The man vanished beneath the monster. His muffled cries could be heard from underneath the creature’s pulsing flesh.
The creature seemed to swell and enlarge even more until it was the size of a large car. The man screamed once as the creature’s mass made several violent shudders, and there was a sucking, scouring sound. Slopping wetness, like a pig slurping from a bucket.
Ralph aimed the flare gun at the pulsing thing. His arm was steady. He didn’t fire. He lowered the gun and shook his head. No need in wasting a flare.
He watched in awe, with something like admiration.
The creature made a moaning, pleasurable sound. Ralph realised he was fascinated by the creature…and the other creatures newly-born to the land. He liked to watch nature documentaries, and was fascinated by nature’s cruelty; lions hunting gazelles and zebras; crocodiles lunging out of rivers to drag wildebeest into the water; eagles snatching monkeys from tree branches and carrying them off to their nests for their young. The dance between predator and prey.
“Amazing,” he said.
The creature looked at Ralph with its many yellow eyes. Then it looked at the flare gun in his hand. It feared neither.
He respected them, the infected; the monsters, the abominations. They held no pretensions. They didn’t hide anything. No delusions about what they were, unlike people. They were honest and they were truthful. Honest in their intentions to ingest or infect you. They were what they were, and nothing else. No lies, dishonesty, betrayal, hatred or ignorance.
No prejudice.
No evil.
No humanity.
The creature’s protean mass began to diminish, deflating itself until it returned to its original size. The pulsing stopped, its eyes closed and its tendrils lowered to become slack and idle upon its tumorous mass.
It had fed well, and now it would sleep.
There was a cry of pain from beyond the creature.
“Florence,” said Frank.
They left the creature to its gluttonous slumber and staggered down the street.
They found Florence standing over Bertram’s corpse slumped against a wall. Bertram’s face was raw and wet, mutilated by a sharp edge. His right eye had been cut away. His throat had been slashed. His chest was a network of red wounds.
Florence turned to the men. She was holding Bertram’s machete. The blade dripped red into a pool by her feet. Blood on her face and her arms. She was shaking, but seemed unhurt.
Frank’s eyes met with hers. They were shadowed with dull patches and appeared too large for her small face.
“He tried to take me away,” said Florence. “He tried to touch me, so I took his knife and I…”
“It’s okay. Everything’s alright.” Frank knelt beside her, looked into her face. He forced a smile, relief and horror flooding through him. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
She shook her head. She radiated heat.
“Did they do anything to you? Anything bad?”
She knew what he meant. Again, she shook her head.
Frank took the machete from her and dropped it on the ground. Behind him, the others were staring at Florence, their mouths open. They said nothing.
“You came back for me,” she said.
“I would never leave you.”
Florence began to cry, and she wrapped her arms around Frank’s neck and hugged him, staining him with Bertram’s blood.
He didn’t care. He couldn’t stop smiling.
CHAPTER FIFTY
They kept to the back roads. Rain gathered in the heavy skies. The wind had picked up. Ralph stared out the window at a lone figure in the fields they passed. It was a naked man, his hands clasped over his chest like he was uttering a plea upon the sodden earth. The man’s stomach was distended and rippling; suddenly, it split into a vertical slavering mouth lined with human teeth.
The man fell to his knees.
Ralph looked away.
The girl was sitting between Ralph and Frank on the backseat. She was resting her head on Frank’s chest; he had his arm around her. He had cleaned her face of Bertram’s blood.
Ralph had never been good with kids; they were just more annoying versions of adults. He could tolerate them, but barely.
Florence had clung to Frank ever since they’d left Loxwood. She had eyed Ralph, Magnus and Joel with suspicion, but Frank had convinced her that they were the good guys, not bad men like those who had taken her. Frank had told her that they were going to look after her and keep her safe from the monsters.
Ralph remembered the girl standing over the man she had killed. He wasn’t shocked anymore. He admired her. It required strength of will to take a life.
Frank caught Ralph’s eye and nodded. Ralph could tell that Frank cared deeply for the girl. They shared something. A bond. The girl’s resemblance to Frank’s daughter Emily was uncanny. Frank hadn’t mentioned that detail before, and because Florence and Emily were so similar, Ralph was concerned about how his friend was reacting to her presence. He had seen the change in Frank even before they had found Florence in Loxwood.
Emily had died two years ago. They had all mourned her. A child’s funeral was possibly the most heart-breaking thing in the world. Ralph had watched Frank and Catherine grieve and suffer, and eventually heal, but not fully, never fully. But they had recovered.
Ralph looked at Frank.
Frank was smiling.
Roads strewn with wrecks and human remains. A milk tanker was resting on its side across the width of one road. Milk had leaked to create a congealed white mud around the stricken vehicle. They had to reverse and take a side road that was no more than a muddy lane littered with broken tree branches and potholes.
A house was burning and there were people standing around it, staring at the flames.
The sky turned black for a few hours and when it rained it was like something unworldly. Something that could have been magnificent in a different time.
They passed lone travellers hitchhiking. People packed into cars, just like they were. Riders on motorbikes and bicycles.
They passed Haslemere, Hindhead, and Liphook. Dead places.
Magnus wanted to forget what he witnessed there. A dark mass birthed inside him and festered. It stayed there like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He wanted to forget a lot of things. He wanted to go home.
When he saw a dead child face down by the road, he felt like crying. He kept his hands gripped onto the steering wheel so he couldn’t see how badly they were shaking.
Great flocks of the infected stained the land, hunting the refugees. Monsters and men. Dead livestock littered the fields. Bodies of men, women and children by the roadside.
They passed a crashed Boeing airliner in a field of rapeseed. A torn fuselage among the garish yellow. Scattered wreckage. Rows of seats with their occupants still seated in them. Handbags and shoes. Spilled suitcases. Discarded clothes fluttering on fences and hanging on tree branches. Sheets of paper and Styrofoam cups drifted in the wind. More bodies pulverised and shredded; some had come to rest hundreds of yards from the airliner. A severed human head was on the road. The infected picked through the remains, scavenging carrion.
“My God,” said Joel.
Magnus was speechless.
“Don’t look,” Frank told Florence.
She asked, “Are we nearly in Bordon?”
“Yes. Almost there.”