The Plague Series (Book 1): The Last Plague

by Rich Hawkins

  Ralph was trying to undo his jeans.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Frank asked.

  Ralph ignored him, reached into his jeans and produced his flare gun. He checked it was loaded then crept down the aisle until he was underneath the mouth. His eyes went wide and he aimed the flare gun upwards.

  He pulled the trigger. The inside of the carriage was momentarily lit up with a flash of red light and smoke. The beast screamed in agony as the flare burned inside the beast’s mouth. The stench of charred meat drifted downwards.

  Then the carriage was shaking and the windows imploded. Flying glass flew and found soft flesh, faces and eyes. Frank slipped, fell down in the aisle. Ralph collapsed on top of him.

  There was a terrible wrenching sound. The world quaked around them. A deep roar followed by a feeling of moving into the air. The carriage left the ground. Then a crash and impact. A pain in Frank’s legs. His breath was stolen.

  Metal and glass everywhere. Broken, screaming bodies.

  By the time Frank came to his senses, he realised the carriage was upside down and he was lying on the ceiling.

  Ralph lay nearby, limbs splayed, eyes open and unseeing.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  There was screaming, crying and moaning. An unseen woman begged for help. The inside of the carriage was all grey light and bright splashes of blood, broken windows and warped metal. Bodies sprawled at contorted angles.

  The seats were hanging above Frank. Bags and belongings littered the ceiling. The world was askew.

  Frank grabbed hold of Ralph’s arm, shaking him. “Ralph! Ralph!”

  Ralph blinked, then groaned and sat up, spitting a tooth onto his chest.

  “Are you okay?” Frank said.

  “Yeah. I think.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that. You pissed it off.”

  Ralph offered a broken grin.

  Florence crawled over to them and knelt next to Frank.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked her.

  She nodded, dazed but unhurt.

  “Where’re Magnus and Joel?” asked Ralph.

  “Over here.” Magnus gestured to them from a few yards away, surrounded by strewn wreckage. He wiped away a trickle of blood from a cut on his brow and crouched over Joel, who was rubbing his head and moaning.

  “Are you okay?” said Frank. “Is Joel okay?”

  With some effort Magnus nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Same here,” said Joel.

  Ralph looked around the carriage, his face beaded with sweat. “Where’s that little bastard creature?”

  Magnus glanced over his shoulder. “Hopefully it’s dead.”

  The large beast was outside. Frank heard its insect legs skittering upon the ground. Screams echoed around the carriage. He looked back towards the track, realised their carriage had been thrown over thirty yards into the field. The beast had upturned the rest of the train and was picking through the remains. One of its tendrils plucked a crying man from a torn carriage and sucked him into its gaping mouth. Hundreds of people were running in every direction, most of them taken down by the infected. Others were fighting back, protecting their families. A group of men and women formed a circle around some children, but were quickly overwhelmed by the infected and then the children were screaming. Groups of refugees were fleeing down the track and away from the train. A boy was pinned to the ground by an infected woman, and her arms were glistening pincers that impaled him through the chest. Then she bent down and began to strip the meat from his face with her ragged hole of a mouth.

  Shadows gathered outside the upturned carriage. Footfalls and mewling sounds mixed with strangled wails. Infected people appeared at the shattered windows, dragging out anybody at the edges of the carriage. One man was pulled outside by a sinewy woman covered in blood. She went to work with her teeth and hands. The man screamed until she removed his throat with her snapping mouth.

  Other refugees climbed out of the train and ran.

  “Stay away from the windows,” Ralph said.

  “It won’t matter,” said Magnus. “They’ll get us.”

  “We’re surrounded,” Joel muttered. “We’re trapped.”

  Frank kept Florence close to him.

  Ralph glanced around, hands pawing at the wreckage. “Where’s the flare gun?”

  “It’s gone,” said Frank.

  Magnus pressed his hands to his face. “We’re fucked.”

  “Shut up,” Ralph said. “Pull yourself together.”

  Frank pointed out the window. “Our only chance is to get to the trees.”

  “What?” said Magnus. “The trees the infected came from?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Fucking hell.”

  “I’m scared,” said Florence.

  “I know,” Frank replied. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Ralph took a deep breath. “If we’re going to leave, we should probably go now, before more infected arrive.”

  Frank looked at his friends. “Ready?”

  They nodded.

  He turned to the girl. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Be brave.”

  “Okay.”

  They prepared themselves to leave the carriage. Magnus inhaled and exhaled through his mouth. Ralph stared outside. Joel wiped at his face. Frank held Florence’s hand.

  Then Magnus screamed as the newborn leapt onto his back and one of its sharp limbs speared his shoulder. The creature’s body was twisted and bleeding. Its mouth opened, jaws connected by glistening strands of fluid, and it pulled its head back, ready to bite the back of Magnus’s neck.

  Magnus fell onto his stomach, the creature a part of him.

  Ralph rushed over and kicked at the newborn. The leg embedded within Magnus snapped and he screamed. The newborn fell back, screeching. Ralph dragged Magnus away from the broken creature as it began crawling towards him on twisted legs.

  Ralph turned around and stamped on the creature’s back until it collapsed, pale liquid bleeding from its wounds. He pushed away its mangled form with his foot.

  Magnus was crying, his face creased and sweating. “Get it out of me!”

  Ralph picked up a jacket, wrapped it around his right hand as a protective sheath, and grabbed the snapped leg hanging from Magnus’s shoulder. “Ready, mate?”

  “Do it.”

  Ralph pulled. Magnus screamed. The limb grinded against bone and scraped flesh then slipped free from his body, dripping his blood, and other fluids not his own. Ralph threw it and the jacket away.

  Magnus’s eyes fluttered and his mouth moved in a silent groan. Ralph and Joel held him steady as he passed out.

  Frank peered out from the carriage. Screams and cries for mercy wavered in the air. Utter chaos. He felt sick. The infected were feeding on the people they’d dragged outside. They stripped and flayed bodies. Ripped limbs from their sockets. Removed tongues from mouths and clutched them like trophies. A squirming woman, trying desperately to escape from their clutches, was torn into five different parts.

  An infected man loped past with a dripping scalp clutched in his hand.

  “Let’s go,” Frank said.

  They crouched as they stepped outside and formed a tight huddle. Ralph and Joel grimaced as they hefted Magnus’s dead weight. Frank scanned the immediate area then moved and the others behind him followed. His heart threatened to burst from his chest. He held Florence’s hand and carried her. She was breathing into his ear, quick and scared, as they crept amongst the slaughter and the panic, dodging other refugees and stepping over dead bodies.

  Frank stared across the field to the apparent safety of the trees. He kept the group moving. He would not let them fail.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Some of the surviving refugees, approximately thirty in all, regrouped in the woods and walked westwards. They moved in a ragged, stumbling mass. Frank wondered how many others had escaped.

  The light was fading. The beast screamed
far behind as the survivors staggered deeper into the woods. He glanced over his shoulder, checking the infected weren’t pursuing them. None of them had any weapons. If the infected emerged from the darkness and attacked, there would be no stopping them.

  Many of the refugees were sobbing, heads bowed. How many had lost family back there?

  Magnus hung limply as Ralph and Joel hauled him along, each with one hand under his arms. His shoulder had stopped bleeding.

  “He’s starting to get heavy,” said Joel.

  Ralph grimaced. “We need to find somewhere to stay the night.”

  “Agreed.” Frank looked at the other refugees. “But we might have competition for any shelter we find.”

  “We should go our own way,” Ralph said. “The infected will be attracted to any large crowds. Better off on our own.”

  “What about safety in numbers?” asked Joel.

  Ralph gave him a mocking glare. “Like herd animals?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Herd animals get hunted.”

  “Ralph’s got a point,” said Frank. “Magnus needs to rest for the night. He won’t be going much further.”

  They broke away from the group. None of the other refugees said anything or tried to convince them to stay.

  An hour later they found an old barn in one of the fields outside the woods. They were alone, for now. Magnus had come to. He was groggy and quiet, his face drained of colour. No sign of serious injury, but they would have to watch for concussion.

  The barn was a large construction. Timber battered by the elements. Old wood, stained dark. An arched roof. Big double-doors, closed but unlocked.

  Joel rubbed his tired eyes. “There might be something nasty inside.”

  Frank took Magnus’s cigarette lighter and opened the doors then stopped and waited, listening. The others hung back behind him. He flicked on the lighter and stuck his head into the barn. The darkness retreated when he stepped inside with the flickering flame.

  Strands of dried straw were scattered around his feet on the hard dirt floor. The smell of desiccation and mice droppings. A ladder led to the hayloft above him.

  “Is it okay?” Joel asked from outside.

  “I think so.” Frank climbed the ladder, keeping hold of the lighter between two fingers, hoping no sudden draught would snuff it out. He didn’t want to be alone in the dark.

  The hayloft was unoccupied and silent.

  Frank looked down the ladder, where the others had gathered on the ground floor. “It’s not a Premier Inn, but it’ll do.”

  *

  Night fell to the sound of distant gunfire drifting around the countryside, a reminder of the war being fought. They rested in the hayloft, huddled together to keep warm, hoping there would be no visitors tonight.

  They slept.

  Magnus woke during the night, shaking and anxious. He thought he heard something outside, like the patter of footfalls in grass.

  Ralph was sitting in the corner, watching him. Magnus said nothing and crept slowly to the window. The glass was cloudy, its edges encrusted with mould.

  His body went rigid as he peered outside.

  In the light of the high moon, waves of men and women moved through the field, like a ragtag army clad in filthy clothes and stained with blood. They hissed and mewled, burdened with appalling injuries and wounds, some of them horribly mutated.

  He clenched his teeth and bit down on his tongue, drawing blood. Then he closed his eyes and flashes of memory came to him in a blurred slideshow. He saw sunny days and sandy beaches, smiling children, a pair of dogs running around a garden as a football was kicked between a father and son. A bride and groom on their wedding day, and a girl losing her virginity to her overzealous boyfriend. A school Nativity play followed by the image of a woman giving birth in a delivery room.

  They were not his memories.

  There were tortured voices inside his head, a cacophony of screaming, wailing and begging, and he caught fragments of names, places and other memories. He heard babies crying. Felt the tears of proud parents and grieving widows. The sadness of lost pets and shattered dreams.

  The infected remembered who they were.

  But beyond that was a hunger, a need, a craving. The feel of flesh beneath his fingers. The smell of steam rising from warm bodies in the cold air.

  He opened his eyes and stood by the window, watching the infected until the last ones had drifted past and the field was empty. He wondered where they were going and if they had known he was watching them. If his theory was correct, he would be joining them soon. The others knew it as well; that’s why Ralph was keeping an eye on him. The plague was in his blood.

  Magnus went back to where he’d been sleeping.

  Ralph watched him.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  The next day they found a car as they entered the village of Milborne Port – a Honda Civic of no use to the dead man lying next to it with his throat torn out.

  Ralph removed the parcel shelf from the car and made Magnus sit in the boot, away from everyone else. Quarantine, Ralph called it, and said that if the plague was airborne it would lessen the chance of Magnus infecting the others. Magnus didn’t argue. No one argued. He sat in the boot without complaint.

  Frank volunteered to drive. They left the village and minutes later passed through Sherborne, which seemed deserted apart from the crows and dogs scavenging on human corpses. On the dual carriageway Frank guided the Civic around crashed cars and an abandoned lorry. A woman with a snapping mouth within her pulped face bolted out from one pile-up and launched herself at their car. Frank steered away from her, resisting the temptation to run her down.

  They reached Yeovil soon afterwards.

  Two bodies lay beside a burning car, limbs splayed, faces torn to red ruin, insides scooped out, half-eaten and left to dry on the tarmac. There was blood smeared on the walls of houses. Cadavers half-hidden in blooming flowerbeds. Lone infected stared out from the windows, screaming silently. A man covered in blood was sitting in a car, staring at his lap. As Frank drove past, the man looked up quickly and laughed. His eyes were gone.

  Some of the roads were blocked, so they had to reverse and find other routes leading to housing estates and side-streets. Kebab shops and Chinese takeaways. Survivors stood on the balconies of flats in apartment blocks, watching the streets. Others watched from their windows, waving for help.

  Great towers of smoke climbed into the sky from the burning hospital. Part of it had already collapsed.

  The infected owned the streets. They saw lone survivors taken down by baying packs. Something with tentacles and multiple insectile legs wrapped itself around a pile of bodies.

  Joel looked at Magnus shivering in the boot of the car. “We won’t abandon you, mate.”

  Magnus replied, “I don’t want to go back home and spread the plague. What if I infect my family? What if I kill them? What if I kill all of you?”

  “We’ll sort something out.”

  “You might as well stop and leave me by the roadside.”

  “We’re not going to leave you, Magnus,” said Frank. “We’ll be with you until the end, mate. I promise. We all promise, don’t we?”

  “Yeah,” said Joel.

  “Yeah,” said Ralph, his voice a whisper.

  There were tears in Magnus’s eyes. “I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be a monster.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Joel was the one who said it.

  “What if we get home and they’re all dead?”

  Frank looked at him in the rear-view mirror. “We don’t know what we’re going to find.” The sudden thought of crows picking at Catherine’s dead body tightened his stomach with nausea.

  “He’s got a point,” said Ralph. “Everywhere else has been fucked,”

  “Everywhere we’ve been. There could easily be places that are still surviving.”

  “You believe that?” asked Joel.

  Frank ignored the question, answer
ed it with one of his own. “I thought Ralph was the only doom-monger amongst us?”

  “Things change,” Joel said. “You know that.”

  *

  Deserted roads. Fields that had been recently harvested.

  Home.

  They entered the village from the south, passing a signpost at the crossroads next to a tall oak tree. Birdsong filled the hedgerows. Familiar roads and lanes appeared and strengthened the feeling of returning to where they belonged.

  Smoke was rising from the other end of the village. Frank remembered Wishford and how that village was overrun by the infected. No one emerged from the houses to greet them. No welcoming party. The doors on many of the houses had been ripped from their hinges. Smashed windows and dried patches of blood. Silent houses of people they knew. The signs of ruin they had grown accustomed to.

  As the car coasted past Silver Street and onto Middle Street, the engine died and rattled to a stop. Magnus was the last out onto the road, breathing slowly and holding his wounded shoulder.

  Florence wrapped her arms around her chest. “It’s like my village. Where’s your house, Frank?”

  “At the other end of the village, along with Joel’s house and Magnus’s house.”

  “The poor end of the village,” Ralph joked. No one laughed.

  Frank looked down the street. The church spire reached towards the sky. He saw movement near the front of a garden, and a dog emerged from between two cars, padding onto the road and sniffing the ground. A black Labrador.

  “That’s Al Copper’s dog,” said Ralph. “Stumpy. Look at its tail.”

  Al Cooper lived at the eastern edge of the village. Stumpy’s tail had been bitten off by a badger a few years ago. The man and his dog were inseparable.

  “So, where’s Al?” asked Joel.

  “He might be around here somewhere. But he might not be the Al we know.”

  Stumpy saw them watching him and raised his head. His ears pricked up as he sniffed at the air.