Harry screamed out, loud enough to reach the moon. Someone pulled him back by the armpits and he kicked out and struggled. The person turned out to be Tonks and the officer was no longer willing to stand by. He controlled Harry’s body with a well-trained grasp of how joints and pressure points worked. Harry was forced by his twisted elbow to walk away from the scene.
“Why?” Harry cried out. “Why are they dead and not me. Why am I fine?”
“I’d say because you’re lucky,” said Tonks, “but I think you’d probably hit me. You were thrown free from the car upon impact. So was the driver of the other car. Your family… well they didn’t have the luck that you did. I’m sorry, Harry, I really am.”
Harry felt weak and struggled to keep his legs from folding like accordions. “How do you know my name?”
“Paramedics found your driver’s license in your wallet. Would you like me to contact anyone?”
Harry shook his head. “…No. I-I will do it later. I want to see my family. I want them out of there.”
Tonks nodded. “I know you do. They’re working on it. Let’s just get you to the hospital for now. There’s no way to deal with something as terrible as this, so don’t try.”
Any fight Harry might ever have possessed was gone from him now. He allowed the officer to take him by the arm towards the ambulance and he would also let them take him to the hospital too. There was no reason to resist now, no reason to fight… no reason to care. Harry’s life was without purpose and always would be from now on.
As he neared the ambulance, Harry noticed something up ahead. There were two other police officers standing with a weary-looking man. They were breathalysing him. Harry’s own breath caught in his chest and the only way he could let it out again was by talking. “Is that the other driver?”
Tonks seemed to stiffen then and started leading Harry at a slightly different angle, putting distance between them and the other officers. “Yes,” he said. “He says he doesn’t know what happened. He’ll be taken in for questioning once the paramedics clear him.”
“Why are they breathalysing him?”
“Standard procedure,” said Tonks without missing a beat.
Harry nodded and let the officer think he was satisfied with the answer. Really, he was taking one last, long look at the man that had just murdered his family, and committing his face to memory. Harry realised that, in actual fact, his life still did have a purpose: to take the life of the man that took his.
Enjoy what’s left of your life, whoever you are, thought Harry, because I promise that this will be your Final Winter.
THE PEELING OF SAMUEL LLOYD COLLINS
Thursday
My big toenail fell off today. That leaves three on my right foot and two on my left. It stung at first, but now my toe just feels… hot. I’m keeping the nail in an ashtray in the kitchen.
My name is Samuel Lloyd Collins and I suppose, in a way, this is my last will and testament, except I don’t have anybody to leave anything to, so I guess this is really just my last testament. Or maybe writing this is merely the closest thing I have to company.
I don’t have to be alone. I could go next door and take part in one of their endless political debates that echo through the walls and keep me awake at night. Sometimes I think about yelling at them to ‘keep it down’, but what would be the use? Politics are high on everybody’s agenda right now. One would expect them to be.
Everyone has their own theory on how ‘The Peeling’ started, but I personally think it was the Arabs. It’s always the Arabs, isn’t it? Saddam is dead and the Yanks finally got Osama. So what choice did they have left but to go for broke? Everyone assumed their master plan would culminate with a nuclear attack on a major city, but in many ways this virus is worse. We may have snuffed out the leaders, but their passion for killing, it seems, will never die. You cut the head off a chicken and it runs around like a maniac, spraying anyone nearby with blood. That’s what ‘The Peeling’ is: arterial chicken blood spraying us all with its infectious filth. I guess the Arabs won in the end…
I came down with the sickness on Tuesday. Two days ago. I’ve already lost a bit of hair and some skin off my testicles, and you already know about the toenails. Funnily enough, my fingernails are currently unaffected, probably the only reason I’m able to write this. I thought about typing this on the computer, but somehow it felt like a man’s final words should be in ink, don’t you think? Maybe when it comes right down to it, paper is more permanent than a collection of cheap circuits.
My future is laid out for me now. I’ll be dead within a week, give or take a day. The beauty of the Peeling is that it leaves no room for hypothesising. No room for hope. It kills every time, no exceptions. In a way that certainty has allowed me to come to terms and accept my fate. This time next week I will be a bubbling oil-slick of rancid, dissolving flesh. Somehow I’m fine with that.
But I need to know who is responsible for the pain I’m in. I already told you I think it’s the Arabs, but unless I know for sure… Well let’s just say that knowing for definite would bring a certain degree of closure to the situation. Of course, the honourable men and women of the Government’s various agencies are urgently investigating the origin of this disease and those responsible, but as each second passes, Great Britain withers and dies beneath its second great plague. I just hope to be alive when they determine the guilty party.
Already know it was the Arabs, just need to know for sure…
Friday
I woke up this morning stuck to my pillow. Not because I had been drooling in my sleep, but because the skin below my left eye had rotted and fused with the cotton. I had to rip the pillow away and half of my face with it. The resulting meld of infected flesh and sickly white cotton reminded me of a surrealist painting, beautiful in a way. Maybe I’ll have it framed before I die.
What an odd thing to muse upon! It would not surprise me if I have gone quite mad. I’m already starting to feel delightfully delirious (or maybe that’s just the throbbing and burning where my face used to be).
Such good bone structure I was blessed with, but did not know of, until I was today faced with it in the mirror. The bone of my cheek now shows right through, covered only by several, thin slivers of sinewy gristle. I look like the Phantom of the Opera (albeit a grizzlier version). I wonder what part of me will dissolve tomorrow. That’s the fun part of this sickness, I suppose, not knowing which chunk of skin will decompose next. It isn’t like typical flesh-eating diseases; they have a point of infection and usually spread systematically. But The Peeling strikes the body at random, necrotising a man’s feet before popping up a day later and doing the same to his ears. I’ve seen hundreds of case photographs and no two victims follow the same path of infection. The only non-variable: it’s always fatal. No one understands this disease at all…
…and no one can stop it.
I think it’s starting on my chest…
Saturday
I can see my ribs. Two of them, glistening at me like curved piano keys. It’s amusing, in some morbidly fascinating way, to see one’s inner workings. The pain is starting to subside, and thankfully only throbbed for a few hours in the morning, but the cloying odour inside the house is repugnant. Ideally, I would open the curtains and windows, but I don’t wish to be disturbed by the outside world. I would only become resentful of those who still have all of their skin. Besides, it was being around other people that infected me in the first place, sealing my fate, and I hate them for that! But retaining my humanity is all I have left to focus on for now and resentment will only make that task harder. I have decisions ahead of me that should not be made in temper…