The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  “Didn’t you see the bite marks on Guy and Tanya?”

  “Yes, but let’s come back later-when they’re awake. We can help then.”

  “They’ve been bitten …” He searches Hayley’s eyes for understanding.

  “They can get a rabies shot.”

  She doesn’t understand. “If they’ve been bitten, Hayley. They could become one of them.”

  “Them?”

  “The infected.”

  “Yes, but the doctor can help them.”

  A twin moves. The other begins to murmur.

  “Come on, before they wake up.”

  As Freddie watches the boys’ movements, and notices that Tanya has woken, the twins unfurl, and push themselves up to stare. Three pairs of eyes stare back at Freddie, three pairs of blood-filled eyes. Tanya snarls. Guy’s eyes flick open. Hayley screams and Freddie slams the door shut as Guy jumps to his feet and launches himself across the room. The door clicks shut as Guy slams against it.

  “Run!”

  41

  Javeen had expected the night to be full of horror, but instead she’d drifted off to sleep at two am and not woken until daylight was streaming in through the slatted boards Andy had nailed to the window’s frame. She turns in the empty bed and listens to the clink of mugs in the kitchen and the unmistakable rush of the kettle boiling. The clock reads nine-thirty am. She’s late. Doesn’t matter! Stangton’s not there to pass comment today. She ignores the nagging voice and has a quick shower, dresses then joins Andy in the kitchen.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “Sorry, I thought you could do with the rest.”

  “I did. What time did you get up?”

  “I haven’t been to sleep.”

  A wave of guilt. She was the Police—she should be the one staying up all night on guard. He notices her frown.

  “Jav, it’s alright. You can take the watch later and let me get some sleep.”

  Has it come to this? Already! “You make it sound like a war.”

  He doesn’t laugh. “I’ve been out already this morning. This far away from the village it’s hard to know what’s going on, but I heard a few noises in the night and wanted to check them out.”

  “And?”

  “It’s quiet.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not sure. The shop was still locked up half an hour ago.”

  Sid was never late to open the shop. “It’s usually open by seven-thirty.”

  “I know.”

  Javeen spoons coffee into a mug, adds another quarter, and covers it with milk. “Anything else unusual?”

  “Some unopened curtains.”

  “I told everyone to barricade themselves in.”

  “Yes, it could be that.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I think we should check. Take a headcount of villagers. See who’s still alive.”

  A stone drops in her belly as she stirs the coffee. “Agreed.”

  They sit for the next twenty minutes listing the names of all the villagers they can remember. Andy draws up a rough map of the village, its shop, roads and lanes, the Castle, the bicycle hire place, the Hound and Stars, the library, along with each house as best as he can remember. A cross has been placed on houses Javeen knows will be empty—those villagers who had left in the convoy and not returned.

  “I’m amazed that you know all of the villagers.”

  “I’ve lived here all my life. It hasn’t changed much and most of them come to me with their cars. It’s like I said, we’re more like family.”

  Javeen mourns for a second, remembering her own fractured family, the uncomfortable Christmases spent with relatives she didn’t like, nodding in agreement as yet another distant cousin berated the poor job the police force were doing, the perennial ‘they should try catching real thieves’ and ‘they make most of their money from the speed cameras’. “Hope they’re not like my family then.”

  “I just meant that we’re a tight-knit community, Jav. There are plenty that don’t like each other, it’s not a case of being one big happy family.”

  She takes solace from that. “So how many villagers are there?”

  Andy turns his attention back to the map and the list. The list has three columns: DEAD, MISSING, and ALIVE. “Counting those we know, or think, are alive then seventy-three.”

  Javeen finishes the final dreg of cold coffee and reaches for her jacket as Andy pulls on his own. Outside the day is drab and darker clouds hover on the horizon. Jacket on, she reaches for her waterproof and pulls on her gloves.

  An hour later, rain spattering against her raincoat, Javeen knocks at another house. Her hand trembles, making the knock a limp thud. She takes a breath, and raps harder, taking furtive glances up and down the street, wary of movement. Andy had said that the howling had become silent as the sun had risen, his theory being that the creatures were becoming nocturnal, but what they’d discovered this morning had made knocking on the doors a struggle. So far, they had found ten houses on the ‘ALIVE’ column of their list, empty. The owners had not answered their knocks despite the curtains being drawn shut and cars still being in the driveway. At the first house, the large kitchen window had been shattered and bloody footprints, not boot or shoe-prints, covered the tiled floor. At number fifteen Main Street, the head of Mr Bateman could be seen through the open doorway. Like poor Anita, his throat had been ripped out and his torso gutted. Andy had baulked at the scene, despite the distance, and vomited on the slabs. Javeen had put a red cross through the house on the map and they’d moved onto the next one. This time, the attacker had broken in through the backdoor. There was the sign of a struggle with upturned furniture and blood spattered across the chimney breast. Eight other ‘inhabited’ houses, so far, had also been broken into. In a further three, there were bodies, the remainder were empty.

  Javeen knocks on the door and waits. Inside, slow footsteps make their way to the door. She breathes a sigh of relief. The door opens slowly, inch by inch, and a haggard face, peers out.

  “Ben!” Andy pushes in front of Javeen and the door widens. As Andy steps up into the hallway, beckoned by the man’s frail hand, Javeen notices the tremor and realises that the man, despite his haggard looks, can’t be more than fifty. “Come in. Close the door,” he says through rasping breaths. “She’s in the kitchen.”

  “Who?”

  “Kathy.”

  Andy grunts. “Kathy Oldfield. She’s Ben’s carer.”

  “Cancer,” Ben adds. “I’m riddled with it.” He sags against the wall. Javeen grabs his arm to steady him, instantly wishes that she hadn’t. His arm is bone thin. His entire body is trembling. Javeen cups his elbow in her hand and helps him to stand. Andy walks ahead down the hallway and opens the closed door then turns with a frown, catching Javeen’s eye. He gives an almost imperceptible nod.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she.”

  “She’s not there, Ben.”

  “What? How? They came last night, two of them. Kathy heard them first, prowling around outside. She was scared, we both were, after what Billy had told her about the wolfmen. I told her not to be daft, but she said she didn’t want to take any chances and went downstairs to lock the doors.”

  “And what happened?”

  “They got in before she had a chance. I heard her scream, but couldn’t get out of bed quick enough to help her - yesterday was a bad day.” He stops, his face screwing up in pain, and leans heavily on Javeen’s arm.

  “Do you want to sit down?”

  “Yes. In a minute.” He draws air through clenched teeth. Javeen waits. “Perhaps … before you go, you can help me with my medicine?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  As the pain recedes, Ben continues. “I heard her scream and then it went quiet. I thought maybe they’d gone, but … they hadn’t. First one came upstairs and then the other, and they both came into my bedroom. I couldn’t move. I was that terrified that I couldn’t move at al
l.” He stalls.

  Javeen prods. She needs to hear what happened. “Ben, could you explain what happened, please?”

  “They came into my room. Hideous—just hideous.” He quiets again, screws his eyes tight shut and shudders. “It was two females—I won’t call them women although they had … titties and … well they just weren’t women. They were naked and covered in hairs—most of their body, even on their faces, but it was their eyes … they were filled with blood. One got up close, leant down to me. I thought she … it, was going to tear my face. Its teeth were that sharp and she opened her jaws, spit dripped onto my face. Breath stank—like she’d been eating, excuse my French officer, but like she’d been eating shit.”

  Javeen remembers the similar tale the Reverend had told. “And she didn’t bite you?”

  “No, they both took a good sniff then left. I stayed in bed listening and when they’d gone, I came down here to find Kathy.”

  “And?”

  “They’d attacked her. She was bleeding and unconscious. I tried to stop the bleeding, brought her a blanket, but she didn’t wake up. She’s still on the floor in the kitchen. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “Let me help you back upstairs Ben.”

  “Will you help Kathy?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Ben scoops the man into his arms and, with a grunt, takes him back upstairs. Javeen continues to the kitchen and opens the door. A blood-soaked blanket is strewn across the floor, but there is no sign of Kathy Oldfield.

  42

  Javeen returns to her car, and rubs at her shoulder as the tightness across the back of her head intensifies. Pain thrums at her temples. Hands trembling, she pushes the key into the ignition and takes a final look at Ben’s bedroom window. He’d asked her to give him his injection. It was the first thing Kathy did when she got there in the morning he’d said. He’d refused to have a cannula in his hand to help with the administration of ‘Ben’s buddy’ as he called his medication, preferring the daily injections via syringe. Javeen had baulked at first, but agreed when she’d realised the look in Ben’s eyes had been fear, more fear than he’d shown when recounting the visit of the monsters in his bedroom last night. Fear is relative, and the pain Ben experienced from the cancer that riddled his body was more of a torment than the concern that wolfmen would rip him apart. It sounded absurd, but his tone, when he’d recounted that they hadn’t bitten him, had been one of disappointment. He’d told her to fill the syringe to the top with the drug, and it wasn’t until after she’d injected him with the full dose that she’d checked his paperwork. Each entry was carefully entered until last night at nine-thirty in Kathy’s neat and very legible hand. Javeen had just administered more than triple that dose. When she’d pulled back the needle from Ben’s flesh his smile of gratitude had made tears prick at her nose. She’d said nothing. It would be their secret.

  Andy closes the door and joins her in the car. The banging of the door thuds in her ears and his voice grates at the pain in her head. She was heading for a migraine. Taking a packet from her pocket, she takes a pill, and downs it with water.

  “You shouldn’t drink water that’s been kept in your car. The plastic leaks poison.”

  “My head is leaking poison right now.” She leans back against the headrest, the chalky pill bitter on her tongue, and takes another swig. “Migraine,” she explains.

  “Let’s just sit a minute. The past hour has been … God, it has been unreal.” Andy fidgets in his seat, checking up and down the road.

  “Sure.” Javeen takes another swig of water then takes out Andy’s map from her pocket and crosses out Kathy’s name.

  “Jav.”

  “Yep.”

  “If Kathy got up after being bitten and disappeared … does that mean she’s one of them now?”

  Javeen’s head throbs. “Yes, I think it does. Here’s my take on it. They’re hunting—in packs. Some people they kill and drag off somewhere to eat, like Anita and Jimbob. Others they just bite, like Rachel Kendrick —I’m pretty sure it was her with Max Anderson and Lois Maybank in the woods, and Conrad said he thought one was Kelly Gray.”

  “What about the others—the ones they don’t kill or bite?”

  “Well, I think they don’t attack them because they’re sick. Reverend Baxter has cancer, and Ben is riddled with it too.”

  “Guess they can smell it or something.”

  “Dogs can. Even some humans can. Diabetics smell different. I remember my uncle Mike. He’d smell like he’d been drinking Jack Daniels even though he didn’t touch a drop, but it was the sugar in his blood leaking out. He ended up losing a foot and going blind in one eye.”

  Andy remains silent, runs fingers through his hair. Infection and disease were smothering the village. Javeen releases a long breath and her memory flits back to the laboratory at Kielder Institute and the scene that had greeted Stangton and herself the morning after the activists had broken in and attempted to destroy Anderson’s research. It dawns on her that Marta had lied. If the research assistant, Sally, had seen Dr. Anderson’s car in the carpark, then she must have too. Her only reason to lie was to cover something up. An image of the dogs, both dead, one the result of ‘blunt force trauma’ (she remembers the phrase with sadness along with the frowning figure of PC Stuart Stangton as he’d stood over the mess), the other euthanised with the empty syringe sticking upright from its stiffening body.

  “We should go to the Institute.”

  “What?”

  “They’ve got drugs there that will kill them and-”

  Javeen’s reply is stifled as movement along the road catches her eye and a motorbike, complete with rider, passenger, and obviously full panniers, rolls out of a driveway further down the road. The bike is followed by another, also with full panniers and pillion passenger. What on earth are they doing? She checks along the treeline for movement - all is still - and opens the door. The noise from the engine thrums at her already pounding head. She waves to catch the rider’s attention. The engine revs and the bike moves closer then pulls to a stop beside her.

  “Freddie, what are you doing?” She gestures to the panniers and Hayley in pillion.

  “We’re getting out of here.” Hayley shouts above the sound of the bike’s engine.

  “I’m riding as far as the boundary and then taking the forest track out of here.”

  “It’s too risky,” Andy responds.

  Freddie’s eyes flit to Andy. “I can go faster than them. I can get there no problem, then it’s just a mile through the woods. We can make it.”

  “Freddie, the forest is infested with them.” Judy, the pillion passenger behind Craig on the other bike looks from Javeen to the forest, her face pale inside the helmet.

  “So is the village.” He casts a wary gaze at the houses along with street. “The Armstrongs are all infected. We found them this morning—curled up in their bedroom, like rats in a lair.”

  “It was gross to see them, Andy. We only just made it back to the house.”

  “And Eric, their shitty little Jackshit, has been bitten.”

  “Jackshit?”

  “One of them designer cross-breed fuckups. It’s a Jack Russel crossed with a Shiatzu. It was out of its mind even before it was bitten. Fucking rat came at me like a hell hound. Red eyes and gnashing teeth-”

  “So, we’ve got to fight weredogs now too?”

  “Not us. We’re out of here.”

  “The Armstrongs—they came after you?”

  “We disturbed them. They came out of the house. I thought they’d chase us, but they went across the road and into the woods—just over there.”

  The close proximity makes Javeen shudder.

  Freddie looks to the sky. “Time we were off.” He revs the engine, slips it into gear, and with a final nod disappears down the road and out of the village.

  Javeen takes out the paper and holds her pen over the square that is Freddie’s house. Andy grabs her hand. “No, Jav. He’ll
make it.”

  He won’t. “If he does, it will be a miracle.”

  “Then we have to believe in miracles.”

  43

  Freddie powers the bike forward, passing through the village boundary, quickly gaining speed until the speedometer reads one hundred and five miles per hour. When he’d escaped them before, he’d been doing over seventy so he is confident that, even if they do try to chase him, that the bike will outrun them easily. As the miles pass, he grows in confidence. The journey to the edge of the forest, passing roads hugged by trees, and those with open grassland and streams either side, is a breeze. Their bikes are the only vehicles on the road and they make good progress. By the time they get to the turn-off for the trail that will take them to the very edge of the forest, they have experienced no incidents, no attempts by naked and hairy beasts to run after the bike, and not a single sighting of the monsters that Javeen had insisted infested the forest. Their lair, he is sure, is close to the village. It would make sense for the creatures to stay close to their hunting ground. He shudders at the thought; the village was a larder; the creatures’ guaranteed supply of meat—free-range, though perhaps not strictly organic.

  He turns off the main road, Hayley’s arms hugging his waist, Craig and Judy close behind, and heads for the sign pointing out the trail. Much of it is tamped down so won’t be an issue for the bike. It will only be the last section, where they have to take one of the smaller tracks, that the bikes could struggle. At that point, they will have to make it out on foot.

  The light has faded to grey within the forest, dark clouds blot the bright November afternoon sun as rain falls on its canopy, dripping down to the damp earth. The air in the shed is warm, filled with the heat from them all … their lair … their flesh, curled together. She can smell each one; their odour, their sweat, their breath, their balls, their soft and salty lips, their dark places. Kelly snickers … their deep, dark places. She leans into the One, taking in his scent, and an ache spreads through her, a dull, delicious throb. Kelly shivers as the ache deepens. She wants him to take the ache … to ram at it, to bang at her, to thrust and to lick and to … she groans as her fingers slip between her own legs. She is slippery, the place warm and swollen. She is ready. She needs him. Only him.