The Last Plague (30 page)

     “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.

     “She’s dead,” Joel said.

     “You don’t know that.”

     “Then where is she?”

     “I don’t know. But I know that she’s not dead.”

     “She’s gone.”

     “She might be hiding somewhere else. Somewhere safe. She might be with Catherine at my house.”

     Joel’s tears were drying from the terrible heat. Fire in his eyes. “That was our house. We were supposed to live here, together.”

     “She’s alive,” Frank said.

     “Do you really believe that? How can you believe that?”

     “I know because you and Anya are going to get married. We’ll find her, and we’ll find Catherine, and we’ll find Magnus’s family and we’ll all be safe.”

     Joel’s mouth worked but no words came out. His face looked like stone. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. He was at the point of exhaustion. He watched the flakes of ash dance and form shapes in the air.

     The fire raged.

     Joel wiped his mouth. “I’m ready to lie down. I’m not strong enough. Never was. If Anya is still alive, she’s got a better chance of surviving without me. She’s better off without me. I’m better off dead.”

     Frank slapped him across the face.

     Joel gawped at him.

     “Don’t you ever say that again. You will stay alive and you will survive, Joel. You will survive and keep Anya safe and you will keep her alive. Do you understand me, Joel? Do you fucking understand me?”

     “You really think we’re going to survive, Frank? Even after all we’ve seen? How do you know?”

     “Because I’m your best man and Ralph and Magnus are your ushers. It’s our job to look after you. You’re still the groom. Nothing has changed from the weekend. We will stick together. We will survive.
You
will survive, Joel. Do you believe me?”

     Joel coughed weakly. “I believe you.”

     Frank nodded, pulled Joel to his feet. “Good. Good job, mate.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

Joel barely raised his head to see where he was walking. Ralph stared into the distance, gulping vodka like it was water.

     Magnus wheezed and moaned, holding his shoulder, every breath a sucking croak, wet and throaty and thirsty. Death was like a black dog on his heels. They had bandaged and tended his wound, but a nagging voice told Frank they would have to deal with Magnus eventually. Maybe before night fell. Maybe before Frank managed to summon the will to do it himself. The thought of it hollowed him out, made him feel sick and lost. Despondent. Maybe Ralph would do it; he had the bat.

     Frank looked at Florence. The girl was brave and strong and he admired her for it.

     He envied her for it.

     Frank stopped, looked at the road sign.

     “Home,” he whispered.

* * *

Frank stepped inside his house. It was like coming home from work. But no one came to greet him and there was no smell of cooking food from the kitchen.

     He knew Catherine was gone.

     He stood in the hallway, amongst the gathered mementoes and artefacts of their life together, and breathed in slowly. Where had Catherine gone? Had she been taken? His heart kicked fast in the hollow of his chest as he searched the house. The shadows cast by the grey light gave him the feeling he wasn’t alone. He thought he could hear Catherine singing and wondered if it was her ghost returning to where she shared her life with him.

     The singing faded away. He sat on the edge of their bed, one hand laid upon the mattress, hoping there would be some residual warmth from her body. He said her name. A whisper. It was good to have her name on his lips; his mouth was a perfect fit for her name. His body felt heavy with adrenaline and disappointment, and his lungs were tight and strained from inhaling smoke. His skin was tender from the heat of the fire. He gained comfort from the familiar surroundings. At least there was still comfort left in the world. He looked through Catherine’s wardrobe, touching her clothes, holding them to his face and thinking about her.

     “Where are you?” he asked.

     He looked at the photos in the house. Then he emptied the almost-bare cupboards of the few tins of food remaining. He and Catherine were supposed to have gone grocery shopping today. The food in the fridge-freezer was already going bad; an opened pack of ham was growing stuff upon it.

     Frank locked the door when he left the house. The possibility of never returning burrowed a gaping hole inside him.

     The others were waiting by the road. Joel’s face was full of foolish hope.

     Frank shook his head.

* * *

Magnus’s pace quickened and he wheezed out a moist breath. “Debbie. My boys. I’m almost home.”

     Frank glanced at Ralph, who was watching Magnus. Ralph took a swig of vodka.

     They followed Magnus down the street. Parked cars lined one side of the road. There were a few trees whose forms were perfectly still, as if painted there by an artist’s hand. The breeze had died.

     Magnus stopped on the road and faced his house. Tears on his face. He was slightly hunched, his spine becoming rigid and bent. Trembling limbs. Fever and heat. Glistening skin. His eyes were growing larger, becoming piscine.

     They gathered beside him. Frank put one hand on his arm, and Magnus jumped, as if woken from a daydream. His smile was heartbreaking and defeated. But he was home. The muscles moved under his face. His shoulders seemed thinner and his neck scrawnier. Veins pressed against the skin like they were trying to escape the prison of his body.

     Magnus was steadily collapsing, so slowly that it was impossible to see, so discreet was the plague’s workings within him. He was becoming something else; something that would make the man known as Magnus Heap as simple memory. He would be dust.

     Magnus closed his eyes, and they could be seen dancing behind his eyelids, as if he were dreaming.

     Then he opened his eyes. “They’re inside the house. They’re at home. They’re waiting for me.”

     “How do you know they’re in there?” asked Joel.

     Magnus started towards his house. Frank placed one hand on Magnus’s uninjured shoulder, made him turn around.

     “Are you going in there alone?”

     He nodded. “I have to.”

     “Let me come in with you.”

     Magnus thought about it.

     “For old times’ sake, mate?” said Frank.

     Magnus nodded again. He looked at his friends in turn, offered them all a smile that was like a grimace painted onto a corpse.

     He turned away and stared at his house.

     Frank told Ralph and Joel to stay with Florence. He fell in behind Magnus.

     The darkness within the windows watched them. It was oily and dense, full of unseen eyes.

* * *

The garden was a small jungle. Grass left to grow too long. Weeds were blossoming. There was a deckchair on the lawn, tilting to one side, its metal legs rusting and bent. A deflated football with some of its skin missing. Magnus bent down to pick up something from the grass: a green plastic toy soldier. Magnus put it in his pocket.

     They continued to the front door. Magnus produced his keys from one pocket, fiddled with them in his hands. The clink of metal; his hands were shaking. He went to stick the key in the door but missed the keyhole. Frank offered to take the keys, but Magnus shook his head.

     “No. I have to do this.”

     On the second attempt, Magnus unlocked and opened the door. Frank followed him inside.

     The hallway. A carpeted floor worn from the tread of feet. A small table with a cordless telephone nestled in its cradle. He picked it up, put it to his ear; the phone was dead. To the left, the stairway and its stained steps leading upstairs. Straight ahead was the kitchen, shrouded in dim shadows. To Frank’s right was the living room. The door was closed.

     Magnus headed to the kitchen, treading softly on the carpet and onto the linoleum. Frank followed him, more than willing to let Magnus take the lead.

     There was nobody in the kitchen. The sink was brimming with dirty plates, stained mugs and stagnant water. Forks and spoons and knives encrusted with food and dried fluids formed a mound of skeletal metal upon the worktop.

     The window above the sink showed them the back garden. Out there were the boys’ bicycles and a trampoline. The window was smeared with grime and dirty fingerprints.

     The house stank. When Frank took a deep breath he had to stop himself from gagging.

     He grabbed a serrated bread-knife from the rack. Magnus eyed him, then the knife.

     “Are you gonna kill my family with that?”

     “I never said that. Just in case something happens. We don’t know what’s in here with us.”

     “My family are here.”

     “Where are they?”

     Magnus turned and nodded back the way they had come. “They’re in the living room.”

     When Magnus stepped forwards, Frank retreated from him.

* * *

The Magnus Heap of old was fading. He was becoming something else. He was changing.

     
I’ll become a beautiful butterfly
, he thought, and almost laughed.

     He could hear Debbie’s voice inside his head. No words, just a gentle humming. She sounded happy. But she hadn’t been happy for a long, long time. Not since before the twins were born.

     Magnus placed his right hand on the door handle, turned it slowly and pushed with his leading arm. Frank didn’t move from the doorway. Magnus stepped into the room.

     The sickly-sweet stench of blood and shit hit Magnus.

     The room was dimly-lit. The curtains were pulled shut. Shapes and suggestions lurking and unmoving. The sofa and the two armchairs had been moved against the walls, clearing the centre of the room. The television was lying on its face, dead and useless and smashed. The natural light from the hallway brought a dull definition to the room. Magnus’s eyes adjusted. There were soft things under his feet. Damp raggedy strips of newspaper and a mulch of mushy organic matter covered the floor. One of the boys’ shoes. There were small bones amongst the litter and waste. Animal bones gnawed clean by little teeth to a gleaming shine.

     Something moved on the far side of the room. He didn’t react. Frank was at Magnus’s shoulder, his breathing shallow and tense.

     Magnus’s family was waiting for him.

     His sons, Grant and Adam, were crawling around in the filth, naked and covered in offal and a pale oily substance. They were tragically thin. They moved like animals. Their little faces were like dolls’ faces, puffy and pale and tinged with a red bloom like rouge upon their cheeks. Their eyes shone. Their mouths shifted open, displaying their small teeth, which were like ivory. The boys coiled together, sniffing the air, and they swung their heads towards Magnus and Frank.

     Were they grinning?

     They hissed, and eyed Frank, and made to move towards him, their fingers extended into sharp hooks, their mouths curled back to show the teeth that would sink into his body and rip bits away.

     Magnus stepped in front of Frank, held out his hands.

     The boys halted, hissing. They began to mewl and whimper. They looked at Magnus, tilting their heads to one side. They approached him cautiously, sniffing at him, clicking sounds coming from their throats.

     “It’s okay, boys,” Magnus said. “I won’t hurt you.”

     The boys sniffed at Magnus’s outstretched hands, licking his fingers tentatively, almost affectionately. It tickled. Magnus felt such a swelling of warmth and love for his boys that he nearly burst into tears. He looked down at them and smiled.

     His boys looked up at him. Then they darted away from him, feet scrabbling and squelching on the waste-filled floor.

     Behind them was their mother.

     Magnus felt tears sting his eyes.

     The boys scampered towards Debbie. Her clothes had been removed. She was a writhing mass of blubber and white skin. Her scalp was bare apart from a few wisps of hair. Her neck was a trunk of fat. Her wedding ring had vanished into blubbery fingers, of which the nails were long and dirty. Her legs were covered in lesions and sores and blisters that wept fluid. She was lying on her left side, facing the room, cooing softly as the boys knelt by her side making small yipping noises and patting their excited hands on the floor.

     Debbie’s breasts had sagged and drooped until they resembled empty water bladders. Punctured flaps of skin without a use. Her nipples were sore and red, blooming into leaking pustules. Her face was as he remembered it, save for the dried blood and scraps of meat around her mouth and down her chin. Around her were the scattered remains of four, maybe five, children; their bones stripped clean, yellow-white, and discarded. Leftovers. Mixed in with them were more animal bones and tufts of fur.

     It was a nest.

     Debbie had grown six large udders, which were hanging from her torso, pale and wrinkled above the matted, tangled patch of pubic hair. Her teets were weeping some sort of milk from the bloated tips. Tips that would slip into a mouth quite easily. The milk looked greasy, like warm ejaculate.

     Magnus watched as his boys lowered their heads and started to feed from her udders. They were eager, biting down with their jaws hard enough to make Debbie whimper and moan. She quietened as the boys began to suck. They squirmed and mewled as they fed from their mother, their shrivelled genitals shivering and their mouths working quickly, their tongues lapping at any milk that missed their mouths. They gripped their mother’s grub-like body.