by Peter Hall
By late afternoon, in a rare moment of consciousness, Cal was surprised to still be alive. The resilience of the human body was amazing. He remembered reading about victims being crucified and lasting three days on the cross. They must have yearned for the release of death, and Cal found himself regretting declining Davidson’s offer of a quick end.
Thoughts of the previous evening tortured him. The cries of pain from Ken. The smell of Susan’s burnt flesh. The pitiful sobbing of Juliet. Cal imagined the horror the women must be living through right now and the many tomorrows to come. He had failed them all miserably. If there was a Hell, he deserved to spend a long time roasting in it.
As he drifted in and out of consciousness, reality and delusion became confused. The edges became blurry, and he found he could visualise almost anything and make it seem real.
For a time, he imagined hearing voices calling out. At first, the sounds were faint, but became louder and seemingly closer. Cal’s mind dreamed of the time he met Juliet, yet those damn voices intruded and clashed with his recollections.
The voices annoyed him, preventing him from focusing on the wonderful vision—that time when he had seen Juliet from behind, before she realised he was there. Her lovely fair hair. Her gorgeous body. He had fancied her from the moment he saw her. An overwhelming tide of sadness washed over him, and for a second, brought lucidity. He opened his eyes and shook his head, trying to concentrate on reality and drag himself from the comforting dream world.
Yes… the shouting was still there… fainter now, coming from the direction of the road. He listened intently, his last reserves of adrenaline bringing clarity.
Voices. Several voices. Different people. One male, one female?
“Hellooooooo?”
“Hello there.”
“Is anybody there?”
The last sounded like a little girl.
Cal tried to speak, yet nothing came out. The shouting moved further away. He could barely hear them. A deep breath and another try. A croak sounded, nothing more.
Mouth so dry. So tired. Want to sleep. What was I doing? The voices!
He took several more deep breaths and opened up the gash on his chest. The pain concentrated his mind.
“Here!”
There, I did it. Did they hear? Again.
“Here!”
God that hurt. Again.
“Over here!” Exhaustion overcame him, and his head slumped. Silence returned. The voices were no more. Maybe he imagined them after all.
The bushes in the hedgerow rustled, and a man forced his way through them.
“Oh my Lord! He’s here, we’ve found him, Joan. By God, we’ve found him. Don’t let Chrissy through, keep her back. She mustn’t see this.”
Cal raised his head and saw two figures coming towards him. A man and a woman. His eyes would not focus, and he wondered if any of this was real. Unable to fight off the blackness any longer, his reserves finally exhausted, he passed out.
Chapter 2
Beyond The Yellow Death
“Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.”
Vittorio Alfieri (1749-1803)
When Kim finally awoke after the fever passed, she felt weak, drained, aching in many places and so very, very, thirsty. Her pyjamas stuck to her skin with dried sweat. She had no idea what time, or even day it was, only that it felt a long time since her mother had last come into the room. Outside, the light was dull and grey.
Her first thought, after the realisation that she had actually lived through the Yellow Death, was Katy. She struggled out of bed and found that standing up was a bad idea, so crawled to the landing. Using the door frame as a support, she tentatively pulled herself up, taking several breaths to steady herself. She walked to Katy’s bedroom using the wall to keep her balance. The effort made her head pound. By the time she had crossed the landing, she was gasping, but a rising sense of panic kept her going.
It was only then she noticed just how quiet the house was, not even a ticking from the wall clock in the hall. It was never this quiet. It was more than quiet, there was an eerie stillness, as if the house itself had died.
Katy’s bedroom door was slightly ajar. She pushed it further open, but did not go in. There was a lump under the bedclothes. A feeling of cold dread washed over her and her knees almost gave way. Already some part of her sensed that there was no life in the room.
Kim walked into the bedroom and stood over Katy’s bed. A rush of adrenaline gave her renewed strength. The sheets were pulled up over Katy’s head and for several seconds, Kim was frozen in time.
Right at that moment, nothing was certain. Maybe Katy was not even in the bed. Maybe she was lying there pretending to be asleep and, when Kim pulled back the sheet, she would jump up and shout “fooled you”. There were any number of possibilities, but as Kim slowly pulled back the sheet, she took all those possibilities away, leaving only the awful truth.
Katy was at peace, cuddling Panda. At first, there was confusion. When Kim developed the fever herself, Katy was not showing any signs of being ill. She had vague memories of her mother assuring her that Katy was fine. How could she now be dead? There must be some mistake. The scene that Kim could see before her did not match with the facts in her brain.
Then she noticed the slip of paper on the bedside table propped up against the lamp. It was her mother’s handwriting:
Dear Kim,
Forgive me for deceiving you. I did what I thought was best. I hope some day you will understand. Please find the courage to go on living – someone has to carry on, we can’t let it all end like this.
God keep you safe.
Mom
As the moments passed, the full horror of the truth sank in. She wanted to cry, but her body was a dried husk and could spare no tears. She climbed on the bed and curled around Katy.
A long time later, Kim found the strength to go downstairs and enter the living room where her mother lay on the couch with a book on her lap, looking as if she was taking an afternoon nap. Kim stood still for several seconds, repeating the process of matching what her eyes told her, with what her mind believed should be the case. It felt as though she had gone to bed one night and while she was asleep, everyone she had loved had taken ill and died. It was too much to bear and she collapsed on the floor and gave in to uncontrollable wracking tearless sobs.
Much later still, she staggered zombie-like into the kitchen and opened a carton of pineapple juice. Katy had loved pineapple juice. She sat and sipped the entire carton, then did the same to a second carton, while she tried to figure out what the hell to do now.
Acknowledgements
What started out as a solitary project turned into a family collaboration and is all the better for it. Suzanne, David, Seb, and Jenny worked through various drafts. This lead to heated family discussions where my carefully crafted plot was pulled to pieces and rebuilt.
The award-winning author—Ian W. Sainsbury—very kindly gave me feedback on the early chapters of this book at a critical time.
Special mention to my beta readers and fellow writers: Peter Sevenoaks, Rob Wood and Meredith Hurst, for brilliant insights.
I’m also grateful for the suggestions received from these Facebook groups:
# SPF Community
# SPF Genius
# On Writing
# South West Authors and Writers (UK)
# Rage Against The Manuscript
The writing community has proved to be amazingly supportive—if only everyone in the world was a writer.
~~~~~
My Website: www.peterhallauthor.com
I welcome any comments or questions from my readers and the best way to submit these is to send an email to [email protected].
I reply to all enquiries, but please be patient—I do have a life. On my website, you can sign up for my newsletter and get exclusive access to two free bonus books.
Yellow Death: Arrival
Book One of the Yellow Death Chro
nicles
First published 2021
Copyright © Peter R Hall 2021
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Original text written and formatted using Scrivener
Cover artwork by Jenny Thorne: www.jennythorne.co.uk
The remaining books in this trilogy are:
# Yellow Death: Aftermath
# Yellow Death: Atonement
Further books in the series are being planned . . . .
For more information, email the author at [email protected]
Website: https://peterhallauthor.com/
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