The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  He takes soft steps towards the shed. The sound of knocking comes again and this time the voice grunts. He laughs and shakes his head. Stupid! It’s just an animal got stuck in the shed. He takes a quicker step towards it and pulls the door open.

  Four pairs of blood-filled eyes open from sleep and turn to stare. His jaw drops open, his boots nailed down. The creatures uncurl from the floor, and Iain only has time to register that three of the four are naked before they pounce.

  25

  Javeen takes another sip of coffee then sighs with undisguised relief as two white Ford Transit vans with a wide stripe of yellow and blue squares, drive into the Station’s car park. The second has ‘POLICE DOGS’ in large blue print across its side. As she opens the door, the first officer, dressed in the typical police uniform of black trousers and white shirt, jumps from the van. He’s just a PC. She bites her lip, holding back her disappointment as he walks to the back of the van and opens the doors. Three other police officers jump out of the back; among them she recognises PC Jenny Osborne. She had expected the forensics team along with a search party. What had Stangton told them? And where the very hell was he?

  She recognises the form of Ted McDermot in the dog handler’s van. He shunts out with a heavy step, the white flesh and dark hairs of his overhanging belly visible through the gap in his shirt. Men really should go back to wearing vests. He waves as he catches her watching. She returns his wave and strides forward, pushing down her disappointment.

  “Morning, Ted.”

  “Latimer.” He returns her greeting with a wink.

  Javeen groans inwardly. She’d never get away from her past mistake. She ignores his overfamiliarity. “Glad to see you here. We certainly need your help. Have you seen PC Stangton?”

  “No, Latimer. I’ve not, but I have heard about your problems. Head Office said you’ve got a wild dog on the loose, perhaps one with rabies, and a missing girl?”

  He doesn’t know! “We’ve found one of the missing girls-”

  “Ah. Good. One?”

  “We have - had - two missing girls as well as a missing adult male. Unfortunately, it’s not good news. One of the young women was savaged in the woods. She died of her injuries before we found her.”

  He searches her eyes with confusion. “Why … Sorry, Latimer, no one mentioned an attack or a death. Forensics should be here.”

  “Yes, they should. Stangton drove through to town yesterday to call it in, but he hasn’t been back.

  “So Stangton’s missing too?”

  “Yes.”

  “How come he drove into town to report the incident?”

  “We’ve got no radio, mobile, or digital signals. Communications are down.”

  “Odd.” He pulls out his phone. “Yep, no signal.” He holds up the mobile for her to see the screen.

  “Stangton was supposed to report the death and the sightings.”

  “They’ve got a similar problem down in Whitby.”

  “Wolfmen?”

  “What? No, rabies. ‘Wolfmen’ Latimer? What’s that about?”

  She flinches from his derision. “Well, probably not, but it is what the villagers are talking about. Several sightings have been reported-”

  “Mass hysteria, Latimer. That’s what that is. There’s no such thing as wolfmen, but when people get scared, and things start to go bump in the night, it’s the kind of story that gets passed around and people start imagining all sorts of horrors. It’s happened before.”

  “Oh?”

  “Down in Dartmoor. 1996. A couple of dogs were attacked by what their owner said was a creature like a wolf. Suddenly there was a flurry of reported sightings. A child went missing and all hell broke loose.”

  “What happened?”

  “It turns out a local farmer’s dog had gone nuts and attacked the woman’s dogs. Someone had overheard her exaggerating the story and then it got out of hand. She corrected the story pretty quickly, but the truth didn’t stop people ‘seeing’ the werewolf.”

  “And the child?”

  “Found safe with her older, married sister watching a film, but it was weeks before people stopped passing on the false stories. Mass hysteria is what it is, Latimer. Rest assured.”

  He opens the back of the van as the other officers join them and clips a lead to the large Alsatian sitting patiently in the back. “Anyway, whatever is in that woods, Cass will find it.”

  The dog jumps down and licks at Javeen’s hand. She strokes its head and rubs behind its ears. “I hope so, Ted. We need sanity restoring around here.”

  As the other officers gather round, she leads them into the tiny Police Station and recounts the incidents of the past days. The men and woman listen in silence, but with deepening concern.

  PC Callum Banks, the senior officer, takes centre stage as she finishes. “Thank you, PC Latimer. That puts a different complexion on our job here today. Obviously, the situation has escalated since it was first reported. It’s very possible that a very dangerous animal is at large in the woods. We haven’t come prepared for that.”

  “Yes, but-”

  “Let me finish, Latimer.”

  “Sorry.”

  “However, PC McDermot is armed-”

  “With a tranquiliser gun.”

  “And we have Cass,” he makes a gesture towards the German Shepherd stood at PC McDermot’s side. “Doctor Max Anderson and Lois Maybank are still missing.”

  “There’s no evidence they’re in the forest though.”

  “That’s correct. However, Anderson’s car is still parked at the Institute and Lois Maybank hasn’t taken any of her personal belongings and doesn’t have any money. The likelihood of either of them being anywhere other than in the vicinity is small.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “That we proceed with the search.”

  “We don’t have protection.”

  “Sod that. I didn’t join up to be stifled by Health & Safety.”

  The officers nod.

  “All agreed then?”

  A general consensus.

  “Right, Latimer. You’ve got your search team.”

  Javeen keeps her sigh of relief locked down. “Good.”

  26

  It takes ten minutes to drive to the location where Javeen and Stangton had found the body. As she jumps from the van, her pulse throbs at her temples. Finding Anita’s body, and the continuing eerie howls that accompany the nights, have taken their toll on her nerves, and she’s fearful of the woods. The sky shifts to drab, and a light drizzle spatters her face, the cold nipping at her cheeks. She pulls on her gloves and leads the team into the forest towards the clearing. She stops before the tree where the girl’s body had lain.

  “Where is it then, Latimer?”

  She stares incredulously at the trunk. Anita is no longer there. “She’s gone!”

  Ted McDermot leads Cass forward and scans the ground. “There’s blood, some gore, and scuff marks. It was here.” He turns to Javeen. “Something’s dragged her off.” He crouches to inspect the dark earth. “From the look of these marks, the body was dragged to this point then lifted. There are possibly some footprints here too, but I can’t be sure.”

  Javeen considers the area. Certainly, there were drag marks and they stopped abruptly. She couldn’t see the footprints as clearly as Ted did though.

  “It would have to be something big to lift her up,” Ted continues.

  A murmur through the officers. PC Callum Banks takes charge. “We’re going to start the search from here. Spread out. Ten feet apart.”

  A grumble.

  “If there’s a killer on the loose up here, we should call for back up. We’re not armed. We just came to help search for a missing girl.” PC Jerry Sykes is losing his nerve.

  PC Banks looks thoughtful. “We’ll work until two o’clock.”

  Callum Banks also seemed to be losing his nerve. Two o’clock is only an hour away. The others nod, though looks of apprehension spread
between them.

  As they begin the search, Javeen steps in time with the only other woman in the small group, Jenny Osborne, a short and stocky woman who could pin a perp to the floor with one swift twist of her chunky wrist.

  “You settling in well, Latimer?” Jenny asks as she scours the ferns.

  “Yes, Kielder’s a great place to work.”

  “Place to forget about the outside world, eh?”

  Jenny’s words jar. “If you’re referring to what happened in Grimsby, I’ve put that behind me.”

  “Scandalous what they did to you though. The Super was as much to blame, from what I heard.”

  “I’d rather not talk about it, to be honest.”

  “Sure. If you ever do though …”

  “Thanks.” Javeen’s not sure whether Jenny is just interested in hearing the lurid details of her fall from grace, or whether she is offering a genuine hand of friendship. She hopes friendship; it would be good to have another friend up here, it did get a little lonely, although Andy was filling that gap quite well. She drifts into memories of their night together and then remembers their last conversation. He wanted to go places with her. He’d suggested a bike ride through the forest once it was safe again, or, when the weather warmed up, sailing on the lake and perhaps in the summer, a trip to Seahouses and the Farne Islands. Warmth spreads through her at the memory of his words; he was making plans for the future which meant she wasn’t just a bit of fluff he’d bed every now and then. Things were coming right in Kielder, even if they were in the midst of a crisis.

  Cass pulls at her lead and Ted is yanked forward. The dog’s sudden excitement startles Javeen and she berates herself for being so jumpy and letting her concentration drift.

  “Halt!” PC Banks raises his hand at the end of the line; he’s found something. The line stops moving forward and Javeen follows his pointing finger. Her heart makes a heavy thud in her chest as her eyes focus on something hanging in the tree. The arm of a man dangles from the branch. She takes several steps forward, forcing herself to look into the tree and block out the excited chatter of the other officers. Javeen recognises Jim Kendrick, the man Beryl Taylor had said she’d seen attacked by the wolfman and dragged off into the forest. His body is hung over a branch, one arm shoved tight against the trunk, the other dangling down, the fingers already black. Blood has soaked his jeans and from the thinness of his torso as it hangs over the bough, his innards would appear to be missing—just like Anita’s.

  Jenny swallows back a scream and jabs her arm to another tree. A face stares blankly back at Javeen; a blackening face with long blonde plaits at its cheeks. Anita! One of the men turns from the scene and retches. Javeen’s stomach rolls and she vomits, bile spattering her shoes and trousers. She quickly wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and turns back to the other officers. Sykes, a younger officer, who can only have been out of training a year or two, is turned away, hands on knees, his body heaving.

  In the near distance a guttural scream-like bark joins the low grumblings of the officers and the commanding voice of PC Drake. He stops to listen for a moment then continues. She can almost see the hair on his scalp creep back from his forehead. He swallows and points to Anita. “Is this the missing body, Latimer?”

  “Yes.” Her voice is barely audible.

  He points a finger at Jim. “And is this your missing man?”

  Javeen takes a breath. Stay calm. Stay in control. “It’s one of them. Jim Kendrick. We have a witness who said she saw him being attacked outside her house and dragged off into the forest.”

  “Dragged all this way?”

  “It’s too far. The attacker must have driven him here and somehow winched him into the tree.”

  “There’s no sign of a rope-”

  “The witness said she saw a … wolfman attack him.”

  PC Drake stares at Javeen. His eyes roll with contempt before he collects himself. “No such thing as wolfmen, Latimer.”

  “No, I’m not saying there are … I’m just saying what the witness said-”

  “Mass hysteria, Sir. I’ve already told her about that,” Ted adds.

  “There must be more than one of them. One man-”

  “Or woman.

  “Sorry, Pilkington. Or woman,”

  “Can’t be sexist, Osborne.”

  Jenny’s eyes roll and she shakes her head. “OK, Pilkington. One man, or one woman, couldn’t have done this on their own.”

  The voices of Eric Idle and John Cleese instantly fill Javeen’s thoughts and she represses a giggle. The moment is surreal. For crying out loud, Latimer! Don’t, for God’s sake, laugh. The giggle wants to burst out of her mouth as hysteria. She takes a breath, hoping the others don’t notice her discomfort. It would be wholly inappropriate to laugh in this dreadful moment.

  “Agreed. We’re looking at a couple of people at least.”

  The momentary terror of becoming a shambolic, giggling wreck, passes, but in the near distance, the shiver of a branch catches Javeen’s peripheral vision and she swivels, her senses on high alert. Leaves shiver and then calm. She turns back to focus on the conversation.

  “What do we do now? We can’t leave them here.”

  “That’s exactly what we do, Sykes. We need to make a note of the location and inform forensics. They’ll set up an investigation around the site. Osborne, pass me the bag.”

  27

  Jenny Osborne shuffles off the rucksack on her back and passes it to PC Drake. Within a few minutes the area has been encircled with yellow ‘police aware’ tape held taut by metal stakes.

  Drake takes out his phone. Presses the buttons then stares at the screen.

  “Phone lines are dead, Sir.” Javeen explains.

  “It was working on the way up here.”

  “We haven’t had internet access or mobile phone communications for the past couple of days, Sir.”

  “Odd.” He replaces the phone in his pocket.

  “It’s patchy up here anyway, though.”

  A branch snaps among the trees. This time Jenny twists to look.

  “Gets to you, doesn’t it—the forest, I mean.”

  Osborne takes a deep breath as she turns back. “Yep, that and finding two mutilated bodies hanging in a tree. I think we’ve got a very depraved serial killer on our hands, Latimer. And, if I’m honest, I think we should get back to HQ and come back with an armed team—we’re too vulnerable here.” She shivers as she scans the trees.

  Javeen nods quietly in agreement and is about to speak when she notices something move next to one of the moss-covered tree stumps that sit like gargoyles between the trees. To make things even more dramatic, mist is creeping over the ground.

  “It’s like something out of a horror film here.”

  Javeen doesn’t reply. Her attention is targeted to the trees about fifty feet to their right. Something had moved among them.

  Another branch snaps and she swivels to the noise. A tree judders to the left. There can be no more than twenty feet between the group of police officers and whatever is in those trees. She waits, not taking her eyes off the quivering tree, expecting a bird to flutter from its branches. Nothing escapes the evergreen. She swallows, and her hands tremble as the realisation strikes her; the team is completely unarmed, and so has no defence against whatever is lurking in the trees, be it depraved serial killer or crazed dog.

  “Osborne …”

  “Yes.”

  “I think something is following us.”

  A tiny mewl sounds from Osborne’s throat and her eyes flit across the forest. “Don’t piss around, Latimer. I’m on edge already.”

  “I’m not. Two o’clock in the shrubs and ten o’clock in that pine with the tree trunk fallen against it. Watch them.”

  “Jesus! Them?” Osborne shifts her gaze from right and then to left. “There’s nothing there.”

  “Keep watching. I saw something move.”

  Osborne stays silent as she follows Javeen’s instructio
ns. Another rustle of leaves and then a thud makes her hair stand on end. Heart beating hard against her sternum, she scans the trees. If she’s correct, something is circling them. From the movement of the branches and undergrowth, it is either one very fast creature, or perhaps even three. She has an urgent need to urinate. Calm it, Latimer! Calm it.

  Movement catches at her peripheral vision again and the snap of twigs ricochets. The others are too involved with their discussions to notice. She has to warn them. But what if she is wrong? She’d look stupid. Doesn’t matter. If she doesn’t, and they are being watched – hunted more like – then she could perhaps save some lives. If she’s right, and from everything she’s seen over the past few days, it would be a miracle if anyone survived.

  “Sir.” She takes a few tentative steps forward, making an effort to seem natural. She doesn’t want whatever is hiding in the trees to know that she realises they are there—if they are indeed there. She swallows down the fear that she’s going to look like a muppet, and taps PC Drake on the shoulder. He stares at her. She’s broken protocol by touching him but, in the moment, that is irrelevant, all that matters is warning him.

  Cass pulls against her lead.

  “Down, girl!” Ted instructs. The dog ignores his command and continues to pull towards the shivering tree.

  He doesn’t reprimand her. “Latimer?” Searching her eyes, they exchange an unspoken understanding, and he checks beyond her shoulder to the deeper forest, taking in the now agitated dog.

  “I think we may be surrounded, Sir.”

  His eyes lock back on hers. “I think you may be right.” Colour drains from his face and his eyes flit to the hanging corpses of Jim Kendrick and Anita, then back to the trees.

  “I think there may be three of them.”

  Their eyes lock. Wood snaps among the trees, somewhere very close. Drake’s Adam’s apple bobs. “We should make our way back to the vehicles.”

  The dog pulls against its lead, growling at the trees. Ted follows the dog’s line of vision and scours the trees then loosens the lead and follows him. The shiver of leaves ahead is barely discernible. The dog barks and strains against its lead, pulling Ted forward with a lurch. He stumbles.