The Last Plague Read online

  “Maybe.” Frank sighed. He opened the door.

  “Isn’t that rude? Are we allowed to go in there without asking?”

  “It’ll be okay. Stay close. Stay quiet.”

  Frank stepped into the hallway. Shadows filled the air, but they retreated from the light coming through the doorway.

  “What’s that smell?” asked Florence.

  “Something nasty,” Frank said, screwing up his face. Bad meat. He went into the kitchen. A framed photo of a man, a woman, a teenage boy and two younger girls. On the worktop was an electricity bill addressed to Mr David Pulver. The smell grew stronger. He saw a hamster cage with its door hanging open. The wiry metal was bent and warped.

  The sound of movement in the next room. He could see a television and a unit of free-standing bookshelves; the living room. He made sure Florence was still behind him then moved to the next doorway. He looked into the room and wished he hadn’t. Patio doors let in the daylight.

  Frank couldn’t speak.

  He held Florence back. He made sure of that. This wasn’t to be seen by her eyes.

  The air left his body. The stink of slaughter made his eyes water. The room before him drifted in-and-out of focus until it remained terribly clear to him. Too clear to ever be wiped from his memory.

  “What is it?” Florence asked.

  “Go back to the kitchen.”

  “What is it?”

  He struggled to answer her. His mouth was dry. He ran his free hand over his face. The hot stink of blood and freshly-slain meat, fat and gristle.

  The walls were stained with red. Splatters from arteries and veins. The remains of bodies on a carpet waterlogged with blood and shit. Scraps of hair. The stumps of arms and legs. Torsos that were no more than stripped meat and bone. Shredded clothes and wet rags. A small ribcage. Slippery organs strewn on the floor. Chewed lumps of flesh. Broken and splintered bones that had been gnawed upon. Wet things glistened.

  At the foot of an armchair was a spine. A damp pelt of hair that might have been a cat once; furred skull and empty eye sockets.

  “Fuck,” Frank whispered.

  The air was hot and stifling.

  A small man was crouched over what remained of a naked body; a woman, judging by the long hair and lacerated breasts. He was sobbing. The lower half of his face was coated with blood. He was topless. Hairy shoulders and a pot belly. Boxer shorts. His knees, forearms, and hands were bloody.

  Frank recognised the man from the photo in the kitchen.

  David Pulver clasped his hands together. As he sobbed he muttered under his breath. Frank realised the man was praying.

  The man looked up at Frank. His face was a mask of torture and misery. And hunger.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said. The inside of his mouth was red. His tongue seemed too long. Dirty teeth. “I couldn’t help myself. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop.”

  Frank tried to speak.

  The man’s eyes were small and pathetic and remorseful. The corners of his mouth jerked. He licked his lips.

  Pulver said, “Mark got away. My son. But I killed Mary and the girls. I got them. They didn’t want to die. They begged me. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to. I didn’t have a choice. Do you understand? Do you see? I didn’t have a choice.”

  Pulver lowered his face to the body beneath him. He kissed his wife’s mouth slowly. He had peeled much of the skin from her face. Pulver turned his body slightly, and Frank saw the throbbing red pustules on the man’s bare back. A pale fluid was seeping from them. Pulver spoke to the woman he had butchered.

  “I’m sorry,” he repeated until his voice faded into silence.

  Frank raised the crowbar. Pulver looked at him.

  “Please kill me,” Pulver said. “Please kill me before I change completely. There’s nothing left for me. There’s nothing left for any of us. The world is changing. We are changing.”

  “What?”

  “Kill me.”

  Frank remained in the doorway. A tremor started in his hands and ran up his arms.

  “Please kill me.”

  Frank stared at the stew of scarlet slush and abattoir runoff before him. He felt his stomach muscles tighten, a wave of nausea, but there was nothing to bring up. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten.

  “Kill me,” Pulver said. “I’m begging you.”

  The pustules on the man’s back throbbed violently. Something moved under his skin. Pulver’s back rippled. He moaned softly and a thin sliver of drool slipped from his wet mouth.

  Frank turned back to Florence. “Stay in the kitchen. Don’t come in here.” He closed the door, stepped towards the man, the sodden carpet squelching under his shoes. Hot itchy air pressed at his skin.

  Frank stood over the man.

  “Please kill me.” Pulver looked up at him.

  Frank hesitated.

  “Please kill me.”

  Frank opened his mouth. No words. He felt his mind weaken, as if the man’s insanity was infectious. He felt his face drain white.

  “Please kill me,” said Pulver. “Or I will kill you, then the little girl you’ve left in the kitchen. I will go out to her and do such terrible things to her. I will rip her open and eat the best parts of her; every soft bit of her.”

  The pustules throbbed and swelled. The man’s eyes went wide. A little smile. He opened his mouth.

  Frank raised the crowbar and, before the man could thank him, brought down the wrench with all the power he could summon into his shaking hands, and kept hitting Pulver until the strength had drained from him.

  * * *

  They walked the road. Man and girl. The world was quiet.

  Frank had thrown away the crowbar after dispatching David Pulver. He could not face wiping it clean. Skull fragments and blood had stuck to the business-end of the wrench like melted confectionary.

  He remembered Pulver’s mad face. Those eyes like dark stains. Taking the man’s life was easier than he thought it’d be, and he felt ashamed and guilty. He had killed twice, now. But he was not a killer.

  But he would kill for Florence.

  He’d found an axe out the back of the Pulver house, forgotten in a corner amongst other tools and discarded things. It was still sharp. A tinge of rust. It could still cut and chop.

  He carried a rucksack containing some tins of food, a few cans of fizzy drink, and two packets of ready salted crisps. A blanket for Florence, a torch and a pair of binoculars. He’d emptied the cupboards in the house while Florence sat at the kitchen table, forbidden to enter the living room. He had no qualms about looting a family’s home. Not now, anyway. Things had changed.

  Frank’s shadow shivered. He watched the mist, expecting faces to emerge from within it. He observed Florence in his peripheral vision; her head was down, the hood of her jacket over her head. Scuffling her feet on the tarmac. She hadn’t spoken since they’d left the house.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah.” She didn’t look at him.

  “Anything you want to talk about?”

  “That man was sick, wasn’t he?”

  “He was sick with something. Infected. He said he was changing.”

  “What does ‘infected’ mean?”

  “It means to be sick.”

  “Like the flu?”

  “Yes.”

  “But it’s something worse than the flu?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Will we get sick? Infected?”

  He had considered this already, and managed to convince himself they were safe from infection, or whatever it was.

  What if it was airborne?

  “We’ll be fine,” he said, hoping she didn’t notice the uneven tone of his voice.

  She looked at him for the first time in a while. “But everyone else is dying or becoming monsters, aren’t they?”

  Frank thought of Catherine waiting for him back home. How many people were dead or turning into monsters?

&nbs
p; “I don’t know.”

  There was gunfire in the distance.

  * * *

  They moved on towards Horsham. Frank led the way. Florence stayed by his side, but she was monosyllabic. Frank knew enough about loss and mourning to understand her reaction.

  Thunder in the sky. Clouds, grey upon grey. The suggestion of something else in the sky, moving in silence. They both sensed it. Frank found himself staring at the sky a few times in response to some perceived threat.

  They sheltered under an oak tree during a rain shower and ate lunch as they watched the downpour. Frank realised he should be at work. He wondered if he would ever return to work. He should be home, he thought. He should be with Catherine. She must be terrified right now. Did she know what was happening? Did she think he was dead?

  He wanted a drink of something strong. He wished he’d taken that bottle of vodka from the Pulver house.

  The rain stopped. No sun, just grey and ashen misery colouring the countryside. At least the air felt clearer, cleaner. They walked on. They found what was left of a body by the side of the road, sprawled on the grass verge. A man, judging by the size of the remains. He had been stripped and flayed. Not much left of him except tatters of meat and bone. His eyes had been taken. A ravaged corpse.

  Florence said nothing. Maybe she was used to such sights.

  “Let’s go,” Frank told her when she lingered by the body.

  “Okay,” she said, looking back at the remains as she followed him.

  Later they heard a deep growling coming towards them. Frank halted, took hold of Florence’s hand. She looked to him. Frank scanned the road ahead.

  “What is it?” asked Florence.

  Scuffled footfalls on tarmac and gravel, beyond the bend in the road.

  Frank put his finger to his lips, shook his head. He pulled her through a gap in the hedgerow and into a field, where they crouched behind the thicket. They stayed low. The grass was wet. Frank peered through the small partings in the hedgerow, towards the road.

  They waited. Florence’s breathing kept pace with his heartbeat.

  The scuffling footfalls became louder.

  A woman shambled into view. What had once been a woman.

  She was deformed. She growled at the air, rabid, hunched over and limping. Ripped jeans showing glimpses of mottled flesh on her thighs. Shoes crusted with dirt and something tinged red. Spikes of black bone had torn through her blouse, colonising her shoulders and back.

  Florence stiffened beside him. The woman sniffed the air. She wheezed from her ruined mouth; the sound of air being pushed from her lungs was like metal scraping on metal. The spikes on her upper body seemed to quiver, as if they were linked to her respiratory system by tendrils of nerve.

  The woman’s mouth opened. Turned to the hedgerow where they hid, but she didn’t see them. She was blind; her eyes were red lesions, glistening like welts. She snarled, exposing crooked, sharp teeth. The inside of her mouth was coated with black, like tooth-rot left to spread and thrive.

  She knows we’re here, Frank thought. He took hold of the axe. Dread in his stomach and a flutter of panic in his chest. His heartbeat surged. His mouth was dry.

  The woman seemed to look directly at him. Her body went rigid, like a hunting dog sighting prey.

  Frank didn’t move.

  A jet flew over, the roar of its engines distracting the woman, and she raised her unholy face to the sky. The jet moved away. The woman continued down the road and disappeared from sight.

  Frank exhaled. Florence did the same. They looked at each other. Frank smiled. She did not return it. They waited to make sure the woman had gone before they emerged back onto the road.

  Frank wondered if he should go after the woman and put her out of her misery. But he could not stomach taking another life so soon after smashing in David Pulver’s skull.

  The light was fading.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “We have to leave,” said Joel. “This place is going to implode.”

  “We’re a long way from home,” said Magnus. “We wouldn’t last five minutes out on the streets. Do you want to die out there?”

  Ralph looked at them in turn. “We might die in here.” He glanced around the classroom. People were murmuring and chattering. Crying children. Two men were arguing. Raised voices and panicked sobs.

  Ralph could feel the tension and fear in the room. The thing in the sky terrified them. He felt sorry for those who were beginning to lose control. He had adjusted to the situation, and maybe a part of him was actually enjoying this. He wasn’t sure how this had happened so easily. Maybe there was something wrong with him; a chemical imbalance or a defect in his brain.

  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.