Plagued

by Barnett, Nicola

  Sarah shook her head, smirking at her friend. “Are you alone?”

  “No! There’s around twenty of us up here, I think. There were more but....we’ll get to that later. My parents were out of town so I don’t know what happened to them,” she said, the smile disappearing from her face. Sarah stroked her arm sympathetically. “But your mum and dad are here!”

  Sarah closed her eyes then, relief washing over her. She swallowed the lump that appeared in her throat as she fought back more tears. They’re alive.

  “Thank God,” Mark muttered, smiling at Sarah.

  “They’re upstairs with the rest. Come on in! Everyone sleeps in the sports hall now. It’s safer up there than down here,” Emily said, standing aside so the others could pass through.

  They walked into the dark building, it was too dark to see what state the rooms were in, but the smell of rotten food hung in the air and flies buzzed around them. Empty tins littered the floor and Sarah assumed this room was now used as a rubbish dump. Great deterrent for unwanted guests.

  Emily took the lead with Sarah as they reached the staircase at the end of the hall, the light from her candle illuminating the way as they began their ascent. The floor was solid wood and their footsteps were loud and echoed around the whitewashed walls. They climbed the steps in silence until they reached a set of double doors and Emily pushed them open, holding one open for the others.

  The room in front of them was large enough to be a basketball arena and the ceiling was so high that they could only see blackness. The floor was a hard, smooth wood and it squeaked when you walked across it, like most sports halls. Candles sat on small tables and chairs that scattered the room and on the shelves at both ends—they illuminated the room efficiently enough for Sarah and the rest to make out the dark shapes of people that lay scattered around the hall floor.

  The people were laid in rows on the floor, with what looked like sports mats underneath as makeshift mattresses. Sleeping bags, blankets and duvets covered them as they slept. A few people were circled in the centre of the room, crowded around a fire and the room was filled with the low chatter of people in hushed conversations. Some of them looked at the newcomers with mild interest, and their dirtied and exhausted faces shone in the light.

  “My God,” Sarah gasped, trying to find faces she recognised.

  “Yeah, these are all the people we’ve managed to find so far, all from the village. We were starting to think that everyone on the outside was…” Emily said, letting the sentence trail off. She walked in front towards the fire, avoiding the bodies laid around the floor.

  Sarah started to recognize some of the faces, and they looked at her with mild interest as she approached but she was too desperate to find the faces that belonged to her parents to interact with them yet.

  “We’ve taken to sleeping in the afternoon or in the morning and most of the men stay awake all night. Just in case. We try to take it in turns. It’s getting harder since the food ran down. We’re all hungry and exhausted.”

  Sarah heard Emily’s words but her attention was stolen by the two people crouched over the fire. They sat with their arms around each other as they spoke to those around them. One was a woman with short brown hair—with just a sprinkle of grey—and the man next to her had dishevelled greying-black hair. The woman wore a brown anorak and the man wore a heavy green jacket. Sarah recognized them instantly. Her heart leapt.

  “Mum!” she screamed. “Dad!”

  The couple turned around curiously and Sarah saw their tired and lined faced. As they realised they were looking at their daughter for the first time in more than half a year, the woman dropped a cup she was holding and it rolled across the floor, spilling the contents.

  “Sarah? Is it Sarah?” Sarah’s mother croaked emotionally. She reached a quaking hand out to her husband for reassurance.

  Sarah’s father grabbed his wife’s hand so tightly his knuckles went white, and his wife returned the squeeze. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said, shaking his head.

  Sarah dashed towards them, leaving Mark and Annie stood watching. Sarah’s father wept to himself as his daughter ran into her mother’s arms and squeezed her tight.

  “I can’t believe it’s you,” her mother said in between sobs. She turned to her husband, “I told you! I told you she was alive!”

  He laughed and wrapped his arms around the two sobbing women. Sarah reached up and kissed her dad on the cheek, feeling the roughness of his stubble—she suddenly realised that she had never seen him unshaven before today.

  Her mother looked much the same as she always did; her features were soft and small and she had the same steel blue eyes as her daughter. Sarah towered over her and had to lean down to hug her. Her father towered over them both. With their new smiles, they looked just like she remembered them—youthful and happy. Her mother wept and laughed at the same time, grabbing her daughter’s face and checking her over frantically.

  “I’m okay, Mum, I’m okay!” Sarah laughed, holding her father around the waist with one hand.

  Sarah’s mum frowned as she checked her daughter’s arms. “Where are these scars from?” She gasped as she saw the bite mark-shaped pink scar on her daughter’s upper arm.

  “Mum, don’t panic. I’m fine. It’s a very long story,” Sarah said. She smiled at her mother as reassuringly as she could through her exhaustion. “I’ll tell you all about it soon. But I’m okay now.”

  “But—” her mother protested.

  “Jenny, let her be. She’s obviously had a long day. For now, just be happy that she’s alive, okay?” her father said, chuckling a little at his wife’s frown. He looked over her shoulder at Mark and Annie and smiled warmly at them. “Hello there,” he said, cheerily.

  “I’m so sorry, I forgot to introduce you two,” Sarah said, blushing a little. “This is Mark and Annie, they are my friends. They helped me get here.”

  Sarah’s father offered his hand to Mark and shook it merrily.

  “My name’s Frank and this is my wife Jenny. We should be thanking you then.” Her father smiled.

  “No thanks necessary, sir,” Mark said politely as Jenny grabbed him in a tight, bear hug. “She can handle herself quite well.”

  Her father raised his eyebrow and smirked at his daughter then turned back to Mark. “You sure we’re talking about the same Sarah?”

  “Frank!” Jenny elbowed him in the ribs and he laughed.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Sarah said sarcastically, her cheeks glowing. “Annie brought us here, Mum. She lives on the farm near Witches’ Wood. We would never have got here without her.”

  Her mother let go of Mark and gave Annie a gentle hug. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you so much for bringing my daughter home.”

  “I thought I recognized you!” Frank said loudly, interrupting the exchange. “You’re Harry’s wife, aren’t you?”

  “Frank? Is that you?” Annie said as she examined his face. “What are the chances?”

  Frank laughed and placed his arm around his wife. “It’s a small bloody world,” he laughed. “This is Jenny, my wife. Jenny, this is old Harry’s wife. You know the one who used to sell me the milk?”

  Jenny smiled and held Annie’s hand. “It’s so nice to see someone outside the village alive. We were starting to think we were the only ones.”

  “Is Harry here with you?” Frank asked cheerily, looking around them.

  Annie’s face fell and she shook her head.

  Frank understood instantly and gave her a sympathetic squeeze of her arm. Another friend lost.

  “I was alone until these two trouble makers came along,” Annie said. “Thought I’d come with them and make sure they don’t get into any more trouble.”

  “I bet you’re shattered,” Frank said. “Come on and sit down. Then you can explain to us how you managed to keep my daughter alive. She’s the clumsiest person I’ve ever met.”

  Mark chuckled and Sarah shot him a look. He held his hands up apologetically as F
rank ushered his daughter, wife, and his new friends towards the fire—which turned out to be a small barbeque, filled with burning cardboard and wood. The smell filled the room and reminded Mark of camping with Simon, in better days.

  They sat around the fire and people started to recognise Sarah. Some young men she knew from the village stood along the back wall, they shouted to her and waved. One of them was her old friend, Jamie, who she had grown up with. She blobbed her tongue out to him mischievously and he returned the gesture. I’ll come speak to you in a bit, she mouthed to him and he gave her the thumbs up sign.

  There was her neighbour, Alan, who was sat with her parents. She saw the woman that ran the post office, the man in charge of the miner’s welfare, and a few of the children that went to the local primary school. They slowly gathered around the fire to listen to their conversations, intrigued by the newcomers.

  Emily, who had taken a backseat to let Sarah and her parents reunite, came back and sat next to Mark, smiling widely at him. He smiled back and blushed. Sarah smirked at her and Emily winked.

  “Please tell us what happened to you, honey, I’m dying to know!” her mother said as she sat down next to Frank.

  Sarah sighed despairingly at Mark, who sat next to her. “You can fill in anything that I forget,” she said, nudging him with her shoulder.

  They told their story for the second time that day.

  Chapter 11

  The small crowd of people turned into a larger one. Most of the people in the room had gathered around the fire to hear Mark and Sarah discuss what they had witnessed.

  After hearing their story, in complete awe, theories of what caused the disease became the main topic. Alan thought it was a new strain of rabies brought on by an over-population of wild animals; an elderly man thought it was God’s way of telling them he wasn’t happy with the amount of people playing the XBOX on Sunday instead of going to church; and Frank thought it was an experiment by the government. Jenny mentioned that she thought it was a new plague and this got a lot of interest from the group.

  A door banged behind them and caught Sarah and Emily’s attention. They stood up to see who it was, leaving the heated conversation at the fireplace.

  “He’s back then,” Emily muttered quietly as they saw the figure walking into the room.

  Sarah froze as the person walked into the light—it was a man. He moved slowly towards them, his long leather coat dangling behind him. He dropped the two bags he was carrying and tins rolled out across the floor as he saw the woman stood in front of him. His face was as shocked as hers as they watched each other.

  She could see him more clearly now, in the light from the fire. His dark hair had grown long enough to fall over his ears. His jaw was dark with stubble and his eyes were black in the darkness. He wore a black t-shirt and dark jeans, his hiking boots black with dirt. He was frowning.

  “Sarah?”

  The room span as Sarah saw Jack for the first time. She had started to forget his face, now it all came flooding back. The long nights talking and joking; hiking together in the woods behind Solitude in the warm summer, the arguments they’d had. Everything. Her eyes flickered with white specks and her head swam. She tried to speak but her mouth wouldn’t produce the words—instead, she ran to him as fast as she could.

  He opened his arms, shock still written on his face as she jumped in his arms fiercely and wrapped hers around his neck.

  “Sarah!” he muttered into her ear as he held her.

  Hearing his husky voice brought tears to her eyes. “I knew you were okay! I knew it!” she laughed and hugged him tighter.

  “Where were you?” he asked back.

  Sarah let go of him and looked at him—his deep brown eyes darker than she’d ever seen them. His features darkened with stubble and he looked tired but surprisingly well. His dark hair was tied at the back into a very small pony tail and he had a small cut across the side of his cheek that was pink and healing. He looked at her, frowning and she realised he was waiting for a response.

  “I’ll explain to you later, but I’m okay. I just needed to find you.”

  “I can’t believe it. I never expected to see you again!” he smiled. “We’ve been holed up in here for months. A few of us tried to leave town but—well we can’t leave town. A group of men have control over this area and they’re not nice guys. They’ve been siphoning petrol out of every car they see so they’re pretty mobile. We’re trapped in here.”

  He bent down to pick up the cans he’d dropped and Sarah helped him, putting them all back into the bags. “How did you get here? Is that your Land Rover out front?”

  “I came here from Winding using the back roads, with Mark,” she motioned towards Mark, who stood watching them cautiously with Emily persistently trying to get his attention.

  Jack glanced coldly towards Mark, who returned the favour with a small sarcastic smile.

  “And the car is Annie’s. She owns a farm in the woods. There are a lot of infected in there,” Sarah continued.

  Jack then glanced at Annie and nodded at her half-heartedly. He turned back to Sarah and smiled warmly as they carried the cans towards the barbeque.

  “You’re back then?” Emily said and Jack nodded at her, coldly.

  “Why didn’t you mention he was still alive?” Sarah asked, looking at Emily.

  “Sorry,” Emily said sheepishly, “in all the excitement, I forgot!”

  Sarah laughed, satisfied with that and kissed her friend on the cheek.

  “You’ve been gone hours. I don’t know where you keep finding all this food,” Emily said bluntly to Jack.

  “I went to see Duke, he swapped me some alcohol I found for some food and water,” he said, then turning to Sarah. “They trade with us from time-to-time.”

  “I didn’t think we had any alcohol left to barter with,” Emily said, eyeing Jack.

  “They took Joe’s girls last time we couldn’t give them anything for trade. Nothing we can do to stop them, they’re all armed,” Frank interrupted, from the other side of the fireplace. He gave Jack a quick cold glance, and Jack lowered his eyes.

  Sarah watched this exchange with only mild curiosity—her father had never thought much of Jack before the infection, so she wasn’t surprised that nothing had changed.

  “He came by a few months ago and introduced himself to us. At first we thought it was a good arrangement, alcohol from the pub for food or water. But he’s a bad guy, Sarah—you don’t want to know what we’ve seen. He noticed we don’t have anything for him anymore, no alcohol or bedding, so he started taking some of us,” Frank explained.

  “He can try to take me, if he likes,” Annie said, the shotgun back in its rightful place.

  Jack smirked at her, eyeing the gun. He knelt down to place the cans of food next to the fire, and his coat moved, revealing a black knife handle sticking out of his belt.

  Jack stood back up and caught Mark staring at it. He held out his hand. “Thanks for looking out for her, man. I don’t know what I’d have done if anything had happened to her,” he smiled at the new guy, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

  Mark shook his hand firmly. “No problem. We had a ball.”

  Sarah smiled to herself uncomfortably, remembering vividly the night before. She missed the frozen glances between the two men.

  “I bet you three are starving! Come on, sit down, and get something to eat!” Emily piped up, cheerily. She did catch the glances and she sat down next to Mark.

  “Not what you were hoping to find here?” Emily asked quietly, watching Sarah and Jack talk to the others.

  “If I’m honest, I expected him to be dead. I know that’s a horrible thing to think.”

  “I understand. You’ve obviously been through a lot together.”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” He turned to look at Emily. “Can I ask you a question? Confidentially.”

  Emily nodded curiously and moved her head closer to his.

  “Is it just me being overp
rotective, or is there something a bit off about him?”

  Emily looked towards the ground and took her hand from Mark’s arm.

  Mark frowned. “What is it?” he asked.

  Emily sighed, moving her hair behind her ear with her hand. She looked in Mark’s eyes, her own were filled with apprehension. “Look, I like you. That’s why I’m going to tell you this, but it’s going to make no difference to her,” she said, nodding towards Sarah affectionately. “She never listens when it comes to Jack Archer. She never has.”

  He nodded for her to continue impatiently.

  “Jack’s not what people think he is. He’s not a good guy. The face everyone sees; the happy, polite guy that helps us survive is really….” she paused thoughtfully and snarled, “a manipulative bastard.”