by Rich Hawkins
Yes, their names were on the register.
Joel almost cried when Anya’s name was read out.
“Where are they?” asked Frank.
“I’m not sure where your wife is, Mr. Hooper, but Mr. Gosling’s fiancée is working as a nurse in the medical centre.”
Joel fidgeted with his hands. He thought his heart might shatter. “The medical centre?”
Simms’s face was blank. “It’s a big tent about a hundred yards from here. You can’t miss it.”
Joel stumbled outside.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
Ralph followed Frank and Florence to the medical centre. Joel was ahead of them, struggling to keep his footing in the mud; he stopped at the entrance to the tent, lifted one of the canvas flaps and looked inside.
The others caught up with him.
Rows of beds, most of them occupied, dominated the inside of the medical centre. Medics buzzed between the aisles while volunteer nurses tended to patients. A soldier stood guard in a far corner, his face slack with exhaustion. Near the entrance, a thin woman behind a desk was reading through sheets of paper on a clipboard. Her hair was pulled back in a vicious ponytail. She looked up at Joel as he approached.
“Excuse me,” said Joel, breathing hard from his run. “Is Anya Lewandowski here?”
“Who?” She sucked on a sweet, rolling it around her mouth.
“Anya Lewandowski.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m her fiancé. Where is she? Is she here?”
“She’s just finished her shift.”
“Where has she gone?”
“I’m here, Joel,” Anya said.
Joel turned towards Anya, who stood in the harsh glow of a halogen lamp. She said something in Polish under her breath and smiled.
He threw his arms around her and they embraced. He held her by the arms and they kissed deeply and slowly in reunion. Anya put her face against his chest as he nuzzled her blonde hair. He closed his eyes, rocked against her. She was crying.
Ralph watched them with envy burning in his stomach. And a little bit of hatred. He thought about his parents; their faces dwelled at the fringes of his mind, and he tried to push them away. He wanted to feel anger, not grief. He could do something with anger.
“Thank God I found you, Anya,” said Joel. “I thought I’d never see you again.”
“I thought you were dead,” she replied. Her words were muffled by tears. Joel wiped her eyes dry. “I can’t believe you’re here, all of you. I thought you were either killed or infected.”
“We barely survived. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen. That we’ve all seen.”
Anya looked at the others in turn. “Is Magnus not with you?”
No one spoke.
“Magnus is gone,” said Joel, finally.
Anya nodded. Her face was sad and flushed pink, her mouth a thin crease. “Oh. Poor Magnus. I always thought he was a good man.”
“Yes, he was. I miss him. We all miss him.”
“But the rest of you made it,” Anya said. She smiled at them, but the expression faltered at the corners of her mouth when she looked at Frank.
“Where is Catherine?” Frank asked her.
Something changed in Anya’s face. Her voice rose low and trembling from her throat. “I’m sorry, Frank. I’m so sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?”
*
Anya led them to the northern perimeter of the camp. Frank’s legs were shaking cartilage and bone, and he looked down at his feet as the mud sucked on his shoes. A creeping dread grew inside him.
The air smelled of rot and smoke, meat and ash.
Anya turned to him, apologetic and silent. Joel stood slack, pale and morose beside her. Ralph and Florence looked past Frank, out to where the land was mutilated and burnt. The scorched earth where figures meandered.
Frank looked beyond the fence and placed both hands against the wire. Something unravelled in his guts and he expected it to come spilling out of him in a slopping bundle. His eyes were stinging. He bit his tongue, wanting to taste his blood.
“I’m sorry, Frank,” Anya said. He barely noticed her until she handed him Catherine’s wedding ring. He snatched it from her and held it between his fingers.
“She’s dead,” he said, not believing the words he was saying.
“Yes, Frank.”
He stared at the ring. It was his last piece of Catherine. The world beyond the fence announced itself in vivid imagery and sensations: the smoke, the smell, the craters in the ground and the pits where flames writhed like nesting serpents. A place where the dead were put to rest.
His voice was papery, the words swept away on the breeze. “Catherine’s out there.”
Anya said, “The soldiers take the bodies out there to be burned in the pits. I wanted to give Catherine a proper burial, but the soldiers wouldn’t let me. They said every corpse has to be burned.”
Frank watched the men push bodies into the ground. They wore masks and boiler suits, boots and gloves. They hefted spades and shovels. A mechanical digger punched into the earth and scooped up dirt, piling it into a mound as big as a house. Soldiers guarded the gravediggers, keeping watch over the grey land.
The dead were piled up and dowsed with petrol. A man lit a match and tossed it into the pit. Flame took to life and roared.
A horrible, corrupting stench slithered into Frank and coiled around his spine, filling his lungs with black vines. He thought of Catherine being thrown into a pit like a dead animal. Like a stray dog put to sleep and dumped. He thought of those men carrying her to the edge of the pit. Maybe they had said a prayer or just done their job in silence. He imagined Catherine’s body falling until it came to rest alongside the other dead, her limbs finding the shape of those around her, entwining with other dead limbs, becoming a patchwork of meat, bone and skin. Dead eyes staring at the sky. He wondered if she had a peaceful look on her face as she was covered with petrol and set alight.
What had been the last thing to go through her mind before she died? Did she die wondering if her husband was dead? Did she die mourning him?
All this way to reach her, to find her…
Tears slipped down his face; he tasted them, bitter and pathetic. There was an emptiness spreading inside his stomach, gnawing at him with blunt teeth. A womb of darkness that was poison and anger and all things sickening. His heart was a hammer. His throat tightened until he was sure he would choke.
He turned to Anya. She met his gaze.
“How did it happen?” How did she die?”
Anya didn’t look away. Her lips moved. No sound. She wiped at her glistening eyes.
“How did she die?” Frank screamed. “How did it happen?”
“It was to save her from pain. A mercy.”
“What?”
“It happened on our first day here.” Anya paused, took a deep breath.
“Go on,” said Frank, urging her.
“There was an attack. The monsters got into the camp, somehow. They caught her; two of them. They were…biting her. She was crying. Bleeding. The soldiers shot her to spare her suffering. They didn’t have a choice.”
He wiped his mouth. A vague sense of surrealism overcame him. He was hearing about how his wife died and couldn’t believe it. It had to be a mistake or a bad joke. It had to be a trick. He eyed Anya, blinking away a dull pain in his eyes. He thought he could hear someone laughing at him.
“So that’s it? That’s how she died? Just like that?”
Anya muttered, “Yes,” and looked away from him.
Frank’s arms fell to his sides like dead weight. He felt dizzy. His heart was palpitating.
And then it all just faded away. Every single feeling. He lowered his head, stared at the ground, and closed his eyes.
Then someone was holding his hand.
He opened his eyes.
Florence stood beside him, offering a wan smile. Her skin was warm and soft in the cold air. He acce
pted her hand, tightening his own around her small fingers, and he tried to return her smile with all of his remaining will, but couldn’t.
He wanted to shut everything out and curl up in a dark corner and forget all that had gone before. He was beaten.
Gunshots rose from beyond the fence.
A small pack of infected was running towards the men working at the pits. Monsters inhabiting barely-human disguises. Men and women, lurching and malformed, hunched and twisted into nightmarish creations.
The soldiers shot them down then approached the bodies, inspecting and prodding them with booted feet. They would be taken to the pits and thrown amongst the other corpses.
“More and more infected come each day,” said Anya, her voice quiet. “They sense us. They know we are here. They come in packs or alone. Lonely ones who come here to die. But, soon, there will be a swarm of them, I think. Like an army.”
“A swarm,” said Ralph. “Fuck.”
“Are more of them coming?” Joel asked.
Frank watched the soldiers collect the dead infected. “Let them.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
The next few days passed slowly. Food and water rations were meagre and the refugees stank of dirt, sweat and filth. The latrines overflowed, filling the camp with the rotten stench of human waste. More survivors arrived, exhausted and traumatised with nowhere else to go, and huddled in small groups waiting for the soldiers and the volunteers to offer them aid. People were waiting to die, or waiting to be saved. Some didn’t care, it seemed. Some were broken, fading away without a struggle. They were broken long before they’d reached the camp.
Sparse packs of infected attacked the perimeter each night. The refugees were the sheep and the soldiers were the shepherd dogs. The infected were the wolves. It rained every day and puddles formed into large pools of dirty brown water. The ground became boggy as the camp turned into a mud hole, like Glastonbury Festival in the old days. The fires in the corpse-pits burned. Supplies ran low. People got sick and spent their days confined to the beds in the medical tent.
They were told that the Royal Navy was sending ships to evacuate them. Devonport, the home of the navy’s amphibious fleet, was overrun with infected. Gone. Wiped out. But the ships would arrive soon. Salvation was close, it seemed, but it was hard to believe, and no one did believe except for the few still hoping and praying for deliverance.
Joel was one of those people.
There was thunder far away and the wind blew cold and sharp in the fading light. He held Anya’s hand as they walked back to their tent. He would never leave her again.
He pulled back the canvas flap.
Ralph and Florence were playing an improvised game of Snap. A married couple, Ross and Michelle, huddled in one corner, silent, their heads bowed. Stuart Lenkman, a professor of biology before the outbreak, was sitting on the ground staring at his hands. A single mother called Donna cradled her baby son in her arms, cooing to him as he cried. The baby always cried. Joel had forgotten the boy’s name. There were other people here, and he didn’t know their names. He didn’t want to know.
He was so tired he could sleep standing up. His eyelids were drooping. He hadn’t slept properly since they had left the holiday cottage. How long ago was that? Six days? Ten days? Two weeks? It could have been a year and he wouldn’t have been sure.
The inside of the tent was cramped, and the constant poke of elbows and knees against his body infuriated him. The smell of bad breath, farts, baby shit, and body odour made him feel ill. People whispered in the adjacent tent, heard above the pattering drizzle, so close were the tents crammed together.
He wondered when the soldiers would start turning people away.
“Where’s Frank?” he asked.
Only Florence looked up. “He’s gone for a walk.”
“Again?”
“Yes.”
He turned to Anya. “I’m going to find him, see if he’s okay.”
Anya nodded. “I’ll stay here. I’m going to get some sleep.” She kissed Joel and told him to be careful.
He went back out into the rain.
*
He found Frank at the northern perimeter staring at the plague pits. The man was a motionless figure in the rain, hands buried in his pockets, the hood of his coat over his head.
Joel looked at the sky and wondered if one of the giant sky-things was up there, watching the camp, waiting for the right time to descend and crush it.
He spat. Whatever those things were, they were not gods. They were not even fit to be compared to his God. His God was all-loving and merciful and kind.
But does He exist, Joel? Are you sure that He exists? Do you still believe in Him? I’m not sure you still do.
“Piss off,” he muttered.
Maybe your faith is wearing thin.
“Go fuck yourself.”
We’ll see about that.
He shook his head. The voice didn’t go away, only faded. He walked over to Frank, clearing his throat to let him know he was there. Frank didn’t react.
Joel stood beside him, looking through the fence as the breeze picked up drifts of ash and soot from the mass graves and made them into swarms that tainted the sky. The pits were deserted. It was a wasteland, scorched and ruined. Poisoned.
“Hey, mate,” said Joel.
Frank’s voice was a whisper. “Hey.”
Above them, gulls and crows performed aerial duels over scraps of food. Joel heard the sea when he closed his eyes. He had loved the sea ever since his parents had taken him on daytrips to Weymouth and Seaton when he was a boy.
His parents were with God now. No suffering for them. No pain. And he was glad they were dead and spared from the horror of the plague. He was glad for the car crash. He was glad they had died together.
“You all right?” he asked Frank.
“Yeah.”
“We’re worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“I want to go out there and see if I can find her.”
“The soldiers won’t let you go out there unless you’re on grave digging detail. You know that.”
“I’ll do that, then.”
“I’m sorry about Catherine. I can’t pretend to know what you’re going through, but you’ve still got us. You’ve still got your mates. And Florence.”
“Florence,” Frank muttered.
“I remember you said to me that you promised to take care of Florence. You said to me that you’d look after her.”
“So what?”
“So, are you going to break your promise to her? I know what it’s like to lose parents, so imagine what it’s been like for her. She needs you, Frank. She’s just a little girl. You’re her guardian.”
Frank looked at Joel. “When we left for your stag weekend, I had no idea I’d never see my wife again. She didn’t even get a decent burial. She deserves to be honoured.”
Ralph appeared alongside Joel. He was shivering against the cold and rain.
The three men looked out towards the plague pits, and beyond that, the hills and fields.
If God exists, said the voice in his mind, how come everything’s falling apart? How come your friends’ loved ones are dead? What did they do to deserve death? What did they do to endure such suffering? Where was God when they were suffering and dying? Shouldn’t He have saved them? Shouldn’t He save us all?
Joel thought he glimpsed figures flitting between distant trees and hedgerows straight ahead, but it could have been his imagination, and when he looked again there was no sign of them.
Ralph grimaced against the cold breeze. “Frank’s right. Yesterday I heard that Salisbury was lost. The army were overrun. But it could be just a rumour. I don’t know…”
Frank closed his eyes. “The centre cannot hold.”
“Will the ships arrive?” Joel asked.
“I think we’re waiting to die here,” said Ralph. “I think we’re alone. Nobody’s coming to s
ave us.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
The days and nights clouded together and it was cold all the time. Hunger kept Ralph awake at night. He thought often of his parents, especially his mother. Her face, awful mouth and nightmare eyes made a nest in his mind.
He considered leaving the camp and travelling beyond the perimeter, past the soldiers and into the ruined country to find something to kill. Despite his quick temper, before the outbreak he’d never felt the urge to kill anyone, but now it was consuming him. The urge made his heart palpitate and his mouth go dry. Made his teeth itch until he could barely sit still.
Maybe he would go home, where he belonged, and give his parents a decent burial. Put them in the ground. Maybe build a funeral pyre for them. Yeah. Burn the dead. Fire purifies.
He huddled in one corner of the tent, his arms wrapped around his chest. The cold air he pulled into his mouth made his gums ache and thrum. His breath stank of sewage. He tongued the gap where one of his front teeth had once been.
Gunshots crackled at the perimeter, mixing with the wailing cries of the infected. Guttural sounds echoed through the night. He shivered. It was a cosmic terror, beyond understanding or reason. The plague only wished to infect and multiply.
And when there was nobody left to infect...
The gunfire stopped. Raised voices. Then silence again.
Ralph decided to stay and help his mates survive. He would stay with them until the end.
*
The morning brought no colour to the world.
Joel and Anya burst into the tent, hope and exhaustion across their faces. “The ships are coming!”
“What?” Frank said. He and Florence were playing Snap.
Joel got his breath back. “One of the soldiers said the ships are coming.”
“To Sidmouth,” said Anya. “Very soon.”
Ralph watched from his claimed corner, chewing on a stale granola bar. “How soon?”
