Mutation (Wildfire Chronicles Vol. 4) by K.R. Griffiths

bay.
     
    *
     
    When the propane tank went up, blowing out every window in The Heart and sending a shockwave of liquid fire through the crowd, Nick knew that the time for planning was over.
    He stared down into the square, slack-jawed, as he saw several figures stumbling from the blast, shrieking human torches that cast a grisly glow on the horror being unleashed below, before they finally dropped to the ground, smouldering. The sickening stench of their cooked flesh floated on the air like confetti, so thick that Nick could taste it, and bile rose in his throat.
    He turned to Drake.
    “Hopper,” he choked. “Where’s Hopper?”
    Drake shrugged and nodded his head down at the square.
    Of course Hopper would be down there, in the thick of it. His rank had taken him away from the action of war and into what was largely administration. He would be right in the middle, barking orders, loving every minute.
    Nick would have killed for a job in administration. He had been a coward all his life, shying away from the merest hint of confrontation, let alone any that might involve firearms. Even when he had been appointed as leader of a group of thirty soldiers, he had led by suggestion, never by command.
    As he smashed open the cabinet that held the fire extinguisher, he wondered idly if his actions would still be considered cowardly. He was about to do the bravest thing he’d ever done in his life, and all so he could run away once more.
    A huge flaming tree trunk crashed through the window at which he had stood with Drake only moments before, crashing through the door opposite and into the dorm, ploughing into the terrified mass of people that huddled inside , where they had believed themselves to be safe.
    Nick ’s eyes fell on the fire axe that sat next to the extinguisher. He grabbed that instead, and hurtled toward the stairs.
    When he reached the ground and burst out of the barracks and into the warzone that the square had become, Nick heard Hopper’s voice immediately, screaming at no one in particular, barking out the order to get to the wall and open fire.
    Mostly Nick saw people milling around in confusion and terror; most were unarmed thanks to Hopper, and Colonel's words fell on deaf ears. He saw a few, the ones he had come to think of as King Hopper’s royal guard, hoisting assault rifles and heading to the wall, and moments later the chatter of gunfire fractured the night.
    Heart hammering, his breath exploding from lungs that tried in vain to choke out the acrid smoke filling them, Nick cast his eyes left and right.
    Where the fuck is Hopper?
     
    *
     
    Jake had loved killing ever since he had been four or five years old, when he had meticulously pulled the wings off a butterfly, slowly and deliberately, relishing the notion that if the thing had been capable of screaming, it would have. The insect hadn’t been delicate and pretty. At least not until Jake had finished with it.
    That first kill, tiny and insignificant as it had been, had sent a n unforgettable shudder of pleasure through his small frame. He had been chasing that thrill ever since, on each and every occasion that he had managed to struggle free of the prison in his mind, the sickness that meant he had to share headspace with a tedious bore.
    He had chased the thrill across the deaths of increasingly larger animals, and eventually human beings, and on each occasion he had been fascinated with tearing them apart; with seeing their insides and remaking them.
    Even the killing of seventeen people in his previous life had turned out to be a case of thinking small, though. The gift given to him at the underground base; the transformation of himself into an apex predator: that had changed everything.
    The battle with the puny creatures at Catterick felt just like killing that first insect, all those years earlier. It felt new.
    He was powerless to resist the lure of their blood now, reduced to a creature of impulse, as hopelessly directionless as the