Reaction (Wildfire Chronicles Volume 6)

by K. R. Griffiths

  Heading east.

  Chapter 31

  This time, Michael thought, we do it right. No more panic. No more blind running.

  He stood in front of the group in the courtyard, preparing to address them as he had once before. There were a few differences this time, though. This time there would be no splitting up; no underestimating the threat posed by the Infected.

  Almost everybody present had dealt with the Infected at least once; they all knew exactly what to expect. Michael was confident that they would be able to hold their shit together.

  Michael’s back ached like someone had driven a hammer into it repeatedly. Already the pain that he had been so grateful to see return was outstaying its welcome, and he couldn’t wait to be rid of it.

  Funny how quickly that happened.

  He had insisted on helping to dig a grave for John despite the growing fire in his spine. Adrenaline must have dampened the pain until the immediate danger had passed, but with safety came the realisation that his back wasn’t healed. Maybe it was healing, but it seemed determined to do so only by forcing him to push through a monumental wall of agony.

  He tried to focus on the doctor’s words, all those months earlier. Distant words spoken in another life, to another person.

  Pain is a construct Mr Evans. You have to push through the pain.

  He pushed through it for John, and would maybe even have admitted that he relished the pain he felt as he dug a hole to lay John to rest. Relished it because it felt appropriate.

  No, more than appropriate. Necessary.

  John’s death was one among many, but it hung over Michael like a low cloud. It could have been prevented. If Michael hadn’t been so…lost, would John have felt he had to rush off on a rescue mission all by himself? Would Rachel have been compelled to go after him?

  In the end several pairs of hands weighed in to help with the gravedigging, and Michael was grateful for that. Not just because it eased the burden on his damaged back, and the growing burden of guilt on his mind, but because it would speed the process along.

  It might have been his imagination, but Michael could swear the column of smoke rising from the island of Anglesey was thickening by the hour.

  He had no idea what a fire at a nuclear power station might do, but he was pretty sure that a lack of electricity would mean any safety protocols that had been in place would be effectively useless. Maybe the core—or the reactor, or whatever—could survive a fire, but it definitely did not strike him as the kind of thing anybody should try to confirm by living through it.

  John was buried and Anglesey was burning.

  Time to go.

  The crowd stared at him expectantly as he straightened, rubbing his lower back and wincing. Forty-one people in total. A motley assortment of damaged individuals drawn together from the ruins of St. Davids and Aberystwyth and Caernarfon and Newborough.

  A family.

  Each and every person carried whatever supplies they could manage on their backs, strapped up with ropes and torn scraps of expensive bed linen taken from the towers to make improvised rucksacks. Some had flashlights and most had weapons of one sort or another: mainly knives, but Michael saw the occasional ancient sword or mace as well.

  Scanning the group, Michael felt his spirits darken a little. At the rear of the crowd, towering above everybody else, he saw a scarred face and vacant eyes. Rachel hadn’t yet solved the problem of her brother, and had persuaded Michael that there would be no need yet; not until they reached Liverpool. He might even prove to be useful, Rachel had argued, and Michael hadn’t been able to disagree with that. A man who could move among the Infected unseen and execute them without endangering himself was a powerful weapon indeed. Annie Holloway had more than proved that.

  Still, the big man’s presence made Michael uncomfortable. Not just because of his infected blood, or even because of the awkward emptiness that radiated off him, like he had ceased to be human altogether. No, it was the potential for damage to Rachel that Michael feared most. When the time came, he wondered if Rachel would be able to let go of her giant little brother. She was strong, Michael had no doubt about that. He wondered, though, if she was ruthless enough to cut Jason loose when she had to.

  Not for the first time, he found himself wishing that John wasn’t lying cold and dead beneath one of the small gardens in the courtyard. John had always had a way of getting Rachel to listen to him; at least as much as anyone could.

  Michael sighed.

  Could really use your help now, John.

  Somebody coughed awkwardly, and Michael realised he had been standing there, lost in thought, for far too long. Virtually every face in front of him looked pensive, if not completely terrified.

  Good job inspiring the troops, Mike.

  “Okay,” he said. “We all know what’s out there. The best way for us to survive this is not to lose our heads. We want to move quickly, but most importantly we have to move quietly. If that means we go slow, so be it. Nothing is more important than remaining undetected. I’m going to tell you right now that we will come across the Infected, so best prepare yourself for it. The thing to remember is that if you don’t make a noise they can’t see you. Not unless they are right on top of you, and we’ll all be keeping an eye out to make sure that doesn’t happen, right?”

  A faint murmur of agreement.

  “I can’t stress this enough,” Michael said. “The biggest threat to your survival now is panic. As long as you don’t panic, you’ve got a chance. More than a chance. If we all hold it together, we’ll get to Liverpool and we’ll get the hell away from this nightmare, okay?”

  A slightly louder murmur.

  “You have my word,” Michael said.

  “We'll move single file. I want everybody within touching distance of the person in front of them. If you see anything; if you need anything, you touch the person in front. If you feel a hand on your shoulder, you touch the person in front. If we have a problem, no matter how small it is, we all stop.”

  Michael paused.

  “We ALL stop,” he repeated. “Most of us don’t know each other, and not too long ago some of us considered each other enemies, but listen to this. Listen to this. There are no enemies here, okay? There are not many of us left, and if any of you hope to survive, you’d better believe you’ll only make it if the people standing next to you do as well.”

  Michael saw some enthusiastic nodding, along with what looked like grudging acceptance.

  He wished he could find the words to make them all believe, to ensure that they would hold it together out there.

  Maybe nobody could. Maybe those words did not exist.

  Michael felt a powerful sense of deja vu.

  “First step is getting across the river,” he said. “We’ll go in groups on the raft. Those who get to the other side first, wait. Stay quiet and stay alert. The town looks clear at the moment, but if you see anything, you get back to the castle immediately, okay?”

  They stared at Michael silently.

  “Uh, move out,” he said. The group began to file toward the castle gate.

  All aside from Rachel, who Michael saw working her way through the cluster of bodies toward him.

  “You think this will work?”

  Michael grimaced.

  “Honestly, no. I can’t see us all making it to Liverpool. Not like this, but what else have we got?”

  “Some could take the boat,” Rachel suggested.

  “Annie had it sunk,” Michael said. “But even if she hadn’t, I would have been reluctant. Who would have got to decide which people took the boat? Me?”

  He shuddered.

  “Some people love the idea of getting to choose who lives and who dies. I can’t think of anything worse. Better that we all go into this equally.”

  Rachel nodded thoughtfully.

  “It’s seventy-five miles, according to Ed,” she said.

  Michael nodded glumly.

  “That sounds about right.”


  “Remember how long it took us to get to Aberystwyth from St. Davids? That was a lot less than seventy-five miles.”

  Michael sighed.

  “I don’t know what else to do, Rachel. If we stay, we definitely die, if we go, we maybe die. Maybe sounds like a better deal than definitely to me. At least there’s a chance the number of Infected along the northern coastline is reduced. According to Shirley, anyway. He said the area had almost emptied, right?”

  “Sure, days ago.”

  Michael gritted his teeth.

  “What’s on your mind, Rachel?”

  “Didn’t Darren say he got here by bus? Just kept on driving straight through them? The bus he used is still out there somewhere, outside the town, right? So why not try to use it? At least to get some of the way. As far as we can.”

  “It’ll be noisy,” Michael said.

  “Yeah. But it’s like John said: we move fast, we run into them. We move slow, we run into them. So fuck moving slow, right? We’ve got weapons. If a group of Infected stops the bus I think we can fight them off. And we do have Jason.”

  “And if we run into a herd?”

  “Then we’re fucked either way.”

  Michael stared through Rachel for several long moments. She had a point.

  “Okay,” he said finally. “We go and find Darren’s bus. If we can use it, we will. But if not we keep moving.”

  Rachel nodded, and shrugged into a large pack that held as much food and medicine as she could carry without collapsing. She turned toward the gate and stopped, her eyes widening in amazement as she caught sight of the stash of supplies they were forced to leave behind.

  “I don’t believe it,” she said.

  “What?” Michael shot a glance around, as if he expected to see something terrible heading straight for him.

  Rachel laughed, and scampered unsteadily over to the mound of supplies, stooping to retrieve something.

  Moments later Michael heard a match striking and he saw Rachel inhaling deeply on a cigarette. A warm glow spread across her cheeks and her eyes glazed over a little.

  Michael chuckled.

  “You reckon you’ll be able to carry all that as well?”

  He pointed at the small pile of cigarette cartons and packets of rolling tobacco.

  Rachel shook her head and sucked in another huge lungful of smoke, letting it seep slowly from her lips with a satisfied sigh.

  She dropped the half-smoked cigarette and crushed it out under her heel.

  “Nah,” she said, blowing out the last of the smoke.

  “I quit.”

  *

  Michael winced as the portcullis rose with its customary whine of metal on stone, but the town that clung to the opposite bank of the river remained deserted. Most likely, he figured, Jason had all but eradicated the Infected that shuffled aimlessly through the town when Annie had sent him out there, like a dog charged with tracking down foxes.

  It would not remain deserted for long, though, he was sure of that. Already he imagined that there were some of the creatures nearby, drifting toward the outskirts of Caernarfon. Silence was paramount. It had become more than important; it was a way of life now.

  He waited with Claire and Pete, watching as the people shuttled across the river in small groups.

  So far, so good.

  He hadn’t mentioned Rachel’s idea of finding the bus that Darren claimed to have left just outside the town to anybody. Not yet. Better if they thought they still had a long and arduous trek in front of them. The more cautious they remained, the better.

  He glanced down at Pete, who appeared to be doing his best to make himself invisible. He hadn’t said a word since Michael had found him locked in the room above Jason’s in the tower. He looked fine, at least externally, but the expression on the boy’s normally excitable face spoke volumes. Michael hadn’t asked yet what Annie had put Pete through. Maybe he never would. There were some things better left buried in the past. Michael knew that all too well, though his heart ached to think that someone so young might also be preoccupied with trying to forget.

  When everybody was safely on the opposite bank, Shirley pulled the raft back across for Michael and the kids.

  It felt strange to be leaving the castle. Inexplicably, Michael found himself feeling that he would miss the place. He put it down to fear of the unknown road that lay ahead of him. For a while the castle had seemed like everything; had been like the ultimate prize.

  Yet now here he was, heading back out into the open.

  Vulnerable.

  He shook the dark thoughts that tried to grip him away.

  Things were different now. The world had no surprises left to throw at him. He knew the Infected, and knew how to deal with them. He tried to focus on the fact that he would be travelling with a large group of people, all of them armed in one way or another, and on the fact that his legs worked now. No longer would he be faced with the prospect of being carried, abandoned to the mercy and goodwill of those around him. If things went sour, he would be able to react. Protecting Claire was no longer a hopeless fantasy.

  He glanced at his daughter, trailing her hand in the river as the raft bobbed across it, and felt a sad ache in his heart. In another world, in a parallel universe, maybe, Claire was drifting in a pedal boat under a warn, comforting sun, trailing her hand in the water and daydreaming. Safe.

  For the longest time, Michael had struggled with the notion that he was a murderer, and that there was a rotten core to his soul; dark and poisonous. In a strange way, putting forty-odd people to their deaths had finally cured him of that misapprehension.

  Not a murderer.

  A father.

  Just another of Earth’s creatures protecting its young.

  When the raft reached the other bank, Michael scanned the people that waited patiently for him. Everybody remained silent as the grave, clustered together, waiting for direction. Michael was struck by the sudden similarity to the Infected he had seen flocking around the countryside.

  This is a herd, too. Just like them.

  We might just make this, he thought.

  He pointed to the north, using the simple hand gestures that John had taught everybody. Everyone knew stop and go and wait here and get down. Maybe in time humans would have to evolve an entire gesture-based language.

  Evolution had been tampered with, but Michael had an idea that tampering with a process like evolution was like throwing a stick into a river and expecting the water to change course. The introduction of Project Wildfire into the stream of human progression was violent only for those doomed to live through the ripples. Evolution would scoop everything up and mould it. The fittest would survive. Maybe that would be the Infected.

  But Michael would be damned if he was going to go quietly. No, he would get to Australia somehow, and if it was free of the virus, he would expend every breath rallying the people of Australia to ready themselves; to prepare for the battle ahead. The battle to take the planet back.

  Focus, Mike. One step at a time. You’d think a cripple would be able to grasp the concept.

  Michael felt a wry smile creeping at the corners of his mouth.

  But as he turned to leave, the smile fell away. Something was nagging away at the corner of Michael’s mind, and he held up a closed fist, halting the group’s progress before it had even begun.

  What is it?

  He turned and scanned the group again. Something was missing. No, not something.

  Somebody.

  Michael’s gut seemed to know what was happening before his mind did. But when realisation caught up with instinct, he knew that they wouldn’t be making their way to Liverpool unscathed, let alone Australia. They were not even going to make it out of Caernarfon without trouble.

  No Jason.

  The big man had slipped away unnoticed. That hardly surprised Michael: it was difficult to miss a man who was in effect absent even when he stood right next to you.

  Clang.

&
nbsp; Clang.

  Clang.

  The sound of a lead pipe hitting metal.

  Jason had returned to his duty, still following the orders of a dead old woman. Still listening to voices nobody else could hear. Calling the Infected toward him. Toward all of them.

  Michael’s heart dropped.

  And the sky filled with distant shrieking.

  Chapter 32

  “Incoming.”

  The word cut through the atmosphere in the control room like a scalpel.

  Fred liked the bridge of the Conqueror. Liked the efficiency of it. Everyone performing their specific function with machine-like precision.

  Giles Filborn’s function was to monitor the radar. Boiled down to its essence, his entire duty was to say that one word when the situation required it. Incoming. As far as military careers went, Fred thought, there were plenty of other, far worse jobs. Most of the time.

  Incoming, he thought. Maybe nothing is worse when that word actually needs to be said, though.

  “Is it the chopper?”

  Fred burned his piercing gaze into Giles.

  “Uh…I don’t think so, Sir. It’s coming too fast.”

  Fred’s heavy brows lifted.

  “Too fast,” he repeated, ladling on the emphasis. The two simple words became a complicated question. One to which an answer lurked somewhere in Fred’s mind already, hiding in the shadows. An answer he didn’t want to shine a light on.

  He stepped closer to the radar display.

  At the centre of the pulsing screen he saw a cluster of large dots that represented the fleet, and a smaller dot to the west, way off at the edge of the screen. Isolated.

  And a tiny speck that arced between the two, heading unerringly straight for the fleet.

  No. Two dots.

  Fred stared at the screen, puzzled, and then back at Giles.

  “That’s the helicopter, Sir,” Giles said, pointing. This one just overtook it.”

  “How big?”

  “It’s small, Sir. Very small. I think we're only picking it up because of the speed it’s travelling at.”

  Giles frowned.