The Plague Series | Book 3 | The Last Soldier

by Hawkins, Rich

  *

  Morse sipped water and downed an aspirin. Every time he started nodding off, he jolted awake with a breathless gasp. Violet asked him if he was okay. He nodded, said nothing, and then stared into the dark at the fleeting glimpses of roadside ruins.

  *

  A few miles on they found a boy in the road, scratching at his face and mouth with his fingernails. Violet stopped the Land Rover. The scrape of the tyres on loose gravel. The boy stood there in the headlights, side-on to them, and when he turned towards the vehicle his eyes gleamed and the blood on his face was brighter than any red Morse had seen before.

  Morse leaned forward, staring through the windscreen. “It’s one of Jardine’s children. He’s wearing the same kind of gown as Florence.”

  Violet gripped the steering wheel. The engine idled. “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

  Morse already had his hand on the door release. “I’m going out to talk to him. He might be able to help us.” He put the pistol in his pocket and stepped outside. Apart from the sound of the engine, there was utter silence out on the motorway. Beyond the reach of the headlights, the darkness swelled and thickened.

  The boy turned to Morse and regarded him with watery eyes. A little boy lost. Despondent. A form barely aware of itself. His skin was puffy, reddened and irritated where his fingers had been busy. Morse couldn’t imagine what it must have been like out here in the darkness, alone and wandering.

  “Hello,” Morse said. He kept his distance, careful not to scare the boy. Violet emerged from the vehicle and closed the door. The boy glanced at her, raking at one corner of his mouth.

  Morse took one step forward.

  The boy looked at him and stopped scratching. “They left me behind. Jardine left me behind.”

  “My name is Joseph,” Morse said. “I can help you.”

  The boy appraised him. “No one can help me now.”

  “What’s your name?”

  The boy blinked slowly. “Daryl Duncan.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Daryl.”

  The boy nodded at Violet. “Who’s she?”

  “I’m Violet.”

  “Like a flower.”

  She snorted. “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Tell me what happened, Daryl,” Morse said.

  “The thing inside my head; that connects me to the Plague Gods. Something wrong with it. Something wrong with me. Not working properly. Malfunctioning. Jardine said I wasn’t special anymore and of no more use; that I wasn’t worthy of ascension. He told me I had to be discarded. I just wasn’t feeling very well, that’s all. I had a bad belly. And I’ve been looking forward to the ascension since Jardine found me. Now he’s abandoned me. What did I do wrong?”

  Morse stepped towards the boy. “You’ve done nothing wrong, Daryl.”

  “I feel bad.”

  “You don’t need to feel bad. None of this is your fault.”

  “No, I feel ill again. My belly hurts.” He placed his hands on his stomach. And before Morse could go to him, the boy hunched over and vomited blood and bile onto the road around his feet, retching horribly as the muscles in his neck stretched tight.

  Morse stepped back. The boy fell to his knees as more fluid spilled from his mouth. He was making an awful sound, like he was being strangled. His bulging eyes flicked towards Morse and the pain in them was severe.

  “Get back here, Morse,” Violet said.

  Daryl collapsed writhing onto his side, clutching his stomach, whimpering and mewling. Bloody vomit covered his garments and the lower half of his face.

  “Morse.” Violet’s voice was shrill. “Get away from him!”

  Morse didn’t move.

  “Move! He’s turning!”

  The boy turned onto his back and arched his spine and his mouth opened in a silent cry. His hands scraped at the road. His legs kicked. Something tore, and Morse realised it was the boy’s clothes as sharp, insectoid limbs and appendages erupted from his stomach and chest. His human limbs fell still and hung limp. He was gasping. Such pain and terror in his eyes. A tortured scream rose from his mouth as his body was ravaged and transformed. His face began to fold inwards like melting plastic. Violet put her hands to her mouth and stared, unable to move.

  Morse could watch no longer. He took the pistol from his pocket and walked over to Daryl, standing out of reach of the jerking insect limbs. He raised the pistol and fired two rounds into the vulva-like maw of the boy’s face. And then Daryl stopped moving and his glistening pale limbs slowly trembled and faltered until they went still. They remained upright, curved towards the sky.

  Morse turned and looked at Violet. She climbed back into the Land Rover and sat in the driver’s seat, staring at her lap, her face deathly pale and slack. Morse returned to the vehicle and sat beside her. They said nothing. The silent dark seemed to thicken beyond the windows.

  They left the boy on the road and carried on.

  *

  Morse had fallen asleep thinking of the boy and the monster he would have become. When he woke and smelled smoke in the air, he swivelled towards Violet and saw she had a lit cigarette in her mouth. She drove carefully, scanning the road ahead.

  “You okay, Morse?”

  He clenched and unclenched his hands, staring at his knuckles as they whitened each time. “I feel useless. I couldn’t save Florence from the Order, and I couldn’t save that little boy.”

  “You did save that boy,” Violet said. “You put him out of his misery. Better to be dead than infected, or whatever he was becoming.”

  “What if we reach Hallow Hope too late and the ascension has already taken place? What then?”

  “I don’t know, Morse.”

  “Will Florence transform like the boy did?”

  Violet tapped the end of her cigarette into the ashtray. “The boy said there was something wrong with him. Malfunctioning, didn’t he say? Fuck knows what that all means. Maybe Florence isn’t malfunctioning. I don’t know how this shit works.”

  “I don’t know if I could shoot Florence, if she transformed.”

  “If it was to put her out of her misery, you would, Morse. I know you would.”

  He looked out the windscreen. The motorway stretching away from them into the fog. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  Violet took one last drag on the cigarette then put it out. “Get some more sleep, Morse. I’ll drive from now on. I don’t want to sleep anymore. I’ve no wish to dream again.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  Past Birmingham and Coventry, Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon. They travelled the M5 towards Cheltenham, and stared in silent awe at the town’s destruction. Past the Cotswolds, which were beautiful even in the harsh and unforgiving grind of winter. There were no infected on the roads as the sky brightened in the east and the darkness began to recede.

  Morse glimpsed in the wing mirror and saw movement. A black dot slowly growing larger behind them. He rubbed his eyes then looked again. Something far back on the road, gaining on the Land Rover.

  He turned in his seat and looked back down the road.

  “What’s wrong?” Violet said.

  “We’ve got company.”

  Violet looked in the rear-view mirror and muttered something under her breath.

  The SUV weaved between crashed cars over the damp road, closing in on them. Its bumper was fitted with a snow plough, which it used to shunt wreckage aside as it screamed down the road. When it closed to within thirty yards, Morse saw hooded men in cloth masks seated within.

  “It’s the Order of the Pestilence,” Morse said. He grabbed the pistol and looked at Violet. “Drive faster.”

  She put her foot down and the engine whined in response.

  *

  The SUV rammed the back of the Land Rover and jolted it forward. Violet struggled for control of the steering wheel as the Land rover juddered and rattled. Morse gripped the sides of his seat with bone-white fingers. Violet glimpsed in the rear-view mirror, her face screwed into in a pani
cked, wide-mouthed frown. She kept her foot down on the accelerator, the Land Rover darting between vehicle wrecks, kicking up scraps of rubbish and debris.

  Morse looked back at the SUV as it closed in and again hit the Land Rover’s back end. Screech of metal crumpling. Hard impact. Shattered plastic. He was thrown forward until his seatbelt cut into his chest.

  There was a metallic rustling from the rear of the vehicle, like something coming loose. Violet swerved to avoid the stranded cars on the road, but could do nothing when an infected man covered in cysts and blackening lesions lurched from behind the derelict hulk of an ambulance. The Land Rover hit him just as he swivelled towards it and opened his ravenous face, and he burst like a sack of rotten meat across the road. Blood and shreds of flesh covered the windscreen. Violet turned the wipers on, smearing the blood over the glass, until she put them on full speed and the windscreen only cleared when they were several yards from the back end of a crashed lorry.

  Violet wrenched the wheel at the last moment and the Land Rover swerved across the road, the tyres shrieking.

  Morse breathed a burst of hysterical laughter and shook his head in disbelief.

  The SUV closed in again, trying to get level with the Land Rover now the road was clear of most obstructions.

  Morse glanced back at the SUV and checked the pistol.

  Violet kept her foot down.

  The SUV was now just behind and to the side of the Land Rover, no more than five yards between the vehicles. Morse swallowed, breathing deeply, biting his lip, his hand tight on the pistol grip.

  When he looked back at the SUV a man emerged from the sun roof, clutching a double-barrelled shotgun. His face and head shrouded by the cloth mask and hood. He levelled the shotgun at the Land Rover.

  “Oh shit,” Morse muttered. He buried his face against his chest and put his hands over the back of his head. Violet screamed and turned away.

  The gunshot shattered the windows over the back passenger seats. A surge of cold air. Tiny glass granules were scattered. Violet cried out.

  When Morse looked up again, the SUV sideswiped the Land Rover and pushed it across the road. Grind and scream of metal. Stink of engine oil, exhausts and smoke. Burnt rubber and chemicals. The Land Rover’s tyres fought for traction on the damp road, and this time Violet lost control and the vehicle lurched to one side and across to the opposite side of the motorway, through a gap where the crash barrier had been torn away by an accident during the outbreak. The tyres screamed and skidded, and the Land Rover veered from the road and down a grassed slope, shuddering and rattling like it was falling apart, then into a barren field. Murky water and mud sprayed from under the wheels. Clumps of dirt dislodged and flew in all directions.

  Morse’s heart was palpitating as he looked back and saw the SUV come down the slope and into the field.

  “Keep going,” he said to Violet. “They’re following. They’re not giving up.”

  Violet was muttering under her breath. Morse thought she was praying.

  *

  They emerged onto a narrow road. Morse glanced back, but didn’t see the SUV behind them.

  Violet said, “If the road’s blocked at some point, we’re fucked.”

  “Keep going. Just keep going.”

  She slowed the Land Rover to skirt around a rusting Volvo crashed halfway into the hedgerow. Half a mile further on, they entered a village. Violet kept at a steady speed through the deserted high street. Morse glimpsed movement in some windows and gardens; staggering figures reacting to the sound of the engine.

  There was a crossroads ahead, directly in the middle of the village. A set of traffic lights, and a church further on.

  The Burned Man stood by the roadside as they passed. He stared at Morse without expression. His blackened skin wept from glistening cysts. He moved his mouth slowly, as if invoking something old and forgotten.

  When the Burned Man grinned, Morse looked away.

  He whispered the man’s name and apologised.

  “Did you say something?” asked Violet.

  They were halfway through the crossroads, and Morse was about to answer her, when the SUV came at them from their right and there was barely time to shout a warning before it swiped them from the road.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  His vision trembled and he put his hands to his face and groaned as the world shuddered in the aftermath of the crash. Violet tried to raise her head from her chest. Morse looked towards the front of the car, where steam was rising from the engine, and the bonnet was crumpled and hanging open after hitting the garden wall. The stink of engine coolant and hot metal. The airbags had already deflated.

  Everything blurred, dipping in-and-out of focus until nausea swelled in his stomach. He ached all over and his head was pounding. He pawed for the seatbelt release, and when he was free he grabbed the pistol from the footwell and climbed out of the Land Rover on unsteady legs. His breath ached through his teeth. He closed his eyes to stop the ground from moving underneath him.

  Looking back down the road he saw the SUV trying to reverse out of the slopping mess of a rock pond, its wheels spraying up brown water and mud.

  Several infected began to emerge from ruined houses and beneath piles of debris. Filthy, shivering creatures crawling from their nests. They headed towards the SUV, hands grasping at the air, their mouths working like mechanical traps. Men, women, children. One woman slithered from underneath a mound of bones and trash and went down on her knees as tumultuous appendages and stingers burst from the dripping cavity of her torso. Her limbs twisted into sharp points and she went onto all fours and skittered in the direction of the SUV, mewling like a sickly newborn thing.

  Morse pulled Violet from her seat. “Are you okay?”

  She nodded and looked at the ruined front of the Land Rover. “I’ll live.” She leaned against the side of the Land Rover and held her leg, while Morse retrieved the bag with their meagre supplies inside.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “We seem to have agitated the villagers.”

  Violet took the lump hammer from her pocket. Morse slung the bag over one shoulder, the crowbar in his hand. The pistol was tucked under his belt.

  They hurried down the road, away from the Land Rover, just as more infected appeared from between the houses, drawn by the sound of the SUV’s engine and the gunshots.

  The men of the Order were fighting off the infected. Pained shrieks and cries stirred the air. Morse glanced back to see two of the men stood either side of the SUV, firing pistols at the diseased villagers, who fell in their disordered ranks.

  Violet gasped and grimaced, trailing her right leg slightly. Morse helped her along as they approached a short stone bridge flanked with iron railings. An infected man in a ripped chef’s tunic stumbled from the doorway of a half-collapsed building, painfully contorted and gasping. The man sighted them and opened his mouth; the squirming horror of his tongue flicked at the air past his teeth. Another infected creature appeared behind him, covered in dirt and encrusted fluids, its neck swollen with rippling tumours.

  “Keep moving,” Morse said, trying to move faster. Violet moaned at the pain in her leg. “We’re not giving up now.”

  You should shoot her, a voice at the back of his mind said. She’s slowing you down.

  He shook his head.

  Do it. Survival of the fittest. Otherwise you’ll die with her…

  More infected emerged from the other side of the road, slavering and squealing.

  Shoot Violet in the leg. Cripple her. Escape. Survive.

  The infected screamed and wailed, hungry for flesh, lost in a haze of bloodlust.

  Do what you always do: survive when others die.

  Morse pulled the pistol from his belt. He looked at Violet. “I’m sorry.”

  She turned to him. “Sorry for what?”

  He let out a rasping breath. He felt sick. But when he spoke, his voice was calm and ordered. “Go on alone, while I keep these fuckers busy. I’ll ca
tch up. I promise.”

  “Morse…” Confusion in her eyes.

  “No argument. Just do it. I’ll find you.”

  “But…”

  “I’ll see you again, Violet.”

  She looked at him, then grabbed either side of his head and kissed his brow. “You’re a stupid bastard, Morse.”

  He smiled wanly and handed her the bag. “Just go.”

  She turned, stumbling away, and glanced back over her shoulder as Morse stood in the middle of the road and waited for the infected to reach him.

  *

  Violet spied the shallow river beneath her as she hobbled across the bridge and then down the narrow street. She entered the churchyard, caught in the shadow of the church tower looming above her. Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t followed, she stepped amongst the old graves, using the headstones to support her weight. She winced and stopped, then tried to continue, but in the end she slumped to the ground with her back against one of the gravestones, exhausted and sore, watching the rise and fall of her chest while she tried to regain her breath. The lump hammer’s grip was slick with sweat as she held it tightly.

  The gunshots from back up the street sounded so distant. She exhaled in shuddering breaths. Her eyes were stinging with tears. A wave of regret at leaving Morse behind swept through her body in juddering bursts. She hoped death came quickly for him.

  It began to rain. She made a sound like the beginning of hysterical laughter, staring up at the sky with her mouth open. And stayed that way for a short while, and only when she heard the pattering of limbs nearby did she lower her face to meet the spindly-legged thing coming towards her from between the graves.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Morse stood on the small bridge, flanked by old metal railings, and shot the first infected that reached him. The shuddering old man whose back was covered in needle-thin spines collapsed near his feet with his black heart blown from his chest.