The Last Soldier

by Hawkins, Rich

  “Yeah. It’s their headquarters, I think.”

  “Where in the south?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. All I know is it’s a men-only club. Their doctrine says that women are inferior and only useful for menial tasks and breeding. I’ve had a few of them spouting this bollocks at me.”

  “A lot of cults appeared during the outbreak,” Morse said. “I didn’t think any of them had survived.”

  “They’re persistent and well-armed,” Violet said. “Is this Florence girl your daughter?”

  “No. But she’s as good as. Although I’ve never told her that. I was supposed to protect her. Now I don’t know what to do. I thought she would be here.”

  She shrugged. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s all fucked. There’s nothing any of us can do.”

  *

  On their way to check on the woman at the back of the house, Violet halted by the banister at the foot of the stairs. Her brow creased as her eyes flitted around the hallway.

  “What is it?” asked Morse.

  “I thought I heard something,” she said, her voice low and conspiratorial.

  “Where?”

  She turned and pointed towards the door under the stairway.

  “Could be just a rat.”

  Morse stepped forwards while Violet stood to the side of the door ready to grab the handle. He flicked the safety switch on the MP5 then nodded at Violet.

  She pulled the door open.

  The man inside the cupboard space screamed and raised his hands in surrender. He blinked at Morse in the glare of the torchlight.

  Morse’s trigger finger tensed.

  “No!” said Violet. “Don’t shoot him.”

  Morse stared down the barrel at the man, who was visibly trembling and pale, with a butcher’s knife in one small hand. A patch of white gauze covered his right eye. Tracksuit bottoms and boots. A jumper under a black body-warmer.

  “Put the knife down,” Morse told him.

  The man crouched and placed the knife on the floor while keeping his eyes on Morse. Sweat dampened the gaunt angles of his face.

  “It’s Tomas,” Violet said.

  “Who?”

  Violet stepped in front of the doorway and shielded the man. She faced Morse and raised her palms to him. “He wasn’t one of them. He’s a good guy.”

  “There are no good guys.”

  “Please, Morse, put the gun down.”

  Morse lowered the MP5. He looked over Violet’s shoulder towards the man.

  “Thank you,” she said. She turned back to the man and they embraced. Morse watched, confused and irritated. Violet guided the man out of the cubby hole and smiled at him.

  “I thought you were dead or you’d done a runner, Tomas.”

  He smiled back, but it faded quickly, and he looked warily at Morse as he touched the taping around the gauze patch and scratched at the surrounding skin.

  Morse glared at them. “Is someone going to explain?”

  “He was these fuckers’ servant,” said Violet. “No better than a chattel slave.”

  Morse looked at the man. “Is that true?”

  Tomas nodded. “Yes. Yes, true.” Eastern European accent. Polish, most probably.

  “The men treated him almost as bad as the women,” said Violet. “He was here against his will. He was the one who had to clean, feed and water us. Tend to our injuries after the men had visited our rooms. He was nice to me and tried to help.”

  Morse gestured to the gauze patch. “What’s wrong with your eye, Tomas?”

  Violet spoke for him. “The men caught him giving me extra food and they beat the shit out of him in my room, while I watched. They blinded him in one eye.”

  Tomas was nodding. “Is all true. Fractured socket and damaged my eye so I can’t see. Bastard motherfuckers.”

  Morse remembered it had been Tomas he’d seen climb out the back of the van earlier that day, when he’d been watching through the binoculars.

  “Are they all dead?” Tomas asked. “All of the men?”

  “Yes,” Violet said. “They’re all gone.”

  A relieved smile formed on his face. “Good. Hope they burn in hell.”

  *

  Morse watched from the doorway as Violet and Tomas released the catatonic woman from her bed. Tomas had found the key for the cuffs in one of the dead men’s pockets.

  The woman said nothing while they moved her into a sitting position. She wasn’t much more than dead weight.

  “What’s her name?” said Violet.

  Tomas dabbed the woman’s face with a damp handkerchief. “Karen. I don’t know where she came from. She arrived here a month or two before you did.”

  “She can’t be any older than twenty. Jesus.”

  “The Order men treat her badly.”

  Violet glanced towards Morse. “We’ll get her dressed and sorted.”

  “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 over his chest, the MP5 hanging over his shoulders. His ears chimed with tinnitus. Beyond the perimeter fence, the village was silent and thin mist 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 had scared him all of his life. That and getting older. 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 swarmed his mind.

  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,” Tomas added.

  “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. I think was 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 take Florence.”

  “Where?”

  “A place called Black Heddon. They have a base there. They told me this many times. 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. Got nothing else to do. 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. “But it’s better than nothing, no? I can drive the van. We have map. You can be…uh…ride shotgun, yeah?”

  Morse glanced at him then Violet, grinding his teeth in his skull. “Fair enough. Sounds like a half-decent plan.”

  Tomas smiled. “Yes, good plan. Good.”

  “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 and around the wrecks of cars 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. “It’s okay, Morse. I think she make it.”

  Morse looked out the windscreen at the dark road and the hills beyond. “I hope so, because otherwise we’re in for a long walk.”

  “Do not worry. My brother was mechanic and he taught me some things. I checked oil and water and tyre pressure. Everything good. If we break down, I sort it. 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 will be fine.”

  “Fair enough. Can you drive okay with one eye?”

  “Of course. I’m good driver. Only need one eye to see, anyway.”

  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 road and passed abandoned or burnt down 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 slit in the stereo. The whirring of the stereo’s insides coming to life.

  Morse watched the digital display start up.

  Track one.

  He recognised the opening guitar chords of a song he had 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. By the time I found, the maggots were already inside it. Some teenagers laughed at me as I walked away with my cat in a bin bag. I loved that cat.”

  “I’m sorry, Tomas,” Violet said.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “Doesn’t matter now.”

  “Shall we go?” said Morse.

  Tomas put the van in gear. They kept going down the road.

  *

  They drove through a cloudburst which lasted no longer than three minutes. 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 roa
d 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.