The Plague Series (Book 2): The Last Outpost

by Hawkins, Rich

  “We lost the daylight.”

  “What?”

  “Take it easy, Royce. You might have concussion.”

  Royce pulled himself up and sat with his back against a tree. He looked around. They were hidden in the treeline to the side of the house, and through the trees he saw Starling House aflame, fire reaching from its shattered windows. There were crashing sounds of collapsing rooms from within. In the night, the only light was the fire that revealed the area around the house where figures fought and died. Pops and cracks of gunfire. The surviving hunters were retreating into the darkness, chased by the screaming infected. Gradually the gunfire dwindled and the last of the screams echoed into the sky, and then the grounds were empty except for the bodies on the grass. Some were still moving. Wounded infected, many with severe mutilations and burns, picked through the remains and fed on the scraps.

  Royce looked around at the ground. He looked at George. “Where’s all our stuff? Our rucksacks? The shotgun?”

  George wiped his mouth. The light from the flames painted his eyes. “It’s all gone. Left behind in the house. Didn’t have time. I was too busy dragging you outside on your arse.”

  Panic opened the pit of Royce’s stomach. His heart jumped. He felt like he was going to throw up again.

  “Everything’s gone? My rucksack’s got important things in it. Family things. My daughter’s…” He stopped talking and looked at his lap, and in that moment of quiet despair Royce tried to remember his daughter’s face.

  With some effort he rose to his feet and staggered from the trees. Glowing sparks and flecks of ash drifted in the breeze. Smoke obscured the distance. The fire reached towards the sky. And when Royce reached the house he slumped to his knees before the inferno, whispering his wife and daughter’s names to the blackened ground.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  George walked among the headstones with flowers in his hands. The ground was soft after the previous night’s rainfall and the trees at the far corner of the churchyard were bare and coal-black. Inside the church behind him, the congregation at Sunday Service were singing hymns. He hummed the tune of All Things Bright and Beautiful under his breath as he halted by his wife’s resting place and crouched next to the grave. The flowers from last week were already desiccated and brittle, and when he touched the petals with his finger they crumbled like ash.

  He replaced the flowers and said a few words to his wife. He missed her deeply, and her absence was especially difficult at night, but it was tempered by the relief that her suffering was over and there was no more pain to be endured. To spend another day by her bedside as she withered and cried would have killed him. And he wondered, as he had done many times in his long life, when his time would come to let go of this horrid, beautiful world and the loved ones he would leave behind.

  When he rose from the graveside, the congregation had stopped singing, and he could faintly hear the reverend’s voice delivering some sermon or supposed sliver of wisdom. Out on the main road, a police car raced past the churchyard with its blue lights flashing and its siren screaming so loud it quickened George’s heart and sent a spike of adrenaline into his veins. He blinked in the grey light and looked at the ground. His shoes needed a polish and his trousers were frayed at their hems. He felt like he didn’t belong in the world.

  He looked up, startled, when someone screamed from inside the church, and he turned towards it as another followed. Both screams were silenced by something that sounded like the shriek of a wild animal.

  George approached the side of the church, the dead flowers still in one hand. When he was twenty yards from the church entrance he halted as the doors flew open and several people burst outside, tripping and stumbling, screaming or crying. They fled down the stone path that led to the car park. Some of them had been bleeding.

  Looked like bite marks.

  Another scream from inside the church made George drop the flowers; he hurried to the entrance, only remembering to slow down at the last second. He paused at the threshold and peered inside. A few candles were alight, but the number of shadows made him reluctant to enter. He was aware, distantly, of a short concussion far behind him from the city centre.

  “Hello?” he said, his voice low and unsure. He could feel the bacteria crawling in his guts. His empty hands grasped the air.

  No one answered him.

  Breathing deeply, he stepped inside and turned an immediate corner. He saw the pews, and the things upon them. The remains of the congregation.

  George moved to the aisle, his eyes flitting in every direction. A man was slumped on a pew to his right. Part of his throat was gone, and the front of his shirt was bloody. The skin, and the flesh underneath, had been torn away. His eyes were slack and open.

  Blood on the stone floor and the carpet that ran down the aisle. The smell of opened bodies. A woman lay to one side of the aisle, the left side of her face missing its skin and muscle. The left eye had been taken; the right seemed to regard him accusingly.

  Why didn’t you save me?

  There were more bodies on the floor, savaged and crippled.

  Why didn’t you help us?

  Before he could form an answer, he looked up towards the front of the pews as a dark shape rose from behind them. It was half-lit by the bleached light from the stained windows and the little flames of candles, and George stepped back, almost tripping on the carpet. He realised, in the poor light, that the shape was Reverend Booth. The man was staring at George. His mouth looked dirty and his body moved in spasms under his garments.

  Something was wrong with his face.

  George froze.

  Reverend Booth was breathing hard, his chest shuddering, and he made a low clicking sound in his throat. George took another step back and raised his hands outwards. His heart was a swollen muscle that would not calm itself.

  Somewhere in the city, maybe a few streets away, there was a popping sound like a firework going off.

  Reverend Booth opened his mouth and his teeth were black with the blood of his flock.

  *

  George woke to thunder high above the house. Rain patted at the windows. He rubbed at his face with cold hands and cleared his throat, then rose from the sofa and shrugged the blankets from his shoulders. After lighting a candle he walked a circuit of the ground floor, checking windows and doors. Everything was secure, as well as he could make it, and there had been no visitors in the night. He breathed in the dust disturbed by his slow movements through the house, and pulled his threadbare jacket tighter over the grimy fleece insulating him against the worst of the cold. Yet his bones were never warm and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever see the sun again or the pleasure of a summer’s day, watching the cricket with a pint of ale.

  George pulled the revolver from his pocket and checked the rounds in the cylinder. He knew how many bullets remained, but did so anyway, just to reassure himself. Then he checked the time on his pocket watch, and with the sleeve of his jacket he cleaned its glass face.

  He went to the window above the kitchen sink, pulled back the curtains and peered between the wooden slats he’d used to reinforce the glass. Nothing out there but rain and desolate fields, with no sight of the sky. He’d been hoping to see some birds this soon after dawn.

  There was a scratching at the exterior of the front door, like a dog begging to be let into the house. George froze and watched the door, and he had to hold one hand against the edge of the sink to steady himself. The weight of the revolver like a stone in his pocket. His skin crawled at a low noise from outside, something akin to the bleating of an animal.

  He stared at the front door for a long time until the scratching stopped and the only sound was the rain.

  *

  After a meagre breakfast and his daily inventory of the supplies, George climbed the stairs with a plastic cup of water and a small bowl of cold baked beans. Through the window on the landing, the stairway wall held the shadows of rain droplets on the glass. He walked to the door on th
e left of the landing and knocked twice, and when there was no answer he opened the door and stepped inside.

  The room was washed in grim daylight from the window, and sparsely furnished, with only a small table beside the bed and a wooden chair near the door. In the corner of the room, where the walls met, Royce was sitting on the bed with thin blankets wrapped around him. Below the hood of his stinking coat, his eyes moved towards George, without visible emotion. His face, long-bearded, filthy and despondent, was like a poorly-realised charcoal sketch. The room stank of body odour and piss, old food and bad breath. Cracked walls mottled with human grease and damp stains, the wallpaper curling where it met the skirting board, and the carpet was more grime than anything else. The smell in the air made George want to clear his throat.

  “I know you’ve got the revolver in your pocket,” said Royce. His voice startled George. “Would you shoot me if I attacked you? Are you scared of me?”

  “I’ve got your breakfast,” George said, and he laid the tray on the bedside table. Royce looked at the tray then at George. His expression didn’t change. When Royce’s mouth moved and he showed his teeth George thought he could hear his lips crack and split.

  “I’m not hungry,” said Royce.

  “You have to eat. At least drink the water.” George offered the cup to Royce who, after a moment of deliberation in which he wiped his mouth and stared at George, took the water and sipped.

  “Thank you.” Royce moved the cup from his mouth and dipped one finger into the water, and when he raised it he watched the water drip from his finger back into the cup. “You don’t need to keep checking on me.”

  “I’m not. But I worry about your state of mind.”

  Royce let out a hoarse laugh. George stepped back.

  “My state of mind,” said Royce, and sniffed sharply. “How’s your state of mind, George? How are you feeling? How could anyone who’s survived so far be sound of mind? Think of the things you’ve seen, and had to do, just to survive. Only the insane are left. So what does that make you, George?”

  George didn’t answer.

  Royce appraised him then sank a mouthful of water. His chin dipped towards his chest.

  “Anything else I can get you?” George said.

  Royce was staring at his hands held upturned towards his face. “I have nothing left.”

  George hesitated, went to sit on the edge of the bed but thought better of it. “I’m sorry about what happened back at Starling House.”

  “You left my things behind.”

  “I saved your life.”

  “I had already saved yours. You should have left me there. I have nothing to remember them by. My photos, the plaster cast of my daughter’s hand – all the other things – are gone. Lost in the fire.”

  “I’m sorry,” said George.

  Royce’s eyes were moist. One side of his mouth quivered. “I can barely remember what they look like, George. They’re fading. I’m losing the memories of them. They’ll be gone soon, and there’ll be nothing but empty faces and strangers’ voices when I think of them.”

  George didn’t know what to say because he knew deep down Royce was right. And this begged a question: how long would it be before he came to the same realisation about himself? How long would it be before he sat at the kitchen table and put the revolver in his mouth?

  He couldn’t look at Royce’s face. “I’ll leave the beans here, in case you get hungry.”

  Royce turned towards the wall. George left the room and went downstairs. The rain was receding, but the wind moved inside the walls. He sat at the kitchen table, placed the revolver before him, and covered his face with his hands.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  In the days that followed, George kept watch and noted their dwindling supplies. He and Royce had been lucky after they’d fled the inferno of Starling House and found the farmhouse; the doors had been locked, but George had gained entry through a back window. Inside, the farmhouse had been untouched by refugees and scavengers. The owners must have left at the beginning of the outbreak, hoping to be evacuated from the mainland. George often wondered, especially in the dark hours, what had become of them, and every time he realised it was better not to know.

  There had been some tins of food left in the cupboards; a few bottles of water, lemonade, and Coke too, but there was only enough left for a few more days at most, and the nearest village was four miles away. He had become used to the hunger pangs and cravings, but he knew they would eventually run out of food and he would have to leave the house to forage for supplies. This certainty filled him with panic and resignation. The thought of going outside, alone, with three bullets in a gun that belonged in a museum, wearing women’s tennis shoes because they were the only footwear he’d found that fitted his small feet, made him feel nauseous and weak.

  The weather was worsening, rain and sleet and hailstones. A religious man might have seen it all as some kind of sign and prayed for divine providence, but George was beyond such acts and it comforted him in some strange way.

  *

  The next morning, George woke to silence and the fear he had fallen deaf during his sleep. There was no rain against the windows and walls. No sharp wind buffeting the house.

  Gathering himself, he ate two stale digestive biscuits then went upstairs with a small helping of food for Royce.

  He was thinking about the previous night’s dreams and nightmares, when he opened the bedroom door and realised the room was empty.

  *

  George searched the house then went outside and paced upon the sodden grass and mud, but there was no sign of Royce. During the night, Royce had shifted the barricade from the front door, pulled back the bolts, and silently opened the door while George slept.

  Panic worked inside him like busy hands while he concentrated to arrange the tumult of his thoughts. He wound his pocket watch and his eyes followed the moving clock hands.

  Royce had left him alone. He was alone. He didn’t want to be alone.

  *

  George left the house in the late morning, wrapped in several layers of clothing against the cold, the revolver in his hand. The hatchet was tucked into his belt. It was bitterly cold and the sky rained silent sleet. He adjusted the woollen hat and pulled up his hood, glancing around and looking over his shoulder for threats or movement. His stomach ached with hunger as the wind pulled at him. He folded his arms against his body, frail and worn, and grimaced at the sleet falling upon the mud and puddles of black water. The hills and fields were pitiless, bleak, exhausted by winter. The wind in the treetops sounded like the ocean.

  Three fields on, where the land declined to the north and crumbling stone walls dripped rainwater, he found an infected man caught in the half-collapsed remains of a barbed wire fence.

  George halted ten yards from the man, who stirred from a deep fugue and looked up at him. He was a pathetic thing, half-dead in the wire, deep cuts along his skin, most of them black and infected. Tufts of hair wilted on his scalp. His clothes were ripped to pieces. He reeked of algae-choked ponds and gangrene. The man’s body had suffered terrible mutations in the soft parts of his body, and his stomach looked swollen. And for a moment George was fascinated and repulsed by the pulsing lesions on his back and the broken arrangement of his limbs. There was a faint hunger in the man’s eyes, his sharp hands groped at the ground, and the wet wound of his mouth opened.

  George stepped closer, careful not to slip on the mud, and crouched to be at eye level with the infected man.

  “How long have you been here?” George glanced at the revolver. “Not fair, is it? This is how your life ends, trapped here, dying of hunger. I’ll bet you once had dreams and hopes; a family, maybe. A job. Bills to pay. Mundane stuff.” George noticed tattoos on the man’s left arm, clouded by grime. He looked closer. Three names in simple lettering with cartoon hearts either side of them each. There was a birth date under each name.

  “I was a father too,” George said, and he swallowed a kno
t in his throat. Looked at the crescents of dirt under his fingernails. “Of course, they were already grown up by the time all this happened. I never found out what happened to them and their families. They had their own children. Suppose I’ll never find out.”

  The man looked at the ground. A wet gust of breath from between his sore and cut mouth. George stood, put away the revolver and took out the hatchet.

  The man’s hand scraped on the ground a few yards from George’s feet. He attempted to thrash in the wire, but the more he moved the deeper the barbs ripped into his skin and made him bleed. Then he became still, and the only sound was the crows in the far off trees.

  George looked at the man, his voice soft and forgiving. “It’s going to be okay.”

  *

  The wind carried to him old smells of ash and charcoal from Starling House, even though it was not yet in sight past the trees. He moved through the small stretch of woodland, nervous and tired, the boughs dripping rainwater like the sounds of ticking clocks. The sleet rustled in the trees. When he broke through the treeline he saw the grass blackened with soot and heat. His trainers sunk into the waterlogged earth. The ruins of Starling House black against the tall trees beyond. The fire had torn through the house that night. Its heart had been burnt out. The walls were still intact but were scorched and frail. Human remains mouldered in the grass around the house; a ribcage curved upwards from a patch of thick weeds. A shattered spine and scattered segments of vertebrae like tossed stones. Rusted firearms beyond recovery. The small paw prints of scavengers.

  George stood in what remained of the front doorway, pushed the blackened doors open and peered inside. Pools of shadow, holes in the floor, torn chasms. Fallen timber, black and crumbling. Ragged scatterings of bricks and mortar. George tried not to look at the bones amidst the wrecked interior, but his eyes discerned every convex rib and angular jut of bone. The remaining floorboards were the colour of coal; he was reluctant to test his weight upon them.