Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) (10 page)

As
Nick drew closer to the group, he saw Drake turn to greet him. Already the big man’s face was becoming depressingly familiar among the crowd.

“I’d say you need to step up preparations for that plan of yours,” Drake said, and nodded at the
people gathering behind him.

Nick
shoved his way past a couple of the onlookers, and felt his stomach lurch when he saw what had caught their attention.

On the floor next to the wall they had spent so much effort building were the remnants of several bodies.
Nick saw four heads. All the bodies had been ripped to shreds and rearranged, bones and organs twisted and stretched like putty to form a single grisly word.

Die.

*

When Colonel Dave Hopper called a general meeting in the square and made it clear that attendance was compulsory,
Nick knew deep in his gut that the place had gone over the edge of the slippery slope, and the journey downward was gathering momentum.

“I think it’s safe to say we have a murderer in our midst, yes?”

Hopper had declined the use of a megaphone to address the thousand-strong crowd that filled the square and leaned out of the windows of the nearby buildings. Instead he filled his ample torso with air and bellowed until he was red-faced and showering those unfortunate enough to be close to him with spittle.

A faint ripple ran through the crowd. Even Hopper’s staunchest supporters - or more accurately, those most scared of him - had serious doubts that the obscenity they had discovered near the wall was the work of a
murderer
. For a start, the couple of medics who had examined the corpses had been clear on one thing: the bodies looked to have been ripped apart. There was no sign that the victims had been
cut
to pieces.

The medics went to great lengths to stress that they were not coroners
and so their judgments included an element of guesswork, but that didn’t matter to Nick. He was no coroner either, but he had fucking
eyes.
Whatever had killed the soldiers was not human. He had no doubt there were enough psychopaths within The Heart to commit murder, but it seemed unlikely any of them would be able to
rip people to pieces.

Unfortunately, the opinion of the medics did
not seem to matter much to Hopper either; he apparently didn't see a terrifying mystery in the destroyed bodies. He saw plotting and insurrection.

“Someone here is trying to frighten us. Are we frightened?”

No one spoke.

At least,
Nick thought as he saw a flicker of self-doubt wobble across Hopper’s jowly face, he had the decency to recognise the ludicrousness of
that
question.

Yes. Of course e
verybody was frightened.
Terrified.

“For the security of everybody in this compound, we will be implementing a curfew. I want everyone confined to quarters until this mess is straightened out, yes? Clear?”

A louder murmur.

Hopper had always spoken like that. Virtually every sentence had a built-in demand for acknowledgment. It
was a habit that made Nick's teeth grind involuntarily.

Nick
thought from the tone of the mumbling in the crowd that he detected a fair amount of acquiescence. Most people clung to the inside of the buildings anyway. Few cared that Hopper had essentially just turned Catterick into a prison, as long as they got to remain safely stationed behind solid walls. Nobody wanted to be out there with the snipers.

Nick
stifled a sigh, and glanced around him. To his left, through the crowd, he saw Drake staring at him pointedly, nodding his head at the roof of the medical centre.

Nick
already had difficulty imagining how he might get the key that opened the door to the roof of the medical centre, let alone the possibility of making it to the chopper without being accosted by Hopper’s men. A curfew took what had been a difficulty curve and lifted it until it was practically vertical.

“Patrols will be set up. Every corner of this place is going to be under scrutiny until the perpetrator of this atrocity is found and brought to justice.
Clear?”

Hopper was rising in pitch, heading toward hysteria at breakneck pace.
Nick tuned him out. He didn’t know for sure, but he was willing to bet that Hopper had the key he needed. Securing it would have been the first thing the Colonel did to prevent ‘deserters’ stealing the helicopter.

The old bastard probably kept it on his person.

Nick looked for Drake again, but couldn’t spot him in the crowd.

You
a coward, Lieutenant Hurt?

Drake's first
words to him came back to Nick, settling into a familiar groove worn deep in his mind.

Coward.

His father’s last words to him, croaked out on the old fucker’s deathbed.

Don't be a coward all your life, boy.

The trouble was that Nick
was
a coward; always had been. Which made the realisation that he was probably going to have to kill Colonel Hopper all the more terrifying.

Michael hated leaving Claire in the tower. Hated letting her out of his sight for even a second, but Gwyneth had persuaded him that whatever they would be discussing with Darren was unlikely to be suitable for young ears, and Michael had found it difficult to argue. Claire had already been through enough. A break from the constant stress - even if only for an hour or two - might be the best thing he could do for his daughter.

Eventually Michael had reluctantly agreed to let Claire stay with Gwyneth and Pete while he, Rachel and John went to see Darren.

He had expected an argument from Claire, maybe even tears, but she surprised him.

“This is the safest place I’ve been in days, Dad.”

He couldn’t argue with that. He hadn't seen much of his little girl in the previous two years. Not nearly enough. Hadn't seen the spirited streak that had grown in her until after the world fell apart. She reminded him a lot of her dead mother, and Michael smiled sadly.

Gwyneth nodded encouragement, and Michael wheeled himself outside to
find John and Rachel waiting with the young girl that had delivered Darren’s invitation. She stood slightly apart with her head bowed, as though she was unable to meet their gaze.

The
strange girl gave Michael chills, and for a moment he considered heading back to Claire. The castle might well have been free of the Infected, but Michael was not sure ‘safe’ accurately described the way the place made him feel. He looked around at the small groups of people working on their various projects in grim silence. John's instincts about the place had been right.

Michael expected the girl to lead them to wherever Darren was waiting, but she simply pointed at the castle’s central tower, the largest of the eight, and whispered in a voice Michael could barely hear.

“He’s in there.”

She wandered away, moving slowly and slightly unsteadily, as though sh
e was in some drug-induced haze, or a deep state of shock.

Michael watched her until she disappeared out of sight behind one of the towers, and felt
the acid burn of stress building in his stomach.

When Rachel turned to head for the tower the girl had pointed out, Michael reached for her arm.

“Wait,” he whispered, glancing around to make sure they were out of earshot of anyone that might be trying to listen in. “Look, you’re both right, okay? There’s something...off about this place. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t want us to antagonise the situation unnecessarily. We have our story, and we stick to it, right? We play it dumb and helpless. For now,” he added hastily when he saw Rachel’s expression darken.

John shrugged.

“Wasn’t going to play it any other way, Michael. But we’re going to need answers.”

“And we will get them. I promise you, but for now we’re just a family in need of shelter
, right? Nothing more.”

John nodded.

“Rachel?”

Michael stared at Rachel until
she sighed in exasperation.

“Yes, Michael. I’m not going to walk in there and punch him, don’t worry.”

“Lucky for him,” John said with a wry smile, and just for a second, Rachel almost grinned back.

*

“You were a driver.”

Darren wasn’t buying it for a second. In a way, John couldn’t blame him. There had been that
fatal split-second of hesitation in John’s answer, and the not-subtle-enough glance from Michael when Darren had asked what John did for a living before the collapse. The moment of pause before the answer had not gone unnoticed by the bearded man.

The interior of the castle's central tower was markedly different to the one they had spent the
previous night in. This one was much wider: the ground floor of the tower comprised of a single room with a radius of around seventy feet.

Ancient wooden benches lined the
stone walls, making it feel like the interior of a church. It had been, John guessed, a sort of throne room or great hall, though there was no throne to be seen now. Doubtless it was on display in some museum somewhere. John was grateful that at least they hadn't found Darren sitting on a throne. The sight might have been too much for him to take.

Instead
, the balding man was waiting to greet them just inside the doorway with a wide, easy smile.

Darren
had smiled and nodded politely as they told him that they were an extended family on the run from the horror that had befallen St. Davids. He absent-mindedly acknowledged Michael and Rachel's words. Only when it came to asking John what he had done before the virus hit did Darren's interest suddenly seem piqued.

"Like a taxi driver?"

John suppressed a sigh. Darren seemed pretty sharp. He asked John the questions, but kept looking at Michael and Rachel, encouraging them to jump in.

Testing whether we’ve got our story straight
, John thought, and he knew they had not. They had come up with their cover story for Darren, but it was just flimsy theatre. None of it would stand up to detailed questioning. John had to be the one to answer, and quickly; before either Michael or Rachel gave the game away.

“A personal driver
," John said.

Darren gave an impressed nod, hamming it up.

“Must have been someone important.”

John knew where this was going. Had to shut it down.

“That depends on whether they were your employer,” he said, and dipped his tone in just enough vitriol to convey that he didn’t want to talk about it. Just enough that even Darren’s butter-wouldn’t-melt demeanour had to register it. To continue the line of questioning would have been a naked challenge, and John was betting Darren didn't want to go that far. Manipulators usually didn't.

Darren smiled coldly.

Didn’t buy it
, John thought.

They had told Darren some of the truth about their journey from St. Davids to Caernarfon, but glossed over
most of the details. Michael had insisted they say nothing of their encounter with Victor, and that they give no hint of the knowledge they had of Project Wildfire, or of John's involvement with it.

They had to play it as a family, and offer no threat. At the time, when Michael had argued the point, John had thought the man was just being cowardly, ready to throw himself at the feet of the people in the castle and beg for shelter.

But as John glanced at Michael as they stood before Darren, he saw a different truth in the man’s eyes. Pretending to be weak was the way to get in to the castle, and it was also the way to get close to Darren. John could practically
see
the bearded man's ego leaking out of every orifice. He thrived on the belief that they were weak, and he was strong.

John knew then that Michael was gambling on the man becoming over-confident and leaving himself vulnerable.
There was nothing particularly wrong with the strategy, yet John could not help but wonder what Michael planned to do with it.

“We’ve told you our story, Darren,” Michael said. “What’s yours?”

Darren smiled.

"It's probably easier if I show you," he said. "This way."

Darren turned and led them to the winding stone stairway that led to the upper floors of the huge tower, and stopped at the bottom, as though something had just occurred to him.

"Oh," he said
innocently, turning to face Michael. "You can't walk at all?"

Michael's eyes narrowed.

"I'll wait here," he growled, and John could read the expression in Michael's eyes clearly. First he had allowed himself to be separated from his daughter, and now from John and Rachel. To a man so reliant on the people around him, being left alone at the bottom of the tower must have been a sharp reminder of just how fragile his position was.