by Rich Hawkins
Frank made sure the main doors were shut tight. There was nothing to push against them. He wondered if the crazies had the wit to open doors.
They found themselves in a small vestibule. Someone was in here, or had been recently, judging by the flickering candles. Frank put the girl down. She looked at the stone floor.
“Stay close,” he whispered. “I’ll take care of you.”
The girl followed Frank up the aisle. Absurdly, he thought of his wedding day, years ago, and was hit by a sudden pang of yearning for his wife. He looked around, mindful of the girl behind him and admired the stained glass and depictions of saints. Tall stone columns scarred by age. Wooden beams and arches built by men now long-dead. Rows of pews, their wood stained and worn, bisected by a long carpeted aisle leading towards the altar. The air was cold and fetid.
Their footsteps echoed around the empty spaces. The candles threw shadows like slick-limbed spirits. Frank’s heart jumped at every small sound and whisper of breeze. His insides were a riot of fear, nerves and horrific flashbacks.
The nave was empty. Frank halted halfway up the aisle, his skin prickling at the sound of creaking wood and shifting stone. He imagined the church as a living organism born from deep within the earth to be groomed, sculpted and adorned by men.
He sat the girl down on a pew. She was malleable and compliant, with understanding in her green eyes. He bent down to be level with face and kept his voice low, trying to hide the fear within it.
“I’m going to take a look around. Are you okay to wait here? Don’t worry, I won’t go too far.”
She stared into his face. The corners of her mouth moved, as though she wanted to talk but couldn’t. Instead she offered a small nod.
Frank attempted a reassuring smile, but it felt tired and sagging. “Okay. I’ll be back in a minute.”
She looked at the floor between her dangling legs, motionless like someone’s lost doll. Frank went to touch her on the shoulder but withdrew his hand at the last moment. Again he gave her that same feeble half-smile, and it made him feel embarrassed and foolish, because what good was a smile when her parents were dead?
“My name’s Frank.” He placed his hand on his chest.
She glanced up at him and blinked then looked down again.
“Fair enough,” Frank said.
He searched the other pews, the pulpit and the lectern. The rest of the nave was deserted. Upon one walls were effigies of the Virgin Mary in all her splendour, and St. George fighting the dragon. Blank stares from waxen faces. He checked the chancel and around the altar. A monolithic organ dominated one wall. Then he stood before the linen-covered altar, intimidated by the grandeur of the holy paraphernalia: the alter crucifix; the tabernacle; the chalice used for communion; the rows of candles. He felt the weight of history and age inside this place. It was stifling and claustrophobic, and he barely noticed the two doors flanking the chancel, one at either side.
His footsteps echoed and bounced off the stone walls, making it sound like he was being followed. In a dark corner where the east and north walls met, he found a fungal-like growth that stretched from the floor to a height of approximately five feet. It appeared pulpy, and smelled ripe and pungent. It was the colour of algae and stank like pond water.
Frank returned to the girl. She was lying on the pew with a prayer cushion under her head. Her eyes were closed. He took off his jacket and placed it over her then listened to the silence around him. Only an occasional scream or cry from outside penetrated the thick walls.
He wondered who had lit the candles and rang the bell earlier. Maybe whoever had done so had already moved on, or was beyond one of the doors he had declined to investigate. It wasn’t important. All that mattered, for now, was that they had shelter for the night.
After blocking the main door with a bookcase full of dusty tomes and hymn books, he took out his phone. No signal. He sat down in the pew in front of the girl’s and looked back at her. She was wearing blue jeans with patterns of flowers and a jumper under her pink jacket. A butterfly-shaped clip held back strands of red hair from her forehead.
She reminded him of his daughter.
“I’ll protect you,” he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Frank woke to weak daylight inside the church and checked his watch. Almost six in the morning. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. Groaned sour breath from between furred teeth. Having slept sitting upright, his spine had stiffened during the night and his back pulsed with pain.
The girl was gone.
He got up, straightened himself out, and looked around while putting on his jacket. Maybe she was hiding.
He searched the inside of the church. The main doors were shut. Sudden guilt and panic stirred his guts when he thought that the girl had gone outside. Then he remembered the two doors in the chancel and walked back up the aisle. In the chancel he opened the door to the right and walked into a plainly-decorated room. There was an old porcelain sink in one corner and vestments hanging in a wardrobe. Communion equipment and a pile of white linen. No sign of the girl.
In the next room Frank found a dead man slumped in a chair behind an antique oak desk, an unfinished bottle of whiskey and some empty blister packs of painkillers before him.
He stepped towards the body.
A priest, his bulging stomach touching the front edge of the desk, his dull eyes cloudy with dust. His dog collar was yellowed and grimy beneath grey whiskers sprouting from his double-chin.
A bookshelf lined with hardcover editions hung on the wall behind the priest. One was about campanology.
Frank almost laughed. “Bell-ringing. Solves that mystery. Fuck’s sake.”
“You shouldn’t swear,” a quiet voice said behind him.
Frank turned sharply. His heart leapt into his gullet.
The girl was huddled in the corner, arms folded over her chest and her face tilted downwards. Small eyes regarded him over thin wrists. Her face was damp with tears.
“I’ve been trying to find you,” said Frank. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you sure? You’re not hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
“What are you doing in here?”
“I was exploring. I found him.” She nodded at the priest. “Did he kill himself?”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was he sad?”
“Maybe.”
“How did he do it?”
Frank looked at the desktop. “He took a lot of tablets and drank a lot of whiskey. Then he went to sleep.”
“Will he go to Heaven?”
“If he believed in it, then yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“He believed in Heaven, so that’s where he’ll go.”
“Do you believe in Heaven?”
“Of course I do,” he lied. “I’m sure he’s in Heaven…with the angels and all that sort of stuff.”
“Was he scared?”
“Probably.”
“I’m scared.”
“You don’t have to be scared,” Frank said. “Everything will be okay.”
“My mummy and daddy are dead, aren’t they?”
He hesitated. “I’m sorry.”
“I miss them.”
“It’s okay to miss them. It’s okay to be sad.”
“Do you think they’re in Heaven?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“Should I do what the priest did? If I do that, will I meet my mummy and daddy in Heaven?”
Frank didn’t know what to say.
“You don’t believe in Heaven, do you?”
“I don’t know. I won’t know until I die.”
“Would you die just to find out?”
“No,” Frank said, harsher than he intended. “I’ve got a wife and friends. I want to see them again.”
“What if they’re dead?”
Frank wiped sweat from his face. “We sh
ould get out of here, find somewhere safe.”
“The village is full of monsters,” the girl said.
“I know,” replied Frank. “We have to get out of the village.”
“Mummy told me I shouldn’t go anywhere with strangers.”
“Your mum was very wise. But it’s okay, I won’t hurt you. I won’t let anything hurt you.”
“Your name is Frank,” she said.
“That’s right. I can’t be a stranger if you know my name, can I? You remembered my name.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You only told me last night.”
Frank couldn’t help a grin. He held out his hand. “What do you say?”
She stood, hesitating, before she stepped forward and took his hand. Her palm was warm and clammy.
“What’s your name?” Frank asked.
She wiped her nose. Her green eyes were full of sadness. “Florence.”
“Nice to meet you, Florence. How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“A proper grown up, then.”
She ignored Frank and pointed at the priest. “Do we have to bury him? That’s what you’re supposed to do when someone dies, isn’t it?”
“I think he’s past caring. I’ll get some linen from the next room and cover him up. Do you know what happened here, Florence?”
“In the village?”
Frank nodded.
“It started yesterday morning. People started changing, turning into monsters, hurting other people. Eating people. I’m so scared.”
“I won’t let them hurt you,” he said.
“Do you live in the village?” she asked him.
“My friends are nearby, hiding in a house, waiting for me to come back. We’re from a small village called Shepton Beauchamp. It’s in Somerset.”
“Your friends might be dead.”
“They might be.”
“I can’t go home, can I?”
“I’m afraid not, Florence. It’s too dangerous. We have to get out of the village.”
“And go where?”
“Somewhere safe,” Frank said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
When they returned to main area of the church, Frank noticed that the black growth in the north transept had burst open. Bits of fungal matter were scattered on the floor beneath the wall.
They both tensed at the scuttling sound amongst the pews to their right.
Florence’s voice was quiet and scared. “What was that?”
Frank caught a glimpse of something black and diminutive peering above the pews. “Let’s go, quietly.”
“Maybe it’s a cat.”
They started down the aisle, his hand gripping hers. “Keep moving, Florence. Don’t stop.”
It came at them like a skittering black spider, low to the floor and fast, trying to cut them off before they could reach the end of the aisle. Bristling arachnid hairs covered much of its gleaming chitin-coated abdomen. Multiple insect legs twitched and jerked, dripping with unknown fluids.
Frank realised, with mounting horror, that the creature had a child’s face mounted upon its horrific body.
“It’s a little boy,” said Florence.
Frank picked up the girl and ran. The creature chased them, its busy legs tapping on the floor and wheezing breath growing louder on their heels. He opened the main doors, glanced back, his legs quivering as the boy-creature bolted towards them. Its mouth was a shivering rip within the pulpy flesh of its face, sheathing an emerging nest of sucking worm-mouths and blind feelers.
They shut the doors moments before the abomination caught up. It screeched in frustration. There was a brief silence before the creature began scratching and scraping on the other side, searching for a way out.
Frank stepped away from the doors and turned to face the churchyard as slack, feverish faces appeared amongst the gravestones, staring at him and Florence.
Acting purely on instinct, he stumbled down the pathway, avoiding the desperate lunges of bony fingers and grasping hands. A man came after them, hobbling on a bad knee. His mouth was stretched too wide and his eyes were blistered and bleeding. His hands had formed into pale hooks of bone.
Frank staggered through the gateway and hurried onto the street. He looked in both directions of the road before choosing the way they had come last night. He set Florence down and they ran together. She was quick and he barely kept pace with her, despite his longer strides.
There were screams behind them.
“Don’t stop,” Frank said. “The house isn’t far away.”
They approached the place where Florence’s parents had died. There was dried blood on the road. Her parents were gone. Florence stared at the car as they passed it. Minutes later they arrived at the house. The front door was splintered like something dense had smashed into it.
Frank entered the house first. Furniture was strewn around the hallway, as though his mates had barricaded the door and then had to remove it to escape the house. The downstairs rooms were empty. Ralph, Magnus and Joel had left their bags behind. Frank and Florence climbed the stairs. The bathroom was empty, as was the master bedroom. Someone had pissed in the toilet and not bothered to flush.
In a bedroom decorated with Shrek wallpaper, they found a dead boy under a duvet. He looked barely human. Florence stared at the corpse until Frank guided her onto the landing.
Scrambling and scratching up in the attic caught their attention. Frank knew it wasn’t his mates. He didn’t want to see what might stare down at them from the open hatch, so they left quickly and didn’t look back.
Nothing attacked them on the street. The silence was enough to bring despair. This was a dead place. He glanced at Florence and wondered how she was dealing with losing her parents, her home, and her old life.
And what had happened to his friends?
A creeping panic tried to overcome him.
He kept watch as they moved down the road. The sky churned with grey, promising rain. He wanted to go home.
“Unless we can find a car,” he said, “we’re in for a long walk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Joel awoke and immediately regretted it when he remembered the past few hours of his life. He’d dreamt of monsters and corpses and things with gibbering mouths. The images of horrid faces lingered in his mind.
He was sitting against the wall in a corner of a long, wide classroom with a musty blanket covering him from his neck to his knees. The high windows in the opposite wall let in a dull light. A large whiteboard featured at one side of the room, and tables and chairs had been stacked in the far corners. Posters of maths sums and the alphabet were displayed alongside crayon drawings of stick people, lemon-shaped suns and rabbits with large eyes and bucked teeth. Stickers of cartoon animals with permanent grins adorned a tall cupboard.
The distant tap-tap-tap of gunfire startled him.
He stretched out his legs on the wooden floor. His entire body ached and his eyes smarted with tears. The smell of unwashed bodies filled the air. He checked his pockets and realised he had lost his wallet and the photo of Anya inside it.
“Sleeping Beauty’s woken up,” said Ralph. He and Magnus sat either side of him, both with their own blankets. “We thought we’d have to keep carrying you around.”
Magnus’s face creased with concern. “You okay, Joel?”
Joel shivered, wrapped his arms around himself. “Where are we?”
“We’re safe,” Ralph told him. “But things are pretty fucked by the sounds of it.”
Joel sat up straight and looked around while avoiding eye contact with the room’s other occupants, many of whom were asleep. There seemed to be about a hundred people here, gathered in various groups or alone. A few families huddled together, sharing water from plastic bottles. Some people stared into space or at the floor, sitting with blankets over their shoulders. An old woman with a severe facial tick was drinking from a bottle of cough medicine. There were young and old alike here, a palpable fear amongst
them, mixed with desperation, shock and disbelief. Wide-eyed denial painted upon traumatised faces. Sleepers having bad dreams. One man was crying into his hands and muttering a woman’s name. Another man stared up at the windows, his left arm in a sling, an unlit cigarette dangling from his bottom lip.
Joel looked beyond the doorway to the adjacent classroom, where more survivors had gathered, coughing and muttering and sobbing.
Magnus handed Joel a small bottle of water and he took several sips then wiped his mouth, savouring the weight of the water in his stomach.
“What’s the time?” Joel asked.
“Nearly six,” said Ralph.
“In the morning? I slept through the night?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened? I remember leaving the village. And then the soldiers stopped us in the road…”
“The soldiers almost shot us after you passed out, mate. They bundled us into the back of their truck and brought us here. The paramedics checked you over, made sure you weren’t infected. They said it was shock that did it.”
Panic fluttered in Joel’s chest and he swallowed the watery nausea at the back of his mouth. “Infected?”
“Yeah.”
“Infected with what?”
“It’s some kind of virus. One of the soldiers mentioned something about a pandemic.”
“An epidemic, not a pandemic,” said Magnus.
“Same thing.”
“No, it’s not.”
“It doesn’t matter. Considering what we saw in Wishford, I’d say we’re in the deep shit.”
Joel put one hand to his mouth and barely suppressed a sob of fear and terror. With some effort he managed to compose himself. “Where are we?”
“A primary school in Horsham,” Magnus told him. “It’s been converted into a rescue centre for survivors.”
