The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  It was over.

  “Devey? Are you there? Is everything all right?”

  Devey dragged himself over to the intercom and pressed his back against the wall. “Everything is fine, Sonja. How’s that little baby of mine?”

  Sonja giggled. “She’s fine. Did I hear gunshots?”

  “There won’t be any more,” he said. “All of you get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

  7

  Devey struggled to the roof of the hospital as he had told Dr Zantoko he would do. The building was only two levels above the hill, so he couldn’t get a view for miles, but he could see the town, and the edges of the city beyond.

  Things were bad.

  A dozen fires burned, and sirens blared all over. Chaos reigned in the city, but death had not yet won. Chaos meant people. Even more positive, the area surrounding the hospital was deserted, which meant Zantoko and the others could leave without being accosted. The plan was for them to go to the large country home of a colleague of Zantoko’s—a heart surgeon from an old money background. Zantoko had taken the man’s keys from a locker, expressing sadness that his colleague was likely dead, but recalling visiting his large home on several occasions. It would be a safe place to hide out until the chaos died down, and Zantoko pledged to make it there if only to inform his colleague’s family of what had befallen him.

  It was a plan.

  But not one which involved Devey.

  By now, almost two whole days since this thing began, he was barely human. His hands, resting in his lap, were skeletal and sore. His breast fell away in long, slippery strands—like unravelling a jumper by a pair of threads. He coughed up blood, and felt something come loose each time, and he could not blink for his eyelids had deserted his face. Still, as he perched on the rooftop watching Zantoko and the others pile into a hospital mini-van, he was not feel entirely without hope. These people were alive because of him. He had kept them safe, protected them. He watched Sonja now with her little girl and told himself that Lauren would live a life because of him. It made his death a little less wretched.

  He counted fourteen people in total and winced as they crammed themselves into a mini-bus built for ten. Still, after being shut inside the hospital’s deathly atmosphere, it probably felt great being outside again. What would happen to them all now was anybody’s guess, and something he would hold no influence over. Maybe things were okay beyond the city, but as he watched another fire leap up in the distance, he wasn’t so sure. Whatever happened from now, the country would never be the same as it was. Lauren would live a hard life.

  The world was infected, sick and dying.

  It might take a long time for it to be well again.

  Before the mini-bus pulled away from the courtyard, Dr Zantoko looked up towards the roof. He spotted Devey there and waved. Devey waved right back. Then they were gone, travelling down the road into town. Eventually, they turned a corner and he no longer saw them. That was how hospitals had always gone for Devey. People he cared about always left him in these horrible places. His mother had left him alone in a hospital room, clutching her hand and sobbing. That his father had not been there as she passed was something that had driven a wedge between them. Devey had been a boy, yet it had been him who had done the man’s duty. He had taken it away from his father.

  Devey reached into his pocket, wincing as the last scraps of flesh tore from his fingers, and pulled out his phone. He had switched it off last night to keep the battery from dying, but now he turned it back on. As Sonja had said, the mobile service had returned, but it was poor, unreliable. No harm in trying to make a call though, and this would be the only chance he got. He coughed another mouthful of blood and understood that it was only a matter of minutes before he would tear something vital inside of himself. Each cough might be the one to kill him. With shaking, senseless fingers, he prodded commands into his phone, struggling to see through the bloody smears he left on the touchscreen. To his surprise, the call connected and started ringing. Now all he needed was for his father to pick up. He could finally say he was sorry.

  If his dad answered.

  If...

  “Hello?”

  Devey smiled. “Hi, Dad. It’s me.”

  <<<<>>>>

  The Peeling Omnibus

  The Original Novellas

  To follow are the 5 original novellas set within The Peeling universe (and a prequel short). They were written during 2012 and 2013.

  THE PEELING OF SAMUEL LLOYD COLLINS

  THURSDAY

  My big toenail fell off today. That leaves three on my right foot and two on my left. It stung at first, but now my toe just feels…hot. I’m keeping the nail in an ashtray in the kitchen.

  My name is Samuel Lloyd Collins and I suppose, in a way, this is my last will and testament, except I don’t have anybody to leave anything to, so I guess this is really just my last testament. Or maybe writing this is merely the closest thing I have to company.

  I don’t have to be alone. I could go next door and take part in one of their endless political debates that echo through the walls and keep me awake at night. Sometimes I think about yelling at them to ‘keep it down’, but what would be the use? Politics are high on everybody’s agenda right now. One would expect them to be.

  Everyone has their own theory on how ‘The Peeling’ started, but I personally think it was the Arabs. It’s always the Arabs, isn’t it? Saddam is dead and the Yanks finally got Osama. So what choice did they have left but to go for broke? Everyone assumed their master plan would culminate with a nuclear attack on a major city, but in many ways this virus is worse. We may have snuffed out the leaders, but their passion for killing, it seems, will never die. You cut the head off a chicken and it runs around like a maniac, spraying anyone nearby with blood. That’s what ‘The Peeling’ is: arterial chicken blood spraying us all with its infectious filth. I guess the Arabs won in the end…

  I came down with the sickness on Tuesday. Two days ago. I’ve already lost a bit of hair and some skin off my testicles, and you already know about the toenails. Funnily enough, my fingernails are currently unaffected, probably the only reason I’m able to write this. I thought about typing this on the computer, but somehow it felt like a man’s final words should be in ink, don’t you think? Maybe when it comes right down to it, paper is more permanent than a collection of cheap circuits.

  My future is laid out for me now. I’ll be dead within a week, give or take a day. The beauty of the Peeling is that it leaves no room for hypothesising. No room for hope. It kills every time, no exceptions. In a way that certainty has allowed me to come to terms and accept my fate. This time next week I will be a bubbling oil-slick of rancid, dissolving flesh. Somehow I’m fine with that.

  But I need to know who is responsible for the pain I’m in. I already told you I think it’s the Arabs, but unless I know for sure…Well let’s just say that knowing for definite would bring a certain degree of closure to the situation. Of course, the honourable men and women of the Government’s various agencies are urgently investigating the origin of this disease and those responsible, but as each second passes, Great Britain withers and dies beneath its second great plague. I just hope to be alive when they determine the guilty party.

  Already know it was the Arabs, just need to know for sure…

  FRIDAY

  I woke up this morning stuck to my pillow. Not because I had been drooling in my sleep, but because the skin below my left eye had rotted and fused with the cotton. I had to rip the pillow away and half of my face with it. The resulting meld of infected flesh and sickly white cotton reminded me of a surrealist painting, beautiful in a way. Maybe I’ll have it framed before I die.

  What an odd thing to muse upon! It would not surprise me if I have gone quite mad. I’m already starting to feel delightfully delirious (or maybe that’s just the throbbing and burning where my face used to be).

  Such good bone structure I was blessed with, but did not know of, until I
was today faced with it in the mirror. The bone of my cheek now shows right through, covered only by several, thin slivers of sinewy gristle. I look like the Phantom of the Opera (albeit a grizzlier version). I wonder what part of me will dissolve tomorrow. That’s the fun part of this sickness, I suppose, not knowing which chunk of skin will decompose next. It isn’t like typical flesh-eating diseases; they have a point of infection and usually spread systematically. But The Peeling strikes the body at random, necrotising a man’s feet before popping up a day later and doing the same to his ears. I’ve seen hundreds of case photographs and no two victims follow the same path of infection. The only non-variable: it’s always fatal. No one understands this disease at all…

  …and no one can stop it.

  I think it’s starting on my chest…

  SATURDAY

  I can see my ribs. Two of them, glistening at me like curved piano keys. It’s amusing, in some morbidly fascinating way, to see one’s inner workings. The pain is starting to subside, and thankfully only throbbed for a few hours in the morning, but the cloying odour inside the house is repugnant. Ideally, I would open the curtains and windows, but I don’t wish to be disturbed by the outside world. I would only become resentful of those who still have all of their skin. Besides, it was being around other people that infected me in the first place, sealing my fate, and I hate them for that! But retaining my humanity is all I have left to focus on for now and resentment will only make that task harder. I have decisions ahead of me that should not be made in temper…

  I have been corresponding all day with a trusted associate that is supplying me with up-to-date information on the current pandemic, along with the progress of the on-going Government investigations into the crisis. So far it seems clear that this was a premeditated and focused attack on the western world. The Peeling has, so far, hit 90% of Europe and is seeping its way into the East. USA and South America are also stricken, worse than we are in fact, but it is unsurprising to me that, as yet, the Arab world is unaffected. I am eager to see just how far into the East the disease spreads before ceasing its journey of human pestilence. I’m guessing that it will be shortly after it runs out of Christian nations to infect.

  SUNDAY

  I lost a hand today. Thank God it was my left and that I can still continue writing this. I now have a withered stump that drips periodically with a viscous yellow discharge. It looks similar to the contents of a Cadbury Cream Egg but smells worse than anything I could ever hope to describe to you now. I suppose it’s the aroma of lingering death.

  Next door are still at it. Talking incessantly at all hours. I need peace and quiet right now. Time to think. I already informed my colleagues that I would be working from home for the next week and am not to be disturbed under any circumstances. They were not happy, but I’m the Boss, so they’ll have to cope. They don’t know that I have the sickness, of course, probably too wrapped up in their own fear of it to even consider the possibility. People only worry about themselves nowadays.

  My associate emailed today and told me that the infection was definitely engineered – Wow. What a revelation! – and that it was unleashed upon the world at strategic locations: Major cities, along coastal areas so that the disease would work inwards from all directions, eating around the edges of England as though it were a Jaffa Cake with a chewy orange centre…

  God what I would do for a box of Jaffa Cakes right now! The stump of my wrist is itching just thinking about it. Perhaps it’s excitement?

  Anyway, I have sent a reply email asking what is currently known about WHO engineered the disease. That is what I have to know.

  Then maybe I can do something about it.

  MONDAY

  I have lost an eye today. It is indeed unfortunate, but in a way I am blessed to have persevered this long anyway. Many do not, and at least I have the other eye. My left one just dribbled out of its socket today like an under-boiled egg with its top sliced off: all foamy white and custardy-yellow. I almost laughed when I looked in the mirror. I look like a zombie-pirate.

  At least it doesn’t hurt. Not physically.

  I suspect I have little time left now and I am anxiously awaiting news from my associate. I can feel the illness seizing my internal organs in its corrosive grip and it’s only a matter of time before they start to decay completely. I have already taken to soiling myself involuntarily, so I assume that my intestines are already rotten. I would take a shower to get clean, but the pressure would only shred what remaining skin I have left. For now I will sit and wait for my associate to provide me the information I so desire…

  Who is responsible? Who turned me, and most of the free world, into a quivering mass of mutilated flesh?

  I wonder if there’s any Jaffa Cakes in the pantry.

  TUESDAY

  It has now been one week since I first noticed the skin under my armpit was peeling away in pus-filled chunks. One week since I realised I was a dead man walking.

  Dead man peeling! Ha!

  But I am still alive, devoid of nearly all my skin, granted, but alive nonetheless. Moist splatters of pungent flesh litter my home now, whilst foul scabs fall from my body constantly. The only merciful thing about this disease is that I feel nothing.

  Nothing except for the soft scraping of insanity inside my fleshless skull.

  WEDNESDAY

  Today will be my last. I can feel it. My lower legs snapped today when I got out of bed, too rotten and malformed to bear what little weight my frail body has left. It is of no importance however, as I awakened to something wonderful: You have mail.

  I am about to drag my withered limbs over to the computer right now, to see what my trusted associate has for me. I will record the email, and my response, for you right here, as I feel it will be important.

  Dear Prime Minister.

  I sincerely hope that you are keeping well in this time of dire need. Great Britain is within the talons of great turmoil and despair, but I trust that your inspired leadership will see us through as ever. This shall not be the end of our endless empire and the good people of this nation will go on stronger than before. That is our way and always will be. May Angels sit on our shoulders as God guides our souls through the times ahead. Long live Great Britain.

  But without further ado, Prime Minister, I will provide you with the Intel you require. It was discovered at 0300 GMT today that the disease is not contained to western nations as first assumed. In fact we now have reliable information that the infection, commonly referred to as ‘The Peeling’, was contracted in Turkey and has quickly spread as far east as Japan. I’m sure you can appreciate, that with the USA also affected, it effectively means the disease has travelled the entire circumference of the world… Yet there is one country that has shown no effects of the illness, despite being surrounded by it on all borders. We have tried to contact that nation’s Government but they have declined all opportunities to reply. It now seems a reasonable assumption that the country in question is responsible for this worldwide plague.

  That country is North Korea.

  As always, I await you orders on how to proceed, but I implore you to act wisely.

  Yours,

  General Harvey Whitehead

  Dear Harvey

  I was certain it was the Arabs! Guess we can all be wrong sometimes…

  Regardless, since my dear Martha and the children were taken from me by this wretched sickness, I have had no time to mourn them, so I regret to inform you that this will be my final act as leader of this nation. I hope that you and your family are well, and remain so. I wish the same for Great Britain.

  Without continued procrastination, my orders, in regards to the Godless entity of North Korea, are as follows:

  Send the Nukes.

  Send them all…

  They will not take this world as their own.

  Yours regretfully,

  Prime Minister Samuel Lloyd Collins

  THE PEELING: BOOK 1

  JEREMY’S CHOICE
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br />   The Never Stop News Studio was cramped with bodies. The typical skeleton crew of six or seven had swelled to at least four times that amount, people cramming together in front of the studio’s news desk while the two young anchors prepared to go live with the evening’s stories. The overcrowding had made Jeremy’s job very difficult.

  Jeremy was a security guard for Never Stop News, responsible for keeping out anyone not invited to be there. With the news studio and its roaming reporters providing content twenty-four hours a day live, there was always a risk that some anarchic member of the public, with a grudge and a message, would try to sneak in front of the cameras and interrupt the feed. With current events, and the public being so frightened, the risk of a security breach skyrocketed. People wanted answers, and when people wanted answers they came after the Government first and the media a close second. With so many people filling up the claustrophobic studio, it was impossible for Jeremy to keep his eyes on everybody.

  There was just one more hour to go before he would be relieved from his post by the night guard, Greg – just one more hour. He could not deny that he dreaded being there even another minute longer, though. Bad things were happening in the world, that had started almost a week ago, and the situation didn’t seem to be getting any better. Jeremy didn’t want to be there anymore. He didn’t want to hear another goddamn thing about The Peeling.