Free Panic by K.R. Griffiths Page B

wet sounds. Sounds that could only be her stricken father struggling in the darkness, the liquid of his life spilling out onto the cold, hard floor.
    Rachel rushed forward blindly then, filled equally with fear and hope and desperation, clumsily and frantically traversing the steps into the basement, into the blackness.
    It was the smell that hit her first. The basement air was musty and old, sour smelling. And filled with another scent, something that took her all the way back to that summer's day and the smashed greenhouse, and the screaming: the cloying, coppery stench of blood.
    Then, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and the source of the strange wet sounds was revealed, Rachel felt something snapping in her mind, some important tether suddenly breaking.
    Rachel's first instinct had been right: it was her father in the basement, lying prone on the concrete, but he was not alone. Crouched over his fallen, lifeless body was the family's beloved friendly little terrier, Sniffer, his snout drenched in gore.
    Eating her father's face.
    She had a moment to take in the insanity, to feel it penetrate her brain and put down roots. A second in which to see the dog lift its head in her direction, to notice that there was something wrong with its eyes, something that the gloom of the basement would not quite reveal.
    A second to stumble backwards as Sniffer came for her, blood-soaked lips pulled back, snarling.
     
    *
     
    Michael hit the tarmac hard, putting his head down to the wind. Travelling .
    He had been a decent runner in school, not quite with that extra burst of speed that the select few of his peers that ended up running for the county had, but they would have been able to see him in their rear view mirror. A few years of little real exercise hadn't quite eradicated that prowess, and as he pumped his legs, feet smashing painfully into the road, he felt a certain confidence.
    The two horrors from the car park were following. He could hear the crashing feet and broken panting. For a moment he found himself questioning how they were able to target him so effectively – clearly they were blind, yet they were not aimless. Again he wondered if they were operating by smell, but the notion seemed ridiculous. These were human beings, not bloodhounds.
    He risked a look back over his left shoulder, and almost yelled out when he saw how close they were. The fog permitted visibility of fifteen feet, twenty at most but Michael could see them clearly. Coming fast. And once again he noticed the strange, alien gait, the movement that seemed to belong more to the animal kingdom than the human world.
    He doubled his efforts, but already his heart was sinking. The air pumping through his lungs felt as though it were getting hotter, each new breath seemed to be filled with razors that rattled around painfully in his chest. He wasn't going to be able to keep this up. They were going to catch him.
    Michael made up his mind before he even realised there was an issue up for debate. The road offered him a clear path, a place to use his pace to its fullest, but it also made him a sitting duck, a target that could not be missed. What the road offered most was vulnerability.
    He veered off the tarmac and into the woods.
    As he crashed into the undergrowth, aware that he was making more noise but also hoping that the more difficult terrain would prove too much for his sightless pursuers, he was surprised to find his mind filled with thoughts of his estranged wife, of the way the marriage hadn't so much broken down as melted away. Each day a steady diminishing, until one day, when you found yourself looking, you discovered there was nothing left to see.
    Things had been good with Elise, really good for a long time. She taught kids at the local primary school. She smiled whenever she saw him. She sang in the kitchen, little improvised verses that usually swerved into ridiculous territory and always made them both laugh.
    Even now, his heart ached