Mike appeared, looking up at the sky, his eyes bloodshot. The helicopter passed over us and continued on over the mountains. As it disappeared into the distance, the unnerving quiet settled over us again.
Mike came over to me. He was wearing just a T-shirt and boxers. He must be freezing but he didn’t seem to notice the cold.
“Dude,” he said as he approached, smiling, “how was your night? Mine was fucking awesome.”
Ignoring his question, I said, “We’ve decided it’s real, Mike. The warning. Everything.”
“For fuck’s sake, not this again. So now you’ve convinced Lucy with your paranoid delusions.”
“I’m not paranoid.”
“Like fuck you aren’t, Alex. You couldn’t just come out here and have some fun, could you? You had to go and turn it into one of your games. You can’t just come out here and hike around the mountains for a couple of days, you have to make it the end of the fucking world. Well here’s some news for you. This is just a normal day like any other. Tomorrow you’ll be back at work like every other Monday. Same old shit as always. So let’s enjoy today and make the most of it.”
“Mike, we think it’s real.”
He glared at me and shook his head. “You really are crazy.” He stalked back to the tents and picked up a saucepan and spoon. Crashing them together, he shouted, “Come on, ladies, it’s time to get up and get moving. We have to go home today.”
Elena and Lucy appeared, blinking against the sunlight.
“Let’s get all this packed up.” Mike’s attitude was brash and loud. “Got to get back to the cars by this afternoon. Move it, people!” He tossed the pan and spoon into the grass. They clattered as they rolled across the grass then went silent. Mike walked away from the tents and stood staring up at the misty mountains.
I went over to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Mike…”
He shrugged me off and took a few steps away. His eyes had tears in them. I had never seen Mike cry. Never.
“You’ll see,” he said, waving a finger at me. “We’ll get to the cars and go home and everything will be just fine. And we’ll be telling this story in the pub with our friends, telling them how Alex thought the fucking world had ended. And they’ll laugh and drink to your paranoid delusional fucking conspiracy theories.”
I went back to the tent without a word. Climbing inside, I shook my head.
“What is it?” Lucy was rolling the sleeping bags up.
“Mike doesn’t believe us. Except maybe he does but can’t admit it.”
“What do you think we’ll find when we get back home?”
“If something really bad has happened, we won’t make it home, Lucy. If there’s a virus, the army will have checkpoints, quarantine. They’ll try to separate the infected. I suppose they’ll set up emergency hospitals.”
“But we’re not infected.”
“No, but they won’t know that. They’ll probably put people in quarantine for the duration of the incubation period of the virus. That’s the only way they could separate the healthy population from the infected. Unless there’s a blood test or something.”
“This is so fucked up.”
“Look, maybe we’re wrong. Maybe we’ll get back home and everything will be normal like Mike says.”
Neither of us believed that.
We packed up the tents and gear into the rucksacks and left the campsite, heading along the hiking trail as it ran through a sharp-smelling pine forest. Mike had said we should be back at the cars by late afternoon. After saying that, he had gone quiet, walking ahead with Elena while Lucy and I trailed behind. Our little group, which yesterday had been split by physical fitness, was now split by beliefs.
The shadows among the pines made me think of the man who had attacked me yesterday and one word kept repeating itself over and over in my mind: infected. If the people infected by the virus became violent, that would explain the warning on the EBS to lock all doors and windows.
Lucy was quiet as we walked, her mind obviously on her family and thoughts of home.
I hoped that whatever was happening, my parents and Joe were OK.
Mike and Elena stopped and waited for us. As we reached them, Mike said, “I’m going to prove to you that nothing’s wrong, man,” He pointed past the edge of the forest to a farmhouse on a hill. “They must have a TV in there. We’ll go ask them if anything is wrong. They’ll think we’re crazy but at least it’ll make you shut up about your crazy theory.”
I looked at the place beyond the pines. It looked deserted. Apart from a few sheep grazing in the field, there were no signs of life. But Mike was right; at least we would know for sure what had happened.
We left the trail and made our way through the trees to the wooden fence that skirted the farm. After throwing the rucksacks over into the field, we climbed over one by one. The fence may have been strong enough to keep sheep in the field but didn’t look like it could take our combined weight. As I slipped the rucksack straps back onto my shoulders, I took a better look at the farmhouse.
An old building made of wood that had seen better days, it had two levels and was flanked by stables and a barn. There was a faded blue Land Rover parked on a patchy area of grass by the house. Looked like someone was home after all.
The others had already started for the house so I jogged to catch up with them. The sheep weren’t too happy about strangers in their field and moved as far away from us as they could get, watching us with baleful yellow eyes.
“This place looks creepy,” Elena said as we got closer to the house.
“It’s just run down,” Mike replied. “Anyway, it will solve the mystery of the end of the world once and for all.”
We climbed the fence and stood before the place. Mike strode up onto the wooden porch and knocked on the door.
Lucy wrinkled her nose. “What’s that smell?”
As soon as she said it, I smelled it too. Like dead, rancid meat. Probably a dead animal the farmer hadn’t disposed of yet.
“Jesus, Alex, you could have waited,” Mike joked, knocking on the door again.
“I don’t think anyone’s home,” I said.
“Maybe they’ve been evacuated,” Lucy offered.
“Oh for fuck’s sake.” Mike tried the door and it opened. “OK, let’s find the TV.” He stepped inside.
“We can’t just go into someone’s house,” Lucy said.
“Hey, the door was open. If that isn’t an invitation, I don’t know what is.” He disappeared inside.
Elena followed.
Lucy looked at me. “Should we go in?”
“We want to know what’s happened. There might be something on the TV.”
She nodded and stepped through the door.
I followed, not oblivious to the fact that a split had occurred in the group and Lucy was on my side. It felt good.
The house looked like it had last been decorated sometime during the seventies. Peeling wooden panels adorned the hall and garish green and yellow wallpaper covered the walls of the living room. The sofa and chairs in there were covered in green paisley fabric. In the corner, looking out of place among the retro decor, stood a big flat-screen TV. Mike found the remote and turned it on.
The screen popped to life, showing us a message that simply said, ‘Off Air’.
“Try another channel,” Elena suggested.
Mike flicked through the channels. Each had a different message but all said essentially the same thing.
Off air.
Not transmitting.
Dead.
“This isn’t fucking happening, man,” Mike said, throwing the remote against the sofa. It bounced off the cushions and landed on the carpet. The battery hatch lid broke off and the batteries spilled out like tubular guts.
“You can’t be thinking what they’re thinking,” Elena said to Mike.
He looked at her. “What else is there to think? No TV. No radio. Some fucked up message on every channel.” He looked over at me
. “I think you’re right, man. I hate to say it but I think you’re right.”
“Mike, no.” Elena shook her head. “This can’t be happening.”
He looked at me. “Tell me about this virus.”
“We don’t know much. Something about a doctor being quarantined in a hospital in London. I think the infected are dangerous. That’s why there was a warning on the radio to lock all doors and windows.”
He nodded grimly. “Try the radio. I want to hear that message again.”
I took the radio out of my pocket and switched it on. The familiar voice filled the room. “…emergency broadcast. Stay in your home. The military and police are dealing with the current situation. Stay inside and lock all doors and windows. If law enforcement or military personnel come to your home, do as instructed and proceed to the checkpoint they designate. Do not open your door to anyone except law enforcement or military personnel. Do not leave your home unless instructed. This is the BBC emergency broadcast. Stay in…”
I switched it off.
“What’s all that about checkpoints?” Mike asked.
“It didn’t say that yesterday. They added that part.”
“Fuck.”
“No, that’s good. It means the army and the police have a plan. They’re dealing with the situation. Sending people to a safe place.”
“And what about us?” Elena asked. “Are we in a safe place?”
“We’re far away enough from the shit that’s going down to be safe,” Mike replied.
I shook my head. “No, we’re not. What about the man who attacked me yesterday? He must have been infected. The people who live out here still go into populated areas to get supplies, to go shopping. They come into contact with the rest of society all the time. Where are the owners of this farm?”
As if in reply, a noise came from upstairs. It sounded like someone climbing out of bed and walking across the wooden floor. The floorboards creaked with each step.
Mike looked up at the ceiling. “There’s someone here, man.” His voice had dropped to an urgent whisper.
Elena’s eyes were wide with terror. “What do we do?”
The footsteps upstairs creaked slowly across the room and sounded like they were moving towards the stairs.
“I’m getting out of here.” Mike ran for the front door and out of the house.
“Let’s go,” I said to the girls.
Elena went next, then Lucy. As I reached the bottom of the stairs, I glanced up to the floor above.
There at the top stood the farmer. Dressed in blue jeans and a red check shirt that had a dark blood stain across the shoulder. His skin was mottled blue and his eyes were yellow. He drew back his lips and snarled.
He stepped down onto the top step. His eyes looked more like a wild animal’s than a human’s.
And they looked at me with pure rage.
I fled the house but as soon as I got outside, I heard a sound that pierced the morning air.
Lucy screaming.
five
I squinted against the sun as I ran out onto the porch. Lucy and Elena stood flattened to the wall of the house, their frightened eyes locked on the scene in front of them.
Mike was lying on the ground face down, hands behind his neck. Above him stood a soldier pointing an assault rifle at Mike’s head. The man was dressed in green combat gear. His black hair was close-cropped and his face looked hard.
I halted on the porch, aware of the creaking stairs behind me. The farmer was coming down slowly but it wouldn’t be a moment or two before he was within grabbing distance of me. I moved away from the open doorway.
“Stay where you are,” the soldier said. “How many more of you are there?”
“None,” I said. “But I really need to move. There’s an infected person in there.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What do you know about the infected? Has one of your group been bitten?”
Another creak on the stairs. A low moan.
“It’s the owner of this house,” I said quickly. “Please, I have to move. Don’t shoot me.”
“Stay where you are or I’ll shoot your friend. Don’t even think about stepping away from that doorway.”
Lucy glanced sideways at me, her big blue eyes gleaming with tears. She must have seen what was behind me because they opened even wider and she screamed.
A low groan sounded behind me. The farmer was almost at the bottom of the stairs now.
The dead meat smell got stronger, making me want to vomit.
If I ran, the soldier would shoot Mike then the rest of us. If I stayed where I was, the infected farmer was going to kill me.
“Please…” I begged the soldier.
“Don’t you move,” he ordered.
I closed my eyes.
The farmer reached the bottom step. He was in the hallway now.
I heard his footsteps coming closer.
The smell was overwhelming.
Mike, his face still in the dirt, pleaded for me. “Please, let him move away from the door. Please.”
The soldier looked down and told Mike to shut up.
Bang
The gunshot came from behind me, from inside the house. I felt something wet hit the back of my jacket.
The farmer collapsed to the floor with a heavy thump.
I looked over my shoulder. A second soldier came from the kitchen, looked down at the farmer and nudged the body with the toe of his combat boot. “We need to get rid of this thing, Cartwright. It fucking stinks.”
He stepped out onto the porch and looked us over. “Back inside, everybody. There’s a whole bunch of nasties coming this way and I don’t think you want to be outdoors when they get here.” He looked over at his companion. “Let him up, Cartwright. He isn’t going anywhere.”
Cartwright stepped back, allowing Mike to get to his feet.
We went back into the living room while the soldiers dragged the farmer’s body out of the house and into the grass.
They came back inside and closed the front door behind them.
The soldier who seemed to be in charge came into the room and said, “Right, listen up. My name is Sergeant Brand. You can call me Mr. Brand or Sergeant. Anything else will get you shot. I am in charge. If you want to live, you will accept that. Ladies, close all the curtains in the house. Gentlemen, find the keys and lock the doors.”
We did as he said. Mike and I went into the kitchen looking for the house keys. We found them hanging from a cast iron rooster on the wall next to the back door. As he locked the door, Mike whispered, “Do you think we can trust them?”
“We don’t have a choice at the moment.”
“What happened to the farmer, man? He was like a fucking zombie.”
“All the more reason to trust these soldiers. They have guns. If there are more of those things out there, we don’t stand a chance without weapons.”
We walked through to the hallway to lock the front door. Lucy and Elena stood at the foot of the stairs. Brand came out of the living room. “What’s wrong, ladies?”
“We don’t want to go upstairs,” Elena said. “That’s where he came from.”
“Cartwright, check upstairs.”
Cartwright went up, rifle raised.
Brand looked at me. His eyes were steel grey. “You need to wash your jacket. Got some blood and brains on the back there. What’s your name?”
“Alex.”
“Well, Alex, once Corporal Cartwright has cleared upstairs, you need to wash your jacket in the bath. It stinks of death.”
“What regiment are you from?” I asked. Neither man wore any identifying insignia. They didn’t even have stripes on their arms to designate rank.
“We’re from the Regiment, lad.” He winked at me.
“What does that mean?” Mike asked.
“SAS,” I said. “They’re from the SAS.”
“I didn’t say that,” Brand said lightly, “If I told you that, I’d have to kill you.” He winked again.
/> “Clear,” Cartwright shouted down from upstairs. “There’s a hell of a mess on the bed, though. I reckon he was lying there when he turned.”
Lucy and Elena went up to close the curtains.
I followed them. I needed to get the pieces of farmer off my jacket.
* * *
With the house in darkness, Cartwright lit a fire in the fireplace with logs he found next to the wood-burning stove in the kitchen. The flickering flames lent the room an eerie orange glow. My cleaned-up jacket hung in the hall drying along with everyone else’s. We were making ourselves at home as much as possible but we all kept our boots on, knowing we may need to make a quick escape from the house.
Brand and Cartwright had removed their combat jackets. Beneath, they wore dark green army sweaters over green shirts. They sat near the window, occasionally pulling back the curtains to peek out. They kept their weapons close.
“Can you tell us what’s happened?” I asked Brand.
He looked surprised. “You don’t know?”
“We were in the mountains. All we know is what the EBS says. I heard something about a virus but my radio wasn’t working properly.”
“There is a virus. One fucked up virus. Yesterday morning, India went dark. No communication from inside the country at all. Nothing. There had been reports for a few weeks about a new outbreak of bubonic plague there. You know the black plague that killed off most of England in the middle ages? Well, that plague still exists in India. So nobody thought much of it.
“There were some strange reports coming out of the country about infected people going mad but this all happened in the mountains, in the villages. Then yesterday, the entire country went off radar. People over here tried to contact relatives there, the newspapers had news crews out there, but suddenly there was no word coming back from them. Nothing.
“Then it turns out a doctor in London who had been working in the mountain villages for a couple of months and returned to Britain last week got put into quarantine three days ago. Whatever had been killing people off over there was now over here. Fucker brought it back with him. By the time they got him into quarantine, it was too late. He was already dead.”
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