George moved slowly, careful not to slip or trip, terrified at the prospect of the gutted house collapsing upon him.
He found Royce sitting and hunched over in the ruins, an ashen ghost among the wreckage. His clothes were damp and they smelled of it, and when George approached, Royce raised his head and watched him and made no attempt to escape.
“I knew you’d be here,” said George. Close up, George saw Royce’s shoulders shaking, and his hands looked palsied and boneless as he clutched them to his stomach. His face was grey in the shadow of the burnt walls. He was crying, but there was no sound from his mouth.
“I couldn’t find anything,” Royce said.
“I know,” said George. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
*
The wind had died, and with it the sleet and the rain. George and Royce were heading back to the farmhouse when Royce pointed out the plume of smoke rising from behind a copse of trees in a distant field. The men stopped. George watched the smoke disperse in the wind when it hit the sky.
“A campfire,” Royce said. His face was sullen and the stains under his eyes were the colour of a bruised apple. His mouth moved awkwardly and he bit his lip. He looked at George.
“The men who chased us?” George said.
Royce shrugged and looked at the smoke, then turned away, and George followed him before his shivering form melted into the fields.
*
The dark came on like a veil thrown over the land. Royce was asleep in his room and George could tell by the things he muttered that in his dreams he was being chased. George placed a cup of water by the bedside and left the room, descending the stairs as the house moaned and creaked around him like an old schooner in a squall.
In the candlelight at the kitchen table he wound his pocket watch and tried to ignore the hunger clawing at the walls of his stomach. He put the watch down and stared at the table top. Ran a finger over ancient stains made in the long ago. Fracture-thin splits in the wood.
The scratching came again at the front door, and before he knew it he was standing by the door with the revolver in one hand and the other poised to open it. The scratching grew frenzied and he pictured those nails or claws gouging at the wood.
Why don’t you come in?
He touched the doorknob and went to turn it, but the author of the scratching made a sound like pigs rutting and he lost his nerve against the squeals and shrieks and wet sounds. He backed away and pointed the gun at the door, worried about the thickness of the wood and how long it would take something with enthusiastic hands to burrow through it.
By the time the scratching went away and the terrible sounds stopped, George had retreated to the living room to huddle in a dark corner with the blankets piled about him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
In the morning, as the first light made a thin line of fire on the horizon, George went outside with the revolver to inspect the front of the house. He examined the scratch marks on the door and the darkening blood upon and around them. The grass around the front of the house had been trampled, but he couldn’t discern any specific footprints.
He looked around at the countryside but there was no smoke, and when it started raining again he returned inside.
*
The day passed in a slow, dim trance of tiredness and hunger. A few mouthfuls of food were all he could take from the supplies. Royce slept for most of the day, and cried out in his dreams and nightmares.
George sat at an old mahogany desk and pored over hardback books of history and theology. There was quite a collection on the dusty shelves, filling an entire wall. The last owner of the house had been a devout bibliophile, it seemed. There were leather-bound editions from HP Lovecraft, William Hope Hodgson, Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, Ambrose Bierce, MR James, and Robert W Chambers.
On the bottom shelf he found an old, creased paperback. A pulp western with a front cover that showed a grizzled gunslinger shooting a black-clad villain on a dirt street in some nameless frontier town.
He picked up the book, Texan Blood Devils, and flicked through the yellowed pages. The publication date inside the front cover was 1995.
He turned the book over and saw a photo of himself standing under the bough of some grey oak tree. A much younger George Carter, from another lifetime. Less grey hair. Staring through the looking glass. A time he could barely remember. He would have thought it a dream if it weren’t for the photo.
George returned the paperback to its resting place among the dust and the other forgotten books.
He fell asleep at the desk, crumpling in his chair like a bag of broken sticks.
*
A hand on his shoulder woke George. He looked up at Royce with his mouth open and his heart kicking hard. The other man was like a shadow in the dancing candlelight. Whether it was because George had just woken, or the light in the study was failing due to the guttering flame, he couldn’t make out Royce’s face and for a moment he was terrified that Royce had become infected.
“There’s something at the door,” Royce said.
George had never been so glad to hear the man speak. Then he heard the scratching at the front door. He grabbed the revolver from the desk and followed Royce into the kitchen.
*
The thing behind the door grunted and wheezed, wet fingers scrabbling and raking. George and Royce stood several yards from the door and watched it tremble in its frame.
From the other side, the doorknob was turned as far as it could go, but the bolts and the lock kept it closed. George was breathing hard.
“We should kill it,” said Royce, and there was nothing in his voice but dead words. He looked at George. There was a knife in his hand; George hadn’t noticed it before.
“We should just wait for it to go away,” said George. “It always goes away.”
“It’s too dangerous,” said Royce. “It might attract others like it. We don’t know what else is roaming around here. We could end up with a whole pack of infected outside the house.”
Before George could think about it, Royce was at the door and pulling back the bolts.
“Stop it!” said George. “What are you doing?”
Royce grunted. “What we should have already done. You ready to use that poxy little pistol?” He turned the key in the lock, then twisted the handle and pulled the door back, stepping away with his knife raised. George saw something manic in Royce’s face.
“Get ready, George!”
George looked towards the doorway and raised the revolver.
The door opened.
The naked creature was on all fours, hunched and bedraggled, with long stringy hair. The face peering through strands of black hair was like a porcelain mask, and when it opened its mouth to display rows of savage teeth George felt a little of something inside him dwindle and shrink away. It sniffed at the air and clawed at the linoleum floor, already halfway through the doorway. A sway of its head and a glimpse of pale, sightless eyes.
“Fucking bitch,” Royce said.
The creature twitched at the sound of Royce’s voice. Its white breasts sagged. Its bony limbs twitched. Torn and bloodied nails on its fingers. Blood dripping from between its legs like some terrible menstruation.
“Shoot it, George.”
George hesitated, his finger on the trigger.
The creature screamed, salivating at the closeness of its prey. A rancid, moronic grin.
“Shoot the fucking thing!” Royce said.
George looked down the revolver’s barrel. His insides were rising like fluid.
The creature raised its pallid face towards Royce.
It moved, feet scrabbling on the floor.
Royce shouted something.
Awful sounds and the stench of offal filled the kitchen.
As the gorge rose into his throat, George pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
They took the creature’s body from the house and dumped it in a ditch half a mile away. The
y wore gloves and breathed cold air through face masks made of rags. Royce spoke about death as they stood at the edge of the ditch, looking down at the body.
“That boy I killed was in my dreams last,” said Royce. “He called me a murderer.”
“You’re not a murderer,” said George.
“Yes, I am. Not that it matters anymore. Murder is everywhere, George; all about us like smoke. I can smell it in the dirt and on our clothes. It’s inevitable. It’s the way of the world. Nature is murder, my friend.” Royce kicked a clump of dirt into the ditch and it landed next to the woman’s corpse. “How did you feel after killing her?”
“I felt terrible,” George said. “Still do.”
“But it had to be done. There was no choice.”
George didn’t reply.
Royce stared into the ditch. “Do you think we’ll be punished for what we’ve done?”
George looked at him. “What do you mean?”
Royce exhaled, chewed on his lip then spat. “I don’t know. I was from a Catholic family. Old stains never fade.”
As they walked away, to return to the house, George looked back at where they’d left the woman’s body and thought that if there were gods in the world they would take her soul with them before they fled this damp hell.
*
They were a hundred yards from the house when they saw the lone figure outside the front door. They crouched behind a hedgerow and peered through the weeds.
The figure was dressed in thick winter clothes, checking the windows for signs of occupancy. The person tried the door, but George had locked it before they left the house earlier.
“Who the fuck is that?” said Royce.
“A survivor,” said George. He pulled down his mask.
“A scavenger.” Royce had the knife in one hand. “Do you have the revolver on you?”
George looked at him. He felt for the weight of the gun in his pocket. “Yes.”
“We have to protect what’s ours,” Royce said. “We can’t let anyone take the house.” He wiped at his mouth. “It looks like he doesn’t have a gun, and we have the element of surprise.
“You want me to shoot him?” said George.
When Royce turned to him, his face was damp with sweat, his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and the way he showed his teeth when he opened his mouth turned George’s stomach to soup. Dirt and grease in his beard and on the skin of his thin neck. “We have to defend the house from bad people.”
George took the revolver from his pocket and Royce snatched it from his hand.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m protecting what is ours.”
Royce began to stalk towards the house, and George whispered after him, but he ignored George and went on with the gun in his hand.
*
George watched helplessly as Royce crept up on the man. The low wind and the patter of the drizzle on the grass covered Royce’s approach, and the man didn’t turn until Royce was upon him. George was twenty yards behind, but as he approached Royce and the figure and the house beyond them, he slowed when he realised that the figure was a woman and underneath her winter clothes, her stomach was swollen and large.
Royce lowered the revolver and stared at the woman. George stood next to him. The woman, her face lined with exhaustion and her eyes livid, raised one hand in a greeting while the other rested upon her belly.
“Hello,” she said, and she would have been beautiful if not for the end of the world.
*
The woman sat at the kitchen table with George sat across from her. Royce was standing with his arms folded in the doorway to the living room, watching the woman in the meek glow of the candlelight. It was nearly dark outside.
George offered her a glass of water, which she gulped down without pause. When she finished she put the glass down and looked at George, her lips damp and her body trembling beneath layers of cotton, polyester and wool. Her blonde hair was tied back in a loose knot. There were bits of twigs and dirt in her hair. She brushed away the strands of fringe that had fallen over her eyes. George couldn’t imagine what she had seen and done to survive. His eyes kept flicking towards her belly: she had to sit back from the table because her stomach was too big for her to lean forward and rest her hands.
“Thank you,” she said in a soft West Country lilt to her voice. “You’re the first people I’ve seen in almost two weeks. Uninfected people, that is.”
“I don’t think there’re many of us left,” George said.
She put her hands on her stomach. “I hope you’re wrong.”
“Me too.”
“My name’s Amy.”
“I’m George. That’s Royce. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
George gave her a tin of spaghetti and meatballs. She peeled the tin open and spooned the food with her hands into her mouth.
“It’s not much,” George said. “But it’s all we can spare.” He watched her eat. She was ravenous. Such desperate hunger scared him a little.
Amy finished the food and placed the tin on the table. “Thanks, anyway.”
“Where are you from, Amy?”
“Tiverton,” she said.
“I’m from Exeter,” George said. “Tiverton’s not far from there.”
“I used to go shopping with my mum in Exeter.” Something in her face slackened, like she was recalling a particular memory. “It was nice.”
“What happened to you?” Royce asked. George glanced at him and frowned.
“Same as everyone else,” Amy said. “The plague. The outbreak. Bad news for everyone.”
“How did you end up here?” George said.
“I was with a group of people.” She paused and glanced at the floor. “I don’t need to tell you what happened to the rest of them. Now it’s just me. Well, me and the bump.”
“Is the father…?”
“My husband. Dead.” No emotion in her voice. “He was killed by a pack of infected near Yeovil.” She looked down at her stomach. “We didn’t get a chance to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. But I think it’s a girl.”
“A girl?” Royce said. “You sure?”
Amy nodded and her mouth held the thinnest curve of a smile.
“How far gone are you?” said George.
“About six months,” she said.
George fidgeted with his hands on the table. “It must be difficult.”
“Don’t feel bad for me,” Amy said. “She’s all that’s kept me going. If I wasn’t for her, I would have given up long ago.”
“Where are you heading?” said George.
After sipping at a bottle of water from her pack, she wiped her mouth with her thin hands and cleared her throat. “I’m going to the east coast.”
George frowned. “Why the east coast? What’s there?”
“I’d heard there’s a survivors’ outpost in Denmark. I’m hoping to find a boat and travel across the North Sea.”
“Denmark? Fucking hell. Sounds like a suicide mission,” said Royce.
“Where did you hear about this outpost?” George said.
“My husband and I were told about it at one of the refugee camps. Other people were going to make the journey too. The remnants of the British military are there, according to what we heard.”
“So it was just a rumour,” said Royce.
Amy shook her head. “More than a rumour. Radio broadcasts.”
“Even if there was an outpost in Denmark, it might have been destroyed already,” Royce said. “I never heard anything about it. And you’d have to survive crossing the North Sea first. Do you realise how difficult that will be?”
“The outpost is still there. And I can look after myself.”
“How do you know it’s still there?” George said.
“I’ll show you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Amy took a wind-up radio from within her pack and set it on the table. It was about the size of a brick, scratched and dirty from
its travels.
“We’re just in time,” she said as she checked her watch.
Royce stepped over to the table and took a chair. He looked at George. Amy flicked a switch on the radio’s side. George felt a tingle of anticipation in his stomach as he drew closer to the radio. The crackle and whisper of static, the sound of the atmosphere and solar winds.
Amy moved the radio to the other side of the table: a voice began to emerge through the distortion and interference. George listened. Royce leaned forward, his face creasing in the candlelight, the shadows under his eyes like smudges of coal.
A man’s voice, barely audible.
“Right on time,” Amy said. She twisted the dial and the voice became clearer and louder. George stared at the radio with his mouth open.
“…survivors…from the infected…we are in Denmark. 55° 28' 0" North, 8° 27' 0" East. A seaport town called Esbjerg. A community of survivors. We offer protection and safety. We are fighting back against the plague. There is hope here. All is not lost. I repeat: all is not lost…”
The message was repeated in Danish, Norwegian, French and German before the transmission ended, and when Amy turned off the radio the silence it left behind weighed heavily like the aftermath of an accusation. Royce wiped at his face. George put one hand to his mouth. Amy looked at the men, her dirty face hopeful and pale.
“I can’t believe it,” said George.
“They repeat the message on the hour, every hour,” said Amy. “Different people, different nationalities. They take it in turn, like a rota system.”
“Do you think it’s real?” said Royce. “It might be a trap, a way to lure people there.”
“For what reason?” Amy said.
“Humans are capable of horrendous things,” said Royce. “Particularly now.”
“We ran into some people a few weeks ago,” said George. “It didn’t end well.”
The Last Plague (Book 2): The Last Outpost Page 13
