“Okay,” he said. “I’ll leave you to it.”
He walked the corridors of the house for a while, looking for any sign of Florence. But there were none and he realised he had lost Florence for good.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The constellations faded with the first shades of light in the sky. Fire bled upon the eastern horizon.
Morse stood on the driveway, arms folded, the MP5 hanging over his shoulders. His ears chimed with tinnitus. Beyond the perimeter fence, the village was silent and a thin fog obscured the fields. He imagined he was the last person left alive in an empty world. It wasn’t hard to picture on mornings like this. He’d read a book a few years ago, before the outbreak, about an astronaut stranded on Mars after his crew had left him behind. The book had deeply affected him at the time.
Loneliness and getting old had scared him all of his life. How many years left for him? How many sunrises remained?
I’m sorry, Florence. I’m sorry I couldn’t find you.
He should have kept one of the men alive, for interrogation. But the anger and the urge to kill had consumed him.
Someone approached behind him on the gravel. He swivelled his head slightly and placed one hand on his gun. Violet and Tomas stopped and regarded him. He turned towards them.
“Are you leaving, Morse?” Tomas said.
“Why do you ask?”
“We want to go with you,” said Violet. “We can help you.”
“How?”
Tomas scratched his eyepatch. “Violet told me about the girl. Florence, is it?”
“Yeah, what about her?”
“She has red hair, right?”
“That’s right.”
“I think the Order brought her here.”
Morse stepped towards Tomas. “You’ve seen her?”
“Yes, a girl. Red hair. Your Florence.”
A frisson of hope in Morse’s chest; a sliver of dread, too, at what the men might have done to her in this terrible house. “Did they put her in one of the rooms, like the women? Did they…?”
“She only stayed for a few hours and then some other men took her away in a car. I think I know where they took Florence.”
“Where?”
“A place called Black Heddon, where they have an outpost. They said I would have to go there one day.”
“Where is this place?” Morse said.
“Many miles,” Tomas replied. “But we have the van, so we can make it. I can show you on map.”
“We want to come with you,” said Violet, folding her arms.
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t ask me that if you knew what they did to me and the other women.”
“The countryside is teeming with the infected,” said Morse. “It’s not safe out there.”
She held his gaze. “I don’t care. I’m not staying here.”
Morse looked at Tomas. “What about you?”
“I am in your debt,” said Tomas. “I help you in return.”
“You’re sure you know where they’ve taken Florence?”
“Black Heddon is all I know about,” Tomas replied. “I can drive the van. We have map. You ride shotgun, yeah?”
Morse glanced at him then Violet, grinding his teeth in his skull. “Fair enough. Sounds like a half-decent plan.”
“One thing before we go,” said Violet.
Morse looked at her. “What?”
“We should bury Freya. She deserves that, at least.”
*
They dug a grave for Freya below a towering oak at the far end of the back garden. They wrapped her body in linen and lowered her into the earth. It didn’t take long to shovel the loose soil back into the grave and pat the surface flat. Then they stood around the grave as the sun rose. Violet recited a poem. Once she was done and had said goodbye, they left the grave and returned to the house.
*
Tomas packed what little food and water there was into the van while Morse gathered the men’s weapons and any spare ammunition into a holdall. Violet sat Karen in a chair near the front doorway and placed a blanket over her shoulders. Karen stared at the floor.
Violet walked over to Morse. “I can use a gun.”
He frowned and appraised her for a moment, then handed her a pistol in a holster with and two spare magazines. “I guess you survived this long somehow.”
She attached the holster to her waist and stashed the magazines in her pocket.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Morse said.
She turned away and looked over her shoulder at him. “I won’t.”
*
Violet helped Karen climb into the van. Tomas had laid a covering of blankets in the back so the women wouldn’t have to sit on the hard floor. Once Violet and Karen were settled, Tomas shut the back doors and walked around to the cab.
Morse carried the bag of guns and climbed into the front, taking his place in the passenger seat. The map was laid on the dashboard. Tomas turned the key in the ignition and the engine started; he tapped the accelerator and listened to it growl. Then he released the handbrake and the van shot forward down the driveway.
They left the house behind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Morse watched the village recede in the wing mirror as Tomas negotiated between car wrecks in the road. Violet and Karen sat in the back, huddled in blankets. No one spoke. The air smelled of sour breath and stale sweat.
Black clouds pulsed with lightning in the western sky.
The infected in the fields screamed and cried at the van as it passed them. Morse tried the radio, but there was nothing broadcasting out there. Not nearby, anyway. He thought about the outpost at Esbjerg.
The van’s engine spluttered for a moment; Morse and Tomas exchanged a look. Tomas tried to hide the anxiety on his face. He gave a little smile. “I checked oil and water and tyre pressure. Everything good. Only problem is the roads. If they are in very bad condition, it will be hard to drive. Lucky the van is big and tough. Big wheels. Should be fine. I think it will be fine.”
“Fair enough. Can you drive okay with one eye?”
“Of course. Only need one eye to see.”
Morse checked the map and traced his finger from the road they were on all the way down the country to Black Heddon. He chewed his lip and frowned. It should be simple enough to get there, but in his experience something always went wrong. He hoped his fears were unwarranted.
They followed the signs for the A697 and passed abandoned houses on the way. Country roads were littered with the belongings of refugees. Makeshift graves on grass verges. He swallowed down a knot of anxiety in his throat and looked back at Violet, and she offered him a nervous smile from her place next to Karen.
Tomas guided the van around deteriorating potholes and widening cracks, and parts of the road where mud banks had collapsed and spilled onto the tarmac. Overhanging trees blocked the dim light and threw the van into shadow.
Tomas’ hands tightened on the steering wheel. White knuckles. He saw Morse notice.
“I have CDs,” said Tomas, wiping his mouth. “If anyone wants to listen.
Morse was about to decline when Violet shuffled forward and rested her arms on the back of the cab seats.
“What you got?” she asked.
“Not my CDs; they belonged to those motherfuckers back at the house. They used to play some of them when they took me out to scavenge for supplies. But now I took the music.” He reached down beside him and produced a black CD wallet. The discs were held in polythene envelopes.
Violet snatched the wallet and went through the discs. “This one.” She passed the CD to Tomas, who looked at it and made a face. “What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing,” Tomas replied. “Not bad. Didn’t think you like that sort of music…”
“My fiancé did. He would always play this album in the car when we went to visit my parents. Said it was the only thing that calmed him before walking into the dragons’ den.” She paused, took a breath.
“Please play it, Tomas.”
He pushed the CD into the stereo. The whirring of the stereo’s insides coming to life.
Morse recognised the opening guitar chords of a song he’d last heard in that long ago world before the outbreak. One among many on an album he had listened to obsessively in his younger years.
Fight Fire with Fire, the first track on Metallica’s Ride the Lightning album, filled the speakers.
Morse only realised he was slightly nodding his head to the music when Tomas looked at him and smirked. He’d been remembering when he was seventeen and listening to this in his bedroom.
He stopped immediately. His foot was still tapping as he turned back to Violet. “Your fiancé had good taste in music.”
“I never used to think that, at the time,” she replied.
Morse faced the front and stared out the windscreen. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard music, and it saddened him.
*
They had to stop at some places along the narrow roads to get out and push derelict vehicles out of the way. Morse and Violet cleared the roads while Tomas kept watch. Karen was little more than a frail figment wrapped in her blankets.
They passed a house where the roof had been ripped away and debris covered the garden. Spindly shapes moved past the glassless windows. Something glistening and tentacle-like was rotting in a puddle.
Further on, Tomas had to brake hard when a pack of feral cats crossed the road ahead of the van. Mangy, thin creatures. Before they vanished into undergrowth Morse noticed the collars still in place around their scrawny necks.
“I keep thinking about all the pets,” said Violet.
“I had a pet cat,” Tomas said. “Someone ran it over and left it by the side of the road. I loved that cat.”
*
They drove through a cloudburst. The wipers struggled to keep the windscreen clear, even on their top setting, as the violent rain fell upon the earth. Tomas slowed the van to a crawl. Water poured from the ditches and ran off the fields. The road became a shallow river of standing water, bursting from the under the van’s wheels and spraying the hedgerows.
They drove for a mile before the water receded from the road and left the tarmac wet and glistening. The branches of trees dripping into the dark thickets. A sky becoming black, consuming a drenched world.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Two hundred yards down the road, something large, pale and spiderlike lunged from amongst a group of crashed cars as the van was passing.
Tomas shouted something incomprehensible and twisted the wheel. Violet screamed. Morse was thrown forwards as Tomas hit the brakes, and he put his hand against the dashboard to stop his inertia. His seatbelt cut into him and left him gasping.
Scream of metal and tyres, and the van veered towards the side of the road and crashed head-on into an abandoned ice cream truck. Jolt of impact. The engine cut out.
“What the fuck was that?” Tomas shouted.
In Morse’s side mirror the pale spider-thing tottered into view twenty yards behind the van and almost the same size. The human faces within its pallid skin opened and closed their mouths in agonised silence. He turned to Tomas, who was fiddling with keys in the ignition. “Start the engine. It’s coming.”
Violet had scrambled to the back window of the van and looked out. “Holy shit.” She turned back to them. “Hurry up, Tomas!”
Morse glanced in the mirror again as the spider thing crept forward then burst into a quick, loping skitter towards the van. He grabbed the MP5 and flicked the safety off. He put one hand on the electric window switch.
The spider-thing was almost upon them when the engine started and Tomas threw the van into reverse and it shot backwards. Morse watched the spider-thing increase in size in the wing mirror. Its maw opened to let out an ear-splitting shriek, as spindly limbs as sharp as knives propelled its glistening segmented body along the ground.
Morse braced himself. In the back, Violet held Karen tight to her. Tomas was completely silent and pale, staring over his shoulder to see through the van’s back window.
The sickening thump and shudder of collision as the spider-thing crashed into the back of them. Heavy impact as metal hit flesh. The scrape of the creature’s claw-tipped limbs along the side of the van filled the interior, and it slammed against the back doors. The van shook as if it were coming apart. The creature shrieked again.
Tomas straightened the van and pointed down the road. Then he put it in first gear, slammed his foot down and the van shot forward. The sounds of the creature’s limbs upon the roof were the last things to be heard before they left it behind.
Morse looked in the wing mirror and saw the spiderlike monster return to its hiding place amongst the cars, waiting for the next traveller.
Violet’s voice was low and trembling, and barely heard above the roar of the over-revved engine. “What was that thing?”
“An ambush predator,” Morse said. “Something different.”
Tomas just looked across at him, his eyes wide and still terrified. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he had seen.
*
They turned onto the A1 as the light began leaving the sky. Tomas switched the headlights on to reveal the desolate road ahead. The dark was falling all about them. Glimpses of figures in the roadside wrecks.
The duel carriageway stretched into the distance, into nothing, chased by the headlights. Morse watched the darkness outside the window, reciting an old nursery rhyme inside his head to ignore the stiffening of his legs. He imagined what the road had looked like on the day of the outbreak and the days following. The chaos and terror. The refugees trying to leave the cities, fleeing south or north, oblivious that it didn’t make any difference because the plague was everywhere.
The van slowed to weave through a place in the road where an army truck had crashed into a limo. The van scraped barely through. In the failing light he saw bones scattered around the back of the army truck and he wondered if an infected creature would make its nest in such a place.
The engine spluttered and the headlights faded for a second.
“We might have a problem,” Tomas said.
“What’s wrong?”
“Something wrong with engine. I think something damaged when the monster attacked us.”
The van began to shudder and rattle. And when it stalled fifty yards down the road and rolled to a stop, they looked at each other and said nothing, until Violet rose from the back with a blanket over her shoulders and asked them what was wrong.
Morse stared down the road, beyond the light. “We could be in trouble.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Tomas popped the bonnet and climbed down onto the road, glancing around the carriageway as he walked to the back of the van. Morse stepped outside and switched on the MP5’s torchlight, then pulled out the retractable stock and held it against his shoulder as he swept the darkness. He followed Tomas, who was gathering a toolbox and some road flares. Morse was given a handful of light sticks.
“You think you can fix it?” Morse said.
Tomas’s face was severe and bloodless. “My brother was a mechanic; he taught me some things. Have to find out what’s wrong with it first. Then I fix. Hopefully. You need to keep watch.”
Morse nodded.
Tomas walked to the front of the van, hefting the heavy toolbox, a Maglite torch in his other hand.
Violet appeared from inside. “I can help.”
He looked at her then stared out at the dark. His eyes fooled him into seeing shapes that weren’t there. He blinked and ran one hand over his face. The van was surrounded by numerous scattered vehicle wrecks in the dark, negating a clear field of fire. It was decent cover for an attack. He bit the inside of his mouth as he considered it all. Trash drifted on the breeze, and there was a distinct smell of rust and decay in the air. A graveyard for the vehicles of an old world.
He felt a quiver of dread in his stomach.
“Okay,
” he said. “But you do exactly as I tell you, understand?”
“I understand.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
*
Morse told Violet to keep watch while Tomas tried to fix the van. He checked that Karen was safely ensconced in the back of the van then closed the doors to shut her inside.
He stood and watched the dark in the cold silence. He swept the wrecks with the light, and did not dwell on the skeletons strapped into their seats. Especially the ones he imagined turning their heads towards him once the light had moved past.
*
The voice of a child came from the far side of the carriageway, past the dark shapes of dead vehicles, faint like an echo of a memory.
“Help me…”
Morse raised his gun towards the voice. The torchlight revealed nothing but the rusting hulks he’d been watching for the last hour. A gust of wind moved past him down the road, and he thought he heard the voice again. He looked towards the front of the van, where Violet stood watch, scanning the road ahead with her torch. Tomas grunted and clinked under the raised bonnet.
“Help me. Help me please…”
Morse looked in on Karen and found her asleep.
Violet appeared and shone her torch at him. “What’s wrong?”
“I thought I heard something,” Morse said.
“Heard what?”
“A child’s voice.”
“From where?”
“From the other side of the carriageway, I think. I just checked on Karen to see if it was her.”
“Was it Karen?”
“No. I don’t think it was.”
They walked around the van, back to where Morse had been standing when he’d first heard the voice.
“Listen,” Morse whispered.
They listened, motionless
The Plague Series | Book 3 | The Last Soldier Page 12
