by Rich Hawkins
*
The car had started on the third attempt. It was dying.
Frank drove slowly along quiet roads clear of other traffic. The events of the last two days stuck in his mind like poison.
Florence was in the back with the bag of supplies. She looked out the windows. Occasionally she would glance at Frank in the rear-view mirror. No words were exchanged.
She looked just like Emily.
There were distant figures in the fields, and they could have been mistaken for scarecrows until their heads turned slowly to track the car.
He tried the radio, fiddling with the tuner, listening for a voice. But there was only white noise. He switched it off.
“Where are we going?” Florence asked.
Frank glanced at her reflection. The morning’s dull light painted her in grey.
“Somerset.”
“What’s there?”
“My home. My wife.”
“Do you think it’s safe there?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t say it as convincingly as he’d liked.
“You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
“No. Why would you say that? I’d never hurt you.”
“My mum said that bad men are everywhere.”
“I’m not a bad man. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I miss my mum and dad.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Look at the people in the field.”
Frank stopped the car.
Three men and a woman were feeding on a cow’s carcass. They stripped away portions of the hide and snaffled the animal’s warm insides from the opening in its stomach. They crawled over the corpse, miring themselves in its flesh and its many gaping, sucking wounds.
Florence shifted over to the window, placed a hand against the glass.
One of the men raised his face from the corpse and glared at them. Blood was coated around his mouth. He moved his neck in spasmodic twists. His open mouth gleamed with wet red and threads of viscera.
Frank drove on.
*
Two miles later the car died and Frank steered it to the side of the road. They gathered their belongings. Frank pulled up his jacket collar against the chill in the air. He held his axe in one hand. Its weight reassured him.
Crows cawed in the next field, picking at the ground for worms and crawling bugs.
“We’ll find another car,” Frank said. “Don’t worry.”
Florence looked at the road, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. Her face was glum as she wrapped her arms around herself.
“You okay?”
She nodded. Her mouth was a thin bloodless line. She looked so young and frail. She was glass, but he would protect her.
Down the road they came to a pile-up. Two cars had crashed into each other. One of the cars was in a ditch; the other was on the road, mangled and wrecked, surrounded by shattered glass, plastic and scraps of metal. Frank noticed a severed hand, palm turned upwards and fingers curled like a dead spider’s legs. Florence stared at the broken bodies in the cars.
In the car on the road, a man was slumping over the steering wheel, his face obliterated and dripping. His lower jaw was gone and his tongue dangled to his lap like an unravelled scarf. A woman was wedged in the windscreen, face down on the bonnet. She hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt.
Frank stood next to Florence. “It’s okay.”
The woman on the bonnet moved, jerked up her head and glared at them. The violence of her ejection from the seat had split her clothes. Her face was shredded. Her mouth opened with a rattling wheeze and some of her teeth tumbled out like dice. She reached for them with a bloodied hand until it could go no further. Then she stopped moving and Frank knew she was dead.
Florence was crying.
He put his arm around the girl and they moved on.
*
“I need to pee,” Florence said.
Frank looked up and down the road. “Okay. Just go in the bushes. But be careful. I’ll watch the road. If you see anything, shout to me, okay?”
She vanished behind a hedgerow. Frank looked up at the sky. Grey upon grey. He thought he could feel rain in the air, like a light mist.
Minutes passed as he waited. Thunder in the distant sky.
“Florence? Are you okay?”
No reply.
“Florence?”
No answer.
“Florence, is everything all right in there?”
He moved towards the gap in the hedgerow where she had gone, then halted and craned his neck to peer into the field. He called her name again, and only silence followed.
“Florence!”
When Frank stumbled into the field she was gone. No sign of her. No sign of a struggle. Wouldn’t she have cried for help?
He looked towards an area of woodland on the other side of the field, where within the groves of thin trees a speck of pink moved away from him, growing smaller by the second.
Florence’s jacket. She was running.
Frank ran after her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The trees swallowed Florence and she was gone.
Frank’s feet thumped on the damp earth. The rucksack was a burden but he didn’t discard it. A crackle of thunder pierced the air as he melted into the inky gloom of the woods. The smell of bark, leaf mulch and sticky sap mixed with the faint musk of animal spoor. Rotting leaves on the ground. Branches rattled in the wind. Twigs snapped under his shoes.
“Florence!” His voice was hoarse and crazed amongst the trees. He was breathing hard. A flash of pink glimpsed ahead of him. He stumbled through the bracken and the wood’s leavings. The canopy above him was thick and dark, everything muted, dull and soaked in grey light. The trees stretched away from him like a fairy tale forest.
Every breath became a wheeze. His ribs pressed against his lungs. He leaned against a tree and took in deep breaths through clenched teeth, closed his eyes and willed his chest to loosen.
He took out his inhaler, shook it once, and put it to his mouth. Closed his eyes. The insides of his eyelids were stained with white blotches. His heart was beating so hard he felt sick.
And then his lungs loosened and cleared.
Better.
He opened his eyes and pocketed his inhaler.
Something unseen was thrashing amongst the trees. It wasn’t Florence. Frank froze, made himself small and stayed flush to one of the trees. Sap stuck to backs of his arms. He tried to hold his breath in the silence as he waited.
A bloodied, gangly man stumbled past, long stringy hair reaching to his shoulders. Scratches and cuts crossed his bare arms, which were elongated to the point that his gnarled white hands nearly touched the ground. Black spikes were growing from his neck, weeping a clear fluid.
He was dragging a naked boy by the ankle. The boy was dead, judging by the red ruin of his chest and throat.
Frank considered attacking the man, but his nerve deserted him and he hated himself for his cowardice.
The man moved away, disappearing into the woods, taking his prey with him.
*
Frank reached the edge of the woods and halted at a ten-feet-high metal chain-link fence. Beyond it was a golf course, its grassed slopes winding away from him down the hill.
The fence was too tall for him to climb. Florence must have slipped through somewhere. He hurried alongside the fence, and a few minutes later found a small opening in the links, low to the ground. He crouched. There was a scrap of pink fluff snagged on an errant metal wire. With much effort he squeezed through the opening and pulled his rucksack after him, then stood and realised he’d cut his arm on the same bit of metal that had snared a bit of Florence’s jacket. It had already stopped bleeding. He wiped it on his jeans then shrugged on the rucksack again and walked onto the fairway, trying to determine which way Florence had gone.
The fairway stretched away from him.
He didn’t like golf.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Frank found a golf ball left in the short grass by the last golfer to walk the course. It was white and clean, without a single blemish, and he picked the ball up and drew a smiley face on it.
He walked the fairway.
Florence was sitting on a flat green, her head bowed. A flagstick fluttered in the breeze. He approached, careful not to alarm her, keeping his axe lowered.
She wiped away tears as she looked up at him. Frank crouched next to her, noticing the small puddle of vomit in the grass. He didn’t touch her.
Several short bursts of gunfire rang out in the distance.
“Hey,” Frank said. “Are you okay?”
She gave a barely noticeable nod of her head. The corners of her mouth shivered. There was saliva on her chin; Frank took a clean tissue from his pocket and wiped it away.
“Why did you run?”
“I was scared. I want to go home. I miss my mum and dad.”
“Sorry, Florence, but they’re gone.”
“I know they’re gone, but I want to go back in time, so none of this happened.”
“We can’t do that, I’m afraid.”
“I know. So, I want to go to my aunt and uncle’s place in Bordon. I don’t want to be with you anymore.”
His chest tightened again, but not from the asthma. “There’s no guarantee it’ll be safe.”
“I don’t care. I want to be with them. They’ll keep me safe.”
“I’ve been keeping you safe, so far.”
“But you’re just a stranger…”
“You’ve been through a lot. You’re traumatised.”
“I want to go to Bordon. You can’t stop me.”
Her face was stony, resolute and pitiful; an aggrieved child. She would go one of two ways in the coming days, Frank thought. She would either store her grief in the back of her mind and adapt, or submit to grief, terror and catatonia. A hard life awaited her in either case.
Frank tried to disguise the slumping of his shoulders as fatigue. “It’s not safe. You’ve seen the things out there.”
“I don’t care. I’m fast enough to outrun them. I outran you.”
“You can’t outrun everything.”
“Then I’ll hide when I have to. I don’t need you to look after me.”
He said nothing and listened to the calling wind.
Florence sniffled, wiped her wet nose.
“I’ll do a deal with you,” said Frank.
“What kind of deal?”
“As I’m heading that way anyway, I’ll take you to Bordon and get you to your aunt and uncle, and then you can do what you like. I’ll look after you on the way there. Deal?”
Florence thought about it, looked at the ground, then at Frank. He offered his hand and she took it reluctantly.
“No more running off,” he said. “Promise not to do that again?”
She nodded.
“Here.” He took the golf ball from inside his jacket.
“What’s that?”
“What does it look like? It’s a golf ball. We’re on a golf course, after all.”
“Did you draw the face on it?”
“That’s how I found it.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Cross my heart.”
“Hope to die?”
“Not for a long time.”
“You’re stupid.”
“I know. But I’m old, so it’s okay.” He handed the ball to her.
“What am I gonna do with it?”
“Just keep it on you. Call it a peace offering.”
She put the ball in her pocket.
“Don’t lose it.”
She shook her head at him.
“We’re just outside Broadbridge Heath, I think. We’ll find a car. Shall we go?”
As Florence rose to her feet, Frank noticed something small and dark in the grass at the edge of the green. He walked over and bent down to examine it.
“What is it?” said Florence.
He picked up the shard of metal and turned it over. It had been ripped from something. He walked to the top of the slope. Florence followed. There was another scrap of metal at the crest of the hill.
He looked down the slope, where more pieces of metal and wreckage dotted the fairway. They followed the trail, and when the course curved to the right two hundred yards on, Frank saw the source of the debris.
A helicopter had crashed at the edge of the fairway, coming to rest against a large oak tree. Crumpled and torn with bits missing. No sign of smoke or fire. One of the rotors had torn loose and gouged shallow furrows into the earth, where it was now stuck in the ground like the marker for a makeshift grave. Florence touched it then took her hand away as if it were hot. She prodded a warped sheet of metal with her foot.
More wreckage had been shed during its landing, scattered around the crash site. Scraps of plastic and unidentifiable trash. Frank wrinkled his nose at the rank smell of oil.
They approached the downed helicopter. The fuselage was ripped open and pitted with dents and scratches. Cracked glass. Wires and cables hung loose. The cockpit had been compromised and warped, the pilot dead in his seat and slumping forwards, eyes open and unseeing. Spots of blood stained his white shirt. His neck was limp and broken.
Frank looked inside the fuselage and flinched at the sight of a middle-aged man in an expensive suit slouching in a corner. A spiked tree-branch had impaled him through his chest and out the other side of his body so that it pierced the back of his seat. He was meat on a stick, and he was starting to smell.
Florence opened a red plastic case she’d found nearby. Inside was a flare gun and spare flares packed in foam. Frank took the case and placed it in his rucksack.
“There was someone else here,” the girl said, pointing at a faint trail of blood in the grass.
CHAPTER FORTY
The blood trail led to a woman sitting against a tree at the edge of the golf course. She was holding the left side of her stomach, and when she saw them coming, her eyes widened in a mixture of hope, elation and fear.
She brushed aside a lock of dirty blonde hair. “Please help me.”
Frank and Florence crouched next to her. Her face was paler than her bleached white teeth. Blood stained her ripped white blouse and black skirt. A yellow-black bruise was prominent under her left eye.
“It’s okay,” said Frank. “Take it easy.” He didn’t know what else to say to her and offered a thin, forced smile as he checked the wound in her stomach.
The woman winced when she moved away her hand. The wound was deep. He replaced her hand upon it.
“You need to get me to a hospital,” she said.
Frank took out the First Aid kit from his rucksack. He placed some gauze on her wound, told her to keep pressure on it. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
“Caitlin.”
“Hey, Caitlin, I’m Frank. This is Florence.”
“Florence is a nice name.”
Florence kept her distance from the woman.
“They’re both dead, aren’t they?” Caitlin said.
“The men in the helicopter. Yeah. What happened?”
“We escaped from London. Tim and I were heading for France. He had a chateau in the countryside.”
“Is Tim the man in the suit?”
“I was his secretary. He said he would protect me, get us out of the country, to somewhere safe. He was a decent man.”
“I’m sure he was,” said Frank. “What happened in London?”
“The plague happened. Killings in the streets. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“I might do. Go on.”
“After we heard the rescue camp at Wembley stadium had been overrun, we decided to get out of the city. We’d already been told that the Royal Family had been evacuated, along with what remained of the government. If it was good enough for them, it was good enough for us. Nothing to stay for. It was Hell. Think of the worst things you
’ve ever seen and that’s nowhere near what I’ve witnessed. The city was falling apart. I remember seeing people running and fighting in the streets, ripping one another to bits as we flew over them. Bodies everywhere. Packs of infected. I saw a squad of soldiers get overrun on Westminster Bridge…” Her eyes fluttered, glazed over for a moment, and then she spat and wiped blood from her mouth. “After leaving the city, our pilot had a seizure of some kind, like he had caught the plague or something, and we crashed. Woke up with a hole in my stomach. I think my right ankle’s broken. I crawled here. You have to help me.”
“We will,” said Frank. “We’ll think of something.”
There was a shriek from the other side of the trees. Another voice yipped and bayed in response.
“Was that one of them? You have to help me get out of here. Don’t leave me here!”
“We won’t leave you, I promise.”
The shrieks and screams were closer this time. Florence looked at Frank, breathing fast, her eyes wide.
“I don’t want to die here,” said Caitlin. “I don’t want to die.”
“You won’t die,” said Frank. He looked at Florence. “We’ll carry her, okay?”
Florence nodded and they pulled Caitlin to her feet. She screamed as her ankle took her weight.
The infected were approaching through the trees.
“Come on!” said Frank. He put Caitlin’s left arm around his shoulders and kept her upright. Florence held on to the woman, helping her along. They moved slowly. Not fast enough.
Caitlin was crying. She screamed in Frank’s ear and he almost dropped her.
“I don’t want to die!”
Frank looked back, wished he hadn’t.
The five infected poured out of the trees – men and women burdened with cysts and tumours, bloodstained and manic. One had thin claws instead of hands, his wide mouth snapping at the air. Another was lop-sided with glistening bulbous growths the colour of mould. The young man in the middle of the pack gasped as black tendrils exploded from between his lips and grasped at the air.