Panic

K.R. Griffiths

Copyright © K.R. Griffiths 2013

This one's for everyone who helped.

Thanks doesn't seem like enough.

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 o
nce 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.

Craig Haycock's hea
d 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 th
e 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 instincts deserted him, swept away on a tidal wave of incomprehension.

Standing in the doorway to the
Bay restaurant and grill
, framed by gunmetal skies and shrieking wind, was Father Peter Leary. Thirty years a St. Davids resident. The man who baptised and married and buried the people. A man of steely faith and gentle humour.

From his left hand, hair entwined around tightly clutched fingers, hung a severed human head.

*

St. Davids, a tiny collection of centuries-old dwellings on the south western tip of Wales, had enjoyed something of a renaissance over the past couple of decades as surfers and second-homers from the home counties descended on the town, drawn towards the rolling waves and low prices. The main street, once home to numerous local craft shops
, subsequently became home to a procession of wine bars and would-be fancy restaurants that were forced to close for half the year when much of the population returned to the cities, but the overall feeling of the place remained undiminished.

The influx of seasonal new blood had done little to change the overall demographic. In the main the residents of St. Davids were either in the middle of their twilight years, or at the very least, seriously considering turning on their headlights.

It wasn't that work was hard to come by exactly, but there was little to entice young working families to the area. A thirty minute commute by car brought the nearby town of Haverfordwest onto the radar, but, not exactly living down the
rural
moniker itself, the larger town offered little in the way of employment for those concerned with getting the latest Audi or buying a 50" Plasma screen TV. The net result of which was that there were very few young people in St. Davids, fewer children, and those who did attend the tiny local school spent most of their time eagerly counting down the days until they finally reached an age at which they could leave.

All of which meant there was very little crime in St. Davids, which suited Michael Evans, one of the town's two-strong (or, as local wags would opine
too-strong
) full time police force, very well indeed.

On this particular cold, grey morning, Michael was sitting as usual in one of the town's two 'squad cars', outside his colleague Carl Wilkins' house, waiting for the older man to appear for his ride to work. The engine was running, the heater working overtime to keep the freezing air at bay. Carl, as usual, was late.

Strictly following protocol, of course, Michael and Carl were each meant to pilot a squad car around the streets, but this seemed unnecessarily wasteful and, in any case, no one from further up the chain of Police command had yet bothered to venture this far into the sticks to check whether their guidelines and advisories were actually being implemented.

Michael shivered and pushed the heater up to maximum. He hated mornings. Hated the way that each dawn broke the promise of the night before, that tomorrow things
might be different. After two years, he still could not adjust to waking up to an empty house, and heavy, unwelcoming silence. Michael's morning routine was always a carefully planned rush, a race against time to get to work that left no room for sitting in that silence, for introspection. Carl's steadfast refusal to exit his house on time was ruining that.

Michael reache
d for his phone, intending to fill a minute or so by checking for messages that he knew were not waiting for him, when Carl opened the door and flopped into the car with a dramatic "Brrrrrr." Michael flicked the phone shut, slipping it back into a pocket.

"Coffee and doughnuts, partner
,” Carl said, in a mock Southern-USA drawl that hadn't improved with repetition. Michael forced a grin, and reached for the thermos Carl offered. With their work consisting mainly of giving lifts to drunks and resolving occasional half-hearted disputes between neighbours, Carl had, several months back, begun to narrate their days like a voice-over on some hard-boiled detective movie. It had started as an ironic joke, yet now it was routine, but at least it came with fresh coffee and yesterday's fresh doughnuts each morning. After all, cops are
meant
to eat doughnuts.

Michael poured himself a steaming coffee into a small plastic cup, and took a long gulp.

"How'd it go then mate?"

Carl grunted by way of response. It was virtually his primary mode of communication. Carl had a grunt for every scenario, probably including a couple Michael didn't like to think about. This one? Displeasure with a hint of resignation.

"She's still...adamant."

The faux-accent was gone, replaced by a gruff, well seasoned valley-boy lilt.

Michael arched an eyebrow. Carl was not noted for his concise vocabulary. The argument must have been a real doozy.

Carl bit into a doughnut and chewed slowly, grimacing, as though the burst of sugar brought him no pleasure whatsoever. He chewed, as always, like a cow.

Michael tried to pin down his partner's expression. Thoughtful. Or constipated. Michael plumped for the former, despite his all-too detailed knowledge of Carl's diet.

"Wants to be nearer the kids." The big man said finally, with an audible swallow. "Told her spending twenty one years in the same house as them was surely enough."

Michael snorted a laugh.

"Then she says maybe spending thirty years with me was more than enough."

Michael chuckled again. Carl's wife, Beth, was a real firecracker. He'd hung out at the Wilkins place often, and rarely left without his ears ringing, usually having been informed by Beth that if he wanted to sort out his life, Michael would have to cheer the hell up, since no one wanted to be with a ‘misery-guts’.

Beth
was forthright, but she was also usually just plain right. It was a killer combination.

"Then she
brings out the big guns. Grandchildren. We'll have 'em soon enough. She wants to be able to see 'em. End of."

Carl often spoke like this, in bullet points. Michael had long suspected
his friend had evolved this mannerism precisely
because
he was married to Beth. He could only ever get words in edgeways. Had to make them count.

"Ouch,"
Michael said sympathetically. "No big guns of your own?"

"Water pistols
, mate." Carl shook his head, forlorn. "She wants me to put in a transfer request to Cardiff. Maybe even Bristol. What the hell would a proper police force want with the likes of me? Can't be that many kittens need rescuing from trees."

Michael's
face cracked in a grin. "True," he said, nodding sombrely. "But on the other hand, kettles don't boil themselves. And there's always filing, and-"

"Bastard,"
Carl said with a laugh. "Just talked yourself out of a doughnut."

Michael laughed.

"So what are you gonna do, mate? Doesn't sound like Beth's going to budge on this one, eh?"

Carl shook his head wearily. "When does she ever? I dunno mate. Women."

He tutted.

"Better off without them."

Carl caught Michael's gaze, and suddenly his face dropped. He flushed.

"Shit, mate, I-"

Michael put the car in gear, and felt rising dismay at the sudden awkwardness, but having no idea how to defuse it, adopted his default approach: pretend he hadn’t heard. He cleared his throat.

"Right then, first order of business?"
Michael kept his eyes focused on the road.

"Hell,"
said Carl. "Let’s swing out by Ralf's. Beth's got this idea that muesli constitutes a proper breakfast. My stomach says otherwise."