Blood Crazy by Simon Clark Page A

depress the clutch pedal. Metal struck metal, the old German car shrieked.
    Sarah pushed both sisters into the front passenger seat then reversed the car across the yard as her father belted from the house. One look at his face told her
RUN
.
    As she drove down the drive he charged the car, punching through the passenger window with his fist.
    Sarah thrashed the motor and the car left him behind. Immediately he stopped running and just stared after them.
    Five minutes later Sarah parked the car – then she threw up in a hedgebottom.
    After that, the sequence of events was similar to mine. Driving round, shocked. Listening to the same message on the radio. Seeing the aftermath where parents had torn apart their children.
    By late afternoon both sisters were complaining of hunger. Sarah found a deserted village store. They could have taken what they wanted but the Hayes sisters had been brought up nicely with a private education. Looting wasn’t on the curriculum so Sarah left the few coins she found in the car to pay for the loaf of bread and chocolate they took.
    Sunday night they slept in the car in a wood. The next morning she decided to drive to Doncaster police station.
    If I hadn’t found them as they tried to change the tyre I think the three sisters – or some part of them – would have joined the other objects that topped the ten-foot poles carried by the mob.

Chapter Twelve
Why Are They Trying to Kill Us?
    â€˜What’s happened? Why are they trying to kill us?
    Shrugging, I opened another beer. Sarah sat on the wooden bench that looked over the fields and tried to work out what had happened. It was a mystery she wanted to solve so much it hurt her more than the bruised cheekbone.
    â€˜I went to bed Saturday night. I’d watched TV with my parents. They were perfectly normal. Dad even brought home a Chinese meal. Then when I woke up Sunday morning they tried to kill me.
    â€˜Had your father ever brought home a Chinese meal before?’
    â€˜No. He always said he never fancied eating—’ She shot me a look with those clear blue eyes.
    â€˜What do you mean, Nick? What’s eating Chinese food got to do with …’
    â€˜Not much, probably. Only the last time I saw my dad he was drinking beer in the afternoon. Nothing odd about that except I’d never seen him ever drink beer before during the day.’
    â€˜You mean they were starting to change even then?’
    â€˜Probably. But the changes were so slight you didn’t notice them at the time.’
    â€˜But what caused it?’ Sarah beat her knee to the rhythm of thewords. ‘What caused most of the population to turn into homicidal maniacs?’
    â€˜Not
most
of the population.
All
the
adult
population.’ I told her about the river of lunatics I’d seen on the motorway. ‘As far as I can tell everyone over twenty has been driven stark, barking mad. I haven’t seen any kids affected.’
    â€˜But how?’
    I nearly told her my neural disrupter theory. In the cold light of day it sounded too half-assed. I shrugged again.
    She started pacing in front of the bench. ‘Is it something in the water supply? In the air? Like a nerve gas? Is it a virus? Why should it send people not just mad, but … but it seems to implant in parents a – a craving to kill their own children … I mean they’re not fighting each other, they’re banding together, they’re flocking like birds … they want … they seem to need to … oh God … God …’
    Sarah suddenly sat down rubbing her forehead, like she was trying to massage the mystery from her brain.
    And she obviously had brains. She was trying to work out logically what had happened. I’m short on brains. I opened another beer. Why should I try and work out what happened? There’d be plenty of scientists and psychologists and all that shit working on what had hit Doncaster for years to