The garden was just as it had been when he’d left. Mum liked to plant and to tend the flowerbeds, but Dad was in charge of the lawn and he was proud of it.
Ralph didn’t want to move. He wanted to stay by the gate and hold onto the thought that his parents were alive and uninfected; that they would be inside the house waiting for him. He would walk through the door and they’d be sitting down in the living room, watching one of the old Peter Sellers films they enjoyed so much. Dad would be in his armchair with a cup of tea and a small plate of chocolate digestives. Mum would be sitting on the sofa, sipping Bovril and petting their cat, Gus. They would be in there and they would welcome him home, and Mum would make him a cup of coffee and a bacon sandwich with brown sauce. Even Gus would welcome him home with an uninterested glance and a swish of his tail.
Past Mum’s hideously beige curtains, he could see part of the kitchen and the living room. He looked for movement, but there was none. The red front door didn’t open for him. No welcome for the returning son.
This house was ingrained in his memory. This house where he lived; where he grew up. This house where his childhood memories were made and treasured.
Ralph opened the gate and then walked up the garden path. He stopped at the front door, laid one hand upon it. He turned the handle and the door opened inwards. A breath of old air met him.
He stepped into the house. An oppressive silence, like a break between screams. He moved slowly into the living room. Two empty armchairs and two empty mugs. The television was dead. Old photos in silver frames. A four-day-old newspaper on the floor. Shelves of autobiographies and history books. His father’s slippers next to the fireplace.
French windows looked out onto the back garden. He remembered playing football with Dad out there when he was a boy. There was nobody out there now. He wondered where the cat was. He checked every downstairs room but couldn’t find his parents.
He trod lightly on the carpeted stairway. He reached the landing and paused outside his parents’ bedroom. A basket of dirty laundry and a cheap painting on the wall. The door was closed. He didn’t want to enter. He listened for any sound and was disappointed with silence. He steeled himself for a terrible sight. He opened the door. The smell of rot greeted him.
I hope you’re both dead…
His father was face down on the bed. He’d been partially eaten and his spine was exposed, dull white nubs of bone showing through yellow fat and the red flesh of his back. The back of his neck had been gnawed away. His father’s killer had ripped through his clothes to get into him. Bare feet and callouses. Grimy soles. The wonky big toe on his right foot. Long toenails; Mum had always moaned at Dad to cut them more often.
Both bedside lamps and the pillows were dotted with dried blood.
His father couldn’t be dead. A part of Ralph refused to believe it. He didn’t want to turn his father over and see his father’s face. He didn’t want to see the last expression his father wore as he died.
Ralph stared at the corpse until a sound from the bathroom stirred him.
He found his mother lying in the bath. She was covered in blood. Her eyes were dark pools and she hissed at Ralph through a red slash of a mouth.
Ralph’s heart felt like a bag of stones. He held his ground, feet shifting on the linoleum floor.
“Mum,” he whispered. “Mum, it’s me. Ralph.”
She was naked. Her fingers were elongated and tipped with onyx claws. Her right arm was hanging over the side of the bath, dripping blood onto the floor. His skin was pale and mottled with grey. He felt embarrassed at the sight of her sagging breasts and wrinkled stomach.
Shit, piss and blood filled the toilet.
His mother reached for him with her right hand.
Ralph shrank away from her.
His mother let out a plaintive mewl. She was one of them now. And in a second of pure white-hot agony, he realised his mother was gone forever.
He walked to his bedroom and reached under his bed, groping amongst the porn magazines and old James Herbert and Shaun Hutson paperbacks. He pulled out the baseball bat and gripped it in both hands. The base of the handle was wrapped in duct tape for better grip. His initials were carved into the wood. He returned to the bathroom, every bit of him screaming to run away, but he wouldn’t. He had a job to do.
His mother waited for him. She reached out to him again, and there was something like recognition in her dark eyes as Ralph stood over her. Her mouth opened; her tongue emerged like a gleaming serpent from a cave, picking scales of dry blood from her chin.
“I’m sorry, Mum,” he said. “Thank you for everything. I love you, Mum.”
His mother’s face was pathetic and full of woe. Maybe she whimpered. Maybe she said his name.
He brought the bat down on her head. His mother’s skull gave no resistance and her body jerked as her nerve endings flared for one last time. A soft moan left her mouth. A sigh of relief.
Ralph finished her without hesitation, forcing all his strength into the final blow. He stared at her body. This broken, diseased thing that had once been his mother. He pulled on a pair of gloves, carried her to the bedroom and laid her down next to Dad.
Ralph covered them with a blanket and said goodbye.
After grabbing some bandages, gauze and painkillers for Magnus, he raided the alcohol cupboard for the last bottle of vodka, then pulled a photo of his parents from its frame and put it in his pocket. He guzzled a few mouthfuls of vodka, savouring the burn in his chest. He punched himself until his face was sore and tender, and he enjoyed the pain because pain was life and life was pain, and one could not be without the other.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
They walked past places remembered from days gone by. They checked the church and found it empty. They found a man lying by a woman’s grave, his throat cut by his own hand. There was a photo by his body. Frank didn’t look at it for too long.
The pub, The Duke of York, was deserted. There were smashed glasses and bottles on the floor, upturned tables and chairs. Blood on the floor and on the bar, but no bodies. Frank stared at a human ear left on the bar, like an offering for them. He covered it with a towel used to clean up drink spillage.
They arrived at the street where Joel and Anya shared a semi-detached house. Fallen leaves flittered upon the road. A plastic bag coasted past. The breeze was cold and intrusive, reaching inside Frank’s collar and stroking the back of his neck.
Smoke dirtied the air, made it thick and acrid.
Joel’s house was burning, along with the house next to it. Joel ran down the street and fell to his knees before the raging fire. When the others caught up with him, he was crying and biting down on his left wrist. Frank crouched next to Joel, grimacing at the heat pressing against his skin. The fire’s voice was deep and growling. Flames leapt from the shattered windows. The roof had collapsed; the chimney had toppled and broken on the road. There would be nothing left, save for ash and carbon, once the fire died. The fire heated the air until Frank could feel the back of his throat begin to dry and itch.
“How did it start?” asked Joel. “Why did this happen?”
The house next door was almost fully consumed by the fire. The walls had fallen and the garden was aflame.
Things popped and smashed inside Joel’s house as the flames claimed them. If anyone was in there they were dead. Smoke streamed upwards, a trail of volcanic grey.
“Joel,” Frank said.
Joel took his wrist from his mouth; imprints from his teeth marked his skin. His eyes were full of shock and incredulity. His mouth moved silently. A fleck of ash landed on his cheek.