The Kielder Strain: A Science Fiction Horror Novel

by Rebecca Fernfield

  Leaving the boot open, Javeen runs back up the driveway, jumps through the doorway into the kitchen, and closes the door. Laura still hasn’t appeared. Another howl.

  “Laura!” Her shout is louder than she expected.

  “Coming!”

  Grabbing the final bag, Javeen waits, moving from one foot to the other until Laura’s footsteps sound on the stairs. “Meet me at the car!”

  Laura strides into the kitchen as Javeen turns for the door. “I’ll take that PC Latimer.”

  “No, it’s OK, and just call me Javeen.” As she opens the door, the howl comes again. This time she has an urge to empty her bowels. This time the ungodly noise is in the village.

  “They’re here!” Laura’s voice is hoarse.

  “Not yet.” Stay calm. “We’ll take my car. It’s parked outside.”

  An icy blast of wind-driven rain spikes at Javeen’s cheeks as she steps outside. The sky is a mottled dark grey.

  “I thought you said they only come out at night.” Laura says as they take quick steps down the driveway.

  “That’s what I thought. Perhaps it’s just the light they don’t like. It’s so overcast now it might as well be twilight.”

  As they reach the end of the drive, the sight at the end of the road sends shockwaves coursing through her body, and she stumbles. A large group jumps, runs, and jostles near the corner. Javeen freezes. Laura knocks against her back, sending Javeen staggering forward. She drops to her knees, keeping her eyes trained on the pack. “Get back,” she hisses. Heads turn towards her position. Laura whimpers but steps back.

  “Now what?”

  A heckle. A cackle. The clacking of claws on the tarmac.

  Javeen takes a deep breath. Stay calm. Got to stay calm. Think. Going back into the house would be suicide. “Get in the car!”

  In the next second, she leaps out from behind the brick column and sprints for the car. The creatures spot her, screech, and lurch forward. Thigh muscles ripple as lips pare back and they bound forward. To her right, Laura sprints to the front of the car and throws herself round to the other side. The noise of cackling and snorting monsters, scratches at Javeen’s eardrums and she yanks the door open, throws herself inside, and pulls it shut. A body thuds against the car door as it clicks to closed. Laura crashes onto the passenger seat and slams the door. Javeen fumbles in her pockets for the keys.

  “Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!” She slips the key into the ignition.

  Laura screams as a creature appears at the car’s bonnet, its face hideously distorted as it snarls and gnashes its teeth. A thud comes from above and metal tears.

  “They’re cutting the roof open!”

  Another thud at the back of the car and something clambers up its side. The sound of tearing metal continues. Javeen twists the key in the ignition. It turns but doesn’t start. Calm down, Jav. Just calm the fuck down! She tries again. The ignition catches. Lights illuminate the creature standing at the front of the car. She shifts the gears into first and releases the clutch. The car jerks forward, then stalls. “Shit! Fucking shit!”

  Laura places a firm hand on Javeen’s shoulder. “Stay calm. Breathe.”

  A figure appears at Emily Carmichael’s window and bangs on the glass. A sickening lurch fills Javeen as she realises the Reverend is banging at the window with his bible. The tearing stops and the creature at the front of the car twists its head to look. Javeen turns the ignition and the engine bursts into life. Slowly this time, she slips the gear into first and releases the clutch. The car moves forward. The creature in front leaps towards the Reverend.

  “No!” Laura gasps as within a second the pack is in Emily’s front garden.

  Javeen slams the accelerator to the floor and shunts the car forward before doing a quick three-point turn and speeding past the horde, and the Church, then careens onto Main Street.

  The car’s boot clicks shut.

  53

  Reverend Baxter’s breath catches in his chest as the monsters lurch across the road, jump Emily’s wall, and slam against the window. Great trails of slather swirl over the glass.

  Thud!

  A clawed fist slams against the glass.

  Thud!

  Another fist slams, and then another. The entire window rattles, plaster cracks around the frame. The room darkens as bodies push against the glass, each forcing themselves in front of the other. On the bed, Emily takes great sucks of oxygen, her bony hands holding the mask tight to her face. The last two hours have been spent reading to her. She’d requested some favourite passages, some of the most beautiful in the English language she’d said, that she had to hear for the last time. Like him, her time was near, and she’d confided in him, with tears welling along her lashes, that she didn’t think she’d get to see the peonies beneath the lilac next spring. She didn’t mind though, because Cyril was waiting for her. He’d taken her hand then, placed his other with a gentle touch across her paper-thin brow and told her the truth—that this life was merely the journey, beyond its final gate was their true home, with the Almighty, in the loving light of His Son. She’d smiled, closed her eyes, and asked him to read. He’d attended many deathbeds, soothed the desperate, given them succour in their time of need, and accompanied those who embraced it, and he had a sense for when their time for passing was near. Emily’s time is close, perhaps this afternoon, or early evening.

  Thud!

  Faces press up against the pane, incisors scratching against the glass, eyes pooled with blood stare madly at him. The car disappears past the church and he steps back to Emily’s bedside and sits back down. With a shaking hand he opens the book and reads aloud.

  “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not-”

  The chattering, screeching and gnashing intensifies, drowning out the Reverend’s voice. He raises it. “He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness …” The chattering subsides, the horde of creatures thins, and grey light returns to the room. At the back of the house the door handle creaks. He hadn’t locked it! Heart palpitating, he turns to Emily. She lies deep in her pillow, eyes closed, chest heaving despite the oxygen mask. He removes it. The door slams open. His hand visibly shakes as he takes hold of hers. “It’s time to go now, Emily. Cyril is waiting. The Lord is waiting.” She takes a great rattling breath as the cackling from the kitchen rises to a crescendo and the bedroom door slams open.

  The Reverend strokes her hand with his, resting his shaking hand on her belly. “I commend you, my dear sister, to almighty God …” The room fills with their stench. “And entrust you to your Creator.” Teeth gnash. One pushes from behind the others. A screech rises and jaws snap. “May you return to Him.” Emily’s eyes flick open. She pulls her hand from his and flings her arms out as though in an embrace and lifts her head from the pillow.

  Hot breath, sour and rank, brushes against the Reverend’s cheek. The room has filled with monsters, the small space claustrophobic. He continues. “…who formed you from the dust of the earth.”

  The heat and stench of their bodies fills the room. A large female bends to his neck and sniffs, growls, snaps, then pulls back. The noise of their snapping and snarling drowns out his voice. He shouts the prayer as they close in around Emily’s bed. “May holy Mary, the angels, and all the saints come to meet you as you go forth from this life.” Emily remains silent, eyes closed. Her lungs exhale, do not inhale. Pain in his shoulder, knives dig deep into the muscle, he sinks beneath the pressure, old knees unable to resist. “May Christ,” he shouts as the pain intensifies and Emily disappears beneath the horde. “Who was crucified for you, bring you freedom and peace,” he screams above their excited chuntering. “Amen.” Emily makes no sound as the creatures fall upon her.

  The car’s tyres squeal as it careens from the road onto the castle’s driveway. Javeen slams it down into second, forcing the engine to power forward. Picnic tables disappear in a blur and the heavy double gates of the arched entrance looms. She beeps the horn then slams on the brakes,
checks the mirrors for movement, then slams a fist on the horn once more. A face appears in the Watchman’s window at the side of the entrance. Andy! He gives her a quick thumbs up then disappears. She checks the surrounding area for movement. Nothing. Her chest remains tight. There is no sense of relief. She grips the steering wheel and shunts it into first as a narrow strip of light appears between the gates. She rolls forward, the headlights almost touching the gates as they open. The car rolls into the cobbled yard and the gates swing closed behind her. Engine off, door swung open, she stumbles from the car.

  “That was close!” She grasps at her belly, a dull pain spreads across her middle. “That was just too fucking close!”

  “What the hell were you doing, Jav?”

  “I had to get Laura.”

  Andy glances at the woman, unsmiling. He grabs Javeen’s shoulder. “No bloody heroics, Jav.”

  She pulls his hand off. He’s right. She knows it. “These people are my responsibility, Andy. What happened to ‘we’re all one big family’?”

  Andy pulls back, shaking his head. “We are. We look out for each other, but you told everyone that the gates would be shut at three-thirty. You risked your life going out there-”

  “I didn’t think they’d come out this early. I thought they were nocturnal.”

  “You were wrong.”

  “It’s just the light.”

  “Whatever it is, she should have been here by three-thirty. You’ve put us all at risk by going out and coming back the way you did. What if they’d gotten in?”

  The pain across Javeen’s belly intensifies as she remembers the pack of snapping, gnashing monsters that had attacked the car and then … Oh, God … and then jumped into Emily Carmichael’s garden. What had she done? It was her fault. Poor, poor Emily. And the Reverend! He could be dead now, eaten alive-

  “Jav. If we’re going to survive this … this … their attacks, then we’ve got to follow the rules.”

  “I didn’t know there were rules.”

  “There are going to have to be rules. We’re all going to die otherwise.”

  She sags, weary after the shock of adrenaline pumped through her body. A howl splits the air. Another creature answers with its own. Javeen’s belly cramps and she leans against Andy as the cacophony reaches a crescendo then fades. Yaps and snarls carry on the wind.

  “Come inside. Moira can you take Mrs Anderson inside, please. We’ve allocated her a room in the east wing; it’s on the plan.”

  As Andy’s arm slides across Javeen’s shoulder, and Laura pulls her bags from the back seat, a clawed hand rips at the bags inside the car’s boot.

  The sun sets across the village, long shadows growing until the only light is the orange haze from the streetlights. Jim Kendrick’s cat dashes across the road, chasing a scurrying rat. At Seven Main Street, Kathy Oldfield’s Jack Russell scrats at the back door and barks at the noise of galloping feet in the garden. Further along the road, at number Twenty-Three Mary Barker’s Bassett Hound howls a lament, its stomach aching with hunger as it pads round and round the kitchen, stepping in its own urine and faeces. A face pushes up to the window. It wags its tail, jumps up at the door leaving a stinking smear of shit on the white paintwork, then barks as the glass smashes, snarls as the thing breaks through the door, and yelps as teeth sink into its neck. As it dies, the air fills with chattering, snickering, incomprehensible voices, and the patter of dozens of feet on the tarmac.

  54

  Javeen ticks off the names on her list as she takes a head count of the villagers that have made it to the castle. Only nineteen people remain. Nineteen out of more than one hundred! The paper in her hand is covered in red lines, and almost every house on the map Andy had drawn of the village has a red cross through it.

  “PC Latimer.”

  She stares at the paper, unaware of Moira’s voice.

  “PC Latimer. I’ve made you a sandwich. Why don’t you come and sit down? I’ll get you a cup of tea.”

  She startles as the paper disappears beneath a ham and tomato sandwich in sliced white bread, discoloured at the edges.

  “Thanks.” She takes the plate, lets herself be guided by Moira to the table and sits. The bread is stale. All of them dead or infected. All of them. The phrase repeats in her mind.

  Andy sits down beside her, leans a large axe against the wall, and takes a cup of steaming tea from Moira’s hands. Javeen scans the group. There are no children. None! What happened to Amy and her children? Her stomach gripes. Apart from herself, Andy, Freddie, and Hayley, the other … survivors – her belly rolls again – are older and two are at least eighty. Conrad would be useful, of course, given his background, and his wife Moira was a force to be reckoned with, but although Laura was in her early thirties, half the time she seemed to be lost in her thoughts, and the other sleeping. Even now, with mug of tea in hand, she is curled up on the large sofa that Andy had pulled up to the open fire and seemed to be nodding off. For Javeen, sleep is impossible, her senses on overload. Andy slips an arm across her shoulder. She shudders at his touch. He pulls his arm away with a quick movement.

  “Gone off me already?”

  “What? No. I’m on edge that’s all.”

  The low, subdued chatter of the room, descends to silence once more. She lowers her voice, pushes out the paper with its red lines, each one a painful reminder of a face, a wave, a smile, now gone. “Look, Andy.” Her voice is almost a whisper. “They’ve all gone. We’re all that’s left of the village.”

  “Whispers, Latimer?” Conrad steps up to their table. “If you’ve got something to say, we should all hear it.”

  Javeen swallows, blinks back the tears that threaten to spill over her lashes, and pushes the paper towards him. “This is the map of the village. I’ve crossed off each house where I suspect the owners have either been killed or infected.”

  He stares down at the paper. “Damn!”

  “We’re all that’s left, Conrad. Just nineteen of us. And no children. In a few days they’ve decimated the population of this village.”

  “They’re ravenous, that’s for sure.”

  “The ultimate apex predator.”

  Conrad grunts. “Well, I-”

  “They’re monsters. Within a few days they’ve destroyed an entire village; either hunted us down, or infected us to become like them.”

  “I think they’re deliberately strengthening their packs.”

  “And we’re trapped in here with them.”

  “Sitting ducks.”

  “They’ve left us here to die.”

  “Marta Steward has left us here to die. The programme that created these monsters is under her direction.”

  “Are you saying this is deliberate?”

  “Are we part of an experiment?”

  “We are now. Steward and Dalton want to capture the ‘wolfmen’ and use them as weapons.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Latimer. What are you saying? That they’re going to capture them and train them as soldiers?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Science fiction! Nonsense!” Conrad scoffs. “Never heard anything so ridiculous in all my life.”

  “It is ridiculous, but so is the existence of wolfmen, yet they’re out there, hunting us down.”

  “They’re not werewolves. That’s just fantasy. Certainly, they’ve been infected with some dreadful virus-”

  A howl splits the air. Silence falls on the room.

  “That was close.”

  Moira is right. The howl could have come from outside on the lawn. Javeen instinctively looks to the boarded window.

  “We’re safe in here.” Andy slips his arm back across her shoulder. This time she doesn’t flinch although her shoulders remains rigid. She picks up the papers again.

  “The fence-”

  “Whoever put that up should be imprisoned. They’ve signed our death warrant.”

  “Why would they do that? If they knew what these creatures were capable of, why di
dn’t they evacuate us before it was too late?”

  Javeen doesn’t have an answer. “If they ever get beyond the fence, they’ll hunt humans to extinction.”

  Freddie catches her gaze.

  “We have to stop them.”

  “How? They’ve killed everything they’ve found so far, killed it or bitten it, and made it one of them.”

  “Conniving bastards.”

  “It’s time to turn the tables. Let the hunted become the hunter.”

  “How do you suggest we do that? It would be suicide to go into the woods.”

  “We set traps—here in the village.”

  Max springs with ease to the wall and vaults over, landing with a soft thud on the grass. It crunches beneath his feet, its iciness in this first frost of winter, sharp against his bare toes. The house sits in darkness, the curtains drawn. Something is different. He walks to the back of the house and pushes down the door handle. It opens to the silence of an empty house. He strides through the kitchen to the living room and then takes the stairs two at a time, inhaling the scent of orange zest, oatmeal soap, Chanel No. 5, and the intense particles of Laura’s sweat and the sweet scent of her dark places. The air in their bedroom is cold, her scent stale. She is gone. Rage swirls. He tips his head back and howls, “Lauurraaaa!”

  Within ten seconds he is out of the house and sprinting past the church. The streets are silent, the houses dark. To his left snickers and tapping feet. The monsters … his monsters … run parallel. In the distance a howl—a call for the hunt. A thrill shudders along his spine and he pumps his arms harder, easily outpacing the strongest among the others. He follows the howl as it rises again, running along the empty roads. Light shines from the dark, a tiny slither that becomes two then three as he rounds the corner. He cackles, his mouth watering; the Screamers are hiding in their light. Ahead, the castle sits as a wide block on its hill. Slithers of light are patterned as stripes on its walls. Come out, come out, little piggies.