*
Morse followed her into the mist. Further on the house appeared out of the murk, and Florence halted and turned back to him. Inside her hood, she smiled sadly and her face was damp with rain. A haunted girl who communed with monsters and pestilent minds.
*
They approached the cottage from the north side and kept low to the ground as they stumbled over puddles and muddy divots. Florence tripped on a molehill but Morse steadied her and stopped her from falling. They halted within thirty yards of the cottage, peering over the rim of a ditch beginning to flood with rainwater. The downpour gave no respite. Morse looked to the sky and saw no end to the grey clouds. What he would give to see the sun again.
“You think someone’s in there?” Florence sniffed and wiped her nose, bunching her shoulders against the rain.
Morse pulled out his binoculars. Nothing moved around the house. He watched the windows, but it was too dark inside the house to notice anyone standing beyond the glass.
“Maybe. Hard to tell.”
“Bad people?”
“What?”
“Bandits or marauders. Murderers. Cannibals.”
“Cannibals?”
“You told me about what happened in that refugee shelter in Sweden. Remember?”
“That was just a rumour.”
“People who eat people.”
Morse exhaled through his nose. “That’s right.”
“Do you think the only survivors left in Britain are bad people?”
“I think people do what they have to do to survive.”
“Have you ever eaten someone?”
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“No.”
“Oh.” She hesitated. “Would you, if you had to?”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“Okay.”
The wind whistled along the ditch and faded into a mournful sigh. Morse lowered the binoculars. “Looks empty. Follow me and stay close.”
*
They stood with their backs flat against the side of the house. Florence was breathing hard as she squeezed her hands into fists and held them to her chest. Morse checked the AK-47 and listened to the rain pattering upon dead leaves and mud. The front garden was overgrown and dripping, frothing with dense foliage and limp weeds. He pulled Florence along as he edged to the front corner of the cottage and then gestured for her to stay where he left her. Then he stepped around the corner with the rifle raised, watching the windows. He placed his feet carefully, alert for traps and snares. The front door was shut. He cast a glance at the garden to make sure nothing was waiting in ambush then moved to the door and turned the handle and it opened first time. A dull click as he twisted. He used his free hand to push the door open, and he entered the house, bracing himself for a bullet or blade. The familiar pressure tightened his chest and squeezed his stomach. He moved in silence and found himself in a large kitchen where everything was covered in dust. Bare plaster had crumbled from the walls to scatter on the floor and along the skirting boards.
A wheatsheaf nailed to a wooden upright. A Bonsai tree dried to dusty sticks. Upon the far wall, a watercolour seascape. A rotting wooden crucifix on the wall above the AGA stove. Pots and pans in mouldering piles on the floor. The scratching of sightless things in the walls.
On the dining table, beside a pile of faded newspapers, a human skull grinned on a plate, furred by dust, a memento of an atrocity in the dark places. Morse stared at its empty sockets and the leathery patches of skin still clinging to its jaw and scalp.
“A warm welcome,” he whispered, and shook his head.
He removed the skull before he summoned Florence inside.
CHAPTER FOUR
Morse drew his pistol from the chest holster. The dull light through the windows. The rain on the roof. Smell of mothballs and wood varnish. Old furniture riddled with stains. Something moved in the walls and shadowed his path along a corridor. He remembered catching and eating a rat with some other survivors in the ruins of a refugee camp. A brief image of their faces. He couldn’t even recall their names, but it didn’t matter, because they were dead and gone, beyond all the pain and suffering in the world.
The downstairs rooms were deserted. The kitchen, the living room, and a small bathroom at the back of the house. Family photos. He expected to find bones, but there were none. When he checked the cupboard under the stairs, the gleaming eyes of rodents stared back at him from the darkness between stacks of boxes. He shut the door quickly and stepped away.
*
Morse left Florence in the kitchen while he went upstairs into rooms of shadows and dust. Peeling wallpaper spotted with black mould beneath cobwebs and desiccated insects out of reach in high corners. There was nothing useful in the deserted rooms so he returned downstairs and found Florence staring at the plate he had found the human skull upon.
“You okay?” he said.
She looked up and nodded, then turned away.
“You sure?”
“Tired.”
“Same here.”
“But that’s because you’re old, Morse.”
“Cheeky sod. I’m not pushing up daisies yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an old saying.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
*
They secured the doors and stuffed old rags into the holes in the windows. Florence winced at the sound of distant thunder. The deluge against the outside of the cottage was so loud that she covered her ears. Morse stood by the living room window and looked outside and the world was lost to the rain.
Thunder crackled again. Closer this time. When he turned around, Florence had slumped on the tattered sofa staring at one of the family photos on the wall.
“I don’t like the thunder,” she said.
Morse unshouldered his rucksack. “Are you hungry?”
She shook her head.
“You have to eat something, to keep your energy up. Did you have any breakfast on the ship?”
“Just some water and a stale biscuit.”
“You’ll get weak.”
“I’m already weak.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
He sighed. “Looks like we’ll be staying here a little while. Best to get some chow and rest up while we can.”
“What if the rain doesn’t stop? Will we stay here for the night?”
Morse chewed his lip. “Maybe. Let’s just see what happens. Would you mind doing that?”
“I don’t know.” She appraised the room around her. “It’s okay now, but it might be different when it’s dark.”
He pulled a chocolate bar from his pack and threw it to her. She caught it in two hands. “Eat some food. Rest. I’ll keep watch.”
She tore the wrapping from the chocolate bar, took a bite and chewed, staring at the floor. She devoured the chocolate in seconds then folded the wrapper and tucked it down the back of the sofa.
Morse watched the rain.
“Can I ask you something, Morse?”
“Of course. Always.”
“Do you think this house is haunted?”
He nearly smiled, but thought better of it. “I wouldn’t worry. The whole world is full of ghosts.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Florence knew she was dreaming when the front door opened and the family that used to live in the house walked in. The house smelled clean and there were no spots of black mould on the walls. This was a time before the outbreak, and she was reduced to silence as she sat in the living room, on the sofa that was no longer tattered and faded.
She watched them with tears in her eyes. A mum and dad, a young boy, and a small dog that ran to her and licked her hands. She stroked the dog’s head and watched the family unpack their shopping. Bags of frozen food. Ice cream, pizza, chips. Donuts and crisps. Cheese and butter. Fresh vegetables and fiz
zy drinks.
The dog nuzzled her fingers with a wet nose.
Then she was sitting at the dining table with the family while the dog loitered around them waiting for scraps. They talked about films, music, football, books. Homework. The parents spoke to the boy about his last school report. She remembered her school and all her friends and the teachers. She supposed they were dead, and the flashbulb memory of their faces formed such a feeling of loss inside her she could only bow her head and close her eyes.
The family ignored her when she began crying, so she slammed her hands on the table and kept banging until she could do it no more and her mouth opened into a scream while the family ate their dinner and discussed the old world she remembered and mourned in her dreams.
*
Morse woke Florence and held her as she cried.
“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s okay. You fell asleep, that’s all. It’s just a dream.”
She pressed her face against his shoulder and spoke through her tears. “I hate dreaming.”
“I know.”
“That dead man we found by the roadside. He lived here with his family. I recognised him in one of the photos on the walls.”
“It’s okay.”
“They were happy, I think.”
“I know.”
She wiped her eyes and sniffled. “I wonder what happened to their dog.”
*
The rain stopped late in the day and by then it was too soon before dusk to leave the house. The light faded from the sky until it was full dark. The mist cleared soon afterwards.
Near midnight Morse watched over Florence as she slept in her sleeping bag, swaddled in the blankets he’d found upstairs. He sat on an uncomfortable wooden stool by the window; he knew that if he sat in the armchair next to the sofa he’d get too comfortable and fall asleep. The blanket over his shoulders did little to stop the cold. His rifle stood against the wall near to his right hand.
There was nothing beyond the window but the starless black. He hadn’t lit a candle because he could see fine in the dark, a shadow amongst the other shadows. And he listened to the house in the night, its gentle sighs and muffled creaks, the whispers in pipes in the walls. He looked back at Florence and wondered what dwelled in her dreams. He couldn’t imagine the things inside her head. She had told him of voices in her dreams which begged her for help; but she could never help them because they were beyond her and lost in the dark.
There was a slight frown on her face. The slow rise and fall of her chest. Morse considered the possibility that he was being misled. Was she still human? Was she a monster wearing the skin of a girl? But it mattered little, because whatever she was, he had promised to protect her, and he would keep that oath until he was dead.
He took the knife from his belt and picked dirt from under his fingernails. Then he ran the tip of the blade along the scars on his wrists and listened to the silence in the night around the house.
*
Morse woke with a gasp in the first shades of daylight. He raised his face from his chest and blinked, picking crust from the corners of his eyes. The knife was still in his hand, and after he returned it to the sheath he stood and turned to check on Florence, but she was already standing behind him.
“Morning,” she said.
Morse frowned. “Morning. You startled me.”
“Sorry.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“Not long. Are we leaving soon? I don’t like it here. The house keeps talking to me.”
*
After a breakfast of old MREs and some water, they left the house with Florence leading the way. Morse watched her. A raggedy girl wrapped up in her coat and thick scarf, traipsing across the mud and leaf mulch.
They walked for over an hour, bypassing the dark apparitions of villages and towns left deserted in the aftermath of the plague. A blackened church spire in a ruined hamlet. An abandoned roadworks, rusted tools in the roadside grass. A corpse without shoes. Fallen and splintered trees beyond an area charred and ashen from an old wildfire. Florence stared at a pit of burnt human remains in a dismal field.
Morse grimaced at his aching legs and pined for the days when he was young and his heart was strong. A lot had happened since then and he’d seen things that would never leave him, and that was even before the outbreak. He thought of old friends and comrades, good mates, all of them long gone.
Florence stopped in the road to look at the sky. The pale clouds with smudges of grey and ash. Morse stood beside her and noticed two of her fingers rubbing together by her side. A shadow passed over her face and the pupils in her eyes diminished to pin pricks.
“I can feel them inside my head,” she said. “It’s like a worm that never stops burrowing through my brain.”
“I’ve got some paracetamol, if you think it’ll help.”
“Pills don’t work much.”
“Do you need to stop for a while?”
“No.” A pause. Then: “We could be losing our minds. We could be mad. Both of us.”
“My ex-wife thought I was mad.”
“Which one?”
“The first. She said I was unhinged.”
“Would we even realise? In this world?”
“Probably not.”
“Does that worry you?”
“I worry about you, Florence.”
She lowered her face and looked at him. Her cheeks were reddish and puffy from the cold. “You don’t have to worry. What will happen, will happen. There’s nothing to be done about it.”
Morse wiped his mouth. “We’ll do what we can.”
“Even that might not be enough.”
CHAPTER SIX
The flat countryside in shades of corrosion. The caterwaul of the wind past farmhouses and empty cow sheds. Deer fed on the sparse grass in desolate fields and glanced about themselves for predators. They watched Morse and Florence travel the road.
More bones in the dirt and on the flaking tarmac. Tufts of fur on barbed wire. A child’s toy. The guts of electrical appliances in rotting sacks. They passed a tree where dripping rags hung from its low branches like pagan decorations. Further on a tractor had been overturned in a ditch and was slowly being smothered by creeping brambles and vines. Morse told Florence to avoid the poison hemlock growing at the roadsides.
They weaved through places in the road where car accidents were frozen in time and glass granules crackled under their boots. The insides of some cars were stained with old blood. Florence peered through a window then immediately stepped away and didn’t tell Morse what she’d seen.
“Keep moving,” he said. “No point in lingering here.” He picked up a crumpled hubcap, threw it into the adjacent field and watched it spin in the air until it flopped in the dirt. Everything faded and solemn below the gunmetal sky.
“At least it’s not raining,” he said.
*
They stopped to rest in the late morning and shared a muesli bar. Morse kept watch while he chewed.
“Tastes like sawdust,” Florence said, picking something from her tongue and flicking it away.
“I think it’s ninety percent sawdust and the rest of it is rabbit droppings.” Morse tucked the wrapper into one pocket. “But don’t knock it too much; it’s better than some of the stuff I’ve eaten.”
“Did you ever eat rabbit droppings?” Florence said.
“Grilled.”
She looked at him. Her brow creased. “Really?”
“Nah.”
“I knew it.”
“They were scrambled actually.”
“What about cow dung?”
“Of course. Raw. Tasty.”
“You’re lying.”
“Would I lie to you?”
“Yes.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say.”
“Shut up, Morse.”
“Yes, M’lady.”
When she let out a small laugh, Morse’s heart swelled and he fought a smile at the edges o
f his mouth. It was good to hear. He looked up the road in the direction they were heading. “Ready to go?”
She was already on her feet. She nodded. Morse grabbed his rifle and they carried on.
*
Morse thought he heard distant calls on the wind and wasn’t sure who or what they were from, or if they were merely auditory hallucinations. Figments. He scanned the fields, kept a watch. Always watching.
To the east, far from the roadside, blackened beams jutted from the half-collapsed wreck of a house. His gaze lingered until the ruins passed out of view behind a dull thicket. He could smell ash and rotting vegetation. Animal scents. Damp matted grass. His boots crunched on wet gravel.
The road widened until it became a dual carriageway flanked by ground that rose into steep banks of earth. There were no vehicles left behind, just tyre marks on the tarmac and ghost-shapes of leaked oil. Down the middle of the carriageway was a median strip of grass and steel ropes mounted on posts. Morse watched their flanks, wary and nervous. Ahead of them, a bridge ran across the carriageway, and when they reached it they stopped beneath for a moment and drank some water. Florence stared past Morse. She scratched the skin under her right eye.
“There’s something down the road,” she said.
Morse took the binoculars and looked. There was a flicker of movement past a pile up of several cars that stretched across their side of the carriageway. It was hard to make out anything. A moving shadow, a smoke-shape.
Morse lowered the binoculars.
“What is it?” Florence said. “Infected?”
“I don’t know. Stay behind me.” He put the binoculars away then raised the rifle to his chest. “Let’s go.”
*
When they rounded the pile up, they came across a pack of feral dogs tearing at a deer carcass. They were mostly mongrels, mangy and filthy, scrabbling about in the blood and bits of fur and small scraps of meat on the road, growling in their throats as they ripped pieces of skin and flesh from the doe. Bones cracked between their teeth, and it reminded Morse of when he was a boy and his old dog used to demolish the bones his mum brought back from the local butcher.
The Last Soldier Page 2
