Then Joel was running back to them, kicking his legs through the water. He scooped her up, but she resisted him, flailing her arms.
Agony bolted through Frank’s body. The wound on his stomach was deep. He was losing blood steadily. Ralph was beside him. He looked dazed and pale. There was a red slash on his neck; the edges of the wound were already turning black.
They looked at each other. They both understood. Then they turned to Joel and Florence.
Joel was crying. He nodded.
“Get out of here,” said Ralph.
Joel said nothing. Florence had stopped fighting him. She was shivering and soaking wet, her red hair plastered to her head.
“I can’t leave you both here,” Joel said. “You can’t stay here.”
Ralph raised his pistol, aimed it at Joel. “Go.”
“Get Florence off the beach,” said Frank. “Get to Anya.”
Joel looked at them, his face slack and unbelieving and his mouth open. He glanced at the pistol.
Ralph’s arm was shaking. “You have to go, mate. No time.”
Joel nodded, turned and ran back to the craft with Florence.
Frank watched them climb aboard the craft. Anya took hold of the girl and hugged her. They turned to Frank and Ralph.
Frank waved. He had done all he could. He had done his best. They would live. They would survive.
Ralph turned back to the pursuing infected. He fired the pistol until it clicked empty. One infected man remained from the pack. Ralph let the man come to him. Ralph pistol-whipped the man in the face until he went down, and then dropped the pistol so he could gouge out the man’s eyes with his thumbs. The deformed man raked at Ralph’s body with hooked claws until he went limp in Ralph’s hands and floated away, face-down and half-submerged in the water.
Frank went to Ralph and helped him to his feet in the surf. Ralph’s hands were raw and weeping, the skin torn into maggot-white flaps and clefts. He was bleeding into the water.
They both turned to watch the last of the landing craft leave.
They staggered onto the beach, supporting each other. Both of them were losing blood. The monsters left them alone.
Ralph nodded and tried to smile. “I can feel it inside me. I don’t feel like myself.”
“Me neither,” said Frank.
The cries of the dying echoed across the blood-soaked beach. Offal and bones were scattered. They walked past a little girl peeling a man’s lips from his mouth. She paused to grin at them.
Groups of feeding infected had gathered along the beach, snaffling up piles of slick remains. They fed slowly and calmly. There was an infected man in a straitjacket, stumbling around in circles, his face a torn ruin. Black tentacles had burst through the straitjacket and were wavering around him. He was laughing.
There were many deformities and mutations. Faces with too many eyes. Bony, pale figures stumbling around clutching pieces of sopping flesh. Infected meat that glistened like succulent jelly, quivering and dividing and forming pincers, vermiform tentacles and black maws. Vaginal mouths parted to show such sharp teeth. Bodies were slipped free from their skin and consumed by ravenous appetites.
The beach was full of meat.
Frank and Ralph watched them feed. They made no attempt to harm the infected. They turned back to the sea and the ships out there waiting for the evacuated refugees. The lucky ones.
“I’m glad they made it,” said Frank.
“Joel and Anya will take care of Florence,” Ralph said. “You did the right thing, mate. You saved the little girl, and you got us here. You gave us a chance of survival.”
Frank didn’t answer. He looked out towards the ships, and he wondered where they would go.
Maybe they were just delaying the inevitable.
“Extinction level event,” said Ralph, as though he had heard Frank’s thoughts.
Frank nodded.
There were flashes of light from the ships. He didn’t realise what this meant until the shells detonated around them. The world became a roaring of explosions and blinding light. The groups of feeding infected were smashed into wet mulch. The naval guns hammered at the shore, sending up great billows of sand, scarring the ground and obliterating those still on the beach. Shrapnel flew, decapitating the infected and shredding bodies into pulp. No sound but the boom of the guns and the shells hitting the ground. Frank couldn’t hear himself scream. He and Ralph tried to stagger from the beach. A shell landed nearby, engulfing them in plumes of sand and dirt. The ground shook. They fell down. The scream of the shells overhead. Boom and crash. The earth shaking, coming apart, tearing and ripping. The smell of fire and burnt meat.
Frank looked up at the darkening sky, the taste of blood in his mouth. He felt the pain of the infected as they were destroyed.
The screaming world became oblivion.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE
The landing craft moved towards the waiting ships. The escaped refugees were silent, vacant eyed and exhausted. Florence was sitting with her head on Anya’s chest while Anya stroked her hair and hushed whispered words of comfort to her. Joel rested his arms on the side of the craft, staring at the beach they had escaped. The horizon was stained with smoke. The beach was a ruin of scars and craters. Great Britain was gone. England was gone. He would never return.
What about Europe and the rest of the world?
Joel wiped his eyes. “We made it.”
“Not all of us,” said Florence.
“I hope Ralph and Frank died quickly,” Joel said. “I hope they’re not alive and infected.”
“Nobody could’ve survived on the beach,” said Anya.
Joel took out his crucifix and extended his arm until his hand was over the side. The sea was protean and tempting, abyssal and dark. He lowered the crucifix towards the water.
Joel’s hand flinched.
The waves crashed.
EPILOGUE
Frank awoke and watched the sky until his eyes stung. He was tired and his bones were heavy.
He sat up. His lungs ached with a cancerous pain. His inhaler was gone. He spat on the sand. His spit was bloody and glistening. His body was intact. The wound in his stomach itched and burned. He’d lost a lot of blood.
He was dying, and he knew this.
He looked around. Human remains littered the beach. The ground had been churned and torn. Craters and gouges in the earth.
There was something beside him.
Ralph.
“I’m sorry, mate,” said Frank. His voice was weak and slurred.
Ralph had been spread around. Shrapnel had ripped most of him into sloppy little bits. The rest of him was a smear upon the sand.
Frank stood over his Ralph’s remains and said a silent farewell to his friend. Then he turned towards the horizon. The ships were gone. There was only the sea. The waves were growing tall and violent.
There was a storm coming.
He hoped the storm wiped the land clean.
Frank walked from the beach, heading inland. His heartbeat was slow and loud. He stumbled on rubbery legs. Sweat beaded on his skin. He passed through Sidmouth. The infected he encountered left him alone. He was one of them, of course. His body, even as it was weakening and dying, was changing. His skin was getting paler, almost translucent. The cries of the gulls were the screams of tortured men.
He thought of Florence, and was grateful she had escaped. She was safe. Joel and Anya were safe. It was some consolation.
He realised how stupid he’d been to think Florence was his daughter. To think she was Emily.
She could have been his daughter, in a different life.
But he was only a man and there was only one life. And if he lived, he would become something else. He walked back to the camp, thinking of Catherine. He would be with her again. He would find her.