The fate of all life.
Joseph Morse had fled Hallow Hope with Florence in his arms. He’d staggered for miles, on the verge of collapsing, until he found a place in a drenched field and laid her down on the ground and held her hand and said he was sorry for failing her.
He tried to dig a grave with his bare hands, but the ground tore his nails and scraped the skin from his fingers. He cried and shouted to the sky. He wailed for the lost world and the countless dead. There was nothing to be done.
He covered Florence with broken branches and dead leaves and then stood on tottering legs and said goodbye. He put the pistol to his head and squeezed the trigger, but there were no bullets left for him. And all he wanted was one. A small favour. But even that was beyond him now.
Morse dropped the pistol into the mud and looked down at Florence’s shrouded form. His last goodbye. His last apology. Then he walked away into the mist, whispering old prayers to dead gods.
*
He was a long time upon the southwards road, and when he arrived at the town, dying and wheezing, shuffling in torn trainers and cowering in the rain, he fell to his knees and started laughing. And it was good to laugh because there was nothing else to do. He hadn’t drunk water or eaten in days and his body was already consuming itself.
This was the town where he’d grown up. The place he’d left when he joined the army. This was the first time he’d returned since then. Almost thirty years ago.
He walked the lifeless streets and his childhood haunts. The shadows of his youth. Those days of changing from a boy to a young man. All of it despondent and abandoned, mouldering, fading to rust and silent sorrow. The old fish and chip shop. The greasy spoon he sheltered within when he was hungover and hungry. Shops vacated and emptied long before the outbreak. The houses of old friends. The bus shelter where he’d had his first kiss. The recreation field where he used to play football with his mates. The lanes and alleyways he’d cycled down. The pubs he’d frequented in his late teens, and those he’d been thrown out of for fighting. Street corners and fast food. Adrenaline and drunken memories.
All of it gone now. And his recollection of those times was waning as his heart dwindled in its beating, ticking down to the end.
The world was now the domain of the Plague Gods. They walked the earth and ruled the sky. He thought the air was getting thinner, but he wasn’t sure if it was merely the failing of his lungs. Not that it mattered, because he had no plans to see the next morning.
After stumbling along the streets for an hour he finally arrived at the road where his parents lived. He stood in the street and turned in a circle and observed the houses in their straight rows. They all seemed intact, although they were slowly falling into disrepair. He walked down the road and stopped outside his parents’ house. The front door was closed. None of the windows were broken.
His father’s car was still in the driveway.
His heart quickened. Almost thirty years. Christ. He shivered, coughing into his hand, blinking at the rain.
He opened the gate and stepped onto the pathway between the overgrown sections of lawn. An old bicycle against the wall. A bird table. A spade. The front door was locked. He bent down and retrieved the key from under a large painted pebble. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he had known it would be there.
Turning the key and opening the door he stepped inside into the hallway, flanked on one side by coats on hooks set upon wooden racks. Two umbrellas. A bobble hat and scarf. Shoes lined in pairs against the wall. A smell he recognised in the air. Old things. Dust and age.
He entered the living room and found the skeletal remains of his parents together on the sofa. Staring at their huddled bones, he spoke to them and apologised for the crime of being a bad son. He asked for their forgiveness.
Around him on the shelves and the mantelpiece were photos of him as a boy and teenager. Polaroid images he could only look at for a short while before tears filled his eyes. A photo of him as a curly haired tyke, throwing a stick for their old dog to chase. Another one featured him and his dad on Lyme Regis beach, making a sandcastle; the sun must have been behind his mum when she took the photo, because her shadow was painted on the sand next to them.
Morse slumped in an armchair, weighed down by regret and sorrow, sick with shame and the dreadful knowledge that he had the chance to make peace with his parents but not the courage to do so. He put his head in his hands and stayed that way for a long while, until he raised his face towards his parents and let the tears well in his eyes. They had died together and that was some comfort to him. But they had died without knowing what became of their son, and that was something that couldn’t be forgiven, not even by the kindest of saints.
*
He struggled up the stairs, gripping the banister tight with both feeble hands. On the landing he hunched over and clasped at his chest until the pain abated. He opened a door with his name upon it and crossed the threshold, swept away by memories as he stood on the threadbare carpet.
His parents had never redecorated his old room. The walls were plastered with faded posters of Eighties’ football stars and glamour models. An ancient hi-fi lurked in one corner, covered in dust, next to a portable black-and-white television. His Commando comic books stacked upon a shelf, next to the football annuals he received as Christmas presents each year. Old VHS tapes of war films. His Airfix Spitfires and Hurricanes. Copies of The Eagle. His Tottenham Hotspur duvet cover. The companies of die-cast soldiers arranged in their ranks.
The floor still creaked in the same places.
He closed his eyes and remembered his mother shouting up the stairs to tell him his dinner was ready or to rouse him from bed on school mornings. He recalled the time he’d brought Stacey Jarvis back here when his parents went out one night. Their frantic attempts to dress after his parents returned early from the pub. His dad’s laughter when he found them.
He smiled to himself, but it was tired and pointless, and he had to sit down on the bed to rest his legs. His bones hurt and the wound in his shoulder throbbed with infection. He could feel his inner workings slowly shutting down, and bowed his head as his heart slowed and spluttered like a broken engine. Not long to go. He was relieved and grateful to die as a man. To die human. It was a rare gift in these final days.
He pulled back the sheets and climbed into his old bed, and he lay there saying the names of all the people he’d known over the years. He apologised to anyone he’d hurt or cheated or let down, and when all that was done and he could remember no more, he closed his eyes in the comfort of the place he called home and listened to his heartbeat gently fail while he imagined the happy times of childhood.
THE END
Rich Hawkins hails from the depths of Somerset, England, where a childhood of science fiction and horror films set him on the path to writing his own stories. He credits his love of horror and all things weird to his first viewing of John Carpenter’s THE THING back in the early Nineties. His debut novel THE LAST PLAGUE was nominated for a British Fantasy Award for Best Horror Novel in 2015. His latest book is THE COLD from Horrific Tales Publishing.
richhawkinswriter.co.uk
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The Plague Series | Book 3 | The Last Soldier Page 21
