Plagued (19 page)

The next day, smoke covered the village like an
eerie fog. From somewhere inside the dense grey clouds, moans and maddening
screams got louder and louder. The infected had finally come.

The survivors stayed awake, watching the smoke
rise from the east and listening to the terrifying sounds of the infected as
they followed the smoke trails right to the village. Those inside the Centre
were trapped, like a princess in her tower, and they knew there was a good
chance they would never go outside again.

Something screamed outside the building and
Sarah’s eyes shot open in panic. The first thing she noticed on consciousness
was the burning pain in her throat and ears. She winced as the pain flooded
her, shocking her wide awake. Her shoulder was heavily bruised from the impact
of the shotgun and her collar bone was swollen and purple. Mark was looking down
at her, his blue eyes weary and sore.

“Morning beautiful,” he smiled.

“Is he dead?” she said, wide eyed.

“He’s dead. Don’t worry,” Mark smiled
reassuringly. “You were pretty bad-ass last night. Scared me for a while.” He
chuckled. “Are you okay?”

Sarah smiled in relief and kissed him passionately
on the lips. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “You can stop worrying about me now.” She
fingered the bandage on her throat and winced.

“Never,” he whispered, smiling defiantly.

They got up slowly—nursing their wounds—and went to
see what food was left. The others had spent the morning piling up any
remaining food and water in a small, storage cupboard in the corner of the hall,
under Jamie’s orders. Sarah opened it, while the others watched over her
shoulder.

“What’s the damage, Rambo?” Jamie said, appearing
behind her with a concerned smile.

Sarah turned to him and winced as she moved aside
so he could see for himself. There were only four tins left: one tin of beans
and sausages, a chilli con carne, luncheon meat, and a tin of peach halves in
syrup.

“Fuck,” Jamie muttered.

“Looks like we’re going to have to ration this,
assuming that none of it has gone bad,” Mark said, turning to face the others.

“What about water?” Alan shouted from the back.

Mark turned to Sarah and she peered inside the
cupboard further. She turned back to him and shook her head gloomily. People
muttered amongst themselves anxiously.

“What are we going to do now?” Sarah whispered to him,
and he shrugged in reply.

“Does anyone have any water left? Any at all?” he
shouted around the room.

Some of them shouted back saying they did and Mark
ordered them to pass it to the front for counting. He unscrewed all the small
bottles and tipped the remaining water into a five litre bottle to see how much
was left. It filled it nearly to the top.

“It’s better than nothing at all,” Frank said, appearing
at the side of Jamie. He had dark circles under his eyes.

“It’s still not enough,” Jackie—the lady from the
Post Office said. “We’re each supposed to drink two litres of that a
day.”

“Yeah, but we can survive on less,” Frank replied
quietly.

“A few of us could, yes. But there’s…” she paused
to count the heads in the room, “eighteen
of us here, Frank. We’re not
going to make it very long on that much water. Unless you want to start
drinking what’s left in the toilet.”

Frank sighed in defeat and Jackie patted him on
the back gently. “Thanks for trying though, Frank,” she said.

“So that’s it?” Jamie asked with genuine curiosity.
“Are we fucked then?”

“No, we’ll find some more,” Mark said, as he moved
to Sarah’s side, who was watching the scene in silence. “Duke managed to get
hold of plenty, who knows, some might have survived the fires.”

“I don’t see how we can go outside with the infected
swarming around. Plus we don’t have enough petrol to get us very far,” said Jamie.

“Point taken,” Mark said as the group began to
gather around the fire. “Anyone else got any ideas?”

Sarah sat next to her mother and father as they
threw cardboard onto the fire to keep it going. The fog was so dense that it
seemed to block the morning sunlight from warming up the building. Many of the
residents wore their coats and shivered. 

“Okay, here’s what we know,” Mark addressed the
crowd. “We have a day’s worth of food and water,
if
that. We only have a
small amount of petrol and the streets are swarming with infected. What are our
options?”

A spirited debate commenced, people began voicing
their ideas with growing frustration as each of them were shot down by the
others.

“What if we drive to Barnmouth? It’s not that far
and it’s a much bigger town than Winding,” said Jamie.

“There could be more infected there than there are
here! It’s too dangerous without knowing what we’d be getting ourselves into,”
Alan retorted and some of the older members nodded their agreement.

“What about Winding?” an elderly man in a blue
anorak said. “We might have a better chance there than we do here.”

Mark shook his head. “I’ve been there for months
and there’s nothing left. Every store I went into was empty. The only hope we
have in Winding is my father and—given our fuel situation—I don’t think it
would be wise to risk it, it pains me to say that but right now it’s true.
Barnmouth is a lot closer.”

“Why? I’d have thought you’d want to go to him,”
the elderly man asked.

“Only four of us can fit in this car and we have
one weapon. If we don’t make it back, you’re all sitting ducks and if we don’t
make it to Winding,
we’ll
be sitting ducks,” Mark said. His heart panged
as he thought of his father, the pain from hunger was nothing compared to how
much he missed him.

“There’s always my farm,” Annie said, calmly
picking at one of her fingernails. “It might not be in good knick right now but
at least we’ve got the man power to grow our own food. All we gotta do is
survive the winter. There are things we can grow in the greenhouse until then.”

“That’s a fantastic idea,” Frank said, smiling
kindly at her, “but it’s the
now
that we need to worry about.”

“So that’s it then, we’re all fucked?” a squeaky
voice came from near the windows.

A young man that Sarah knew only from passing,
stood at the window watching the infected outside. His hands were shaking
uncontrollably. He looked—at the most—eighteen or nineteen years old; his face
was dotted with acne. He stood taller than everyone else in the room and was a
little underweight; his fleece jumper hung from his frame.

The infected screamed outside, making the boy jump
nervously. His eyes were wide and skittish and he was breathing quickly. Something
banged on the doors and windows downstairs—as they had been doing for hours—and
the boy jumped away from the window and let out a terrified wail.

“I can’t stand this anymore!” he shrieked.

“Calm down, Stuart,” Alan said quietly from beside
the fire. “They’ll hear you.”

“What does it matter? We’re sitting ducks here!
They’re going to get in eventually! We have to leave!” the boy called Stuart
screamed. Sweat poured from his brow and his head twitched nervously as he
spoke.

“Stuart, take a deep breath and relax,” Mark said,
smiling kindly. “We can’t leave here just yet, not until we’ve got a plan.”

The boy started hyperventilating. Tears rolled
down his cheeks and snot dribbled out of his nose.  “We can’t stay here!” Stuart
screamed pathetically. “
I’m
not staying here to die like a rat in a
cage!”

The others exchanged horrified looks. Most of them
felt the same way as he did, but knew the risks of leaving were worse than
staying put.

“
Calm down
,” Mark purred. “It’s going to be
okay. They’ll get fed up of trying soon and they’ll leave. We just have to ride
this out. Someone will come for us.”

“Are you all insane!?” the boy spat, pacing wildly
now. “No one is coming for us! There’s no one left but us and I’m not staying
here to die with the rest of you idiots!”

Mark opened his mouth to speak but the boy pushed
past him and ran for the door. Mark reached out to grab his arm to stop him but
missed.

Someone called to Stuart and he turned around one
last time. “Fuck you!” he screamed, his eyes wild. “You’re all fucking dead! If
you stay here, you’re all walking dead!” He laughed hysterically as he ran down
the staircase.

“Fuck’s sake!” Mark growled to himself and ran to
the window. “What is he doing?!”

Jamie ran downstairs after Stuart, shouting his
name frantically.

A crowd of people gathered around the window,
watching in morbid fascination.

A few seconds later, Stuart burst through the
front doors of the building. Jamie made a last ditch attempt to grab him but
the boy was too fast. Jamie waited for a few seconds and shouted something to
Stuart with a frustrated look on his face, but he was ignored. Jamie pulled the
doors closed as he saw the number of infected in the fog and ran back up the
stairs to join the rest of the group, who were watching helplessly through the
window. “I tried.”

“We know,” Mark said sombrely, as he looked down
through the window, hand-in-hand with Sarah.

The infected were scattered around the boy,
fighting with each other and engaged in lively ‘conversation’, completely
unaware of his presence. Stuart watched them curiously with his mouth wide
open.

There were five infected altogether; two of them
were hungrily ripping into a dead man on the floor, his purple sores were
evidence that he was once himself infected. One of them—a male with long,
blonde hair and a biker’s jacket—had the dead man’s intestines in his hands and
wrapped them around his neck like a scarf. Blood and brown gunk dripped all
over his tattered clothes and he span around, swinging the guts gaily and
smiling to himself, seemingly pleased with his new attire.

Seeing this, Stuart gagged into his hands.

“Yaaaa!” the biker screamed happily, smearing the
blood all over his face like a mask. He jumped up and down in triumph.

The sight was too much for a shell-shocked Stuart.
In a panic, he changed his mind and turned back around to the front doors. He
pushed the door but it held strong as he began hammering with his fists. “Let
me back in!” Stuart screamed hysterically.

Jamie, turned to run back down, but Mark grabbed
his arm quickly. Jamie looked at him in surprise.

Mark nodded to the window. “You open that door and
they’ll follow him inside. We’ll all be dead.”

“He’s right,” Alan said, looking at Jamie
sympathetically.

Jamie nodded and wiped at his eyes with his arm.
He knew they were right—if the infected noticed there were people inside,
they’d all be doomed. “He’s just a kid.”

The infected heard the boy's screams and turned to
see what was happening. They saw Stuart banging on the door frantically. An
infected boy, no older than Stuart himself watched him with his head cocked to
the side, as if fascinated by the skinny man in front of him. The biker with
the intestine scarf pointed to Stuart and roared angrily. Stuart looked behind
him and let out a high-pitched shriek.

Sarah let out a deep sigh and buried her head in
Mark’s chest.

The group of infected ran for Stuart, screaming
playfully, like children on the playground. He gave up on the door and tried to
slip past them, screaming for help as he ran, but they were too fast. The
biker—who was a large-set man—leaped through the air with a wide smile on his
face and landed right on the boy’s back, knocking him to the ground with a
‘thud’. He lay on top of Stuart, laughing at his horrified squeals and petting
the boy’s hair like he was a pet dog. The other infected joined the biker and
leapt on their victim.

Upstairs, most of the people turned away from the
window, sickened by the sight below. They wretched and cried as Stuart’s agonizing
screams filled the air. Mark stood fast, hoping irrationally that the boy might
somehow crawl out from under them as they bit and clawed at his flesh—but he
didn’t.

As the fog grew denser, the only thing visible was
the bright, red blood that covered his attackers’ bodies. The boy’s desperate
screams turned to gurgles and eventually he fell silent. The four infected
climbed off him and then dragged his body laboriously into the fog.

“He was just a boy,” one of the older women
whimpered.

“We’re all dead, aren’t we?” a man shouted. “He
was right!”

As the villagers began to panic, Sarah thought she
heard a crackling. She stopped in her tracks and listened intently. There was
another crackle, followed by some low mutterings. “Shhh!” she shouted to the
crowd, they didn’t hear her.

Mark noticed Sarah’s expression. “What?”

Sarah hushed him and pointed her hand to her ear
as she listened out for the sound again. Another low crackle followed by a low
grainy voice. It sounded muffled and distant.