The Last Plague (38 page)

     Frank stood over his Ralph’s remains and said a silent farewell to his friend. Then he turned towards the horizon. The ships were gone. There was only the sea. The waves were growing tall and violent.

     There was a storm coming.

     He hoped the storm wiped the land clean.

     Frank walked from the beach, heading inland. His heartbeat was slow and loud. He stumbled on rubbery legs. Sweat beaded on his skin. He passed through Sidmouth. The infected he encountered left him alone. He was one of them, of course. His body, even as it was weakening and dying, was changing. His skin was getting paler, almost translucent. The cries of the gulls were the screams of tortured men.

     He thought of Florence, and was grateful she had escaped. She was safe. Joel and Anya were safe. It was some consolation.

     He realised how stupid he’d been to think Florence was his daughter. To think she was Emily.

     She could have been his daughter, in a different life.

     But he was only a man and there was only one life. And if he lived, he would become something else. He walked back to the camp, thinking of Catherine. He would be with her again. He would find her.

     The camp was ruined. The two coaches left behind had been smashed and battered. Bodies on the ground. Crows picked over the cadavers. Frank could smell the rot and slaughter still in the air.

     There were still some infected here; the stragglers and those too weak to walk away. Wretched specimens being absorbed by the mud and filth.

     Captain Shaw was sitting on the ground against a scrum of corpses, staring at the skin peeling from his hands. His bones had changed and shifted so that his body was an ill-fitting sack over them. He wheezed and groaned. He had paled to ivory. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. He sagged like a pile of old clothes.

     Shaw’s naked stomach had birthed a colony of red writhing cilia. A yolky substance dripped from the corners of his mouth. Small, wet spikes were emerging from his scalp, like a crown of thorns.

     Shaw looked at Frank and whimpered for mercy.

     Frank took a pistol from a dead soldier’s hand. He went over to Shaw and shot him in the head. Shaw’s body quivered once then fell still. Frank dropped the pistol.

     There was movement out by the edge of the camp towards the north side where the pits had been carved into the earth.

     A little girl, red-haired and pale. It wasn’t Florence.

     It was Emily.

     Frank smiled.

     She beckoned to him.

     Frank went to her.

     As he approached Emily she turned and started towards the pits, glancing back at him. He followed. She led him to the pits. He thought he could hear her voice inside his head. Emily halted by one of the pits and looked down. Then she turned back to him. She smiled again. She pointed into the pit.

     He looked into the earth. When he looked back at Emily, she had vanished.

     Frank went down into the pit, amongst the scorched remains. He fell to his knees. He searched the pile of bodies as thunder roared overhead. He searched while his heartbeat counted down the time he had left, as his blood leaked from his body and he grew weaker.

     Darkness closed in around him. He sensed Emily nearby, watching him. He remembered his friends and the world that was now lost.

     
I am still Frank Hooper, and I will die as a man, not a monster.

     When he found what was left of his wife, in the midst of warped limbs and eyeless faces, he curled his body beside her and wrapped himself around her bones. Trace of red in her blackened hair. Her skull grinned, pleased to see him. Her spindly fingers brushed against his skin. She accepted him, welcomed him into her embrace as he produced her wedding band from his pocket and slipped it onto her ring finger. He put his mouth to hers. His lips opened. Her scent was smoke and old things. She tasted of ashes.

     He closed his eyes.

     His final thoughts ran through his mind.

     Humanity was a dying flame, its passing barely noted by an unsympathetic, indifferent universe. The Earth would have new masters. The constellations would still burn and species greater than Man would emerge to grow and die in the dark reaches of the cosmos. 

     Frank went to sleep, content in his heart that he would never wake up.

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