The Last Plague (10 page)

     Dead streetlights. Empty driveways. He saw a woman’s body slumped across a car bonnet; the dark stains that had leaked from her and pooled in clotted slicks. She had been opened up and emptied out. He kept moving. He walked past something that looked like moulted skin, sloughed off by some unknown thing. He prodded it with a foot, disgusted and intrigued.

     He heard a car engine from the next street. He stopped. Brakes shrieking. Tyres scraping on the road. The crash of metal against something heavier and immovable. A scream cleaved the night.

     Frank ran towards the scream, resisting the temptation to run the other way. He rounded the corner and stopped. He panted, his shoulders moving with each breath he gave and took.

     A car had crashed into a stone wall outside a house. People were inside the car. There was an excited screech from nearby. He swallowed to wet his throat. 

     There was a man in the driver’s seat, slumped over the steering wheel. A woman was in the front passenger seat, crying between her screams. A girl sat in the back, stunned and reeling.

     An old man pulled open the driver’s door and dragged out the man. The woman screamed again, made a futile effort to stop him being pulled outside.

     The old man laid out the driver and knelt over him.

     “Hey,” Frank shouted.

     The old man turned. His body was misshapen, his bones jutting from under his clothes. He was shaking like an addict. Frank halted.

     The old man’s face was blank, almost moronic. Sunken eyes. He turned back to the unconscious man and bent his head towards the man’s face. There was a wet scraping sound. He looked like he was kissing the man, his back arching as he bobbed his head to batten onto the younger man’s face.

     The woman screamed when she saw what the old man was doing.

     Frank stumbled over to the old man and hit him on the back with the crowbar. The old man came free from his victim with a moist rip and turned, a wheezing rattle coming from his open mouth. He had no teeth. On his neck, flaps of skin parted bloodlessly to reveal a nest of black tendrils no longer and thicker than shoelaces. The tendrils stretched and lunged at the air, wanting to envelop Frank’s face and squirm into his mouth. Frank smashed the old man’s face with the crowbar; he collapsed, as did his skull. The tendrils danced erratically, even as the old man stopped moving, his face a desiccated mask. His eyes had caved in and his nose was all bent cartilage and crumbling bone. 

     The tendrils flopped wetly onto the old man’s chest, like something washed up on a beach. Frank stepped away, repulsed.

     The woman was still screaming. The girl stared at Frank, her palm pressed against the window.

     Frank ran to the car, opened the back door. “Come on, get out.”

     “That was Mr. Stewart,” she said. She had red hair, and he had a sudden image of another girl with red hair. A girl he loved.

     On the other side of the car, two men had opened the woman’s door and grabbed her. There was something wrong with the men’s faces and their hands. They ripped the woman from her seat just as Frank pulled the girl from the car. She didn’t fight him. She only looked back at the car and called for her mother.

     The woman screamed. The men piled upon her. The sounds of paper being torn, but it wasn’t paper. She stopped screaming.

     “We can’t help her,” Frank told the girl as he led her away. “I’m sorry.”

     Frank looked down at the man, whose mouth was too wide and bloody for him to be alive. His eyes were open. He must have awoken when the tendrils invaded him. His teeth were stained red and his tongue was gone. The flesh on his cheeks had been gnawed away. His throat was a red wound.

     The stink of vinegar and rotten eggs.

     “That’s my dad.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “Is he dead?”

     Frank didn’t answer. He was looking down the road. A group of people were running towards them. He couldn’t see them clearly. He didn’t want to see them clearly. He looked the way the car had come and saw the church tower looming above the houses a few hundred yards away. He remembered the church bells had rung earlier. Maybe someone was there.

     The girl was crying.

     Frank picked her up and ran down the road. A loose-faced woman wearing a stained cotton nightdress stepped from the darkness. The girl yelped. The woman’s arms trembled and jerked. She stared at the ground and vanished back into the shadows.

     He kept running, getting closer to the church; the spired tower tall and dark.

     The main gates appeared ahead of them.

     Things that were once people screamed and cried behind them. Getting closer.

     Frank could feel the girl’s small body shaking against him.

     They reached the gates. A row of sentinel-like trees around the graveyard’s periphery, deep shadows beneath them. Frank pushed through the gates onto the stone pathway winding through the graveyard. In the pale moonlight he could make out gravestones jutting from the ground and a war memorial to the men who’d died in both World Wars. The church was darker than the sky. There was light inside, visible through the stained-glass windows. Hope flared inside him.

     “We’re nearly there,” Frank whispered.

     He stopped.

     There were people in the graveyard, mewling and crying to one another amongst the graves. The church’s large, arched double-doors were thirty yards away. They could make it, but what if the doors were locked?

     Shapes moved like mourners trying to find the right grave at which to grieve. Frank looked towards the stone pathway and saw a figure on its hands and knees, crawling away from the church. A woman. He would have to get past her.

     Frank moved. He kept some distance between them and the woman. She was making a clicking sound in her throat.

     They reached the church doors. Frank twisted the ring-shaped metal handle. There was movement to his right; a teenage boy stepped from a pool of shadow into the moonlight. His shoulders were slumped and narrow. His face was a riot of wounds and writhing barbs. Frank opened the door and rushed inside the church. The door shut loudly, but he was just relieved to be inside. They found themselves in a small vestibule.

     Frank made sure the main doors were shut tight. There was nothing to push against them. He wondered if
they
had the wit to open doors.

     Candles had been lit. Someone was in here, or had been recently. Frank put the girl down. She looked at the stone floor.

     “Stay close,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”

     The girl said nothing. Barely a nod of her head.

     With the girl following him, Frank walked slowly up the aisle. Absurdly, he thought of his wedding day, years ago. He looked around. Stained glass and saints. Tall stone columns scarred by age. Wooden beams and arches built by men long-dead and buried. The floor radiated a dry cold. Rows of pews. Stained and worn wood, dissected by a long, carpeted aisle leading towards the altar. The air was cold, fetid and old. Dry. Thick enough to snatch handfuls. Their footsteps echoed around the empty spaces. The candles threw shadows like slick-limbed spirits. Frank’s heart jumped at every small sound and whisper of breeze. Inside, he was a riot of fear, nerves and horror.

     Churches made Frank nervous. Even on his wedding day he’d been worried about setting foot inside one. All that piousness and judgement. He’d never found a reason to believe in God…or any other god. He needed evidence to believe in something. Due to his father’s gentle encouragement, he stopped believing in Santa Claus and The Tooth Fairy when he was barely seven years old. Father had been a taciturn, honest man and he taught Frank to be pragmatic and sensible in life; that problems could be solved with common sense and simple solutions. His father said once that “dreamers never get anywhere. That’s why so many writers and artists kill themselves”.

     Frank was his father’s son.

     The nave was empty. About halfway up the aisle, Frank stopped. The girl stopped beside him. His skin prickled. The sound of creaking wood and shifting stone. He imagined the church as a living organism born from deep within the earth; groomed, sculpted and adorned by men.

     Frank sat the girl down on a pew. She was malleable and compliant. Understanding in her hooded, green eyes. He bent down to her eye level. Her face was pale and dirty.

     “I’m going to take a look around,” Frank said, keeping his voice low, keeping the fear out of it. “I’ll see if anyone’s around. Are you okay to wait here? Don’t worry, I won’t go too far.”

     She stared into his face. The corners of her mouth moved, like she wanted to talk.

     “Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.” He offered her a tired smile. She looked down at the floor between her dangling legs. She remained there like someone’s lost doll. Frank went to touch her on the shoulder but withdrew his hand at the last moment. He felt bad for leaving her.

     Again, he gave her that same feeble half-smile; he wished he’d stop doing that. He felt foolish. What good would a smile do when her parents were dead?

     “My name’s Frank,” he said, placing his hand on his chest.

     She glanced slowly up at him. Blinked. Looked down again.

     Frank searched the other pews. Nobody was hiding in the pulpit or the lectern. The rest of the nave was deserted. Effigies of the Virgin Mary, and St. George fighting the dragon. Cold blank stares from carved faces. He checked the chancel and around the altar. A monolithic organ melded to the wall. He stood before the linen-covered altar, intimidated by the grandeur of the holy paraphernalia: the alter crucifix; the tabernacle; the chalice used for communion; the rows of candles. He felt the weight of history and age inside this place. It was stifling and claustrophobic. There were two doors flanking the chancel.

     His footsteps echoed and bounced off the stone walls, making it sound like he was being followed.

     Everything was cold.

     He kept looking back to make sure the girl was still where he had left her. She was still gazing at the floor.

     He checked the north and south transepts flanking the chancel. In a dark corner where the east and north walls met, Frank found a fungal-like growth that stretched from the floor to about five feet high. Pulpy and ripe-smelling. He didn’t touch it. It was the colour of algae and stank like pond water.

     Frank returned to the girl. She was lying on the pew, eyes shut. A prayer cushion under her head.

     He took off his jacket and placed it over her.

     Silence, apart from an occasional distant sound from outside. A scream or a cry penetrating the thick walls.

     He wondered who had lit the candles and who had rang the bell earlier. Maybe whoever had done so had already moved on. Maybe they were dead. Maybe they were beyond one of the doors he had declined to investigate. It wasn’t important right now. All that mattered, for now, was that they had shelter for the night.

     After blocking the main door with a bookcase full of hymn books, he took out his mobile. No signal. He sat down in the pew one up from the girl. She was wearing blue jeans with patterns of flowers and a white jumper under her pink jacket. White trainers. A green butterfly hair clip amongst her red hair. She reminded him so much of his daughter, and the mere thought of it almost brought him to tears.

     He would keep the girl safe. He would watch over the girl all night. He would protect her. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

     “I’ll look after you,” he whispered.

     In the morning he would decide what to do next.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Frank awoke to weak light washing into the church. He checked his watch. Almost six in the morning. He yawned, rubbed his eyes. Groaned sour breath from between furred teeth. Because he had slept sitting upright his spine felt like a rod of hot metal. 

     The girl was gone.

     He got up, straightened himself out, and looked around. Maybe she was hiding.

     “Little girl,” he said.

     No reply. His jacket was on the floor. He picked it up and put it back on.

     She wouldn’t be stupid enough to go outside, would she?

     He searched the inside of the church. The main doors were shut. Sudden guilt stabbed him. Panic stirred his guts. He had promised to take care of her. Then he remembered the two doors in the chancel. Frank opened the door to the right and walked into a plainly-decorated, musty room. A light covering of dust on skirting boards. A broken cobweb hung from the ceiling. The room was the sacristy, if he remembered correctly. There was an old porcelain sink, cracked and stained. Vestments hung up in a wardrobe. Communion equipment. A pile of white linen.

     The girl wasn’t there.

     He took the door to the next room. He could smell alcohol.

     There was a dead man at an antique oak desk, slumped back on his chair, his face raised to the ceiling. A half-full bottle of whiskey and some empty blister packs of painkillers. An empty glass.

     Frank stepped towards the body.

     A porcine-faced priest. His dog collar was yellowed and grimy. Grey whiskers sprouted from a double-chin. Bulging stomach touching the edge of the desk. His hands were dangling by his sides. His eyes were open and dull, cloudy with dust.

     A bookshelf on the wall, lined with hardcovers. One was about campanology.

     “Bell-ringing,” Frank said. “Solves that mystery then.”

     Frank checked the priest’s pulse. Nothing. Still fairly warm. Couldn’t have been dead for long. Rigor hadn’t set in yet. Maybe he had died while Frank and the girl had been sleeping.

     “Fucking hell,” Frank muttered. “I’m sorry.”

     “You shouldn’t swear,” a quiet voice said behind him.

     Frank turned sharply. His heart leapt into his gullet.