Red Death Wave: The UK Under Attack

Chapter 1

"Hello? Is someone there?" A voice coming from up ahead makes me freeze. Dread churns in my stomach. While I know that someone from a gang is hardly going to be calling hello like this, I can't shake my cautiousness regarding other people. There's nothing to protect us from the savage side of human nature any more.

Lola looks up at me, her eyes questioning. Her hand feels so small in mine, and I instinctively tighten my fingers around hers.

"Stay behind me," I tell her.

The voice comes again, weaker, more strained. Whoever's calling, they're not far away. I approach the voice, Lola walking behind me, her hands on my hips. It makes it harder for me to move with her clinging onto me like that, but I'll never tell her to let go. It's too easy for people to let go in this world.

Rounding the crumpled bonnet of another car, I finally spot the speaker. It's a woman, sitting in the road next to a battered minivan with all its doors hanging open. She'd holding a small body in her hands, a little girl in a blood-stained dress. Another dead child is crumpled like a broken doll on the road beside her.

"Help me," the woman whispers, stretching out a hand.

But I stay back.

Her lips are swollen and cracked, blood dribbling from her gums. It's almost black against the pallor of her skin. Her eyes are bloodshot, haunted hollows in the ghastly mask of her face.

She has the plague.

The woman's hand hangs in midair, blood caked on the tips of her fingers. "Please help me," she whispers, and more blood dribbles down her lips. "My children..."

Her children are already dead. Maybe she doesn't realise it yet. The Red Death takes the mind as well as the body, turning the human brain into a fevered husk of madness and violence. Whatever the case, we can't help her.

Lola peeps around my hip. "Can we help her, Maddy?"

I put my hand on her shoulder, holding her back. "No, she's sick."

I can't see Lola's mouth behind the rag tied across her face, but I think her lips are trembling. This isn't the first time I've refused to let her help someone she thinks needs it. But Lola doesn't understand. She doesn't understand that if we catch the Red Death we will die, horribly. She can't seem to grasp that this plague is ripping through the world's population with a speed and fatality rate beyond anything we've ever seen before. That's why we're heading towards Gunwharf and the hope of a refugee camp. The rags I've tied around our mouths and noses aren't enough to keep the plague out, not indefinitely. We need help.

The woman tries to climb to her feet, still cradling the body of her child, but her legs give out and she collapses back onto the road. Her knees are cut and bleeding, and I wonder how many times she's tried to get up.

"Come on, Lola," I say, skirting around the woman. She's too weak to crawl after us. I hate myself for leaving her here, unable to get away from the bodies of her children, but there's nothing I can do to help her. And I'm not risking Lola's life on a lost cause.

Lola doesn't say anything as we make our way down the road, but she looks back, her eyes brimming with tears. The woman is crying now, bloody tears that leak down her face. Her cries echo on this desolate stretch of road, populated by the dead.

*

We have to stop twice more before we reach the Portsmouth High Street. Lola complains about being thirsty but there's no water left to give her. Any shops that survived the 2nd Wave have long since been ransacked by desperate survivors. I feed her the last bit of cereal bar from the bottom of the rucksack, ignoring my own hunger pangs.