Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 1)

By K.R. Griffiths

Michael Evans is only in rural St. Davids to maintain a low profile after his time spent as a city cop ended in disaster. The town is perfect for him: isolated. A tiny population. Virtually no crime.

Until the night the strange canisters fall from the sky and the town priest starts killing people with his teeth. To Michael, the bloodbath looks like a murder case that the quiet town's two police officers can't possibly handle.

But this isn't just a crime scene.

And the priest is just the beginning...

• Language: English
• Publisher: K.R. Griffiths
• Release date: Aug 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301941162

K.R. Griffiths

K.R. Griffiths is a former journalist and editor turned novelist. He is the author of Horror/Science Fiction series Wildfire Chronicles. Five installments have now been released: Vol.1: 'Panic', Vol. 2: 'Shock' (a novella), Vol. 3: 'Psychosis', Vol. 4: 'Mutation' and Vol. 5: 'Trauma'. After 15 years spent living and working in London, he now resides in Wales with a cat that thinks it is a dog and an imagination that sometimes concerns even him.

Book preview

Prologue

From a distance, even the most violent events in nature can seem innocuous and easily overlooked. Thousands of feet above the Earth, viewed from tiny cabin windows, even the mightiest river – all that tumultuous and chaotic force – becomes just another blue scratch on the land below. The collapse of a star, an explosion a billion miles wide, wreaking havoc on an entire galaxy, becomes just a pin prick of light in the night sky.

Had a casual observer been scanning that same night sky on the morning it began the falling object would most likely have been overlooked. From a distance, the tiny object made its way serenely and gracefully toward the Earth kilometres below. It was canister-shaped, metallic. Sunlight that had yet to find its way to the surface of the planet glinted off it. It looked like a shooting star moving at its own leisurely pace.

Up close, of course, it was a different story. The canister thrummed and glowed as it forced penetration of the ionosphere, the sudden friction of the descent causing a buildup of energy that poured off it as writhing fire. Far above the clouds that blotted out the dark land below, the canister trembled like a living creature as the wind buffeted it, shrieking around its terminal velocity as though enraged at the intrusion. Up close, the descent was a thing of howling, relentless violence.

The night side of the Earth loomed below, curved at first, gradually flattening out as the canister approached, filling the horizon in all directions.

The canister-shaped object was not self aware. There was no moment of self congratulation as it headed straight for the target, the journey from space to ground unwavering. Perhaps even if the canister had a mind it would have realised that there was nothing particularly impressive about its precise journey. Nothing unique.

For in the distance, invisible at this range, other canisters were falling.

*

Jane Leary, normally an impressively heavy sleeper, woke with a start, blinking blearily into the darkness of the bedroom. Jane was an early riser, an unashamed member of the best part of the day brigade, but in fifty five years of practice, she had not come close to getting used to her alarm waking her. The alarm clock was an intruder in the bedroom, a malevolent presence that tortured her each and every morning, each press of the snooze button merely a delay to its inevitable victory. Jane always fought for those few precious minutes in the bed, which was somehow many times more warm and comfortable than when she had slipped into it the night before. Waking up before the alarm just wasn't on.

Leaning to her right, she squinted at her digital nemesis, feeling dismayed as the luminescent digits swam into focus.

4.37am. One hour and twenty three precious minutes before she was due to resume her daily battle with the alarm.

Jane frowned, irritated. She had learned long ago to have her last cup of tea in the evening no later than 10pm to avoid precisely these moments, yet even as she began to pull the covers aside she realised it was not her bladder that had awakened her. She paused. What then?

When she turned over, she discovered one possible culprit. Her husband's side of the bed was empty. She frowned again. Peter was resolutely not a morning person, refusing even to set an alarm clock. Instead he relied on Jane to wake him at the last possible moment, giving him just enough time to rush to the shower, hastily chew on some cold toast, and rush out to the Cathedral.

When they were a little younger Jane had tried to break him of this habit, going as far as to question why it was that a man of God would be content to miss the small miracle that occurred each morning, as light crept over the horizon and the world began to wake up. Peter's defence had been rock solid: God, he said, got his work done and spent a full day in bed.

She let her head drop back onto the pillow. Peter, having never mastered the don't-drink-before-bed thing, had probably woken up to use the loo, waking her in the process. He was a big man, and despite his best efforts, his movement made an impact. Jane closed her eyes, hoping that the brief, unwanted trip into wakefulness hadn't quite alerted her senses, but she already knew it was futile. Her morning routine was off-kilter, and her mind had decided to wake itself up fully by way of protest.

Well, she thought, might as well get the day started.

She flicked the off switch on the alarm clock, postponing the battle until tomorrow, and slid her feet out from under the covers into the cold air, relaxing when they found the soft material of her slippers, waiting at the side of the bed. Stepping into them, Jane stood, wrapping her cold dressing gown around her, and padded out of the bedroom.

She expected to find the door at the end of the hall - the entrance to the bathroom - shut, with a thin sliver of light escaping around its edges. That was where Peter would be. In thirty years of marriage, she hadn't known him to be anywhere else in the middle of the night, unless he was sick, in which case he would wrap himself in a duvet and relocate to the couch, aware that his coughing would disturb his wife's sleep.

The hallway was dark and empty.

Jane padded to the top of the stairs and peered down them. The ground floor appeared unlit – if Peter had been struck by some illness, it must be a bad one, to have him sitting down there in the dark.

Pete? She called out softly. You okay hun?

No response.

Suddenly Jane felt strangely apprehensive and off-balance. The stairs leading down into the darkness, stairs that she had walked for thirty years and more, which were as familiar to her as sunlight, now seemed oddly threatening and alien. A dark, strange landscape, as though the house was informing her that things were different in the small hours; that she should not be here.

Jane was no fan of horror films. Like Peter, she was mystified as to what enjoyment anyone could possibly get out of fear and violence. Why would anyone willingly spend time revelling in the darker, evil side of humanity? Still, she had caught the end of one on TV once and found herself reeled in; a clammy, breathless hour spent in the company of a young family living with some fearful malevolent spirit in their house. The experience had shaken Jane, and for a while it had kept resurfacing whenever she found herself alone in the house, particularly at night. The silence, the emptiness was suddenly a breeding ground for something, alive with dark potential, and around each corner she expected to find some sign of a presence, all the more horrifying for being couched in the friendly familiarity of her little home.

The feeling had worn off of course; she had never seen any such thing, and eventually the memory of the movie had been worn away by time, but an echo of that feeling always remained, a faint feeling that the safety of the home could so easily be twisted by some unpleasant surprise.

She felt it now. Why wasn't Peter answering?

The stairway lightswitch was at the bottom of the steps: a fact that had always been faintly irritating, but which now engulfed her in unchristian rage. She'd have to descend in the darkness. Setting her mouth in a firm line, reminding herself that movies weren't real, Jane began to descend, heart beating fast.

At the bottom of the stairs stood the front door, which neither Peter nor Jane ever really used, preferring the patio doors in the kitchen to the rear of the house. To the right, hidden behind a corner, was the entrance to the living room. With each step that she crept down, Jane kept her gaze focused more and more intently on this corner, half-expecting some dark shadow to move around it, a patch of blackness in the blackness, moving toward her almost invisibly. She tried not to think about the possibility that someone was waiting around that corner, grinning, seeing their prey clearly framed by light from above, stepping toward them.

The feeling that something was wrong increased as Jane reached the last couple of steps, and it took her a moment to realise what was causing it.

The draught. Jane could feel a cool breeze swirling around her bare calves. The back door was open. She swallowed painfully.

As soon as she was able, still two steps away from the floor, Jane reached out into the darkness and found the lightswitch, flicking it on and almost crying out with relief when she saw the menacing shadows flee. There was no evil presence lurking at the bottom of the stairs.

Turning the corner, she was able to see into the living room. Dark and empty.

No, not dark. Not quite. There was light spilling into the living room, a cold, lifeless light. Coming from the kitchen, no, through the kitchen. Coming from the back garden.

What on Earth?

Jane stepped cautiously through the living room, shivering as the cold night air flooding into the house chilled her, and onto the freezing tiles of the kitchen floor. The patio door was drawn fully back, revealing a sight that made her breath catch in her throat.

At the far end of the long, narrow garden, was a brilliant sphere of white light, roughly the height of a tall man. The light was painful to look at, yet somehow compelling, beautiful. Jane stepped forward, through the patio door and onto the small step beyond. There was something between her and the light, a silhouette that was difficult to make out at first.

As Jane squinted, trying to make it out, the light began to ebb, seeming to retract into itself, and the shape became familiar. Peter, her husband, kneeling on the ground, his hands placed on something within the light, something cylindrical and metallic.

Pete? Jane whispered softly.

At the sound of her voice, she saw her husband rise to his feet, turning, and begin to move toward her.

With the light dying away behind him, it was difficult to see until he was close. Only when he was a few feet away could Jane really see his face, see the eyes bulging in their sockets, blood seeping from the tear ducts. He was closer still when Jane understood that the man she had loved for over three decades, the gentle, kind man who had treated her like a queen intended to murder her.

So close that when he leapt toward her, snarling, strong fingers grasping for her neck, Jane didn't even have time to flinch.

*

The canister, half buried in the earth, cooled in the night air as the last of its power was expended. The payload delivered, the object had no more use. Its final act was the release of a drum of acid that it kept in its belly. It was a quiet sort of suicide.

Chapter 1

Craig Haycock's head exploded in the extravagantly-named Bay restaurant and grill. It was a controlled demolition, no sign of damage externally. Inside though, the devastation was catastrophic.

The detonator, a dropped dish – now a constellation of once-white shards on a murky tile floor that owner Ralf Williams always cheerfully deemed the colour of life, that is – rattled and skittered to a halt. The sharp noise set Craig's tender nerves jangling.

He moaned dramatically. Mainly for effect, given that even this bare minimum of effort was seized on by his pounding head as a sign that, clearly, it needed to step up its efforts to subdue and punish him.

God's sake Ralf, keep it down will you? I'm dying here.

Ralf, red-faced and sweating profusely, nodded a breathless apology at his only customer, and frowned as he set to the task of plotting the course he would need to take to navigate around his plentiful gut and down to the floor to clean up the mess.

Cradling his coffee, Craig felt uncannily like he had just kicked a sick puppy, and let out a guilty sigh. He made a mental note to leave Ralf a healthy tip. Neither his own raging hangover nor the smashed plate was particularly Ralf's fault, though the latter had a case that would definitely stand up in court. The fat man's clumsiness was innate, and endearing in all honesty. Ralf liked to joke that he'd be a Michelin-starred chef if only he could get the food from the oven to the table in one piece. His regular customers, fully aware that the place was little more than a greasy spoon dressed up in its Sunday best naturally retorted that he had more chance of becoming the Michelin-man.

Craig gulped down a mouthful of near-scalding coffee and felt the caffeine begin to work its magic on his protesting body. He took a moment to silently curse the strange bond that forms when two people are alone in one space, and slid off the rickety barstool to help clear the shards of porcelain.

Take it easy, mate, he said to Ralf with a watery grin, as he positioned himself between the gelatinous blur of activity and the remainder of the smashed plate. I'll sort it out. Don't want you getting a heart attack before that bacon's ready.

Craig plucked the dustpan and brush from Ralf's meaty left hand, and staggered a little when the big man gave him a grateful slap on the shoulder. Ralf waddled back to the griddle.

Craig had ordered bacon with the coffee, and the aroma was beginning to fill the room, which could seat up to thirty diners, but which usually only seated about five. The grill was located on the road that led from St. Davids to the picturesque White Sands Bay beach, roughly halfway between the two. As such it was mainly a base of operations for the town's small but enthusiastic fishing community, and not much else. Occasionally travellers stopped in, making their way along to coastal road to nearby Fishguard, which boasted a sizeable ferry port and numerous boats making the short trip across the water to Ireland. Drawn in (and some may argue deceived) by the Bar and grill tag and the promise of a fine meal overlooking the crashing waves of the Irish Channel.

The view was guaranteed, but the café, as the locals obstinately continued to call it, was hardly a fine dining experience. Not that Craig's rumbling, gurgling stomach would agree, as the smell of the salty bacon filled his nostrils and made his mouth water. All depends on your definition of 'fine', he thought, as he began to sweep up the broken plate. Few things, in Craig's opinion, were finer than a good bacon butty when you'd spent the best part of a night sat on a tiny trawler in savage, freezing winds, only to return home with a handful of worthwhile cod and a half empty bottle of scotch.

Good catch last night mate? Ralf puffed cheerfully, apparently reading Craig’s mind.

Craig looked up. Ralf was still chasing bacon around the griddle. He could have simply left it to cook of course, but Craig knew that Ralf liked to tend to food as it cooked, whether it was required or not. Made him feel like a chef.

Had it been anyone else enquiring, Craig would have suspected sarcasm. The whole town knew that these days his nights were spent plumbing the depths of a bottle, not the freezing sea. It had been that way since Amy died. Nearly three years, now. Shit.

Craig forced a sickly chuckle, and returned his gaze to the last of the mess on the floor.

Sea's drying up Ralf. My whole catch last night could have just about served us up a decent breakfast, if I trusted you to cook it right.

Behind Craig, the door to the café opened and a blast of the icy Welsh coastal wind rushed in, undoing all the hard work Ralf's tiny space heater had put in that morning in a couple of seconds.

Ralf didn't respond, and Craig felt a little pang of guilt again. Surely the big man knew he was kidding? He shot a glance at Ralf. The fat man, uncharacteristically, was rooted to the spot, eyes fixed on the doorway.

Something about the stony expression on Ralf's face, normally so convivial, iced up Craig's veins. Maybe it was some relic of his days as a proper fisherman, some finely tuned animal instinct bred of a life spent doing battle with the sea, Craig would never know, but even before he turned to face the doorway, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling in silent warning, Craig realised that he was in the presence of death.

When finally he faced the doorway, all of Craig's

Reviews for Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 1)

[jpodlaski_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Panic offers a different twist on the zombie apocalypse - canisters from the heavens cause this pandemic - once infected, zombies lose their eyes but their remaining senses are enhanced - smell being the most potent. Zombies chasing the living...the living hiding...all set in a small town in England. It was difficult for me to get through this book, and I concur with other reviewers that this story was extremely wordy and slow in between action scenes, eventually causing me to lose interest. I did make it to the end, but It took me much longer when compared to other books in this genre. As a result, I won't be continuing with this series. John Podlaski, authorrCherries - A Vietnam War Novel

[bookworm1985-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As a Welsh woman, I enjoyed the fact that there was finally a book set here in rural Wales, St David's to be precise. I was able to instantly picture everything which I find important when I'm reading as I like to have a little 'film' running in my head as I read, picturing the characters in their settings. I instantly liked Michael and was rooting for him as the chaos started. I'm not particularly into zombie type books as I'm not a fan of gore but I will read most things at least once. I personally did find the 'gore factor' a little high but at the same time I did expect it so it wasn't a complete surprise. I think K R Griffiths was very adept at scene setting, I found it a very very accurate depiction of South Wales. I also read some of the other reviews and one lady said she found the character development was a bit too in depth but I personally liked that, I wanted to know more about Michael, I didn't mind the slight breaks in the action to explain more and was waiting to discover what 'The Cardiff Incident' was as we came close to finding out in this book 1 of the series, but we still don't know as yet what haunts him to this day. I liked Jason and Rachel too and was pleased when they all banded together.I also think the author did a good job of creating a truly evil character in Victor. I thought at first he was just odd but as we got to the final third we found out just how evil and depraved he was. One criticism for me was the 'breaking down' of a strong character with sexual torture near the end. It seemed out of place somehow, like it was added on as a bit of an afterthought. I didn't think it was necessary for this book as things had already been bad enough for this character already but I'm not the author so its just a personal thing. Overall, I liked the book and would really like to know what happens in the rest of the series.

[debbie.addis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked it. Well written. I would have liked more details on the canisters. Curious as to where they came from. I will read the sequels.

[kristen11-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Panic is definitely a different approach on the apocalyptic tales that have sprung up lately. After a mysterious canister lands in a small town, the residents begin to change into eyeless zombie-esque creatures from a seemingly blood-born illness/effect. The book often switches between different characters and their points of view, so it's hard to establish early on who's going to be the main character. A pet peeve of mine with this book, or maybe a stroke of genius on Griffiths part, was to get you invested in a character only for it to die. It occurs so much that I lost interest in becoming invested in any of the characters. Towards the ending, you do see that a main character is established. But I was disappointed with the predictable ending and cliff hanger. A trigger warning should be included for a couple of the scenes at the end, as well.This book is fast paced, though. I was surprised to notice how quickly I was reading it. Regardless of my pet peeves and dislikes, Griffiths knows how to keep the flow going well. There were a few editing mistakes (misspelled words and the like), but they are easily overlooked and forgiven. All in all, Panic was a decent read. I would recommend it to the die-hard apocalyptic genre crowd. Though, I'm not interested enough to read the rest of the series.

[geniariddick-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Honestly, when I first began reading, it was a bit tedious, the descriptions seemed overly long and drawn out and didn't seem to correlate with what I might imagine occurring if this scenario were actually to take place... However, I stuck it out, continued to read and thankfully it got better.By chapter 4 the dialogue had gotten to a point where I didn't have to read and re-read passages just to figure out what the author was really trying to convey.All in all, I would say it was an engaging read and I was interested to see what was going to happen next to the characters in the story.

[heatherbennett32 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was hard to put down. It was action packed and a page turner. The author wrote a great book. The characters are well developed and the plot was great.

[honoliipali · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Interesting and well written lead in to some kind of horror story. I actually thought that the characters and their travails flowed very well into each other. Since I won this book in exchange for an honest review, I did not really know what to expect. The horror genre is not something that I gravitate to so I was kind of caught off guard.Evidently the Wildfire Chronicles is a 4 part book and I have only read part 1 so far. So far, I am actually enjoying the story and really want to find out what happens. So, I will provide further reviews once I have read the next installment.

[dokfintong · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I cannot work up any enthusiasm for this copycat book that is so very much like so many others.

[sarah42-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Panic (Wildfire Chronicles Vol 1.) By K.R. GriffithsPanic is a apocalyptic zombie-esque secret society driven disaster story set in the rural village of St. Davids in Wales. The ball is set rolling with the landing of steel canisters in the back yard of one of the villages’ houses that results in the first “zombification” resulting in the typical struggle for survival.One thing made me love this book and would prompt me to actually buy the further volumes of the series. That was the fantastically vivid descriptions of the carnage and the fast nature of the story telling. The story writing doesn’t labour over the small unimportant details of the scenery or talk down to the reader by explaining who everyone is and their back-story in more detail than necessary.However, what makes me think again was the lack of trigger warnings for one or two of the scenes at the end. These sorts of this might be where the human condition goes to during this sort of event but please lead up to it with something to at least warn the reader of what to expect. Well paced, fast read with a typical cliff hanger ending to keep you coming back. 3.5 stars.I received this book to review through Library Thing Early Reviewers.