The three men laughed. Joel remained unmoving.
Their laughter cut out. The men looked at the floor, as if ashamed of themselves. To Frank, it felt strange and even offensive, to laugh after what he’d seen today. He took a large swig of his drink. His throat burned. The alcohol hit his bloodstream and his head went a little fuzzy. He welcomed the buzz.
Frank was studying the map. He’d folded it into a small rectangle that showed Southern England. He placed his finger on a spot on the map.
“We’re here,” Frank said. “Slinfold. You see?”
Magnus and Ralph nodded.
Frank ran his finger westwards along the map. “And these are Loxwood, Ansteadbrook, Haslemore, Bordon. Various towns and villages.”
“I wonder what we’ll find in them,” said Magnus. He didn’t look optimistic as he put down his empty glass.
Frank said, “I was supposed to take Florence to her aunt and uncle in Bordon. I promised her.”
“It wasn’t your fault she was taken,” said Ralph.
“I still feel like shit.”
“We all do, mate; it’s the end of the fucking world.”
“She’s gone,” said Magnus. “There’s nothing we can do about that now.”
Frank downed the rest of his glass then looked at Ralph. “Refill, please.”
“Good idea,” Magnus said.
Ralph nodded. He replenished their glasses and his own.
They drank, grimaced at the taste of the whiskey, and then studied the map.
Frank said, “We’ll skirt the northern edge of the South Downs National Park, avoiding Farnham, Basingstoke and Winchester. The next big population centre will be Salisbury.”
Ralph sucked on his teeth. “The army might have razed Salisbury to the ground.”
Magnus looked shocked. “Would the government do that?”
“I don’t think they will,” said Frank. “Guppy told me that the army is regrouping in Salisbury.”
“Why in Salisbury?” asked Ralph.
“Because all the main roads go through there. He also said they were transporting refugees by train out of the city. Salisbury’s important to the government and the army. They won’t want to lose it to the infected.”
“It’s probably a fucking battleground by now.”
“Let’s worry about that when we get there,” said Frank. “We might not even get that far.”
Ralph grunted. “I’m impressed; you sound as pessimistic as me.”
“I’ve had a bad few days,” Frank said without humour. “We all have.” He was struggling to hold it all together, and it wouldn’t take much for him to fall apart. But that was true for all of them, he supposed.
He glanced at Joel and wondered what his friend was thinking.
“We could go around Salisbury,” said Ralph. “Avoid it completely.”
“That’s a possibility, but it would take much longer. I want to get home as soon as possible. And maybe we can catch a ride on a train, if we’re lucky.”
Ralph and Magnus nodded.
Frank folded the map and put it away. “We’ll try to find a car in the morning.”
“Maybe something that has enough petrol to take us further than twenty miles this time,” Magnus said.
Frank grabbed the whiskey bottle and topped us his glass. He noticed Ralph looking at him.
Ralph was studying him silently. There was no aggression or confrontation in Ralph’s face. More like a barely-disguised expression of pity. And concern.
“What’s wrong?” asked Frank.
Ralph’s face softened. He looked away. “Nothing, mate. Don’t hog the whiskey.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Just before midnight Frank was in the kitchen, staring out at the darkness. The clouds had receded; the moon was revealed, stark and clear and pale. Starlit desolation. Planets and stars and all the things in-between. Pulsars and nebulas and moons. Burning constellations. Infinity.
He was looking into forever, and it stretched before him and declared he was as insignificant as one of the dead insects on the windowsill. He rubbed his face and when his hand came away damp he realised he was crying.
Past the back garden and the fields beyond, there were flashes of white light on the horizon.
He listened.
Distant booms and detonations.
“War,” he whispered.
The four men watched from the back garden. They passed the whiskey bottle back and forth until it was dry.
The distant horizon was lit up by tracer rounds and muzzle flashes; the crack and pop of gunfire.
“I watched a documentary last week,” said Ralph. “It was about World War Two. Old footage of battles and night time skirmishes. It was like this.”
“Last week seems like years ago,” said Frank.
“I remember watching the invasion of Iraq,” said Joel. “The night-vision shots of Baghdad being bombed…” His voice trailed off.
Silence fell upon them. Nothing else to say.
Magnus asked, “Do you think we’re winning?”
Frank awoke a few hours later on the living room floor. The others were asleep. He’d dreamt about monsters that wanted to eat him.
There was an approaching sound. He pulled aside the curtain over the living room window and looked onto the street. Darkness. Nothing out there but the other silent houses.
Headlights were coming up the road.
A convoy of civilian vehicles passed through the street. Frank counted them as they went past. Fifteen, in all. Cars, trucks and minibuses full of people. Refugees. Survivors.
He didn’t go outside to stop them; he didn’t want to leave his hiding place.
The convoy passed out of sight.
“Where are you all going?” he whispered.
He went back to sleep.
They left the house at first light. A cold breeze pushed them onward below clouds the colour of concrete and oil smoke.
The crackle of gunfire to the south.
Frank found a battered and ugly Volvo. It took four attempts to start the engine, and when it did it spluttered into a gargled cough of fumes and oil-stink.
Fighter jets sliced the sky overhead.
The men left Slinford and its dead behind. Magnus drove.
Joel seemed to have recovered slightly. He had eaten the remaining four biscuits from the plastic bag. He still looked pale, but that could have been the morning light casting his skin in shades of ivory and chalk.
There were wrecks on the roads. Shattered glass and crumpled metal. Collisions and accidents from days ago, when the outbreak had first hit. Magnus slowed the car to manoeuvre around them, careful not to puncture the tyres on the broken glass that littered the road.
They passed a car transport truck that had ploughed through a wooden fence and into a field, shedding much of its load of brand-new cars, which were now scattered around like a child’s neglected toys. The transport truck was on its side. It would stay there for a long time, maybe years.
They passed a few groups of refugees on the road, but with Ralph’s insistence they ignored their pleas for help. Frank looked back at the people struggling with injuries and children, and felt a stab of guilt. These people, lame and shuffling along the road, would be easy prey for the infected.
There was a silence in the car that Frank didn’t like. He kept thinking of Florence. The shame and guilt he felt for losing her was strong and potent in his blood.
Then he saw something that quickened his heart and turned his mouth dry and dusty.
“Slow down,” he said.
“It’s just another wreck,” said Ralph.
“No, it’s not. Pull over. Now!”
Magnus protested, but stopped the car.