Chapter One

   The runner sped along exhaling clouds of cool air that held its wispy tendrils in the lightly chilled morning. Her heart pounding hard in her chest she raced as though running for her life. Music thundered in her ears through her sports ear buds as she returned to a more moderate comfortable pace. The motion of her running smooth and seemingly gliding as she took in the colours of the burgeoning autumn around her. The vibrant ambers, golds, and dark greens that shone radiantly in the late September light giving her an almost spiritual lift and bringing joy to her heart. She ran the cinder path of the nature reserve country park knowing its every turn and camber confidently navigating the terrain.

   Lindsey Metcalf was thirty six years old although she didn’t look a day over thirty . Her chestnut brown hair tied in a ponytail bounced out behind her as she ran, her slim build powerfully pushing onward.

Clad in orange and shocking pink patterned Lycra running leggings and tight orange vest she cut a swathe through the park. She’d been a runner for about three years now having taken it up after her daughter Lois was born. It was a way to shift the baby weight. She now also used it as a means of escape and for the headspace it gave to assess her current life.

    She was happy but deep down she just felt that now she was approaching her forties she wanted more out of life again. She remembered her previous life, her going out with friends, a social butterfly but by no means a party animal.

She had enjoyed the occasional Saturday bottomless brunch with the girls, a few cocktails, and a dance at the clubs on the main strip in the city, the girly holidays to Marbella and Ibiza.

    This was all a distant memory now. Her job as a team manager at a call centre in the city is where she had met Darren her now husband. He was a good man overall, charming, attractive and kind but with a tendency to impulse and excess.

 He was originally a builder by trade but with the current slump in the housing market had managed to get a job in the small insurance office where Lindsey worked.

    They hit it off immediately and were inseparable within weeks of starting to see each other.

He however liked the weekend indulgences a bit too much though for Lindsey’s liking. Alcohol and cocaine being the main culprits, he was rather partial to a boy’s weekend however when she fell pregnant Darren became a changed man.

   Vowing to prioritise and protect their unborn child and remove all temptation he had suggested the move away from the city centre  to the countryside .They brought a little terrace house in the small district of Taverham on the outskirts of Norfolk’s green and lustrous county city of Norwich. It wasn’t much but it was theirs. Their family home.

   Lois their beautiful bonnie daughter was born and their life was for a while serene and content with both her and Darren the doting parents. However the struggle of missing her friends as Lois had gotten older started to tell and Lindsey had begun to draw into herself, isolated. She didn’t hate her life but she sought something else , something more.

   She tried the local mother and toddler groups, but it just didn’t feel like her .She didn’t really connect with anyone there. It felt cliquey and gossipy and not really for her. She had desperately wanted to return to work but Darren wanted her to wait till Lois was settled at school, She yearned for her independence , to be her own woman so now she ran to break up her days and the monotony of her current existence. To run away from the humdrum and dream of something else , something better.

   The freedom she felt when she ran was liberating. She could be alone with her thoughts, daydreaming of careers and aspiration, of Lois growing older, holidays in the sun, those precious things she would never get to experience.

   Lost in her thoughts she failed to notice the faint buzzing growing louder above her. It was moving closer and the first insect homing in, descended, landing on her exposed neck.

She felt a faint tickle that she swiped at, losing her rhythm and then a sharp scratch followed by an intense burning sensation. She let out a little shriek. The large burnt orange and brown striped torpedo with its lance like stinger drove the poisonous spike deep into her neck just above the collar bone again causing her further pain and to swipe at herself. She was confused, trying to comprehend her situation .Rational thought getting lost in the rising panic.

Another landed on her terrified pale sweaty face ,striking her below the right eye piercing her pale skin , pain like she had never felt before. The wound instantly swelled and causing excruciating pain she screamed in terror and bewilderment. A white-hot panic took hold.

She now noticed the low droning noise that was beginning to get louder and nearer.

   She then with disbelief saw the swarming insects descending. The next insect landed on her arm once again pierced her skin with the poisonous spike and another and another until she was engulfed by a cloud of droning stinging insects.

Her mind was a frenzy now as she thrashed wildly on the path falling to the ground unable to bear the excruciating pain.

The hordes kept attacking and fiery poison coursed through her veins. Her neck and face swelled, cutting off her air supply

Her mouth wide in a silent scream, gasping for breath as her lungs struggled for life giving air, the insects entered her, stinging as they made their way towards her throat.

   She collapsed to the ground of the isolated path of the park clawing at her neck, her eyes wide in terror, her mind unable to comprehend what was happening and now numb, frozen with shock her last thoughts of Lois and Darren wandering where she was! “where’s mummy, where’s mummy, I want my mumm………….” And then nothing but the sound of the light breeze blowing through the trees.

 The onslaught continued for a few more minutes, before the insects in their thousands ascended into the sky, the menacingly black droning cloud moving on.

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