She grinned, examining the ring, turning it in the air so it sparkled. “I thought you were about to break up with me.”
“That’s stupid.”
“You’re stupid.”
“We’ll be stupid together.”
“Okay.”
They walked on, after more hugs and kisses.
Violet couldn’t wait to tell her family and friends. She was tempted to text her best and oldest friend Sandra, and tell her. Although she hoped Sandra wouldn’t be jealous, seeing as she had just broken up with her boyfriend. She tried to imagine her mother’s face when she told her. She hoped Dad would be okay with it; he had always told her never to get married too young. But she was twenty-three now, an adult, and she knew what she was doing. Ethan was the man for her, even with his horrendous flatulence after eating pizza.
She put her arms around him as they walked. He stroked her hand and said it would be a beautiful day.
“It is already,” Violet replied.
Ethan pointed across the field, to where a man had emerged from the trees. She looked towards the man and squinted. He was about fifty yards away, stumbling through the grass. Part of his t-shirt was ripped. He was jerking his head around, like there was a wasp buzzing around his face. Violet thought his face was twitching, but she couldn’t be sure because of the distance.
He was heading towards them.
“What’s wrong with him?” Violet said.
“Maybe he’s got a hangover too.”
“Can we turn back? I don’t like the look of him.”
He smiled at her. “I’ll protect you, my wife-to-be.”
“Oh, my dashing hero.”
“That’s right, baby.”
They turned around and started walking back up the river. Violet glanced back and saw that the man was following them. He did not look away from them and had shortened the distance to less than forty yards. His mouth was moving. Violet thought she could hear him gibbering. She thought there was blood on his hands. It could have been red paint. Yeah, red paint…had to be.
“Walk quicker,” she said to Ethan.
He glanced over his shoulder and frowned. “What the hell…?”
They quickened their pace.
Violet checked behind to see the man had gained on them, and now he was only twenty yards away and loping into a staggering run. Perhaps he was only out for a morning jog…
With red paint on his hands and a torn t-shirt…
He was almost upon them when Violet screamed.
Ethan turned around and raised his hands as the man lunged forward and took hold of him. And before he could protest or even ask what he was doing, the man jerked his head towards Ethan’s face and seized the skin of his cheek in his mouth. Ethan screamed, his eyes going wide with shock and pain. Violet couldn’t move. The man pulled his head back and tore away a patch of skin from Ethan’s face. A sound like ripping cloth. Blood spurted and covered his lips and chin. Ethan pawed uselessly at the man, who knocked him to the ground and fell upon him, snapping jaws working against the torn mess of his face and throat. Ethan screamed wordlessly. Called out to Violet. His legs kicked at the air.
“Leave him alone!” Violet screamed.
The man raised his face from Ethan’s trembling body and stared at her, his mouth hanging open and bloodied. Bits of Ethan were on his face and down the front of his ripped t-shirt.
Violet bunched her hands into fists as she backed away. She risked a glance at Ethan; he wasn’t moving. His eyes were open and staring at the sky. His throat had been opened and most of the skin was gone from his face. Violet was muttering, crying, and wiping her eyes, trying to stand upright, because if she collapsed now she would suffer the same fate as her fiancé.
“Oh god,” she whispered, close to hysteria. “Oh god, help me.” She said Ethan’s name as she realised he was dead. Her lovely, poor, sweet Ethan, gone. Gone. Dead. There would be no engagement party and no wedding, no marriage and no children. No life together. Nothing. She felt reality falling away and she wondered, absurdly, what her mother would say when she got home.
The man rose from Ethan’s lifeless form and started towards her, reaching with bloodied hands.
She turned and ran.
*
Violet fled up the pathway and into the stretch of woodland that would take her back to the street directly outside the nature reserve. She cried and wailed as she ran, senseless and beyond logic. There was thunder in the sky, and she thought that was strange because there had been no clouds only a short while ago.
The man bolted from the trees to her right and bundled into her. They fell down together. She landed next to him and rolled away just as he swept out a hand that raked across the ground. She shuffled backwards, using her hands to move. He crawled after her, snarling, his eyes wild and bloodshot.
She backed up against the bottom of a tree trunk and the man bounded forwards like a crazed animal. She drew her foot back and kicked him in the face. He flinched, but it barely slowed him down and then he was upon her, his mouth opening wide. She noticed how sharp his teeth were. The teeth that killed Ethan.
There was a large stone in her hand.
She swung the stone at his face and connected with his left eye, and he fell away shrieking. She rose into a crouch and when he recovered and came forward again, she hit him on the side of the head and he collapsed stunned to the ground. A horrid wheezing drifted from his mouth as she knelt over him on one knee.
“Who the fuck are you?” she said, at the edge of madness. “Why did you kill my Ethan? What’s wrong with you? Why? WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?”
The man growled in his throat as she brought the stone down again and again until his face was caved-in and destroyed, and all recognisable features were nothing more than red pulp. Then she sat and threw the stone away and cried for a long while under the canopy of trees, staring at the blood on her hands. Grief and terror blanked all rational thought and there was only the savage cry of murder in her head. Shadows danced around, limbs as thin as the tree branches above her. Black dots imposed upon her sight. Voices and sirens on nearby streets. A child crying. Dogs barking. The thunder was louder.
It sounded like the world was ending
*
Violet woke with tears in her eyes. She looked at where the engagement ring had been on her finger, and couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it.
She thought about Ethan and wondered if he was waiting for her in some other place, with his family and her family, and all their pets. All of those who’d died in the outbreak.
She would never forget them.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
They stopped in a layby. Morse slumped in the passenger seat as Violet took her turn to drive. He was exhausted. His eyes struggled to stay open. He yawned into his hand and looked out the windscreen at the shapeless dark.
“Where are we?” Violet said as she clipped in the seatbelt.
Morse blew air from his mouth and rubbed his face as he checked the map. “A few miles north of Nottingham, on the M1.”
“We’ve still got to go around Birmingham?” said Violet.
“Yeah.”
“We haven’t got much fuel left. I don’t know how far it’ll take us.”
“Let’s just keep going.”
Violet put the Land Rover in gear. “Fair enough.”
*
Morse tried to sleep, but his hands were jittery. He 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 be
fore.
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. “Are you okay?”
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 mist. “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 panicked, 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 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 kept pace with them and then closed in again, trying to get level the Land Rover now that 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. Violet clenched iron fingers around the steering wheel; sweat dripped down her face, her skin bloodless and clammy, and her eyes bulging wide. Murky water and mud sprayed from under the wheels. Clumps of dirt dislodged and flew in all directions.
The Last Soldier Page 18
