The Last Plague (8 page)

     “What’re you doing, Ralph? Almost scared me to death.”

     “Sorry.” He held up his hands. “I’ll wait here for you, mate.”

     Magnus nodded. “Cheers.”

     “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

     “Same here.”

     Magnus started up the stairs.

     Up there, beyond the wooden hill, the darkness waited for him and seemed to thicken in anticipation.

* * *

Magnus emptied his bladder. He didn’t flush the toilet; he was too worried about making any loud noises. He closed the toilet lid, sat down upon it. Looked at his trembling hands. He thought of the thing he’d seen in the sky. The thing – the presence – had touched him, he was sure of it.

     He held his face in his hands. Took off his glasses, rubbed his tired eyes and squeezed them shut. When he opened them, white spots danced in his vision. He exhaled through gritted teeth. He stared at the floor until his eyes dried and his vision cleared.

     The bathroom was a small, neat space. No mould in the damp, shadowed places where moisture gathered. The roll of toilet paper was nearly used up. There was a hint of bleach in the air.

     Magnus walked to the sink. A child’s toothbrush in a glass jar. Wisps of matted hair around the plughole. He squirted liquid soap on to his palms, rubbed his hands together. He rinsed away the lather then dried his hands on a towel.

     He stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. The reflection of a dead-eyed man with narrow shoulders and a glass jaw. A ghost. Shadows under his eyes. Every wrinkle and crease in his face was starkly visible in the torchlight. The stress of being married to Debbie, of her constant demands and insecurities, was ageing him. He patted his stomach; he had a paunch. A pair of soft man-breasts developing slowly. He was skinny everywhere else. His bones felt frail and brittle, yet his limbs felt heavy, as if they were full of water.

     “Getting old,” he muttered.

     He used to play football for the village team each week, along with Frank and Joel; Ralph was too lazy to play football so he just watched from the touchline, shouting abuse and grunting advice. They had been young men then. Before his sons were born. Before Debbie’s ‘condition’ had fully infested her mind and made her a burden.

     Good old days, he thought. Nostalgia was like a drug.

     He almost laughed, but then remembered Frank was out there.

     They should have been out there searching for him.

     The ceiling creaked. He looked up, listened. He placed his hands on the sink.

     There it was again. Pressure upon wood and plaster.

     Something in the attic. But Ralph had said they checked the house for anyone alive.

     They had forgotten about the attic.

     A dull ache formed at the front of his skull. He spat into the sink, watched his phlegm dribble into the plughole. He was relieved to see it was bloodless.

     More creaking, moving away from him. Light, quick footfalls. Something small. Magnus’s eyes tracked them.

     He pointed the torch at the ceiling, followed the footfalls out of the bathroom and onto the landing.

     The footfalls stopped above him, next to the closed attic hatch.

     The wooden cover on the hatch shifted with a quiet scrape. Magnus tensed. The torchlight trembled upon the ceiling. A thin line of darkness appeared at the hatch. The smell of dust and neglect came to him, and the undeniable sense he was being watched, scrutinised, maybe even evaluated as a threat; or even worse, something to be hunted and chased.

     The dark line widened. The hatch cover moved. He saw a glint of gleaming eyes and a face that was all bone and sallow skin.

     Magnus turned and stumbled down the stairs.

     Ralph was waiting for him. “What’s wrong?”

     “Something up there. Something in the attic.”

     Ralph looked up the stairs. “We didn’t check the attic.”

     “What’s wrong?” Joel asked from the living room.

     There was a soft thud on the landing. The creak of a door.

    “We woke someone up,” said Magnus. 

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The woman was on Frank’s heels, her ragged panting in his ears, draining the strength from his body. Part of him just wanted to fall down and let her take him.

     He didn’t look back.

     Almost full dark. Almost night. He ran past empty gardens and dark houses. His legs throbbed and screamed. His chest grew tighter as he went. Fear and adrenaline were a chemical mixture clouding his mind. His heartbeat was a metallic drumming in his ears.

     The woman screamed. He felt her foul hot breath on the back of his neck.

     Frank cried out. His body was jelly.

     He stumbled and tripped on a patch of uneven road, twisted and fell onto his back; the woman scrambled onto him, very eager and very hungry. He held the crowbar under her jaw and pushed to stop her from snapping her head forwards. Her mouth opened. Dull ivory teeth. He caught a whiff of hellish gingivitis. Her tongue was like a worm feeling for somewhere to burrow. She radiated a terrible, stinking heat. Her body was a sack of sharp bones straddling him. His cock went hard.

     The woman tried to claw at his eyes. He drew back the crowbar and hit her in the face. She fell back and Frank scrambled away from her, breathing hard, shifting awkwardly on his feet like an amateur fighter.

     The woman was on her knees. Skin came away from her legs, peeled by the road surface. She hissed at him through broken teeth. Her nose was smashed and broken, blood dribbling into her mouth and down her chin. Frank hadn’t meant to hit her that hard. He felt guilt and shame for hurting a woman.

     “I’m sorry,” he said.

     She began to get to her feet.

     “Please stop,” Frank said. “This can end now. It doesn’t have to be like this. You need medical attention.”

     She ignored him.

     “Please stay down. Stay back.” His pleading tone made no difference to her.

     The woman stood. She opened her mouth, her jaws clicking. Her face was monstrous in the growing dark. She took a step towards him, a great tension building in her body. A low growl emanated from her throat.

     “Don’t come any closer,” said Frank, retreating two steps. “I’ve already warned you. I don’t want to hurt you. I want to help you.”

     She lurched towards him, arms outstretched.

     It happened so quickly. Time seemed to speed up. All he could see was her leering bloodied face coming towards him.

     Frank hit her again with the crowbar. She collapsed at his feet. The back of her skull hit the tarmac with a dull, porcelain crack. Blood pooled underneath her head.

     The world went askew. Gravity pressed down on Frank’s shoulders. A sense of surrealism washed over him.

     “I had to defend myself,” he said. “I had to…”

     The woman wasn’t moving. Her eyes remained open, staring into his face.

     “I didn’t mean to hurt you; it was an accident. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

     He covered his mouth with one hand. His eyes stung with tears. He muttered and cursed under his breath, shaking his head slowly.

     No matter how disturbed and insane she had been, she was a woman. A human being. And he had killed her.

     “What have I done?” he whispered, staring at the woman’s cooling corpse, until the sharp cold air bit at his face and he regained his senses.

     Noises drifted towards him over the gentle wind. He looked around the street.

     Shapes and scurrying forms were emerging from their dark holes and silent places, gibbering and hungry.

     They saw Frank.

     Frank ran.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Ralph halted on the penultimate step and shone the torchlight into the landing’s darkness. The attic hatch was open. He breathed slowly and quietly. Magnus tensed behind him, holding a brass poker. Joel was waiting at the foot of the stairs.

     Ralph stepped upon the landing. The open hatch gaped like a mouth above him. He imagined something plucking him from the landing and hauling him up into the dark.

     “Look,” said Magnus, his voice barely audible.

     The door to the bedroom, which seemed to be the boy’s judging by posters of superheroes upon it, was open just enough for someone to slip through.

     “It was closed before I came downstairs.”

     “I see it,” Ralph whispered. He looked at Magnus and nodded. Magnus returned the gesture. A muscle twitched under his left eye.

     Ralph placed his hand on the door. He smiled weakly at the Spider-Man poster. Spider-Man had been his favourite superhero as a kid.

     He pushed the door open; a low creak, and aimed his torch into the room. Magnus did the same. Ralph paused in the doorway. The room looked like how he had left it when he searched the house earlier. A shelf full of comics.
Shrek
wallpaper. Posters of Harry Potter, Lionel Messi, and David Beckham. Action figures scattered on a desk. A few books. A box of Lego.

     Only one thing was different.

     “Oh shit,” said Magnus.

     There was a huddled shape on the bed, underneath the
Star Wars
duvet cover.

     The shape was trembling in the torchlight.

     Ralph and Magnus looked at each other. Magnus’s Adam’s apple bobbed and moved. He chewed on his bottom lip. Ralph stepped into the room and Magnus followed.

     They approached the bed. Ralph felt his heart try to climb his throat.

     The shape under the duvet jerked, as if hit by a spasm. The two men froze. Ralph could see Magnus’s hands shaking. Ralph motioned for Magnus to pull back the duvet so he would be ready with the knife if there was something…
nasty
underneath.

     Magnus reached slowly for the duvet. He gently took hold of it between a thumb and forefinger.

     Ralph raised his knife.

     Magnus pulled back the covers.

     A little boy was on the bed. His skin was almost transparent and his eyes were too large within his face. He wore only a white vest and underpants. He shivered in the torchlight. His dark eyes found Ralph.

     Magnus stepped back, his face quivering. “Look at him. Fucking hell.”

     Ralph couldn’t speak. He ran the torch beam over the boy’s bony, white limbs. A narrow chest. Thinning, coal-black hair.

     The boy opened his mouth, and a pale fluid wet his lips, spooling on the mattress. A wheezy sigh. The boy had the look of disease. Ralph had seen black-and-white photos taken of inmates rescued from Nazi death camps at the end of World War Two. This boy could have stepped out from any of those old photos.

     “What’s wrong with him?” said Magnus, as if Ralph would know the answer. “What happened to him?”

     Ralph shook his head. “I wish I knew.” He covered his nose. The boy stank of vinegar-and-eggs.

     Magnus said, “I think his parents left him here. Maybe he started to…
change,
so they fled. Poor little bastard.”

     “Yeah.”

     “Do you know CPR?” Magnus asked him.

     Ralph shook his head.

     The boy stared at Ralph. His breathing slowed gradually until it stopped. His eyes glazed over, fixing onto Ralph until what little light had resided there was gone. Ralph considered checking the boy’s pulse. He didn’t.

     “It’s as if he went to bed just so he could die,” said Ralph.

     “But what did he die of?”

     “Maybe the same thing that was wrong with the woman we found.”

     “It’s fucked up,” Magnus muttered.

     Ralph averted his gaze to the floor. “I wish we knew his name. No one should die without a name, especially not a child.”

     Magnus covered the boy with the duvet and retreated quickly. “What if the boy’s contagious?”

     Ralph didn’t answer.

     They returned to the landing.

     Ralph looked up at the attic hatch. “So what was he doing up there? Hiding?”

     “We’ll never know,” said Magnus. “There’s no need to know. Let’s just go back downstairs.”

     “Someone should go up there,” Ralph said.

     Magnus blinked. “What? Are you mental?”

     “Think about it. Do you want to go downstairs knowing there might be someone else lurking in the attic? There’s that thing outside that crashed against the door, and the thing that was shrieking when we first arrived in the village. Those
things
, whatever they are, are outside. We need to make sure that we’re safe
inside
the house.”

     Magnus sighed. “I’m not having you on my shoulders. You’re too heavy. We’ll need a stepladder to get up there.”

     “Not necessarily,” said Ralph.

     “What do you mean?”

     “You get on my shoulders.”

     “Fuck off.”

     “We have to know if the attic’s empty. We might have to stay here for the night. Otherwise one of us will have to stand guard here all night.”

     Magnus looked up at the hatch. “Bollocks.”

     “Come on then.” 

     “How do you wanna do this?”

     “Either you stand on my shoulders or I give you a lift up with my hands.”

     “You choose.”

     “I’ll lift you up.”

     “Okay. Don’t let me fall.”

     “Don’t you trust me?”

     “No. Not at all.”

     Ralph put down his knife, then crouched beneath the hatch and cupped his hands. “Ready?”

     “No.” Magnus stepped forward, put his right foot into Ralph’s hands, and his other foot on Ralph’s right shoulder.

     Ralph took his weight and wobbled; shifted his feet to steady himself. His fingers hurt under Magnus’s cheap trainers.