Plagued (13 page)

“I’ve missed you too, baby. I’m so sorry I didn’t
come looking for you.”

Sarah shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.”

He unzipped his jacket and dropped it besides them,
then with Sarah’s help, quietly slipped his shirt over his head. His body was
tanned and his chest dark with swirling hair trailing down to his toned
stomach. She ran her fingers across his shoulders and felt the hard muscles
flexing as he unhooked her bra.

Sarah unbuttoned the front of Jack’s jeans and
pushed them down towards his knees inside the sleeping bag. It was her turn
then, Jack ripped her jeans down in one fluid motion, flinging them off to the
side. He cupped her breasts then, feeling their warm fullness and began gently
kissing them. She gasped in pleasure and bit at his neck as he slipped her
underwear down below her thighs and pulled them loose. She wrapped her legs
around him, making Jack smile in surprise at her directness. Without
hesitation, he pulled himself inside her. She gasped as he entered her and they
made love in the dark, silently finding each other all over again.

As their love-making climaxed, she lay on his
chest, listening to his heartbeat as she fell into a deep sleep—warm and safe
in Jack Archer’s arms.

Sarah was standing outside their house in Solitude
and in her hands were two rather heavy shopping bags. She had been into town
for their weekly food shop and had caught the bus back from Winding. The sun
was shining and it was unusually warm for an English summer; even in her light
lemon summer dress, her skin was still moist with perspiration. Her arms and
chest were lightly tanned from the summer sun and she could smell the faint,
coconut scent of her own sun cream.

A sudden pang of fear hit her as she noticed the
front door to their rented house was ajar. She pushed the door open slowly and
she winced at the creak it made. She hesitantly crept into the house, listening
for the sound of intruders. The strong scent of vanilla—Sarah’s favourite
scent—met her in the hallway, strong in the warm air.

She crept down the hallway, listening to her own
heart beating frantically in her chest. The doors to the other rooms were open
as she had left them, nothing was out of place. Sarah relaxed; maybe Jack had
left the door open because of the heat.

She entered the doorway to the living room and saw
the back of Jack’s head as he sat on the sofa, facing the TV. It was turned
off. The room was flooded with summer sunlight, giving the beige room a warm
and inviting feel. An ashtray lay on the glass coffee table in front of him,
shimmering in the sunlight and a cigarette burned away inside it, untouched.

“I’m back. I’ve brought something nice for us for
tea tonight,” Sarah said cheerily and dropped the bags next to the doorway.

Jack didn’t move.

“Jack?” she asked, and then laughed with a tremor
in her voice. “Are you okay, babe?”

Apart from the gentle motion of his breathing, he
sat rigidly on the sofa, not even flinching at the sound of her voice.

Sarah moved gingerly around the couch to face him;
it seemed much bigger than normal—she just couldn’t seem to get around it.
Anxiety came flooding back through her mind again and she found herself
wondering if she had done something wrong.

Jack twitched a little as she came around to the
front, his breathing quickened but his gaze never left the TV.

“Jack, what’s wrong?” she asked. Her legs were
turning to jelly as she tried to walk around the couch.

The room felt bigger than before, the sky turned
darker with every step. The smell of vanilla faded and turned into a sickening,
sour odour that filled her nose. Outside, rained started to pelt against the
window, making her jump—it had been sunny but a moment ago, with no clouds at
all in the sky. Sarah began to feel something was really wrong, the skin
prickled on her arms and something in her mind screamed at her not to look at
him.

She pushed the thought out of her head as she finally
made it to the front of the couch. Jack’s head turned maddeningly slowly
towards hers and as she saw his face, she began to scream.

His face was contorted in an extreme rage; his
brow furrowed deeply and his mouth stretched unnaturally into a cruel grin, his
teeth were bared like an animal and his wild eyes were locked onto hers. She
stepped away from him, bumping into the coffee table and knocking a mug of cold
tea on to the carpet.

“Welcome home, baby,” he growled and leaped
towards her.

~

Sarah awoke with a start, with Jack’s frowning
face above hers.

“Are you okay? You were screaming in your sleep,” he
whispered.

“Yeah I’m okay,” she gasped, catching her breath, “it
was just a bad dream.” She offered him a wan smile.

Sarah sat up, shivering from the layer of sweat
covering her body. People were staring at her with annoyed faces, some shaking
their heads as Sarah smiled at them apologetically.  It was dark outside and
since it was nearing the end of summer in England, the darkness meant it was nine
o’clock or later.

Jamie, her old school friend, looked at her from
his chair beside the window. He shrugged at her and mouthed, ‘are you okay?’
Sarah nodded at him with a shy smile, which he returned before turning his
attention back to the window.

Jack rubbed her shoulders and smiled back. “It’s
okay now, you’re safe.”

Before she had the chance to reply, Jamie yelled, “Everyone
up!”

Then Emily came running across the room towards
Sarah and Jack, narrowly avoiding the people who were still asleep. Aware of
still being undressed, the two of them scrambled to put their shirts on and
slipped their bottoms on under the covers.

“What’s wrong?” Jack yelled, with slight irritation
in his voice.

“Duke’s driving around outside, Jamie saw him
through the window. There are three others in the car as well!” she said, her
eyes wide.

Everyone in the room scrambled to their feet,
pulling on their clothes frantically. Cries and murmurs echoed throughout the
hall as people ran to pick up anything they could use as a weapon.

“Fuck,” Jack growled, climbing out of the sleeping
bag and pulling on his boots. Sarah followed.

“What are we going to do?” Emily asked, eyeing
Sarah’s lack of a bra.

“They’ve probably noticed the Land Rover outside,”
Jack said and ran towards the windows.

Jenny caught sight of Sarah and ran to her,
holding her hand as they walked to the windows, besides Jack. The elderly in
the group moved slowly towards the back end of the room, gathering together and
muttering in uncertainty.

“What’s going on? Are they back?” Jenny whispered
softly.

“Yes. But don’t panic, they’re just driving around
the streets,” Jack said quietly, looking through the gap in the curtains.

Her mother whimpered and Sarah hugged her tight.

Frank came over and took his wife away from the
windows. “Come on. Let’s get a cup of that horrible green tea you like,” he
purred.

Sarah looked around the room frantically,
realising she couldn’t find Mark. She couldn’t see him in the corner where he
slept. Panic rose in her chest.

A door banged shut behind her and she spun around
nervously. Mark was stood in the doorway looking confused. He gave her a ‘what’s
wrong?’
look.

She ran to him. “Duke’s outside, driving around in
a car. I couldn’t find you.”

“You don’t have to worry about me. I just went to
the toilet,” Mark smirked, seeing the worry lines on her forehead.

“Don’t go running off like that again.” Sarah smiled
weakly and punched him playfully on the arm.

Mark caught sight of Jack in the window behind
her. He was watching them intently as he held the curtain open. Mark’s smile
faded. “Listen Sarah,” he said softly, looking back at her. “I’ve got something
I need to tell you.”

“What is it?” she asked, looking worried.

“Well, now that you’re back home and Jack’s okay,
I was thinking about going back ho—”

“They’ve pulled up outside! Hide the food!” Jamie yelled,
interrupting Mark.

Jack—still at the window—swore and checked his
belt for his knife. It was still there. He moved away from the window as the
other men in the group ran frantically to follow Jamie’s orders, hiding
anything they could find under the blankets and sheets.

“Don’t let them take me!” Someone shouted in
desperation.

“Calm down! Everyone, sit back down!” Jack growled.
“Jamie, Alan and every man here, pick up whatever you can use as a weapon and
stand by me! Hurry the fuck up!”

Sarah recognized some more of them that she hadn’t
seen the previous day; one was the rubbish collector, the other was the post
office lady’s son. They seemed to be the youngest men in the room—besides the
few children in the group, who were currently being cradled by their panicked
parents.

The men gathered their weapons: sticks, planks,
golf clubs, sports bats, kitchen knives, and anything else they could find—then
stood by Jack in front of the door. Annie picked up her shotgun and handed it
to Mark, her face stern and not in the slightest bit scared.

“You!”
Jack shouted at Mark. “Take Sarah
over to the corner and make sure she stays there, Emily too. No young women on
sight.”  

Mark nodded and did as he said, herding Sarah and
Emily towards the frightened group of people that cowered in the bottom corner
of the hall.  

Sarah looked back at Jack anxiously. ‘Don’t worry’,
he mouthed to her and tried to force a relaxed smile as Duke and his men
ascended the staircase.

Nicholas Dowsett—or Duke, as he was nicknamed—had
been in prison before the outbreak and it was for the long-haul. As most people
who knew him would tell you; it was for murder—that wasn’t a secret. What they
didn’t know was that the man he murdered wasn’t his only victim; there had been
more, starting with his own father at the tender age of thirteen. Coincidentally,
it was when he reached his thirteenth murder that he finally got caught.

He hadn’t always been the monster that people had
come to fear. Through his childhood he was—by any standards—a normal, healthy
boy with a perfectly happy family life. He dreamed of one day becoming a famous
trials biker and he practiced daily on his BMX, eagerly awaiting his
seventeenth birthday when his mother promised him a real dirt bike, on the
promise that he continued to do well in school. He built ramps with his friends
so they could take it in turn to jump over each other with some daring stunts,
only occasionally coming home with forehead bruises.

Then, upon reaching this thirteenth year, things
took a drastic turn for the worst in the Dowsett household. It all started when
his father, George, got fired from work. It had been a surprise announcement;
his father loved his job and—being the only breadwinner in the house— it was
very important. The strangest part was that his parents never told him the
reason for his father’s dismissal, it had become a big secret and whenever he
mentioned it, the subject would be quickly changed. The only thing Nick knew
was that the atmosphere in the house had disintegrated since that day; his
mother had taken up drinking wine in the middle of the afternoon (something she
never did previously) and they had started having frequent arguments in the
evenings. Big ones.

One particular night, after a long day out with
his friends, Nick came home to hear his mother, Kate, screaming at her husband.
That in itself wasn’t unusual, but it was the words that she said that
resonated with Nick for years to come. He’d never heard her use the words “whore”
or “pervert” before that day and it wasn’t until he reached fifteen that he
learned what those words actually meant. So—knowing the old routine of
shouting, silence and then his mother bursting into a fit of tears—he went to
bed with his earphones in, thinking about the day he could just jump on his new
trials bike and ride away from them both.

He woke up the next morning at 10AM and went downstairs
for breakfast. It was Sunday so he had a hard day of biking planned. The house
was unusually silent; normally there’d be at least one of his parents walking
around the house at that time. He looked at the clock—his mother should be starting
to cook their Sunday dinner soon, a hungry excitement filled his stomach. He walked
into to the kitchen expectantly to find his mother sitting at the dining table
with a note in her hands, gripping it so tightly her knuckles were white. Her
eye make-up had run down her face, leaving a black trail down to her chin. Her
eyes were red raw.

“What’s wrong, mum?”

She gave him the note silently and lowered her
head onto the table, sobbing into her hands. Nick opened the note; it was from
his father. It explained that he had fallen in love with a woman he met at his
local pub, and had been seeing her for a while. He said that he had tried to
make it work but couldn’t put up with his wife’s constant moodiness and lack of
trying in bed. He was leaving his wife and had taken every penny of their
savings to start a new life with his new partner, who apparently appreciated
him more than his wife. There was no remorse in the note, nor was there mention
of Nick, his only son.

Nick’s life was shattered. The man he trusted as
his father had abandoned him. Hate began to fill young Nick’s mind and it grew
with every day that passed. His mother got more and more depressed as the days
went on, until finally she made a sloppy attempt at suicide. In the next few weeks
she would try again two more times and Nick began to realise that no one cared
about him at all. He had lost his mother to her grief and she had tried to
leave him all alone, leave him like his father had. There was one person to
blame, one person who had destroyed the lives of two—Nick decided it was time
to pay him back.

Not a great deal of planning went behind his
father’s murder—in fact he hadn’t planned it at all. The hate in his heart
wouldn’t give him time to think, all it wanted was to avenge the death of his
happiness and the sanity of his once-beautiful mother.

Nick simply went out of the house, filled some
petrol cans at the station while cheerily talking to the attendant as if it was
a regular, sunny day in Winding. He waved goodbye to the clerk and walked off,
knowing exactly where he was going. He had heard from many people in town that
his father spent most of his new life in the pub, watching his whore work
behind the bar, forgetting the family he had once had. So that’s where Nick
decided he would have the best chance of finding him.

Sure enough, there he was! Laughing and joking
with a blonde haired woman in a mini skirt. She wore cheap, plastic red hoops
in her ears and her lips were the bright pink of a cheap hooker. Nick stared in
disbelief through the window. He had broken up a family, ignored his only son
and left his wife at the bottom of a bottle and suicidal—yet there he was,
oblivious to it! The cheek of it! The betrayal! Nick thanked God for his good
luck and timing, and watched them for a while as they laughed together, talking
to their friends as his bitch served them drinks. They looked happy. They
looked
drunk.

He knelt in the bushes until darkness came and the
last person left, leaving only his father and his pet whore. They sat at the
bar drinking shots and singing along to the music on the radio. His father had
his hand on her thigh and it crept up her skirt. Nick felt sick. Anger built up
in the pit of his stomach and he decided it was time to do what he came to do.

He crept out of the bushes with his petrol can and
quickly covered the doors and windows in the flammable liquid. He grinned at
them menacingly but they didn’t seem to notice him.
Good.
He went around
the back to do the same to the back door. He laughed to himself as he saw the
‘fire exit’ sign hanging next to the door. The pub was very small so it
wouldn’t take long to burn and it was full of little wooden trinkets and
paintings on the walls that would make great kindling. He took a deep breath
and opened the back door.

The music was blaring loudly and he walked inside,
leaving a long trail of petrol behind him. He pulled the door shut and pulled
an old filing cabinet and a half-filled barrel of beer against it, trying to
block the escape—not that he would need it. He walked through the hallway and
looked back at the trail, happy with his work. He lit it with his Zippo and it
set alight with a
whoosh
, watching with amusement as it engulfed the
back door and everything around it in seconds.

He entered the main room where his father sat, the
heat of the growing fire warm on his back. His father glanced towards him, his
drunken smile slowly leaving his face. He recognized his son only a second
before his son launched the liquid from the can towards him, completely dousing
him. Surprisingly, his father burst into laughter!

“What’s that?” George’s mistress asked, too drunk
to notice the lighter in the boy’s hand.

“What are you doing, son?” his father said, a
stupid, confused smile on his face.

“I didn’t know you had a son!”
the whore laughed,
wobbling on her feet.

His father didn’t mention him to her, not even
once. Anger built inside Nick and he threw the remaining petrol across the bar,
watching with pleasure as a bit splashed on the whore.
Not a lot, but enough.
The woman shrieked and tried to wipe herself dry. Nick confidently walked
around them and towards the front doors of the pub, pulling open the doors. Carefully
dodging the petrol on the steps, he stepped outside, turning back around to
face them with his lighter in hand.

“Your little cunt just threw water on me!” the
whore shrieked to George.

His father climbed down off his stool, looking
down at his wet clothes. He sniffed the liquid that dripped down onto his chest
and his eyes grew wide as it finally dawned on him what was going to happen. He
shook his head frantically and a low moan escaped his mouth.

“Catch you later,
Daddy
,”
Nick
smirked. Then he lit the Zippo.

His father went up in seconds and the screams he
produced were like nothing Nick had ever heard, even on the horror movies he’d
watched with his friends. It was the scream of a man getting his comeuppance.
His whore tried frantically to put him out and as she touched him, the petrol
on her skin set alight. It was like a cartoon to Nick, who burst into laughter
as she screamed in agony. She tried to run to the back door, noticing too late
that it was already engulfed in flames.

Nick laughed quietly as he leaped out of the front
door and pushed it closed behind him. For a few seconds, he heard banging and
screaming on the other side; its occupants begging him for their lives, but it
quickly died down as the building filled with smoke.

Nick stood outside for a while and watched the
building burn. The warmth hit his face and a tear of happiness rolled down his
cheek. As the first sound of sirens got louder, he ran into the darkness and
back home to his mother.

~

“Hello again, Jack,” Duke said, in a gravelly
voice. He shot a cocky, one-sided grin at Jack, revealing black and rotting
teeth. He wore an old green vest underneath a heavily worn, black, biker’s
jacket. He had on dark green combat trousers and some black Doc Martins that
had seen better days. His hair was white—not greying, but pure white—and it was
slicked back to his scalp. A piece hung down his face over one of his dark,
black eyes.

“Duke,” Jack replied coolly. “What can I do for
you this time?”

Duke eyed Mark, who stood next to Jack, with cool
interest. “You recruiting now?”

Some of his men sniggered.

“This is Mark. He arrived last night,” Jack said,
poker-faced.

“A survivor, huh?” Duke said thoughtfully, turning
to Mark. “Wouldn’t have thought anyone was left alive. My boys were out there
yesterday afternoon.”

Yeah I know,
Mark thought to himself. “I
didn’t see any other survivors,” he said instead. “It’s pretty quiet out there.”

Duke nodded suspiciously and turned his attention
back to Jack.

“Well I suppose I ought to get down to business,
Jacky boy. I’ve given you quite a lot of food today and I’m here for my
payment. I know I said I’d give you a few days but some of our ladies went for
a little run this afternoon, and I think they met with a few infected because
they didn’t come back in the best condition. Now that means I kinda need to restock,
as quickly as possible.”

Jack glanced at Mark and fingered the knife in his
jean belt; Mark caught the look and swiftly raised the shotgun.

“Woah, woah, woah!” Duke said with a laugh as his
men raised their weapons, which ranged from machetes to knives and bats. They
outnumbered Mark and Jack six to two.

Only Duke carried a gun; a small pistol which he
raised confidently as he spoke. This caused the villagers in the hall to look
on helplessly and a woman cried in the background.

“There doesn’t need to be any violence,” Duke said
calmly, pointing the gun in Mark’s face. “We just want what we were promised.
You said one blonde girl so we’re gonna take one blonde girl. Don’t worry, we’ll
bring her back when she’s served her purpose, I promise.” He put a hand on his
chest comically.

His men laughed nervously, watching Mark and
Duke’s showdown intently.

“You offered them a woman?” Mark growled at Jack,
who was stood beside him.

“I didn’t have much of a choice, we’re fucking
starving here,” Jack hissed back.

Mark looked into Jack’s eyes aggressively, trying
to hold back the growing urge to turn the gun on him. Jack’s demeanour faltered
and he recoiled a little as if he could read his thoughts. But then Mark turned
his rage back to Duke. “You aren’t taking anyone, Duke,” Mark growled, behind
the shotgun. “Go home.”

Duke frowned and then pointed his gun into the
crowd in the back of the room. They screamed and panicked. Duke smiled
confidently.

Annie stepped out of the crowd and opened her
mouth to speak but Duke hushed her before she had the chance.

“You again!” Duke said, shaking his head at her. “We
let you go once, old lady, so don’t push your luck. Now, here’s what’s going to
happen, so none of those lovely people have to get hurt. Me and my boys are taking
what we were promised. She’s going to come with us without struggling and then
I don’t have to waste my time by coming back and massacring your whole fucking town.
Is that clear enough for you, Mark?”

Mark put his finger on the trigger. “Over my dead
body.”

Duke snarled and his men advanced towards them.

“Wait!” a woman’s voice yelled across the room.

Emily came running towards them. “Wait! Please
don’t hurt them!” she said, walking up to Duke steadily. “I’m the one you want,
I’ll go with you and I won’t struggle.”