by Rich Hawkins
A man’s clothes had been discarded on the floor. Blue t-shirt and khaki trousers. Black socks and boxer shorts.
“What do you think of that?”
Frank crouched, prodding the t-shirt with his axe. “Weird.”
“That sums up the last few days.”
“They’re not torn.”
“But it looks like they’ve been taken off in a hurry.”
“True.”
“Do you smell that?”
“As soon as I walked in here. It’s like yeast.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“What is it?”
“Nothing good.”
A side door led away from the kitchen and into dreamy shades of ash and darkness.
“You want to go through that door, don’t you?” said Ralph.
Frank stood and looked at him.
“You know, mate, you could just tell Florence that we couldn’t find her aunt and uncle, then she’s all yours to look after.”
A flicker passed over Frank’s face. Maybe he was considering it. “It would be easy, wouldn’t it? But it wouldn’t be right. We have to do this properly.”
“You and your conscience.”
“What do you think’s through that door?”
“Maybe a cellar?”
“Maybe.”
They switched on their torches.
*
A set of steps led beneath the house. Frank went down first, and their torchlights revealed a damp cellar dripping moisture from its walls and a dirty stone floor stained with mould. Cardboard boxes and junk were piled in shadowed corners.
A woman was sitting cross-legged with her back against the wall directly opposite them. Revealed in the torchlight, she raised her head, her eyes glazed and large inside the moon-like frailty of her face. Her greasy hair hung to her shoulders. She was naked save for her underwear, and grinned at the men as they halted before her.
Ralph recognised her from the photos. Florence’s aunt.
She let out a high-pitched giggle and wiped her mouth with the back of a veiny hand.
The moist, pickling smell of fermentation filled the air.
Both men said nothing, directing their torch beams around the cellar at the symbols and shapes carved into the wall above the woman’s head. Strange eldritch sigils, crescents and nonsense shapes, curlicues and dagger-like triangles. Shapes without meaning, at least to Ralph. All of these symbols were contained within a carved sphere filling most of the wall.
And on the wall to the woman’s left, there was something else. The men trained their torches upon it, taking a step backwards as they realised what they were looking at.
“Fucking hell,” said Ralph.
Frank’s mouth fell open. He was blinking quickly, as if doing so would erase the thing on the wall from existence.
“Very soon,” said the woman, her voice a whisper.
It was like a fungus, a sack of pulsing fluids and blubber, reaching from the floor to the ceiling. Fibrous and wet, the same colour as a spider’s nest, glistening in the light. Big enough to fit a man and attached to the wall by some sort of resin. Patches of it were transparent. Something moved inside it.
Ralph stepped forward. “It’s a chrysalis.”
“Careful,” said Frank.
Ralph shone his torch into the glistening sack, and it showed him a vague shape curled up within the briny juice of its amniotic fluid. Wetly encased in the sack’s sallow skin was a head, a torso, and legs. The curved line of a jaw and a dreamy smile. Arms folded into its body, legs raised to its chest. Foetal. In the silence Ralph thought he could hear a heartbeat that wasn’t his own, muffled by the protective liquid enveloping it.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered to the thing.
The sack’s pulsing grew faster, reacting to his proximity.
Ralph held out the torch until it was almost touching the sack, which gurgled like an upset stomach. The creature within flinched.
“All flesh is useful,” the woman said.
Ralph turned to her. “What does that mean?”
“You’ll all be welcomed into the flesh. None of you shall go to waste. Every one of you. All the men, all the women…all the little children. All flesh is useful.”
Ralph stepped back alongside Frank.
“What’re you doing here?” Frank asked the woman.
She looked at him with a secretive grin. “He’s going to be a beautiful butterfly. I’m waiting for him to wake up. He’ll wake up soon. Maybe today.”
“Who’s in there?”
“Her husband,” said Ralph. “Florence’s uncle.”
The woman’s grin faltered. “Florence? I remember that name. A little girl. Part of my blood.”
“She’s your niece,” Frank said.
“That’s right,” the woman replied. “I remember now. Is she here?”
“She’s outside.”
“Maybe you should bring her down here. She can be a beautiful butterfly as well.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Maybe not now, but eventually…”
“Never.”
The woman laughed, baring her teeth.
“What’s happening to your husband?” said Ralph.
“He’s becoming something else. He’s changing into something better than before. Something stronger.”
Frank spat. “He’s turning into a monster.”
The woman’s grin consumed her face. “I’m waiting for him to emerge. He’ll make me like him.”
Frank looked at Ralph. “We’re done here.”
“We could kill them.”
“We don’t need to. They’re not a threat to us. Let them be together. They deserve that, at least.”
As they left the cellar, the woman said, “Say hello to Florence for me.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
After leaving Bordon they skirted the northern edge of the South Downs National Park, passing through Alton, Alresford and Kings Worthy. They were hungry and thirsty.
Frank told Florence that her aunt and uncle were dead and she accepted this with a kind of solemn silence. She was already traumatised by her parents’ death and killing Bertram, so the death of her aunt and uncle didn’t make much difference to her.
She went to sleep with her head on Frank’s chest.
Poor girl, Magnus thought. How many other children are orphans now? At least Florence wasn’t alone. At least they were all together.
They bypassed Winchester. The city was consumed by a fire so intense it burned an afterimage in Magnus’s vision.
That night they stopped the car at a rest area just outside the village of West Tytherley. In the morning they would enter Salisbury. Getting closer to home.
The sky darkened into a night without stars.
They slept in the car that night and made sure to lock the doors.
*
Joel awoke in darkness, gasping and breathing hard, followed by a second of confusion. In the cold air he rubbed his eyes then pulled his jacket up to his chin. He pulled out his tiny silver cross, tightened his right hand around it and closed his eyes.
Are you listening, God, or have you abandoned us?
He opened his eyes and pocketed the cross, inhaling a deep breath. The others were asleep. Ralph snored and grunted.
The stars were visible through a parting in the clouds. He stared at them for a long time and fell into a trance-like state, his mind untroubled for a while until the clouds closed and the stars went away again. He thought of Anya. In the light of his dying mobile phone, he opened his wallet and took out the photo of them together, taken on a holiday in Norway. The freezing North. Mountains, waterfalls and ice. A beautiful land.
He fell asleep with the photo in his hand.
*
Was it a dream or a memory? Or the memory of a dream?
Magnus stood outside Debbie’s bedroom in the upstairs hallway of their house. He usually slept in the spare room because she took up so much space,
wheezing through her blubbery mouth and wriggling in her sleep.
He was holding a tray of food: a bowl of tomato soup, four slices of buttered bread, and a cup of tea. The thud and crash of his two boys playing downstairs drifted up to him. Banging footsteps across the living room and out into the kitchen. One of the boys was crying. Adam, probably; he was smaller and weaker than Grant.
Glass smashed. Grant shouted. Adam was still crying.
Magnus shook his head. A vague depression settled upon him. The house smelled of dust, neglect, and Chinese takeaways rotting in a bin. He looked down at the tomato soup and thought about spitting into it, and then considered ejaculating into it. Cream of tomato, indeed. He wanted to throw the tray against the wall and scream. He wanted to leave and be free again. The bond to his family was like a fraying rope gradually unravelling.
“Magnus, are you out there? I’m hungry.”
His body sagged, the air rushing out of him like a punctured balloon. He dug his fingers into the plastic tray, fought the urge to walk downstairs and out of the house.
“Yes, dear. I’m coming.”
Balancing the tray on one arm, he opened the door. The smell that greeted him made his eyes water. The curtains were drawn against the sunny morning. The glow of the lamp on the bedside table was yellow and dirty. Old wallpaper peeled in the high corners.
Debbie was on the bed, an obese mass beneath a stained duvet. A pallid face and bovine eyes framed by greasy hair.
“Here you go, dear,” Magnus said. “I’ve got your favourite.”
Her eyes tracked him from the door to the bedside. She sniffed the air, glaring at the tray. “I don’t like tomato soup.”
“But it’s your favourite.”
“I like chicken soup now.”
Magnus made a rigid smile and wanted to tear off her face.
“Take it away. I don’t want it. I want chicken soup.”
Magnus said nothing. He imagined making her eat his shit.
Her face bloomed pink and her eyes shined. “I’m in the mood, Magnus.”
“Are you sure, dear?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He put down the tray.
“Undress,” she said.
He took off his clothes and then climbed into bed as she pushed aside the duvet. Debbie parted herself to him and she was clammy, moist and stinking of something like brine. A shellfish opening its gummy cleft. Her large hands guided him into her. He wasn’t fully hard. She moaned and writhed, buckling underneath him. She was cold inside.
He took hold of her upper arms and thrust his hips forwards. She raised her hands to her sagging breasts and pinched her nipples. Magnus pushed again. She pulled him towards her, to kiss her mouth, and her breath was like rot.
Their mouths joined. She moaned and cried beneath him.
Her body began to envelop him. She covered him in pale blubbery flesh until Magnus was a part of her.
He screamed once before he was absorbed.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Ralph lit the cigarette he’d stolen from Magnus and watched grey light seep into the sky. He took a drag and sucked the smoke into his lungs. It was his first since giving up last year, and the nicotine hit made the inside of his head spin for a moment.
He breathed out, listening to the birdsong. Maybe they’d be home by the end of the day. The others were awake, their hands buried in pockets against the chill of the early morning air. They were sullen, grey and tired.
The fields were wreathed in mist. Earlier, when he’d been pissing onto a grass bank, Ralph had seen a family of deer moving silently amongst the white shrouds. It was nature reminding him that it was still there. He had watched the deer until they vanished into the mist, and he wished them well with a bittersweet smile.
He dropped his cigarette and put it out with one foot. The sound of vehicles approaching them grew louder in the morning air.
Magnus and Frank were looking down the road. Joel stayed near Florence, biting his nails. Ralph walked to the car and joined them. He loaded the flare gun and pocketed the spare cartridges. “Sounds like company.”
Magnus and Frank retreated to the side of the road as a convoy of military trucks and other vehicles – jeeps and armoured cars – rounded the corner.
“We’re saved,” said Joel. “We’re saved, aren’t we?”
Ralph remembered the infected children at the crossroads and said nothing.
The lead jeep slowed to halt, as did the rest of the convoy. The trucks were filled with refugees.
A soldier emerged from the jeep’s cab and approached them. Ralph watched as the soldier spoke to Frank and Magnus. He couldn’t hear what was being said over the sound of idling engines.
Moments later Magnus jogged back to the car.
“What’s happening?” asked Joel.
Magnus smiled. “They’re taking us to Salisbury. They’re going to help us get home.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Salisbury was a battleground of smoke and fire and smashed buildings. Wrecked cars and detritus obstructed the roads, at the sides of which bodies were piled. Streets of abandonment and things left behind. Discarded suitcases and plastic bags scattered upon pavements. Sporadic gunfire echoed around the city.
The convoy blasted through the ruined streets, scraping viscera from the road with their wheels. Fighter jets screamed overhead. The concussion of artillery shells from outside the city made the ground tremble. The refugees in the trucks huddled together, seated on the metal benches or crammed on the floor. When Ralph and the others had climbed aboard the truck, some of the refugees greeted the sight of four grown men and a little girl with some suspicion. Not surprising, really. He would have done the same.
Ralph peered through the side of the truck and saw the cathedral’s spire, undamaged and resolute, reaching towards the sky. He wondered how long it would remain standing.
Magnus and Joel were seated either side of him while Frank sat with Florence on the floor. She looked at Ralph and he returned her gaze. He didn’t smile at her. Then he turned away as the truck juddered over rubble and potholes.
According to the rumours, passed about like germs in the back of the truck, the army had purged the infected from most areas of the city. One man, wrapped in a dirty blanket, said the infected had amassed near the cathedral to store dead victims in their nests. Ralph didn’t know what to believe.
The convoy halted. The refugees looked at one another. Furtive glances and confusion. Murmurs and whispers amongst the crowded bodies.
A short while later, they disembarked from the trucks and were herded down the road. Frank kept Florence close to him, holding her hand. Armed soldiers lined the street, watching the crowd. Side roads were blocked by armoured cars. Helicopters buzzed the skies. Gunfire crackled a few streets away.
“Keep moving!” a soldier was shouting. “Don’t stop!”
“Where are we going?” asked Florence.
“Just stay close,” said Frank. “Everybody stay close.”
The crowd streamed into the train station car park. Cars had been shifted to make space for people to gather. Other groups joined, creating a huge swarm of refugees. A surging, confused mass of humanity.
Another soldier was standing on the roof of a tank, speaking through a loudspeaker: “Please stay calm. Move in an orderly fashion. Do not panic.”
They passed a machine gun nest manned by nervous-looking squaddies. Ralph met eyes with one of them, a young man of no more than twenty who averted his gaze quickly.
The flow of the crowd slowed until it stopped outside the station entrance.
“Please keep calm,” the soldier with the loudspeaker said. “Do not panic.”
Rain began to fall.
*
Any refugee with a weapon, makeshift or otherwise, was forced to relinquish it to the army. Frank handed over his axe without complaint. Ralph stowed the flare gun down his jeans, hoping some grubby soldier wouldn’t look down there. Baseball bats, c
ricket bats and knives were handed over under protest. Red Cross workers and Salvation Army volunteers distributed blankets and bottles of water. Both items ran out before even a quarter of the refugees received any.
Trains arrived at and departed the station; some travelled straight through, already laden with refugees staring out from clouded windows.
After waiting for what seemed like hours, stuck in the rain, they were finally moved into the train station and onto one of the platforms. They were all drenched and miserable. Ralph was craving a hot shower, a pint of beer, and a plate of toasted cheese sandwiches. Maybe a chicken curry with rice, naan bread, and prawn crackers. His mouth watered.
“We’re going home,” said Joel. “At last. We’re going home.”
The crowd filled the platform above the tracks. People jostled for room. Small arguments broke out but were quickly subdued by the soldiers. Ralph and the others managed to get to the front of the platform, overlooking the tracks. They were careful not to get pushed off. The rain was coming down fast and hard. Ralph looked towards the horizon and it was all black clouds.
They waited. Expectant pale faces and shivering bodies clad in coats or jackets. Hoods pulled up to shelter their heads. Huddled families waiting to be saved. Murmurs and whispers. Babies crying. An old lady kept asking if the train would be arriving before it got dark, but no one gave her an answer.
More jets roared overhead, lost in the clouds. Some of the children covered their ears. A loud crash from across the city was followed by a mushroom cloud of smoke that rose above the buildings and dispersed in the breeze. Someone screamed. Someone told the screamer to shut up.
The battle for Salisbury was raging.
“Are we going on the train?” said Florence.
“Yes,” Frank told her.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re going to Somerset. “Have you ever been to Somerset, Florence?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. My dad always said the people who lived there were inbred. What does that mean?”
