The Last Plague (34 page)

     Anya nodded. Her face was sad and flushed pink, her mouth a thin crease. “Oh. Poor Magnus. I always thought he was a good man.”

     “Yes, he was,” said Joel. “I miss him. We all miss him.”

     “But the rest of you made it,” Anya said. She smiled at them, but the smile faltered at the corners of her mouth when she looked at Frank.

     Frank looked at her. “Where is Catherine?”

     Something changed in Anya’s face.

     “I’m sorry, Frank,” Anya said, her voice low and trembling from her throat. “I’m sorry.”

     “Why are you sorry?”

* * *

Anya led them to the northern perimeter of the camp. Frank’s legs were shaking cartilage and bone. He looked absently down at his feet as the ground sucked at him; his shoes were caked with mud. A creeping dread was filling his body.

     The air smelled of rot and smoke, meat and ash.

     Anya turned to him, apologetic and silent. Joel was next to her, and he was slack, pale and morose. Ralph and Florence looked past Frank, out to where the land was mutilated and burnt. The scorched earth where figures meandered.

     Frank looked beyond the fence. He placed both hands against the wire. Something was unravelling slowly in his guts and he expected it to come spilling out of him in a slow, slick, slopping bundle. His eyes were stinging. He bit his tongue and wanted to taste his blood.

     “I’m sorry, Frank,” Anya said. He barely noticed her until she handed him Catherine’s wedding ring. He snatched it from Anya’s hand, holding it between his fingers.

     “She’s dead,” he said, not believing the words he was saying.

     “Yes, Frank,” Anya said.

     He stared at the ring. It was warm. His last piece of Catherine. 

     The smoke. The stench. The craters in the ground. Pits where the flames writhed like nesting serpents. Beyond the fence was where the corpses were taken; where the dead were put to rest.

     Where Catherine had been put to rest.

     Frank swallowed. “Catherine’s out there.” His voice was papery, the words swept away on the breeze.

     Anya said, “The soldiers take the bodies out there to be burned in the pits. I wanted to give Catherine a proper burial, but the soldiers wouldn’t let me. They said that every corpse had to be burned in the pits.”

     Frank watched the men push bodies into the ground. The men were masked and wearing boiler suits, boots and gloves. They were carrying spades and shovels. A mechanical digger punched into the earth and scooped up dirt, piled it into a mound as big as a house. Soldiers guarded the gravediggers, keeping watch upon the grey land.

     The dead were piled up and dowsed with petrol. A man lit a match and tossed it into the pit. Flame took to life and roared. The smell of burning flesh.

     A horrible, corrupting stench slithered into Frank and coiled around his spine, filling his lungs with black vines that would wrap themselves like twine around his organs. He thought of Catherine being thrown into a pit like a dead animal. Like a stray dog put to sleep and dumped. He thought of those men carrying her to the edge of the pit. Maybe the men had joked whilst doing so; maybe they had said a prayer; maybe they hadn’t said a word. He thought of those men counting to three and adding her to a growing heap of cadavers. He thought of her body falling until it came to rest alongside the other dead, her limbs finding the shape of those around her, entwining with other dead limbs, becoming a patchwork of meat and bone and skin. Dead eyes staring at the sky. He thought of her face amongst the other dead faces, and if she had a peaceful look on her face as she was covered with petrol and set alight.

     What had been her last thought? What had been the last thing to go through her mind before she died? Did she die wondering if her husband was dead? Did she die mourning him?

     All this way to reach her, to find her…

     He wondered what she looked like now; a charred, crooked and blistered thing.

     Tears struggled down his face; he tasted them, bitter and pathetic. There was an emptiness spreading inside his stomach, gnawing at him with blunt teeth at his soft vulnerable places. A womb of darkness that was poison and anger and all things sickening. His heart was a hammer. His throat tightened until he was sure he would choke. His lungs were heavy and sodden like sacks of water weighed down with stones.

     He turned to Anya. She met his gaze.

     “How did it happen?” How did she die?”

     Anya didn’t look away. Her lips moved. No sound. She wiped at her glistening eyes.

     “How did she die?!” Frank screamed. “How did it happen?”

     “It was to save her from pain. A mercy.”

     “What?”

     “It happened on our first day here.” Anya paused, took a deep breath.

     “Go on,” said Frank, urging her.

     “There was an attack. The monsters got into the camp, somehow. They caught her; two of them. They were…biting her. She was crying. Bleeding. The soldiers shot her to spare her suffering. They didn’t have a choice.”

     He wiped his mouth. A vague sense of surrealism overcame him. He was hearing about how his wife died; he couldn’t believe it. It had to be a mistake or a bad joke. A trick. Yeah, it had to be a trick. He eyed Anya, blinking away a dull pain in his eyes. He thought he could hear someone laughing at him.

     “So that’s it? That’s how she died? Just like that?”

     Anya muttered, “Yes.” She looked away from him.

     Frank’s arms fell to his sides. Dead weight. He felt dizzy. His heart was palpitating. Insects crawled up his spine.

     And then it all just faded away. Every single feeling. He lowered his head, stared at the ground, and closed his eyes.

     Then someone was holding his hand.

     He opened his eyes.

     Florence was beside him, offering a porcelain, wan smile. Her skin was warm and soft in the cold air. He accepted her hand, tightening his own around her small fingers, and he tried to return her smile with all of his remaining will, but couldn’t. He was exhausted and battered, like something dragged for miles over jagged rocks and sharpened stone.

     He wanted to lie down. He wanted to shut everything out and curl up in a dark corner and forget all that had gone before. He was beaten.

     There were gunshots.

     Frank and the others looked beyond the fence. A small pack of infected was running towards the men working at the pits. Monsters inhabiting barely-human disguises. Men and women, lurching and malformed, hunched and twisted into nightmarish creations from the minds of dark dreamers.

     The soldiers shot them down. They sprawled on the ground like beached marine life. Some of the soldiers approached the bodies, inspecting and prodding them with booted feet. They would be taken to the pits and thrown amongst the other bodies.

     “More and more infected come each day,” said Anya, her voice quiet. “More of them attack the camp each day. They sense us. They know we are here. They come in packs. Some come alone. Lonely ones who come here to die. But, soon, there will be a swarm of them, I think. Like an army.”

     “A swarm,” said Ralph. “Fuck.”

     “Are more of them coming?” Joel asked.

     Frank watched the soldiers collect the dead infected. “Let them come.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

The next few days passed slowly. Food and water rations were meagre. Every person stank of dirt, sweat and filth. The latrines overflowed, filling the camp with the rotten stench of human waste. More refugees arrived at the camp, exhausted and traumatised people with nowhere else to go. They huddled in small groups waiting for the soldiers and the volunteers to offer them aid. People were waiting to die, or waiting to be saved. Some didn’t care, it seemed. Some of the people were broken, gently fading away without a struggle. They were broken long before they’d reached the camp.

     Sparse packs of infected attacked the perimeter each night. The threat of them was constant. Every attack was repelled and the infected shot down like wild dogs.

     More were on their way, said the rumours drifting around the stinking shelters and tents.

     The refugees were the sheep and the soldiers were the shepherd dogs. The infected were the wolves. It rained every day. Puddles formed into large pools of dirty brown water. The ground became boggy as the camp turned into a mud hole, like Glastonbury Festival in the old days. The fires in the corpse-pits still burned. People still died. Medical supplies were running low. People got sick and spent their days confined to the beds in the medical tent.

     The refugees were told that the Royal Navy were sending ships to evacuate them. Devonport, the home of the navy’s amphibious fleet, was overrun with infected. Gone. Wiped out.

     The ships would arrive soon. Salvation was close, it seemed. It was hard to believe, and no one did believe except for the few still hoping and praying for deliverance.

     Joel was one of those people.

     Four days had passed. It was raining again, great droves of it lashing down, turning the ground into slurry. There was thunder far away. The wind blew cold and sharp. The wind had claws. Joel was hungry. He had only eaten half a chocolate bar all day. The light was already fading. He held Anya’s hand as they walked back to their tent. He would never leave her again.

     Joel pulled back the canvas flap.

     The others were in the tent. Ralph and Florence were playing an improvised game of Snap. A married couple, Ross and Michelle, were huddled in one corner, silent with heads bowed. Stuart Lenkman, a professor of biology before the outbreak, was sitting on the ground staring at his hands. A single mother called Donna cradled her baby son in her arms, cooing to him as he cried. The baby always cried. Joel had forgotten the boy’s name. And if he was honest he didn’t care. There were other people here, and he didn’t know their names. He didn’t want to know.

     He was so tired he could sleep standing up. His eyelids were drooping. He hadn’t slept properly since they had left the holiday cottage. How long ago was that? Six days? A week? Ten days? Two weeks? Could have been a year and he wouldn’t have been sure.

     The inside of the tent was cramped. The constant poke of elbows and knees against his body. The smell of bad breath, farts, baby shit and body odour. Stale sweat and old socks. He could hear people whispering in the adjacent tent, even above the pattering drizzle, so close were the tents crammed together. More refugees arrived every day. Joel wondered when the soldiers would start turning people away.

     “Where’s Frank?” Joel asked.

     Only Florence looked up. “He’s gone for a walk.”

     “Again?”

     “Yes.”

     He turned to Anya. “I’m going to find him, see if he’s okay.”

     Anya nodded. “I’ll stay here. I’m going to try to get some sleep.” She kissed him.

     Joel went back out into the rain.

* * *

Joel found Frank at the northern perimeter staring at the plague pits. His hood was raised over his head. He was statuesque. The rain was coming down harder, and the wind picked it up and blasted it into Joel’s face. He wiped his face dry, tasted the rain in his mouth, on his tongue.

     He looked at the sky and wondered if one of the giant sky-things was up there, watching the camp, waiting for the right time to descend and crush it and the poor bastards sheltering here.

     Joel spat. Whatever those things were, they were not gods. They were not even fit to be compared to his God. His God was all-loving and merciful and kind.

     
But does He exist, Joel?
asked a little voice secreted at the back of his head like an entrenched parasite.
Are you sure that He exists? Do you still believe in Him? I’m not sure you still do.

     “Piss off,” he muttered.

     Maybe your faith is wearing thin.

     “Go fuck yourself.”

     We’ll see about that.

     He shook his head. The voice didn’t go away, only faded in volume. He walked over to Frank, clearing his throat to let him know he was there. Frank didn’t react.

     Joel stood beside him, looking out through the fence as the breeze picked up drifts of ash and soot from the mass graves and made them into swarms that tainted the sky. It was desolation. No one was at the pits.

     It was a wasteland, scorched and ruined. Poisoned.

     “Hey, mate,” said Joel.

     “Hey.” Frank’s voice was quiet. His hands were in his pockets. Overhead, gulls and crows performed aerial duels over scraps of food and rubbish. If Joel closed his eyes and listened very, very carefully, he could hear the sea. He had always loved the sea, ever since his parents had taken him on daytrips to Weymouth and Seaton when he was a boy.

     His parents were with God now. No suffering for them. No pain. For the first time since they had died, he was glad they were dead. He was glad for that maniac in the stolen Porsche who had run them off the road. He was glad they had died together.

     He almost envied them.

     “You alright, mate?” asked Joel.

     “Yeah.”

     “We’re worried about you.”

     “I’m fine.”

     “You’re not.”

     “I don’t care if you believe me.”

     Joel didn’t reply. He hugged himself against the cold.

     Frank said, “I want to go out there and see if I can find her.”

     Joel turned to him. Frank was staring at the pits.

     “The soldiers won’t let you go out there unless you’re on grave-digging detail. You know that.”

     “I’ll do that, then.”