The Plague Series | Book 3 | The Last Soldier

by Hawkins, Rich

  “Do you think it’s hunting us?”

  “I don’t know. But we’re in its territory, its hunting ground, so we should get away from here.”

  Florence said nothing and moved closer to him.

  *

  Two miles on, the road was flooded and there was no way through. Morse stood at the edge of the black water and tried to gauge how deep it was, but it was impossible to tell without going in there. And he didn’t like the look of the water and what might be in it.

  They would have to go around by entering the thick woodland either side of the road. Morse led Florence into the thin shadows away from the reach of the pale daylight. Under the canopy of wiry branches and dripping boughs they walked, stepping softly on the ground.

  “Strange,” Florence said, her feet crunching on leaves.

  “What is?” Morse said.

  “How peaceful it is. It’s like the plague and all the death never happened. We could stand here and pretend none of it happened. And beyond these woods the world’s still there, my parents are waiting for me to come home…and everything’s fine. We could just go home.”

  Morse stopped. Looked at her. The frail little girl, her pale face framed by a plastic hood.

  “That sounds nice,” he said.

  She nodded. “Yeah. But it makes me sad.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “Really?”

  “All the time.”

  *

  They walked. Morse scanned the surrounding trees. Silence except for the vague chatter of birds in the treetops.

  Florence pulled on his sleeve. Morse halted and looked to her. He raised his eyebrows.

  She whispered, “I think we’re being watched.”

  Morse kept his voice low. “Where?”

  “Behind us.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “A shadow.”

  “A shadow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Keep moving. Don’t look back.”

  They resumed walking. Morse listened for the rustle of leaves and snapping of twigs.

  “Is it the big cat?”

  “Just keep walking.”

  Something moved in Morse’s peripheral vision to his left, but when he glanced that way there was nothing there. The back of his neck tingled. His fingers tapped on the rifle. Florence muttered something inaudible.

  Off to the left was the rustle of foliage. Morse ignored it and kept moving. He tried to estimate how far to the end of the woods, but the trees seemed to stretch on for miles and thicken all about him. His hearing picked up the low sounds of the woods, the insects and the small mammals. The distant cries of birds. Florence’s footfalls.

  Something on all fours ran through the trees up ahead, across his line of sight, and vanished into shadow.

  Morse stopped. Florence stood beside him.

  A burst of laughter seemed to echo all around them, fading then growing louder and then fading again. Morse scanned the surrounding trees when he thought he saw a flicker of movement. Then the laughter came again, drifting from the heart of the woods. It was humourless and dry; Morse imagined it spilling from a swollen, dusty mouth.

  Morse turned to his left when he heard the sound of snapping sticks and feet slapping on the ground.

  He realised his mistake too late, and as he turned, a dark shape wearing a crown of sticks leapt from the trees to the right and fell upon him. They hit the ground together and the air was knocked from his lungs. The rifle fell from his hands and hung loose from his shoulders as the strap dug into the side of his neck.

  The smell of old shit, sweat and piss assailed Morse as the figure grabbed for his throat with one hand while raising a knife with the other. Fetid, sulphurous breath blasted his face.

  A bone-thin man in rags, face streaked with grime, his beard wild and knotted with filth. He was slippery and manic, scratching at Morse’s skin like an animal in heat. Long fingernails raked down one side of Morse’s face; he gritted his teeth against the pain.

  The blade swept towards his throat and he barely managed to block the man’s arm with his own. He grabbed his attacker’s wrist and twisted, and the man shrieked but the knife stayed in his hand.

  Morse twisted again, but the man craned his neck back and head-butted him in the face. He felt his nose bend, and tasted blood on his teeth. He slumped, disorientated, his vision blurry.

  The man pinned Morse to the ground and raised the knife again; the glint of the blade next to his mad, filthy face. The hole of his mouth and the brown teeth past his scabbed lips. Mad sounds. The rattle of breath in his chest.

  Florence appeared behind him and plunged a knife into his neck; he froze as his eyes bulged. His face was all surprise and shock.

  She let go of the knife and backed away.

  The man’s grip on Morse’s arms loosened, and his mouth slackened so that it hung open and let out a small gasp. Morse heaved him away and stood, grabbing the rifle as he stepped back.

  The man was lying on his back with his face towards the canopy above, the small slivers of grey daylight dappling his face. He shivered as blood poured from where the knife was embedded in his neck. He blinked, moved his mouth, but there was no sound. Then he reached for the knife and pulled it out and it fell from his hand. A kitchen knife with a serrated blade. Morse looked at Florence, but she only stared at the man, watching his life ebb away.

  “He’s not one of the infected,” she said.

  A trickle of blood ran from the corner of the man’s mouth. His hands pawed weakly at his chest.

  “Let’s go,” said Morse.

  “Wait,” Florence said. She looked past him, into the trees.

  A woman stepped from the undergrowth; thin, animalistic and ragged. She stood over the dead man with her head bowed. She wore a composition of rags and animal pelts. Tattered trainers on her feet. Her hair reached down to her waist, knotted with bits of moss and leaves. She glanced at Morse and Florence then fell to her knees next to the man and enclosed his hand with hers. Finally she put to her face to his chest and began to cry.

  Morse pulled Florence with him and they carried on and left the woman to mourn.

  When they had walked ten yards through the trees Morse stopped. Florence went on a few steps before she realised he was no longer beside her. She looked back.

  Morse was staring at the ground.

  “She’ll follow us,” Morse said. “Come after us as revenge for the man’s death. She’ll try to kill us. I won’t let her hurt you, Florence.”

  He turned and walked back to the woman. She was still kneeling over the man’s corpse, crying and muttering. He hung the rifle over his shoulder then drew the pistol. Stood over the woman and the dead man. The woman glared up at him as he raised the pistol. His heart fluttered and he hesitated. The woman bared her teeth at him and spat. But when he noticed her other hand upon the swollen curve of her stomach, he lost the will to kill her and lowered the pistol.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered. And then retreated and left her to mourn her dead mate. She watched him leave, her red-rimmed eyes watery and fierce. The last he saw of her was as she put her face to the dead man’s mouth and kissed him.

  Florence called to Morse from past the trees.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  They reached the edge of the woods and returned to the road. Just before dusk they found a bungalow set back from the road, down a gravel driveway overgrown at the sides with pale weeds that clung to their clothes as they passed. They stepped around the shapes of old bones. Florence looked back towards the road.

  When Morse opened the front door he had to step back from the thick rot-stink of corpses. He told Florence to wait outside. Fixed a cloth over his mouth and nose then entered the building. He went through the rooms; human remains scattered everywhere, long-dead and decayed. Walls and floors stained with old blood that was almost black. This had been the scene of a slaughter. He touched one of the walls and ran his finger down a long vertical fracture that w
as crumbling at the edges. Mounds of damp plaster fallen from the sagging ceiling. Peeling wallpaper. He raided the kitchen cupboards and found a bar of Fry’s Turkish Delight hidden behind a stack of greasy Tupperware pots and tubs. He hadn’t eaten any since he was a teenager, and the sudden thought made his eyes sting.

  Florence’s voice from the back doorway startled him. “If we can’t stay in here, I’ve found somewhere else we can spend the night.”

  He put the Turkish Delight in his pocket. “Where?”

  “Come and see.”

  *

  They stood in the back garden as the light faded below the faint glimmer of constellations. The curve of the moon. The air turning colder.

  Morse looked up at the treehouse nestled among the thick branches of a great oak, situated at least nine feet above the ground.

  “That?” he said.

  “Yeah. It looks like Bart Simpson’s treehouse.”

  “We’ll be cold.”

  “We have blankets.”

  “You sure about this?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fair enough.”

  *

  After pulling the rope ladder up so that no one could follow them, they prepared to settle down for the night. There was a homemade sign daubed in felt tip. PETER’S DEN. There was a pile of superhero comics, and posters of Boba Fett, Darth Maul and Darth Vader loomed on the walls.

  A small wooden desk on one side of the floor, beneath the glassless window. A beanbag seat. A shelf lined with old Fighting Fantasy books; they must have been passed down by an older relative, or bought from a charity shop, because they were the same editions Morse remembered reading in the early Eighties. They were collector’s items with no one left to collect them.

  In the desk drawers he found a Panini football sticker album from just over two years ago. That was the last ever season of professional football, or any football. There were also some plastic toy dinosaurs, a pack of pencils, and some drawing pads filled with sketches of fantastic creatures and cartoon characters. Peter had been a talented artist. It all made Morse very despondent and melancholy. He wondered if the boy was amongst the decayed remains back in the house. Then he thought it didn’t matter because the boy was probably dead anyway, and that was that.

  *

  In the low light of the candle, they sat beside each other and huddled under their own blankets and some Morse had taken from the airing cupboard in the bungalow. The treehouse creaked in the night and the dark outside was absolute since the sky had clouded over. They had finished their dinner in minutes, ravenous as they had been. Florence’s stomach gurgled as it went about digesting the food. Morse’s legs and back were aching. They both stank. Morse had cleaned the scratches on his face with some TCP. He supposed he should be worried about catching an infection from the man’s filthy fingernails, but it was something he could push to the back of his mind for now. His nose wasn’t broken, thankfully.

  “Where did you get that knife, Florence?”

  “What?”

  “The knife you used back in the woods.”

  “I found it in a house.”

  “I thought so.”

  “Are you annoyed with me?”

  “No. I’m glad you did it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Thank you, Florence.”

  “For what?”

  “For using it. You did well.”

  “Do you think I could be a soldier?”

  He looked at her and smiled. “Maybe one day.”

  “I don’t think there’ll be anything left one day. Not of people, anyway.”

  “You could be right,” Morse said.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  In the morning they climbed down from the treehouse and started towards the border.

  They passed a stretch of grassland where there had once been a refugee encampment. Florence stopped to look, even when Morse urged her onwards, and in the end he had to go back for her. He stood beside the girl. She was biting one fingernail.

  “You okay?” said Morse.

  “Yeah.”

  “Best we don’t stop.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “The people who stayed here, trying to survive…they didn’t stand a chance, did they?”

  Morse looked out towards the ruins of shredded, tattered tents slowly being consumed by the overgrown grass. The site had already been picked through and looted, he reckoned. There would just be bones.

  “It wasn’t a good place to set up camp,” Morse said, speaking to himself more than Florence. “Stupid, really. Out in the open, exposed on all sides. Indefensible.”

  “They must have been desperate.”

  “Yeah. Everyone was, back then.”

  Florence said, “It would have been a few days after the start of the outbreak. A few families, on the run, trying to hide. Low on food and supplies. Nowhere else to go.” She crouched and picked up a Lego brick from the grass by her feet. She stood and examined it in her hand. “The infected came from the west. A flock, most probably, full of the recently-turned. I think they came upon the camp at night while most of the people were asleep. They swarmed through the tents. People were killed in their sleeping bags. Children and babies crying. Screaming. A few of the men tried to fight with cricket bats and wooden clubs, but they were slaughtered and it was over in minutes. Some of the refugees became infected and were absorbed into the flock; the rest of them were eaten. Mainly the children.”

  Morse watched her put the Lego brick in her coat pocket. “Let’s go.”

  “Okay.” She looked back one last time at the ruins of the campsite and said something, but Morse didn’t quite catch it and he carried on with her by his side.

  *

  They reached one of the last villages before the border and found it in ruins, save for a few cottages left emptied and looted, and most of those were burnt inside and hollowed out by fire. There was nothing to be found in this silent, desolate place. Crows perched on exposed beams beyond collapsed roofs. Woodpigeons in the charred trees. Graffiti had been scrawled on walls: KILL THE INFECTED!!!! ONCE BITTEN TWICE SHY THEN YOU DIE! GOD HAS BETRAYED US! And finally: THESE ARE THE DAYS OF THE LAST PLAGUE. The road they walked was topped with a thin layer of ash that shifted in the breeze. Morse pulled up his cloth mask and watched the ruins for movement.

  A large rat ran across the road and vanished beneath the remains of a car half-buried by fallen rubble.

  “It smells of shit around here,” Florence said, covering her nose with her hand.

  “Just keep walking. We’ll pass through soon enough.”

  Another rat appeared on the same side of the road as the first one. It stopped in the middle of the road and regarded them as they halted. Morse raised the rifle. The rat watched them with black beady eyes and only moved when it caught scent of something on the wind and bolted into the ruined houses on the other side of the street.

  And before Morse and Florence could move, more rats appeared out of the ruins and followed the two scouts across the road. Dozens of them, from runts the size of average rats to ones as big as the first scout.

  Florence stepped back. Morse put his hand on her shoulder.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t think they’re interested in us. They’ve got plenty to eat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “No.”

  “That doesn’t make me feel better.”

  “Sorry.”

  The swarm crossed the road and disappeared into what was left of the houses.

  Morse shook his head. “There go the inheritors of the earth.”

  Florence moved her gaze from where the rats had vanished. “I’ve never liked rats.”

  “They’re not so bad. They’d have only attacked us if we were badly injured.”

  “Really?”

  “Probably.”

  “Oh.”

  *

  The border country. Cold wind gusting down the road. Birds in the bare trees.

  A mile outside the villa
ge, flakes of ash began to fall from the sky. They stopped. Morse held out his hand and watched a flake land on his palm. Then he brushed it off with his other hand and looked at Florence. She was frowning.

  “I remember a few years ago,” said Morse. “A volcano in Iceland blew its top.

  Florence pulled her dust mask up. “I don’t remember that.”

  “You would have been too young to remember.”

  “What happened?”

  “It created a giant ash cloud in the sky and grounded a lot of planes at the airports. Too dangerous to fly.”

  “Did anyone die?”

  “I don’t think so. But it pissed a lot of people off. Some people couldn’t go on their holidays.”

  “So you think this ash is from a volcano? Maybe the same one?”

  He looked at the sky. Endless grey. He wiped his brow. “I think the ash is from somewhere else. Something else. But it doesn’t matter now.”

  “You think it might be from a nuclear bomb?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “I just do.”

  “You don’t know, then.”

  He looked away and thought about nuclear warheads detonating over cities of swarming infected. Mushroom clouds rising from black horizons. He realised it was already too late for them if the ash was radioactive.

  They walked on.

  *

  Further on, Florence found a deflated football and was kicking it through the grass at the roadside when she stopped and looked down at the ground. She gestured for Morse to come over and he went to her and saw she was standing before a steel animal trap hidden in the weeds, set and primed. Florence paled and looked at Morse, and he pulled her away from the trap and they carried on down the road

  *

  Florence stopped in the road and put her hands to her face. She hunched over, and when she took her hands away there were smears of blood on her fingers. She raised the cloth mask to her nose. The bleeding wasn’t severe, but it didn’t take long for the cloth to darken. Her hands shook. The blood around her mouth and down her chin gave her the appearance of a melancholy cannibal girl.