The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  Kelly pushes closer to Max, pressing her naked flesh into his, fingers between her legs, fingering her bud, aroused and driven to make him fill her, to fornicate, to thrust together until they howl in their ecstasy. She will claim him. She slips an arm over Max’s chest, lets it slide down his belly, as her need pulses, and strokes at the soft flesh between his legs. She curls her fingers through the hairs, stroking, teasing. He groans in sleep, but the soft flesh begins to harden. Grow hard … fill Kelly with your seed. Fuck Kelly … Fuck Kelly hard. She strokes the rod. Wants his rod. Only his. The ache deepens between her legs, and she strokes harder, pulls at the rod. Pain sears her shoulder. She yelps as sharp claws dig into her flesh, pulling her back, forcing a gap between herself and Max. Kelly twists her head with a quick jerk, still holding Max, and snarls, teeth bared at the woman behind. Lois pulls up to a squat, snaps her jaws at Kelly, her snarl low and rumbling; a challenge. Max shifts next to her, growls in his half-sleep, and snorts. Lois continues to squat, legs apart, her genitals bared. She gnashes her teeth, shuffles closer to Max, and slips a hand over Max’s thigh, digs sharp nails into Kelly’s wrist, drawing blood.

  Kelly places a hand on his shoulder. Lois bares her teeth, and, still squatting, moves a leg over his sleeping form, eyes locked to Kelly’s. Ignoring Lois’ claim, Kelly slides her arm across Max, hooking hers over his chest. He murmurs in his sleep. His throaty grunt mingles with the inhale and exhale of the others. “Lauuura … Lauuura.” His teeth gnash and his eyes flicker to open. Eyes still locked to Kelly’s, Lois smirks, bares her teeth, and pushes her hips along Max’s thigh, forcing him to roll to his back, squashing Kelly to the floor. She yelps. Lois snickers and rocks her hips, sliding her heat over Max’s rod until he groans. She rises, lowers herself down and rocks against him. He gasps, grabs her breasts, lifts her into the air, and flips her to face the shed floor. Fully erect, he takes her from behind. Their grunts and moans fill the small, muggy space, waking the Others as Kelly scuffles to the corner. She watches as Max thrusts into Lois and snarls as the woman giggles and gnashes, howling her triumph over Kelly. Rage grows within her, but she bites back the need to gnash and tear at the woman. Later, Max would be hers. Later, Lois would cower.

  As Lois and Max finish their rutting, Kelly stands and moves to the door. Max pounces, gnashes his teeth and blocks her exit. She takes a step back as he stands over her, teeth bared, and waits. The hunger in her belly is overwhelming. The drive to gnash and bite, to slice her teeth into soft, pulsing flesh, growing with each second. Max gives the signal to leave and she bursts out of the door, followed by the Others

  A large male brushes past her. He is strong. She could bed with him, be his mate, if he is strong enough. She follows him to a hanging tree. Above, high in its branches, arms and legs dangle, and hollow torsos rest against the boughs. She clambers high, crouching on the branch, legs parted, and tears at the fabric covering the flesh. Her genitals gleam pink at the Other waiting below. His rod grows. She snickers, locks her eyes to his, then bites at the buttock of the Hanging One. The flesh is cold, already with the stench of rot and poison. She jumps back down. Grunting at the Other. She needs fresh meat, fresh bleeding, throbbing flesh. She pushes close to the Other, stroking her hand down his back, watching the reaction of He, Max, the Only One. She slides a hand down the Other’s belly. He hardens and pushes her to the ground. The Only One leaps to them, pulling the Other from between her legs, throwing him to the forest floor. He snarls at the Other, it doesn’t growl back, but squats, cowers. Not strong enough. Kelly bares her teeth as Max turns back to stare at her. His eyes gleam hard and red in the forest gloom. He steps forward, raises his hand, scratches nails down her arm. Blood seeps from split flesh, pain dances through her muscle, and she yelps, shuffles back, crouches beside the tree, eyes averted, waiting for the pain to stop, the flesh to heal. Lois snickers. Kelly’s rage grows.

  In the distance an engine roars. She recognises the sound, each revolution, each thrust of its pistons. The Uncaught. The rabbit … she licks her lips … the rabbit that had run away, that had bolted down its hole. Their eyes had met. She had wanted him then. Wanted him to take her. Wanted to be his. The strong one riding. Ride Kelly. Take Kelly. Love Kelly. Fill her. Her genitals throb, her vagina contracts. Her need is overwhelming. This time she will catch He. No more running, little rabbit. This time she will bite, sink her fangs into flesh, this one she will keep, make hers, and leave the Max, leave the Others. Make her own place … hole … lair. She snickers … fill Kelly’s hole. The Uncaught would be hers to keep, to fill her, hunt for her, make her swell with his seed.

  As Max gives the order to run to where the lights burn, to where tender flesh and beating hearts hide, to where blood pulses ready to be swallowed. Kelly’s mouth waters and memories of the village, of hunting among the houses, dances in her mind. But a greater need fills her and she darts to an upturned moss-covered ball of roots and crouches behind the thick ferns that grow from the upturned base. As the Others and The One run down the slope and disappear between the thick scratching trunks, and waving green leaves, Kelly listens to the engine, then turns to follow the sound. Run rabbit, run, rabbit, run, run, run!

  44

  As Kelly sprints with ease through the forest, jumping roots, darting between trees, and vaulting across trickling streams towards the pulsing engine, Freddie leads the group deeper into the forest. They reach a crossroads and he slows the bike to a stop, removing his helmet. The enclosed space, and the sweat of fear, has made his hair damp. Checking around, the space is silent, and he gestures to Hayley to dismount. Noticing Craig’s frown, he gestures to the trees. “There’s nothing here. Those things live closer to the village.”

  “How do you know that?” Craig scans the trees, his frown making deep lines across his forehead.

  “It makes sense for them to do that. The village is their hunting ground, why come out here,” he gestures to the surrounding forest with its host of ramrod straight trunks, and fallen, rotting, moss-covered trees, “when it’s empty? There’s nothing in here but a few squirrels.”

  “He’s right. How often have you seen anything living in the forest?”

  “If there is anything it hides well.” Judy scans the forest, her cheeks pale though a red flush shows at her collar. “Can we just get out of here, please? The forest gives me the creeps anyway, but now I know it’s infested with … with ‘wolfmen’ I-”

  Her eyes dart to the trees where a branch quivers. From its boughs, a bird flaps its wings and launches into the sky. She takes a gasp of breath. “Hell,” she pats her chest. “I thought that was one of them.”

  Freddie attempts a smile, fails. “Don’t worry, Judy. I told you, there’s nothing at this end.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll feel a whole lot better once we’re on the other side.”

  “What if we get there and it’s fenced off like PC Latimer said it was?”

  “It’s not just PC Latimer who’s seen it. Conrad said there was a twenty-foot steel fence across the exit road.”

  “Yes, he did, Hayley, and it was at the barrier that the … the wolfmen attacked the convoy, so they do come over to this side.”

  Freddie swallows. Another bird flutters from the overhead branches and then another bolts into the air as though launched from a spring. Freddie resists the urge to pull an imaginary rifle up to shoot and watches as it flaps into the greying sky. Rain, filtered through a thousand pine needles, spatters against his cheeks and he blinks it from his lashes. A crack, deeper in the forest, pricks at his awareness and he turns his head to listen. The noise mingles with the flap of the bird’s wings and seems to fill the space as he waits. His heart palpitates a beat faster.

  “OK.” Freddie turns a careful smile to Craig, Judy, and Hayley, sensing their need for his reassurance. “Let’s go.” He swings his leg back over the motorbike’s seat and waits for Hayley to join him then twists the key in the ignition. The bike’s engine roars, more birds burst from the canopy and h
urtle into the sky. He waits for Craig’s thumbs up, then manoeuvres the bike onto the path that will take them through the last, but most difficult, part of their journey to the edge of the forest.

  They ride for five minutes, before a mass of worming roots rises across the path, Freddie slows, moves to the edge of the track, ploughing through ferns, dodging felled boughs, and manoeuvres the bike to the other side. Here the track narrows. Bowing fronds brush against the motorcycle’s wheels as he moves the bike forward. Achieving any kind of speed will be difficult, if not impossible here. He looks ahead, searches his memory of past hikes through the woods. If he is correct, they are nearly at the edge of the forest, and this track should lead them to open moorland where the going would be tough, particularly on these bikes, but not impossible. What if there’s a fence, Freddie? Can’t be. How could they fence an entire forest? He rounds another corner, heads to a bank of ferns between a wide gap in the trees and jerks as the bike’s front wheel loses contact with ground. It spins mid-air for a second as the forest floor gives way to a steep bank, then crashes down, pulling the bike forwards. The bike wavers, the wheels spin, slip, and the bike falls. He grasps the handlebars and leans into the bank. Hayley, used to riding pillion, does the same, and the bike stalls as it slides down the bank coming to a stop as the wheel catches against a thick sapling.

  Heart pounding, he pulls his boot from beneath the tank, and twists to help Hayley. “You OK?” he shouts.

  “Leg’s caught!”

  At the top of the slope, Craig is dismounting, Judy already taking side-steps towards them.

  “Are you alright?” she calls.

  As Freddie calls back, a figure flits between the trees at the top of the slope. Freddie’s startled expression alerts Judy and she stops in her tracks.

  “Christ, no!”

  Another figure jumps behind Craig.

  “Craig, run!”

  “There’s two of them!”

  Startled, Craig twists his head to see, helmet impeding his peripheral vision. Behind him, two figures, almost camouflaged against the dark brown bark of the pine trees and the gathering gloom of the spaces in between, move between the trunks. Craig freezes. Freddie’s feet are locked to the ground. Should he shout to Craig? He doesn’t want to startle the beasts into action. Freddie raises an arm and slowly beckons for Craig to move forward as he crouches to his own bike and unbuckles the long bag of his hunting rifle. The creatures creep a little closer to Craig. He takes a step towards the slope. Freddie raises the rifle. And peers down the sights.

  Before he’d left the house, he’d made sure the rifle was loaded with bullets meant to obliterate vermin and small mammals. Apart from the pellets he kept for clay pigeon shooting, they were the only bullets he had that could do real damage. This thing, however, was the size of a woman, and muscular with it. The expanding tip of the bullet could do some serious damage, perhaps enough for them to escape. As he squeezes the trigger, he notices the curves of the larger female and how the dark hair that spreads across her chest thickens to a line past her belly-button and ends in a curling mass of pubes. Despite his fear, an ache passes over his groin. Why had he expected it to be shaven? Because you’re a perv, Freddie. His sights centre on the woman’s temple, the thinnest part of her skull, the best place for the bullet to gain access to her raddled brain. He pulls the trigger just as the other thing pounces, intercepting the bullet’s trajectory. The rifle kicks back against his shoulder. Damn! That would have been a perfect shot! The wounded beast flops to the ground, dark hair covering its face, blood seeping from its throat. Freddie takes aim again as it writhes. Craig stumbles down the steep bank, his feet trawling through the earth. He loses his balance and slips until his body jars against a thin sapling.

  The wounded beast shuffles backwards, a hand covering its damaged throat. Blood seeps through its fingers, its lips pulled back into a snarl, bare incisors an inch long. Freddie shudders as he aligns his sights on the blonde once more. As he squeezes the trigger, she – no, don’t humanize it – it - darts to the left, and disappears behind a trunk. The bullet shoots straight, bark splinters.

  Kelly snarls as rage takes her. Lois lurches to her feet, scream high-pitched as she disappears into the woods. The Uncaught is there, down the hill. The pointing stick has his attention. She leaps from behind the tree and bounds beside the other male. She can smell him, smell his fear, and the scent of his underarms, and the musky delight of the soft places, his sex, his dark hole. Her mouth waters. She licks her lips. He is strong. Bigger than The One. The Uncaught one scrabbles on the ground, the long stick at his side as she leaps again. Close now, she can see the hairs on the back of the New One’s neck. She can feel the heat of his body escaping from the collar of his jacket. She scans the area, her senses finely tuned. Within seconds she has judged the situation. The woman stands behind the man with the shining stick. She’s passing him something from the forest floor, it catches the light as he takes it. The stick lies broken and he stuffs the silver thing inside. She fears the stick. The other woman, the one that belongs to the New One, is on her knees, her voice grates against Kelly’s ears. In the forest, Lois chunters and chafes as her flesh mends. Stupid bitch. Stay away stupid bitch. Go back to Max. They are mine.

  In the second that the Uncaught takes the silver things from the woman, Kelly leaps. She pounces down the slope, clawed feet anchoring her to the forest floor, and grabs the New One from behind. She is silent across the forest floor. Swift to embrace him. Her arm slides across his chest and she hauls him to her breast, dragging him up the slope, digging her free hand into the soil, into bark, taking him with her into the dark places of the forest, the hidden places. He struggles. She likes his strength, and aches for him to be hers. As they reach the top, she throws him to the floor and lunges at him, jaws open, saliva dripping to his pale, hairless flesh. Their eyes meet as she bends to him, and he screams until her fangs sink into the warmth of his neck. The pulse beats against her tongue and she licks the blood as it seeps into her mouth. He kicks and beats against her back. Screams break through her ecstasy and she pulls back.

  The Uncaught appears over the brow of the slope, his stick pointing, scanning the forest. He can’t see them; hidden behind the bowing ferns, making their forever love. She looks down at the New One, her new one. His eyes are rolled back, the red blood already seeping across the whites. His chest heaves. Her mouth waters, hunger growls, and the urge to gnash and tear at his flesh bites at her. She resists. Keeping the Uncaught one in sight, she crouches and drags the New One to the deeper wood, to wait and claim him. On the other side, Lois howls, calls the Others and He.

  The rifle kicks back against Freddie’s shoulder. He curses, aware that he’s shooting blindly into the forest, shooting at something that howls, something that moves too fast among the growing dark, something that makes his scrotum shrivel and his testicles retract. Judy’s screams, muffled by his helmet, ring through the woods, then disappear beneath the howls that fill them.

  “Did you get it?” Hayley’s breath comes hard as she scrambles up the slope to stand next to him. “Did you?” Her voice is edged with despair. “Jesus, Freddie. What the hell happened? Let’s go. Just go. Just go.”

  “He’s gone!” It had all happened so fast. One second the creature was laid on the floor and then in a blur, Craig was gone. His scream had curdled Freddie’s blood, but worse was the abrupt silence. The thing he’d shot had crawled back into the forest before he’d had time to reload and its screaming howl had turned his bowels to water. Hayley tugs at his sleeve.

  “It’s calling. The one you shot is calling.”

  “Calling?”

  “Howls. That’s what they are. Wolves howl to call the pack.”

  Freddie’s scalp creeps and his eyes flit among the ferns and trunks. The forest light is shifting to dark grey, further inside the forest the light has become shadow. “We’ll have to get out on foot. There’s no way we can escape this way on the bikes. They’re too
heavy.”

  Judy crouches against his bike, hugging her knees. If they are to survive, they have to gather their senses. He leans down to her, his face stern—now is not the time for kindness. “Judy. We have to get out of here.” She pulls her arms tighter around her knees. “Judy!” Sterner now. “Get up. There could be more of them coming for us. We have to-”

  “I can’t ride that bike down there.” She gestures to the steep slope.

  “Neither can I. We’re going on foot.” She remains curled against the bike. He tugs at her sleeve. “Move it, Judy! We can’t wait any longer.”

  “Judy.” Hayley’s voice is gentler. “Please. Get up.”

  Heart pounding and unwilling to wait, Freddie steps away. “I’m going. If you stay here, you’ll die. If you come with us then you could survive.”

  She doesn’t move. Wind pushes through the trees, sending large drops of water pattering to the floor. Rain splashes against her cheek. She wipes at it then stands. With relief, Freddie moves away.

  “What about our stuff?”

  “Leave it. It’s just stuff. We can always get more.”

  “He’s right. It’ll just weigh us down anyhow.”

  He takes another step down the bank, gripping saplings then branches for support. Sure that Judy and Hayley are keeping up, he increases his pace and all three sidestep at a run down the slope. In the distance, the too near distance, a howl carries through the woods. Another voice responds, one that can only be a call from the thing he had shot. A wave of cold washes over him along with the urge to open his bowels. He takes a massive breath to release the tightness across his chest. Don’t shit your pants, Freddie-boy. Get a grip, and run!