Plagued

by Barnett, Nicola

  “So Mark, I’ve heard Sarah’s love story but what about yours? Did you have a lady back home?”

  Sarah looked up, her curiosity piqued by the topic change.

  Annie spotted her expression in the side mirror and smirked to herself.

  “No, nothing like that,” Mark said. “We split months before this happened.”

  “Aww, sorry to hear that, son,” Annie said and tapped him on the knee. “What happened, if you don’t mind me askin’?”

  “She just left. Took her stuff and most of mine and walked out one day. She said we never talked,” he snorted. “Strange. She did nothing but talk.”

  Annie laughed heartily.

  Sarah glanced at him in the mirror on his side of the car and saw he was already watching her. He gave her a grin and she smiled back. “Did you love her?” she asked softly, trying not to sound too interested. Mark raised his eyebrow for a second, just long enough for Sarah to see it, before it disappeared.

  “Loneliness maybe, but not love. We met at a bar — great start, I know. She just came up to me, told me to take her to my place. I was so stunned that I did exactly that. Then she just didn’t leave. We just sort of stayed together. Dad says I was just too polite to tell her to get lost. Not that I would have dared — Simon, my friend, had been trying to get me a girlfriend for a long time. I didn’t want to burst his bubble,” he said laughing. “Dad was right.”

  Annie slowed to drive over a cattle grid. The Land Rover jittered in response. “You know, I think we might just find the love of your life in Solitude, Mark. I got a feeling in my water,” she said, eyeing Sarah mischievously. She saw Sarah’s eyes widen.

  “Why do you say that?” he asked, amused.

  “I get these feelings, Marky, and when I get them, they’re always right. Sometimes things are just meant to be,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road. “Not far now.”

  Mark chuckled to himself. “I don’t think there’s going to be many dating opportunities for a while. It’s just not a romantic situation. The majority of the women that I’ve seen so far have tried to bite my head off. But, I’m happy as I can be right now,” he said looking at Sarah in the side mirror and winked dramatically.

  Sarah shook her head at him in mock disgust, hiding the butterflies that fluttered in her stomach. Annie watched this in silence, getting all the information she needed from it.

  They sat quietly for the rest of the ride, listening to Annie whistle to the music playing. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky, and Sarah began wondering what month it was — she guessed late August to early September from the heat.

  After a while of silent driving, Annie slowed down. Coming up to the right of them, in the distance, they saw grey slated rooftops and chimneys sticking out above the trees.

  “Nearly there,” she said.

  Apprehension filled the air as the ground to their right started to rise up into a large banking that encircled this side of the village. Only a long path cutting straight through the hill that was made for tractors gave them access from this side.

  Annie slowed the vehicle to a crawl as she drive up to the cutting, ready to turn the Land Rover right and straight through into the village. “Grab my gun, Mark.”

  He did so and grabbed a hand full of shells and put them in his pocket for easy access.

  “Now don’t shoot until we say so, we don’t want to cause any unnecessary noise. And we definitely don’t want to shoot anyone that’s not infected,” Annie said.

  “Is anyone else getting the feeling that this isn’t such a good idea?” Mark said and was met with silence, their lack of an answer confirming it for him.

  They drove into the cutting and slowly down the path, which wasn’t very long but extremely dark, thanks to the valley-like hill on either side of them. Trees and weeds grew on each side of the cutting, making it difficult to see where they were heading but after only a few minutes of driving, the valley began to flatten back down again as they entered Solitude. They drove out into open space and light hit them, perfectly highlighting the small, wooden sign that read in white font, ‘Farm traffic only.’ Below that it said, ‘Solitude.’

  Chapter 10

  The Land Rover bounced as it drove off of the dirt path and onto the asphalt cul-de-sac at the bottom of the village. Despite the sound of birds singing, there was an eerie silence. The streets were empty apart from rubbish like paper and tin cans blowing across the streets in the gentle afternoon breeze. Sure, Sarah had seen it quiet before, but never had it felt so dead.

  They passed a black Corsa that was parked on someone’s front lawn with its doors wide open. There was a large crack in the windshield and a dark stain ran down it. Sarah tried to remember who the owner of the car and the lawn might be, but she wasn’t sure—whoever it was had tried to make a quick getaway, and failed. She hoped it was one of the newcomers to the village, someone she didn’t know.

  “I don’t think there’s anyone here,” Mark said, his gun propped on his knee.

  “My parents live right up the street from here...” Sarah said, letting the sentence trail off.

  “Everythin’s gonna be fine, honey. Don’t you worry about it,” Annie purred, looking at Sarah in the rear view mirror.

  They drove up the street slowly, checking for signs of life in every house they passed, but seeing none. Windows were smashed and glass littered the gardens. They all saw the tell-tale brown stains littering the curbs and roads but—for Sarah’s sake more than anything—they didn’t mention it.

  They drove past number 13 Sage Road and Sarah asked Annie to slow down. She had known the old couple that lived there since she was a child; their names were Barbara and Trevor Ash. They had given her five pounds for each of her birthdays until she was thirteen years old and Barbara had always smelled like cinnamon. Her heart sank as she looked at their house and the hand print smudged down the glass of their living room window. Sarah closed her eyes, despair flowing through her. My parents are dead too. They’re dead.

  The roads in Solitude meandered around the houses in long curves causing a well-run joke that the builders were drunk when they laid them. The houses themselves were older builds with darker brickwork and the occasional slate roof, though many had been updated with double-glazed windows and new, easy to clean white PVC doors. They had been originally built in the 1900s, Sarah had once read, but had been updated a few times since then—much to the displeasure of the older residents.

  Although it was a relatively short drive to get here from the other towns nearby, there wasn’t much reason to. The village had a small Miner’s welfare (like many of the smaller villages in the area) and a small Post Office that was mainly used by its elderly residents, since most of the younger generation had been quick to leave at the first opportunity they had.

  Sarah had hoped that her hometown’s slow-paced lifestyle might have helped it during the outbreak but even in this small mining town, people had still ransacked each other’s houses in a blind panic—without a thought to those inside.

  She had lived in Solitude all her life and enjoyed it, until her teenage years when it had become stale and uninteresting. For a mischievous girl and her friends, it had lost its appeal— they had no boys their own age to flutter their eyelashes at and the only place to get beer or cigarettes was the welfare. The problem with the latter was that everyone in the village knew that she wasn’t old enough to drink or smoke, so acquiring them without leaving the village was difficult. So they kept themselves busy with video games and walking through the farmland and woodland behind the village. Though that period was a great time in her life, it didn’t last. Eventually her friends all grew up and moved away, leaving Sarah in Solitude, alone.

  She began to wonder where all her friends were and the thought that she might never see them, or her neighbours, again was too much for her. She burst into tears in the back of Annie’s Land Rover. Seeing her, Mark reached behind his seat and held her hand sympathetically. Life was never g
oing to be the same.

  At the end of the street, Annie pulled up outside a house with ‘36’ painted on its red door. The front window was gone and glass littered the window-sill and the grass around it. The grass on the front lawn was long and weeds were climbing high, completely untamed.

  Sarah climbed out from the back of the 4X4 and stared through the windows, her skin prickling with a sudden burst of fear. This was her parents’ house. She heard a car door slam twice and a second later, Mark was stood at her side with his shotgun.

  “I told Annie to wait in the car, just in case,” Mark said, gently as he watched Sarah’s reaction.

  She nodded in return, not taking her eyes off of the house. “Let’s get this over with.” Her voice was shaking. Followed by Mark, she walked steadily up to the front door and put her head towards the wood, listening for any sound coming from inside. She hoped—irrationally, she knew—that she would hear her father’s voice beckoning her inside. But there was nothing.

  “Do you want me to go first?” Mark said, readying his gun.

  “No,” Sarah said. “If they’ve turned, I want to be the first to see.” Her hand hovered over the door handle as she fought the urge to just turn around and leave her parents’ fate unknown. But she knew she couldn’t do that. She gripped the handle and pulled it downwards, her stomach did a flip as the latch opened smoothly and the door cracked open.

  She pushed the door open quickly and the two of them stepped backwards instinctively as they peered inside the darkness of the hallway. Coats and shoes lay strewn across the floor and all the doors leading to the other rooms were closed, apart from one—the bathroom. Sarah stepped into the house, feeling the softness of the rug beneath her feet; it said ‘Welcome’ in black letters that had been worn away over time.

  “Careful, Sarah,” Mark whispered.

  She carried on as if she hadn’t heard him. She took another step into the house now, focusing her attention on the open door to her left and the stairway at the end of the corridor. The house was silent. Seeing no blood stains around the walls or floors, Sarah felt a glimmer of hope and it excited her—the idea that her parents were still in here and alive took over her and she yelled out, “Dad!”

  Before Mark could object, a high-pitched wail came from the bathroom a split-second before a figure came rushing out of it. Sarah cried out as a woman with wild, grey hair shot towards her, frothing at the mouth and spitting it down her own chin and neck. Sarah lifted her arms over her face pathetically just as she felt a hand around her arm and a tug backwards.

  Mark, who had grabbed Sarah as soon as he heard the screech, pulled Sarah backwards and she stumbled over the doorstep as the wild woman ran for them. The woman was nearly on top of her as Sarah managed to scramble to her feet, aided by Mark. He pushed her towards the car and swung his arms up, pulling the trigger of the shotgun he was holding as he aimed it towards the frothing woman’s face.

  The gun went off with a loud crack and Mark’s shoulders were forced backwards from the recoil. The woman’s front teeth and most of her jaw disappeared, being replaced by a large number of splattered, red holes. She fell backwards onto the ground, thrashing her arms in front of her face as she squealed wretchedly.

  Mark turned around and ran for the car and Sarah was already sat in the back. As soon as he jumped back into the passenger seat, Annie floored it and they sped off towards the centre of Solitude.

  Mark turned around in his seat and looked at Sarah, who was panting heavily. “Was that—?”

  Sarah shook her head. “No. I don’t know who that was.”

  “Good,” Mark said. “Where do we go now?”

  Just then a large, new-looking building surrounded by small, ornamental trees came into view. A large chain link fence was visible around the back of it.

  “That’s the Village Hall!” Sarah said, excitedly. “Stop there!”

  Annie followed a small roundabout until they faced the entrance to the car park and she pulled inside. She parked the car across the bays, close to the front door and they studied the front of the building carefully.

  The Village Hall—or Solitude Centre, as it was also called—had been restored many years before and was one of the newest buildings in Solitude. Used mainly for youth clubs, sports and days out for the elderly, it was also the largest building in the village.

  The Centre’s windows were large and stylish, both those and the glass-paned doors were double glazed. Sarah knew they were pretty tough to break. As a child with her first pair of rollerblades, she rode down the steep path leading to the back door of the building, and couldn’t stop herself from rolling straight into the glass. Her nose had bled for two days.

  The large green curtains in every upstairs window were closed so it was impossible to see inside, and the ones on the lower floor had been heavily boarded up. The large main door was also boarded up with wood and the glass on the outside was completely smashed. There were bloodied scratch-marks running down its surface, like someone had frantically tried to get inside—but the door held strong.

  “Wait here,” Sarah said, and climbed out of the jeep, “there’s another entrance round the back.” She walked slowly and carefully around the back of the large building, hugging close to the wall as she went. She knew that usually there was nothing around there but a large chain-link fence that enclosed the back entrances completely. She reasoned that if the gate was still locked tight, there was a good chance any survivors would be still safely inside.

  A large, brown rat ran out of an overturned dustbin as she walked past it, startling her. The animal shot her a quick glance and then squeezed its podgy body through the fence. Plague. She shuddered at the thought. The gate here leading around the back was still locked with a padlock, so she looked through the fence to see the back door—it had also been boarded up but the glass here was still intact. She fought the dash of hope that hit her, trying to avoid any unnecessary disappointment if the hall was empty.

  As she walked to the jeep, she saw something in the corner of her eye that seemed to come from the second floor windows. She could have sworn that a light had flickered through a gap in the curtains. She motioned to Mark and Annie and they poked their heads out of the jeep, following her gaze. It began flickering again; a dim, orange light barely noticeable if you weren’t looking for it. Something dark blocked the light for a few seconds, and then the curtains slowly closed shut, taking the light with it.

  “Someone’s up there!” she whispered.

  Mark grabbed the shotgun and held it tight as they climbed out of the jeep and ran to Sarah as she began banging on the large double doors frantically.

  “Is anyone in there? It’s Sarah Carlisle, I live here! Please let us in!”

  “Sarah! Be quiet! We don’t know who it is!” Mark growled, looking around him nervously.

  “I don’t like this,” Annie muttered from her place at Mark’s side.

  Sarah stopped banging and stood with her ear against the door, waiting for movement but the double doors were too thick to hear through.

  After a few minutes had passed, Mark resigned and lowered the gun. “Maybe it was nothing, Sarah, it doesn’t look—”

  “Sarah?” a woman’s voice whispered through the door.

  They heard the sound of metal creaking on the other side of the door and suddenly it began to give way. A crack a few inches wide appeared in the door, revealing a portion of a young woman’s face that was bathed in a warm light from the candle she was holding. She had short blonde hair and freckles sprinkled on her nose, ones that Sarah recognized almost instantly.

  “Emily?” Sarah said, dumbly. She looked at the woman’s features in the gap in utter disbelief.

  The young woman nodded. She placed the candle on the floor and pushed the bar on the door open. Emily paused in the doorway, staring at Sarah with teary eyes. Her lips were trembling as the two women stared at each other, smiles creeping on their faces.

  “I can’t believe it,” Sarah we
pt.

  They jumped toward each other and embraced. Emily squeezed Sarah hard around the waist and burst into laughter.

  “We’ve been so worried about you!” Emily cried into Sarah’s neck.

  Sarah broke away then and turned to face Mark and Annie, who were staring in confusion. “This is my friend, Emily, we grew up together!” Sarah grinned. “Emily, these are my new friends, Mark and Annie. I just….I can’t believe it!” She laughed.

  Emily’s hand shot out and grabbed Annie’s hand. “I’m so glad not everyone is dead!” she said, with a large smile. She shook Mark’s hand then, shaking it furiously.

  He smiled. “Me too.”

  Emily looked Mark up and down with a raised eyebrow, still holding his hand. She turned to Sarah then, and mouthed ‘WOW’.