Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) (19 page)

"Bet you do," he said cheerfully. "Reckon you'll have a bruised arse for days."

They both laughed again, and Nick couldn't help but smile.

"I'm Ray. The shy one behind me is Gareth. Reckon that's your chopper back up the road, right?"

"Uh, yeah," Nick said.

"Can you fly it?"

Nick nodded. "I could," he said. "Until the fuel ran out."

"Ah," Ray said. "We'll have to sort that out, then. Shouldn't be a problem. After all,
this is the land of opportunity now, right? No credit card required."

He clapped Nick on the shoulder. Nick blinked in confusion.

"Aren't you worried about the Infected?"

For a moment Ray looked puzzled.

"The Sockets, you mean? That's what we call 'em. Nah, there's none left here mate. They all upped sticks and headed west from here days ago. Get the odd straggler here and there. Animals too, they operate on a different wavelength, I reckon. Nothing we can't handle."

"
They headed west?" Nick couldn't keep the confusion from his voice. He had only just learned that animals could carry the virus, and now this strange man was asking him to believe that the Infected were somehow...
organised
. "Why?"

Ray shrugged.

"Beats me," he said. "But that's why we need the chopper."

Nick stared at him blankly.

"We're heading west, too," Ray said with an easy grin. "And you're going to be our pilot."

Nick stared into the man's eyes, drilling down past the grin and the easygoing
manner. Something smouldered in the man's gaze. Something that left Nick in no doubt that anything other than an affirmative answer might see things end badly for him.

"Sure," he said weakly, and Ray clapped him on the shoulder.

*

Ray and Gareth led Nick a mile or so down the road, before following a narrow trail through the trees. Neither spoke, and the resulting oppressive silence made Nick clench his fists so tightly that his fingernails dug painfully into the flesh of his palms.

After a walk of around fifteen minutes, they emerged into a small clearing and Nick was surprised to discover that they were near a cliff overlooking the ocean. It looked like the place had once been a spot for ramblers to stop and admire the view. Now, a small, messy camp had been set up in the clearing. It made sense, Nick supposed, to put the ocean at your back.

He saw a handful of other men milling around the camp, and several large motorbikes propped on kickstands in the swaying grass. A group of bikers. Suddenly the devil-may-care attitude seemed to make a little more sense to Nick.

He pulled Ray aside.

"Where are we?" He asked. "I had no idea I was near the ocean."

"Flying blind, huh?" Ray said with a grin. "Reckon we all are now, one way or another. North Wales coast, mate, near the English border. Not too far from Liverpool."

That made sense. Nick had flown southwest for a long time. Any further and he would have been landing the chopper in the sea. He shuddered involuntarily.

"Ray," he said. "Something doesn't make sense. Back there you said all the Infected had gone west. But then you said you wanted to go that way too. You meant east, right?"

Ray shook his head.

"West, mate, that's right."

"But why?"

"To right a couple of wrongs, mate," Ray said, as if the answer was as straightforward as simple arithmetic.

Nick frowned in confusion.

"We had a place we could have been safe," Ray said. "About as good a place as you could get in this nightmare, I reckon. It could have worked, but the guy in charge decided he didn't want our sort mixing with his sort."

Nick
stared around the group of men as Ray started toward the camp again. They all looked huge and intimidating. Covered in rippling muscles under weathered, tattooed skin.

"This person made you leave?" Nick couldn't keep
the astonishment from his voice as he trotted along behind Ray's loping stride. He tried to imagine what sort of person would be able to intimidate a group of men like the ones now standing in front of him.

"Aye," Ray said. "He did. He had a couple of guns
and a big wall to hide behind. We had fists and bad language. But things have changed now, right?"

Nick stared at him blankly.

Ray winked.

"Now we've got a
helicopter.
"

Six had definitely been too many. Darren should have listened to his instincts. It was the children that did it. How was he supposed to turn away children? The youngest of the people he had managed to gather together in the castle was seventeen. If they were to survive what was beginning to look like the end of days, they would need children.

If it came to it
- to repopulating and trying to build some sort of life for the future - children would be just about the most valuable thing Darren could imagine. They had been worth the risk. But even then, Darren had only permitted the opening of the castle doors because the people with the children looked harmless. An old woman, a cripple. Another young woman to add to the growing numbers he had already secured; God knew she might be valuable as well. He had only permitted a handful of men to remain in the castle, just the ones he could control. They would need lots of women if they were to avoid veering too close to inbreeding.

There would be little point in surviving the apocalypse, living on through dreadful
squalor, only to discover that the children you produced were damaged. Not
viable
.

He had thought only the one who stank of military training - John - would be a problem to the continued harmony in
his castle. And John was being dealt with at that very moment, out there in Caernarfon. Killed and stored away out of sight. Future meals for the guardian at the gate; the thing that kept them all safe, for as long as Darren kept her alive.

And then, just as Darren thought the situation was under control, he had walked in on the old woman and the cripple plotting to kill him. And worse, they had freed th
e man from the tower's top room and were no doubt jumping to all
sorts
of conclusions.

Darren stepped into the room and swung a solid fist into the cripple's face, toppling him from the wheelchair onto the stone floor.

"
This
is your gratitude?" He spat the words out like rotten meat. "This is the thanks I get for allowing you in here?"

Michael spat out a mouthful of blood, and twisted awkwardly until he was on his back. He glared at Darren.

"You want gratitude?" Michael barked a harsh laugh. "Do you even see what you are, Darren? Forcing a child into cannibalism? Killing off men so you and your buddies can terrorise a bunch of women you've turned into prisoners? That's the price of safety?"

"That's
my
price of safety," Darren roared. "Because this is
my
place. Who the fuck do you think you are to come in here and think you have the right to preach to anyone? You think I swallowed all that bullshit about you all being a family, and making it all the way up here without getting your hands dirty? I didn't question it because it's not fucking important. My hands are dirty. Fucking
filthy.
But we are safe here, and we can continue to be safe. And now you're in here talking about killing me because of
that
?"

He jabbed a thick forefinger at the amputated man.

"Do you know how dirty
his
hands are? Did you bother to consider it before you started making judgments? That fucker over there is the only one here that has touched any of those women, and that's why he lost his arms. Anybody else here follows his lead and I'll do the same to them. Nobody touches anyone without my say so, understand? He didn't understand and he is paying for his crimes, and we are still fucking safe!"

Darren was screaming now, losing all sense of control. He sucked in a deep, shuddering breath.

Michael looked stunned.

Darren snorted a laugh.

"Oh, what, you thought I was some psychopath, right? Doing this for the fucking
fun
of it? I've had to do terrible things, because
someone
has to do terrible things or we'll all end up dead. We'd be fucking dead already. What about you, Michael? Done anything terrible? Done anything you'd rather you hadn't? Or you, old woman? Are your hands clean?"

Gwyneth took a step backward, as if stunned by Darren's sudden ferocity.

Michael rubbed his hand across his lip, winced a little at the sharp pain.

"She's a
little girl
, Darren."

"She's not a little girl," Darren thundered. "She
was
a little girl. Now she is the only thing that keeps
them
from swarming over this place and killing us all. She is the only weapon we have against them. What would you have done with her?"

Michael stared at him, and said nothing.

"Exactly," Darren snarled. "You have no answer because there
is
no answer. I'm not going to waste time wondering if I'm going to Hell for my actions, Michael. There's no need; I'm already there. I move from one foothold to the next. It's all I can do. You want to live according to some moral code, you do it somewhere else. I want to
survive.
This castle is
mine,
understand?"

Michael shook his head.

"There are ways to survive without us becoming the monsters, Darren. Killing people that threaten your life is one thing, but feeding people to the Infected to stay alive? That's not surviving, not in any way I recognise. If all you want to do is go on living, why not just go out there and get infected yourself? That way all you lose is your eyes, not your soul."

Darren sighed.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Michael. I hoped you might see reason."

He withdrew a
multi-tool from a pocket and unleashed the blade with a sharp
snap
.

"I can't allow you to divide this place, not now. It has to be this way."

Michael laughed softly.

"I never thought you were a psychopath, Darren.
I think you're a sociopath. You'd have to be to end up running this place as you have. You'd have to understand that there are some situations so terrible that choice goes out the window. As it happens, I don't even blame you for keeping the girl outside. I would have done the same, had I known the whole story. I
will
do the same."

Michael reached under the pack at his side and pulled out the rifle, aiming it at Darren's face.

Darren froze.

"You are right about one thing, though," Michael said. "This place can't be divided. Not if there is to be any hope of survival here. But the castle isn't yours. Not anymore."

Darren's face dropped.

"We do what we are forced to do, don't we Michael?"

Darren held up his hands, but to Michael it didn't look like a gesture of surrender. More like acceptance.

"We do," Michael said, and blasted a hole through Darren's skull.

"I'm sorry, Gwyneth," Michael said.

Gwyneth nodded slowly. She looked stunned and frightened.

"You had to do it, Michael," she said in a trembling voice. "He was going to kill you."

"No," Michael said. "I'm sorry that you're infected. It's too dangerous to have you here."

He swung the rifle around, aiming it at Gwyneth.

"B-but I'm not-"

Michael didn't let her finish.

*

Gwyneth didn't feel the bullet ripping through her heart. It took her a second to die, but a second was long enough.

In that long,
meandering moment, she understood something about the virus that had mutated her cells. As the darkness claimed her, she felt that strange connection being made once more, just as it had when she had been unconscious on the boat.

It was all to do with the blood
, she saw that suddenly and clearly, like a flashbulb pointed at the truth. The sharing of the genes with those closest to you. With family. The infection reserved a special savagery for that bond. It attacked it with howling, relentless ferocity. In that split-second as death wrapped her in its cold embrace, she pictured all the mothers out there hunting down their children. All the sons and daughters chasing down their parents; siblings that turned on each other with blinding ferocity, not understanding why their blood raged at the very existence of family; just programmed to kill the bonds that tied them to their old selves.