Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) (6 page)

He took the bodies of the two soldiers he had killed and arranged them precisely, and wondered how the terror among the soldiers might taste when they stumbled across his work and realised that the Infected - shambling, mindless critters that they were - were
now the least of their problems.

When he was done, Jake strolled away from the place, congratulating himself on his admirable restraint. As he headed out into the dark, empty fields he tried to affect a cheerful whistle, but the noise that his deformed lips allowed out was more like a distant tuneless shriek.

He kind of liked it.

Welcome to my castle
.

The words echoed and reverberated in John's head as he left the market and the Infected girl. Darren had offered
assistance, smiling warmly as he said he could spare a couple of his men to help John and his friends carry their supplies up from the harbour. John had politely declined, even as the alarm bells rang in his mind.

My castle. My men.

John knew a threat when he heard one. He had heard plenty, and the worst ones were always delivered with a smile. The bizarre meeting with Darren had merely amplified the disquiet he had felt on approaching the castle. Something in Darren's eyes reminded John of the man that had led him into St. Davids. Jeff had been obsessed with structure and leadership. He had also worn a look of unhinged insanity in his eyes the minute the shit began to hit the fan.

Some men, John kne
w, were not born to lead others though of course that did not stop them. The military had been rife with men promoted solely because of their experience, with little consideration given to whether they might, in fact, be raving lunatics.

If finding an
Infected girl tied up in the market like some grisly totem to ward off passersby had not quite been enough to persuade John that Caernarfon was bad news, Darren's smile and cold gaze had finished the job. The castle was trouble. Every fibre of John's being knew it instinctively.

As he wound his way back through the narrow streets, he wondered how he was going to break the news to the others that he thought they should turn the boat around and get as far away from Caernarfon as possible. His heart sank as he thought about Michael.
Convincing him was not going to be easy.

As he thought about the crippled man, John noticed a
small care home for the elderly nestled alongside a small square park, and he headed for it, hoping he might find a wheelchair for Michael, and trying to persuade himself that he was not going to use it to try to bribe the man into agreeing that they should move on. Either way, John would be damned if he was going to carry Michael around on his back as Jason had.

When he reached the building, he tried the door and found it swung open easily. He slipped inside, nerves racing, and pulled the small flashlight from
a pocket, piercing the darkness with the narrow beam.

He saw the blood immediately, a vast pool of it that
had leaked from the sad body of an old woman who had probably been waiting to die peacefully before someone came along and ruined that by ripping her throat out. John played the flashlight over her corpse for a moment. She still had her eyes. She had died human.

He crept forward and found two more bodies in a
large communal room to the right. One of them appeared entirely unmarked, and it took John a moment to realise that the old guy had probably died of a heart attack when he saw the world descend into madness.

You got lucky, old fell
er,
John thought. The woman who had died in the same room had not been so fortunate. Her guts had been ripped open, and a long slippery string of intestine sat across her lap. He wondered if the old guy had sat and watched his friend being shredded as his heart began to explode in his chest, and John knew the truth when he saw what the old man was sitting on. A wheelchair. He must have been powerless to move, doomed to sit and watch the horror up close. Wondering whether the explosive pain in his chest or the virus would kill him first.

"Sorry about this," John muttered, and he grabbed the lapels of the old man's jacket
and shoved the corpse to the floor with a dull thud.

For a moment John paused to listen
intently as the noise of the body hitting the floor reverberated through the silence. He expected to hear snarling and the thunderous approach of feet, but there was only deathly quiet.

It was somehow almost more disconcerting. How could Caernarfon be free of the Infected? Clearly they had been there. Where had they gone?

The question weighed heavily on John's mind as he pushed the wheelchair out onto the cobbled streets and made his way toward the dock. When he reached the rope tied to the harbour wall, he set the wheelchair aside and put all his strength into pulling the boat towards him.

Michael looked at him quizzically, as though he had expected to see John return with a horde of Infected at his back.

"We can't stay here," John said.

Michael's brow furrowed.

"Why?"

"Look, Michael, I want you to trust me on this. There are people in that castle. They don't need our help. I spoke to the guy running the show. He's a bad guy, Michael. I
know
it. They've got an Infected girl tied up in the town centre like a warning sign. We need to turn the boat around and get out of here. We need to find somewhere else."

"What about the Infected?" Michael said. "They've got one tied up
outside
the castle? Where are all the others?"

John shrugged.

"I didn't see a single one, other than her."

"That makes no sense," Michael said. "The virus didn't make it here?"

"Oh, it made it here alright," John muttered. "There's blood and bodies everywhere. It's just like Aberystwyth. Crashed cars, smashed windows. Plenty of places look like they've been burned."

Michael frowned.

"But there are none here now?"

John knew exactly where the conversation was going from Michael's tone, and he felt his spirits drop.

"No," John said. "But-"

"But you want us to leave so we can find somewhere that there
are
Infected?"

John sighed.

"John," Michael said. "I get it. You think this place is weird. You don't trust the people inside. Believe me, I don't either. Hell, I don't even trust
you.
"

John looked up sharply, and Michael
held his hands up in apology.

"I'm sorry, but I don't. I don't trust anyone. How could I? How could any of us - you included? But we have children here. We're exhausted.
Injured. We have almost nothing in the way of supplies. Where else are we going to run
to
? Wherever we go, they will find us, and they will kill us. For whatever reason, all we have to deal with here is these people, who may or may not do us harm. I think at this point, I'd like to take the element of doubt over certain death."

John rubbed his forehead, his expression pained.

"We have a
gun
, John," Michael said in a low whisper. "We can hide it from them, make ourselves look helpless. That should be pretty easy, really. Just
look
at us. But if it comes to it, we can defend ourselves against
people.
I don't think our luck is going to hold up out
there
much longer."

He waved a hand at the dark countryside beyond the town.

"Do you?"

John stared at Michael for several long seconds.

Just go, John,
he thought.
If they want to stay, let them. Take the boat, and get the fuck away. You don't need to deal with this.

Torn by indecision, John stared at their expectant faces
. A helpless cripple, an old woman, two kids.

Can you really leave them to fend for themselves?

John knew the answer immediately, knew it just as he had known that when it came down to a choice between himself and the other men that had landed with him in St. Davids, there had been no decision to make. Jeff had died so that John could live. Michael and his ragtag group were no different.

But
then John's gaze fell on Rachel, sitting quietly at the back of the boat, her furious eyes burning a hole in the deck.

Fuck.

*

They slipped the rifle into one of the rucksacks they had managed to cl
ing onto during their panicked flight from Aberystwyth. The weapon was too large, and the barrel protruded from the bag, but when John placed it on Michael's lap as he sat in the wheelchair, Michael contorted to hide it from sight. It would do.

"Don't worry," Michael said with a smile. "No one is going to feel threatened by the guy in the wheelchair."

John nodded, and his eyes narrowed a little. Michael had already caught John flat-footed once by portraying himself as a harmless victim. He suspected the trick would work again on the people in the castle, but he could not help wondering if it might work again on himself. Was Michael manipulating him, even now?

"Okay," John said
, raising his voice a little for them all to hear. "This place doesn't feel right. Everyone stick together. Stay close. We go in, we thank them for taking us in, and we tell them we need to rest somewhere on our own, right? Don't let them separate us, no matter what. Agreed?"

For once, Michael simply nodded.

When they reached the huge door that barred the castle's main entrance, the heavy wood swung open to meet them, and John could not help but feel like he was stepping into the jaws of some monstrous, malevolent beast.

Darren was waiting for them with wide arms and a wider smile.

"Welcome," he said warmly. "I'm glad you decided to join us."

John stared around the castle with interest. He saw a couple of large fires, and small groups of people sitting in the glow of the flames to keep warm. Only a couple of
them bothered to look up to study the new arrivals. None seemed to be speaking.

John's jaw clenched. Everything about the castle and the people inside seemed...
off
somehow. Under the circumstances, how could the people inside be anything
but
intrigued to see who was walking in the front door?

"As you can see, we have fires if you'd like to warm yourselves up, and there's food and water-"

"Where are all the Infected?" Pete blurted out.

John
smirked. The kid hadn't spoken much since they left Aberystwyth, but clearly he could not keep a lid on the question that everyone else was trying not to ask any longer.
Good lad,
he thought.

Darren waved a dismissive hand.

“No Infected left here,” he said almost breezily. "Caernarfon had been hit when we arrived, but mostly they seemed to have moved on. So we took the castle, and we haven’t been bothered since. It's safe here.”

He smiled.

Bullshit.
John knew the smell all too well. He had been steeped in it his entire life.

“You haven’t had any come to you, not even a few?” Michael said, his tone dubious. “Not even with that
thing running?”

Michael
pointed to the generator that provided power to the spotlight in the centre of the castle's wide, open interior. The same one that had shot the distress signal up into the sky. It chugged away like an idling truck with an ancient engine that badly needed servicing.

Darren shrugged.

"Like I said, we haven't been bothered. Not for days."

John
remembered the way the Infected had pursued him through dense forest, the way they had come streaming from the trees when they had heard the chopper engine as his team landed in a field outside St. Davids. The creatures possessed extraordinary hearing, and the generator was loud enough that voices had to be raised to be heard above it. It should have acted as a beacon to the Infected for miles around.

John caught Michael glancing at Gwyneth and saw the old woman shake her head slightly in response.

John grimaced. He did not believe any of Gwyneth's story about being able to sense the presence of the Infected after she herself had been bitten.
Couldn't
believe it. But he had been very clear to warn them not to bring it up in front of Darren as they approached the castle. There was no way to predict how the man or his strange group of followers might react, but John had spent a lifetime watching people kill each other over things that they perceived as valuable. If Gwyneth
could
do what she claimed, or even if others simply believed she could, she would be in jeopardy.

They all would.

He glared at Michael.

Michael pressed his lips together, catching
the warning.