Plagued (12 page)

“No! There’s around twenty of us up here, I think.
There were more but....we’ll get to that later. My parents were out of town so
I don’t know what happened to them,” she said, the smile disappearing from her
face. Sarah stroked her arm sympathetically. “But your mum and dad are here!”

Sarah closed her eyes then, relief washing over
her. She swallowed the lump that appeared in her throat as she fought back more
tears.
They’re alive.

“Thank God,” Mark muttered, smiling at Sarah.

“They’re upstairs with the rest. Come on in! Everyone
sleeps in the sports hall now. It’s safer up there than down here,” Emily said,
standing aside so the others could pass through.

They walked into the dark building, it was too
dark to see what state the rooms were in, but the smell of rotten food hung in
the air and flies buzzed around them. Empty tins littered the floor and Sarah
assumed this room was now used as a rubbish dump.
Great deterrent for
unwanted guests.

Emily took the lead with Sarah as they reached the
staircase at the end of the hall, the light from her candle illuminating the
way as they began their ascent. The floor was solid wood and their footsteps
were loud and echoed around the whitewashed walls. They climbed the steps in
silence until they reached a set of double doors and Emily pushed them open,
holding one open for the others.

The room in front of them was large enough to be a
basketball arena and the ceiling was so high that they could only see
blackness. The floor was a hard, smooth wood and it squeaked when you walked
across it, like most sports halls. Candles sat on small tables and chairs that
scattered the room and on the shelves at both ends—they illuminated the room
efficiently enough for Sarah and the rest to make out the dark shapes of people
that lay scattered around the hall floor.

The people were laid in rows on the floor, with
what looked like sports mats underneath as makeshift mattresses. Sleeping bags,
blankets and duvets covered them as they slept. A few people were circled in
the centre of the room, crowded around a fire and the room was filled with the
low chatter of people in hushed conversations. Some of them looked at the
newcomers with mild interest, and their dirtied and exhausted faces shone in
the light.

“My God,” Sarah gasped, trying to find faces she
recognised.

“Yeah, these are all the people we’ve managed to
find so far, all from the village. We were starting to think that everyone on
the outside was…” Emily said, letting the sentence trail off. She walked in
front towards the fire, avoiding the bodies laid around the floor.

Sarah started to recognize some of the faces, and
they looked at her with mild interest as she approached but she was too
desperate to find the faces that belonged to her parents to interact with them
yet.

“We’ve taken to sleeping in the afternoon or in
the morning and most of the men stay awake all night. Just in case. We try to
take it in turns. It’s getting harder since the food ran down. We’re all hungry
and exhausted.”

Sarah heard Emily’s words but her attention was stolen
by the two people crouched over the fire. They sat with their arms around each
other as they spoke to those around them. One was a woman with short brown
hair—with just a sprinkle of grey—and the man next to her had dishevelled
greying-black hair. The woman wore a brown anorak and the man wore a heavy
green jacket. Sarah recognized them instantly. Her heart leapt.

“Mum!” she screamed. “Dad!”

The couple turned around curiously and Sarah saw
their tired and lined faced. As they realised they were looking at their
daughter for the first time in more than half a year, the woman dropped a cup she
was holding and it rolled across the floor, spilling the contents.

“Sarah? Is it Sarah?” Sarah’s mother croaked
emotionally. She reached a quaking hand out to her husband for reassurance.

Sarah’s father grabbed his wife’s hand so tightly
his knuckles went white, and his wife returned the squeeze. “Well, I’ll be
damned,” he said, shaking his head.

Sarah dashed towards them, leaving Mark and Annie
stood watching. Sarah’s father wept to himself as his daughter ran into her
mother’s arms and squeezed her tight.

“I can’t believe it’s you,” her mother said in
between sobs. She turned to her husband, “I told you! I told you she was alive!”

He laughed and wrapped his arms around the two sobbing
women. Sarah reached up and kissed her dad on the cheek, feeling the roughness
of his stubble—she suddenly realised that she had never seen him unshaven
before today.

Her mother looked much the same as she always did;
her features were soft and small and she had the same steel blue eyes as her
daughter. Sarah towered over her and had to lean down to hug her. Her father
towered over them both. With their new smiles, they looked just like she
remembered them—youthful and happy. Her mother wept and laughed at the same
time, grabbing her daughter’s face and checking her over frantically.

“I’m okay, Mum, I’m okay!” Sarah laughed, holding
her father around the waist with one hand.

Sarah’s mum frowned as she checked her daughter’s arms.
“Where are these scars from?” She gasped as she saw the bite mark-shaped pink
scar on her daughter’s upper arm.

“Mum, don’t panic. I’m fine. It’s a very long
story,”
Sarah said. She smiled at her mother as reassuringly as she could through her
exhaustion. “I’ll tell you all about it soon. But I’m okay now.”

“But—” her mother protested.

“Jenny, let her be. She’s obviously had a long
day. For now, just be happy that she’s alive, okay?” her father said, chuckling
a little at his wife’s frown. He looked over her shoulder at Mark and Annie and
smiled warmly at them. “Hello there,” he said, cheerily.

“I’m so sorry, I forgot to introduce you two,”
Sarah said, blushing a little. “This is Mark and Annie, they are my friends.
They helped me get here.”

Sarah’s father offered his hand to Mark and shook
it merrily.

“My name’s Frank and this is my wife Jenny. We
should be thanking you then.” Her father smiled.

“No thanks necessary, sir,” Mark said politely as
Jenny grabbed him in a tight, bear hug. “She can handle herself quite well.”

Her father raised his eyebrow and smirked at his
daughter then turned back to Mark. “You sure we’re talking about the same
Sarah?”

“Frank!” Jenny elbowed him in the ribs and he
laughed.

“Thanks, Dad,” Sarah said sarcastically, her
cheeks glowing. “Annie brought us here, Mum. She lives on the farm near Witches’
Wood. We would never have got here without her.”

Her mother let go of Mark and gave Annie a gentle
hug. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you so much for bringing my daughter home.”

“I thought I recognized you!” Frank said loudly,
interrupting the exchange. “You’re Harry’s wife, aren’t you?”

“Frank? Is that you?” Annie said as she examined
his face. “What are the chances?”

Frank laughed and placed his arm around his wife. “It’s
a small bloody world,” he laughed. “This is Jenny, my wife. Jenny, this is old
Harry’s wife. You know the one who used to sell me the milk?”

Jenny smiled and held Annie’s hand. “It’s so nice
to see someone outside the village alive. We were starting to think we were the
only ones.”

“Is Harry here with you?” Frank asked cheerily,
looking around them.

Annie’s face fell and she shook her head.

Frank understood instantly and gave her a
sympathetic squeeze of her arm. Another friend lost.

“I was alone until these two trouble makers came
along,” Annie said. “Thought I’d come with them and make sure they don’t get
into any more trouble.”

“I bet you’re shattered,” Frank said. “Come on and
sit down. Then you can explain to us how you managed to keep my daughter alive.
She’s the clumsiest person I’ve ever met.”

Mark chuckled and Sarah shot him a look. He held
his hands up apologetically as Frank ushered his daughter, wife, and his new
friends towards the fire—which turned out to be a small barbeque, filled with
burning cardboard and wood. The smell filled the room and reminded Mark of
camping with Simon, in better days.

They sat around the fire and people started to
recognise Sarah. Some young men she knew from the village stood along the back
wall, they shouted to her and waved. One of them was her old friend, Jamie, who
she had grown up with. She blobbed her tongue out to him mischievously and he
returned the gesture.
I’ll come speak to you in a bit,
she mouthed to
him and he gave her the thumbs up sign.

There was her neighbour, Alan, who was sat with
her parents. She saw the woman that ran the post office, the man in charge of
the miner’s welfare, and a few of the children that went to the local primary
school. They slowly gathered around the fire to listen to their conversations,
intrigued by the newcomers.

 Emily, who had taken a backseat to let Sarah and
her parents reunite, came back and sat next to Mark, smiling widely at him. He
smiled back and blushed. Sarah smirked at her and Emily winked.

“Please tell us what happened to you, honey, I’m
dying to know!” her mother said as she sat down next to Frank.

Sarah sighed despairingly at Mark, who sat next to
her. “You can fill in anything that I forget,” she said, nudging him with her
shoulder.

They told their story for the second time that
day.

The small crowd of people turned into a larger one.
Most of the people in the room had gathered around the fire to hear Mark and
Sarah discuss what they had witnessed.

After hearing their story, in complete awe, theories
of what caused the disease became the main topic. Alan thought it was a new
strain of rabies brought on by an over-population of wild animals; an elderly
man thought it was God’s way of telling them he wasn’t happy with the amount of
people playing the XBOX on Sunday instead of going to church; and Frank thought
it was an experiment by the government. Jenny mentioned that she thought it was
a new plague and this got a lot of interest from the group.

A door banged behind them and caught Sarah and
Emily’s attention. They stood up to see who it was, leaving the heated
conversation at the fireplace.

“He’s back then,” Emily muttered quietly as they
saw the figure walking into the room.

Sarah froze as the person walked into the light—it
was a man. He moved slowly towards them, his long leather coat dangling behind
him. He dropped the two bags he was carrying and tins rolled out across the
floor as he saw the woman stood in front of him. His face was as shocked as
hers as they watched each other.

She could see him more clearly now, in the light
from the fire. His dark hair had grown long enough to fall over his ears. His
jaw was dark with stubble and his eyes were black in the darkness. He wore a
black t-shirt and dark jeans, his hiking boots black with dirt. He was
frowning.

“Sarah?”

The room span as Sarah saw Jack for the first
time. She had started to forget his face, now it all came flooding back. The
long nights talking and joking; hiking together in the woods behind Solitude in
the warm summer, the arguments they’d had. Everything. Her eyes flickered with
white specks and her head swam. She tried to speak but her mouth wouldn’t produce
the words—instead, she ran to him as fast as she could.

He opened his arms, shock still written on his
face as she jumped in his arms fiercely and wrapped hers around his neck.

“Sarah!” he muttered into her ear as he held her.

 Hearing his husky voice brought tears to her
eyes. “I knew you were okay! I knew it!” she laughed and hugged him tighter.

“Where were you?” he asked back.

Sarah let go of him and looked at him—his deep
brown eyes darker than she’d ever seen them. His features darkened with stubble
and he looked tired but surprisingly well. His dark hair was tied at the back
into a very small pony tail and he had a small cut across the side of his cheek
that was pink and healing. He looked at her, frowning and she realised he was
waiting for a response.

 “I’ll explain to you later, but I’m okay. I just
needed to find you.”

“I can’t believe it. I never expected to see you
again!” he smiled. “We’ve been holed up in here for months. A few of us tried
to leave town but—well we
can’t
leave town. A group of men have control
over this area and they’re not nice guys. They’ve been siphoning petrol out of
every car they see so they’re pretty mobile. We’re trapped in here.”

He bent down to pick up the cans he’d dropped and
Sarah helped him, putting them all back into the bags. “How did you get here?
Is that your Land Rover out front?”

“I came here from Winding using the back roads,
with Mark,” she motioned towards Mark, who stood watching them cautiously with Emily
persistently trying to get his attention.

Jack glanced coldly towards Mark, who returned the
favour with a small sarcastic smile.

“And the car is Annie’s. She owns a farm in the
woods. There are a
lot
of infected in there,” Sarah continued.

Jack then glanced at Annie and nodded at her half-heartedly.
He turned back to Sarah and smiled warmly as they carried the cans towards the
barbeque.

 “You’re back then?” Emily said and Jack nodded at
her, coldly.

“Why didn’t you mention he was still alive?” Sarah
asked, looking at Emily.

“Sorry,” Emily said sheepishly, “in all the
excitement, I forgot!”

Sarah laughed, satisfied with that and kissed her
friend on the cheek.

“You’ve been gone hours. I don’t know where you
keep finding all this food,” Emily said bluntly to Jack.

“I went to see Duke, he swapped me some alcohol I
found for some food and water,” he said, then turning to Sarah. “They trade
with us from time-to-time.”

“I didn’t think we had any alcohol left to barter
with,” Emily said, eyeing Jack.

 “They took Joe’s girls last time we couldn’t give
them anything for trade. Nothing we can do to stop them, they’re all armed,” Frank
interrupted, from the other side of the fireplace. He gave Jack a quick cold
glance, and Jack lowered his eyes.

Sarah watched this exchange with only mild
curiosity—her father had never thought much of Jack before the infection, so
she wasn’t surprised that nothing had changed.

“He came by a few months ago and introduced
himself to us. At first we thought it was a good arrangement, alcohol from the
pub for food or water. But he’s a bad guy, Sarah—you don’t want to know what
we’ve seen. He noticed we don’t have anything for him anymore, no alcohol or
bedding, so he started taking some of us,” Frank explained.

“He can try to take me, if he likes,” Annie said,
the shotgun back in its rightful place.

Jack smirked at her, eyeing the gun. He knelt down
to place the cans of food next to the fire, and his coat moved, revealing a
black knife handle sticking out of his belt.

Jack stood back up and caught Mark staring at it. He
held out his hand. “Thanks for looking out for her, man. I don’t know what I’d
have done if anything had happened to her,” he smiled at the new guy, but it
didn’t reach his eyes.

Mark shook his hand firmly. “No problem. We had a
ball.”

Sarah smiled to herself uncomfortably, remembering
vividly the night before. She missed the frozen glances between the two men.

“I bet you three are starving! Come on, sit down,
and get something to eat!” Emily piped up, cheerily. She
did
catch the
glances and she sat down next to Mark.

“Not what you were hoping to find here?” Emily asked
quietly, watching Sarah and Jack talk to the others.

 “If I’m honest, I expected him to be dead. I know
that’s a horrible thing to think.”

“I understand. You’ve obviously been through a lot
together.”

“Yeah, you could say that.” He turned to look at
Emily. “Can I ask you a question? Confidentially.”

Emily nodded curiously and moved her head closer
to his.

“Is it just me being overprotective, or is there
something a bit off about him?”

Emily looked towards the ground and took her hand
from Mark’s arm.

Mark frowned. “What is it?” he asked.

Emily sighed, moving her hair behind her ear with
her hand. She looked in Mark’s eyes, her own were filled with apprehension. “Look,
I like you. That’s why I’m going to tell you this, but it’s going to make no
difference to her
,”
she said, nodding towards Sarah affectionately. “She
never listens when it comes to Jack Archer. She never has.”

He nodded for her to continue impatiently.

“Jack’s not what people think he is. He’s not a good
guy
.
The face everyone sees; the happy, polite guy that helps us
survive is really….” she paused thoughtfully and snarled, “a manipulative
bastard.”

 “What has he done, Emily?”

“You care about her, I can see that much. I do
too. But I can’t tell you. Some things are better left unsaid.”

“Why
?
What’s he done that’s so bad?” Mark
pushed.

“I can’t, I’m sorry. Not yet, not on her first day
back. We’ll talk later, I promise. Just let her enjoy tonight, please.”

Mark sighed, defeated.

Across the fire, Jack and Sarah were now sat on
two fishing chairs and Sarah caught him up on what had happened. The only thing
she kept to herself was the time she spent with Mark in the early hours of that
morning. She pushed the thought away.

Jack shot icy glances across the fire towards Mark
every now and again as they talked, and Mark returned them.

As he watched Sarah enjoying Jack’s company, a
knot tied in Mark's stomach. Her face was alight behind the fire, the happiest
he’d seen her since they’d met. She glanced his way every now and then and
smiled at him—her face was strained, he couldn’t tell if it was confusion or
regret.
I’ve lost her
. Watching them together made Mark angry and, he
admitted to himself, jealous.
He doesn’t deserve her.

A thought hit Mark; there was no reason for him to
stay—he’d fulfilled his promise of keeping Sarah safe. She didn’t need him
anymore. The love-making they’d shared that morning was meaningless now that Jack
was alive. The thought hurt Mark deeply but he couldn’t shake it.

Emily was back in a cheerier mood and started
talking to him in her chirpy voice. She seemed to like him. She was a very
sweet girl—beautiful, if Mark was honest with himself. Her brown eyes were
bright and he hadn’t seen her without a cheery smile on her face for longer
than a minute. It was refreshing to him and he couldn’t help but feel happier
around her.

He shared some of his crackers with her and they
ate a small portion each of canned beans. It was only half a can and they
tasted sour and stale but he had been too hungry to care. He wolfed it down and
soon, weariness flowed through his body and he realised just how tired he was.

He put down his empty can and asked Emily where he
could rest for a while. She pointed him to a quiet corner of the room and he
rose to his feet and thanked her. Just as he did so, Emily grabbed his arm and
pulled him towards her.

“Don’t get in his way, Mark,” she whispered.

“What?”

“I mean it. I’ve seen how you look at Sarah, it
doesn’t take a genius to figure out you have feelings for her. But right now,
it would be best if you left them alone.”

“I wasn’t going to get in their way. Honestly, you
don’t have to worry about me.”

“Listen, I’m telling you this because you seem
like a great guy. There’s something about Jack that you don’t know. He’s not—” Emily
paused as though something was on the tip of her tongue, and then sighed. “Like
I said, he’s not a good guy. I didn’t tell Sarah that he was alive because
frankly, I was hoping he wouldn’t come back. I don’t think he’ll let her go
without a fight.”

“I wasn’t going to fight.” Mark said goodnight to
everyone and walked away from the group, settling himself on a sleeping mat in
the corner of the room.

~

Sarah saw Mark get to his feet and tried to excuse
herself to go talk to him, but Jack grabbed her by the arm.

“Can I speak to you for a moment, alone?” Jack asked,
smiling so widely that she saw the filling in his right molar.

Something about Jack’s smiles filled her with a
little apprehension. She looked towards Mark desperately, wanting to talk about
the day’s events but Jack seemed to need her urgently. Unable to say no, she
gave in to him and nodded. She said goodnight to her parents, gave them a hug,
and followed Jack to his makeshift bed.

The smell in this corner of the hall was worse
than in the centre and the smell of sweat and a lingering smell of damp stuck
in her nose. They obviously hadn’t washed for a long time. She sniffed her own
clothes self-consciously as she walked.

Jack lay down on his green, double sleeping bag
and climbed inside. He tapped the space next to him for Sarah to sit down. She
did as she was told and hesitantly sat next to him, becoming inexplicably shy
under his watchful eye—a feeling that felt familiar to her. She shivered,
noticing the temperature had indeed dropped as the light diminished outside.

“Get in here with me, baby. It’s getting cold in
here,” he said gently.

Baby?
Sarah flushed and climbed into the
sleeping bag next to him, their arms touched and she felt her cheeks redden.
Jack looked into her eyes for what seemed like minutes, completely silent with
an expression that was hard to place.

Suddenly, he reached for her face, and Sarah
snapped back to reality. He guided her face gently towards his and she resisted
for a second, feeling uncomfortable with his touch. That confused her. Why
should she react that way? She’d dated him for a long time—she had
loved
him for a long time. Remembering then the loss she had felt without him, she
yielded to him.

They kissed and Jack pulled her body closer to his.
His lips were cool and dry but familiar. The warmth from his body radiated
towards her and she closed her eyes. This was her Jack and she had finally
found him again.

Their kisses became frantic as their need for each
other grew. Their tongues gently massaged each other’s, tasting each other for
the first time in half of a year. Old feelings flooded through Sarah, as she
relived the sensations of his kiss and his touch. “I’ve missed you
so
much,” she whispered, in between kisses.