Rich Hawkins: The Last Plague

“So that’s it? That’s how she died? Just like that?”

Anya muttered, “Yes.” She looked away from him.

Frank’s arms fell to his sides. Dead weight. He felt dizzy. His heart was palpitating. Insects crawled up his spine.

And then it all just faded away. Every single feeling. He lowered his head, stared at the ground, and closed his eyes.

Then someone was holding his hand.

He opened his eyes.

Florence was beside him, offering a porcelain, wan smile. Her skin was warm and soft in the cold air. He accepted her hand, tightening his own around her small fingers, and he tried to return her smile with all of his remaining will, but couldn’t. He was exhausted and battered, like something dragged for miles over jagged rocks and sharpened stone.

He wanted to lie down. He wanted to shut everything out and curl up in a dark corner and forget all that had gone before. He was beaten.

There were gunshots.

Frank and the others looked beyond the fence. A small pack of infected was running towards the men working at the pits. Monsters inhabiting barely-human disguises. Men and women, lurching and malformed, hunched and twisted into nightmarish creations from the minds of dark dreamers.

The soldiers shot them down. They sprawled on the ground like beached marine life. Some of the soldiers approached the bodies, inspecting and prodding them with booted feet. They would be taken to the pits and thrown amongst the other bodies.

“More and more infected come each day,” said Anya, her voice quiet. “More of them attack the camp each day. They sense us. They know we are here. They come in packs. Some come alone. Lonely ones who come here to die. But, soon, there will be a swarm of them, I think. Like an army.”

“A swarm,” said Ralph. “Fuck.”

“Are more of them coming?” Joel asked.

Frank watched the soldiers collect the dead infected. “Let them come.”

The next few days passed slowly. Food and water rations were meagre. Every person stank of dirt, sweat and filth. The latrines overflowed, filling the camp with the rotten stench of human waste. More refugees arrived at the camp, exhausted and traumatised people with nowhere else to go. They huddled in small groups waiting for the soldiers and the volunteers to offer them aid. People were waiting to die, or waiting to be saved. Some didn’t care, it seemed. Some of the people were broken, gently fading away without a struggle. They were broken long before they’d reached the camp.

Sparse packs of infected attacked the perimeter each night. The threat of them was constant. Every attack was repelled and the infected shot down like wild dogs.

More were on their way, said the rumours drifting around the stinking shelters and tents.

The refugees were the sheep and the soldiers were the shepherd dogs. The infected were the wolves. It rained every day. Puddles formed into large pools of dirty brown water. The ground became boggy as the camp turned into a mud hole, like Glastonbury Festival in the old days. The fires in the corpse-pits still burned. People still died. Medical supplies were running low. People got sick and spent their days confined to the beds in the medical tent.

The refugees were told that the Royal Navy were sending ships to evacuate them. Devonport, the home of the navy’s amphibious fleet, was overrun with infected. Gone. Wiped out.

The ships would arrive soon. Salvation was close, it seemed. It was hard to believe, and no one did believe except for the few still hoping and praying for deliverance.

Joel was one of those people.

Four days had passed. It was raining again, great droves of it lashing down, turning the ground into slurry. There was thunder far away. The wind blew cold and sharp. The wind had claws. Joel was hungry. He had only eaten half a chocolate bar all day. The light was already fading. He held Anya’s hand as they walked back to their tent. He would never leave her again.

Joel pulled back the canvas flap.

The others were in the tent. Ralph and Florence were playing an improvised game of Snap. A married couple, Ross and Michelle, were huddled in one corner, silent with heads bowed. Stuart Lenkman, a professor of biology before the outbreak, was sitting on the ground staring at his hands. A single mother called Donna cradled her baby son in her arms, cooing to him as he cried. The baby always cried. Joel had forgotten the boy’s name. And if he was honest he didn’t care. There were other people here, and he didn’t know their names. He didn’t want to know.

He was so tired he could sleep standing up. His eyelids were drooping. He hadn’t slept properly since they had left the holiday cottage. How long ago was that? Six days? A week? Ten days? Two weeks? Could have been a year and he wouldn’t have been sure.

The inside of the tent was cramped. The constant poke of elbows and knees against his body. The smell of bad breath, farts, baby shit and body odour. Stale sweat and old socks. He could hear people whispering in the adjacent tent, even above the pattering drizzle, so close were the tents crammed together. More refugees arrived every day. Joel wondered when the soldiers would start turning people away.

“Where’s Frank?” Joel asked.

Only Florence looked up. “He’s gone for a walk.”

“Again?”

“Yes.”

He turned to Anya. “I’m going to find him, see if he’s okay.”

Anya nodded. “I’ll stay here. I’m going to try to get some sleep.” She kissed him.

Joel went back out into the rain.

Joel found Frank at the northern perimeter staring at the plague pits. His hood was raised over his head. He was statuesque. The rain was coming down harder, and the wind picked it up and blasted it into Joel’s face. He wiped his face dry, tasted the rain in his mouth, on his tongue.

He looked at the sky and wondered if one of the giant sky-things was up there, watching the camp, waiting for the right time to descend and crush it and the poor bastards sheltering here.

Joel spat. Whatever those things were, they were not gods. They were not even fit to be compared to his God. His God was all-loving and merciful and kind.

But does He exist, Joel? asked a little voice secreted at the back of his head like an entrenched parasite. Are you sure that He exists? Do you still believe in Him? I’m not sure you still do.

“Piss off,” he muttered.

Maybe your faith is wearing thin.

“Go fuck yourself.”

We’ll see about that.

He shook his head. The voice didn’t go away, only faded in volume. He walked over to Frank, clearing his throat to let him know he was there. Frank didn’t react.

Joel stood beside him, looking out through the fence as the breeze picked up drifts of ash and soot from the mass graves and made them into swarms that tainted the sky. It was desolation. No one was at the pits.

It was a wasteland, scorched and ruined. Poisoned.

“Hey, mate,” said Joel.

“Hey.” Frank’s voice was quiet. His hands were in his pockets. Overhead, gulls and crows performed aerial duels over scraps of food and rubbish. If Joel closed his eyes and listened very, very carefully, he could hear the sea. He had always loved the sea, ever since his parents had taken him on daytrips to Weymouth and Seaton when he was a boy.

His parents were with God now. No suffering for them. No pain. For the first time since they had died, he was glad they were dead. He was glad for that maniac in the stolen Porsche who had run them off the road. He was glad they had died together.

He almost envied them.

“You alright, mate?” asked Joel.

“Yeah.”

“We’re worried about you.”