The Last Plague Read online

  No one screamed for long.

  Frank imagined what it would be like to be caught in the streets when the incendiary bombs hit. Burned alive. No one would survive. Not even the monsters roaming the streets.

  He sucked on his inhaler twice.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing,” he said. “Never thought I’d see an English town get firebombed. Especially by its own government.” He stopped talking, simply because words meant nothing at that moment when faced with the swelling inferno before them; what had once been Horsham.

  “I hope that there weren’t many people in the town when the bombs dropped,” said Frank. “Uninfected, of course.”

  “There would have been a few hundred, at least,” said Guppy. “Maybe the infected had already killed them…or worse. The fire would have been a mercy for them.”

  Frank felt sick. He glanced back to see Florence asleep on the backseat.

  “It won’t be enough,” Guppy said. “They’ll have to purge every village, every town…every city, to beat them. To destroy them.” He nodded at Horsham. “This is nothing. Next time it’ll be nukes.”

  Frank couldn’t take his eyes away from the fire. “Nukes?”

  “I’m just a grunt, so I might be wrong. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Not with the people we have in charge. They’ll panic. If they’ve already took the decision to firebomb a town, things are really bad.”

  “I can’t believe it,” said Frank.

  Guppy spat. “Scorched earth.” His eyes glowed yellow from the flames. “Funny thing is, when I was a lad, I used to love staring at fires. I could watch a bonfire for hours, mesmerised.”

  Movement in the fields below caught Frank’s attention. Refugees were fleeing across the fields. The infected wouldn’t be far behind.

  “We can’t stay here,” said Guppy. “We have to find shelter for the night.” He switched on the engine.

  Before they moved off down the road, Frank saw flashes of light from both the north and east.

  He tried not to think what they were.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Guppy stopped the car at an isolated cottage a few miles from Horsham. The windows were dark. No sign of habitation.

  He woke up Florence. She was bleary-eyed and sleepy. When Frank told her they were going to stay the night in the house she looked at him and nodded.

  Frank got out his torch and shone it around the empty driveway and the garden. An overgrown lawn spotted with molehills. A set of creaking, rusted swings. Garden gnomes were grinning at him. The cottage was small. White speckled walls and vines of ivy. Old wood aged by decades. Square windows with rotting frames. A flowerbed long devoid of any flowers. The cottage was a relic. Abandoned.

  The front door was closed.

  Guppy twisted the handle and the door opened a little. He pushed it with the barrel of his rifle. Frank stood alongside him, shining the torch inside. Florence followed them.

  Darkness cleaved by torchlight. A stairway leading upstairs. The smell of dust, mildew and old clothes. Silence, apart from a tap dripping in the kitchen at the back of the house.

  “Shut the door,” said Guppy. “I’ll check the rooms.”

  * * *

  Guppy searched each room. He told Frank and Florence not to enter the bedrooms. He didn’t need to say why.

  They bedded down in the living room. Florence took the sofa. Frank found some old blankets for her. She returned to sleep quickly. Guppy barricaded the doors with furniture. He would keep watch. Frank offered to take it in turns until first light, but Guppy refused.

  Frank settled in an armchair. He missed Catherine intensely. He thought of Ralph, Magnus, and Joel, and wondered if they had been in Horsham when the bombs fell. The possibility needled his heart and turned his guts to jelly.

  He fell asleep thinking about lost friends and great mountains of writhing fire.

  When he woke, the silence stunned him. He wiped spittle from his mouth. His eyes were wet. He had been crying in his sleep.

  Florence was a shape in the darkness, breathing slowly and steadily.

  Guppy wasn’t here; might have abandoned them, but Frank was too tired to care at the moment. He rose, stepped quietly over to Florence. He stood over her and her pale face became clear like a ghost in the dark. She looked so much like Emily that she could have been Emily. Could have been her twin.

  Frank smiled at the sleeping girl. He brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead. Her blankets had fallen to the floor, so he replaced them on her body.

  He stared at her for a long while.

  Guppy was standing in the doorway watching him.

  “Everything okay?” The soldier’s voice was flat and tired.

  “Florence was having a bad dream.”

  “You should get back to sleep.”

  “I’m fine. Are you alright, Corporal?”

  “It’s all falling apart, Frank. Pike was right.”

  “Do you have a family? Somewhere to go?”

  “I’m leaving in the morning,” Guppy said. “Heading to Lowestoft. I’m divorced, and the ex-missus got custody of our son. I’ve got to see if they’re okay. I’m sorry to leave you and Florence, but I’ve got to see them. The army can’t control this plague and I’m past caring about going AWOL. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “You can keep the car. Use it to get to wherever you’re going.”

  “I’m going home,” said Frank. “Heading back to Somerset. I live in a small village. My wife’s there…”

  “Maybe things are going better back there.”

  “Maybe.”

  “The last I heard, the army had regrouped at Salisbury. My lieutenant told me that trains are being used to transport survivors to refugee camps along the coast. ”

  “Which coast?”

  “I don’t know; he didn’t say. Go back to sleep, Frank. You’ll need your energy in the coming days, especially if you want to take care of your daughter. Things will only get worse.”

  Guppy turned away and headed to the kitchen.

  Frank returned to the armchair, sat down, and closed his eyes. The silence was enough to make him weep.

  Things would definitely get worse.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Morning. The sky brightened to a desolate silence. Tendrils of cold crept over Frank’s skin and seeped into his bones. He woke slowly while they ate breakfast. Chocolate biscuits, crisps, and fizzy drinks. Guppy chewed a strip of beef jerky and looked out the kitchen window. Frank was keen to get on the road. He ignored the family photos on the walls. He wanted to go home.

  Guppy packed his kit and some food he had scavenged from the cupboards. Frank found a map in a desk drawer and slipped it into his pocket. Guppy gave him a small First Aid kit he’d taken from upstairs.

  They walked outside. Frank checked his watch. Almost seven. Dew on the grass.

  “I’m sorry to leave,” said Guppy. “But I have to think of my family first.”

  “Good luck. It’s a long walk to Lowestoft, Corporal.”

  “I don’t doubt that.” They shook hands. The soldier nodded at Florence.

  “Best of luck,” Guppy said to Frank. “Look after the girl. Stay safe. Get home.”

  “I hope you find your family.”

  Guppy set off across the fields. Frank watched him fade into the distance.

  Frank carried their supplies to the car. He looked at the sky. The clouds looked fungal and puffy, as if they were about to burst open with spores. But there was sunlight and birdsong, and that was good enough for him.

  He hoped they were good omens for the journey ahead.

  * * *

  The car started on the third attempt. It was dying. The roads were quiet and clear.

  Frank drove slowly. The events of the last two days stuck in his mind like poison.

  Florence was in the back with the bag of supplies. She looked out the windows. Occasionally she would glance at Frank in the rear-vi
ew mirror. No words were exchanged.

  She looked just like Emily.

  There were distant figures in the fields. They could have been mistaken for scarecrows until they moved. Ragged shapes. Their heads turned slowly as they tracked the car.

  He tried the radio. There was only white noise. He fiddled with the tuner, listening for a voice. Nothing. He switched it off.

  “Where are we going?” Florence asked.

  Frank glanced at her reflection. Her face was a blank. The morning’s dull light painted her in grey.

  “Somerset.”

  “What’s there?”

  “My home. My wife.”

  “Do you think it’s safe there?”

  “Yeah.” He didn’t say it as convincingly as he’d liked.

  “You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”

  “No. Why would you say that? I’d never hurt you.”

  “My mum said that bad men are everywhere.”

  “I’m not a bad man. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “I miss my mum and dad.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “Look at the people in the field.”

  Frank stopped the car.

  There were infected in the field; three men and a woman feeding on a dead cow. They stripped the hide from the cow’s body and snaffled the animal’s warm insides from the opening in its stomach. They crawled over the cow, miring themselves in its corpse and its many gaping, sucking wounds.

  Florence shifted over to the window, placed a hand against the glass.

  One of the men raised his face from the corpse and glared at them. Blood was coated around his mouth. He moved his neck in spasmodic jerking twists. His open mouth gleamed with wet red and threads of viscera.

  Frank drove on.

  * * *

  Two miles later the car died. Frank steered it to the side of the road. They gathered their belongings. The air became colder. Frank pulled up his jacket’s collar. He couldn’t see any infected nearby. He held his axe in one hand. Its weight reassured him.

  Crows cawed in the next field, picking at the ground, rooting for worms.

  “We’ll find another car,” Frank said. “Don’t worry.”

  Florence looked at the road. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Her face was glum. Her eyes were dull. She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “You okay?”

  She nodded. Her mouth was a thin bloodless line. She looked so young. So frail. She was glass.

  He would protect her.

  She followed him.

  Down the road they came to a pile-up. Two cars had crashed into each other. One of the cars was in a ditch; the other was on the road, shattered and torn. Glass, plastic and metal on the road. Some blood. Frank noticed a severed hand, palm turned upwards and fingers curled like a dead spider’s legs. There were mangled bodies in the cars. Florence stared at them and she was silent.

  In the car still on the road a man sat behind the steering wheel, his face obliterated and dripping. His lower jaw was gone. His tongue was hanging onto his lap like an unravelled scarf. A woman was wedged in the windscreen, face down on the bonnet. In the back was a little girl with the top of her head missing. She was wearing a purple coat.

  Frank stood next to Florence. “It’s okay.”

  The woman on the bonnet moved, jerked up her head and glared at them. The violence of her ejection from the seat had split her clothes. Her face was shredded. Her mouth opened slowly and some of her teeth tumbled out like dice. She made a wheezing sound. There was no way to tell if she was infected or not. She reached for them with a bloodied hand until she could reach no further. Her fingers scraped on the bonnet.

  She stopped moving. Frank knew she was dead.

  Florence was crying.

  He put his arm around the girl and they moved on.

  * * *

  “I need to pee,” Florence said.

  Frank looked up and down the road. “Okay. Just go in the bushes. But be careful. I’ll watch the road. If you see anything, shout to me, okay?”

  She didn’t reply as she vanished behind a hedgerow. Frank looked up at the sky. Grey upon grey. He thought he could feel rain in the air, like a light mist. Moisture on his face.

  Minutes passed. He waited. Thunder in the sky.

  “Florence? Are you okay?”

  No reply.

  “Florence?”

  No answer.

  A sliver of panic in his stomach, like a parasite uncurling itself.

  “Florence, is everything alright in there?”

  He moved towards the gap in the hedgerow where she had gone. He halted, craned his neck to peer into the field. He called her name again, and only silence followed it. He swallowed.

  “Florence!”

  Frank stumbled into the field. She was gone. No sign of her. No sign of a struggle. Wouldn’t she have cried for help?

  He looked toward the horizon, away from the road. There was an area of woodland on the other side of the field. Groves of thin trees blanketed by grey. There was a speck of pink moving away from him, growing smaller.

  Florence’s jacket. Florence was running.

  Frank ran.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The trees swallowed Florence and she was gone. Branches rattled in the wind. Frank’s feet thumped on the damp earth. The rucksack was a burden but he didn’t discard it. A crackle of thunder pierced the air as he melted into the inky gloom between the trees. The mixed smells of bark and mulch, sticky sap and vegetation. The faint musk of animal spoor. Rotting leaves on the ground. Twigs snapped under his shoes.

  “Florence!” His voice was hoarse and crazed amongst the trees. He was breathing hard. A flash of pink ahead of him. He stumbled through the bracken and the wood’s leavings. The canopy above him was thick and dark. Everything was muted, dulled, soaked in grey light. The trees stretched away from him like a fairy tale forest.

  Every breath became a wheeze. His ribs pressed against his lungs. He leaned against a tree and took in deep breaths through clenched teeth, closed his eyes and willed his chest to loosen. Breathe slowly, breathe deeply. Every breath counted.

  He took out his inhaler, shook it. Put it to his mouth and sucked.

  He closed his eyes. The insides of his eyelids were stained with white blotches. His heart was beating so hard he felt sick.

  The pressure on his lungs lessened.

  Better.

  He opened his eyes and pocketed his inhaler.

  Something unseen was thrashing amongst the trees. It wasn’t Florence. Frank froze, made himself small and kept flush to the tree. Sap stuck to his hands. He tried to hold his breath, but couldn’t. He didn’t move. He adjusted his grip on the axe.

  Silence.

  He waited.

  A man stumbled past. He was bloodied and gangly. Long stringy hair. His bare arms were scratched, cut and elongated so that his gnarled white hands nearly touched the ground. Black spikes were growing from his neck, weeping a clear fluid. Around them were dark red lesions. There was a colony of blistering tumours on his stomach.

  The man was dragging a small boy by the ankle. Frank couldn’t tell if the boy was alive or dead. The boy was naked and there was a greasy puncture wound in his sternum.

  Frank hoped the boy was dead.

  The man moved away, disappearing into the woods, taking his captured prey with him.

  * * *

  Frank reached the edge of the woods. He was halted by a ten feet high metal chain-link fence. Beyond it was a golf course, judging by the trimmed grass winding away from him down the hill.

  He couldn’t climb the fence. Florence must have come this way, but where had she gone? She must have slipped through the fence somewhere.

  Frank hurried alongside the fence. A few minutes later he found a small opening in the links, low to the ground. He crouched. There was a scrap of pink fluff snagged on an errant metal wire. He plucked it between two fingers.

  With much effort he
squeezed through the opening and pulled his rucksack after him. He stood and realised he’d cut his arm on the same bit of metal that had snared a bit of Florence’s jacket. It had already stopped bleeding. He wiped it on his jeans then shrugged on the rucksack again. He walked onto the fairway, trying to determine which way Florence had gone.

  The fairway stretched away from him.

  He shook his head.

  He had never liked golf.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Frank found a golf ball left on the fairway by the last golfer to walk the course. It was white and clean, without a single blemish. He picked it up, held it in the palm of his hand, then took out a black marker from the rucksack and drew a smiley face on the ball.

  He walked the fairway.

  Florence was sitting on a flat green, her head bowed. A flagstick fluttered in the breeze. Frank walked towards her slowly, careful not to alarm her. He kept his axe lowered.

  She did not run from him. She wiped tears from her face as Frank approached. He noticed the small puddle of vomit on the grass. Florence looked up at him with eyes like pools of water. Frank crouched next to her. He didn’t touch her.

  Several short bursts of gunfire rang out in the distance.

  “Hey,” Frank said. “Are you okay?”

  There was a faint, barely noticeable, nod of her head. The corners of her mouth shivered. There was saliva on her chin; Frank took a clean tissue from his pocket and wiped it away.

  “Why did you run?”

  “I was scared. I want to go home. I miss my mum and dad.”

  “I’m sorry, but they’re gone, Florence.”

  “I know they’re gone. I want to go back in time. I want none of this to have happened. I wish I’d never met you, Frank.”

  “I know.”

  “I want to go to my aunt and uncle’s place in Bordon. I want to be with them. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”