The Last Plague (18 page)

     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.”

     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. Nothing 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.”