Horseflesh Read online

distracted through the plate-glass frontage by a car-crash right outside. Three cars – two blokes fighting. On a Sunday morning. Maybe one was late for church. I was past laughing then and I definitely am now. In fact though you can’t see it I’m crying as I’m writing this. It happened so fast.

  You can probably guess that the test was positive. I sat there stunned. In one way it proved nothing – well, it proved there was worse than horse in there, but it didn’t prove what I’d come to suspect, what I feared. That Mum was right – that the silly old bat was right.

  I tried to call her, suddenly wanted nothing more than to talk and hear her voice, would have given anything to be able to spend the usual hour and a half just listening to her go on and on about anything she wanted.

  Crying properly now – I’d give anything to hear her voice. Never got the chance.

  I remember hearing a funny noise from the radio – a scuffle, some shouts, then unexpected light music. I listened transfixed for ten minutes, knowing something was wrong, but it didn’t stop. It’s still there, I check every morning.

  19.

  After the radio went dead I surfed the news channels and found reports coming in from all over. Once they’d linked the four tribulations – there’s a world I learned – and the penny finally dropped that all this was connected the story grew massively – debilitating illness, death, accelerated wasting and incredible violence, the stories and pictures were horrific. Of random stabbings and riots, shootings. I went upstairs at midday and there were police sirens wailing, people running in the streets. I went back inside – the travel news said not to go out: the Tube had stopped, roads were barricaded. It was incredible – so fast and so utterly complete. I tried contacting Oates, then Brinkley during the day but there was no reply. Nor from Mum, or Lianne.

  I got an e-mail circular from Craddock late on Sunday evening saying the office would be closed on Monday with no explanation, and indeed it was. I slept on a couch with my coat. The heating still worked (and I have since figured out how to over-ride the controls) and I scavenged food from the various fridges. I had microwave pasta that night, watching the news roll in.

  I woke on the Monday confused and cold – the heating had failed to come back on. My phone battery was dead – left the charger on my desk at home - so I tried the landlines, only to find the network down. Outside there was occasional shouting – I went back to the basement and back online. It was odd the sudden drop in activity: lots of ‘404’ errors everywhere, basic format news only, for the first few days and then…Of course pretty much everyone must have eaten one of the four, or eaten something else that had… Had I? I keep checking for symptoms, have done for these eight, nine weeks. So far so good.

  20.

  So here I am, in the basement, with my microscope and my laptop and I am hoping dear God I am hoping for a ‘War-of-the-Worlds’ type ending where the bacteria or maybe the ants or the cockroaches come to the human’s rescue and kill the alien invaders. Hope - that’s all I’ve got. Like I say, I can’t trust outsiders – there are stories, there are always stories, of violent gangs luring people out and then…I hope you weren’t part of this – whoever you are and whenever you read this I hope you weren’t part of it.

  Waiting – that’s what my life has become, if not for a blessed solution then for my own death at least. And sometimes I wonder if sooner would not be better than later, that I should go and give myself to the disease or the gangs because what comes next could be worse.

  You see I read up on it, on the internet. It’s all there and Mum was right – she said the end had come, that time of judgement, The Apocalypse was upon us, and she was right. Hell on earth.

  ‘And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

  ‘And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

  And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.

  ‘And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

  ‘And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.

  ‘And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

  ‘And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black horse; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.

  ‘And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.

  ‘And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.

  ‘And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.’

  I cut and pasted that, in case you think I remembered it or made it up. Pestilence, war, famine and Death – the opening of the first four seals - four horses and four horsemen of The Apocalypse, harbingers of the Last Judgement – bringers of Hell on earth. Book of Revelation – Chapter 6 verses 1-8. It’s been there in black and white for the best part of two thousand years. But I think it’s fair to say no one expected them to arrive in burgers.

  So here I wait – wait for the next seal to be opened and given the sneaky way the first four came upon us God knows what they’ll be like. The souls of the dead rising, if I recall. Speculation is rife but I wish it’d hurry up. The suspense is killing me.

  21.

  Post script: the internet has gone off. Woke up this morning to a message box saying ‘no network connection’. Searched for wireless, tried the LAN connections upstairs – nothing. Can the internet die? They always said it would go on forever, survive the holocaust. Which reminds me – I’ve not seen any cockroaches either - haha! Taking a leaf out of Brinkley’s book and laughing at my own jokes otherwise it’s too quiet, all too quiet and frankly I can’t stand the silence.

  It’s very quiet without the internet. You don’t realise just how noisy it was.

  I miss Lianne. I’d give anything just to be with Lianne.

  END