pushes up on all fours.

  Sour breath, hot and moist, brushes the skin of her cheek.

  2

  EIGHTEEN HOURS EARLIER

  Kielder Village, 9.16 am

  Javeen swings the patrol car into the station’s car park and curses; PC Stangton’s bicycle is already in its stand. She’d hoped to get in before him. ‘Late again, Latimer?’ he would say with that self-satisfied smirk and glint in his eyes that told her he knew exactly why she’d been shunted to this backwater. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s wanted to slap his smug face, and if he gives her that wink again! She breathes out the tension with a huff and her shoulders sag with resignation. She only had herself to blame. They all knew about it—exactly why she’d been transferred; she was an embarrassing faux pas that needed sweeping under the carpet, or rather, ‘disappeared’ to Kielder. “Note to self,” she mutters. “Do not bed a Superintendent with aspirations of climbing up the greasy pole to become Chief Super, particularly if he’s already married.” She pulls the handbrake up with a vindictive yank and stares at the tiny Police Station. Tucked away at the end of the village, the last building before the road disappears back into the forest, it seems to cower beneath the trees; its slate roof mottled with lichen, its white-washed walls crawling with green algae.

  She had to admit - although it was a secret she hugged to herself - she liked the place. Was it boring? Compared to Grimsby, her last placement, yes it was. She shudders at the memory. Hell, the women there were worse than the men, and you could bet, nine times out of ten, the females were the perpetrators when the neighbours called to complain about a fight next door. Take Aileen Ricks for instance. Now, there was a woman you didn’t want to cross. Built like the proverbial outhouse, at forty-one she was as wide as she was tall, a cigarette permanently on the go, and more than happy to lob an ashtray, remote control, plate, or kettle – all of which she had done – at her husband. Mr Ricks wasn’t exactly small himself, but no match for Aileen’s abusive temper and abhorrence of his ‘habits’, as she used to call the irritations that set it off. You couldn’t fault her work ethic though; sixty hours a week at the local fish processing plant whilst juggling kids, a husband (when he wasn’t on the docks), and a house, was no easy feat.

  Javeen sighs. Grimsby. The town that had made her wonder if she had chosen the right career and driven her into the arms of the very married Superintendent Nigel ‘bloody’ Parker. Policing there was certainly gritty, just like in the weekly police procedurals she’d been glued to as a teenager. If she was honest, despite the tantrums, and angry, bordering on abusive, phone calls to Nigel, Javeen was relieved when she’d been banished to the sleepy backwater that was Kielder. This week was different though. This week, the chaos that marred the towns and cities seemed to be catching up with the quiet village.

  As she enters the office, she wishes for the second time that she’d beaten Stangton into work. She determines that tomorrow she will. He looks up from his desk as she enters through the door. A gust of cold November wind blows dead leaves across the threshold with her. “Aye, aye. Look what the wind’s blown in!”

  Javeen stifles her groan as he looks at her with interest bordering on contempt.

  “Late again, Latimer?” Light shines on his scalp where his hair is already thinning to bald. His cheeks are ruddy. “Up too late, were you? Walk of shame, ay?”

  She drops her handbag on the table a little too hard. Oh, shut up, Stangton! Her sex life, or lack of it, was nothing to do with him, but confronting PC Stuart Stangton, village Bobby and nosey parker extraordinaire, just wasn’t worth it.

  “Ay?” His eyes gleam with mirth. He’s enjoying watching her squirm.

  Javeen swallows down her anger as she slides her handbag inside the desk drawer. She’ll brazen it out. She gives him a tight smile with lips curled tight against her teeth. “Oh, you know …” If she can’t bite back, she’ll tease.

  He raises his brows, a smile cracking across his lips, a glimmer of greedy interest in his eyes. “Oh, aye?” He waits. She leaves the office and switches on the kettle in the tiny kitchen. Let him stew.

  “Two sugars,” he calls from his desk.

  Make your own coffee.

  “Spill the beans then, Latimer. Who was it?”

  She drops an overlarge spoonful of coffee into her mug and drowns it with milk. The kettle boils. She can feel his eyes boring into her back.

  “Blackwell from the garage?”

  She ignores him. However, Andy Blackwell from the garage would be a contender. At six foot three with broad shoulders and muscles that over-filled his t-shirt he was certainly a bloke you wouldn’t kick out of bed. But no, her bed mate last night, as it had been every night since she’d arrived in Kielder was a hot water bottle, a cup of tea, and a copy of the next Stephen King on her TBR pile. Since she’d arrived, she’d made pretty good headway through that list.

  “Maybe it was Jack from the Hound & Stars? He’s got the hots for you.”

  This was news to her. Jack, landlord of the village pub, was pushing seventy and didn’t look as if he’d had the hots for anyone since 1979.

  “Give me a break!” she retorts.

  “Pah! Don’t tell me then. I’m not that bothered. Who you shag is your own business.”

  Chance would be a fine thing! “Too bloody right!” She gives the coffee an extra stir—she knows the scraping of metal against the hard surface of the mug grates on his nerves.

  “As long as he wasn’t married, Latimer, ay?” Stangton mutters, his petty vengeance obvious.

  Javeen bites back her words. One of these days she wouldn’t be able to hold back and then he’d know about it. Nosey sod. She saunters back to the office and places her mug on the coaster. Milky coffee spills over the sides.

  “Watch it!” Stangton remonstrates moving a pile of papers away from the mess. “Anyway, you haven’t got time to drink that. We’ve just had a call from the Institute. There’s been an incident up there.”

  “Incident?”

  “Vegan extremists.”

  Javeen snorts. “Vegan extremists?”

  “Don’t laugh, Latimer. It can come harsh when they whip you with their celery sticks.”

  “Right. So, what exactly have they been up to?”

  “Lobbing avocadoes. Waving placards. All very scary stuff.”

  Javeen sighs. Chaos seems to have followed her to the village.

  3

  Kielder Institute, 9.36 am

  The door to the lab opens and thuds to a shut. Max tenses as the lock clicks. It’s her—again! His heart taps in time to the tack, tack of her heels as she makes her way across the tiles. The noise seems to fill the small room.

  “Dr Anderson, how’s it coming on?” Dr Marta Steward stands at
his shoulder for a moment then steps to the window and closes the slatted blinds, shutting out the grey morning light. “That’s better.” The bank of trees across the car park disappears from his peripheral vision along with the straggle of scruffy activists with placards at the gates. He grits his teeth. The flour bombs they’d thrown at the car this morning had smeared the windscreen as he’d switched the wipers on. Stupid, ungrateful fools! They had no idea just how important their work at the Institute was; it didn’t seem to matter to them that it would save lives.

  The protesters appearance at the Institute had given Max heartburn. He’d thought the location, deep in the forest, only two miles from the most remote village in England, would have given him, and his colleagues, some protection. He’d been wrong, and now the petty anarchists were here lobbing stones and flour paste-filled balloons as he passed through the gates. At least the protests weren’t like those in the city; there he had become frightened. The lab had come under frequent attack, and he’d feared for his life on more than one occasion. This lot, thankfully, seemed to lack the edge and cohesion of the other terrorist group. That they had been terrorists was certain, the death threats, break-ins, and, finally, the incendiary device detonated at the front doors, had proved that beyond doubt.