Back through the village. They passed Magnus’s house, and they looked at it one last time, wondering if he was still in there with his family. They passed Frank’s house, and Frank could not help looking at the windows, hoping he’d see Catherine’s face peering out at them. They passed the still-burning devastation that had been Joel’s house, and Joel ignored it with his head bowed.
No one spoke. The men said a silent goodbye to their home village. Frank wondered if they would ever return here and, when or if the time came, he would want to return.
The village was dead and rotting, and the silent houses were nothing more than memorials to the people who once lived here.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
They passed through many more places that were wrecked and spoiled and burnt. Most of them were lifeless, save for the scattered and ragged groups of infected watching from their squalid holes. Some ran at the car as it passed, bolting from doorways and passageways, reaching for the car with fleshy hooks and stained claws. Gibbering and shambling scarecrow-like figures scrambled out of houses painted with splashes of red.
They saw bodies that had been thrown into pits. They saw heaps of corpses in a field, piled high, burnt and blackened and twisted. Hollowed out and jumbled together. Piles of things taken from nightmares.
Amongst the corpse-mounds were abandoned army vehicles.
A few miles on, Ralph stopped the car next to a field covered with stubbly grass pushing from the earth. There were two figures in the field, heading towards them. Madly-gangling silhouettes.
“What are you doing, Ralph?” asked Joel, glancing towards the approaching figures.
Ralph didn’t answer. He stared at them. Every breath he took induced judders in his arms. His face was creased, lilywhite and angry. His eyes were seething moons, bloodshot and framed with shadows the colour of grave dirt. His mouth was a thin and narrow cleft. His temples pulsed. The skin tightened on his face until his cheekbones were pronounced and bulging.
“Ralph,” said Frank. “Ralph, what’re you doing?”
Ralph grabbed his baseball bat and got out. Before Frank could open his door, Ralph had already opened the gate to the field and was stomping towards the figures, his bat swaying in his hands.
“Wait here,” Frank said to Joel and Florence. Then he was out of the car and running after Ralph.
Ralph was almost upon the skittering infected.
Frank broke into a run.
The inhuman, slick-faced mutations growled at Ralph. The first one, a woman who was naked except for a torn t-shirt stretched over warped arms and crooked shoulders, went at Ralph with hands formed into raking talons. She frothed and screamed, her eyes bleeding down her skeletal face.
Ralph swung his bat and hit her on her arms, breaking them with a sickening crack. She howled, but still came towards him, gibbering and crying. He went at her with such intensity and such rage that when he had finished with her, and his bat was dripping with red, she was nothing more than a shattered heap of wet bones upon the dirt.
The other infected, a man with needle-sharp black quills protruding from his back and a damp gurgling in his throat, leapt at Ralph. His face was malformed into a mask that looked like it was made of melted wax. His mouth parted in small gasps in which his tongue slithered through and tasted the sore skin around his lips.
Ralph smashed his head in. His skull bled onto the cold ground. His legs twitched and jerked. Ralph finished him without hesitation and then spat on his corpse.
Ralph turned to Frank and stared at him. Frank took a step back. Ralph’s face was pallid and severe. His eyes bore the look of sickness.
“Are you okay?” Frank kept his voice as low he could.
Ralph exhaled through his mouth. “Am I okay? Good question. I’m fucking dandy, mate; thanks for asking.”
“I’m sorry about your parents.”
“They didn’t deserve to die, Frank.”
“I know.”
“Then why did they?”
“I don’t know.”
Ralph’s eyes reflected the grey world around him. “I had to kill my mum, Frank. She was infected. She killed and partially ate my dad. She had loved my dad. They had loved each other. And I had to fucking kill her like she was a diseased animal.”
“I’m sorry,” Frank said.
“It’s not just my parents; it’s Magnus as well. He’s gone. He’s one of them. What’s happened to the world? What’s happened to us? I want things to go back to what they were like before. Everything’s fucked, mate.”
“Let’s go back to the car,” said Frank.
“I hate them,” said Ralph. “I want to kill them all. I don’t want to stop until I’ve wiped them out.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’ll be dead by the end of the week.”
“Don’t say things like that.”
“It’s true.”
“No, it’s not. I made a promise to take care of Florence.”
Ralph laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Of course, it comes back to the girl.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know what I mean. The way you look at her. She looks like Emily, doesn’t she?”
Frank didn’t look at Ralph. “I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“You think, somehow, that she’s your daughter. I don’t know how. But you’re wrong. She’s not your daughter. Your daughter is dead, Frank.”
“Shut up,” Frank said.
“She’s dead. Emily’s dead, Frank.”
“Shut up.”
“She’s gone. Wake up. You’re a fucking fool.”
Silence. Frank’s hands were shaking. They held eye contact, neither willing to look away first.
Then Ralph lowered his gaze to the ground, shame burning his face.
“Let’s go back to the car,” said Frank.
Ralph nodded. They didn’t talk as they left the field.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Joel was driving the car now and Ralph was sitting in the front seat next to him, staring out at the dull, washed-out world.
They wormed through South Somerset and into Devon. Speckles of rain patted against the windscreen, but the downpour that threatened didn’t appear.
They were fifteen miles from Sidmouth, heading towards the coast. There were gulls drifting lazily in the air. They passed a burnt out truck with charred corpses spilling from its open back. Crumbling remains. A charcoal scarecrow was leaning against the truck, white teeth grinning, tufts of hair jutting from its scalp. Drifts of ash like ghosts.
There were no signs of life along this road. The silence and stillness of the empty earth. It was enough to make Joel’s heart shrivel.
All he could think about was Anya. All he could think about was holding her, kissing her.
They rounded a corner and there was an army Humvee parked across the road, blocking their way. Three soldiers were standing next to it. One soldier held up his hand for Joel to stop. The others raised their rifles.
Joel stopped the car.
“I hope they’re a welcoming party,” said Frank.
The camp had been set up in the fields outside Sidmouth. It was a sprawling, stinking mess of mud, ramshackle tents, open latrines and just under a thousand refugees, according to the soldiers. The military was fighting the infected in the town, mopping up those still infesting the streets and buildings. The soldiers said that the army had incurred heavy losses all over the country and was heavily undermanned here. The remaining soldiers stationed at the camp had been dragged together from the surviving remnants of different units in the area.
The Humvee made its way down the hill towards the camp. The camp filled two fields. Tents in blocks and rows, like the regimental formations. A chain-link metal fence surrounded the entirety of the camp. Just beyond the northern side of the camp was an area of dark grey land. Plumes and drifts of smoke. The soldiers were burning something down there. Flickers of flame.