The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  His sleep is light, flirts with the edges of a deeper unconsciousness. As it dips into the trough of nightmares, Max is running. The forest ricochets with the sound of barking and behind him the pack runs. Sweat trickles from every pore as he sprints through trees, and jumps over fallen trunks. The dogs close in and surround him. He’s caught in torchlight and the dogs bay for his blood. They leap as guns blast and Max dances as the bullets tear into him. He wakes with a start.

  Cold seeps through to his bones. He stands, shakes the leaves from his torn shirt, tips his nose upwards and sniffs. He can smell the scent of her fear. It wafts like a band of smoke in the air and he follows it to the clearing. A tree with its massive root lies fallen, stretching out across the grasses. The girl crouches at the base of the upturned root, sheltering beneath its bone white fingers. He runs along the treeline and approaches from her blindside. He creeps along the trunk and crouches, salivating. She’s asleep, crouching, leaning into the root, her arms still tight to her body. A torch is grasped in her hand, its light weakening. He shuffles forward. Slice at her! He reaches a clawed hand to her face. Warm breath brushes coarse hairs. No! She’s beautiful as she sleeps, so young, her skin pale and unblemished, a blonde plait falls across her cheek from beneath her woollen hat. If he has a daughter … pain stabs at his heart … he would want her to be this beautiful. She murmurs in sleep. He snatches his hand away and jumps back behind the trunk. Saliva pools in his mouth.

  He pulls at his hair and turns, galloping away from the girl to the forest. He squats at the treeline, staring to the root, clawing at his face, digging claws into his own belly. You can’t eat her, Max! That makes you a monster. He squats and waits. Time passes and the charcoal of night fades to grey. In the distance, in the lower woods closer to the village, he hears voices. Two—a man and a woman. His heart picks up a beat. Movement at the root and the girl stands. He steps out from the treeline. She’s seen him. He darts back behind the tree as the weak light of her torch shines in his direction.

  The voices are louder. If he hadn’t slept, he could have slashed and sliced them too. Light flashes. The girl searches the forest as the light flickers among the trunks.

  “Hey!” She steps out from the root. “Hey!” She waves her arm as the light moves between the trees then runs to follow.

  Max makes his move. As she reaches the tree-line he runs parallel. The urge to dig his claws into her flesh consumes him. He can hear the pounding of her heart, its beat irregular, like a tone-deaf drummer. Her yellow plaits bounce against her jacket. She raises an arm to protect her face against the branches as she runs through the trees. Max gallops beside her. Keeping her pace is easy – she’s slow, so slow – he snickers and licks his lips in anticipation. There are no thoughts, only the need to sink his teeth into her ripe flesh. She glances across to him as she pushes another branch from her face, stumbles as her eyes widen, then darts to the left. An ache spreads through his groin. Her foot catches against a root and she falls. She grunts in pain as her knee knocks against the worming root. Her hands slam to the forest floor. Within a second, as she scrabbles to her feet, he’s so close he could lick her cheek. Max knocks her back to the forest floor and straddles her. Aroused to the point of ecstasy, he sinks sharp incisors into her neck and tears. In the distance the voices fade and leave the forest.

  13

  Their efforts had been fruitless and Javeen had returned to Andy’s house, cold and weary, unable to find whatever had made that soul-scraping noise in the night. The dark of the forest had given her chills and there was no way on God’s earth that she’d go back in there at night.

  She flicks the kettle on and spoons in a heaped teaspoon of coffee to her mug, then adds a few more grains – today she’d need the caffeine – and drowns it with milk, full-fat thank you very much. She may even eat the chocolate bar stashed in her drawer this morning. Lack of sleep makes her grouchy and hungry. She rubs at her eye with the palm of her hand. It stings with tiredness, but she gloats; this morning she’d beaten Stangton into the office. She stirs the coffee with a clink of the spoon and takes it back to the desk, sinking into her chair and closing her eyes. She could go to sleep right now, she was that tired. A flash of movement outside and then Stangton strides in through the door, his cheeks flushed from the cold.

  “Morning, Latimer,” he nods as he unclips his bicycle helmet. “You beat me to it today, then.”

  “Yep,” she says sitting forward and taking a slurp of coffee—she knows that irks him too.

  “Looks like someone didn’t get much sleep.” He raises his brows. “Aye?”

  Javeen keeps her groan of irritation inside. “You’re correct. I didn’t. I-”

  “No need to go into details, Latimer. I’ve been filled in on proceedings.” He gives her a wink.

  “What?”

  “You and Blackwell.”

  “What the-”

  “It’s a small village, Latimer. The whole place knows if you so much as fart, and what it smells like.”

  Her turn to snort. How the very hell did Stangton know that she’d bedded Blackwell? “We shared a few drinks in the pub after work.”

  “At ten fifteen of the preceding evening, PC Javeen Latimer was seen walking with the accused from the Hound and Stars to number four Church Lane. PC Javeen Latimer did not leave the premises until six-thirty am of the following morning.”

  Burning stings her cheeks. Who the hell had seen her? She remembers the neighbour’s twitching curtains. Nosey old bag! “And just how the hell do you know that?”

  He taps the side of his nose. “Sorry, m’lud, but I can’t divulge the source of my information.” He cackles. She throws him a look of scorn and swings the chair to face her monitor. She slurps deeper from the coffee.

  “To serious business though, Latimer. There’s been a report of an intruder at number three Church Lane. Mrs Carmichael reported a man vaulting the garden wall. He was last seen running in the direction of Main Street.”

  “Vaulting a five-foot wall?”

  “… at approximately four-thirty am-”

  “She called you at four-thirty am.” Javeen is hopeful; it had been Stangton’s turn to be on call last night. Normally, the ‘on-call’ shift was as silent as the grave.

  “No, she waited until a decent hour. Didn’t want to wake me she said.”

  “I heard screams from the woods last night, Stangton. I … we … went to investigate but couldn’t find anything. Number three … isn’t that Doctor Anderson’s house?”

  “It is.”

  The phone rings and Stangton answers. His face instantly drops to serious, all mirth gone. He pulls his pad and grabs his pen, asks the required questions, replies, mumbles, then finishes. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “And?”

  “That was Billy Oldfield. There’s been a break-in at the Institute.”

  “The vegan anarchists?” she asks with a roll of her eyes.

  “No … maybe, but whoever broke in trashed Dr Anderson’s lab and two dogs are dead. It’s like a slaughterhouse up there apparently.”

  “Doctor Anderson? The owner of the house where Mrs Carmichael said she saw a man vault over the five-foot wall and disappear up the road?”

  “Yep.” Stangton buttons his coat back up as Javeen grabs hers. She slips the chocolate bar into her pocket—she has a feeling she’ll need it.

  Twenty minutes later she’s standing in ‘Laboratory 2’ at Kielder Institute. A mess of blood and gore is smeared across the floor and two beagles lie dead on the tiles. It’s not quite the slaughterhouse that Stangton had described, but the smaller beagle’s head is almost flat. A large fire extinguisher butts up against the cages on the other side of the room. The lab stinks of faeces and the metallic scent of blood. The room is muggy and she gags on the stench. Man up, sugarplum!

  Marta Steward has her back turned and stares out to the thick bank of trees that stretch across the hills. Javeen squats and rests her hand on the larger dog�
��s neck avoiding the syringe sticking out at a right angle. The animal feels stiff. Had she expected a pulse? A small glass vial has rolled under the desk. She picks it up with gloved hands, and rolls it between her fingers to read the sticker. “Beuthanasia D-Special. Contains pentobarbital and phenytoin. Warning: for canine euthanasia only.”

  Marta turns from the window. Her face is much paler than yesterday and her eyes puffy. She looks as though sleep was rough last night, or non-existent. “It’s what we use to euthanise the test subjects with.”

  Stangton rises from examining the smaller dog. “It may have been used on the larger dog, but this one died from blunt force trauma.” Javeen holds back her smirk. She knows just how much he has itched to say that phrase. “From the evidence, it would appear that the fire extinguisher has been used to kill the smaller dog.”

  Marta nods and clasps a hand to her mouth. Javeen steps in. She won’t let her leave until she has the answers she needs.

  “Do you have any witnesses to what happened here last night?”

  She shakes her head. “We have CCTV installed, but it’s only trained on the entrance gates and the front door, not the labs.”

  “We’ll need to see the recordings.”

  “Of course. You’ll need to talk to the Head of Security, Billy Oldfield.”

  “Are any of your staff missing?”

  “All staff are usually here before nine-thirty, but we’re fairly flexible in terms of time—as long as the hours are put in during the day, people can arrive and leave any time between seven-thirty and eight-thirty. Doctor Anderson often works later though.”

  “And where is Doctor Anderson?”

  “I haven’t seen him this morning. He’ll be devastated when he discovers Shep.” She points to the larger beagle. “He was one of our successes. Doctor And-”

  The lab door swings open and a young woman strides in, her morning greeting halted as she glances from Javeen and Stangton to Marta. As she notices the dogs on the floor her face crumples.

  “Shep!” She gasps. “Molly!”

  “Step back please, miss.” Stangton steps in front of the dogs. “This is a crime scene.”

  The woman halts behind Stangton’s outstretched arm. “Where’s Max?”

  “He hasn’t come in yet, Sally,” Marta offers.

  “But his car’s in the car park.”

  Javeen catches Stangton’s quick reaction and they exchange glances. “So, he is here?”

  “If his car is, then he must be. He sometimes bikes to work, but it’s too cold now for that and too dark to cycle home when he finishes.”

  “Doctor Steward, I think we’d better see the CCTV footage now.”

  She nods. “Follow me.”

  Javeen draws back with frustration and stares again at the blank screen, moving away from the waft of alcohol on Billy Oldfield’s breath. “So, you’re saying that there was a blackout last night and it wiped out all of the security footage from yesterday.”

  “Yep. And last weeks. I’ve had to re-tune it all. In the old days it would all be there on the video tape, but this lot is digital. Technology! Knows how to screw you up.”

  Was the man incompetent? “Isn’t it on the cloud somewhere?”

  His voice waivers. “No, we’ve not got that.” He’s lying.

  Javeen notices the tremble in Billy’s hand. He wasn’t known as an alcoholic. Sure, he’d had a few pints in the pub last night, and a couple of whiskey chasers, but unless he’d downed numerous pints after Javeen left with Andy (her cheeks sting as she remembers the twinkle in Billy’s eyes as she’d caught him watching them talk) then there was something else wrong with him. Perhaps nervousness. What did he have to hide?

  “Anything else you’d like to tell me, Billy?”

  “Eh?”

  “Well, I can tell that you’re nervous.” She gestures to his shaking hand. “Now, unless you’ve got some form of Parkinson’s, which I doubt, because you had no problem lifting your pint glass last night, or you got totally blasted after I left, then something else is making you quake in your boots. Am I making you nervous, Billy?” She’s pushing a bit too hard, he’s not being interviewed after all, but she knows if she just prods a little more, he may tell her why the CCTV footage had been wiped. She didn’t believe the blackout story one bit.

  “I …” He falters and taps at the keyboard again.

  There’s something he wants to say. “You can tell me, it will be confidential,” she urges. Spill the beans on Steward, Billy.

  “Last night … after the pub …” He stops again and the tremble in his hand increases. He pulls it from the keyboard and stuffs it inside his trouser pocket.

  “What did she ask you to do, Billy?”

  “Eh?”

  He gives her a blank look. She pushes again. “What happened?” Javeen searches his eyes. He seems afraid—perhaps Steward and her heavies have nobbled him-

  “A beast. There was this man … this wolf-thing … creature … I know how crazy this sounds … It ran past me—not on all fours—on two legs, but it had fangs and the most … it’s eyes … its eyes were filled with blood and …” He stops but this time doesn’t resume. The words had flown out of his mouth in a jumble.

  Javeen sighs. Perhaps he was an alcoholic after all.

  “And then that scream.” He pulls his fingers through his hair. Sweat marks the underarms of his sleeve, and its sourness wafts into her nose. The hair on Javeen’s neck creeps as he continues his story of how the thing had run past him as he’d puked into Mrs Belasis’ drive, locked eyes for a second, then sprinted past and jumped over the wooden fence on the other side of the road and disappeared into the woods. The scream was perhaps the first one Javeen had heard as she’d lain with Andy. Billy’s eyes search hers as he finishes his story then flit to the wall beyond her shoulder before focusing back on the screen. Whatever he’d seen, fantastical as that was, he believed it was real.

  “How much did you have to drink last night, Billy?”

  He huffs. “I was drunk, I admit it. I’m a lightweight when it comes to drinking and Jack was egging me on.”

  Javeen grunts, the old codger knew how to get the locals to open their wallets.

  “But … that thing was real.”

  Javeen stands back, arms crossed, her fingers digging into her upper arms. It couldn’t be true, not really, but perhaps someone did run past him and into the woods. Perhaps there was a nutter loose. Perhaps it/he was the thing that had screamed in the woods—probably some stupid prank.

  “Could it have been a mask, Billy?”

  He sags. “I told you … it was real. No mask has eyes like that.”

  “Alright, Billy. I’ll make a note of your … sighting.” She doesn’t tell him that she’d heard the scream too and spent the early morning searching through the woods. She thanks him for his help then meets Stangton in the entrance lobby. A shiver of realisation runs through her; what if she and Andy had met this lunatic ‘wolfman’ whilst they’d been searching?

  14

  Max wakes with a start. Light filters through the criss-cross of branches. A bird coos in the distance. A scurry of tiny paws taps at his eardrum and he holds his hands to his ears to soften the noise. He shuffles to a squat, pushing away the branches he’d ripped from the tree to cover his body as he slept, and sniffs. Close by, very close, something moves. He sits deathly still.

  From a cluster of bowing ferns, a large cat steps forward. It seems wary. Max salivates. The lynx, one of the five pairs that had controversially been reintroduced to the forest earlier in the year, lifts a paw, stares with amber eyes in his direction, and stands completely still. Max closes his eyes, each breath slow and silent, waiting for the cat to make its move. The paw descends and the lynx moves away. Max pounces, his claws digging deep through the soft amber fur penetrating the soft belly beneath. He growls with delight as he rips at its flesh and devours the innards.

  With mouth full of warm offal, he tucks the corpse beneath his
arm and makes his way to the clearing and the wooden cabin. Smoke curls in tendrils from its chimney. He takes another bite of the lynx’s liver, blood dripping at the side of his mouth, then runs behind the trees to the shed tucked away to the left of the house. A car crunches over gravel and disappears down the track as he reaches the shelter. He yawns, spittle dangles between his jaws, and he snaps them shut. Max bares his teeth as a man appears at the cabin door, then watches from the cover of branches as he leaves.

  Hooking the lynx over a bough, anchoring it between dividing branches, he moves to the door of the shed. Once inside, he rips at the fabric covering his body and throws it to the floor. Removing the shoes that no longer fit, he steps onto the tattered remains of his shirt and trousers, curls beneath the workbench, and falls into a light sleep until his belly aches again and his mouth salivates at the urge to gnash, and rip, and gnaw.

  As the sun begins its descent into late afternoon, Marta blows smoke out through dry lips, it mingles with the cold air as she leans out of the window and she shivers. She shivers again as she glances across the open space to where the grass meets the tree-line. Max and Lois, or rather the hideous and deformed monsters that had fled the laboratory last night, were still in there.

  Blake hangs his binoculars by his side.

  “Was it them?”

  “I’m not sure. I thought I saw movement.”

  She scans the area around them. Reassured that no one is listening, she speaks. “What the hell are we going to do, Blake?”

  He returns her question with a gaze that makes her squirm. “We are going to hold it together, Marta. I thought you were tougher than this—a real ball-breaker.”

  “I am, but those things-”

  “They’re part of the programme now. From our point of view, things couldn’t have gone any better. This development is astounding. The power Max and the girl had! He barely flinched when the bullet hit his shoulder-”