The creature plucked the man from his seat and pulled him outside to be dragged away.
The men regarded one another, and they were silent.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
They stayed on the bus. It was quiet outside.
“I thought you were ghosts,” said Frank. “I thought you were all dead. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to see you all.”
There had been much back-slapping and man-hugs earlier. The camaraderie was a lift to his spirits. Frank felt some hope, for the first time in a while.
Frank checked for his inhaler in his pocket and was relieved that it hadn’t fallen out. Joel’s wallet was there too. He handed over the wallet. Joel nodded tersely and thanked him.
Frank thought about Florence. He tried not to think about what those men would do to her. Best not to linger on it. Madness waited on that path.
“What happened to you, lads?” Frank asked.
“What happened to you?” said Ralph, his face serious. Freckles of dried blood on his face. “You abandoned us; left us in that house with freaks in the attic.”
“You shouldn’t have left us,” said Joel.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said.
Magnus looked at him. “What happened?”
Frank recounted the events up to when they found him on the pavement outside. They were silent as he told them of the last two days; about finding Florence and rescuing her from Wishford.
“Fucking hell,” said Magnus. “This is insane.”
“That poor girl,” Ralph muttered. “She survives all of that carnage just to be abducted by a few perverts in a van.”
“Monsters, everywhere,” Magnus said.
“A plague,” said Joel. “It’s almost Biblical.”
“Let’s not start that nonsense,” said Ralph.
Magnus cleaned his glasses. “A virus.”
“How is it transmitted?” asked Joel. “By bites? By blood and saliva?”
“If it’s airborne we’re all fucked,” Magnus said.
Ralph scratched himself. “You’re lucky to be alive, Frank. I wish you didn’t try to save every person who needs help. We need to look after ourselves, not other people. I told you that before you left us. I wish you would listen to me.”
“Yes, I know, Ralph. But you don’t know what I’ve been through. You don’t know what I’ve seen. I had to kill a man who was eating his dead family. I’ve watched people get slaughtered by monsters. Florence lost her parents to the infected, saw them die, so I had to take care of her. I tried to protect her but I failed. Don’t talk down to me, Ralph. We’ve all made bad decisions and done things in the last day that we regret, so why don’t you just back off for once?”
Ralph held eye contact with him. “I’m sorry, Frank. You’ve got some bollocks, I’ll give you that. I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Frank said. “Doesn’t matter now.”
“Kiss and make up, lads,” said Magnus. He grinned.
Frank shook his head.
Ralph grunted, looked away. He was holding the flare gun Frank had found.
“Be careful with that,” said Frank.
Ralph tapped the flare gun against his forehead and winked.
Frank appraised his friends. Studied the small details that told of what had happened to them. They looked like he felt, and he felt like sun-fried shit in a shoebox. They were exhausted and stressed. Hunted and haunted. Pale faces and red-rimmed eyes. He wondered what terrible things they had seen. Ralph appeared to be coping better than Joel and Magnus, although there were dark bruises under his eyes, and his thickening beard made his face seem heavy and spade-like. There was a plain white plastic bag on his lap. The bag bulged.
“What’s in the bag?” asked Frank.
Ralph put the bag on the floor. “Not much. Things we’ve scavenged on the way here. A torch, a bottle of water, a packet of painkillers, a packet of biscuits…”
“Better than nothing, I suppose.”
“Yeah,” Ralph said.
Joel was rubbing the left side of his jaw, a nervous tic that Frank recognised. There was something in his other hand, which was clenched into a fist. He was taking great pains to keep it hidden.
Magnus was trembling and blinking his eyes. He ran his hands over his shaven head. He looked ready to drop. His jacket was torn and there were stains on his trousers. Frank tried not to guess what they were.
In the distance, something roared.
Night was coming.
Ralph shut the doors.
Time to hide when the darkness arrived.
“We managed to get out of Wishford,” said Ralph. He was looking at Frank, his face caught in shadow as the light faded. He told Frank about the attack on the rescue centre.
“We were lucky,” said Magnus.
“How did you escape?” Frank was sitting on a seat, sipping from a water bottle.
“We hid in the kitchen, in a big cupboard where they stored food. We barricaded the door. The infected didn’t find us. We waited, listening to the screams. Then everything went silent. Eventually we crept out. There were only a few infected remaining at the school; they must have left in search of more victims. We managed to sneak outside and down the street. We were lucky to get out of the town alive. People were fleeing the town. We were running across the fields outside of Horsham when the bombs hit. Still can’t believe they firebombed a town.”
“Things are bad, if that’s the government’s solution to the plague,” said Joel.
“But to firebomb a town on British soil? This isn’t the fucking Blitz,” said Magnus.
“There wasn’t a choice,” said Frank. “The town was overrun. The infected were everywhere. I saw them. We all did.”
Magnus cleared his throat. “And that enormous thing in the sky,” he said. “We all saw it.”
“What do you think it was?”
“It was alive. It wasn’t a ship or a craft. It was organic.”
“We don’t know that,” said Ralph. “It could have been anything.”
Joel said, “Yeah, Ralph’s right.”
“It was like a god,” muttered Magnus.
“It can’t be a god,” said Joel. He went to say something else, but stopped himself. He shook his head. He looked sick.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Ralph. “We have to worry about the things down here with us.”
A few moments of silence. Almost full dark outside. They were four huddled darkening forms amongst the stinking seats.
“It’s the entire country, isn’t it?” said Joel. “It’s everywhere.”
“Seems that way, from what we’ve heard,” said Ralph.
“You think it’s global?” Magnus’s voice was hoarse.
No one answered at first. Then Ralph spoke.
“That doesn’t concern us at the moment, lads. We have to get home before we start worrying about the rest of the world. They don’t care about us. Fuck them, for now. This is England.”
“He’s xenophobic and borderline racist,” said Joel. “But he’s right.”
“Suck my balls,” Ralph said. “But thanks for agreeing with me.”
“I’m sorry about Florence,” Joel said to Frank. “Even when everything’s falling apart, people are still bastards.”
“People are always bastards,” Ralph said. “Maybe even more so when things are bad.”
Magnus was nodding.
“Wish we could catch the men that took her,” said Ralph. “Fuck knows what they’ll do to her. I’d cut off their bollocks if I got my hands on them.”
“She’s gone,” said Frank. His acceptance shamed him. He had lost Florence just like he had lost his daughter. He should be searching for her. But it was dark, the men would be far away by now, and Frank was terrified of the things lurking in the dark.