by Rich Hawkins
This all happened in the space of five seconds. Frank turned away and vomited onto his shoes.
Florence was screaming.
He turned back and held the girl.
A man in torn clothes stood before them, his body shaking violently. His mouth stretched wide and a glistening proboscis emerged from between his teeth. Frank stepped back as the proboscis probed the air. A clear fluid dripped from its tip and its sheath pulled back like a foreskin revealing a thin appendage with a sharp point.
The man lunged at them.
Florence cried out.
The man’s head exploded and he collapsed.
Ralph walked over to the man and stepped on the still-wriggling proboscis until it was crushed beneath his foot. He was holding a pistol.
“Where did you get that gun from?” Frank asked.
Ralph’s eyes were manic. “Belonged to a soldier. He didn’t need it anymore.”
Frank tightened his grip on Florence’s hand.
Ralph put a bullet through a growling woman’s face as she lunged at him. Then he turned back to them. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
The infected man snapped his mouth towards Anya, and she recoiled, stumbling over her own feet. The man let out a growling roar as blood leaked from his eyes.
Joel smashed him in the face with a rock he’d found on the sand. The man fell to his knees, clutching his nose with one gnarled hand, and then slumped onto his back as Joel hit him again and again. His shattered skull leaked a putrescent liquid onto the sand. Joel discarded the rock, grabbed Anya and ran for the shore, pushing people out of the way. Directly ahead of them, Navy crewmen were loading people onto a landing craft. Royal Marines stood guard, shooting the attacking infected, cutting them down with rapid bursts from their rifles. Other craft were getting swamped by the desperate refugees. One was a heaving mass of bodies, infected and uninfected, the Marines lying dead in the surf.
Some of the craft were already leaving. Joel pulled Anya with him, bursting into a sprint.
A young boy bolted towards them, his body covered with rupturing tumours, and blocked their path. He wailed through a contorted mouth as his head split open into teeth-lined halves and a nest of trembling wormlike feelers rose from within his cranium like snakes from a charmer’s pot. The feelers, each one of them approximately three feet in length, possessed clusters of tiny sucking mouths upon their forms, dilating at the close proximity of prey. Joel and Anya backed away, and the boy-thing followed. Pale, milk-white spider-legs grew from the boy’s flanks and came to rest on the ground lifting him from his original height and supporting him in his new form.
Joel put himself between Anya and the boy-creature. People were running past them. The infected boy reared up and screamed in terrible pain then moved towards Joel and Anya.
Joel did something he never thought he would have done.
A man stumbled next to them, and Joel pushed him towards the boy-thing. The man screamed and looked at Joel with an expression of undiluted terror and fear.
“I’m sorry,” said Joel, but the man didn’t hear him.
The boy reeled the man in and embraced him. The man begged to be released as he was pinned on the sand. The boy’s feelers elongated from within his head and clamped upon the man’s face. The man wriggled and squirmed, clawing at the feelers as they drilled into his eyes, his mouth, and the soft tissue of his cheeks and chin.
When the man stopped moving, the feelers detached and retreated, leaving only a skull and a few scraps of skin and muscle.
Joel and Anya ran for the shore. The craft was almost full, getting ready to leave.
“Wait for us!” Joel shouted.
One of the Marines turned and fired at them. They both screamed, then glanced back to see a bloated woman collapsing onto the sand behind them, a red wound where her face had been.
“Quickly,” the Marine said. He shot two more infected advancing towards them.
Joel pushed Anya forwards. His legs felt like they were on fire. All he could hear was the screams of monsters and dying people. The Marines pulled them on board over the lowered ramp, and they collapsed among the other refugees who had made it. Many of them were crying and sobbing; others were in stunned, traumatised silence.
Joel turned back to the beach. He couldn’t see Ralph, Frank or Florence. The shoreline was a field of slaughter. Blood stained the sand and turned the tide red. Body parts floated in the water. Most of the craft were leaving, and many people were left behind, the majority of the refugees either dead or too badly injured to move. Packs of the infected were feeding.
Gunshots echoed down the beach, where a few Marines were holding off the infected until their craft could escape. There were bodies everywhere. Infected children scavenged on warm remains, sucking the marrow from snapped bones.
“Let’s go, let’s go,” said one of the Marines.
“You can’t leave yet,” Joel cried. “My friends are still out there.”
The Marine offered a sympathetic look. “Sorry, mate. It’s too dangerous to stay here. We’ll get swarmed sooner or later.”
“Look!” said Anya, pointing to their left.
Frank, Florence and Ralph were running towards them, weaving between feasting infected and wounded refugees. Ralph raised his hands, holding a pistol.
A pack of infected were right behind them.
“Come on!” Joel shouted.
They splashed through the surf towards the craft. Ralph turned around and shot two infected before stumbling onwards again.
“Move faster! Don’t stop!”
They were ten yards from safety when something came out of the water and grabbed Frank.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Frank dropped Florence and they both fell into the water. She reached for him and screamed before he was dragged beneath the frothing tide.
He gasped in agony and shock as sharp claws pierced his stomach. The sight of the creature’s face inches away from him almost stopped his heart. Panicking, he took in mouthfuls of saltwater as he fought to break free.
The pale thing was emaciated and snarling, the ragged remains of a white shirt and red tie clinging to its form. It leered at him with a wound of a mouth and lifted him out of the sea. He flailed and cried, vomiting water, eyes stinging as he sucked in air. Cold fingers gripped him. Blood in the tide. The creature roared at him, its breath stinking of rot and mould.
Ralph shot it in the face and it dropped Frank. Ralph pulled him up as the other infected closed in.
Frank turned to Florence and managed to speak through saltwater and pain. “Go! Get on the boat!”
Florence hesitated.
“Go!”
Then Joel was running back to them, kicking his legs through the water. He scooped her up, but she resisted him, flailing her arms.
Agony bolted through Frank’s body. The wound on his stomach was deep and bleeding. Beside him, Ralph looked dazed and pale. There was a red wound on his neck, the edges of which were already turning black.
They looked at each other and understood. Then they turned to Joel and Florence.
Joel was crying. He nodded.
“Get out of here,” Ralph told him.
Florence had stopped fighting Joel. She was shivering and soaking wet, her red hair plastered to her head.
“I can’t leave you here,” Joel said.
Ralph raised his pistol, aimed it at Joel. “Go.”
“Get Florence off the beach,” Frank said between rattling breaths as he clutched the wound in his stomach. “Get to Anya. Get to safety.”
Joel looked at them, his face slack and unbelieving. He glanced at the pistol.
Ralph’s arm was shaking. “You have to go, mate. No time.”
After a moment of hesitation, Joel nodded solemnly, tears in his eyes, then turned away and ran back to the craft with Florence. Frank watched them climb aboard. Anya took hold of the girl and hugged her. The three of them looked back towards Frank and
Ralph.
Frank waved. He had done all he could. He had done his best. They would survive. Florence would survive.
Ralph turned to confront the pursuing infected. He fired the pistol until it was empty. One infected man remained from the pack. Ralph let the man come to him then pistol-whipped him in the face until he went down. Then Ralph dropped the pistol and gouged out the infected’s eyes with his thumbs, both men half-submerged. The deformed man thrashed and shrieked until he fell still and floated away, face-down in the water.
Frank went to Ralph and helped him to his feet in the surf. Ralph’s hands were raw and weeping.
They watched the last of the landing craft leave then staggered onto the beach, keeping each other upright. Both of them were losing blood. The infected left them alone.
Ralph tried to smile. “I can feel it inside me.”
“Same here,” said Frank.
The cries of the dying echoed across the blood-soaked beach of scattered bones and offal. Groups of infected gathered along the shore to snaffle up piles of slick remains. They fed slowly and calmly. An infected man in a straitjacket stumbled in circles as black tentacles burst through his chest.
There were many deformities and mutations. Faces with too many eyes. Pale figures staggering around clutching pieces of sopping flesh. Infected flesh glistening like succulent jelly, quivering and forming pincers, vermiform tentacles and black maws. Vaginal mouths parted to show such sharp teeth. Bodies were slipped free from their skin and consumed by ravenous appetites.
The beach was full of meat.
Frank and Ralph turned back to the sea and the ships out there waiting for the evacuated refugees. The lucky ones.
“I’m glad they made it,” said Frank.
Ralph wheezed out a tortured breath. “Joel and Anya will take care of Florence. You did the right thing, mate. You saved the little girl, and you got us here. You gave us a chance of survival.”
Frank didn’t answer. He looked out towards the ships, and he wondered where they would go. Maybe they were just delaying the inevitable.
“Extinction level event,” Ralph muttered.
Frank nodded. And he didn’t realise what the flashes of white light from the ships meant until the shells detonated around them and the world was lost to explosions and blinding fury. The groups of feeding infected were obliterated as the naval guns hammered at the shore, sending up great billows of sand. Shrapnel flew, decapitating several infected and shredding bodies into pulp. No sound but the boom of the guns and the shells hitting the ground. Frank couldn’t hear himself scream. He and Ralph tried to stagger from the beach. A shell landed nearby, engulfing them in sand and dirt. They fell down to the scream of ordnance overhead and collapsed on to their backs. Boom and crash. The earth shaking and coming apart. The smell of fire and burnt meat.
Frank looked up at the darkening sky, the taste of blood in his mouth. He felt the pain of the infected as they were destroyed.
The screaming world became oblivion.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
The refugees were silent, vacant-eyed and exhausted as the landing craft moved towards the waiting ships. Florence was sitting with her head on Anya’s chest, her eyes wet with tears for Frank and all the people lost on the beach. Anya stroked the girl’s hair and whispered words of comfort to her.
Joel rested his arms on the side of the craft, staring back at the shore where he’d last seen his friends. Smoke stained the horizon and the beach was a ruin of scars and craters. Great Britain was gone. England was gone.
His voice trembled with emotion. “We made it. We escaped. I can’t believe it.”
“Not all of us escaped,” said Florence.
“I hope Ralph and Frank died quickly.”
“Nobody could’ve survived on the beach,” Anya said. “They’re gone.”
Joel took out his silver cross and extended his arm until his hand was over the side. The sea was protean and tempting, abyssal and dark.
He lowered the cross towards the water and thought about the things that had happened.
His hand flinched.
The waves crashed.
EPILOGUE
Frank woke and watched the sky until his eyes stung, then used most of his remaining strength to sit up amongst the devastation of the beach. His lungs ached with a cancerous pain. He couldn’t find his inhaler in his pockets. Wheezing and hacking, he spat red mucus onto the sand. The wound in his stomach itched and burned. He’d lost a lot of blood.
Human remains littered the beach. The ground had been churned and torn. Craters and gouges in the earth.
Shrapnel had ripped Ralph into bits. Most of him was a smear upon the sand.
Frank rose and stood over Ralph’s remains and said a silent farewell to his friend. Then he turned towards the horizon out at sea. The Royal Navy ships were gone.
He walked from the beach and headed inland, stumbling on rubbery legs. His heartbeat was slow and loud. Sweat beaded on his skin. When he passed through Sidmouth, the infected in the streets left him alone. He was one of them, of course, his body changing even as it weakened and neared death.
He was grateful Florence had escaped to safety, along with Joel and Anya. The consolation brought some comfort. He’d been stupid to think Florence was his daughter. To think she was Emily had been a foolish, delusional notion. He saw his mistake with the clarity of a man at the end of it all.
She could have been his daughter, in a different life. But he was only a man and there was only one life. And if he lived, he would become something else.
He walked back to the remains of the camp, daydreaming of Catherine while the virus burned in his blood. He would be with her again. He would find her. The two coaches left behind had been smashed and battered. Dozens of bodies on the blood-soaked ground. Crows picked over the cadavers. Rot and slaughter in the air.
Some infected lingered in the area – the stragglers and those too weak to walk away. Wretched specimens being absorbed by the mud and filth.
Captain Shaw sat slumped against a scrum of corpses, staring at his raw hands. He wheezed and groaned. His eyes were red-rimmed and haunted. As he regarded Frank, his naked stomach birthed a colony of writhing red cilia. A yolky substance dripped from the corners of his mouth. Small, wet spikes emerged from his scalp, like a crown of thorns.
Shaw whimpered for mercy.
Frank took a pistol from a dead soldier’s hand. He went over to Shaw and shot him in the head without hesitation. The captain’s body quivered once then fell still. Frank dropped the pistol then turned towards a flash of movement at the north side of the camp, where the pits had been carved into the earth.
A little girl, red-haired and pale, stood watching him. It was Emily. He smiled, and when she beckoned to him, he started towards her with joy in his heart.
As he approached Emily, she turned away and walked towards the pits, glancing back to make sure he was following. Her voice whispered inside his head.
Emily halted by one of the pits and pointed down into the earth, before turning back to smile at him. He went to her and regarded the charred bodies within the pit. Jumbled heaps and drifts of cadavers. And when he looked back at Emily, she was gone, vanished like a shade on the wind.
“Goodbye,” Frank said. He knew what he had to do. She had shown him the way.
He went down into the pit and fell to his knees to search through the bodies as thunder roared overhead. He pawed about the scorched remains while his heartbeat counted down the time he had left, as his blood leaked from his body and he grew weaker. Darkness closed in. He sensed Emily nearby, watching him. He remembered his friends and the old world.
I am still Frank Hooper, and I will die as a man, not a monster.
When he found what was left of his wife, in the midst of warped limbs and eyeless faces, he embraced the wreck of her body and stated his love. There was still a trace of red in her blackened hair. Her skull grinned, pleased to see him. Her spindly fingers brushed against his
skin. She welcomed him to the pit as he produced her wedding band from his pocket and slipped it onto her ring finger. He put his mouth to hers and opened his lips. Her scent was smoke and old things. She tasted of ashes and deliverance.
Frank went to sleep knowing he would never wake again.
THE END
AWOL
A PLAGUE NOVELLA
BY RICH HAWKINS
CHAPTER ONE
From his hiding place within a dense thicket of brush and thin trees upon the hillside, Corporal John Guppy watched the swarm of infected moving across the distant fields and dirt lanes below.
With the binoculars fixed to his eyes, he barely moved or breathed, a shadow nesting in shadows as the sun glared overhead. The sky was patchy with clouds and smeared with the colour of ash. On the far north-western horizon beyond the swarm, London was burning after the dropping of incendiary bombs. Great mile-wide towers of smoke rose from the city. Guppy thought of all that history and culture – all those lives – destroyed in some misguided attempt to cleanse the streets of the infected.
It was enough to leave him without hope for the future of the human race. Annihilation for a good cause, for the best possible reasons, to save lives in the long run. Supposedly. But he wasn’t optimistic about it doing much good.
The swarm was moving in a south-westerly direction, trampling meadows and pastures. Thousands of filthy bodies packed together in the search for flesh, consumed by their need to spread the virus inside them. Guppy wondered if it was the Greater London swarm he’d been warned about by the last group of refugees he’d passed yesterday. They’d told him about the infected forced out of London by bombs and fire. The ones who had survived. It was impossible to know for certain.