Rich Hawkins: The Last Plague

“Where’s the rest of the coaches?” asked a fat man near the front of the crowd.

The sergeant hesitated then looked to the officer in charge of the camp, Captain Shaw, who was watching the coaches descend the hill.

Shaw turned to the crowd. He was a tall and morose man, black haired and dark-skinned. Eyes like dark stone fetched from the earth. “Everyone will be evacuated, I promise you. I have been told by my superiors that there are more transports arriving soon. There’s no need to worry. Salvation is here.”

He wasn’t lying. Frank could tell. But Shaw’s superiors might have lied to him, for all he knew.

The coaches halted outside the front gates. They were being driven by soldiers, haggard and exhausted-looking. The sides of the coaches were streaked and smeared with blood, grime and mud. Frank wondered if the coaches had enough fuel to reach Sidmouth.

He held Florence’s hand and offered her a crooked smile.

The first coach had been filled, packed tight, the refugees weighing it down as it left the camp.

Frank and the others were near the front of the crowd. He was confident they’d be on the next coach when it was ready to receive them. He breathed in, breathed out, tried to keep his heart steady. Florence was jittery beside him.

“Are we going to France? Or an island?” she asked, large eyes peering up at him.

His mouth felt dry and cracked, like a desiccated corpse’s leathery skin. “Maybe, Florence. We’ll find out when we get on the ships.”

“Okay.”

Frank looked at Ralph and nodded. Ralph returned the gesture. Joel and Anya were struggling to stay on their feet as the crowd swayed and flowed.

“Keep together,” Frank said. “No matter what.” He looked down at Florence. He wished Catherine was here with them. He wished she was here to hold his hand.

His insides were cold, and he missed her enough to offer his own heart for her return. But he had to push away his grief and deal with it later. Now, he had to help Florence.

The second coach was slowly filled with refugees. The soldiers checked the lines of people to keep them in order. Belongings were left behind. All they could take was what they were wearing.

Frank and the others missed the cut off point for the second coach.

“At least we’ll get a decent seat on the next one,” Ralph said sourly.

“Hopefully,” said Frank.

Then there was gunfire. A woman screamed. Frank looked to the east side of the camp.

“What’s that sound?” asked Florence.

Frank lowered his head to look at her. “What sound?”

But then he heard it, and so did everybody else.

A roaring. A screaming. A wailing. The tremor of the ground from a thousand footfalls.

“What is that?” asked Joel.

The horizon was filled with an enormous writhing swarm of infected. Sprouting tendrils and baying mouths. Mangled faces with too many teeth. Abominations. Travesties and twitching wretches. So many of them. More than a thousand. More than two thousand. More than three thousand.

Enough to wipe the refugees from the earth.

The soldiers opened fire upon the swarm, but the infected still came forward, their numbers barely affected by the hail of gunfire meeting them. The infected surged down the hill and nothing could stop them.

The refugees panicked, bolted for the buses. The gates were wrenched open. People were trampled and left as easy pickings for the infected. The coaches were swamped by the rush of desperate, terrified people.

The swarm of monsters was upon the refugees. Blood and meat. Screams and pleas for mercy.

The infected tore through crowd.

No one spoke on the coach. Frank was staring out the window. The blood on his face was not his own and still wet. Florence was on his lap, silent. Ralph was sitting next to them, his head bowed. Joel and Anya were seated across the aisle. A few people were crying and sobbing quietly. A woman at the front of the coach was wailing, mourning her husband who’d been left behind.

There were many empty seats.

Only two of the remaining four coaches had escaped. The other two had been left behind, overrun by the infected. Hundreds of refugees left behind to die or be assimilated into the swarm.

Frank was still shaking.

The infected had poured down the hill towards the camp. A wave of gnashing mouths and rending claws. The swarm had emitted a collective scream and crashed against the crowd of refugees. The soldiers who stood and fought fell quickly, overwhelmed by the sheer number of infected. Other soldiers turned and boarded the coaches, abandoning the people they were supposed to protect.

Screams had filled the air.

Frank had managed to board one of the coaches, carrying Florence in his arms, Ralph and Joel and Anya right behind him. They were among the last on the coach before it pulled away from the camp, shrieking infected hanging from it trying to get at the people inside. More infected had been crushed by the coach’s large wheels, snapping and cracking like wet twigs.

Frank had looked back at the camp as they drove away. The image of what he’d seen was branded into his mind. Only a fraction of the refugees had managed to escape, he estimated. He shook his head, tried not to believe it.

How many had been left behind?

They were approaching Sidmouth. Houses appeared alongside the road, dead and empty. Piles of bodies stacked in a field.

He put his hand in his jacket pocket, felt for Catherine’s wedding band. He was relieved it was still there. He looked at his own ring; it was loose on his finger.

The coach entered Sidmouth.

Through the town, towards the beach. Gutted buildings and smoke. Shattered windows. Frank saw a little girl’s bicycle lying by the pavement, its front wheel buckled. Cars had been pushed to the sides of the road to allow the coaches through.

Gulls swooped overhead and drifted over the roofs.

The army had cleaned out this town.

The two coaches reached the shorefront. Coaches and buses from other camps and rescue centres had already arrived here. Beyond the seawall, the beach was covered with refugees, crammed together and waiting to be rescued. Frank was reminded of holidays in Spain where the beaches were packed with sunbathers and tourists. There were thousands of people here, stretched along the beach for a mile. A desperate, exhausted mass of humanity. The thrum and drone of chatter and moaning and shouting. Some people were injured; on crutches or being carried on stretchers. Medics tended to those needing help. Soldiers patrolled the beach. There weren’t many soldiers left.

And beyond the beach was the sea, tempestuous and broiling; dark and uncaring. Waves fell against the shore. Some people were even stood in the shallows, the water up to their knees, so desperate were they to escape.

The tide was low.

Frank counted four Royal Navy ships were out there, as close to the shore as they could come without beaching themselves in the shallows. Landing craft were ferrying people straight from the beach to the ships. But the turn-around was slow and torturous. It would take hours – maybe a full day – to evacuate the refugees.

It could all fall apart so easily, Frank thought, as he and the others were herded from the coach to the edge of the beach.

“It’ll take ages to evacuate us all,” said Joel. He squeezed Anya’s hand.

“We’ll have to wait,” said Frank. “No other choice. At least we have some time before it gets dark.”

“I’d like to be out of here before nightfall,” said Joel. “Anyone fancy swimming out there?”

“That’d be pointless,” said Frank. “And probably suicidal. You’d drown in that water. And there’s no guarantee the ships would let you on if you made it out there. They could even shoot you.”