Reaction (Wildfire Chronicles Volume 6)

by K. R. Griffiths

  Reckless and rash, and so flat-out crazy that it might just have a chance of working.

  John would have been proud.

  Chapter 23

  By the time Annie had hoisted her old bones from the throne, one shriek had become many, and the blood had drained from her face.

  She stared at Gareth Hughes for a moment in stunned shock, and he stared right back at her, his eyes wide.

  "The door!" Annie hissed.

  She was already moving, but Gareth's younger legs beat her to it by a distance. He cracked open the heavy door and looked outside, and Annie knew the truth of the situation from his trembling gasp.

  "Shut it," she said, and tossed him the keys. "Lock it."

  Gareth fumbled the keys, and nearly let out a pathetic scream when they tumbled to the stone floor with a clatter.

  As he stooped to retrieve them, he watched the door warily, expecting that at any moment one of the creatures he had seen running amok in the courtyard would target the noise and smash its way into the tower.

  After a second that felt like a lifetime, he slid the old iron key into the lock, panting in relief when it engaged with a dull click. For good measure, he threw the heavy deadbolt into place.

  The door was sturdy and old, designed to protect against men with weapons. It would surely stand against the tide of inhuman fingers that would attack it in moments.

  "I think we're okay," he breathed.

  "Okay?" Annie's voice was high-pitched with either astonishment or contempt; Gareth wasn't sure. Maybe both.

  "They are inside the castle? How the fuck did they get inside the castle?"

  Gareth flinched. Annie Holloway cursing was in some ways just as terrifying as the bloodbath that was unfolding just a few inches of wood away from him. He had only heard her swear a couple of times in three decades. It had never been a good omen.

  "I...I have no idea. Maybe it is airborne after all?"

  Annie's eyes narrowed dangerously.

  "It is not airborne. If it were, we'd all be dead already. It's him."

  Gareth opened his mouth to ask who, but shut it again promptly. He had a feeling that the less input he had in the conversation, the better it might go for him. Neither of Annie's thuggish sons was in the tower, but she still had the revolver she had taken from the crucified man.

  Gareth couldn't picture Annie Holloway firing a gun—it seemed like a ridiculous image from a movie to him—but his imagination failing to conjure up something was no reason to suppose it couldn't happen.

  It is an extraordinary situation, Gareth thought. Has been for days. And Annie's response to the extraordinary has been to sink into malevolent insanity.

  Suddenly he could picture Annie firing the gun; could see it all too clearly, like he had been briefly granted the power to see the future.

  "The cripple," Annie hissed. "I don't know how, but he did this."

  Gareth swallowed painfully as Annie pulled the revolver from her skirt pocket and clutched it between her trembling hands. He had noticed the trembling before: Gareth was one of the few people that Annie ever let her guard down around.

  He had never brought it up, of course. To do so would have been to imply that Annie was weakening, letting age get the better of her.

  The gun twitched wildly, but remained pointed at the floor. For a moment Annie's eyes looked foggy, as though she had no idea what to do next. She stared down at the gun, and then back to Gareth.

  "Where is Voorhees?"

  Oh shit.

  If you throw your lot in with a temperamental maniac, Gareth thought, there are likely to be times when even doing exactly as they ask might provoke a catastrophic fury.

  He had always been aware of Annie's…volatility. In the past the worst outcome to disappointing her had been a snarling, ear-shredding rebuke.

  Gareth felt his eyes glued to the gun. Felt his nerves jangling and his blood thundering through his veins.

  Times had changed.

  Annie had left Gareth in charge of Voorhees. It was Gareth that ferried the frightening man across the river on the raft to the town. Gareth that brought him back. Gareth that administered the drugs that Annie believed kept the big man docile.

  Gareth had done exactly as he was supposed to: Voorhees was locked inside one of the upper rooms in a nearby tower, recovering from the treatment the doctor had administered.

  The big man was comatose, drugged to the eyeballs on exactly the cocktail of drugs that Annie had ordered he be given.

  The one weapon we have against the Infected, he thought, and she has blunted it to the point of uselessness.

  Annie wouldn't see it that way.

  "He's...uh...in his room."

  The statement sounded ridiculous as it fell from his lips. Like he was telling a mother where she could find her sullen teenage son after an argument.

  "He's, uh, out of it."

  They both knew that was Annie's doing; her insistence on continually pumping Voorhees full of painkillers and sedatives. Gareth saw a flicker of recognition pass over her eyes; felt the unspoken agreement crackling in the air like electricity. It didn't matter. Annie wouldn’t blame herself. She never did; never had.

  Annie raised the gun, her bony old fingers trembling wildly.

  And pointed it at Gareth.

  "Then you are going to go and wake him up," she hissed.

  *

  Where the hell is Jason?

  Michael cowered in one of the stately bedrooms with Claire, barely daring to breathe, and stared through the narrow window at the courtyard below.

  Once again the place was painted with grisly bodies. Pieces of human flesh—some recognizable and some terrifyingly not—littered the enclosed space.

  He had thought the old woman's response to an outbreak in the castle would be to send Jason out to put an end to it. Hell, his entire plan had been built on the Infected decimating the old woman's people and leaving him with a chance to end her with a gun taken from whichever of her sons he was able to launch his surprise attack on.

  But Jason was nowhere to be seen.

  Of the forty-or-so people that had been milling around the courtyard when Michael threw a man-shaped grenade into their midst, Michael estimated something like twenty had been dealt lethal blows in the violent storm that had Bryn Holloway at its epicentre.

  That left roughly another twenty. The ones that had not been killed, but had instead been transformed and who were now pulsing around the courtyard like flocking birds.

  Like caged predators.

  Shit.

  Michael scanned the human and once-human wreckage below him, and found his eye drawn to the most extreme example of carnage in his line of sight.

  Rhys Holloway.

  It looked like the man had been dragged through a gigantic shredder. Where others had succumbed to tears in their necks or their bellies, Rhys had been torn limb from limb. Ripped up and tossed aside like a bad lottery ticket.

  Michael remembered Rachel describing to him the bloody mess she had seen in the farmhouse outside St. Davids. And hadn't Jason said something about his mother targeting her children specifically? Like somehow the family connection made the need to kill stronger?

  That explained why Bryn Holloway was the only member of the Infected not circling aimlessly. The man that had started the carnage stood in front of the castle's main tower, pointing his empty eye-sockets at the door intently. He looked like he was trying to work out a particularly difficult puzzle.

  Hope you get a chance to have a nice family reunion, pal.

  Michael returned his gaze to Rhys' ruined corpse and felt frustration rising inside. In the centre of the smeared stain that the man's body had become, Michael saw his rifle. There would be a set of keys among the gore somewhere, too, but they might as well have been on the surface of the Moon for all the good they would do him now.

  Annie's people had retrieved the antique weapons from the tower Michael occupied, but there was still an ancient suit of plate ar
mour on display. For a moment he toyed with the idea of seeing if he could slip into it, and march outside to get the gun and the keys, wrapped in the safety of the iron. Like a tank.

  Ridiculous.

  Even if the armour protected him from the teeth and clawing fingers, the Infected would bring him to the ground through sheer weight of numbers.

  There was no way out.

  The people in the cells were safe. Michael was safe. But it wouldn't matter. They were all trapped, and once more Michael was faced with the prospect of the castle keeping him protected from the virus while he slowly starved to death inside it.

  Frustration rolled around his gut.

  What have I done?

  A flicker of movement outside caught his eye, noticeable only because it was located so far above the whirling vortex of horror at ground level.

  Michael squinted.

  It was the man he thought of as Annie Holloway's advisor, exiting the door at the top of the main tower and moving out onto the battlements, creeping along as slow as evolution and clearly terrified.

  Michael frowned as he watched the man's progress along the wall.

  Now where the hell are you going?

  Chapter 24

  Getting out of the tower and onto the wall that ran around the castle felt bizarrely like a relief to Gareth, despite his sudden proximity to the horrors below.

  Annie prowled around the inside of the tower like an angry scorpion. The Infected that circled in the courtyard far below somehow felt less threatening.

  Until he stopped and actually looked at them.

  The destruction of Newborough had mostly happened around Gareth, like movement caught only in the corner of his eye. He had been safely tucked away inside the town hall while hell was being unleashed on the streets outside.

  He saw the obscene aftermath, of course; the decimated bodies and the stink of blood and death that accompanied the sight. But other than a snatched glimpse from an upstairs window, he had not seen the Infected up close.

  The folly of his loyalty to Annie Holloway became apparent immediately.

  Focused on killing and subduing each other, when creatures like this are out there, he thought. So short sighted. So human.

  Gareth knew the creatures had extraordinary hearing, yet still he underestimated them. At first he shuffled quickly from the door onto the wall, aiming to get to the next tower as fast as possible. Within three steps he stopped dead as several eyeless faces whipped in his direction, and he realised that even the soft rustling of his shoes on the flat stone drew their hideous attention.

  He held his breath, afraid that the sound of the air moving in his lungs would get him killed, and only allowed himself to breathe again when the creatures below returned to their aimless wandering.

  All except for one.

  Bryn Holloway.

  Oh shit.

  Staring at Annie Holloway's eyeless, blood-soaked son was like hearing the word of God. A revelation. When Annie discovered that her boy—possibly both her boys—had succumbed to the virus, her fury would be biblical.

  She'll kill us all.

  Gareth's mind raced even as he fought to keep his movements slow and measured. Getting Voorhees to wake up and dispatch the Infected was paramount, he decided. But returning to Annie was definitely not.

  If he could get the big man out into the courtyard, and let him do…what he did, Gareth made up his mind that he would flee the castle the moment the last Infected body hit the ground.

  The outside world frightened him terribly, but at least he would stand a chance out there. Inside the castle there would be an armed woman looking for brutal retribution, and Gareth would be her first, and maybe only target.

  Gareth kept one sweaty hand at his hip, clutching the set of keys in his pocket tightly to keep them from jangling, and made his way inch by inch across the wall.

  He had to travel around sixty feet to reach the tower that held Voorhees and the little boy that Annie had taken as her own.

  Thinking about the boy, Gareth felt a pang of guilt. Leaving him there felt cruel, but Gareth knew he would not be able to protect him beyond the castle’s gate. He had grave doubts about his ability to protect himself.

  Will she kill the boy?

  Gareth doubted it. Most likely, he thought, Annie would simply replace her own dead sons with the little boy. She had already practically adopted him, cooing over him and stroking his hair with a faraway look in her eyes.

  In some ways, he thought, that might be worse for him than death.

  Thinking about the little boy, and how he was going to abandon the poor little bastard to endure Annie's wrath alone was making Gareth edgy. Making him sloppy.

  Once more he felt the eyeless faces pointed in his direction, and he dismissed all thoughts of everything else and focused only on the path ahead, and on negotiating it without making any more noise than the frantic pounding of his heart.

  Only when he reached the tower that held Voorhees did he allow himself to relax a little. He knew exactly which key opened the door, and managed to slide the bunch of keys from his pocket and select it without making any further sound. Disengaging the lock might attract some attention, but by then it would be too late for the Infected, and he would be safely inside. The next person to exit the tower would be Voorhees, even if it took several hours for Gareth to rouse him from his narcotic slumber.

  When he finally closed the door behind him and stood on the dark, winding stone steps that led down into the tower, he let out an explosive gasp of relief. The air he sucked into his lungs felt like razors, and the sudden intake of oxygen that his terrified journey had denied him made him feel dizzy.

  Made it, he thought triumphantly, and he scurried down the steps.

  The boy was locked in the tower's top room. He had been there for several hours as punishment for calling Annie a crazy old bitch. Gareth had the impression that the kid had idolized the man whose throat Annie had ordered to be cut. He seemed like a pretty spirited lad, and Gareth imagined it would take Annie a while to break him.

  He suppressed a shudder and continued down the steps, reminding himself that he was not there for the boy.

  Voorhees occupied a room on the next level down. He was locked in, though Gareth and Annie had discussed the probability that the big man no longer needed securing. Each time Annie sent him out into the town to 'cure' the Infected, he came back willingly enough.

  Still, Annie insisted on continuing with the regime of imprisoning and drugging him.

  Gareth unlocked the door and stepped into the room. Voorhees was out cold, unmoving as his system worked its way through the handful of powerful painkillers Gareth had dosed him with only a couple of hours earlier.

  Gareth tried shaking him gently, and got no response.

  It was as he was debating whether slapping the man might result in both waking him and enraging him that Gareth heard the noise behind him. The sound of the door to the room being pushed open gently.

  Not Infected, he thought as he turned, they would rush straight in.

  His mouth dropped open, and he realised that in his eagerness to get to Voorhees, he had not locked the door to the battlements behind him.

  And now he was not alone.

  The cripple. Not crippled at all, but standing upright with a malevolent grin on his face.

  And a shotgun in his hands.

  Gareth raised his arms aloft in feeble surrender, frantically trying to think of the words that might mollify the man. It was all wasted effort.

  Before he could even open his mouth, Gareth's vision was filled by the butt of the gun, and he had time to hear the crunch as it impacted with his jaw before the world became brief pain and long, slow darkness.

  *

  Annie felt like her mind was being stretched; being slowly extended to its limits. To the point of snapping.

  She stood alone in the throne room, confronted suddenly by the very real possibility that everybody else could already be dead, a
nd that she was just one old woman with hands that shook wildly and a gun that she had no idea how to use.

  Years of building influence slowly. Decades of work. Surely it could not come down to this? Surely she had not been solely reliant on the brawn of her idiot sons?

  She stared at the gun, lost in dark thoughts, and found relief washing through her when she heard Gareth returning.

  She turned to the base of the winding staircase, and hoped the paralysing fear she had felt only a moment earlier was not written clearly on her face. A show of weakness would be seized upon, and a strong appearance might be all she had left.

  When she saw who the footsteps belonged to, the fear returned.

  Michael.

  Not crippled at all, but standing in front of her as large as life, with Bryn's shotgun levelled at her.

  "Drop the gun," Michael said evenly.

  Annie didn't hear him.

  All her thoughts had coalesced into one single terrible whole.

  He has Bryn's gun.

  My boy...

  The revolver dropped from Annie's nerveless fingers and a pitiful sob escaped from her quivering lips. Somewhere deep inside, hatred at the display of weakness flared.

  She felt a single tear rolling down her wrinkled cheek, and found that she could not rip her gaze away from the shotgun. From what she knew in her heart that it represented.

  "Is he dead?"

  There was no strength in her voice, no sign of the fortitude that had helped her to dominate the town of Newborough for decades.

  "In a manner of speaking," Michael said grimly. "The other one, though. Well, he's definitely dead."

  Annie collapsed to her knees, ignoring the fiery complaints of her ancient joints as they struck the hard floor. Finally she tore her gaze from the gun, and focused it on Michael's smug eyes, and felt an overpowering surge of hatred for the man.

  "And now I suppose you think you've won," she spat.

  "Won?" Michael's voice was filled with wonder. "I think we've all lost."

  "And now what?" Annie snarled bitterly. "You murder me? Somebody had to take control, to give the people direction. People need organisation, Michael, don't you understand? People need leadership. Who cares if you don't like the way I do things? What chance would we have had to survive all this without clear leadership?"