The Last Plague (22 page)

     “Sorry,” Ralph muttered.

     “It’s okay.” Frank turned. “You okay, Joel?”

     Joel nodded. He didn’t look at Ralph.

     They walked onwards.

* * *

Slinfold was silent. The men entered the village while dusk fell.

     They walked up the high street of dark houses and shadowed windows. No infected came at them. No distant shrieks or screams. No birdsong. No sounds of animals. There was a red Range Rover on its side and dried blood around it. A pair of polished shoes had been left by the edge of the pavement, as if someone would return soon to collect them. There was a strange smell in the air, faint, but noticeable once you knew it was there. A chemical taint. Something Frank associated with public swimming pools and cupboards full of cleaning agents.

     Dead birds littered the ground. Blackbirds, sparrows and crows. Black, beady eyes. Yellow beaks and grey beaks. Dark feathers fluttering in the breeze.

     Magnus’s mouth fell open when he saw the carpet of avian bodies.

     “Another ghost town,” said Ralph, switching on his torch and lighting up the shop doorways he passed.

     “Where is everyone?” asked Frank.

     “No idea.”

     “There they are.” Joel nodded towards the end of the street.

     Bodies piled on top of one another. A large mound of corpses.

     Frank spat.

     They walked to the bodies. No one spoke. The top of the pile was higher than the tallest of them; Joel was over six feet tall but the pile of remains towered over him. The men were swallowed by its shadow. Frank looked down at the bodies dried out like the husks of dead crabs. Many of them had died as if reaching out for a loved one as they lay on the ground. Doughy slack faces. Bent and entwined limbs. Glazed, bulging eyes and mouths frozen in their last screams. Some of them had died raking their fingers on the road. Fluids had leaked from mouths, eyes, ears, and dried into dark stains like colonies of mould.

     Frank watched a beetle crawl over a woman’s face and into her mouth.

     To think that Florence was among the dead here almost floored him. He didn’t know if he could come back from seeing her within the tapestry of stiff limbs and waxen faces. Not again. Not after losing Emily.

     There were even dead dogs and cats within the pile. Pets with collars and name tags. Frank shivered with revulsion and sadness. A pool of darkness formed in his stomach and he wanted to cry at all of the pointless death before him.

     “These people weren’t infected when they died,” said Ralph.

     “I can’t see any bullet wounds,” Magnus said. “None of them were shot. How long have they been dead?”

     “Couldn’t have been long,” said Frank.

     “Chemical weapons,” said Ralph. “Gas, maybe. Some kind of nerve agent. Who knows what the army and the government have got tucked away waiting to be used? More shit than we’ll ever know about.”

     “It gets worse and worse,” said Magnus.

     “What kind of gas?” said Frank. His great-granddad had fought at the Somme and Passchendaele during the First World War, but had died before Frank was born. Joseph Hooper never said much about his time in the trenches, Frank’s father once told him, but he could imagine the hell of France and Belgium back then. Gas attacks. Mud and slaughter. Men choking, clawing at their throats as they died.

     Frank wiped his sweat-soaked face. His throat had dried and closed up. He felt a great urge to touch the corpses; to reach out and touch their hands, run his fingers down a dead man’s cold palm.

     He suppressed a burst of laughter.

     He thought he could hear someone crying far away, a sound echoing down the empty streets, but it wasn’t real. He looked at his hands and they were shaking.

     “So the army killed these people then piled them here?” asked Magnus.

     “Looks like it,” Frank said.

     “Maybe it wasn’t the army that did this,” said Joel.

     “Who else would have done this?” said Frank.

     “The things in the sky, maybe,” said Magnus, and the other men looked at him.

     “How bad are things going to get?” said Joel, his face pale, sagging and forlorn. “Those kids and these people. All this death.”

     “Are we in danger?” Magnus asked.

     “From what?” Ralph stared at the bodies.

     “Whatever killed these people.”

     “We should leave,” said Joel. He was holding one hand over his mouth and nose.

     “If we’ve been contaminated,” said Ralph, “it’s too late now.”

     “Are you sure?” Joel’s voice was muffled under his hand.

     “If there was still a danger, we’d already be dead.”

     “I admire your confidence,” said Magnus.

     Ralph regarded the sky. “We should find somewhere to spend the night. Just because there’re no infected here at the moment doesn’t mean any won’t pass through.”

     “Agreed,” said Frank, turning away from the pile of bodies. His body still ached, and every time he moved was a moment of dull pain.

     “We can’t stay in this village,” Joel said.

     Ralph looked at him. “Why not?”

     “Because we can’t.”

     “We haven’t got a choice.”

     “It doesn’t seem right.”

     “Why? You afraid of offending those poor bastards?” Ralph gestured to the bodies.

     Joel looked away.

     “We’ll find a house at the other end of the village,” said Frank. “It’ll be okay, Joel.”

     Joel ignored him.

     “I hope there aren’t more bodies,” said Magnus. “I’m sick of seeing bodies.”

     Ralph picked something from his teeth then flicked it away. “Doesn’t matter. Bodies are just bodies. It’s all just meat.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

The men found an empty house and made it their own for the night. Ralph secured the doors and closed the curtains.

     They made sure to check the attic.

     Joel removed the family photos from the walls and formed them into a pile in the corner. No one questioned his motives. They knew why, and they were grateful.

     They gathered around Frank’s map in the living room. Ralph had lit a candle he’d found in a drawer, confident that the curtains would hide the light from outside. They ate a sparse meal of cold hot dogs and baked beans from tins liberated from the kitchen cupboard. Ralph found a bottle of cheap whiskey; it tasted like badger piss but warmed Frank’s insides. The warmth gave him hope, numbed the edges, and made it easier to think about Florence.

     Joel hardly touched his food. Ralph ate the rest of his share. Joel was silent. He was lying on the floor, sipping from a bottle of water, gazing at the ceiling.

     “All we seem to do is hide in other people’s houses,” said Magnus. “Dead people’s houses.”

     Ralph swigged a shot of whiskey. The candlelight made his face flicker with shadow. “Would you rather be out on the streets tonight?”

     “I’d rather go for a ride on your mother,” Magnus said.

     No one laughed.

     Ralph nodded. He tipped his almost-empty glass towards Magnus in acknowledgement. “Well played.”

     Magnus looked guilty. “I shouldn’t be making jokes. Not after the things we’ve seen.”

     “I know what you mean,” said Frank.

     “It doesn’t matter,” Ralph said. “Things are fucked anyway. Cracking a few jokes won’t make things any worse.”

     Magnus looked at the floor.

     Ralph exhaled, a wistful look on his face. He met Frank’s eye. “I thought we’d lost you, mate. I thought you were dead.”

     “Yeah,” said Magnus, his eyes a little glazed. He rubbed his jaw.

     Frank winced as his spine clicked. “I’m sorry for leaving, lads. I won’t go out there on my own again.”

     “Good to hear,” said Ralph. “Can’t have you leaving me with Magnus and Joel. It’s a nasty job trying to keep them from kissing and cuddling every five minutes.”

     The three men laughed. Joel remained unmoving.

     Their laughter cut out. The men looked at the floor, as if ashamed of themselves. To Frank, it felt strange and even offensive, to laugh after what he’d seen today. He took a large swig of his drink. His throat burned. The alcohol hit his bloodstream and his head went a little fuzzy. He welcomed the buzz.

     Frank was studying the map. He’d folded it into a small rectangle that showed Southern England. He placed his finger on a spot on the map.

     “We’re here,” Frank said. “Slinfold. You see?”

     Magnus and Ralph nodded.

     Frank ran his finger westwards along the map. “And these are Loxwood, Ansteadbrook, Haslemore, Bordon. Various towns and villages.”

     “I wonder what we’ll find in them,” said Magnus. He didn’t look optimistic as he put down his empty glass.

     Frank said, “I was supposed to take Florence to her aunt and uncle in Bordon. I promised her.”

     “It wasn’t your fault she was taken,” said Ralph.

     “I still feel like shit.”

     “We all do, mate; it’s the end of the fucking world.”

     “She’s gone,” said Magnus. “There’s nothing we can do about that now.”

     Frank downed the rest of his glass then looked at Ralph. “Refill, please.”

     “Good idea,” Magnus said.

     Ralph nodded. He replenished their glasses and his own.

     They drank, grimaced at the taste of the whiskey, and then studied the map.

     Frank said, “We’ll skirt the northern edge of the South Downs National Park, avoiding Farnham, Basingstoke and Winchester. The next big population centre will be Salisbury.”

     Ralph sucked on his teeth. “The army might have razed Salisbury to the ground.”

     Magnus looked shocked. “Would the government do that?”

     “I don’t think they will,” said Frank. “Guppy told me that the army is regrouping in Salisbury.”

     “Why in Salisbury?” asked Ralph.

     “Because all the main roads go through there. He also said they were transporting refugees by train out of the city. Salisbury’s important to the government and the army. They won’t want to lose it to the infected.”

     “It’s probably a fucking battleground by now.”

     “Let’s worry about that when we get there,” said Frank. “We might not even get that far.”

     Ralph grunted. “I’m impressed; you sound as pessimistic as me.”

     “I’ve had a bad few days,” Frank said without humour. “We all have.” He was struggling to hold it all together, and it wouldn’t take much for him to fall apart. But that was true for all of them, he supposed.

     He glanced at Joel and wondered what his friend was thinking.

     “We could go around Salisbury,” said Ralph. “Avoid it completely.”

     “That’s a possibility, but it would take much longer. I want to get home as soon as possible. And maybe we can catch a ride on a train, if we’re lucky.”

     Ralph and Magnus nodded.

     Frank folded the map and put it away. “We’ll try to find a car in the morning.”

     “Maybe something that has enough petrol to take us further than twenty miles this time,” Magnus said. 

     Frank grabbed the whiskey bottle and topped us his glass. He noticed Ralph looking at him.

     Ralph was studying him silently. There was no aggression or confrontation in Ralph’s face. More like a barely-disguised expression of pity. And concern.

     “What’s wrong?” asked Frank.

     Ralph’s face softened. He looked away. “Nothing, mate. Don’t hog the whiskey.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Just before midnight Frank was in the kitchen, staring out at the darkness. The clouds had receded; the moon was revealed, stark and clear and pale. Starlit desolation. Planets and stars and all the things in-between. Pulsars and nebulas and moons. Burning constellations. Infinity.

     He was looking into forever, and it stretched before him and declared he was as insignificant as one of the dead insects on the windowsill. He rubbed his face and when his hand came away damp he realised he was crying.

     Past the back garden and the fields beyond, there were flashes of white light on the horizon. 

     He listened.

     Distant booms and detonations.

     “War,” he whispered.

* * *

The four men watched from the back garden. They passed the whiskey bottle back and forth until it was dry.

     The distant horizon was lit up by tracer rounds and muzzle flashes; the crack and pop of gunfire.

     “I watched a documentary last week,” said Ralph. “It was about World War Two. Old footage of battles and night time skirmishes. It was like this.”

     “Last week seems like years ago,” said Frank.

     “I remember watching the invasion of Iraq,” said Joel. “The night-vision shots of Baghdad being bombed…” His voice trailed off.

     Silence fell upon them. Nothing else to say.

     Magnus asked, “Do you think we’re winning?”

* * *

Frank awoke a few hours later on the living room floor. The others were asleep. He’d dreamt about monsters that wanted to eat him.

     There was an approaching sound. He pulled aside the curtain over the living room window and looked onto the street. Darkness. Nothing out there but the other silent houses.

     Headlights were coming up the road.

     A convoy of civilian vehicles passed through the street. Frank counted them as they went past. Fifteen, in all. Cars, trucks and minibuses full of people. Refugees. Survivors.

     He didn’t go outside to stop them; he didn’t want to leave his hiding place.