The Last Plague (14 page)

     How could this be enjoyed? He should be fucking
terrified
like the poor bastards in here with him. Like Joel and Magnus.

     
He was hungry. They had only been given a few cheese crackers and a cup of water each for lunch. Supplies were running low, the police had said. But they would be re-supplied soon, they had been promised.

     Ralph knew a lie when he heard one.

     
A loud boom from a few streets away shook the building. Someone screamed. Ralph looked at the ceiling. The light fixtures rattled. The windows trembled.

     Gunshots nearby. Getting closer. Another muffled thump not too far away.

     “The infected are nearly here!” a woman said.

     The room went silent. More gunfire. Ralph could hear the police moving around outside.

     “It’s falling apart,” Joel said. “We have to leave.”

     “And go where?” said Ralph. “We could make a stand here.”

     “Make a stand?” Magnus said. “This isn’t Rorke’s Drift, you idiot.”

     Ralph shrugged. “The coppers won’t let us leave.”

     “They might not have a choice very soon,” said Joel. “They’ll have other things to worry about.”

     “Joel’s right,” said Magnus.

     Ralph sighed. “Fair enough. Let’s go outside and see what’s happening.”

     Magnus and Joel nodded.

     Another burst of gunfire made Joel jump. Mothers comforted their children. Ralph turned to see Susan Blake sat alone, holding her dog to her chest. Ralph’s eyes met hers. She gave him a little smile, but her face was drawn and pale, and the smile didn’t last.

     Ralph wanted to help her, but he had to look after Joel and Magnus first.

     He turned back to his friends.

     “On your feet, bitches. Let’s go.”

     Refugees filled the car park at the front of the school. The police did their best to calm them, but panic and fear were more persuasive than words.

     Ralph, Magnus and Joel lurked at the back of the crowd. There was no path to the front, but Ralph could see through gaps in the scrum of bodies to the road beyond the gates.

     Fires lit the sky within the town. The crackle of gunfire. A baby was wailing.

     A military vehicle pulled up outside; a soldier jumped out. Automatic rifle and desert fatigues. Boots pounding over tarmac. He moved quickly. He spoke to one of the police officers. The officer’s face sagged as he listened.

     “That doesn’t look good,” Ralph said.

     The soldier ran back to the jeep and got in then the jeep took off down the road. The police officer relayed whatever he’d been told to his sergeant. The sergeant listened, nodded and hefted his weapon. He went to the crowd and said something.

     The crowd didn’t listen.

     The sergeant raised his gun and fired into the air.

     The crowd quietened. A few scared voices, but the police sergeant now had their attention.

     “Please listen!” The sergeant was a big man, gut straining against his shirt. Sand-coloured hair and ruddy cheeks. “I’ve just been informed that the infected have breached the Safe Zone. Please remain calm. The army will be along very soon to evacuate you all. Please stay calm. You are all safe here. We will protect you until the army arrives.”

     “We need to leave now!” said a woman at the front of the crowd.

     “I’m sorry, but you can’t leave on your own. We cannot guarantee your protection out there.”

     “Can you guarantee our protection here?” asked a man.

     “Yes,” the sergeant said, but Ralph saw the lie in his face. “You must remain here until the transports arrive.”

     “Fuck off!” said another man. This sentiment was echoed by a few others.

     The other police officers looked tense and scared. Only the sergeant appeared to retain any sense of composure.

     “Please remain calm,” the sergeant said. “There is no need to panic.”

     Screams came from up the street from the direction the army jeep had come.

     The crowd surged towards the car park fence, almost overwhelming the police. Ralph kept Joel and Magnus close to him. He formed his hands into fists.

     The refugees screamed and cried. The clamour of stinking bodies; dried sweat, dirt and fear. Shit and panic. Ralph was jostled by the people around him. Sharp elbows dug into his flanks. A woman with too much neck fat looked at him with saucer-eyes.

     “Oh shit,” Joel was repeating. “Oh shit, oh shit.”

     The infected were coming.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Frank and Florence arrived at the outskirts of Horsham just before five. The world was turning dark. Dead street lamps loomed over them.

     Jets roared low and unseen overhead. A moment of silence. A flash of light. Then a great boom as something detonated. The closest Frank had ever been to a war zone was watching news reports from Afghanistan. This was surreal. This wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Britain. Not in England. 

     There were so many bodies.

     Most of them had bullet wounds. Executed in the street. Faces frozen into snarls and stretched grimaces. Some of the corpses were bent into unnatural angles; bones protruded from bodies and gleamed wetly. There were children here. Some of the bodies were burnt. Charred and twisted remains of people. Grinning faces. The stink of meat left too long on a grill.

     A car alarm was blaring from deep within the town.

     Florence said nothing as they picked their way through the dead.

     “Don’t be scared,” Frank told her. “We’ll find some help.”

     A fire burned on the next street. The air tasted acrid, scraping the flesh of his throat. Florence kept her hood up and covered her mouth and nose with one hand.

     Frank’s eyes flicked to both sides of the street. No one came out of the houses. Front doors hung open. There was fire damage to some of the houses. Scorched walls and blackened lawns. Frank swallowed, felt the burning heat of being watched from the windows, but when he turned there was no one there. He raised the axe. He stepped on broken glass. There were suitcases and bags on the road and the pavements. Scattered belongings. Abandoned cars. Frank contemplated stealing one of the cars to travel into town, but he was worried that they would be held up by roadblocks and wrecked vehicles. And bodies, of course. Also, driving around was a good way to get noticed by the things he didn’t want noticing them.

     “Where’s everyone gone?” said Florence. “The ones who aren’t dead.”

     “Maybe they’ve been evacuated.”

     Turning onto the next street they found a body slumped across a car bonnet, rendered genderless by the ferocity of its death. The body had been shredded and most of it had been scattered on the road.

     A burst of gunfire, and they both ducked instinctively. Frank pulled Florence closer to his side and scanned the road ahead. Smoke drifting through the air gave the impression of figures moving within a grey-white veil.

     They passed a dead man in a Rolls Royce, slumped over the steering wheel. Frank didn’t look at him in case he began to move.

     Ahead of them was a fire engine left abandoned across the road. Its crew were nowhere to be seen. Long gone. Florence stared at the vehicle as they passed it.

     Frank heard weird animal sounds, shrieks and howls, from the nearby streets.

     The town was being overrun.

* * *

Moving further into Horsham. More bodies. Past the point of trying to protect Florence from the sight of them.

     The concussion of thunder in the sky, like mountains colliding.

     Frank had expected safety and sanctuary here. He kept trying to call Catherine. His heart palpitated when he thought of her. He squeezed the phone until his hand hurt.

     They couldn’t stay on the streets much longer.

     Florence pulled on his jacket sleeve. Frank looked down at her. She pointed up the street. A car had been abandoned across the road. Swathes of darkness and grey light beyond.

     “What is it?” he said.

     She kept pointing. Large, shining eyes in her face.

     Frank pocketed his phone, resisting the urge to throw it away. He flexed his hands on the axe. He approached the car. Florence followed him.

     He could hear wet sucking sounds. A cold hand fingered his spine. He peered at the road behind the car.

     He went to say something but the words stuck in his throat.

     There were bodies laid out on the road. Broken remains of people. A girl was crouched over one of the bodies. Her face was attached to its face. The girl was making the sucking sounds. There was just enough light to make out the torn pyjamas she was wearing.

     Florence saw the girl and let out a whimper. The girl couldn’t have been much older than her.

     The girl raised her head, detaching from the dead body. Frank pulled Florence behind the car and put his free hand over her mouth. He caught a glance over the car’s bonnet. The girl looked around, her gleaming feral eyes scanning the road. Her face was covered with blood. A carrion eater scavenging on the dead. She had been a little girl with a family once; a mum and a dad and dreams of boy bands.

     The girl returned to her meal. Frank and Florence went around her, treading silently. Frank watched the girl all the way until they were clear.

     Further on they crept around a group of people feeding on a pile of corpses. Some of the dead were wearing army fatigues. The scavengers were too busy stripping meat from bones to notice them.

     Every dark corner and shadow was a threat. Small fires burned. Shop windows had been smashed. All he could smell was blood and smoke. The deeper they went into the ruined town the more they saw deformed and mutated people roaming the streets in baying packs, shrieking and screaming and dragging flayed bodies behind them. Frank noticed others lurking in shadowed alleyways and gardens, gibbering and wailing. Some of them simply stood staring at the ground or at the sky. A lot of them stared at the sky.

     Frank saw people chased down and ripped apart. Some of them begged until the very end, until their vocal chords were removed by spindly fingers and hooked claws.

     Some of the mutated ones hunted alone, stalking the streets like predatory insects. Frank and Florence hid behind cars and walls. They were prey. Death would not come quick if they were caught. The monsters sensed Frank and Florence, sucked in the smell of their fear and sweat. Monsters everywhere, creeping out of their holes.

     He found the dark doorway of an empty book shop and pulled Florence down with him.

     Slick-skinned figures skittered upon the pavements, parts of their bodies clicking and clacking and scraping together like lengths of dry bone.

     Screams and shrieks and plaintive cries of hunger.

     Gunfire nearby. Florence was trembling and crying. A man was shouting. Frank looked up, expecting some grinning monster to fall upon them.

      “It’ll be okay,” Frank whispered to Florence. “It’ll be okay.” He decided he would kill her with the axe and then take down as many of them as he could before he succumbed. He wouldn’t let the creatures take her.

     Dark shapes approached them.

     Frank raised the axe.

     Florence whimpered.

     A man’s voice.

     Four soldiers, faces hidden by gas masks, found them huddled in the doorway.

     “Are you infected?” one of the soldiers asked them.

     Frank stared at them, his mouth open.

     He shook his head.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Corporal Guppy was a short and stocky man. Even behind the muffling effect of his gas mask, his voice was deep and commanding. The other soldiers – Privates Sibbick, Gawen and Pike – sounded as though they were barely out of their teens, but they killed infected people with an absent, instinctive skill.

     
The infected
, Frank thought.
That’s what they’re called. Infected.

     “Keep moving,” Guppy said. He and Private Gawen jogged either side of Frank and Florence. Private Sibbick was on point, his SA80 trained on the road ahead. Private Pike guarded the rear. 

     Sibbick raised his hand. They stopped behind him, hidden behind the corner of a house. Frank was breathing hard.

     “Is she okay?” asked Guppy, nodding at Florence.

     “Yeah. But she’s seen a lot,” said Frank. “
Too
much.”

     “Are you her father?”

     Frank hesitated. “Yes.” He swallowed, looked away. He felt Guppy’s eyes on his face.

     “What do you see, Sibbick?” Guppy asked.

     “A single infected ahead. He’s just stood there.”

     “Maybe he’s waiting for a bus,” said Gawen.

     “Can we get past him?” Guppy said.

     “Should be able to,” said Sibbick. “He’s facing the other direction.”

     “Okay, let’s move. Keep an eye on the bastard. If he clocks us, take his head off.”

     They crept past the man and stopped at the next corner. The soldiers scanned the street, searching for targets.

     “Where are we heading?” said Frank. “What’s happening?”

     “The world’s ending, that’s what happening,” said Gawen.

     “Button it, Private,” said Guppy.

     “Sorry, Corp.” Gawen said. He looked at Florence. “Sorry, little lady.”

     Guppy cleared his throat. “The town’s been overrun. We lost a lot of lads back there, including our CO.”

     “We’re more fucked than a choirboy at a priests’ piss up,” muttered Pike. His eyes were shockingly white.

     “We’re heading to the school,” said Guppy. “Before we were cut off from our unit, the order came through to evacuate the town. The last transports will be leaving the school soon. We haven’t got much time. The town’s due to be firebombed within the hour. We’ve lost control.”