Morse turned his head slightly, trying not to stare at her hairless scalp or meet her red eyes, which looked like deep pools of velvet. He tried to keep the fear out of his voice, despite the tremble of his mouth and chin. His heart was frantic.
“What happened to you?” he said.
Her smile never wavered as she raised her face to him. “I know I seem…different, but I’m still me. I’m still the girl you know. I’ve just been changed a bit, that’s all.”
“Is this your ascension?”
“This is the prelude to it. I’m in the early stages of transformation.”
“What will you become?”
“Something wonderful. It’ll be glorious, Morse. The Plague Gods have welcomed us.”
“They didn’t welcome the Order of the Pestilence.”
“They weren’t gifted, so they were deemed irrelevant. Only good for food, I’m afraid.”
“What about Jardine? He had the same gift as you.”
“He was just a facilitator, though an unwitting one. His purpose was to bring the children together, and once he’d fulfilled his purpose he was no longer needed.”
Morse realised that the other children were standing nearby, silent and motionless in the mist, watching him and Florence. They were red-eyed and hairless. The boys and girls of the plague. He thought of them as larval forms eager to shed their human skins and reveal the monsters lurking underneath.
“Why haven’t you killed me yet, Florence?”
She wiped her mouth with back of her pale arm. “I want you to join us. There is no other way. This is the next stage.”
“You want to infect me, you mean.”
She halted. “Look ahead at what is waiting for us, Morse.”
He stared into the mist as it swirled and capered, and when it thinned and allowed him to see beyond, it revealed an enormous pit whose edges faded into the vapour. The ground had collapsed or been scooped out. Endless. Incomprehensible. Nothing but darkness within. He stepped forward until he was a few yards from its edge and felt such a wave of vertigo that he held his arms out to steady himself.
“That’s what’s left of Hallow Hope,” Florence said. A note of victory in her voice. She’d appeared beside him, gazing down into the abyssal dark.
“What happened here?” Morse said, trying to comprehend what his eyes showed him.
“The Plague Gods came down from the heavens,” whispered Florence. She trembled with something like excitement. “This is how it’s supposed to be.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You won’t be a drone; you’ll be something else. Something better. Something greater.”
“Like what?”
“A protector. A guardian. My guardian, again.”
A deep rumble travelled underneath their feet, like massive tremors in the deep earth. Morse swayed and almost fell down, but Florence gripped his hand and held him up. The tremor passed beyond them. Morse didn’t let go of her hand despite the damp meat feel of her skin.
“What do you mean?” he said.
She turned away and faced the pit as something emerged with the sound of colliding mountains.
“Oh god.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Florence said. “A god.”
The immense form rose and extended into the sky, at least four hundred feet tall. A gargantuan entity that roared through a mouth as wide as a quarry, claiming the world and all life upon it. A wavering, writhing protean form, extending giant tentacles towards the sky, casting the ground in shadow, its red skin rippling and swelling with undulating tendrils and immense worm-like appendages.
Morse retreated from the pit until he fell onto his back, staring up at the monstrous titan. The Plague God. One of many. He felt his mind slipping away. His heart jerking in his chest. Hard to breathe. He realised he was crying and biting into his fist so hard that his teeth left dimpled marks in his skin. He couldn’t speak.
Florence stood over him as he put his hands to his face and stared through the gaps between his fingers. Past her, membranous-winged beasts swooped, circling the towering Plague God, screeching and wailing. They were pale, elusive forms, darting around the massive tentacles like birds or bats. His eyes hurt, and he tried to deny what he saw, but there would be no denying of anything because this was the way of things now. This was the plague in all its forms.
Florence offered her hand and he accepted. He could feel her alien heart beating. The corruption within her spreading like cancer. “This is the fate of all sentient life,” she said. “The other children and I will be emissaries to other worlds yet to receive the plague.”
“Emissaries?”
“The plague has evolved, Morse, and it wants other life forms to accept infection willingly. Communion is so much easier that way.”
She pulled him to his feet and he stood there breathing weakly, grasping his shoulder. He glanced beyond her at the abomination that filled the sky; the Plague God in all its dark glory. Florence unhanded him but stepped closer until he could smell her. The foul odour of her mouth and her bloodless skin.
“I can talk to the Plague Gods. All the children can. We’re linked. Our thoughts are shared. The Plague Gods have agreed to let me take you, Morse. We can still be together.”
He reeled, pleading to her with his eyes. “I can’t join you like this, Florence. This isn’t life. This is wrong. It’s not supposed to be like this.”
Doubt passed over her face. “There is no other way, Morse. Human survivors are slowly being wiped out or absorbed, and soon there will be no one left. Come with me, Morse. I can save you from an agonising, lingering death. What will you do if you flee? You’ll die out in the wastelands, or become infected and you’ll join the swarm and you’ll just be another drone. This is the only way. Come with me, Morse. Please.”
She held out her hand.
Morse swayed on his feet, wiping his eyes. “I don’t know. I need time to think about this. It’s all too much.” His heart winced. He put one hand to his chest.
“Take my hand,” she said. “It’s the only way.”
He met her crimson eyes. She was still the girl he’d sworn to protect, but she was being consumed from within and it broke his heart beyond comprehension.
The children gathered around them. No one spoke. The thunder roared in the sky. Writhing flesh in the mist all about them. The sky darkened with colossal shapes.
He sagged, torn by indecision, the sounds of the Plague Gods filling his skull. He looked at Florence. Saw her the way she had once been. The little girl he’d rescued from an abandoned refugee camp. The girl he’d saved. The girl he’d come to love as a daughter. And then he saw the truth of her: transformed by the Plague Gods, changing into something that would soon be unrecognisable as human. She would be lost.
She was already lost.
His mouth trembled and he let out a low, mournful moan.
Florence reached for him. Her small voice. “Come with me, Morse. We can be together until the universe dies.”
He let out a low sob.
She touched his arm gently, like old times.
With one hand he reached behind him into the waistline of his trousers under the hem of his coat and grabbed the pistol stashed there. The pistol that Jardine dropped when he’d been plucked from the ground and devoured. And Morse pulled the pistol free and brought it forward and aimed at Florence. His hand was shaking terribly, his shoulder in agony. Screeching laughter filled his head. He was losing his mind. He muttered with no idea of the words he spoke.
The children wailed around him, except for Florence; she simply watched him with her red wine eyes full of sorrow and disappointment. They became watery with what seemed to be tears. And she knew what would come.
Morse grimaced at the pain of the bullet wound and wished to die soon. “I can’t let you become a monster, Florence. I love you. You are my daughter. My girl. My weakness. I promised to protect you, to save you, and I will. I will save you from the monsters.”
<
br /> Florence opened her mouth and shrieked his name as he fired the pistol into her chest. The report of the gunshot filled the space between them, and the silence that followed was terrible and heart breaking. Morse cried with such sorrow that he fell to his knees.
The children stumbled away, clasping hands to their faces and vanished into the mist.
Morse closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled deeply until there was no air in his lungs. When he opened his eyes, Florence was lying on the ground, sprawled cruciform. A red rose spreading upon her gown.
He sobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He knelt next to Florence and held her hand, lowering his face next to hers. “I had to save you.”
Her mouth took weakening mouthfuls of air. She looked at him with tears in her eyes, and she became that frightened little girl he’d saved once upon a time.
“Forgive me, Florence. Forgive me, please.”
She raised her head slightly and whispered something in his ear, but it was too soft to be heard and she died with her mouth close to his face as a final shuddering breath rattled in her chest.
He cradled her head and kissed her brow. She was already cold. He cried for a long time, surrounded by the hell of Hallow Hope, as the Plague Gods roared and screamed and mourned for his loss.
“I love you, Florence. Sleep well, my girl. It’s all over.”
EPILOGUE
The world was darkening and the skies were never without thunder and rain. Black fungi bloomed and flourished and expelled spores that killed the trees. Plant life withered and died. All creatures of the plague prospered in the ravaged land. Swarms of infected merged to form monstrous, writhing titans of flesh. This was the next stage. Their evolution, witnessed a thousand times on a thousand different worlds.
A new ecosystem was emerging. New monsters and beasts. Abominations and obscene things that lived to kill and feed. Terrible infants born from monsters’ eggs. Broken gods birthed from nightmare wombs. The world was flesh, tooth, maw, stinger, and claw. It was meat and skin. A world torn asunder to be remade.
The fate of all life.
Joseph Morse had fled Hallow Hope with Florence in his arms. He 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. Florence, Violet, Tomas, Karen, Sophie. 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’d 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 and a quick fumble with the neighbour’s daughter. He couldn’t remember her name. 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. Drunken memories. Young women in short skirts.
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. The planet was being adapted to suit them. 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. Unscathed from the horror of the last two-and-some years.
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. Standing there, 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 or 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 morning
s. He recalled the time he’d brought Stacey Jarvis back here when his parents went out one night. The things they had done in his bed. 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. And 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
The Last Soldier Page 21
