by Rich Hawkins
When he opened his eyes, his mother was kneeling next to him, her face looking down at his pathetic form. She asked him when he was coming home, because she and his father worried about him so much and wanted to reconcile with him. She said she was sorry.
Old friends appeared, standing over him with accusations burning in their eyes. They were angry because they were dead and he was hanging onto to life by a gossamer thread. They were waiting for him to let go so they could take him away to the dark places where they dwelled. Then they left, shaking their heads at him, calling him a stubborn fool.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, his voice barely passing his lips.
When Florence came to see him she crouched beside his trembling form and stroked his hair, but her affection turned into condemnation and anger and she began scratching at his face and screaming at him, demanding to know why he had let the bad men take her away.
Morse cried and tried to shield his face, and when Florence drifted away he called for her to return so he could apologise and make things right.
But she never returned.
And soon it all went dark in the room and there were no more visitors.
*
Morse woke in a corner of a windowless room and sat up and immediately placed one hand to the bullet wound in his side. His vision blurred and turned his surroundings to water, but cleared when he rubbed his eyes and let them adjust to the dim light in the room. He was upon a mattress on the floor, with a fresh dressing around his torso. The roughly-hewn blankets that covered his stomach and legs did little to keep the cold away, naked as he was except for his old boxer shorts and socks. When he put his hands to his face it was tender and felt bruised. He coughed until his chest was sore, and in his mouth he could taste the bacteria on his teeth and under the grimy fold of his tongue. He looked about himself and felt a knot of panic in his chest when he couldn’t find his pistol and knife. There was a cup of water placed beside the mattress. He looked at it for a moment then grabbed it and put it to his mouth but at the last moment he withdrew the cup and examined the water.
“It’s perfectly safe,” a voice said from his right.
Morse swivelled, wincing at his aching body and the throbbing bullet wound. On the other side of the small room, a crouching figure hunched over a steaming pot on a camp stove. The smell of something like stew or soup. His mouth watered and he tried to recall how long it had been since he’d eaten.
He noticed a bolt-action hunting rifle standing against the far wall.
The figure was side-on to Morse, but he couldn’t see its face because of the hood over its head. He felt a frisson of apprehension and fear, and thought that maybe he was the final ingredient to whatever was in the pot.
Morse didn’t try to move; it hurt too much. “Who are you? What happened?”
The figure stirred the pot’s contents with a wooden spoon. “What do you remember?”
He stared at the back of the person’s head. “How about you answer my questions first?”
The figure stopped stirring. Then stood and turned to Morse, and within the hood was a woman’s smiling face. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She was short and thin inside her tracksuit top and the fleece beneath it. Jeans and dirty trainers. Fingerless gloves.
“My name’s Sadie. I found you. You were unconscious.” She stood over him and lowered her hood. Northern accent. Yorkshire, maybe. Blonde hair that was almost white.
Morse tried to remember the time after Florence had been abducted. His heart quickened, and bile stirred in his chest at the memory of collapsing in the road after staggering away from the house. The bodies of the dead infected on the ground. The blood on his face.
“I heard the gunfire,” Sadie said, crouching next to him. “I waited a while then went out to take a look. That’s when I found you in the road, half-buried in ash.”
“I can still taste it,” Morse said, stifling a cough. “You carried me back here?”
“Dragged you, actually. Looked like you’d been in one hell of a fight.”
Morse stared at his hands. “Something like that.”
“Who were you fighting?”
“A group of men,” he said. “They took a friend of mine.”
Sadie frowned. “Who did they take?”
“A girl.”
“Your daughter?”
“Not exactly. Someone I was supposed to protect.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Why did they take her?”
“Why else would a group of men want a young girl?” He let the suggestion hang and looked at the floor. When he thought of what the men would do to Florence, tears welled in his eyes and he felt sick with guilt and remorse.
“If it helps,” Sadie said, “her suffering is probably over by now. I’m sure she’s at peace.”
“She can’t be dead.”
“It’s probably better if she is.”
Morse bit the inside of his mouth and curled one hand into a fist. He closed his eyes but all he saw was Florence dead in a field, left to be carrion for the scavengers after she was no longer useful to the men.
He opened his eyes and sighed deeply. His skin itched.
“It’s okay,” Sadie muttered, and her hand rested near to his arm. He pretended not to notice.
“Where are we?” Morse said.
“On the English side of the border, south of the River Tweed.”
“Northumberland?”
“That’s right.”
“How long have I been here?”
“Almost a week. You spent most of that time passed out or babbling incoherently and calling out in your sleep. Did you have bad dreams?”
“I can’t remember.”
“How do you feel?”
“Like hammered shite, but better than I did before you found me.”
She nodded, gave a half-smile. “That was a nasty wound in your side. Pistol round?”
Morse placed his hand to the dressing over the wound; it was sore and tender to touch, but nothing close to the agony of before. “Some bastard snuck up on me.”
“Did you get him?”
“Yeah.”
“Good for you. Luckily the bullet only grazed you.”
“Still hurt like fuck.”
“I can imagine.”
“Thank you for helping me,” he said.
She shook her head, her cheeks flushing reddish-pink, then glanced away. “No problem. I gave the wound a clean and slapped a new bandage on it, then gave you some antibiotics so you wouldn’t get an infection. You’re due for your next dose, by the way.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” said Morse. He couldn’t look at her. “You could have just left me to die.”
“Like I said: no problem.”
“What’s in it for you?”
She smiled at him. “Well, I don’t get much company, so I’m forced to seek out injured men on the roads and bring them back here so I have someone to talk to.”
Morse frowned.
“I’m joking,” she said. “I just did what any half-decent person would do.”
“I thought the decent people were dead.”
“You’re a pessimist, I see.”
“Not much else to be in this world.”
“Fair enough. I’ll let you ponder that while I dish up the food.” She walked to the steaming pot.
“What is it?”
“Squirrel soup.”
“Interesting.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It’s not terribly good, but it’s better than cat meat.”
“Really?”
“More or less.”
“Okay.”
*
Morse spooned the soup into his mouth as Sadie watched, and when he was finished he handed her the bowl and asked for seconds. She dished up some more. He got stuck into it, barely stopping to breathe. He thought it best to swallow without chewing once he’d noticed the small grey scraps of meat floati
ng in the soup. It burned his throat but he didn’t care because the warmth in his stomach was the best thing he’d felt in a long while.
Afterwards, he tried to get up, but Sadie eased him back down to the mattress and told him to rest. She gave him water and some pills. She placed her hand on his brow and frowned.
“You’ve still got a temperature. Rest up, Joseph.”
His eyes fluttered. “How do you know my name?”
She stood and looked down at him. She smiled without showing her teeth. “You told me in your sleep.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“I’m going out for a while, to find food. I’ll lock the door behind me.”
“Why lock the door?”
“So nothing bad can get in here.”
“Okay.”
“Go back to sleep, Joseph.”
*
In dreams Florence came to his bedside and told him of all the bad things that the men had done before they’d killed her. Then her skin peeled away in wet folds and she became a raw, red-slick thing pawing at his blankets until he pushed her away and she fled to the corner of the room and began screaming into her hands.
He was crying when he woke.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Sadie returned empty handed. Morse sat up and rested his back against the wall. She unshouldered the rifle and leant it against a stack of cardboard boxes.
“No luck?” he said.
“There were too many infected around. Did you get much sleep?”
“Little bit.” He closed his eyes and let out a deep breath. His mouth smelled like a sewer.
“Bad dreams?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“That’s fine.”
He opened his eyes. “What time is it?”
“Early evening.”
“I can’t stay here.”
Sadie placed her hands together. Her knuckles cracked. A note of anxiety in her voice. “What do you mean?”
“I have to find Florence.”
“She’s dead.”
“She could still be alive.”
Sadie put the bag down. “It’s unlikely. Even if she is alive, how would you find her? Do you know where the men took her?”
“No, but…” His voice died and he remembered the dream and Florence’s screams from the corner of the room.
“You’re too weak to go outside, Joseph. If you went back out into the wasteland in your condition, you’d be easy prey for the infected. You need to fully recover before you can even think about going out there. Give it a few days and then see how you feel.”
“Florence might be dead in a few days.”
Sadie’s eyes never left him. “She might already be dead. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
*
They sat around a Coleman lantern and ate mushroom soup from paper bowls.
“Where are we?” Morse asked. “What is this room?”
“We’re on the first floor of a supermarket, in one of the back rooms.”
Morse wiped his mouth. “You cleared the building of infected?”
“Yes. With the rifle and a hatchet.”
“Impressive. You can handle a gun then.”
“I’m competent.”
“If you can catch a squirrel you must be pretty good. You from out in the sticks?”
“No,” she said, steam from the bowl rising before her eyes. “I’m from Leeds. Worked in a call centre. City girl.” She smiled a small smile then spooned soup into her mouth.
“Wouldn’t have guessed,” Morse said.
“Hard to tell with some people. It’s just nice to have some company. It gets lonely out here.”
“You’ve done well to survive for over two years. Did you ever try to escape the mainland?”
She swallowed. “Me and my husband tried when the outbreak first hit. He died on the third day. I watched him get torn apart by a pack of infected that included most of our neighbours. I barely escaped.”
“I’m sorry,” said Morse. There was nothing else he could say, so he looked away and picked food from his teeth.
“What about you? How have you survived?”
“I managed to get on a ship and escape the country. Spent a while on a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, squeezed into a room with other survivors. Ended up in a refugee centre. Not that it was any safer, of course, because the fucking plague was everywhere.”
“Did you have a family?”
“Two ex-wives, that’s all. I have no idea what happened to them.”
“No children?”
He shook his head.
She finished her soup and placed the bowl on the floor. “Me and Chris were trying for a baby at the time everything went to hell. Hardly seems fair.”
“It’s not,” said Morse.
“Just another sad story, I suppose.”
Morse nodded. “Soon there will be no one left to tell any stories.” He put his empty bowl down and glanced at her, but she looked away and her face was tragic and pale in the light of the lantern.
*
Sadie changed his bandage, and her close proximity made him feel awkward and embarrassed. He didn’t look at her, and when she finished she stood and walked away, and only then did he watch her.
*
Sadie locked the door and put the key in her pocket. She turned to Morse. “I’m going to bed.”
He was picking at the frayed stitching in his jumper. “Okay.”
“You should probably get some sleep too.”
“Yeah, I will.”
“Good.” She went to her camp bed on the other side of the room. She took her boots off then climbed fully-clothed under the blankets. When she had settled and her head was on the pillow, she said, “I’ll leave the lantern on.”
“Okay.”
“Are you alright, Joseph?”
“Just tired.”
“Then get some sleep.”
“Will do.”
“Goodnight, Joseph.”
“Goodnight.”
*
There were dreams of terrible mouths and the indistinct figure of Florence calling his name. Blood greased his hands and dripped onto his bare feet. The weight of guilt was his burden to be carried. He saw the faces of people he’d killed severe with judgement and condemnation for his vile soul and the blackness in his heart. The slick-faced Catholic priests from his days as an altar boy, watching him and gloating; they told him he would go to Hell. They told him he was beyond redemption. No salvation for him. He could wish to repent with all his heart, but it would not be allowed because his soul was marked for another place, where the demons and sinners capered and wept, and that would be that for Joseph Victor Morse.
*
He woke in the dim light of the lantern, breathing hard and sweating, tears from his eyes streaming down the clammy skin of his cheeks. The wound in his side pulsed hotly, and for a moment of heart-stopping terror he was sure that a sweat-slicked, porcine-faced Catholic priest was lurking at the end of his bed.
He rubbed his eyes and wiped them dry.
Sadie was standing over him, shivering in a t-shirt and underwear. He looked up at her and opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say. She knelt beside him and reached under the blankets and started stroking his crotch.
“What are you doing, Sadie?”
She didn’t look at him. “No talking.”
Before he could reply, she took off her t-shirt then undid and removed her tattered bra. Her breasts hung loose and pale as she climbed under the blankets with him. Then her hands were at the waist of his trousers and pulling them down his legs. Morse was frozen, unable to react aside from the stiffening of his cock in her hands. She smiled at him and then her mouth was where her hands had been and she moved her head up and down until Morse was gasping and digging his fingers into the mattress. And when he was close to climaxing, Sadie removed her mouth, pulled off her underwear and slid on top of him and to
ok his hands and placed them on her breasts. She moaned, rocking back and forth upon him, and closed her eyes and grinned. Morse held her breasts tighter, grabbing handfuls of her flesh, and she responded by putting her hands upon his throat and pressing until he couldn’t draw air. Sadie’s movements quickened as she neared orgasm, and when she came and released his throat, Morse came with her and they both cried out in the wan light, and then she dismounted him in silence, gasping for breath, her face glistening with sweat and tears.
Morse lay back and looked at the ceiling. He heard her walk back to her bed and slip underneath the blankets. He said nothing. She said nothing.
When he eventually fell asleep again, he did so with the maddening remnant of her scent upon him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In the morning Morse woke and remembered the night before. He closed his eyes and groaned and put his hands to his face. Flashbulb images of Sadie grinding her hips upon him, and the memory-feel of her clammy fingers upon his throat.
He sighed. His mouth tasted like bad meat. His back ached and the wound in his side felt as if it were being softly probed by little fingers. The smell of cooking food in the close confines of the room only made his stomach turn and his bowels loosen.
Sitting up, he looked towards the other side of the room. Sadie was already awake and dressed, stirring the steaming pot with a ladle. She raised her face and smiled at him. Her hair wasn’t so unruly and scraggly this morning.
Morse tried to return the smile, but the muscles at the side of his mouth wouldn’t move, and all he could do was look at her while trying to think of something to say.
Sadie rose with a mug in her hands, and she walked over to him as he tried to hide his discomfort and pull the blankets up to his throat.
