“Such a task does things to a person,” Charlie said. “Wears you down. Makes your bones ache. Gives you bad dreams.”
“We all have bad dreams,” said George, staring into his coffee.
Royce turned to Charlie. “You said this place was a shelter. What happened here?”
Charlie didn’t take his eyes from the fire. “The same that happened everywhere else, I bet. The plague spread and the infected were gathering. Bad vibes, man. I came here when the army turned the church into a rescue shelter – there was just death and infection on the streets. Over two hundred refugees crammed in here without food, piss-all water and limited medical supplies. No organisation. It didn’t take long to fall apart.”
“The infected attacked the church?” George said.
Charlie shook his head. “We didn’t need the infected to tear things apart – we did it ourselves.”
“How do you mean?”
“Once the water ran out, things got worse, and people started fighting. And from there it descended into chaos. By then the town was a battleground and the damage was done. People fled into the countryside. I stayed and watched the infected overwhelm the army. Then the jets came and dropped their bombs. Now nothing lives here.”
“Except you,” said Royce.
Charlie picked a scrap of food from his teeth and flicked it away. “Except me.”
“Bloody hell,” said George, and he stared into the fire with Charlie. Royce looked at them both and finished the last dregs of coffee in his mug. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and inched towards the fire.
“What will you do now, Charlie?” George said. “Now you’ve finished your work here.”
“Not much left to do,” Charlie said. “I’m almost out of supplies.”
“You could come with us.”
“I can’t leave this place.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to.”
“There’s nothing here,” said George.
“Doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “It’s my home. I’d rather die here than out in the wasteland. There’s no dignity in death out there.”
“Do you think we’ll die out there?” said Royce.
“Probably. You’ve done well to survive this long, but eventually you’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you’ll get so desperate that you’ll take one risk too many, and that’ll be it. I don’t mean to be so blunt, but that’s the way it is, my friends.”
“Thanks for your honesty,” said Royce.
“The world was full of lies and bullshit before the plague, and that world is gone. The least we can do is to be candid with each other.”
George said nothing, and neither did Royce.
A while later Charlie asked them, “Where are you lads heading, anyway?”
Royce looked at George before answering. “We’re just trying to find somewhere safe, like the others who passed through here. Hoping to find some semblance of organisation – other people and civilisation. If there is such a place.”
“Civilisation is gone,” Charlie said. “If what I was told is true.”
“What were you told?” George said.
“One group that passed through told me that the remnants of the armed forces had scattered, and most of them had gone rogue. The refugee camps along the south coast had been destroyed by the infected. One man told me the Royal Marines had tried to evacuate refugees from Sidmouth, but most of the refugees were massacred on the beach before they could escape. No one knows what it’s like in the Midlands or further north, and some refugees had been told to stay away from London.”
“So it’s basically all fucked, then,” said Royce.
Charlie coughed and folded his arms. “There’s Starling House a few miles from here. It’s an old country house that was open to the public. They used to hold weddings in the grounds and such other crap. I heard it was used as a refugee shelter when the outbreak began. I don’t know if it’s still holding out. I doubt it, but there’s always a chance. Might be worth checking out. Some of the refugee groups said they were heading there. Can’t think of anywhere else around here.”
“Do you really think people are still there?” said Royce. He was doubtful, but Charlie was local and he might know better.
Charlie spat into the fire, wiped his mouth. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up. You’re just as likely to walk into a swarm of infected.”
No one said anything for a while. George bit on his lower lip, his eyes mournful in the small light of the flames. Charlie stared into the fire. Royce was exhausted. His eyes grew heavy and weary, and he yawned into one hand. The town was silent outside. No rain or wind to disturb the cold ruins in the night.
Charlie fell asleep soon after, wrapped in blankets and a sleeping bag, resting his head on a stained pillow upon the floor. He looked like a pagan king. George looked across the fire at Royce, and the light from the flickering flames did nothing to chase the paleness and grey shadows from the old man’s face.
“What do you think?” George’s voice was no higher than a whisper.
“Of what?” Royce said.
George shrugged and glanced around. “This…”
“I think we’re safe here for tonight.”
“Do you think Starling House is worth a shot?”
Royce rubbed at his tired eyes with his knuckles and yawned. All he wanted to do was sleep, despite the fear of the dreams that may come. “Maybe. I don’t know. Are there any better options? Can you think of anywhere else we could go?”
George’s mouth trembled into a weak smile. “We could stay here for a while.”
“I don’t think so, George.”
“But Charlie said that there’re no infected here.”
“There’s nothing here. We can’t stay.”
“What if there’s nobody at Starling House?”
Royce sighed and rubbed his face. “I don’t know. It’s too late for all these sodding questions. I’m knackered. We’ll discuss it in the morning.”
Royce lay down and closed his eyes before George could reply.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
In the morning Royce woke to find George crouched over him.
“Get up, Royce. Get up.”
Royce sat up and grabbed the knife tucked under his blanket. “Is it the infected?” His heart was beating so fast he couldn’t concentrate.
George’s face was slack and loose in the light coming through the church doorway. There was sweat on his brow and his mouth wouldn’t keep still.
“It’s Charlie.”
Royce followed George outside to find Charlie lying on the front steps with wrists opened to the sky. A photo album on his lap showing photos of Charlie and a woman who must have been his wife. Royce looked away from the photos.
They stood either side of Charlie and looked down at him, the sky brightening from the east as the sun cleared the horizon. In Charlie’s left hand was a penknife, its blade dirty with blood and small scraps of skin. There were little dots of blood on the steps.
“He killed himself as he watched the sunrise,” George said. “I woke up and saw the doors were open, so I walked out here and found him like this. He’s still warm.”
“Fuck’s sake,” Royce said.
“Poor bastard.” George folded his arms.
“Last night he said his work was done and there was nothing left to do.”
“He left us some stuff,” George said.
“What stuff?”
They returned inside. Near their drying coats was a small holdall containing two tins of peach slices, a pack of AAA batteries, two glow sticks, and a litre bottle of petrol.
“He must have prepared this as we slept,” George said.
Royce picked up the holdall. “Charlie, you sneaky bastard.”
*
Royce found two empty whiskey bottles in a back room and he tipped petrol into each of them until they were half-full, then he cut a section of Charlie’s blanket into rags and stuff
ed them into the tops of the bottles.
“Molotov cocktails,” George said. “Nice.”
Royce nodded. “Poor man’s grenade.” He placed the bottles into his rucksack and wadded his blanket around them so they couldn’t smash. Using more of Charlie’s blanket, George applied new wrappings to his trainers and taped them tight.
They left Charlie on the steps with the photo album in his hands and his face towards the sky.
*
The town receded behind them as they walked past lines of broken down cars in the road. Royce turned back once as they moved away and regarded the fading shapes of the ruins and knew that it would never be rebuilt and within a decade nature would reclaim what remained of the town. The monuments of Man would be consumed. Royce imagined a world devoid of life, save for bacteria. Just the seasons, autumnal decay and dark winters followed by the green shoots of spring. And what would happen to the infected when there was no life left for them to assimilate? Would they die out and dissipate into spores to drift upon the solar winds until they found a new planet to infect?
The plague would go on. The plague would abide.
*
They walked for hours in the constant drizzle, and they stopped by the roadside when the sky cleared and the sun swept the earth so that the wet ground steamed in the new light. The road shimmered like a river of silver fish. A toppled electric pylon in the next field, all grey and slumped, the bones of a metal giant. Dead wires and the last structures of the old world. George sat on a gnarled tree stump and clutched at his ruined trainers, grimacing and blowing air from his cheeks. His mouth made painful shapes.
“You okay?” Royce said.
George pulled the trainers from his feet and squeezed the rainwater from what was left of them. “Splendid. How much further to this Starling House place?”
Royce checked the map then looked down the road flanked by fields and hedgerows. Ahead, the road curved to the left and vanished behind a large area of woodland where crows and magpies loitered in the treetops.
“A mile, maybe two,” Royce said. He wiped a fleck of grit from his eye.
“I’ve had enough of walking,” said George, and he rested his elbows on his thighs and held his head in his hands. “I used to love walking before all this happened.” He took the water bottle from his pack and drank with his eyes closed.
Royce sipped from his own bottle and stared down the road, watching the steam rise from the fields. When he turned back to George, the old man was looking back the way they had come, his face caught in a frown.
Royce wiped his mouth. “What’s wrong?”
George didn’t look at him. “Thought I heard something behind us.”
Royce could only see about fifty yards before the road was obscured by fields, dark thickets and wild scrubland. He saw no one. “What did you hear, George?”
“I’m not sure. Sounded like a motorbike engine. I think…”
“You sure you’re not hearing things?”
“My wife said I had good hearing; it made up for my bad eyesight.”
“But you don’t wear glasses,” said Royce.
George shrugged. “More fool me.”
“Fuck’s sake. Who would be on a motorbike out here?”
George watched the road. “I think we’re being followed.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They hunkered down in a wet ditch shadowed by hedgerow perpendicular to the road, hiding among long grass, weeds and stinging nettles. The ditch was deep enough to hide them amongst the smell of damp foliage and animal musk. They lay against the ground and peered over the rim of the ditch, parting stems of grass and thistles with their hands. Royce laid the shotgun across his arms and watched the road approximately fifty yards away and as empty as they had left it. The thorny hedgerow behind them would hide their silhouettes from anyone approaching.
And they waited.
The wind swept across the field and stirred the grass. Within minutes a figure appeared, walking slowly on the road. Tall and thin, wearing a hood over a baseball cap. It was a man. The hem of a long coat danced around his ankles. Tracksuit bottoms whose legs were streaked with dirt. He had a holdall strapped across his back, the straps of which dangled behind him. He was holding a bolt-action hunting rifle across his chest, the barrel pointing at the ground as he turned his head left and right.
“A scout,” said Royce.
More people followed the scout. They walked upon the road and in the fields to either side of the road, clad in tattered coats and jackets, jeans and combat trousers. Woollen hats and peaked caps. Some of the men were bearded. Some wore dust masks or cloths over their mouths. Eyes within dirty faces, scanning the landscape. They moved in a loose, untidy formation, like a ragtag army with no enemy left to fight. Cradling rifles or crossbows or shotguns. Pistols in gloved hands. Lengths of steel pipe. One man with a thick ginger beard carried a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.
Royce counted more than two dozen of them.
“Who are they?” George said. He lowered his head below the rim of the ditch and made little hushed sounds through his open mouth. Royce watched the men.
“Bandits, maybe. Scavengers. I don’t know.”
There seemed to be no women amongst them. Then he looked away from the road to the other men approaching across the field. They were spread out, but Royce didn’t think the spaces between them were wide enough for them to pass him and George without finding them. But if they tried to escape now, they’d be seen. Royce dropped down and looked at George, saw his own fear reflected in the old man’s face.
George’s hands were tight around the hatchet’s rubber grip. “What do we do now?”
“Stay quiet,” said Royce. “Stay down.”
George’s eyes were damp and his lips were dry. He looked like something that had dwelled in the ditch for months, surviving on insects and weeds. Royce flicked the shotgun’s safety as the men’s footfalls crept closer. Voices from the road. Someone laughed, and it made Royce’s shoulders tremble. George kept his head down and looked at the ground. Insects crawled in the undergrowth around them.
The men in the field were no more than fifteen yards away now. Royce waited, counted the footfalls to the hurried beats of his heart. His teeth rattled. He swallowed down his dry throat. George was breathing hard through his nose, and his mouth was moving with silent words. Royce cringed as the nearest man drew closer, and he looked up when the man’s shadow fell over him.
The man looked down at Royce and George. But when Royce looked into his face he realised that he was barely a man, in his late teens with a wispy beard of blonde hair, and shocked eyes widening at the sight of the two men cowering in the ditch. Ears too big for his head. His mouth opened and he raised the snub-nosed revolver from his side and pointed it at Royce. Royce brought up his shotgun. The boy’s hand was shaking and his face was too pale against the sky.
There were voices behind the young man.
“Please let us go,” Royce whispered. His voice was slow and tired.
The young man’s throat worked. He hesitated, sniffed, looked from Royce to George and back again.
“Please,” said Royce. “We’re no trouble and we won’t bother you.”
The young man frowned. One side of his mouth moved. A glimmer of hesitation in his eyes.
“Over here!” he shouted, and a second later he fell back with his chest shredded by buckshot. He screamed, followed by a wet spluttering and then a horrible silence.
“Oh shit,” Royce muttered, staring at the smoking barrel. “Oh holy fucking shit.”
Then the ground around the ditch was chewed and kicked up by gunfire.
“We have to move,” said Royce, “otherwise they’ll flank us and trap us in the ditch.” The old man said nothing. His eyes were wild and frantic. Bullets whipped over their heads into the hedgerow and beyond. Royce pulled George with him and they began crawling single file along the ditch. Dirt and scraps of bracken flew around them. George was whimp
ering. Royce coughed and spat as he crawled, his palms pierced by thorns and thistles, and his face scratched by sticks and brambles. Royce scrambled through a gap in the hedgerow and pulled George after him just as a section of the hedgerow disintegrated and something hot streaked past one side of Royce’s head. He grabbed George and they ran for the woods across the field. There were shouts behind them. All the way to the woods Royce waited for a bullet in his back. George was crying. Royce looked back and saw some of the men crawling through the gap in the hedgerow; others had circumnavigated the hedgerow and were emerging into the field from the road.
Royce pushed George ahead of him and they fled into the woods.
*
Hunted through the trees, they struggled deeper into the woods. Royce couldn’t hear the men, but he knew that they were following, and he knew they would catch up eventually because George was slowing down and slowing Royce with him.
The trees were thin and bare, the canopy sparse against the fading sky. The air was thick with the smell of rotting bark and mulch. Branches and trunks groaned in the wind. Rustling shapes in distant shadows. He remembered the bears that had escaped into the wild and wondered what else now roamed the countryside.
“Keep moving,” said Royce, fighting for breath. George was wheezing and gasping, holding his stomach. They stumbled blindly. Royce blinked sweat from his eyes and wiped his face. His limbs were too heavy for the rest of him.
George tripped, fell, landed on his front, and Royce helped him up and they continued, Royce dragging the old man with him. He guessed they were heading in the direction of Starling House, but he wasn’t sure because the trees looked all the same and his heart was pounding so hard he couldn’t arrange his thoughts above it. All he could think about was staying ahead of the men hunting them.
From their right came a buzzing sound that Royce slowly realised was a motorbike engine. Coming through the trees towards them. Royce stopped, and George fell against him and they both stumbled against a tree.
The Plague Series (Book 2): The Last Outpost Page 10
