by Rich Hawkins
Sibbick shouted and fired overhead, his rifle tracking movement over the street. “Contact! Bastard!”
A human-like shape atop one of the houses opposite the group caught Frank’s eye. He turned and stared at it. The thing crouched beside a chimney, its body coloured like alabaster. Its movements were jerky and quick, like a bird. A low mewling drifted from its hidden mouth.
“I see it,” said Frank, his voice a whisper.
Guppy aimed at the creature, but it melted into the darkness before he could fire.
“It followed us,” said Sibbick. “What a fucking arsehole.”
Guppy lowered his rifle but kept watching the rooftops. “Get going, lad. We’re too vulnerable stood in the middle of the street, and we need to get out of here before our nuts are roasted by the RAF.”
The group moved as one, sticking to the centre of the road.
A scrabbling on one of the roofs to their left. Frank saw the creature’s eyes flash in the dark, then vanish.
“Keep moving,” Guppy said, urging them onwards.
The creature shrieked and came at them from above with a gust of air from veined wings. Frank saw its face, once that of a man. Now it was a slick drooping mask with a saw-toothed rictus.
Claws sliced the air above his head.
Guppy and Sibbick fired at the creature as it disappeared again.
Sibbick swept the rooftops. “Where is it?”
“There!” said Guppy, pointing to where the monster was clinging to a wall. It scrambled upwards out of sight then could be heard skittering over the roofs. A tile fell from above and smashed on the pavement.
“Wait a minute,” said Guppy. “I think it’s distracting us…”
Frank looked at him. “What do you mean?”
A keening cry rose from behind as another creature leapt from the other side of the street. A single flap of its wings and it was upon them.
The creature was streamlined and hairless. Its hands opened into filthy black claws.
It reached for Florence.
Sibbick flung himself between the creature and the girl. He fired his rifle. Florence screamed.
There was a maddening squeal. A shriek of pain. A wet ripping sound.
Guppy fell back and emptied the rest of his magazine at the flying abomination.
Frank grabbed Florence and they rolled away, and when he looked back the creature had vanished.
Sibbick was lying on the road. His gas mask was gone, as was most of his face. He screamed through a ruined mouth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sibbick’s eyes and teeth were starkly white against the red pulp of his face. Deep lacerations crossed his chest and stomach. The creature’s claws had been busy.
His screams faded into a series of broken sobs.
“It’s okay,” Guppy said, on his knees beside the soldier’s trembling body. He placed one hand on Sibbick’s shoulder. “It’s all going to be okay, my lad.”
The flying creature was lying sprawled by the pavement, riddled with bullet wounds. It had once been a man, naked and pale with lesions and tufts of wiry hair on its glistening skin. Large membranous wings curled around its limp body. Its face was a horror of teeth and soft meat.
The other creature had retreated beyond the rooftops.
Guppy pulled his mask above his face. He looked different than Frank had imagined, with a soft face and a balding scalp. He looked more like a bank manager.
“What’s it done to my face, Corp?” Sibbick asked through shuddering breaths.
“You’ll be fine. We’ll sort you out.”
“I can feel the virus inside me.”
The pain was vivid in Guppy’s eyes. “You’re imagining it, Private. Just rest, lad.”
“It hurts so much.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Corp. But you should step away.”
The two men looked at each other. Guppy nodded, stood, and wiped his hands on his thighs.
“You know what you have to do,” said Sibbick. “We’ve discussed this. I’d rather be dead than one of those things.” He began to shake violently. His fingers raked at the road. A damp nonsense sound came from the quivering hole of his mouth and his eyes rolled upwards.
Guppy stepped back and reloaded his rifle. Frank guided Florence to the other side of the road, all the while watching the rooftops.
Sibbick thrashed against the tarmac, wheezing and crying. Frank had heard similar sounds echo amongst the streets of Wishford and Horsham.
Florence covered her ears as Guppy turned his rifle towards the fallen soldier.
There was a single shot, shockingly loud. Sibbick fell still and silent. His crumpled body looked pathetic on the road.
Guppy was an abject figure, cradling his rifle, staring at Sibbick. His face sagged with exhaustion and grief.
“They killed all of my lads,” Guppy said. “They’re gone. All gone.”
More gunfire erupted from within the town.
Guppy relieved Sibbick of spare ammunition then stepped around him and started down the street.
Frank and Florence followed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
They passed a pub with its doors hanging open. The coppery taint of blood drifted from the darkness inside. Frank thought he could see dark shapes huddled together in a frenzy of busy movements.
They hurried past.
Farther on, Guppy halted and looked down the street. “This road leads out of town. But it looks like there’s a problem.”
“What’s wrong?” Frank said.
“Hostiles. Quite a few. Won’t be able to go through them on foot.”
Frank looked down the road. Scattered figures loitered and shifted in the moonlight, emitting low growls and mutterings. Some of them were gazing at the sky.
“Don’t they ever sleep?”
Guppy checked his rifle. “Haven’t thought to ask them yet.”
“Could we use a side street to go around them?”
“It’ll take too long.”
“What, then?”
The corporal motioned for Frank and Florence to follow him to car by one side of the road. A man was dead in the driver’s seat. Guppy dumped him at the kerb then sat at the wheel with the rifle cradled across his lap.
“Keys in the ignition. Sorted.”
“We’re driving out of here?” said Frank.
“We won’t make it out otherwise. Hopefully the rest of the road is clear once we get through the infected.”
“If we get through the infected.”
“Fair point. Watch the road while I give the engine a try.”
Frank stood guard, keeping Florence close. Guppy twisted the keys and the engine spluttered and gurgled like something slowly rising from the dead just so it could die again.
Heart pounding, Frank watched the infected down the road, praying silently that Guppy’s attempts to start the car wouldn’t catch their attention. So far, their luck was in, and the infected remained in their distracted state. So far.
Florence looked up at him. Those small, dark eyes told him nothing. Her mouth didn’t move. He nodded at her, offered a strained smile.
After four attempts, the engine started. Guppy tapped the gas pedal, listened to the engine’s irregular thrum.
“Get in,” he said.
Frank sat next to Guppy in the front. Florence sat on the backseat, her hands fidgeting in her lap.
“Keep your head down,” Frank told her. “Don’t look out the windows.”
She nodded.
Guppy handed his rifle to Frank. “Look after that while I drive. Don’t shoot yourself. The safety is on, but still be careful with it, okay?”
Frank held the rifle by his legs, the barrel pointing upwards. He swallowed to wet his throat and noticed the tax disc on the windscreen was out of date by a week. A pair of miniature boxing gloves hung from the rear-view mirror. Old parking tickets scattered around his feet. The smell of cigarette smoke had been absorbed into uph
olstery.
Guppy reversed the car into the middle of the road. “Put on your seatbelts.”
Frank did so and then checked Florence had as well.
Guppy started the car down the road, his hands clenching the steering wheel, and approached the infected.
“Here we go,” said Guppy. “Hold on.”
All at once the infected woke from their various fugues and turned to watch the car coming their way. Moments later they were sprinting towards it, eyes gleaming in the headlights. One of the infected men had been a police officer, his mouth contorted and peeling away to reveal broken jagged teeth.
Whatever had made them human was gone.
Guppy slammed one hand on the steering wheel and let out something like a war cry. Frank braced himself, staring through the windscreen. He gritted his teeth, narrowed his eyes so that the sight of bodies being smashed aside wouldn’t be so clear.
Then there was impact. The world outside the car was all bodies and gaping mouths, mixed with the screams of the infected as they were ploughed aside. The scraping of limbs against the car was an awful sound. Terrible faces glimpsed for a second before they vanished. Something was caught under the wheels and crushed wetly like rotten fruit. Frank felt rather than saw the fleshy pop of skin and fluid.
A body rolled across the bonnet and hit the windscreen, cracking the glass and falling away. Bloodied hands scraped at the side windows. The car jolted, its suspension grinding and clanging, and caused Frank to bang the top of his head upon the roof upholstery. His vision blurred for a moment. The inside of his skull throbbed with dull pain.
The screams faded behind them. Open road ahead. The car juddered and shook as it struggled to keep going and not fall apart despite the severe damage done by the swarm of infected.
Guppy let out a heavy sigh of relief. “Those motherfuckers. They nearly had us.”
Frank’s hands were shaking. Adrenaline flowed through his blood. He looked back at Florence, who sat in the same position as before their trip through the infected. Her hands seemed locked together and bloodless. She stared straight ahead and only regarded Frank just before he turned away and faced the front again.
“It’s okay,” he said to her. “We’re safe. We made it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Horsham was burning. The firestorm roared. Plumes of smoke towered into the sky.
Guppy parked the ailing car by the roadside, looking down at the town as it was consumed. Muffled pops and booms were followed by detonations that flashed and echoed around the low hills and fields. Buildings collapsed in smoke and flame, the rage of incineration awe-inspiring in devastation.
The fire seemed sentient and malign in its hunger.
Frank wondered at the temperature of the fires and realised it was beyond his comprehension. He thought he could smell roasting flesh through his partly open window. When he closed his eyes and listened hard enough, he heard the screams of those trapped in the fire, drifting on the wind.
But no one screamed for long.
He imagined what it would have been like to be caught in the streets when the incendiary bombs hit. The torture of being burned alive. Oxygen combusting inside the lungs of refugees. The annihilation of bodies. No one could survive it, not even the monsters.
He sucked on his inhaler twice and shivered. “Never thought I’d see an English town get firebombed, especially by its own military.” He stopped talking, simply because words meant nothing at that moment when faced with the swelling inferno that had been Horsham.
“There would have been a few hundred people left in the town when the bombs dropped,” said Guppy. “Maybe the infected had already killed them…or worse. The fire would have been a mercy for them.”
Frank felt sick. He glanced back to see Florence asleep on the backseat.
“It won’t be enough,” Guppy added. “They’ll have to purge every village, town and city to destroy the infected. What they did to Horsham is nothing. Next time it’ll be nukes.”
Frank couldn’t take his eyes away from the fire. “Nukes?”
“I’m just a grunt, so I might be wrong. But I wouldn’t be surprised. Not with the people we have in charge. They’ll panic. If they’ve already took the decision to firebomb a town, things are really bad.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Scorched earth. Eradicate the infection. Funny thing is, when I was a lad, I used to love staring at fires. I could watch a bonfire for hours, mesmerised. But this…” He shook his head. “Jesus…”
Movement on the hillside below caught their attention. Refugees were fleeing across the fields. The infected wouldn’t be far behind.
“We have to find shelter for the night,” Guppy said as he switched on the engine and put the car into gear.
Bright flashes of light rose from both the north and east.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Guppy stopped the car at an isolated cottage a few miles from Horsham. The windows were dark. No sign of habitation.
Florence was bleary-eyed and groggy when Frank woke her. He told her they were going to stay the night in the house. She looked at him and nodded but said nothing.
Frank shone his torch around the empty driveway and the garden, sweeping the light over an overgrown lawn spotted with molehills. A set of rusted swings creaked in the breeze.
The cottage was small, with white speckled walls covered in ivy vines. Old wood aged by decades. Square windows within rotting frames either side of the front door. A flowerbed long devoid of any flowers.
Guppy opened the door and entered, raising his rifle. Frank stood alongside him, shining the torch inside and trying his best to keep it steady. Florence followed them into the darkness.
They passed a stairway leading upstairs. The smell of dust, mildew and old clothes hung around them. A tap was dripping in the kitchen at the back of the house.
“Shut the door,” said Guppy. “I’ll check the rooms.”
*
Guppy searched each room then told Frank and Florence not to enter the bedrooms. He didn’t need to say why.
They bedded down in the living room. Florence took the sofa and Frank found some old blankets for her. She fell asleep within minutes of resting her head. Guppy barricaded the doors with furniture and said he would keep watch. Frank offered to take it in turns until first light, but Guppy refused; said he was too wired to sleep.
Frank settled in an armchair. He missed Catherine with an intensity that made him sick. The possibility that Ralph, Magnus and Joel had been in Horsham when the bombs fell pierced his heart and made him morose.
He fell asleep thinking about lost friends dying in writhing fire and smoke.
When he woke, the silence stunned him. He wiped spittle from his mouth. His eyes were wet.
Florence was a shape in the darkness, breathing slowly and steadily, but there was no sign of Guppy, and Frank wondered if the soldier had abandoned them. He rose, stepped quietly over to Florence and stood over her. The girl’s pale face became clear like a ghost in the dark. It could have been Emily lying there. He brushed a strand of hair away from her forehead then stared at her for a long while.
Guppy was watching him from the doorway. His voice was flat and tired. “Everything okay?”
“Florence was having a bad dream.”
“You should get back to sleep.”
“I’m fine. Are you okay, Corporal?”
“It’s all falling apart. Pike was right.”
“Do you have a family? Somewhere to go?”
“I’m leaving in the morning and heading to Lowestoft. I’m divorced, and the ex-missus got custody of our son. I’ve got to see if they’re okay, I owe them that. The army can’t control this plague and I’m past caring about going AWOL. I don’t think it matters anymore.”
“Fair enough.”
“You can keep the car. Use it to get to wherever you’re going.”
“I’m going home,” said Frank. “Heading back to Somerset to see my
wife.”
“Maybe things are going better back there.”
“Maybe.”
“The last I heard, the army had regrouped at Salisbury. My lieutenant told me that trains are being used to transport survivors to refugee camps along the coast. ”
“Which coast?”
“He didn’t say. Go back to sleep, Frank. You’ll need your energy in the coming days, especially if you want to take care of your daughter. Things will only get worse.”
Guppy turned away and headed to the kitchen.
Frank returned to the armchair, sat down, and closed his eyes. The silence was enough to make him weep.
Things could definitely get worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The sky brightened in the desolate silence of morning. Tendrils of cold crept over Frank’s skin and seeped into his bones. Another day. He exhaled through aching teeth.
The three survivors ate a breakfast of chocolate biscuits, crisps, and fizzy drinks. Frank was keen to get on the road and go home. He found a map in a desk drawer and slipped it into his pocket alongside the small First Aid kit he had taken from upstairs. Guppy packed his kit and some food he had scavenged from the kitchen.
They walked outside onto the dewy grass. Frank checked his watch. It was almost seven.
“I’m sorry to leave,” said Guppy. “But I have to think of my family first.”
“Good luck. It’s a long walk to Lowestoft, Corporal.”
“I don’t doubt that.” They shook hands. The soldier nodded at Florence, then turned back to Frank. “Look after the girl. Stay safe. Get home.”
“I will.”
Guppy set off across the fields. Frank watched the soldier fade into the distance.
He carried their supplies to the car. He looked at the sky. The clouds appeared fungal and puffy, as if they were about to burst open with spores. But there was sunlight and birdsong, and that was good enough for him. He needed good omens for the journey ahead.