Trauma (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 5) Read online

  Rachel was like a ticking timer. She had influence in the group that ran deeper than the fact she had taken possession of Darren's shotgun. The men and women all liked and respected her. Sooner or later, when their hunger and desperation matched her desire to go out and kill, she would mobilize them to charge out of the castle to their deaths.

  Even worse, Michael would be powerless to stop them going, and his useless legs meant he would be left at the castle with the weak and the injured. With the vulnerable. Better to manage the situation himself. Take Caernarfon on his terms. It was the only way, whether he liked it or not.

  He had believed taking the castle would be the end. Finally admitting it was not made his heart ache and sink into a deep well of depression.

  He nodded.

  "We'll need to be careful. No margin for error now," he said grimly.

  "We know how to hurt them," Rachel said. "We have a chance now, at least."

  "Sure," Michael said. "We know how to. We just don't have the means to do it. No electricity. No way to make a loud noise beyond screaming, and we've already seen how the Infected respond to that."

  "We don't have the means here," Rachel agreed with a nod. "But over there? Fuel, batteries. Who knows what else?"

  Michael squinted at the dark town again, and sighed. He had hoped that securing the castle would be the end of it, that the security the stone walls provided would see them through, but he knew now that he had been deluding himself. The Infected weren't going to starve to death, or wander away and leave them to live out peaceful lives.

  Without supplies, they had no chance. Hiding away in the castle was simply making the choice to die slow instead of dying fast.

  "Where's John?" Michael asked.

  "I think he's at the gate trying to teach people how to defend us," Rachel said with a crooked grin. "Though by now he might have killed them all himself."

  Michael arched an eyebrow.

  "Slow learners," Rachel said, and the grin widened.

  Michael cracked a weary smile.

  "If you see him, better tell him we need to talk," Michael said, and gave a final look at the town before turning away. "We'll need a plan of attack."

  Rachel nodded and turned to make her way down the steps. As he watched her descend, Michael thought about how she had done as he asked without question, and he stared down at his paralysed legs, lost in thought.

  It wasn't just the fact that he had killed Darren or had saved John. His paralysis had given him a bizarre power over the people there; a strange sort of authority that he didn't fully understand. Not for the first time he wondered if the trust they showed him stemmed from the fact that he was disabled, and they perceived him as no threat to them. In a world that hummed with constant menace, maybe seeming harmless made them naturally gravitate toward him.

  Maybe they think I'm a hero.

  Or maybe Michael was reading too much into their willingness to follow him. Maybe it was nothing to do with his paralysis. Maybe it was the rifle. The one he'd used to kill Darren, and which never left his side.

  "Oh, Michael?"

  Rachel had stopped halfway down the steps, and turned to look up at him, breaking a train of thought that he suspected was headed to a dark destination.

  "Yeah?"

  "The guy Linda was looking after? Colin?"

  Michael knew what she was going to say, and he felt the urgent pressure building once more in his skull, like his brain was expanding, trying to break free of its bone prison.

  "He just died. Thought you'd want to know."

  Michael nodded, and Rachel turned away, heading toward the largest of the castle's towers. He watched her go with a grimace.

  Colin, he thought. It took him a moment to place the man. One of the bikers that had joined them just before the Infected attacked the castle. He had been injured in the attack, and had circled the drain ever since, dying slowly from wounds that any doctor would have been able to patch up with their eyes closed only weeks earlier.

  The castle didn't have doctors; it had Linda: a former schoolteacher with a general grasp of biology and little in the way of equipment and medication.

  For those bleeding internally like Colin, there was nothing to be done. Their lives trickled away like sand in a timer, and everyone at the castle was powerless to do anything beyond easing their pain and watching them die, and wondering when their own turn would come.

  Twenty eight.

  Was thirty four.

  He wondered how many would die before he could even reliably match their names to their faces.

  Alone again, Michael returned his gaze to Caernarfon, and he saw it immediately.

  Shaking.

  Just a hint of movement, barely noticeable. Certainly not enough for him to feel. But he could see it. The coastal wind was bitter; whipping his haggard face like a slap, but it wasn't anywhere near strong enough to be blowing his leg around. When Michael took a turn on watch - grateful for any chance to get out of the stifling confines of the castle's circular towers - he was primed for movement. It was something John had drilled into him, to let his gaze fix on a point and gradually force himself to focus on his peripheral vision.

  Just look for movement, John had said, but Michael hadn't expected movement there, at the end of the dead limbs that hung uselessly from his torso.

  Michael furrowed his brow, staring at the errant limb. Had he really just seen his paralysed leg move?

  Focusing on his feet, Michael summoned up every ounce of concentration he could muster and told his legs to move, but they hung, as dead and immobile as they had been ever since the car crash outside St. Davids that pushed a thin piece of wood into his lower back.

  Wishful thinking, he thought.

  7

  Annie guessed that the strange man that had saved them all would be out of action for several hours.

  For a while she watched him sleep, surprised to find that despite the quantity of drugs she had given him, which she reckoned would be enough to drop a large horse, Voorhees twitched and writhed while he was out cold. It looked to Annie like the man’s slumber was disturbed by nightmares at least the equal of those that now existed in the real world. Several times he mumbled a name - Rachel - and his voice was filled with a terrible anguish.

  His wife or girlfriend, Annie supposed. Dead somewhere, most likely, or wandering around the countryside with no eyes killing whatever she came across. Annie made a mental note of the name. If the man proved to have a spirit that was difficult to break, she’d use it when the time was right.

  After a few minutes, she turned her attention to more pressing matters, and beckoned Gareth Hughes to join her at a shadowy corner separate from the others.

  Gareth was one of the few people of Newborough whose opinions Annie gave any credence to. He worked alongside her on the town council, dealing mainly in financial matters, and had always been loyal to her. Alongside a good head for figures, Gareth had a good deal of common sense which in Annie’s opinion made him rare for a resident of Newborough and rarer still for a man.

  “What’s up Annabel?”

  Gareth eyed her with concern.

  No one else called her Annabel. The truth was that she didn’t like it much, but she always let it slide because Gareth Hughes was useful. It earned him a little leeway.

  “Just about everything, Gareth,” she replied in a low voice. “Most of these people are only one scare away from a heart attack or some kind of mental break, and I’m afraid our doctor is beyond helping them."

  She smirked.

  "It doesn’t look like anybody is coming to help, does it? I think we’re on our own. So I’m wondering: do you think this place is secure?”

  Gareth pondered the question for a moment. He always took time to answer even the most rudimentary of questions, a habit that Annie found faintly irritating, though far less so than getting a response from the type of idiots who jumped at the first answer that popped into their minds, spewing it out into the world withou
t thought.

  “I’d say no,” Gareth said finally. “The town hall itself is fine, but Newborough is too exposed. The forest, the dunes. Nothing but fields the other way. The town is too open to…uh…defend.”

  Gareth faltered on the last word, and Annie saw his thoughts written clearly in his eyes. The man was in his late fifties, plump and comfortable, more used to worrying about whether he had milk in his fridge or not. The notion of having to defend a position, like they were suddenly somehow at war, was no doubt galling to him.

  “Too many ways into the town,” he continued. “Obviously we could keep a lookout, but I don’t think we have enough people to watch everywhere.”

  “Is there any way to shore the place up?”

  Gareth lapsed into thought again and shook his head firmly.

  “We could barricade the streets, I suppose, cordon off an area around the town hall, but the…things could just come through the buildings themselves. And besides, building a barricade like that would make a lot of noise. Doesn’t seem like there’s any of them nearby right now, but I’d bet there’s more out there. If they came at us while we were trying to fortify…”

  He shrugged. Didn’t want to finish the thought, and Annie didn’t blame him.

  “And if this is countrywide, God help us,” Gareth continued, “then we run the risk of them coming over the bridge from the mainland. I can only imagine what it's like in densely populated areas. If a large group finds its way here…”

  He trailed off, apparently unwilling to finish the thought.

  “I think based on everything you’re saying, that if we stay in Newborough, sooner or later we’d end up trapped in the town hall again,” Annie said.

  “What about…uh…him?” Gareth pointed at the drugged man.

  Annie pursed her lips.

  “He wants to leave. I think it’s going to take a little persuasion to make him stay. We can’t count on him. Not yet.”

  Gareth nodded slowly.

  “What can I do to help?” he said.

  Annie smiled. The response was precisely why she considered Gareth to be worthy of her time. There was no petty arguing, no wrestling for superiority. Gareth backed her when she needed it.

  “Can you think of a place we can go?” Annie said.

  Gareth’s eyes disappeared into the middle-distance for so long that Annie began to wonder if he was suffering some sort of episode.

  “Penryth,” he said finally, with a beatific grin.

  Annie’s brow furrowed. Penryth was at the south east corner of Anglesey, and contained almost nothing of interest. The only reason anybody ever visited the tiny village was because of the golf course nearby and…

  Ah. Well done, Mr Hughes.

  “The hotel,” Annie said, and Gareth nodded brightly.

  “The hotel pretty much only hosts golfers,” Gareth said. “At this time of year, it's probably empty. The golf course all around it means there probably won’t be too many of the..uh...Infected nearby. And it’s on the shore. We’d have the sea at our back; only have to watch one direction.”

  Annie warmed to the idea immediately. The hotel was one of those weekend-break type places that had become so popular in recent years: a plush spa, pool and gymnasium, all wrapped up in solid walls designed to mimic an old stately home. The place would likely have plenty of food. Even better, there was a jetty. If they had to run, Annie couldn’t think of a better place to flee than the sea.

  “We’ll go across the dunes,” Annie said more to herself than to Gareth. It’ll take longer, but it will be quiet.”

  “When?”

  Annie blinked. For a moment, she had forgotten that Gareth was standing beside her.

  “Now,” she replied firmly. “Tell everyone to take whatever they can carry. And whatever they can use as a weapon. I want to be there before he wakes up.”

  Gareth nodded, and left Annie alone. She dimly heard him passing on her instructions to the people sitting on the floor eating, convincing them all that they would be safer at the hotel than in Newborough. Very few objected, and those that did so, did only very weakly. Nobody, Annie guessed, particularly wanted to stay in Newborough, where walking anywhere meant stepping over the decomposing corpses of their former friends and neighbours.

  Annie let Gareth take care of rounding everyone up. Lost in thought, she stared at the man who called himself Voorhees, wondering how much torture it would take to break him and make him useful.

  8

  “Swing low,” John Francis said, for what felt like the hundredth time, and suppressed a sigh when he saw the looks on their faces: like he'd just told them the earth was flat after all.

  Each morning, when he took a group of people to the courtyard and tried to train them on how best to defend the gate and themselves, he ran up against the same set of problems. Everything they knew about swinging a sword came from the movies. None of it was helpful.

  John had never received any formal training with swords, of course. His years as a soldier had mostly been spent destroying enemies with weapons that didn’t cut so much as evaporate the target. Wars were won by whichever side had the better weapons. Always had been.

  Right now the arms at John’s disposal were pitiful: the castle had a small stockpile of ancient weaponry that was for the most part fragile enough to be useless, but they had a crossbow and a working longbow that wouldn’t shoot far, but still held some potency at medium range. Beyond that the only option was close quarters combat with swords, clubs and maces.

  John had been forced to kill at close quarters with a ballistic knife on more than one occasion, and he knew that training went out the window when a battle came down to blades. Winning was sometimes determined by speed and survival instinct; more often by luck. The notion of actually planning to use a sword would have struck him as ridiculous, until guns became more trouble than they were worth.

  He trained the others by default: he had already killed with swords, and they had not. It made him the expert. Most had guessed that John had spent time in the army, but he told them nothing.

  “You don’t need to end the conflict with one blow,” he continued. “You aim to decapitate them and miss, and you’ve lost. Aim for the biggest target. Put the blade in their gut and you put ‘em down. If you really want to chop off their heads, you do it when they are on the floor and the threat is minimal.”

  A few of the attentive faces paled. A couple looked like they were trying really hard not to retch.

  He demonstrated a wide swing that began low at his hip, rising a little as it arced through the air. If the blow had been aimed at an average-sized adult, the blade would have nestled deep in the gut, somewhere between the barriers presented by the hipbone and the ribcage.

  “Worst case scenario, you hit them too low,” he said, swinging again from a semi-crouch. The blade was now just a couple of feet from the floor. “Do that and you take their legs.”

  He straightened.

  “Same result. You put them down. That’s your focus. Get them on the ground and the fight’s done. Get to thinking maybe you’re some kind of ninja, and things might reach a different conclusion.”

  At the word ninja the tension that had been building as John spoke dissipated a little, and a few half-smiles broke out among the group of six young women that John hoped to turn into competent warriors.

  “And what if there’s more than one of them?”

  The question came from the back of the small group. Emma. The girl John had come to think of as Darren Oliver’s favourite. She hadn’t spoken much for the first few days, just drifting around the castle with haunted eyes, but seemed to be coming out of her shell slowly when it became clear that the men now living at the castle weren’t lunatics intent on doing her harm.

  “If there’s more than one, you run.”

  “Is that what you’d do?”

  John blinked at Emma’s question. Her tone suggested she thought maybe he was being condescending.

  “Runnin
g is my plan A. These,” - he lifted the sword - “are a last resort. If you can get away, you get away. It’s exactly what I’ve been doing, and so far I’m still alive. The way to survive is not by becoming skilled at conflict; it's by learning how to avoid it.”

  Emma flushed and looked at the ground, and John felt a little guilty at the harsh tone of his words. It was easy to forget just how young these women were. Most were barely out of their teens; hand-selected by the maniac who had run the castle before they arrived. According to the terrified women he had left in his wake, Darren Oliver had claimed to be running the castle with an eye on repopulation, on continuing the human race in a practical manner.

  Maybe the man even believed his own rhetoric, but John had seen the truth in the bastard’s sly eyes the moment they met.

  The end of the world was, to some people, an opportunity. Hell, that’s exactly the way it had been designed by Fred Sullivan and Chrysalis Systems. Darren had turned the castle into his private harem, and given the young women a stark choice: stay and lose your freedom and dignity, or go and die.

  It was a tactic straight from the playbook of the politicians that had ruled the world up until just a few weeks earlier; the rule of terror. Control maintained by manipulating the fear of the enemy at the gates, trying to get in. Just like the politicians, Darren's motivation had been self-interest.

  John wondered for a moment how many more were out there like Darren, finding grim, brutal ways to survive, clawing their way to power in their own little fiefdoms. Many would take the obvious route: the exercising of physical power. Mankind had once more been reduced to the rule of brawn, and many people would look to strength in numbers to rule by force.

  Not all though, John thought, casting an eye up at the battlements. Michael had spent his time avoiding John as much as possible, and whenever they did lock eyes, John saw something in the man's gaze that he couldn't quite identify.

  As he stared up at the wall, he saw Rachel making her way toward him across the courtyard, chewing on the remains of a breakfast that looked like it was causing her physical distress.