Psychosis (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 3) by K.R. Griffiths Read Free Book Online Page B

as they had looked back on the smouldering ruins of St. Davids. “Right,” he said. “Victor.”
    Jo hn looked at Rachel quizzically and Michael, studying the man’s face, thought just for a second that he saw a ripple of something cross his eyes.
    “A psycho,” she said , and the temperature of her tone dropped to zero.
    Michael nodded again. “Yeah, a psycho. And a reminder. People have a habit of finding ways to kill each other. Even with all this going on. The Infected are just one more obstacle to that happening. Someone will find a way to get around it. Killing humans is what humans do.”
    By everything that was good and holy Rachel wanted a cigarette, ached for a calming hit of nicotine. Felt her mind skittering on the surface of things, refusing to settle for a moment; her tolerance slowly deflating like a punctured tyre. For the hundredth time she checked her pocket, the side that ritual dictated would hold the cigarettes, and for the hundredth time she had forgotten for a millisecond that she had none and felt the crushing disappointment.
    It was thinking about that, about the fact that whatever the world was now, it might not contain cigarettes, that set her mind on course to a troubling destination. Her eyes widened.
    “And something else.” Rachel said suddenly, and nodded her head toward the plume of smoke that still hung in the air to the south. In St. Davids it was fire. At night we saw other fires on the horizon. Other places it will be something else. All the things we surrounded ourselves with, all the technology. The petrol stations, the boilers, the flood defences, everything. There’s no one at the controls.”
    Michael pondered this for a moment, his eyes slowly widened.
    “ Exactly,” Rachel said as she saw his awareness growing. “The electrical grid. The power stations. Nuclear sites. If the world is like this, like this everywhere? Then there’s nobody maintaining anything, and that means...”
    “Time bombs, all around us.” Michael said, the full horror of understanding breaking across his mind like a stormy dawn.
    “ And no cigarettes . How much do any of us know about…well…anything?” Rachel said. “I know how to put together a PowerPoint presentation, I know how to fetch tea and coffee for men in suits, I know how to fax. I know how to email. I can order stationary and take minutes of meetings. From the looks of things, pretty much everything I know is obsolete.”
    “You know why they rip their eyes out?”
    Jason’s voice. They all stared at him, startled. He was, apparently, a few minutes behind the conversation.
    “Uh, because they are insane animals?” Rachel said.
    “Maybe,” Jason said. “Or maybe they’re not. Maybe the person they used to be is still in there somewhere, trapped, struggling to make it back. Maybe they rip their eyes out because they don’t want to see.”
     
    *
     
    “He has to avoid stress, the medication can’t work miracles.”
    That had been the phrase Alex remembere d most from the time before things went wrong, when the careful routine they all employed to keep him placid and anchored to reality fell apart. His stability had relied on that routine. When one of the nurses, Robert, had screwed up Alex’s medication, Dr Jackson had unloaded both barrels of her ire on him. Stable medication, stable environment .
    Stepping out of the car and into Rothbury represented a serious deviation from routine. Hell had descended on the town. It looked like the scene of a historical battle re-enactment in which real weapons had been used.
    He opened his door, nudging aside what looked like a mess of intestines on the floor outside, and stepped onto the street. He could smell it now, the overpowering stench of blood and shit. He almost thought he could smell the fear in the air, the terror these people must have felt as their sanitised, civilised lives ended in blood and fire. He felt it under his boots, the slick, slippery cobbles awash with