Reaction (Wildfire Chronicles Volume 6)

by K. R. Griffiths

  “Nothing natural moves that fast, Sir.”

  “How long do we have?”

  “I’d guess it’s going to make contact with the fleet in less than thirty seconds.”

  Fred sighed.

  Wearily.

  It was a sigh that felt like it had been building for decades, prompted to finally escape his lips by the sudden understanding that the plan had been deeply flawed from the beginning. Project Wildfire never had a chance of succeeding. Not as long as humans were involved in the process.

  The entire debacle would end in panic. Survival was going to be a roll of the dice, despite everything he had done to ensure that luck played no part.

  The people aboard the Conqueror were going to have to fight for their lives. Gassing the majority of the crew suddenly looked like a terrible idea.

  Impetuous.

  “Battle stations!” Fred snarled.

  Giles stared at Fred and blinked slowly.

  “Uh…Sir?”

  Fred glared at Giles.

  “What are we fighting?”

  *

  Tim Flynn hadn’t expected the end of the world to be so boring. Life had never been boring before: there had always been the prospect of a roadside device livening the day up, or of stumbling blindly into a fire fight in what was supposed to be a family home. Hell, even if you were surrounded by kids, there was always the chance one of them would produce a battered AK from nowhere and begin rattling bullets at your head. Hard to be bored in that sort of environment.

  Some thought it was terrifying, some wallowed in philosophical observations about how fucked the human race was if nine-year-olds were carrying guns and killing in the name of well, anything really. Tim was just grateful for the excitement.

  It was why he’d signed up for the army in the first place. Because everything else was just so damned mundane.

  He always hoped he would advance through the ranks, but never so far that he would be taken away from the action. He didn’t want the stifling boredom of command. Spec Ops would have been ideal; Black Ops was the fevered fantasy that teased him in his dreams.

  What Chrysalis Systems had offered him sounded like the greatest under-the-radar mission ever undertaken. Accepting the challenge once his army career was done hadn’t even been a decision at all. At that point, faced with the prospect of finding work in private security somewhere—or worse, civilian work—Tim would probably have gladly signed up with the fucking mafia just to keep the adrenaline pumping.

  Chrysalis Systems, Tim had been promised, would be like adrenaline injected right into his heart.

  And it was boring.

  Exciting at first; heady and intoxicating when it became clear that Chrysalis meant to survive the end of the world. But after that? Day after day of sitting on a goddamned boat going nowhere, hiding in the shadows while the real excitement went down just a few miles away, on the land. Enemies everywhere, a constantly-evolving theatre of war. No holding back. The entire world was now the textbook definition of fire at will. And Tim was doomed to sit around and daydream about getting involved, cooped up on a floating prison with hundreds of other bored bastards, none of whom even had the decency to be interesting.

  Even the ship itself was an insult: the core of the fleet was all aircraft carriers and destroyers; at least if he had been aboard one of those ships he might have been able to maintain an illusion that he might see action at any moment. At least those ships had fucking guns.

  On the former container ship Sea Star even delusion was out of reach. The ship was built for transporting cargo. Not a single weapon on board, other than the ones carried by the soldiers themselves. It was one of several ships within the fleet that had been designated for transporting supplies. Food, fuel, medicine. And, most ridiculously of all: at least half the ship was given over to transporting luxury items for the rich bastards who had tagged along for the ride. Tim had been down to the vast cargo decks, and had seen it all with his own eyes: supercars, works of art that he presumed were priceless, a huge library of old books.

  The Sea Star was a Noah’s Ark dedicated not to preserving animal life, but pointless bullshit.

  Tim had made his feelings on the matter known by pissing all over a large painting that he recognised vaguely. One by the guy who drew faces of people at ridiculous angles. To Tim the art didn’t look impressive; it looked like a half-wit had gone berserk with a set of crayons. The addition of his piss, he suspected, had probably improved the piece.

  That had been the most exciting thing to happen on the Sea Star in days.

  Until the strange explosion.

  Tim was sitting in the cafeteria when it happened, chewing through a hunk of badly-cooked beef that he knew came from a can, but seriously doubted had ever been a part of an actual cow.

  He stopped mid-chew when he heard the odd bang. It didn’t really sound like an explosion; didn’t have that rumbling quality that he associated with heavy ordnance. Instead it sounded more like a plain-old impact, like some giant had smashed a fist into the hull.

  Everyone in the dining area entered a comical sort of freeze frame state: cups held against lips, forks paused on their journey from plate to mouth.

  For a second, everybody stared at each other in confusion.

  “Did we just run aground?” a voice to Tim’s left said.

  The answer was automatic gunfire, muffled but clearly audible, rising from one of the lower decks.

  A lot of automatic gunfire.

  Tim swallowed the half-chewed beef and leapt to his feet.

  Moments later a siren sounded; a long, almost mournful howl, and the ship finally became interesting.

  Tim rocketed from the cafeteria, making his way back toward the dorm and the footlocker that held his until-now-pointless assault rifle. A tide of soldiers moved around him, and Tim felt the dizzying electricity in the air, the static charge that built up in men who knew they were about to engage.

  His nerves raced frantically to keep up with him.

  Once in the dorm, the clicking of footlockers being unlocked sounded almost insectile, a chattering cacophony, like a small army of crickets had descended on the room.

  Outside the dorm, a fresh burst of gunfire shattered the silence. The sound mixed with a chorus of terrified screams.

  Right outside the dorm.

  Even Tim paused, his anxiety to engage whatever enemy had breached the ship stifled momentarily by the sheer horror evident in the screams that ripped through the corridor outside.

  More gunfire. Further away. Receding.

  Tim raced to the dorm’s main door and threw it open. He stared, stunned, at the scene that greeted him.

  In the corridor outside the dorm it was raining blood; thick rivulets dripping from a ceiling drenched in the stuff.

  He saw dismembered limbs everywhere.

  Saw a hand sliding slowly down the wall opposite him, partially-glued to the surface by blood and gristle, before it finally fell to the floor with a wet splat.

  Something had passed through the corridor. Something that had chewed up everything in its path like a lawnmower.

  What was left no longer looked like a corridor on a ship. It didn’t look man-made at all; spray-painted with organic matter, the path that stretched out ahead of Tim now looked like a gigantic artery clogged with globs of glistening fat. Stepping out of the dorm felt like stepping out of sanity and entering a place of tortured madness.

  For a second the shock locked Tim in place, and beneath his excitement he felt another message pulsing in his mind, desperately trying to be heard.

  Run away you fucking idiot. Hide.

  Only for a second, though. When his years of training and conditioning for combat came back online, he yelled out hoarsely.

  “This way!”

  Tim charged forward, oblivious to the fact that only a handful of people were stupid enough or dedicated enough to follow him from the dorm, and he followed the trail of blood and broken bodies, all the way back to th
e cafeteria.

  When he kicked open the door, the sight that greeted him caused a fracture in his mind, like the first indication that an earthquake was imminent. Standing in the centre of the canteen, drenched in gore, Tim saw a creature born in nightmares, clutching a severed head and biting into it like it was an apple.

  Tim looked at the creature.

  The creature looked at Tim.

  The assault rifle in Tim’s hand only had time to move a fraction of an inch. His mind was still conveying the order to his arm to lift the weapon when something inexplicably powerful gripped the top his head.

  And began to twist.

  *

  Fred stood in the control room and watched through powerful binoculars as the Sea Star began to sink into the waves. McIntosh had punctured the hull below the waterline like a fleshy torpedo, and Fred could only guess at the havoc that had been wreaked on the ship. It would take a long time to sink; the container ship was gigantic, and was taking on water slowly. Far too slowly. If McIntosh had made it all the way to the fleet, hopping from ship to ship until he tracked Fred down would present no problem whatsoever.

  “Fire on that vessel,” Fred barked.

  The confused stares he got in response made Fred think seriously about pulling out his revolver and executing everyone in his immediate vicinity. Only the fact that there would be no one left to control the ship stayed his hand.

  He gritted his teeth.

  Fred heard a man's voice stuttering next to him.

  Dick Skinner. Head of Security. Utterly useless, just like the rest of them. The man’s lower lip trembled like he was a teenage girl about to receive her first kiss from a boy, and Fred struggled to resist the urge to begin beating the man. He succeeded in doing so only because there just wasn’t time.

  “Sir,” Skinner said. “The VIPs are on that ship. “Even the Royal—"

  “There are no VIPs, Skinner,” Fred snarled. “The only thing that matters on that ship is the creature that is no doubt tearing your VIPs to shreds as we speak. Soon that creature will come to this ship. How important do you feel, Skinner? Very? Or not very?”

  Fred leaned in close to Skinner and spoke in a low, dangerous whisper.

  “Give the order to sink that ship, Skinner. Sink it. Now.”

  *

  The old man wasn’t on the ship. Jake hadn’t killed everyone on board; not yet anyway, but it was already clear to him that the vessel was full of the kind of people the old bastard would think of as disposable.

  The ship hovered at the periphery of the fleet. In fairness, Jake thought, it would have been lucky to find Sullivan at the first attempt. Not that it was a problem: this attempt had been enormous fun, and he suspected every other would be, too.

  He almost hoped that Sullivan would be on the last ship that he attacked. Something about letting the old man stew while Jake worked his way relentlessly towards him, cutting through thousands of bodies en route, made his deformed groin ache with pleasure.

  Jake stood in the cafeteria and watched the latest round of corpses settling onto the floor, letting the warm blood swill around his mouth like fine wine before swallowing.

  The intake of blood was overwhelming; the energy rushing through his veins felt almost dangerously out of control and his massive heart pounded rapidly.

  Is it possible to overdose?

  The thought struck Jake as highly comical, and for a moment he stood alone in the lake of gore and chuckled to himself.

  In the distance he heard a sound that pulsed underneath the wailing of the ship’s alarm like a beating drum, and his laughter died.

  A thunderous roaring, followed by a whistling shriek.

  Jake began to run. Not in any particular direction; there was no need for him to know the layout of the ship in order to evacuate. Thrumming with the power the blood had given him, he was confident that smashing through the tempered steel walls would be like pushing through wet paper.

  The weapons the humans carried were ineffectual, and so the old man had resorted to a larger variety. The distant booming and whistling Jake heard was presumably incoming artillery fire.

  With a grunt, he kicked powerfully, rocketing through walls and exploding from the hull of the ship.

  By the time enormous explosions tore the vessel in two, Jake was already a hundred yards clear, powering through the water. In his former life, swimming had been beyond him; now it was as straightforward as breathing. Just a matter of reaching forward to claw at the water and pulling himself through it. Slower that his movement on land, but somehow even more fun.

  Judging by the arcing trail of smoke that hung in the sky, the shots had been fired from a ship that sat near the middle of the fleet. A destroyer that heaved under enormous guns and was probably staffed by a crew of Sullivan’s most highly trained and dangerous soldiers.

  Jake hurtled toward it, and hoped they would offer up some sort of challenge.

  Chapter 33

  We might have stood a chance, Michael thought. If only everybody had stayed quiet. We could have slipped away and let Jason draw them to him.

  If only the people huddled by the river when the shrieking started had remembered not to panic.

  The first sign of the Infected had drawn a scream from someone in the group. A male voice. Michael had an idea the voice belonged to Gareth Hughes, and even as he began to process the chaos that unfolded around him, some part of Michael’s mind rebuked him sternly for not killing the man when he had the opportunity.

  It wouldn’t have mattered. Michael had prepared himself for the eventuality that they would run into the Infected sooner or later, and that someone wouldn’t be able to swallow back their terror.

  He had just hoped it would be later. Not while they were still standing within spitting distance of the castle.

  Michael saw Jason in the distance, along the harbour front, putting an end to one Infected creature and blissfully unaware of the other two that streaked behind him.

  There’s only a couple of them. We might be able to make it.

  “Get back to the castle!” he roared, but his words were lost in a chorus of screams.

  The group scattered, as though a live grenade had landed in their midst; rushing away in all directions.

  Blind panic.

  And then the Infected arrived.

  Michael saw one of the young women that had been Darren Oliver’s prisoner freed at last, her throat torn away by the teeth of a pregnant woman with empty eye-sockets, and he wondered dimly what sort of horror might be lurking in the creature’s womb.

  He turned away, feeling a powerful urge to vomit, and saw Rachel fall to the ground, dragged onto her backside by the grasping fingers of the other.

  For a moment she scrabbled at the air helplessly like an upturned tortoise, weighted down by the heavy pack on her back, and Michael watched in mute dismay as she pulled the revolver from her waistband and blew the creature’s head off in one smooth motion.

  The noise of the report was deafening. Immediately the shrieking over Caernarfon seemed to multiply, and Michael could almost see the horrific figures hurtling toward them through the narrow, winding streets.

  And then, in a frightening blur of motion he could see them.

  Caernarfon wasn’t clear of the Infected; far from it. All Jason’s prolonged hunting of the monsters had accomplished was to draw more of them toward the town.

  A small group surged along the harbour, some peeling away toward Jason.

  Others making straight for the river.

  There were far too many even for Jason to handle. The big man’s style of execution was slow, methodical. There was no need for him to rush; they couldn’t see him. Michael had no doubt that Jason would eventually kill them all, but eventually was a sharp word, loaded with deadly connotations.

  For a moment Michael was paralysed once more; locked in place by an immobility that spread from his mind. His thoughts raced as chaos erupted all around him, and he struggled to process the optio
ns that would give him the best chance of survival.

  Several of the group bolted into the nearest buildings, smashing their way through the windows when they found locked doors. To Michael’s left, he saw Linda leaping into a tiny restaurant, dragging Pete by the hand.

  Noise.

  So much noise.

  To his right, from the corner of his eye, Michael saw Rachel hauling herself back to her feet, loosing off another precious bullet into the oncoming horde and then abandoning the fight. She streaked away, crashing through a doorway into a small waterfront cottage and disappearing from his sight.

  She was too far away. Already the creatures were moving between Michael’s position and the building Rachel had taken refuge in. There was no way to reach her.

  In the distance, he saw another small group of the creatures surging into sight, one of them sprinting directly into a swinging lead pipe that took most of its head off. And another. And another.

  One made it past Jason. And then three. Five.

  And then the time for thought was over and Michael was running on legs made of fire, heading to the left, aiming for the broken window that had swallowed Linda and Pete, grasping Claire’s small hand and dragging her along with him, praying feverishly that they would make it and knowing at the same time that the building could not save them. All the walls would accomplish was to slow the Infected down, to force them into a bottleneck.

  As he leapt through the shattered glass and into the dark space beyond, Michael was already spinning, losing his grip on Claire and pulling out a blunt short sword he had taken from the castle.

  Driving it back through the window and into the soft flesh of an eyeless face.

  The creature fell backward, and the hilt of the sword was torn from his grasp.

  And then there was nothing left to do but run.

  *

  Rachel exploded into the tiny cottage, cursing her brother and cursing herself for firing two of the only six bullets she had.

  Stupid, Rach. Bullets are wasted on the Infected. Save them for humans.