Abide with Me, 3/6
Part 2
Merlin was alone.
The girls-they were gone. He didn't know where. He'd seen them, had seen how they left him but that was so long ago and he couldn't remember. He saw flashes instead: of their faces, smiling and laughing, stark with fear, screaming without a sound. He saw his mother laid out on her bed, rotted away to a skeleton. The skull had the same grin she used to have when she teased him and ruffled his hair.
Arthur was missing, and Merlin was looking for him. He'd even lost his cricket bat. He looked down at his hands and he was holding one of the shotguns. Was it loaded? How did you check if it was loaded? He tried to hold it up to look but it wasn't a shotgun, it was a shopping trolley with a wobbly wheel, the bottom lined with carrier bags and Terry's Chocolate Oranges. And where had all the blood come from? It was everywhere, and all over Merlin's dirty hands and torn clothing. He pushed the hobbled trolley along, looking for Arthur. Merlin didn't want the bloody sweets; they were Arthur's.
But where had Arthur gone? He'd left. Merlin was all alone and now there was that horrible screeching and wailing and all he had was a fucking shopping trolley and he was about to die horribly, or something worse.
The Infected screamed some more and they were saying his name. This was death, surely, when your killers knew your name and the sound of it ripped impossibly from their ravaged throats.
“Merlin!”
Merlin shut his eyes against the onslaught and then blinked, because he was lying on the ground in a tangle of blankets and Arthur was nudging at him with his foot.
“I-what?” he managed, struggling upright and yanking blankets savagely from under his legs.
“Beauty sleep is over, Princess; time to move on.” Arthur smirked down at him infuriatingly.
“Yeah... alright.” Merlin's head was full of cotton wool, but he gave it another moment and then the world began to make enough sense for him to get up, fold up his makeshift bed and stuff it in the back of the car. Everyone else was awake, especially Arthur, who'd taken the last watch after staying up with Merlin and still looked far too energetic for the early hour, the prat.
Merlin got the front passenger seat and saw that Arthur had finally wrested the keys from Morgana, who had hauled a blanket into the back seat to wad up as a pillow.
“No more beauty sleep for you, either, Morgana,” Arthur said into the mirror as he started the engine. “It can only do so much.”
She gave him the finger. Arthur laughed and then they were on their way, back onto the M5 and then onwards to Devon, for lack of a better plan.
Merlin had never been on a road trip of any kind, not having had any friends with cars before, but as the morning faded to afternoon and they drove southwest under gradually thinning clouds, trading easy banter and stopping for breaks in random, green meadows, he could almost imagine that this was what it would feel like. Anyone would think they were all lifelong friends, the way they were getting on; the girls laughed and joked with the boys as they played some unfathomable card game across the back seats and Arthur threw back witty retorts and pointed out interesting scenery as Merlin fiddled with the radio, listening to the static. Except for the fact that they seemed the last ones left in the world, he could almost forget, in these moments, that they were living in a Stephen King novel.
“Merlin,” Arthur said, in that particular way that had already been labelled as his exasperated with Merlin tone, “why do you insist on playing with the sodding radio? Are you hoping there's a DJ somewhere in the country, holed up with his Clash collection and playing at pirate radio?”
Merlin shrugged, still twiddling the dial and keeping an ear on the endless white noise. “You never know,” he replied. “Although I'm not much of a Clash fan. D'you think this DJ would take requests?”
Arthur chose not to dignify him with a response, possibly wisely. Merlin switched to the AM band. Hang on. Was that...?
He cranked up the volume until the hiss and pop of static tickled his eardrums, ignoring the chorus of protests that sprang up and slapping Arthur's hand away from the power button. “Shut up,” he said, turning the tuner again very lightly.
And suddenly, through the hissing, came a man's voice.
“--st find us. Message repeats.”
The car fell silent. Merlin realized belatedly that Arthur had also hit the brakes, and they were now idling in the middle of the motorway. After a short pause, the voice came through again, distorted but understandable.
“Salvation is here. The answer to infection is here. If you can hear this, you're not alone. There are others like you. There are fighters, other survivors. We are soldiers and we are armed. Our location is at the thirtieth roadblock on the A38, outside Plymouth in Devon. You must find us. Message repeats.”
They let it play through one more time before Merlin reached out and turned the volume back down. No one spoke for a long time.
“Plymouth?” Morgana said finally, her voice sounding unnaturally rough. “Roadblocks... from all the people trying to escape to France.”
“They had the right idea,” Merlin muttered.
“Soldiers, though?” Gwen said. “Do we want to join up with soldiers?”
“Well, why not,” Merlin said tartly. “They've got loads of guns and such, after all. Surely we'd be safer than on our own.”
Arthur remained silent. Merlin cast him a questioning look and at last he opened his mouth.
“I agree with Gwen,” he said, unexpectedly. “Our own plan was as good as any; I'm not being forced into military service.”
“Who says you bloody would be?” Merlin demanded. “Maybe they just want to get us out, or give us a cure. He was talking about the answer to infection, Arthur.” Merlin stabbed a finger at the silent radio. “You're mad if you don't think we should find out what that's about.”
Arthur glared. Merlin glared back. The man was truly baffling.
Morgana leaned forward, between the front seats, to interfere in their contest of wills.
“Perhaps we should put it to a vote?” she asked lightly, looking between them. “Right. The answer to infection, versus hiding out ourselves in the country till all this somehow blows over. All in favour of the soldiers?” She raised her hand and both her eyebrows, looking round the car.
Merlin raised his hand smartly, giving Arthur his best challenging look.
In the back seat, Gwen's hand silently and slowly crept up into the air. Arthur saw her in the mirror and his face turned stony.
“Fine,” he snapped, shifting into gear, “we'll go meet the fucking soldiers. See how all this ends.” He put his foot down on the accelerator rather harder than was necessary, and they were off toward Exeter, where they would likely raid a corner shop somewhere for a map from there to Plymouth.
Merlin left the radio dial alone and settled back in his seat to bask in his victory. He was so pleased with himself that for a while, he nearly managed to ignore the fact that the friendly, carefree mood of earlier had deserted them.
***
“I think that's it up ahead, there.” Morgana's words interrupted a long and thoughtful silence.
Merlin studied the map (torn and water-stained, and the only map to be had in Exeter, possibly-they'd searched four shops before finding it) and squinted at the blurry lines.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Keep on this street.”
If he didn't know better, he'd have said Arthur couldn't hear him. He kept his eyes ahead and maintained the stony silence he'd been nurturing for the past three hours.
Merlin stifled a sigh and went back to fiddling with the map.
In another five minutes, they came upon the roadblock they'd been directed to. There had certainly been a military presence once: a ramshackle, corrugated-steel shed stood on a concrete pad several yards off the road, its sides covered in black and red graffiti, and there were military trucks and even a tank all parked around the barricades. The tale the scene told wasn't a good one, though, Merlin thought. The small, square windows of the shack were broken, dirty and spray-painted, along with the sides of the tank. One of the trucks had all the windows smashed and looked like it had burnt from the inside out, perhaps from firebombs, and another was missing all the tires on one side. The barricade-large, imposing concrete blocks-had perhaps been run into by a truck or five, because bits of it were shifted and a whole section lay crumbled as if a giant had kicked it.
The four of them looked round silently, wandering about and poking at bits of the abandoned battlefield. Finally, Merlin spotted the bodies that were the only thing missing from the tableau. A pile of corpses sat in the ditch behind the shack, weeds growing up through the spaces between them. Some wore civilian clothes and some wore fatigues, the green stained brown with old blood. He startled a raven from its lunch as he approached and it took off shrieking, scaring him badly. With a shudder, he turned away and there was another body, hanging improbably off the top of the shack, sprawled across its low-pitched roof. It stared back at him with one intact eye and its rotting mouth gaped like that of a fish, flies buzzing around it.
He swallowed back bile and jogged over to the others, who stood near the tank turret.
“Well,” said Arthur, looking not displeased with the turn of events, “what shall we do now?”
Morgana looked mulish. “This is mad. There must be someone left here.”
“Maybe they've moved?” Gwen tried, always the optimist. “Somewhere safer than the motorway? But surely, if they remember that their message is playing, they must come back now and then to look for people.”
“Yes, I'm sure any minute now they'll come out of the trees with tea and biscuits,” Arthur snarled. “It's been a month. Do you have any idea how improbable it is that we're even here? Even if any of these soldiers are still alive, we haven't a snowball's chance in hell that they're still looking for survivors. So let's-”
Morgana held up a hand to interrupt him. “Did you hear that?”
“What are you--”
“Oh Christ,” Merlin said, realization sitting cold and heavy in his guts, “it was the door of the shack.”
One of the Infected had already had time to circle around them and cut them off from the car; the other was on the other side of them, several steps outside of the now-open door of the shack, its head cocked to the side in a parody of curiosity and its sides heaving as it sized them up.
Merlin had left his bat in the boot of the car, wedged up against the rear seats. He flexed his fingers uselessly, feeling the absence of a weapon, and then spied the butt of a gun poking from the back of Arthur's jeans. Arthur's hands were out at his sides, tense but still, and Merlin wondered if he would have time to reach for it before the Infected in front of him grew tired of their staring contest.
He sneaked a look at the girls; Morgana had her taser out and aimed at the Infected nearer the car, subtly pushing the unarmed Gwen behind her. Both Infected shifted just a bit, looking as if they were sniffing the air.
A shot rang out.
Several more followed, kicking up stinging chips of rock from the pavement, and Merlin found himself belly-down on the ground before he knew what was going on. Arthur's hand rested between his shoulder blades.
“What the fuck?” Merlin yelled at him over the barrage, covering his head with his arms.
“Stay down!” Arthur shouted back.
The firing stopped and both Infected lay twitching in pools of their own, tainted blood before Merlin dared look up again. Arthur hauled him back onto his feet and left him to brush off the dust while he made sure the girls were alright. Merlin heard their voices dimly; his ears still rang from the crack of gunfire.
“All clear!” a gravelly, male voice called out.
Merlin looked up in alarm as five men wearing fatigues and carrying very large guns appeared from among the trees. They did not, he thought wildly, appear to have any tea or biscuits.
Arthur swore quietly, and Merlin turned to see that he'd appeared beside him once again. “Royal Marines,” he muttered, just loud enough for Merlin to hear. “Fantastic.”
Merlin didn't have time to ask how Arthur recognized their uniforms, because the marines were now upon them and their leader was directing two of his men to go shoot the dying Infected some more, presumably to make sure they wouldn't suddenly get up again, and then approaching him and Arthur with a smile on his face.
“Well, well, that was a spot of bother, wasn't it?” the leader said, grinning at Arthur. The name tag on his uniform said 'Blakely'. The patch on his sleeve had three chevrons pointing down and Merlin frantically searched his memory for any knowledge of what that meant.
“We had it under control, Sergeant, but thank you for your concern,” Arthur said coolly.
Sgt. Blakely and Arthur proceeded to have a staring contest, and Merlin felt the testosterone levels rising steadily, until Morgana headed off the confrontation in her cool way.
“Look, Gwen,” she cooed, “so many big, strong men in uniform, come to save us from a horrible end!”
She hooked her arm through Gwen's good elbow and smiled at Sgt. Blakely in a way that Merlin would bet had led a great deal of men to doing her bidding. It certainly seemed to be working on these men, from the besotted looks on their faces. Merlin wondered how long it had been since any of them had seen a woman.
“Gentlemen,” Morgana continued, “please lead the way to safety.”
“Right,” Blakely said, visibly giving himself a shake. He unclipped a radio from his belt.
“Alpha to Base; we have made contact with survivors and will be bringing them in now. Two females and two males. Over.”
As the soldier walked away from them, listening to his radio chatter back, Merlin had a handful of seconds to wonder why their genders would be significant information before he found himself standing alone in the road. The others were piling back into the car to follow the armoured truck that was just now rattling up the road to pick up Blakely and his team. Merlin took the chance to grab his cricket bat again and propped it against his knees in the passenger seat, taking comfort from the now-familiar texture of its leather grip.
He shot a sideways look at Arthur as they bounced along a rutted, muddy track behind the marines. His face was emotionless, both hands gripped the wheel tightly and his eyes faced forward, only rarely diverted by the scrape of tree branches along the sides of the car. He seemed even more tense, if that were possible. Why did he dislike the military so much, Merlin wondered, and come to that, how was he so familiar with it? Merlin supposed that perhaps he was denser than most about that sort of thing but he assumed that knowing how to read symbols of rank, never mind recognizing the Royal Marines from a distance, implied a familiarity. But he was too young to be in the military, wasn't he? Merlin squinted at him. He seemed twenty at the oldest. In the reserves? But then he would have been called out when the outbreak had begun.
A thought occurred to him. Was Arthur... thingy... when you left the army without permission... AWOL, that was it. Merlin furrowed his brows as he thought about it. It made sense, in a way. Perhaps he'd been in training, which would have explained his sort of Rambo behaviour and reflexes and such. And then for some reason he'd run away, and now he was afraid he'd be recognized and... arrested? Killed? Bugger, what did they do to deserters in this country? Merlin had no idea, but if Arthur was in fact on the lam from a military career then it seemed important that he say something about it.
“Er... Arthur,” he ventured.
“Merlin.” Arthur's gaze didn't stray from the windscreen.
“Are you...” He paused. Upon reflection, this was a silly idea. But then, Arthur already thought he was an idiot, so what harm was it? “Are you AWOL from the military?” he asked in a bit of a rush.
Daft he may have been, but Arthur finally looked at him, even if his expression suggested he thought Merlin had forgotten his medication.
“Am I... no, Merlin. I have never been in the Armed sodding Forces. What the hell are you thinking of?”
“I just. I thought. You never said what you did, and you seem terribly familiar with them. And hostile. That as well.” Merlin felt his chin go up stubbornly and resigned himself to looking like an idiot some more.
Arthur sighed. “I was a student, alright? Reading political science.”
“Not even the Reserves?”
“No.”
“Cadets?”
“No, Merlin. Shut up.”
Gwen reached forward to pat Merlin's shoulder reassuringly, and they abruptly bounced out of the forest behind the marines to emerge in a driveway, surrounded by overgrown, green lawns. A ridiculously large manor sprawled at the other end of the drive, which was marginally smoother than the forest track and had more trucks and several Jeeps parked along its length and at the widened, gravel-packed oval at its end.
As Merlin jumped out, bat in hand, he had a good look around. The estate had clearly been abandoned and taken over by the marines. The large patio overlooking the lawns had been fronted with coils of barbed wire, behind which sat several guns that looked large enough to shoot down an entire plane. They were all aimed at the distant trees.
As the soldiers jumped off of their truck, others from their unit spilled out of the house to join them. While several men went to gather up all their food to take inside (which admittedly gave Merlin a twinge), an older man with a scar on his face came over to meet them.
“Oh fucking hell,” he heard, and turned to see Arthur frozen in place a step behind him. He had a wild look about him, like he might try running off and taking his chances with the Infected in the woods.
Merlin looked back at the old man. He didn't seem any more worthy of panicking over than any of the other fifteen-odd personnel now milling about the yard.
The man got within five steps (and Merlin could now make out that his name tag said, 'Penn') and then stopped dead, his mouth falling open in a distinctly non-scary way.
“Arthur?” he said.
Merlin raised an eyebrow.
“Father,” Arthur said in a resigned sort of voice.
That was it; Merlin had gone deaf from all the shooting.
But then the man named Penn swept past Merlin to hug Arthur, and apparently he was Arthur's dad after all. It was gratifying that at least Morgana and Gwen looked as astounded as he felt.
“Arthur's got a dad?” Gwen whispered, coming up on Merlin's left and grasping his arm.
“And he's in the Royals?” Morgana added, from his right.
Merlin stared at the crown patch on Arthur's dad's sleeve, in the same place as Sgt. Blakely's chevron insignia had been.
***
Once the yard had cleared and the soldiers had finished appropriating all their things, in short order Arthur was dragged off by his father (who was a Major, because Merlin had listening skills, if not a ceaseless font of knowledge), possibly never to be seen again from the resigned look on his face, and Gwen and Morgana were taken shortly after to find the medic and have Gwen's arm poked at. Merlin was left standing aimlessly in the yard and so a grunt named Moore took it upon himself to give him the grand tour.
The decoration inside the manor had clearly once leaned toward opulence but had since been manhandled into looking more utilitarian. Expensive-looking wood floors were covered in green and grey and black weaponry and supply cases and other military trappings; furniture had been shoved into unused rooms or covered with drop cloths, and rugs had been rolled up and propped against walls and stacked on the furniture. Several sitting rooms at the front of the house were now barren and naked-looking, except for the crates stacked to the ceiling in places and two largish rooms that were now made up as barracks. Apparently the soldiers had chosen not to take up the undoubtedly numerous bedrooms.
They walked through this front area quickly as Moore gestured vaguely at the repurposed living spaces, his voice dripping with his disinterest. They hardly even paused to look around before they reached the back corridor and the kitchen. Moore pushed open the huge door and stuck his head in.
“Jones!” he shouted. “What's for tea?”
Jones called back something that Merlin couldn't understand from outside the door, but there was a great deal of laughter and then Moore walked into the kitchen, waving at Merlin to join him. The first thing that struck Merlin upon looking around the kitchen was the burly man in a pink, ruffled apron. He was mixing something in a bowl he held in the crook of his elbow. Three other men were standing around him, dressed more normally and chopping vegetables as they continued to laugh at him.
“That's Jones, our chief tin-opener,” Moore said, pointing at the man in the apron, who did a little twirl as he turned to pick up an egg.
“Fucking terrible cook,” he whispered conspiratorially in Merlin's ear. “Can any of you lot find your way round a kitchen?”
“Er,” Merlin tried, thinking wildly. “Possibly Gwen... the one in the arm cast?” he clarified, off Moore's confused expression.
“Nice to have some women around again,” Moore said, nodding. “Right then, let's get out of here before we share the blame for the disaster-in-progress. Let's go meet Mailor.”
“Mailor?” Merlin asked, but Moore was ahead of him and seemed not to be paying attention.
They made their way further along the back corridor, past box after box of tins, and up a staircase to the outside. They were in a walled-in garden, which was mostly mud except for a shed at one end and had coils of barbed wire stretching along the top of the brick wall. Probably the soldiers had put that up, although Merlin couldn't really imagine why. Were the Infected very good climbers?
Moore led him to the shed, and as he reached for the door handle Merlin heard a loud banging and crashing from within. The whole building actually shook slightly.
“Are you ready to meet Mailor, then?”
Words would not line up correctly on his tongue for a moment, so he just stared. “Wha-is-d'you-Mailor's in the fucking shed?”
Moore raised an eyebrow at him and hauled the door open.
There was a rattle of chains and the distinctive screeching of the Infected as soon as the door swung open, and Merlin thought he must be mad to look inside but he did anyway.
Mailor screeched and lunged. Merlin had already run three steps backwards by the time he realized the Infected was chained up and could only make it halfway across the shed. Moore laughed loudly.
“No need to shit your pants; he's not getting out of there. Come on, then.”
Moore's hand pushed in the middle of his back, shoving him toward the shed, but Merlin was having none of that, thanks.
“You've fucking lost it if you think I'm going in there!”
“It's quite safe; he's chained right up. Look,” Moore said, walking inside himself to demonstrate. “Just stay near the door. He can only get halfway across. See, he's worn a rut in the floor.”
There was a clear semicircle of scuffs in the wood that showed the limit of Mailor's chain. Against his better judgement, Merlin sighed and gingerly stepped into the gloom of the shed with Moore. Mailor screamed again and threw himself at them but immediately fell back choking, and Merlin saw for the first time that it was because Mailor's chain was fastened around his neck. He also saw for the first time that Mailor was (more or less) in the uniform of the Royal Marines, dirty and bloodstained and torn as it was. The Infected slumped back against the blood-smeared rear wall, his sides heaving visibly and a wild look in his red eyes, and he stared at Merlin.
“Why've you got an Infected soldier tied up in a shed, anyway?” he asked, tearing his eyes away to look at Moore. The wall at his back was solid and reassuring and he pressed his palms against it as he leaned back.
“The Major ordered it. We took him alive from back at the roadblock and chained him right up in here. Now we can study him and learn what we're facing.”
“And what have you learned?” Mailor seemed to be dozing off, of all things.
Moore looked at his former comrade. “We've learned that Mailor's not in there anymore. He's gone and he won't be back. The thing that's left is a husk that knows nothing but rage and murder and will never have a future like Mailor had.”
“So what's left to learn, then?”
Moore turned to leave the shed. “How long it takes an Infected to starve to death.”
Mailor jerked awake a bit as they made their way out, but quickly went back to sleep. Or whatever that was.
***
Part 4
Merlin was alone.
The girls-they were gone. He didn't know where. He'd seen them, had seen how they left him but that was so long ago and he couldn't remember. He saw flashes instead: of their faces, smiling and laughing, stark with fear, screaming without a sound. He saw his mother laid out on her bed, rotted away to a skeleton. The skull had the same grin she used to have when she teased him and ruffled his hair.
Arthur was missing, and Merlin was looking for him. He'd even lost his cricket bat. He looked down at his hands and he was holding one of the shotguns. Was it loaded? How did you check if it was loaded? He tried to hold it up to look but it wasn't a shotgun, it was a shopping trolley with a wobbly wheel, the bottom lined with carrier bags and Terry's Chocolate Oranges. And where had all the blood come from? It was everywhere, and all over Merlin's dirty hands and torn clothing. He pushed the hobbled trolley along, looking for Arthur. Merlin didn't want the bloody sweets; they were Arthur's.
But where had Arthur gone? He'd left. Merlin was all alone and now there was that horrible screeching and wailing and all he had was a fucking shopping trolley and he was about to die horribly, or something worse.
The Infected screamed some more and they were saying his name. This was death, surely, when your killers knew your name and the sound of it ripped impossibly from their ravaged throats.
“Merlin!”
Merlin shut his eyes against the onslaught and then blinked, because he was lying on the ground in a tangle of blankets and Arthur was nudging at him with his foot.
“I-what?” he managed, struggling upright and yanking blankets savagely from under his legs.
“Beauty sleep is over, Princess; time to move on.” Arthur smirked down at him infuriatingly.
“Yeah... alright.” Merlin's head was full of cotton wool, but he gave it another moment and then the world began to make enough sense for him to get up, fold up his makeshift bed and stuff it in the back of the car. Everyone else was awake, especially Arthur, who'd taken the last watch after staying up with Merlin and still looked far too energetic for the early hour, the prat.
Merlin got the front passenger seat and saw that Arthur had finally wrested the keys from Morgana, who had hauled a blanket into the back seat to wad up as a pillow.
“No more beauty sleep for you, either, Morgana,” Arthur said into the mirror as he started the engine. “It can only do so much.”
She gave him the finger. Arthur laughed and then they were on their way, back onto the M5 and then onwards to Devon, for lack of a better plan.
Merlin had never been on a road trip of any kind, not having had any friends with cars before, but as the morning faded to afternoon and they drove southwest under gradually thinning clouds, trading easy banter and stopping for breaks in random, green meadows, he could almost imagine that this was what it would feel like. Anyone would think they were all lifelong friends, the way they were getting on; the girls laughed and joked with the boys as they played some unfathomable card game across the back seats and Arthur threw back witty retorts and pointed out interesting scenery as Merlin fiddled with the radio, listening to the static. Except for the fact that they seemed the last ones left in the world, he could almost forget, in these moments, that they were living in a Stephen King novel.
“Merlin,” Arthur said, in that particular way that had already been labelled as his exasperated with Merlin tone, “why do you insist on playing with the sodding radio? Are you hoping there's a DJ somewhere in the country, holed up with his Clash collection and playing at pirate radio?”
Merlin shrugged, still twiddling the dial and keeping an ear on the endless white noise. “You never know,” he replied. “Although I'm not much of a Clash fan. D'you think this DJ would take requests?”
Arthur chose not to dignify him with a response, possibly wisely. Merlin switched to the AM band. Hang on. Was that...?
He cranked up the volume until the hiss and pop of static tickled his eardrums, ignoring the chorus of protests that sprang up and slapping Arthur's hand away from the power button. “Shut up,” he said, turning the tuner again very lightly.
And suddenly, through the hissing, came a man's voice.
“--st find us. Message repeats.”
The car fell silent. Merlin realized belatedly that Arthur had also hit the brakes, and they were now idling in the middle of the motorway. After a short pause, the voice came through again, distorted but understandable.
“Salvation is here. The answer to infection is here. If you can hear this, you're not alone. There are others like you. There are fighters, other survivors. We are soldiers and we are armed. Our location is at the thirtieth roadblock on the A38, outside Plymouth in Devon. You must find us. Message repeats.”
They let it play through one more time before Merlin reached out and turned the volume back down. No one spoke for a long time.
“Plymouth?” Morgana said finally, her voice sounding unnaturally rough. “Roadblocks... from all the people trying to escape to France.”
“They had the right idea,” Merlin muttered.
“Soldiers, though?” Gwen said. “Do we want to join up with soldiers?”
“Well, why not,” Merlin said tartly. “They've got loads of guns and such, after all. Surely we'd be safer than on our own.”
Arthur remained silent. Merlin cast him a questioning look and at last he opened his mouth.
“I agree with Gwen,” he said, unexpectedly. “Our own plan was as good as any; I'm not being forced into military service.”
“Who says you bloody would be?” Merlin demanded. “Maybe they just want to get us out, or give us a cure. He was talking about the answer to infection, Arthur.” Merlin stabbed a finger at the silent radio. “You're mad if you don't think we should find out what that's about.”
Arthur glared. Merlin glared back. The man was truly baffling.
Morgana leaned forward, between the front seats, to interfere in their contest of wills.
“Perhaps we should put it to a vote?” she asked lightly, looking between them. “Right. The answer to infection, versus hiding out ourselves in the country till all this somehow blows over. All in favour of the soldiers?” She raised her hand and both her eyebrows, looking round the car.
Merlin raised his hand smartly, giving Arthur his best challenging look.
In the back seat, Gwen's hand silently and slowly crept up into the air. Arthur saw her in the mirror and his face turned stony.
“Fine,” he snapped, shifting into gear, “we'll go meet the fucking soldiers. See how all this ends.” He put his foot down on the accelerator rather harder than was necessary, and they were off toward Exeter, where they would likely raid a corner shop somewhere for a map from there to Plymouth.
Merlin left the radio dial alone and settled back in his seat to bask in his victory. He was so pleased with himself that for a while, he nearly managed to ignore the fact that the friendly, carefree mood of earlier had deserted them.
***
“I think that's it up ahead, there.” Morgana's words interrupted a long and thoughtful silence.
Merlin studied the map (torn and water-stained, and the only map to be had in Exeter, possibly-they'd searched four shops before finding it) and squinted at the blurry lines.
“Yeah, I think so,” he said. “Keep on this street.”
If he didn't know better, he'd have said Arthur couldn't hear him. He kept his eyes ahead and maintained the stony silence he'd been nurturing for the past three hours.
Merlin stifled a sigh and went back to fiddling with the map.
In another five minutes, they came upon the roadblock they'd been directed to. There had certainly been a military presence once: a ramshackle, corrugated-steel shed stood on a concrete pad several yards off the road, its sides covered in black and red graffiti, and there were military trucks and even a tank all parked around the barricades. The tale the scene told wasn't a good one, though, Merlin thought. The small, square windows of the shack were broken, dirty and spray-painted, along with the sides of the tank. One of the trucks had all the windows smashed and looked like it had burnt from the inside out, perhaps from firebombs, and another was missing all the tires on one side. The barricade-large, imposing concrete blocks-had perhaps been run into by a truck or five, because bits of it were shifted and a whole section lay crumbled as if a giant had kicked it.
The four of them looked round silently, wandering about and poking at bits of the abandoned battlefield. Finally, Merlin spotted the bodies that were the only thing missing from the tableau. A pile of corpses sat in the ditch behind the shack, weeds growing up through the spaces between them. Some wore civilian clothes and some wore fatigues, the green stained brown with old blood. He startled a raven from its lunch as he approached and it took off shrieking, scaring him badly. With a shudder, he turned away and there was another body, hanging improbably off the top of the shack, sprawled across its low-pitched roof. It stared back at him with one intact eye and its rotting mouth gaped like that of a fish, flies buzzing around it.
He swallowed back bile and jogged over to the others, who stood near the tank turret.
“Well,” said Arthur, looking not displeased with the turn of events, “what shall we do now?”
Morgana looked mulish. “This is mad. There must be someone left here.”
“Maybe they've moved?” Gwen tried, always the optimist. “Somewhere safer than the motorway? But surely, if they remember that their message is playing, they must come back now and then to look for people.”
“Yes, I'm sure any minute now they'll come out of the trees with tea and biscuits,” Arthur snarled. “It's been a month. Do you have any idea how improbable it is that we're even here? Even if any of these soldiers are still alive, we haven't a snowball's chance in hell that they're still looking for survivors. So let's-”
Morgana held up a hand to interrupt him. “Did you hear that?”
“What are you--”
“Oh Christ,” Merlin said, realization sitting cold and heavy in his guts, “it was the door of the shack.”
One of the Infected had already had time to circle around them and cut them off from the car; the other was on the other side of them, several steps outside of the now-open door of the shack, its head cocked to the side in a parody of curiosity and its sides heaving as it sized them up.
Merlin had left his bat in the boot of the car, wedged up against the rear seats. He flexed his fingers uselessly, feeling the absence of a weapon, and then spied the butt of a gun poking from the back of Arthur's jeans. Arthur's hands were out at his sides, tense but still, and Merlin wondered if he would have time to reach for it before the Infected in front of him grew tired of their staring contest.
He sneaked a look at the girls; Morgana had her taser out and aimed at the Infected nearer the car, subtly pushing the unarmed Gwen behind her. Both Infected shifted just a bit, looking as if they were sniffing the air.
A shot rang out.
Several more followed, kicking up stinging chips of rock from the pavement, and Merlin found himself belly-down on the ground before he knew what was going on. Arthur's hand rested between his shoulder blades.
“What the fuck?” Merlin yelled at him over the barrage, covering his head with his arms.
“Stay down!” Arthur shouted back.
The firing stopped and both Infected lay twitching in pools of their own, tainted blood before Merlin dared look up again. Arthur hauled him back onto his feet and left him to brush off the dust while he made sure the girls were alright. Merlin heard their voices dimly; his ears still rang from the crack of gunfire.
“All clear!” a gravelly, male voice called out.
Merlin looked up in alarm as five men wearing fatigues and carrying very large guns appeared from among the trees. They did not, he thought wildly, appear to have any tea or biscuits.
Arthur swore quietly, and Merlin turned to see that he'd appeared beside him once again. “Royal Marines,” he muttered, just loud enough for Merlin to hear. “Fantastic.”
Merlin didn't have time to ask how Arthur recognized their uniforms, because the marines were now upon them and their leader was directing two of his men to go shoot the dying Infected some more, presumably to make sure they wouldn't suddenly get up again, and then approaching him and Arthur with a smile on his face.
“Well, well, that was a spot of bother, wasn't it?” the leader said, grinning at Arthur. The name tag on his uniform said 'Blakely'. The patch on his sleeve had three chevrons pointing down and Merlin frantically searched his memory for any knowledge of what that meant.
“We had it under control, Sergeant, but thank you for your concern,” Arthur said coolly.
Sgt. Blakely and Arthur proceeded to have a staring contest, and Merlin felt the testosterone levels rising steadily, until Morgana headed off the confrontation in her cool way.
“Look, Gwen,” she cooed, “so many big, strong men in uniform, come to save us from a horrible end!”
She hooked her arm through Gwen's good elbow and smiled at Sgt. Blakely in a way that Merlin would bet had led a great deal of men to doing her bidding. It certainly seemed to be working on these men, from the besotted looks on their faces. Merlin wondered how long it had been since any of them had seen a woman.
“Gentlemen,” Morgana continued, “please lead the way to safety.”
“Right,” Blakely said, visibly giving himself a shake. He unclipped a radio from his belt.
“Alpha to Base; we have made contact with survivors and will be bringing them in now. Two females and two males. Over.”
As the soldier walked away from them, listening to his radio chatter back, Merlin had a handful of seconds to wonder why their genders would be significant information before he found himself standing alone in the road. The others were piling back into the car to follow the armoured truck that was just now rattling up the road to pick up Blakely and his team. Merlin took the chance to grab his cricket bat again and propped it against his knees in the passenger seat, taking comfort from the now-familiar texture of its leather grip.
He shot a sideways look at Arthur as they bounced along a rutted, muddy track behind the marines. His face was emotionless, both hands gripped the wheel tightly and his eyes faced forward, only rarely diverted by the scrape of tree branches along the sides of the car. He seemed even more tense, if that were possible. Why did he dislike the military so much, Merlin wondered, and come to that, how was he so familiar with it? Merlin supposed that perhaps he was denser than most about that sort of thing but he assumed that knowing how to read symbols of rank, never mind recognizing the Royal Marines from a distance, implied a familiarity. But he was too young to be in the military, wasn't he? Merlin squinted at him. He seemed twenty at the oldest. In the reserves? But then he would have been called out when the outbreak had begun.
A thought occurred to him. Was Arthur... thingy... when you left the army without permission... AWOL, that was it. Merlin furrowed his brows as he thought about it. It made sense, in a way. Perhaps he'd been in training, which would have explained his sort of Rambo behaviour and reflexes and such. And then for some reason he'd run away, and now he was afraid he'd be recognized and... arrested? Killed? Bugger, what did they do to deserters in this country? Merlin had no idea, but if Arthur was in fact on the lam from a military career then it seemed important that he say something about it.
“Er... Arthur,” he ventured.
“Merlin.” Arthur's gaze didn't stray from the windscreen.
“Are you...” He paused. Upon reflection, this was a silly idea. But then, Arthur already thought he was an idiot, so what harm was it? “Are you AWOL from the military?” he asked in a bit of a rush.
Daft he may have been, but Arthur finally looked at him, even if his expression suggested he thought Merlin had forgotten his medication.
“Am I... no, Merlin. I have never been in the Armed sodding Forces. What the hell are you thinking of?”
“I just. I thought. You never said what you did, and you seem terribly familiar with them. And hostile. That as well.” Merlin felt his chin go up stubbornly and resigned himself to looking like an idiot some more.
Arthur sighed. “I was a student, alright? Reading political science.”
“Not even the Reserves?”
“No.”
“Cadets?”
“No, Merlin. Shut up.”
Gwen reached forward to pat Merlin's shoulder reassuringly, and they abruptly bounced out of the forest behind the marines to emerge in a driveway, surrounded by overgrown, green lawns. A ridiculously large manor sprawled at the other end of the drive, which was marginally smoother than the forest track and had more trucks and several Jeeps parked along its length and at the widened, gravel-packed oval at its end.
As Merlin jumped out, bat in hand, he had a good look around. The estate had clearly been abandoned and taken over by the marines. The large patio overlooking the lawns had been fronted with coils of barbed wire, behind which sat several guns that looked large enough to shoot down an entire plane. They were all aimed at the distant trees.
As the soldiers jumped off of their truck, others from their unit spilled out of the house to join them. While several men went to gather up all their food to take inside (which admittedly gave Merlin a twinge), an older man with a scar on his face came over to meet them.
“Oh fucking hell,” he heard, and turned to see Arthur frozen in place a step behind him. He had a wild look about him, like he might try running off and taking his chances with the Infected in the woods.
Merlin looked back at the old man. He didn't seem any more worthy of panicking over than any of the other fifteen-odd personnel now milling about the yard.
The man got within five steps (and Merlin could now make out that his name tag said, 'Penn') and then stopped dead, his mouth falling open in a distinctly non-scary way.
“Arthur?” he said.
Merlin raised an eyebrow.
“Father,” Arthur said in a resigned sort of voice.
That was it; Merlin had gone deaf from all the shooting.
But then the man named Penn swept past Merlin to hug Arthur, and apparently he was Arthur's dad after all. It was gratifying that at least Morgana and Gwen looked as astounded as he felt.
“Arthur's got a dad?” Gwen whispered, coming up on Merlin's left and grasping his arm.
“And he's in the Royals?” Morgana added, from his right.
Merlin stared at the crown patch on Arthur's dad's sleeve, in the same place as Sgt. Blakely's chevron insignia had been.
***
Once the yard had cleared and the soldiers had finished appropriating all their things, in short order Arthur was dragged off by his father (who was a Major, because Merlin had listening skills, if not a ceaseless font of knowledge), possibly never to be seen again from the resigned look on his face, and Gwen and Morgana were taken shortly after to find the medic and have Gwen's arm poked at. Merlin was left standing aimlessly in the yard and so a grunt named Moore took it upon himself to give him the grand tour.
The decoration inside the manor had clearly once leaned toward opulence but had since been manhandled into looking more utilitarian. Expensive-looking wood floors were covered in green and grey and black weaponry and supply cases and other military trappings; furniture had been shoved into unused rooms or covered with drop cloths, and rugs had been rolled up and propped against walls and stacked on the furniture. Several sitting rooms at the front of the house were now barren and naked-looking, except for the crates stacked to the ceiling in places and two largish rooms that were now made up as barracks. Apparently the soldiers had chosen not to take up the undoubtedly numerous bedrooms.
They walked through this front area quickly as Moore gestured vaguely at the repurposed living spaces, his voice dripping with his disinterest. They hardly even paused to look around before they reached the back corridor and the kitchen. Moore pushed open the huge door and stuck his head in.
“Jones!” he shouted. “What's for tea?”
Jones called back something that Merlin couldn't understand from outside the door, but there was a great deal of laughter and then Moore walked into the kitchen, waving at Merlin to join him. The first thing that struck Merlin upon looking around the kitchen was the burly man in a pink, ruffled apron. He was mixing something in a bowl he held in the crook of his elbow. Three other men were standing around him, dressed more normally and chopping vegetables as they continued to laugh at him.
“That's Jones, our chief tin-opener,” Moore said, pointing at the man in the apron, who did a little twirl as he turned to pick up an egg.
“Fucking terrible cook,” he whispered conspiratorially in Merlin's ear. “Can any of you lot find your way round a kitchen?”
“Er,” Merlin tried, thinking wildly. “Possibly Gwen... the one in the arm cast?” he clarified, off Moore's confused expression.
“Nice to have some women around again,” Moore said, nodding. “Right then, let's get out of here before we share the blame for the disaster-in-progress. Let's go meet Mailor.”
“Mailor?” Merlin asked, but Moore was ahead of him and seemed not to be paying attention.
They made their way further along the back corridor, past box after box of tins, and up a staircase to the outside. They were in a walled-in garden, which was mostly mud except for a shed at one end and had coils of barbed wire stretching along the top of the brick wall. Probably the soldiers had put that up, although Merlin couldn't really imagine why. Were the Infected very good climbers?
Moore led him to the shed, and as he reached for the door handle Merlin heard a loud banging and crashing from within. The whole building actually shook slightly.
“Are you ready to meet Mailor, then?”
Words would not line up correctly on his tongue for a moment, so he just stared. “Wha-is-d'you-Mailor's in the fucking shed?”
Moore raised an eyebrow at him and hauled the door open.
There was a rattle of chains and the distinctive screeching of the Infected as soon as the door swung open, and Merlin thought he must be mad to look inside but he did anyway.
Mailor screeched and lunged. Merlin had already run three steps backwards by the time he realized the Infected was chained up and could only make it halfway across the shed. Moore laughed loudly.
“No need to shit your pants; he's not getting out of there. Come on, then.”
Moore's hand pushed in the middle of his back, shoving him toward the shed, but Merlin was having none of that, thanks.
“You've fucking lost it if you think I'm going in there!”
“It's quite safe; he's chained right up. Look,” Moore said, walking inside himself to demonstrate. “Just stay near the door. He can only get halfway across. See, he's worn a rut in the floor.”
There was a clear semicircle of scuffs in the wood that showed the limit of Mailor's chain. Against his better judgement, Merlin sighed and gingerly stepped into the gloom of the shed with Moore. Mailor screamed again and threw himself at them but immediately fell back choking, and Merlin saw for the first time that it was because Mailor's chain was fastened around his neck. He also saw for the first time that Mailor was (more or less) in the uniform of the Royal Marines, dirty and bloodstained and torn as it was. The Infected slumped back against the blood-smeared rear wall, his sides heaving visibly and a wild look in his red eyes, and he stared at Merlin.
“Why've you got an Infected soldier tied up in a shed, anyway?” he asked, tearing his eyes away to look at Moore. The wall at his back was solid and reassuring and he pressed his palms against it as he leaned back.
“The Major ordered it. We took him alive from back at the roadblock and chained him right up in here. Now we can study him and learn what we're facing.”
“And what have you learned?” Mailor seemed to be dozing off, of all things.
Moore looked at his former comrade. “We've learned that Mailor's not in there anymore. He's gone and he won't be back. The thing that's left is a husk that knows nothing but rage and murder and will never have a future like Mailor had.”
“So what's left to learn, then?”
Moore turned to leave the shed. “How long it takes an Infected to starve to death.”
Mailor jerked awake a bit as they made their way out, but quickly went back to sleep. Or whatever that was.
***
Part 4