The Plague Series (Book 1): The Last Plague Read online

  Magnus turned off his mobile and put it in his pocket, then went outside. Summer was coming to an end.

  “Oh, fuck it,” he said, taking out his phone. He switched it on and waited.

  The phone rang. Debbie was calling. He let out a tired sigh and put the phone to one ear. “Hello?”

  “Are you coming home?” Debbie asked in a pleading voice that made Magnus hate himself. “When are you coming home?”

  *

  Joel needed to stretch his legs after the lukewarm shower had failed to refresh him. He had brushed his teeth twice to remove the taste of alcohol from his mouth.

  The grass was wet, dampening the hems of his jeans as he walked the fields around the house. He wore a jacket in case the temperature dropped. The breeze ruffled his hair.

  He remembered parts of last night; the stripper dancing around him, her groin writhing inches from his nose. She had touched his face, her fingertips warm and yellowed from nicotine. He remembered the others laughing. He didn’t want to think about what would happen if Anya found out.

  But he hadn’t done anything wrong, had he? Why should he feel guilty when he had no control over what had happened?

  Still, he felt like he had betrayed Anya, even though nothing sexual had happened with the stripper. He was wracked with anxiety and the hot panic of shame, and it was all he could do not to scream to the sky.

  The land opened before him, lined with low hedgerows. Scattered copses of trees and dense thickets. A family of deer grazed in a field. A crow flashed overhead, squawking like it was mocking him.

  “Yeah, fuck you, too.”

  He halted and looked down the footpath, gripping his phone in one hand. His guts squirmed as he dialled Anya’s number. Part of him hoped she would answer, while another part prayed she wouldn’t so he could put this off a bit longer.

  She answered almost immediately. Typical.

  “Hello, love,” he said. “How’re you?”

  Anya coughed, clearing her throat. “How is my future husband this morning? Still drunk?” He loved her accent. Fucking loved it. Her English was excellent. Ever since he’d been a young lad he’d been captivated by women with Eastern European accents. Russian, Slovakian, Polish, it didn’t matter.

  “No, just a bit hung-over,” he replied.

  “This is a surprise. I thought you’d still be in bed. You have good night?”

  “Uh, I have to admit something.”

  A pause on the other end of the line. He pictured her looking worried, waiting for him to say he had cheated on her.

  “Admit?”

  “There was a stripper last night.”

  A pause. He heard her breathing. He closed his eyes and waited.

  “I know,” she said.

  He opened his eyes one at a time. “What? You know?”

  “I know what happened.”

  “I’m sorry. Please forgive me. The others were goading me. I thought that if I wimped out of it I’d look like a twat. I didn’t do anything with the stripper, I promise.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  He listened to her tone of voice as his heart pounded against his ribcage. “Are you still there, Anya?”

  “It is okay, Joel. You did nothing wrong. You are a silly man.”

  “What? Really?”

  She was giggling. “I knew you would have stripper. Ralph and Magnus told me before you left. They asked for my…uh, permission.”

  “So you really don’t mind?”

  “Joel, what you think me and my friends did on my hen party?”

  “You had a stripper?”

  “Yes. I had to lick cream from his washboard stomach. Was fun. I was drunk, of course.”

  His heart winced with jealousy, but he ignored it. “I did that as well.”

  “Lick cream from man’s washboard stomach?”

  “No, I had to lick squirty cream from her bellybutton.”

  She laughed. Joel laughed along with her, relieved, the anxiety fading from his head, chest and stomach.

  “You realise how much I love you?” he said.

  “Tell me.”

  “I’ll show you when I get home tomorrow.”

  “I look forward to that.”

  “I’ll bring the squirty cream.”

  She laughed again. It was always easy to make her laugh, even with his bad jokes. He adored her for it. Other women had been mere infatuations that ended badly. It didn’t matter. He only wanted her.

  “I love you, too, Joel. My husband.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Soon.”

  “I’ve got to go now,” he said. “I think it’s going to rain.”

  They said their goodbyes. Joel returned the phone to his pocket and looked to the eastern sky, from where three distant dots were approaching. The deep muffled stutter of rotor blades grew louder. The dots coalesced into distinctive shapes.

  The Chinook helicopters were flying fast and low. Their roar was deafening. He covered his ears as they passed directly over him. He ducked instinctively and watched them until they faded away into the distance, heading west.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” he said, before heading back to the house.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Dark clouds filled the sky on Monday morning. The previous evening had been spent slumped in the living room watching old Hammer horror films and eating junk food.

  The Corsa was idling on the driveway, Frank waiting behind the wheel while Magnus and Ralph got in the back of the car. Joel had triple-checked that the cottage’s lights and electrical switches were turned off and the back door was locked. Now he was testing the front door to see if it would open.

  “It’s locked,” Ralph called through the open window. “You just locked it, you OCD freak.”

  Joel glanced back, glared at Ralph, and then tried the door again. After a few moments he put the keys in his jacket pocket and got into the car.

  “Don’t think I’ll be drinking again for a while,” said Magnus.

  Joel slumped in his seat. “Me neither.”

  “Wimps,” Ralph said with a shake of his head.

  Frank put the car in gear and started down the track. He glanced towards the western horizon, where a plume of smoke was climbing the sky.

  It was in the direction they would be heading.

  *

  Frank slowed the car to a crawl. The four men stared ahead.

  A red Toyota Yaris was on the grass verge, its back end sticking out onto the road. The driver’s door was open. The exhaust coughed petrol fumes.

  Frank edged the car forward until it was alongside the Toyota. Joel wound down the window and peered out. The open-door alarm was beeping and the headlights were on, but there was no sign of a driver or any passengers.

  “Maybe they’ve gone for a piss in the bushes,” said Ralph.

  Joel glanced up and down the road. “Maybe it’s an ambush.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Frank.

  “Maybe they’re waiting for us to get out of the car and rob us.”

  Ralph chuckled. “You think Dick Turpin’s gonna steal our wallets? I don’t think things like that happen around here, mate.”

  “Should we wait in case the driver returns?” asked Magnus.

  “It hasn’t been parked,” said Frank. “It’s been abandoned.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Joel said.

  “Let’s have a look.” Frank parked the Corsa by the side of the road. He got out. Ralph and Magnus followed him to the Toyota.

  Joel hesitated. “Are you sure this is the right thing to do?”

  Frank went to the driver’s side. A long scratch ran along the side of the car, etched into the chassis. He looked inside. A strawberry-scented air-freshener hung from the rear-view mirror. Static hissed from the radio, mixed with the faint garble of distant voices. Frank turned off the headlights and the engine.

  “What if the driver comes back?” said Joel.

  “What if he doesn’t? Check the
boot.”

  “Why?” asked Ralph.

  “For a body.”

  Ralph looked at Frank.

  “I’m not joking.”

  Ralph opened the boot. Frank joined him.

  “Just a spare tyre, a foot pump and a bottle of water,” Ralph said.

  Joel peered over their shoulders. “Why would someone just leave their car here with its engine running?”

  Ralph closed the boot. “Maybe they were injured and couldn’t drive.”

  Joel put his hands in his pockets. “But if they were injured, why wouldn’t they stay here?”

  Magnus was looking downwards. “There’re drops of blood on the road, heading away from the car.”

  “I’m calling the police.” Joel took out his phone and dialled 999. The others watched him. Moments later he lowered the phone from his ear and stared at its screen, his face creasing with confusion.

  “What’s wrong?” said Frank.

  “I can’t get through.”

  “What?”

  “The network’s down. Try your phones.”

  “I’ve got nothing,” Ralph said. “No signal. No fucking network.” He tapped his phone, as if that would solve the problem.

  “Same here,” added Magnus. “I was wondering why Debbie hadn’t called me in a while.”

  Frank couldn’t even get a ringtone when he dialled.

  “What do we do?” Joel was glancing up and down the road again.

  “This is fucking weird,” said Magnus. “I think we should head to Wishford, or even that farmhouse we passed on the way to the cottage. Tell someone about this.”

  Ralph grunted. “Tell them what? That we found an abandoned car? Is the farmer gonna tow it away with his combine harvester?”

  “We have to tell someone,” said Frank. “Maybe they’ll have a landline telephone we can use. And if the driver is walking the road, we’ll catch up with him.”

  Joel nodded eagerly. “That sounds good. I don’t want to stay here.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Nobody walked the road.

  They approached the farmhouse, which stood at the top of an incline of gravel and dirt. They passed a mud-streaked Land Rover and a rusting transit van with flat tyres and missing windows. A tractor was parked by a barn. Crows lined the roof of the barn, pecking at one another and cawing insults.

  Frank stopped the car in front of the house. He got out, but the others stayed inside. He turned back to them. They looked at him, hesitant to leave the car. He shrugged, half-raised his hands.

  Ralph was first to relent. Joel and Magnus followed him. They walked to the farmhouse.

  The building was in poor condition, with cracked roof tiles and scarred outer walls. The stench of dampness and wood-rot hung in the air. Frank stepped towards the open front door, but was reluctant to touch the leering brass face that served as its knocker. He looked down and noticed scattered boot prints in the dirt.

  There were two downstairs windows at the front of the house. The curtains were drawn.

  Joel glanced around nervously. “I wonder if anyone’s home.”

  “Why would they leave the door open?” asked Frank.

  Magnus wiped his glasses with his sleeve. “Maybe they’re at the back of the house.”

  “Looks haunted,” said Ralph with a little grin.

  “That’s helpful.” Joel said, and then looked over his shoulder, as if someone was standing behind him.

  Frank rapped his knuckles three times on the door. Too loud in the silence. He waited, listening for movement inside the house.

  No response.

  He knocked again.

  Ralph stepped back and looked up at the upstairs windows. “Maybe the farmer’s squeezing one out.”

  “Let’s just go to the village,” said Joel.

  Frank stepped into the front hallway of the house.

  Joel was right behind him. “Farmers have shotguns, you know. He might think we’re burglars. We can’t just walk into someone’s house, even if the front door’s been left open.”

  They stopped in the middle of the hallway. Joel stood close to Frank. Magnus and Ralph paused at the doorway.

  Frank looked at the shadowed corners around him. Coats and jackets hung from a rack on the wall. Umbrellas and walking sticks collected in a stand. Two doorways led to a living room and a kitchen. A wooden staircase climbed into darkness. Wooden ceiling beams draped in cobwebs. Frank had a phobia of spiders ever since he’d left a glass of water by his bed overnight when he was a kid, and had woken in the morning, taken a sip of the water and realised too late that a spider had fallen into it and drowned. The spider’s legs had brushed his lips as he went to drink.

  He shivered at the memory.

  “Hello? We’re sorry to enter uninvited, but we’ve got a bit of a problem. We found an abandoned car nearby, wondered if the driver had come here...”

  No answer.

  Joel stood at the foot of the stairway, fidgeting with his hands. “Let’s get out of here. No one’s home.”

  “Joel’s right,” said Ralph. “They must be out somewhere.”

  “No,” said Frank. “Something doesn’t feel right.” He walked into the darkness of the living room and opened the curtains. Sudden grey light revealed a dirty and stained carpet. Peeling wallpaper. An old television with a layer of dust on it. A cold fireplace below a mantelpiece topped with clay figurines. There were photos of a middle-aged couple. No sign of life.

  Ralph flicked the light switch. “The power’s out. You think that’s the farmer’s wife in the photo?”

  “Could be his sister, but I doubt it,” said Frank.

  “Could be both.”

  “We’re from Somerset, mate. We’ve got the monopoly on inbreeding.”

  Frank and Ralph searched the rest of the house while Magnus and Joel stayed in the hallway. The back door had been left open. It looked out on a small garden with an allotment of cabbages and rhubarb. Drying towels flapped on a clothesline above a basket of damp washing.

  A distant thunderclap echoed around the fields.

  “Can we please leave?” Joel asked them as they returned inside.

  Ralph and Frank exchanged a look.

  “Might as well head to the village,” said Frank. “We’ll find a phone that works, call the police, and tell them about the abandoned car.”

  “Then we can go home?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At last. Let’s get out of here.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  They were two miles outside Wishford when a horse ran into the road from an adjacent field.

  Frank hit the brakes, but his response was tragically slow, and the car was already out of control and clipped the rear end of the horse. The tyres shrieked and the horse made a terrible whine of agony.

  The car swerved off the road, shuddering along the embankment, too fast, and crashed into an oak tree. Hard impact. Scream of metal. The bonnet buckled and flew open. The seat belt cut into Frank’s chest and his neck twinged sharply as he was pitched forward. The airbag deployed and cushioned him as the car jolted to a stop.

  He slumped in his seat. Steam rose from the engine. The smell of petrol and burnt rubber stung his eyes. The engine died.

  Frank blinked, groaning. The inside of his head danced and thumped. A jolt of adrenaline spiked his heartbeat.

  Joel rubbed his face with one trembling hand. Ralph and Magnus moaned from the backseat. Luckily they were all wearing seatbelts.

  Frank checked himself for injury. He moved his limbs, stretched his tendons and muscles. His chest was tight, so he used his inhaler and then took a deep breath of air.

  “Is everyone okay?” he said.

  Joel nodded at Frank but said nothing.

  “You two in the back okay?”

  Magnus gave a lethargic thumbs-up.

  “Yeah,” Ralph said. “Fucking hell. What the fuck was that?”

  “A horse,” Magnus replied. “Did you see it? It was injured.”
r />   “It was all cut up,” said Frank.

  *

  The horse, a white mare, had collapsed on the road. The men stood around her. She was still alive, but her back legs were broken.

  Frank gazed down at the horse. “I’m sorry.”

  The others looked at him.

  “It’s not your fault,” said Magnus.

  “Look at her,” said Ralph. “Poor girl.”

  Eyes bulbous with pain and fear, the mare made a pathetic mewling sound. She buckled and her front legs kicked. The men, apart from Ralph, stepped back.

  Something had torn several deep cuts into the horse’s left flank, revealing a glimpse of bone and flesh. There were flaps of ragged skin around the wounds and smears of blood on the road.

  “I broke her legs,” said Frank.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Magnus said. “Nothing you could have done about it.”

  “Looks like a wolf or a lion mauled it,” said Joel.

  Ralph shook his head. “Not in this country, mate.”

  “Might have escaped from a zoo.”

  “We should put her out of her misery,” said Ralph. “She’s lost too much blood. She’s suffering.”

  Magnus folded his arms and stepped back. “You want to kill it?”

  Ralph looked at him, then Frank, and nodded. “It’d be a mercy.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Ralph crouched and stroked the mare’s neck. “You won’t have to. I’ll do it.”

  The mare whined.

  “He’s right,” said Frank. “You sure you can do it, Ralph?”

  “I hate seeing animals suffer.”

  “It’ll have to be quick. What can we use?”

  “Is that crowbar still in the boot?”

  Frank fetched the crowbar and handed it over.

  Ralph stood over the stricken animal. The others watched him. The mare was silent now. He looked into her eyes and raised the crowbar.

  “You’ll have to hit her hard,” said Frank. “Horses have thick skulls. Make it quick.”

  Ralph hesitated. His eyes were damp.

  “Get it over and done with,” said Joel.

  The crowbar sagged in Ralph’s hands. “I can’t do it. I can’t kill her.”