by Rich Hawkins
“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 village, 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 with her leakage. Her hands shook. The blood around her mouth and down her chin gave her the appearance of a melancholy cannibal girl.
Morse watched the blood drip onto the road. Dots of red on the tarmac. He looked at her waxen face.
She put one hand to her head. Her voice was small and pained. “It hurts. Inside.”
Morse guided her to the side of the road and they sat on the grass verge. Bloodied and trembling, Florence seemed frail enough to disperse in the wind. Morse put his arm around her and she rested her head on his chest. Her nose had stopped bleeding. The ash fell like the severed wings of insects.
Florence whispered, “I can hear voices.”
Morse wiped ash from his face. “The infected?”
“The Plague Gods.” She raised her face towards the clouds.
“What are they saying?” Morse asked.
She let out a drawled breath. “I’m not sure. Sounds like plans and schemes.” She sipped water from her canteen. She bowed her head and sobbed in her throat.
Morse pulled her tight to him. He said nothing.
“I don’t feel very well, Morse.”
He just held her, and they sat while they watched the ash fall upon the scarred land.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Morse took her to the nearest house. She wasn’t capable of making the border before dark, and it was already mid-afternoon. The hours seemed to fall away and the daylight was a mere glimmered respite between each night.
He searched and secured the house then brought Florence inside and lay her on the threadbare sofa in the living room whose walls were covered in framed photos of smiling people. He washed the blood from her face as she shivered under the blankets, eyes fluttering as she muttered the names of people she’d spoken of before. Then she went silent.
Morse watched her for a long while until she fell into a deep sleep.
*
With darkness approaching he went outside into the falling ash and looked at the dimming landscape. He thought of the fields strewn with bones, slowly being shrouded. The wind carried the cry of the dead world.
Ash crumbled under his boots as he walked to the end of the pathway. He crouched, pinched some between his fingers and put it under his nose; it smelled of long gone days and bonfire nights when he was a boy.
He looked to the sky when the crash and boom of thunder filled the clouds above, and shuddered in his bones. He stood. A sense of biblical terror tightened his heart. Angry gods demanding tribute. The Plague Gods.
He went back inside and bolted the door. Florence was sleeping soundly. He watched her eyes move under their skin lids and thought he could hear her heartbeat. She was his last hope; once she was gone, they’d be nothing else left for him. And he knew what he’d do then.
*
Morse spent the next hour walking around the house, checking the windows and keeping watch. His body ached and he struggled to keep his eyes open. The pounding of his tired heart.
He went into the study at the back of the house and stood amongst the clutter of someone’s old life. The dead computer captured his reflection as a thin shadow without a face. The desk was piled with paper and books. He yawned, swaying on his feet, rubbing the underside of his jaw. His eyes stung.
The ash whispered against the windows. When he squinted, it looked like snow, and he wondered for how long it would fall. He yawned again. Hard to keep his eyes open.
He only meant to rest on the small couch by the back wall and take the weight off his feet for a moment, but soon after sitting down he slumped backwards and closed his eyes and remembered a distant time when he was safe and warm and didn’t wander through ruined lands teeming with monsters.
*
In his dreams he looked at a sky-high sun so bright it was glorious and otherworldly. He was ten years old. A dream of a memory.
His father took him to the local steam fair held in a field not far from the village. He was fascinated with steam engines. His father was stoic and reserved, but not unkind. Always thinking about things, and he never said a word that wasn’t needed.
Joseph Morse licked a Cornetto and looked at the grass around his charity shop trainers. There was ice cream on the tip of his nose. His father looked down at him and took a handkerchief and wiped Joseph’s nose clean. Then he returned it to his breast pocket and walked on, and Joseph followed behind him, the ever-faithful son.<
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Steam and smoke. Tractors and machines. Raucous laughter from thick-handed, bearded men in plaid shirts and braces and boots. Beards and whiskers. Smoking cigarettes and wooden pipes. The grind and bellow of engines. Fat women chortling from behind deep fat fryers. Barrels of cider and ale.
When they passed the hog roast, Joseph could taste the cooking meat on his tongue, and his mouth watered, but it was quickly replaced with the smell of chip fat, toffee apples and candy floss.
The barking of a dog tied to a tree, wagging its tail in the cool shade. A bowl of water by its feet.
Travellers hawking lucky heather and wooden clothes pegs. Goldfish in polythene bags of water.
Joseph looked at the sky and it was all blue and never-ending. He smiled. The sound of a brass band playing a slow song. And when he turned away from the sky and looked for his father, he was gone, lost among the crowds, and the wisps of steam that danced like ghosts.
*
In the darkness Morse woke dry-mouthed and cold to Florence’s screams. His heart was wild and aching. He sat up on the couch and only after he rubbed his eyes did he see the dark form of a hooded, masked figure stalking towards him from the open doorway.
Florence called out to him from somewhere in the house. The sounds of scrapes and collisions, grunts and shouts mixed with the smashing of glass.
Morse rose as the figure, which had the height and size of a man, lunged and thrust a knife towards his face. He dodged the attack and deflected the man’s arm. The man’s other hand, closed into a knotted fist, swung around and hit Morse on the side of the face. Morse stumbled back against the wall and dislodged a painting from its hook that fell to the floor next to him.
The man smelled of engine oil and smoke, and Morse thought for a second that he was a remnant of the dream. The holes in the cloth mask showed crazed eyes and a dirty mouth. Morse pulled his pistol from its holster and raised it to fire, but the man rushed him and pushed the gun towards the ceiling while the knife swung down in a narrow arc. And Morse moved his head at the last moment and the blade embedded in the wall. Morse threw two quick punches to the man’s kidneys, and he stumbled back but pulled Morse with him and they fell down to the floor. The man’s hood fell back and the cloth mask slipped from his face to reveal a visage of creased skin and acne scars as he flailed without his knife. Then he jumped upon Morse and tried to wrench the pistol from his hand. They rolled against the desk, struggling for the gun. The man’s face came close to Morse’s, as if to kiss, and his breath was like rot. The pistol slipped from Morse’s hand and skidded under the desk.
Then the man’s hands were at his throat, squeezing and scratching. Morse grabbed the man’s wrists and pulled them away then raised his head, opened his mouth, and clamped his teeth around the man’s nose and bit down with all the pressure he could muster. Skin tore. The taste of metal. Cracking, ripping cartilage.
The man screamed and his fingers dug into Morse’s shoulders as he convulsed. Morse pulled his mouth away with bits of the man’s nose between his lips. And the man fell to his knees, clasping his face, blood seeping through his fingers.
The man was still screaming through his hands when Morse gathered the pistol from under the desk and shot him twice in the chest.
A sound in the doorway behind Morse; he turned as another masked man appeared with a snub-nosed pistol held at the waist. Morse raised his gun and fired at the same time as the man, then fell against the wall, intense pain and heat in his side. His hand came away bloody. When he looked up, the man was on the floor just past the doorway. Even in the dim light, Morse could see the hole in the cloth-mask covering the man’s face and the dark blood spilling forth.
Morse slumped on the couch and put pressure on the bullet wound. He cried out and thumped the seat of the couch with the other hand. The bullet had grazed the left side of his torso and missed his spleen by inches. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he tried to calm his breathing and the riot of his heart, and then he rose from the couch with the pistol in hand, aware that the house was silent, and stumbled through the doorway towards the front of the house.
He reached the front door and kicked it open into the falling ash and caught a glimpse of Florence being bundled into the back of a black van. When the hooded men around the van saw Morse, they raised their guns and fired.
Morse threw himself to the floor as bullets tore into the front of the house and the kitchen window shattered inwards. The wound in his side burned white hot. Then the gunfire cut out. The sound of doors being opened and shut. The growl of the van’s engine and the scrape of tyres. By the time Morse climbed from the floor, the van was already halfway down the track and beyond his reach.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Morse cried through clenched teeth as he cleaned the bullet wound with a gauze pad from his First Aid kit, the taste of the man’s flesh and skin still rancid in his mouth. Sweat dripped from his face. Sharp breaths taken and given.
He wrapped a dressing around his torso to cover the wound and tried to stand but his legs surrendered beneath him and he had to sit back down again. He grimaced, swore under his breath, and wiped his eyes. He had failed Florence, and whatever happened to her now was his fault, because he was incompetent and old and useless. Not fit to carry a rifle.
An old soldier too soft and slow to do his job.
*
The men had taken all of Florence’s belongings, even the blankets she’d slept beneath.
With the darkness of the house behind him he walked out into the falling ash, one hand at his wounded side. He had enough food and water for a few days.
Tyre tracks leading away from the house.
And there was movement in the dark about him.
Attracted by the gunfire, dozens of figures emerged slowly from the fields around the house, wheezing and growling, staggering like broken puppets. Deformed, gangly things on thin legs.
“Oh god.” His voice was a weak croak.
The infected moved towards him, catching his scent, breathing in the musk of his sweat and failure. Some of them made snapping noises with their sharp mouths; others screeched and flailed their arms in agitation.
Morse spat bloody saliva from his aching mouth. His vision swam. The bullet wound throbbed hotly and he wondered if he would pass out before the infected fell upon him.
He raised the rifle, flicked the safety lever off, and sighted the nearest infected, struggling to keep his hands steady.
There was a last thought of his failure and Florence as the ash fell and the infected closed in.
He pulled the trigger.
The monsters screamed in their absolute hunger.
*
In the silent dark he limped and staggered onward, following the tyre tracks in the ash and mud. The rifle was lost back at the house, there were only a few rounds left for the pistol, and his knife was stained red in its sheath. He was covered in blood and gore, exhausted and shivering, each breath taken as if it were the last one.
How far had he walked? Hard to tell in the darkness and the raining ash.
A little voice in the back of his head said he should use the pistol to take the honourable way out, but he just shook his head and told the voice to go away. He would follow the tyre tracks to their end, or as far as he could go before he collapsed. And then that would be that.
He stopped and looked around. There was a road sign, but he couldn’t read it because his vision was blurry and whiting out at the edges. He thought he might have a concussion from when the infected woman with the ruptured stomach had knocked him to the ground. And he swayed and placed one hand on a wrecked car to keep his balance. The ash whispered as it touched the ground. He was crying. Remember the dead and remember them well. Into the dark he said names he hadn’t spoken in years. Flashbulb memories of summer days and teenage years spent trying to get a blowjob from Sarah Morton who lived down the road.
Morse laughed to himself and tried to carry on, but his feet wouldn’t move because they were
so tired and his legs burned with a deep pain, and he eventually slumped to his knees next to the car and bowed his head as if to receive a blessing.
All for nothing. Nothing at all. He should never have let Florence return to Britain. He should have kept her safe.
The ash fell onto his shoulders and stuck to the drying blood on his clothes. He listened for voices out in the night. He asked for help but there was no answer. Nothing but silence. And it was as he thought of lost friends and lovers that he collapsed onto his back and stared at the sky until he closed his eyes and welcomed the end of suffering.
PART TWO
ENGLAND
CHAPTER TWENTY
When he woke flat on his back he gasped for water with guttural mutterings and whispers that hurt his mouth. He ached all over, every muscle, ligament, tendon and piece of skin sore and tender, like something recently born from a scraping womb. His stomach winced with hunger and it took a while to remember his name as he stared at the minute cracks in the ceiling. The last thing he remembered was collapsing in the road with the ash falling from the sky around him.
Coming from one corner of the room was some kind of light, maybe a lamp or a candle, but he couldn’t sit up to see what it was. His slack tongue slid over his furred teeth when he tried to speak, and all he could do was utter a dry croak before he passed out again.
*
Slipping in and out of consciousness as nonsense words spilled from his mouth. Glimpses of other worlds through fever-dreams and shuttered nightmares. No concept of time. Nothing was linear or orderly. He thought he could hear his two ex-wives in the room, arguing about which one of them hated him more.
With his eyes closed, he tasted water on his lips, then in his mouth and down his throat. He gave his gratitude to someone he couldn’t see. He remembered swallowing a pill, and afterwards he had fallen asleep and dreamed of deserted cities ruled from the sky by immense, tentacled monsters harbouring mouths the size of caverns.