“I’m fine. Are you alright, Corporal?”
“It’s all falling apart, Frank. Pike was right.”
“Do you have a family? Somewhere to go?”
“I’m leaving in the morning,” Guppy said. “Heading to Lowestoft. I’m divorced, and the ex-missus got custody of our son. I’ve got to see if they’re okay. I’m sorry to leave you and Florence, but I’ve got to see them. The army can’t control this plague and I’m past caring about going AWOL. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Fair enough.”
“You can keep the car. Use it to get to wherever you’re going.”
“I’m going home,” said Frank. “Heading back to Somerset. I live in a small village. My wife’s there…”
“Maybe things are going better back there.”
“Maybe.”
“The last I heard, the army had regrouped at Salisbury. My lieutenant told me that trains are being used to transport survivors to refugee camps along the coast. ”
“Which coast?”
“I don’t know; he didn’t say. Go back to sleep, Frank. You’ll need your energy in the coming days, especially if you want to take care of your daughter. Things will only get worse.”
Guppy turned away and headed to the kitchen.
Frank returned to the armchair, sat down, and closed his eyes. The silence was enough to make him weep.
Things would definitely get worse.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Morning. The sky brightened to a desolate silence. Tendrils of cold crept over Frank’s skin and seeped into his bones. He woke slowly while they ate breakfast. Chocolate biscuits, crisps, and fizzy drinks. Guppy chewed a strip of beef jerky and looked out the kitchen window. Frank was keen to get on the road. He ignored the family photos on the walls. He wanted to go home.
Guppy packed his kit and some food he had scavenged from the cupboards. Frank found a map in a desk drawer and slipped it into his pocket. Guppy gave him a small First Aid kit he’d taken from upstairs.
They walked outside. Frank checked his watch. Almost seven. Dew on the grass.
“I’m sorry to leave,” said Guppy. “But I have to think of my family first.”
“Good luck. It’s a long walk to Lowestoft, Corporal.”
“I don’t doubt that.” They shook hands. The soldier nodded at Florence.
“Best of luck,” Guppy said to Frank. “Look after the girl. Stay safe. Get home.”
“I hope you find your family.”
Guppy set off across the fields. Frank watched him fade into the distance.
Frank carried their supplies to the car. He looked at the sky. The clouds looked fungal and puffy, as if they were about to burst open with spores. But there was sunlight and birdsong, and that was good enough for him.
He hoped they were good omens for the journey ahead.
The car started on the third attempt. It was dying. The roads were quiet and clear.
Frank drove slowly. The events of the last two days stuck in his mind like poison.
Florence was in the back with the bag of supplies. She looked out the windows. Occasionally she would glance at Frank in the rear-view mirror. No words were exchanged.
She looked just like Emily.
There were distant figures in the fields. They could have been mistaken for scarecrows until they moved. Ragged shapes. Their heads turned slowly as they tracked the car.
He tried the radio. There was only white noise. He fiddled with the tuner, listening for a voice. Nothing. He switched it off.
“Where are we going?” Florence asked.
Frank glanced at her reflection. Her face was a blank. The morning’s dull light painted her in grey.
“Somerset.”
“What’s there?”
“My home. My wife.”
“Do you think it’s safe there?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t say it as convincingly as he’d liked.
“You’re not going to hurt me, are you?”
“No. Why would you say that? I’d never hurt you.”
“My mum said that bad men are everywhere.”
“I’m not a bad man. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“I miss my mum and dad.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Look at the people in the field.”
Frank stopped the car.
There were infected in the field; three men and a woman feeding on a dead cow. They stripped the hide from the cow’s body and snaffled the animal’s warm insides from the opening in its stomach. They crawled over the cow, miring themselves in its corpse and its many gaping, sucking wounds.
Florence shifted over to the window, placed a hand against the glass.
One of the men raised his face from the corpse and glared at them. Blood was coated around his mouth. He moved his neck in spasmodic jerking twists. His open mouth gleamed with wet red and threads of viscera.
Frank drove on.
Two miles later the car died. Frank steered it to the side of the road. They gathered their belongings. The air became colder. Frank pulled up his jacket’s collar. He couldn’t see any infected nearby. He held his axe in one hand. Its weight reassured him.
Crows cawed in the next field, picking at the ground, rooting for worms.
“We’ll find another car,” Frank said. “Don’t worry.”
Florence looked at the road. She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear. Her face was glum. Her eyes were dull. She wrapped her arms around herself.
“You okay?”
She nodded. Her mouth was a thin bloodless line. She looked so young. So frail. She was glass.
He would protect her.
She followed him.
Down the road they came to a pile-up. Two cars had crashed into each other. One of the cars was in a ditch; the other was on the road, shattered and torn. Glass, plastic and metal on the road. Some blood. Frank noticed a severed hand, palm turned upwards and fingers curled like a dead spider’s legs. There were mangled bodies in the cars. Florence stared at them and she was silent.
In the car still on the road a man sat behind the steering wheel, his face obliterated and dripping. His lower jaw was gone. His tongue was hanging onto his lap like an unravelled scarf. A woman was wedged in the windscreen, face down on the bonnet. In the back was a little girl with the top of her head missing. She was wearing a purple coat.
Frank stood next to Florence. “It’s okay.”
The woman on the bonnet moved, jerked up her head and glared at them. The violence of her ejection from the seat had split her clothes. Her face was shredded. Her mouth opened slowly and some of her teeth tumbled out like dice. She made a wheezing sound. There was no way to tell if she was infected or not. She reached for them with a bloodied hand until she could reach no further. Her fingers scraped on the bonnet.
She stopped moving. Frank knew she was dead.
Florence was crying.
He put his arm around the girl and they moved on.
“I need to pee,” Florence said.
Frank looked up and down the road. “Okay. Just go in the bushes. But be careful. I’ll watch the road. If you see anything, shout to me, okay?”
She didn’t reply as she vanished behind a hedgerow. Frank looked up at the sky. Grey upon grey. He thought he could feel rain in the air, like a light mist. Moisture on his face.
Minutes passed. He waited. Thunder in the sky.
“Florence? Are you okay?”
No reply.
“Florence?”
No answer.
A sliver of panic in his stomach, like a parasite uncurling itself.
“Florence, is everything alright in there?”
He moved towards the gap in the hedgerow where she had gone. He halted, craned his neck to peer into the field. He called her name again, and only silence followed it. He swallowed.
“Florence!”