The Last Plague Page 20

  The crowd filled the platform above the tracks. People jostled for room. Small arguments broke out but were quickly subdued by the soldiers. Ralph and the others managed to get to the front of the platform, overlooking the tracks. They were careful not to get pushed off. The rain was coming down fast and hard. Ralph looked towards the horizon and it was all black clouds.

  They waited. Pale and expectant faces. Shivering bodies clad in coats or jackets. Hoods pulled up to shelter heads. Huddled families waiting to be saved. Murmurs and whispers. Babies crying. An old lady kept asking anyone who would listen if the train would be arriving before it got dark. No one gave her an answer. She gave up after the eighth time of asking. Then she asked if the rain would stop soon.

  More jets roared overhead, lost in the clouds. Some of the children covered their ears. A loud crash from across the city; a mushroom cloud of smoke rose above the buildings and dispersed in the breeze. Someone screamed. Someone told the screamer to shut up.

  The battle for Salisbury was raging.

  “Are we going on the train?” said Florence.

  “Yes,” Frank told her.

  “Where are we going?”

  “We’re going to Somerset. “Have you ever been to Somerset, Florence?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. My dad always said the people who lived there were inbred. What does that mean?”

  Ralph couldn’t help but laugh.

  Frank hesitated. “It means they’re nice people.”

  “Inbred,” she said slowly, trying out the word in her mouth.

  “We have to get out of here,” said Joel. The colour of his face was like curdled milk.

  “We will,” said Frank. “Be patient.”

  Joel coughed, scratched a rash developing on the side of his neck. “Me and Anya came to Salisbury last year for a day out shopping. I bought her some nice earrings. We got the train back. We waited on this platform. The train was late, if I remember correctly.”

  “Sounds about right,” said Frank. “I’ve never liked trains.”

  “I need a cigarette,” said Magnus. “Ralph stole my last one.”

  An Apache helicopter flew over them then stopped and hovered over one of the streets to the north. It released its missiles at the ground. Unknown targets. An explosion. Flames bloomed and then died. The Apache banked to its left and wheeled away out of sight.

  “Boom,” said Ralph.

  “Fucking hell,” Magnus said. “It’s almost unreal, isn’t it?”

  Ralph spat onto the tracks. “Yeah.”

  “I hear a train coming,” said Joel.

  A rush of expectation and excitement swept through the crowd. Raised voices. Someone laughed in relief.

  “This next train isn’t stopping,” said a soldier cradling his rifle. “You’ll be on the next one.”

  There were complaints. Dissenting voices. Insults. The soldier ignored them all.

  “Where will our train take us?” said Joel. “Will it stop to let us off in Somerset? The train might go straight through Somerset. Do you think they’ll let us get off at Yeovil Junction or maybe Crewkerne station?”

  No one answered him. No one had a clue.

  A train appeared from around the bend in the track, the ugly noise of its engine growing louder.

  People were screaming on the platform. Ralph saw the train driver and realised why. The man looked terrified.

  Frank turned Florence away from the train as it went past them. Joel held one hand over his mouth. The train, all five carriages of it, was filled with the infected and their victims. Blood painted the windows. Snarling faces smashing against the glass. Red handprints. Windows filled with writhing flesh. The infected screaming to be let out, driven into a frenzy by the proximity of fresh victims.

  Rain was pelting the carriages. A great silence descended on the platform as the train went past.

  “Infected must have gotten aboard one of the carriages,” said an old man next to Ralph. “Slaughter. A fucking slaughter.”

  “Does that mean we can’t go home?” said Joel. He looked ready to burst into tears.

  “I don’t know,” said Frank.

  A ripple of sheer panic spread through the crowd. A woman was crying, saying “Oh god, oh god,” over and over until she buried her face in her hands.

  Voices spoke up from the crammed bodies on the platform. High-pitched with fear as the possibility of being stranded at the station became very real.

  “Are there any more trains?”

  “We can’t stay here!”

  “Please help us!”

  “All those people are dead!”

  The same soldier from earlier addressed the crowd: “There’ll be another train along in a minute. Please remain calm.”

  “Can we still use the track if that train is on it?” said a middle-aged woman carrying a toddler.

  The soldier held out his hands. “Yes. It’s been diverted onto another track and it’ll be dealt with. There’s no need to panic.”

  “Thank fuck for that,” said Magnus.

  “What if our train has infected on it?” said Joel.

  “It’s either that or stay here,” said Ralph.

  Joel looked at him, said nothing.

  The sound of a train approached the platform.

  “Get ready,” said Frank.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  The rain lessened and became a drizzle against the windows. The train groaned and picked up speed as it headed out of Salisbury with its four carriages packed full of human cargo.

  Parts of Salisbury were burning. The sky above the city was bloated by the smoke rising from the fires. The refugees had been crammed onto the train; the aisles were filled, swamped by people holding onto seats to keep their balance. A silence descended aboard the train, allied with relief, misery and a little hope. The smell of dirty bodies, wet hair and waterlogged clothes; the mutter of prayers spoken behind entwined hands. The sense of relief was palpable, but it was tempered by fear and anxiety. Whispers of quiet elation, guarded like secrets. The odour of stagnancy was so thick it had a pulse.

  Ralph watched a young boy sitting on his father’s lap, picking his nose and examining the stringy mucus on the tip of his finger. The man called him Sam. Ralph wondered what sights the boy had seen in the last few days; the horrors that had hunted him. Sam glanced at Ralph, blessed with the total absence of adult manners and ego, and wiped his finger on his father’s jacket without his father realising. Ralph forced a thin smile. Boys would be boys, even as the country was falling into ruin.

  Ralph pulled his fingers through his scraggly beard, staring at the floor. So many people around him, suffocating him. He closed his eyes, counted to ten, and then opened them. Deep breaths. His fingers felt tingly and his heart was punching against his ribcage. Too many people. He had been fine earlier when he was on his feet and his mind was occupied; but now, crammed into this metal coffin, his discomfort with large amounts of people and their close proximity was unsettling him, raising his hackles and turning his mouth dry.

  Magnus was sitting next to him. Behind them were Joel and Frank, with Florence sitting on Frank’s lap. The aisle was filled with standing people. A man’s groin was four inches from Ralph’s face, and he kept completely still so there was less chance of his nose or mouth accidentally brushing against something dangling and soft.

  “You alright, mate?” said Magnus.

  “Fucking rosy.”

  “Did you count to ten?”

  “First thing I did.”

  “Did it help?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “I forgot to let you have the window-seat, mate. Sorry. Do you want to swap?”

  Ralph shook his head. “No, I’m okay. Cheers, anyway.”

  Magnus patted him on the arm.

  Ralph breathed in deeply and took out his stress-ball from one of his pockets. He squeezed it hard. He opened his palm, and the ball was a misshapen lump; it slowly reformed. He squeezed it
again until his knuckles had lost their colour.

  “We’re going home,” Magnus said. He sank back into his seat. “Never thought I’d be so glad to get on a bloody train.”

  “I hate trains,” Ralph said. “Did I already mention that?”

  “Yeah, but we’re going home. It seems a bit surreal now, don’t you think?”

  Ralph said, “The last few days have been surreal.”

  “I thought we were going to die out there. We were lucky.”

  “We’re not home yet. Not by a long way.”

  “Always the optimist.”

  “Always best to expect the worst, mate.”

  “And then anything else is a bonus?”

  “Spot on.”

  “That’s one way of looking at things.”

  “It’s the only way, my friend.”

  “You’ve always been a ray of sunshine.”

  “I try my best.”

  Magnus laughed and cleaned his glasses. “Some of the things I’ve seen…” His voice trailed off. He was shaking his head. “Part of me still finds it hard to believe they’re real. I had never seen a dead body before, Ralph.”

  Ralph looked at him, let him continue.

  “I’ve been constantly terrified for the last few days. Terrified beyond anything I could’ve imagined. It exhausts you, digs into your sanity.”

  “You’ve done well.”

  “Really?”

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  Magnus looked puzzled.

  “Try to get some sleep, mate,” said Ralph. “A nap will do you good.”

  “I am pretty tired.” Magnus looked out the window as the train rushed past fields, houses and roads. “Wake me if anything happens, Ralph.”

  “Will do.”

  Magnus closed his eyes.

  * * *

  “I’m never going home again, am I?” said Florence. Exhaustion strained her voice. Her lips were cracked. “I’ll never see my house again. I’ll never go home. I’ll never go back to my bedroom and sleep in my bed.”

  Frank tried to smile for her. He didn’t want to give her false hope. She would never return to Wishford and her old life. That life was dead.

  “Maybe one day we’ll go back there. When this has been sorted out.”

  “My parents will never come back.”

  “I’m so sorry, Florence.”

  “You say that a lot.”

  “She’s right,” said Joel. “You do. Stop saying sorry. It’s not your fault.”

  “What will happen to me now?” Florence asked. “When the train stops…”

  “You can stay with me and my wife. Her name is Catherine. She would love to meet you. I reckon you’d both be great friends. We’ll look after you.”

  She eyed him. “Do you and your wife want to be my parents now?”

  Her question took him by surprise.

  “No one could ever replace your parents, Florence. That wouldn’t be right. We’re just trying to look after you.”

  She looked at the floor. “I’m hungry and thirsty.”

  “So am I,” said Frank. “We’ll get something when we get off the train.”

  “Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “Okay.”

  Frank wanted to be her father. He couldn’t deny it to himself. He looked at Florence, and his chest felt full of air; but it was a good feeling.

  He rested his eyes and shut out the world for a little while. He felt Florence’s weight on his lap, comforting him. It gave him hope to think that such a delicate creature had survived so far when so many others were dead.

  He kept his eyes shut and he could almost pretend that Emily was sitting on his lap.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Magnus awoke as the world shuddered around him. The squeal of brakes, like an animal pulped beneath the train. A hard jolt and the shock of recoil. Stillness and inertia. Voices and panic. The cry of a child being hushed by its mother.

  He’d been dreaming of Debbie and the boys again. He was tired.

  The train had stopped. The carriage creaked. He blinked his eyes clean, wiped them with the back of one hand. He yawned. His back and his legs ached fiercely.

  The rain had eased off; only a few droplets on the windows. The other refugees were looking down the train. Disquiet and apprehension. A few whispered words. There was a vague smell of opened pores leaking sweat.

  “What’s happened?” Magnus asked Ralph. “Why have we stopped?”

  Ralph spared him a puzzled glance and shrugged.

  Magnus pressed his head to the window, tried to see towards the front of the train. Nothing. There were fields on both sides of the train, and beyond them were deep ranks of trees that led into darkness. He stared into the trees for a while. Shadows moved, stopped, and moved again. He got the feeling of something stirring within the inky darkness. His skin broke out in gooseflesh.

  He looked away.

  “What’s going on?” Joel asked from behind. Frank was reassuring Florence.

  Anxiety and pent-up anger began to take hold on the collective emotions of the refugees; a single pulse composed of their combined heartbeats, growing faster with every second that the reason for the train’s stop was not revealed.

  Magnus could hear voices from the next carriage. Arguments were breaking out.

  Ralph was looking down the aisle, trying to see past the standing bodies.

  “What’s going on?” said Magnus.

  “Maybe we’ll be told in a minute.”

  The speakers in the carriage buzzed with static, and a tinny voice spoke: “Uh, please stay calm. Do not panic. There is an obstruction on the track. Do not panic. In a moment the driver will be passing through the carriages to the other end of the train so we can reverse... ”

  Cold sweat broke out on Magnus’s back and ran down his spine.

  The carriage rocked gently on its wheels. At the back of the carriage, a woman screamed. She was pointing out the window, towards the trees flanking the train. Someone asked her what was wrong. She shrank away from the window, her face stretched and pale.

  “There’s something out there!” she cried. “Something in the trees!”

  Magnus looked at the trees. He moved towards the window until his nose was touching the glass. The shadows were moving again. Gaining shape. Coalescing.

  Coming towards the train.

  He retreated from the window.

  A man burst from the trees, sprinting towards the train. He was topless. His jeans had been torn into rags. His upper body had developed dark lesions. His left arm was withered into a hooked appendage. Magnus couldn’t hear him, but he could tell that from the shape of the man’s mouth and the crazed intent in his eyes, he was screaming.

  “Infected!” someone said.

  Another man bolted from the trees, running for the train. Then, another. Four, five, six. All of them were horribly deformed.

  “They’re on the other side as well!” a woman cried.

  Heads turned. Magnus managed to peer between the scrum of bodies blocking the aisle, and saw men and women tearing down the field towards the train.

  “Oh shit,” Magnus said.

  The infected emerged from both sides.

  Panic broke out on the carriage. The infected kept coming. The fields on either side of the train were filled with them.

  Magnus looked past the infected people. He was so scared that his heart almost stopped.

  Something large was coming through the trees.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  The thing began as an amorphous shadow skulking within the tree line, and then it emerged. Frank’s hands tightened around Florence; an instinctive act of protection. The other refugees saw it, too. The carriage was full of screaming and crying. A lone voice begged its god for help that wasn’t coming.

  The train driver, a plump and sweaty man, was trying to make his way up the aisle, towards the other end of the train. He was struggling to wriggle through the bodie
s crowding the carriage. He was too big. He shouted and swore at them to let him through. They ignored him, staring at the thing coming at them from out of the trees.

  The creature loomed almost thirty feet tall; a spindly, dangling abomination. Frank couldn’t take his eyes away from it.

  Joel was shaking his head. His eyes were wide and shivering with tears. He rubbed the rash on the side of his neck. He looked at Frank, opened his mouth to speak, but words failed him.

  The creature broke through the trees, pushing branches from its path. Frank couldn’t see it clearly, but its tall, bloated body appeared to be pulsing. There were tendrils attached to its main mass. Then it opened its mouth, and despite the carriage interior’s muffling effect, its screech was high-pitched and anguished. The carriage trembled.

  The infected people reached the train and began to pound, scratch and claw upon it. The refugees looked down at them, safe for now, until they found a way inside.

  The tall thing skittered across the field on rows of insect legs. It moaned dully as it moved.

  “What the fuck is that?” said Ralph.

  Frank saw its body in detail for the first time, and he wished it to be the last. The creature halted by the train, looming over it, casting a shadow that darkened the inside of the carriage. Its tendrils were tipped with stingers or sharpened claws. There were human faces partly-submerged within its mass, and the flailing naked arms of those people were hanging from its flesh, their fingers grasping at the air. Faces and body parts were dripping a pale fluid onto the ground. The beast was a growth of half-absorbed bodies and screaming faces. They were still alive. They were part of the creature, assimilated into its body. A monster composed of human bodies and infected flesh.

  Those human eyes, so many of them, appraised the contents of the train. One of the eyes, bloodshot and staring, seemed to find Frank and focus on him. It was using the eyes of its human victims to navigate. Its body was veiny and pulsing, throbbing dully and slowly like a pig’s heart. It didn’t possess a face, but there was a mouth, and it opened just a little into a vulva-like aperture showing pink gums and a glistening passage leading to somewhere he didn’t want to visit.