The Last Plague Read online

  His chest tightened again, but not from the asthma. “There’s no guarantee it’ll be safe.”

  “I don’t care. I want to be with them. They’ll keep me safe.”

  “I’ve been keeping you safe, so far.”

  “But you’re just a stranger…”

  “You’ve been through a lot. You’re traumatised.”

  “I want to go to Bordon. You can’t stop me.”

  Her face was stony, resolute and pitiful; an aggrieved child.

  Frank sighed. Florence would go one of two ways in the coming days, he thought. She would either store her grief in the back of her mind and adapt, or submit to grief, terror and catatonia.

  Frank felt rejected and forlorn. He tried to disguise the slumping of his shoulders as fatigue. It felt like something dull and rusty had embedded in the centre of his chest.

  “It’s not safe,” Frank said. “You’ve seen the things out there.”

  “I don’t care. I’m fast enough to outrun them. I outran you.”

  “You can’t outrun everything.”

  “Then I’ll hide when I have to. I don’t need you to look after me.”

  Frank said nothing. He listened to the calling wind.

  Florence sniffled. Her nose was wet.

  “I’ll do a deal with you,” said Frank.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “I’m heading that way anyway. I’ll take you to Bordon. I’ll get you to your aunt and uncle then you can do what you like. I’ll look after you on the way there. Deal?”

  Florence thought about it, looked at the ground, then at Frank.

  Frank offered his hand. She took it reluctantly. Her hand was hot and moist.

  “No more running off,” he said. “Understood? Promise not to do that again?”

  She nodded.

  “Here,” he said, taking the golf ball from inside his jacket.

  “What’s that?”

  “What does it look like? It’s a golf ball. We’re on a golf course, after all.”

  “Did you draw the face on it?”

  “That’s how I found it.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. Cross my heart.”

  “Hope to die?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  “You’re stupid.”

  “I know. But I’m old, so it’s okay.”

  He handed the ball to her. She looked at it as if it were the steaming leavings of a mongrel dog.

  “Take it,” Frank said. “It’s yours.”

  “What am I gonna do with it?”

  “Probably nothing. Just keep it on you. Call it a peace offering.”

  She put the ball in her pocket.

  “Don’t lose it,” Frank said.

  She shook her head at him.

  “We’re just outside Broadbridge Heath. We’ll find a car. It’ll be okay.”

  Florence stood.

  “Shall we go?” Frank asked.

  She nodded.

  Frank saw something dark on the grass at the edge of the green. He walked over to it, bent down to examine it.

  “What is it?” said Florence.

  Frank picked up the shard of dark metal. He turned it over. It had been ripped from something. He looked around. He walked to the top of the slope. Florence followed.

  There was another piece of metal at the crest of the hill. He picked it up. It was bigger than the first piece and ragged. He looked down the slope.

  More pieces of metal on the fairway.

  They walked down the slope and found more wreckage on the way. Two hundred yards down, the fairway curved to the right, and Frank saw from where the debris had come.

  A helicopter had crash-landed at the edge of the fairway, where it had come to rest against a large oak tree. Crumpled and torn. Bits missing. There was no smoke and no fire. One of the rotors had torn loose and gouged shallow furrows into the earth, where it was now stuck in the ground like the marker for a makeshift grave. Florence touched it then took her hand away as if it were hot. She prodded a warped sheet of metal with her foot.

  More wreckage had been shed during its landing, scattered around the crash site. Scraps of plastic. Frank could smell oil.

  They approached the downed helicopter. The fuselage was pitted with dents and scratches, and had been ripped open. Wires and cables. Cracked glass. It must have been a privately-owned helicopter. It had been painted the colours of the Union Jack.

  The pilot was dead in his seat. The cockpit had been compromised and warped. He was slumped forwards. Blood stained his white shirt. His eyes were open. His neck was too limp and his head was set at an obscene angle.

  Frank looked inside the fuselage. A row of seats. A middle-aged man in an expensive suit was slumped in a corner. A spiked tree-branch had impaled him through his chest and out the other side of his body so that it pierced the back of his seat. He was meat on a stick, and he was starting to smell.

  Frank found a red plastic case and opened it on the grass outside. A flare gun and spare flares packed in foam. He put the case in his rucksack.

  “There was someone else here, as well,” said Florence. She pointed at a faint trail of blood on the grass.

  “Let’s follow the trail,” Frank said.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  The woman was sitting against a tree at the edge of the golf course. A dotted ribbon of red led to her. She was holding the left side of her stomach. She saw them coming and her eyes widened in a mixture of hope, elation and fear.

  “Please help me.”

  Frank and Florence crouched next to her. Her eyes were wet, sharp and clear with pain. Her face was pale. Red on her lips that wasn’t lipstick. Bleached white teeth. The hand over her stomach wound was sticky with blood, of which she had lost a lot. She was wearing a ripped white blouse, and Frank tried not to let his eyes linger on the sight of her bra strap clinging to her pale skin. A black skirt ended well above her knees. Bare legs. There was blood in her long blonde hair and smeared over her forehead. A yellow-black bruise under her bloodshot left eye.

  “Please help me.”

  “It’s okay,” said Frank. “Take it easy.” He didn’t know what else to say to her. He offered a thin, forced smile.

  He checked the wound in her stomach. She winced when she moved away her hand. The wound was deep. He replaced her hand upon it.

  “You need to get me to a hospital,” she said.

  “Calm down,” Frank said. “We’ll help you.” He didn’t know how, though. He had no medical training; hadn’t even done a First Aid course.

  “I need to get to a hospital.”

  Frank took out the First Aid kit from his rucksack. He placed some gauze on her wound, told her to keep pressure on it. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

  “What’s your name?” Frank asked her.

  “Caitlin.”

  “Hey, Caitlin, I’m Frank. This is Florence.”

  “Florence is a nice name.”

  Florence kept her distance from the woman.

  “They’re both dead, aren’t they?” Caitlin said.

  “The men in the helicopter. Yeah. What happened?”

  “We escaped from London.” Her eyes fluttered. “Tim and I were heading for France. He had a chateau in the countryside.”

  “Is Tim the man in the suit?” said Frank.

  “Yes. I was his secretary. He said he would protect me, get us out of the country, to somewhere safe. He was a decent man.”

  “I’m sure he was,” said Frank. “What happened in London?”

  “The plague happened,” she said. “It was all panic and slaughter. Killings in the streets. You wouldn’t believe it.”

  “I might do,” said Frank.

  “After we heard the rescue camp at Wembley stadium had been overrun, we decided to get out of the city. We’d already been told that the Royal Family had been evacuated, along with what remained of the government. If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for us. Noth
ing to stay for. It was Hell. Think of the worst things you’ve ever seen and that’s nowhere near what I’ve witnessed. The city was falling apart. There were monsters. I remember seeing people running and fighting in the streets, ripping one another to bits as we flew over them. Bodies everywhere. Packs of infected. After leaving London, our pilot had a seizure of some kind, like he had caught the plague or something, and we crashed. Woke up with a hole in my stomach. I think my right ankle’s broken. I crawled here. You have to help me.”

  “We will,” said Frank. “We’ll think of something.”

  There was a shriek from the other side of the trees. Another voice yipped and bayed in response.

  “Was that one of them?” Caitlin said.

  “It’s okay,” said Frank. “Don’t panic.”

  “You have to help me get out of here. Don’t leave me here!”

  “We won’t leave you, I promise.”

  More shrieks and screams. Closer. Florence looked at Frank, breathing fast, her eyes wide.

  “I don’t want to die here,” said Caitlin. “I don’t want to die.”

  “You won’t die,” said Frank. He looked at Florence. “We’ll carry her.”

  They pulled Caitlin to her feet. She screamed as her ankle took her weight.

  The infected were coming through the trees.

  “Come on!” said Frank. He put Caitlin’s left arm around his shoulders and held her up. Florence held on to the woman, helped her along. They moved slowly. Not fast enough.

  Caitlin was crying. She screamed in Frank’s ear and he almost dropped her.

  “I don’t want to die!” she wailed.

  Frank looked back. Wished he hadn’t.

  Too late.

  The infected poured out of the trees. Five of them. Ragged men and women. Two of them had been transformed into things with claws instead of hands and wide mouths snapping at the air. One of them was lop-sided with glistening bulbous growths the colour of mould.

  They were screaming and howling. They lusted after blood and meat.

  “Keep moving!” Frank said. The fairway opened up before them. Nowhere to hide. An open range where they would be run down and gutted. A killing ground.

  Caitlin slipped from Frank’s grip and fell down. She cried and screamed. Frank glanced back at the infected then picked her back up. He dragged her with all his strength.

  “They’re coming,” said Florence.

  The infected screamed.

  Florence was crying.

  Caitlin was dead weight.

  Frank would not let the infected hurt Florence. He had promised to protect her. He knew what he had to do, and he hated himself for it.

  He let Caitlin go.

  She fell down.

  “Don’t leave me!” she said, scrambling after him, her eyes pleading. “Please don’t leave me!”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Frank said.

  “You can’t leave me! You can’t fucking leave me!”

  “I have to. I’m so sorry.”

  “You fucking bastard! You fucking cunt! You’re murdering me!”

  Frank grabbed Florence and pulled her along. They ran. The infected were closing in.

  Florence screamed.

  Frank looked back to see the infected falling upon Caitlin. They swarmed her. One of the men ripped her leg away at the knee and buried his mouth in the gristle of her calf muscle. They dismembered her upon the grass while she was alive and lapped at her precious fluids and snaffled the exquisite morsels of her abdomen.

  The infected didn’t come after Frank and Florence. They would be sated for a while.

  Caitlin was still screaming when the infected tore out her heart.

  Her screams would stay with Frank for a long time.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Broadbridge Heath was desolate and silent.

  They reached the centre of the village. The doors of the village hall were open and a rotting stench drifted from within. They didn’t look inside. There were crashed cars. No bodies. There was a bus ahead of them, abandoned across the road.

  Frank could still hear Caitlin’s screams inside his head. They would fade eventually, but not for a long while, and he was okay with that. He had to keep Florence safe. Her safety was his responsibility.

  Florence hadn’t spoken to him since they’d escaped the golf course.

  “I’m not a bad man, Florence. I had to leave Caitlin behind. I didn’t have a choice.”

  Florence’s face was shaded with dull blotches. “Would you do the same to me?”

  “Do what?”

  “Leave me behind for the monsters.”

  Frank crouched before her and held her softly by her shoulders. She didn’t flinch away from him.

  “I would never leave you behind, understand?” His voice was louder than he intended, and he saw it in her face. He lowered his tone, tried to smile. “I left Caitlin behind so you and I could live. So we could survive. I did it to protect you, Florence. Caitlin was a stranger; you’re my friend, Florence, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “Friends do anything for each other. I wouldn’t leave a friend behind.”

  Doubt in her expression. “Is it my fault that she died? Because you wanted to save me?”

  “No, of course not. Don’t ever think that. Caitlin would have died anyway. She had lost too much blood.”

  “But would you leave me behind if I was really badly injured?”

  “I would have stayed with you, Florence. I wouldn’t leave you alone.”

  “Okay.”

  “I promised to get you to Bordon. And I’ll do that.”

  “Okay.”

  He let her go, stepped back. Looked down at her.

  He heard a car approaching from behind them. He turned.

  Florence heard it, too. “Who’s that? Do you think they’ll give us a lift?”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  A white transit van appeared at the top of the road, heading towards them. Frank guided Florence to the side of the road. The van picked up speed. Frank made sure the axe was visible by his side. He kept Florence behind him. The van slowed and braked to a clumsy stop next to them. The engine idled. The two men in the van looked at Frank, then at Florence, then back to Frank. No one said anything. The driver wound down the side window.

  “Hello,” said the driver, a chubby balding man with glasses and a goatee beard.

  “Hello,” said Frank. He nodded at the men.

  “Hey there,” said the other man. He was wiry and scraggly, wearing gardening gloves and a beanie hat. He was rodent-like. Small eyes like marbles.

  “Where you heading?” the chubby man asked.

  “We’re looking for the nearest rescue centre,” said Frank.

  “That’s cool. My name’s Bertram. This is Mackie.” He cocked a thumb at the wiry man.

  Mackie waved. “Hey.”

  The men stared at Frank as waiting for him to introduce himself. He said nothing.

  Bertram grinned. “Where you coming from?”

  “Horsham,” Frank said.

  “Bloody hell. You got out of there just in time. I watched it burn.”

  Frank nodded. “So did we.”

  Bertram looked at Florence. “Hey there, little lady, you look a bit pale. Are you okay? Are you sick?”

  “She’s fine,” said Frank. “Just a bit shaken up with all that’s happened.”

  “You her father?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Bertram’s grin faded. “Just making conversation, my friend.”

  Mackie waved at Florence. His beady eyes gleamed.

  “We could give you both a lift,” said Bertram. “Wherever you’re going…”

  “We’ve got sweets,” Mackie said.

  “No, thanks,” said Frank. “We’re fine.”

  “You sure?” said Bertram. “It’s dangerous out here, especially looking after a little girl. Come on, we’ll give you a lift. Hop in the back. It’s no troub
le. No trouble at all.”

  “Yeah,” said Mackie. “We insist. Come on, man. Look after your little girl.”

  “What do you think, little lady?” said Bertram. “Do you want a ride in the van? You’ll be safe. I promise. We’ll have some fun.”

  “Don’t talk to her,” said Frank.

  “No need to be rude, my friend,” Bertram said. His mouth turned up at the corners like a knife-cut in pale meat.

  “Dickhead,” said Mackie, shaking his head at Frank.

  Bertram looked at Frank. “It’s too dangerous on the road, my friend. You really want to put your little girl in danger?”

  “It’s no concern of yours.”

  “We’re just trying to help.” Bertram looked at Florence. “Would you like some help, little lady?”

  “I said don’t talk to her,” Frank said. He took hold of Florence’s hand and they walked away.

  Bertram and Mackie were laughing behind them.

  “Why are they laughing?” asked Florence.

  “Ignore them,” said Frank. “Now, those men are strangers.”

  “My mum always told me not to talk to strangers.”

  “That’s good advice. Exactly.”

  “Hey, come back!” Bertram said.

  “Keep walking,” said Frank.

  The van pulled up alongside them.

  They kept walking. Frank didn’t look at the van.

  The van kept pace with them.

  “There’s no need to be belligerent, my friend,” said Bertram. “We have to stick together in times like these.”

  “Dark times,” said Mackie. “Dangerous times. People are dying.”

  “Come on,” Bertram said. “We’re trying to help you both.”

  Frank halted, turned to them, keeping himself between Florence and the men. “Listen, fellas…I’m very grateful for the offer, but we’re fine.”

  “You think that axe will protect you?” said Mackie.

  “It’s a shame you won’t accept our kind offer,” said Bertram. “Do you think if I beeped the horn any infected people in this village would head this way?”

  “I reckon they would,” Mackie said. “Bet they’re pretty hungry.”

  “We’re not asking for any trouble,” said Frank. “Please leave us alone. I’m asking nicely, lads.”

  Both Bertram and Mackie grinned.