WELCOME TO SOMERSET
“You’ve come a long way, baby.” Violet spat a laugh out.
Away to the left, in a shrouded field, the thin shape of an electricity pylon emerged like an abandoned wicker man. A dead sentinel on the Somerset Levels.
*
They’d walked for hours, and now the dark was closing in and all about was the dying of the light.
“We should get off the road,” said Violet.
They cut across a wild field and entered a hamlet of several houses where nothing moved or made any sound and the buildings welcomed them with open doors. They moved slowly, carefully, listening to the mist and watching its tendrils close around their legs then dispersing again when they moved.
Violet led them to a house on the very edge of the hamlet and stepped through the doorway, sweeping the insides with her torch. She knocked on the jamb and waited. Morse gripped his crowbar and looked around, and when he turned back to Violet she nodded at him and moved further inside the house. He followed, closing the front door behind him.
Violet waited for him in the hallway.
Together they searched the house for infected.
*
They sat around two birthday candles fastened to a nub of Blu-Tack and watched the small flames as they ate from tins of food.
“How far are we from Hallow Hope?” said Violet, chewing with her mouth open.
“About eight miles. We’re close.”
“Not close enough to walk there tonight.”
“Maybe.”
“It’d be stupid to keep walking in the dark.”
“I know.” He sipped water. Held one hand up to the light, noticing the faint tremor under his skin. “What if we get there and they’re gone? I don’t know what I’d do.”
Violet’s eyes were solemn. “Would you give up?”
“I don’t know.”
“We could try and get off the mainland,” she said. “What’s it like in the rest of Europe?”
He put the water bottle down. “It’s about as fucked as it is here. Wherever you go, it’s fucked.”
“So, is this it then?”
“What do you mean?”
“The end. The end of us; of the human race.”
“Who knows? We don’t know how the other parts of the world are doing, but the last we heard, it had all fallen. Parts of the United States could be surviving. Canada and South America. The Middle East is probably the same old shit storm. No idea about China or Russia. I think it’s the same all over the planet, to be honest. The Plague Gods have won.”
“I’ve always wondered how North Korea would have coped.”
“Who knows? Who wants to know? I don’t want to know.”
“Maybe there’s a survivors’ colony in Greenland or Alaska; or the Antarctic.”
“Maybe,” Morse said. “It’s not impossible.”
“What about the tribes in the Amazon?”
“Fuck knows.” He rubbed his aching face.
“It’s insane,” said Violet. Her eyes were watery in the candlelight. “One day everything is rosy – fast food, iPhones, Starbucks, Google – everything at your fingertips. And now it’s all gone.”
“Extinction level event. A lot of it was overrated anyway. We’d fucked things up even before the plague arrived.”
“Do you know what I miss most?” she said.
“What?”
“Custard donuts.”
“I miss chips with brown sauce.”
“Nice one.”
Morse smiled at her, and she smiled back, but the moment soon died when she had to wipe her eyes and turn away.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The infected attacked during the night. It started with scraping at the walls and then the front door was hammered upon by a scrum of bodies all clamouring to get inside.
Morse and Violet stood together in the hallway and faced the demented groans and vile shrieks from beyond the house.
“We have to fight,” Violet said. She sounded terrified.
Morse wriggled his fingers around the shaft of the crowbar and nodded.
“Get ready.”
The front door didn’t hold for long until it was splintered and ripped down. And then the infected came inside with their black claws, thrashing limbs and choking mouths. Glimpses of wet tendrils writhing in the dark.
Morse attacked the first infected through the door – a shivering abomination of a naked man – and it fell back with its face crumpled inwards. Violet used her lump hammer to crack a woman’s skull open.
The next infected creature rushed forward with sharp fingernails and gnashing teeth. Violet hit the creature around the side of the head and pushed the knife into its stomach.
The infected came towards them, scratching at the walls and floor. Morse swung the crowbar double-handed and knocked a teenage girl off her feet; she hit the wall before she lunged forward again, and he brought the crowbar down and collapsed the top of her skull. She lay writhing at Morse’s feet until he stamped on her throat, crushing her windpipe and snapping her neck.
More infected poured through the doorway. Morse and Violet exchanged a glance.
“Good luck,” she said.
Morse nodded at her. “Ready?”
“No, but fuck it.”
“Good.”
They screamed and rushed towards the infected, weapons held high, murder in their hearts. And all about them was flesh and blood.
*
In the first light of the day they stood exhausted in the mist outside the house, with the corpses of infected all around them, some still twitching or wheezing their last breaths. Everything stank of the plague and the insidious pestilence.
Morse dropped the bloodied crowbar, his arms trembling, and put his hands on his thighs as he hunched over and vomited onto the ground. His clothes were covered in gore and his face was speckled with blood. His heart hurt. When he’d finished expelling the contents of his stomach he stood and looked at Violet as she crouched by the broken body of a little girl. She was crying. He walked over and stood beside her.
Violet didn’t look up at him. “She looks like my niece.”
The girl’s scalp still retained a few wisps of blonde hair. Her bloodshot eyes open and lifeless. The dress she’d been wearing on the day of her infection was little more than strips of filthy rags over her emaciated body. It had been a blue dress. Prominent ribs. Her hands were more like claws. Her stomach was perforated with stab wounds.
“It’s not her,” Morse said.
“I know.” Violet tossed her knife away and it clattered on the road. The blade thick with drying blood. “But when I saw her, I thought it was Julia, and I hesitated and she almost had me because of it. I never knew what happened to Julia. I last saw her with my sister, running towards a refugee shelter as a swarm of infected poured down the street. There was no way they could have escaped.”
Morse touched her shoulder.
“They were all people, Morse. They all had ambitions and hopes and fears and worries. They loved and hated and they had dreams, and now it’s all nothing. And I had to end it for so many of them.”
“Come on,” Morse said. “Let’s get cleaned up.”
She let out a deep sob and wiped her eyes. “Okay.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
They left the motorway and took the A39 later that morning. Five miles from Hallow Hope. There was thunder in the east, crackling and roaring, and it sent a shiver through Morse’s bones. The thought of facing a Plague God turned his heart to cinders and drained the strength from his legs. What would he have to confront to save Florence?
“There’s something ahead,” Violet said as she slowed her pace. “Looks big.”
Morse saw it rise from the mist and thought it was some species of infected monster before he noticed the windows and the curve of a wheel.
They stopped behind the back end of a minibus. Morse looked further into the mist where it revealed the convoy of vehicles. Morse
moved forward and Violet followed. Minibuses, vans and Land Rovers.
It was all abandoned, deserted. No bodies. The backs of the vehicles were loaded with belongings, baggage and supplies. Cold engines.
“Where have they gone?” Violet toed a dropped handkerchief. “Why would they leave all their stuff behind? Why would they leave the vehicles with fuel still inside?”
Morse stood watching the vehicles. “Let’s walk down the road and find out.”
*
A mile later they found the bodies half-eaten and dismembered. Ripped flesh and skin upon the blood-red road. Throats slashed. Hanging tongues. Vacant eyes.
This was the Order of the Pestilence, or what remained of it.
Morse looked down at the cadavers scattered across the road, searching for Florence’s corpse among the remains, but the sheer violence of their deaths made it impossible to identify anyone. His eyes were hot and stinging, and he felt sick. The smell was of slaughterhouses and carrion rooms.
“I can’t see Florence anywhere.” His voice was weak and unsure. His legs felt unsteady. The ground seemed so far away. A mounting pressure reared inside him as he tried to hold the trembling of his hands while stepping over severed body parts, hair and peeled skin. Offal-stink made him dizzy.
“It was a fucking slaughter,” Violet said. “It’s like they just disembarked willingly from the convoy and came here to be killed. Like cattle.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Morse said.
Violet stood next to him and put her hand on his arm. “I don’t think Florence is here. We’ll find her.”
Morse had never before noticed the blueness of her eyes.
“It’s okay,” she said.
He nodded and wiped his mouth.
She smiled at him, with something like hope.
He touched her arm. “Thank you.”
The bullet made a neat hole in Violet’s forehead before the back of her head was blown out. Her eyes met his, and she opened her mouth to say something, before her legs failed and she collapsed at his feet.
He stared down at her, shocked into silence, her blood warm on his face and hands. His mouth hung open as he tried to say her name, but all that spilled out was a trembling breath.
The next bullet took Morse in the shoulder.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
His hands scraping raw on the tarmac, Morse crawled over the road as someone came through the mist after him. The shoulder of his coat was soaked with blood. He gritted his teeth at the pain and dragged himself to the roadside and sat against the wheel of a rusted car. His body had failed him and this was the end. Faint and sick, he clasped one hand to his shoulder to stem the bleeding, and all he could do was look at Violet’s body lying on the road.
A shape manifested in the mist and struggled towards him, hunched upon a walking stick.
“You bastard,” Morse said.
Jardine emerged and stood looking down at him with such an expression of hate and anger that Morse almost turned away. The old man looked at the pistol in his hand. The weapon he’d used to kill Violet.
“You didn’t have to kill her,” Morse said, and spat at him. “You motherfucker, you didn’t have to. What was the point? Why? You fucking bastard…” His voice faded with his strength.
“Hello, Morse,” Jardine said.
“Pointless death, all of it.” Morse gritted his teeth against the agony in his shoulder and stared at the murderer.
Jardine wiped his mouth. “She had to die. It seems that we all have to die. Are you ready to die now, Morse?”
“What happened to your army? Looks like the infected fucked up your plans.”
Jardine winced as he touched the weeping wound in his side. His face clammy and bloodless. “I was betrayed.”
“Betrayed?”
“We were slaughtered. The infected were waiting for us. The Plague Gods were in the sky. When we first arrived, it was exciting and I thought we were going to be welcomed. But after we all disembarked from our vehicles and walked for about a mile, the infected emerged from the mist and set upon us. It was a massacre.”
“What about Florence? Is she dead?”
Jardine’s eyes fluttered. He grimaced. “They didn’t harm the children.”
“Then how did you survive?”
“I managed to escape while the others were slaughtered. I hid. I heard them all die, Morse. I heard the infected feeding. And when I returned, the infected were gone and they had taken the children with them, down the road to Hallow Hope.”
“Ascension,” said Morse.
Jardine’s face crumpled as if he was about to cry. “I was supposed to be their leader, but only the children were saved. Why wasn’t I saved? I have the gift. Why didn’t they take me with them?”
Morse shook his head. “Maybe you weren’t pure enough. Too old. Too weak. Just a doddering old man.”
“Don’t you mock me,” Jardine spat. “Don’t you dare mock me, you insignificant wretch.”
Morse savoured the taste of blood in his mouth and raised his middle finger to the old man.
Jardine shook with rage and his eyes were wild. He took one step forward, breathing through his clenched jaw. “I should have killed you back at Darlington House. I should have cut your head off.”
Morse mouthed fuck you.
“Bastard!” Jardine bared his teeth and aimed the pistol at Morse’s face.
A plaintive cry drifted out of the mist.
Morse saw something monstrous approach behind Jardine and he thought it was the Devil arriving to take them both away. He grinned through nerve-shredding pain and felt a pure wave of relief for the first time in a long while.
“Judgement,” Morse whispered.
“What?” Jardine said, puzzled.
“You’ll see.”
A tall form of flailing tendrils came out of the mist behind Jardine, seized the sides of his head with dripping pincers and lifted him from the ground. He screamed and dropped the pistol. The monster emerged fully, and the sight of it almost stopped Morse’s heart. It was over ten feet tall and pale white in colour, shuddering on insectile legs that bent both ways at their joints. The squirming appendages on its glistening abdomen danced in the air, whip-like and tipped with weeping stingers.
And those stingers jabbed at Jardine’s body, piercing him multiple times through his clothes. His face slackened and blood frothed from his mouth as he gurgled and spluttered. More pincers emerged from flesh sheaths within the creature’s centre mass and gripped Jardine’s limbs; and his final scream died as he was torn in half like a wet cardboard effigy and his insides slopped upon the road and steamed in small mounds.
The creature opened its vertical maw and pushed the two parts of Jardine inside, gobbled up his dangling legs, and then there were only the sounds of bones being snapped and flesh chewed to paste.
Morse’s chest tightened. A squeezing hand around his heart. He stared in awe at the monster, waiting for it to come forward and work itself upon his quivering body. He felt his mind slipping away, and it was for the best, because he did not want to be aware when it fell upon him.
The monster skittered forward until it towered over him. Its smell was of stagnant water and brine. Jardine’s blood stained its mouth and limbs. A shivering breath slipped from its maw. Morse saw the teeth inside gnashing in anticipation of his flesh.
“Hurry up and get it done,” he said. “I’ve had enough. We’ve all had enough.”
The monster’s appendages descended to him and paused before his face, wriggling and floundering, dripping a pale fluid onto his clothes. One of the appendages touched his forehead and he had to stifle a horrified cry by gritting his teeth. The appendage’s sharp tip ran across the skin of his brow but didn’t break the skin. He swallowed bile down his throat. The back of his mouth watered with nausea.
“What are you waiting for…?” he whispered.
The monster backed away until it was indistinct in the mist, and it stayed there watching him
, a tumultuous form mewling softly, sated by the feast of Jardine’s body.
Another form melted from the mist and approached, stepping softly over the corpses. A small, slight figure that smiled and reached towards him. A girl he once knew. He tried to stand, but his legs failed and his ailing heart was a terrible weight.
The girl stood and looked down at him. Her scalp was completely hairless and her eyes were soaked in a deep red. The gown she wore hung from her thin shoulders, speckled with dried blood. Her mouth was pretty, and when she smiled again Morse felt the pain leave his body. He smiled back at her. His dark angel.
“Florence,” he whispered.
She reached down for him and took his hand and her skin was warm. “You came back for me. I’m sorry I was mean to you before. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“What’s going on, Florence?”
She showed her teeth. “Something wonderful has happened, Morse. It’s all going to be okay. There will be no more pain. No more death. Not for any of us”
“What do you mean?”
“Come with me and I’ll show you.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
The Plague Gods filled the air while Morse and Florence walked hand in hand to the cries of monsters in the mist. The air he breathed was foul with rot and thick enough to be swallowed like fluid. Shapes moved around them, barely glimpsed. Nasal snorts and murmuring. Deformed faces stretched beyond human suffering. Crooked bodies lurching and loping. Beasts of the plague, misshapen to obscene positions and composed of human limbs, faces, eyes and torsos. A prehensile tail tipped with a loaded stinger, weaved through the mist. A bloated stomach glistening as it peeled open to allow a sheathed proboscis to emerge wetly, draped with strands of mucus. The slapping of flesh on the ground. Feral cries.
Florence was smiling. Her voice was serene and kind, as if she’d been dosed with some kind of opiate. “Don’t be scared, Morse. Nothing will hurt you here.”
The Last Soldier Page 20
