Read Online Infested by Mark R Faulkner - Free Book Online Page A

me.
     
    There were no options left open to me but to continue. I was too weak and
fragile for anything else and so day and night, I paddled resolutely onward
toward London. Memories of that time are hazy, disjointed. I was in the full
grip of fever, starving and deprived of sleep and I was hallucinating.
Sometimes, in the day, I would see Lindsey’s body in the water, or swimming
alongside me. She’d turn her small, pale and decaying face up toward me and
say: “This is your fault, you know? It’s what you wished for.”
    I didn’t possess the strength to answer.
    “You killed me, and my family. You killed everyone.”
    I don’t know whether or not I cried every time she appeared, but the
sadness and guilt I felt were so deep they threatened to consume me entirely.
    During the night it would be Helena, my wife, who visited, or Andrew
Morris; “Come into my office,” I’d hear him say. “We need to talk about your performance .” He said, his back turned,
walking away from me in a manner which said I needed to follow. I could see
him as if we were in the same room, only his feet floated in the dark.
    And then I’d see her, one eye oozing from the pulpy mess which was once
its socket, smashed teeth protruding through torn lips like buckshot. Then her
broken jaw would sag, her tongue darting in and out as she laughed, “Your
performance leaves a lot to be desired.” And then he would turn, his face also
a red mush on a misshapen head, and they’d come closer, both laughing.
     
    This continued, day and night, for God knows how long until, in a
moment of lucidity, I realised I was once again in a built up area, with
restaurants and shops lining the river. I couldn’t remember when I’d last been
travelling through open countryside and guessed I might be in London. The air
was filled with acrid smog, which tickled the back of my throat and maybe it
was this which had rekindled my senses. There were no fires alongside the
river, but in places the smog appeared darker, as if there was smoke rising from
somewhere deep within it.
    Then I was in the heart of the city, seeing landmarks I knew from TV
and postcards. The houses of parliament and Big Ben were on my left, just
before the towering London Eye, which was so covered in silk it was easy to
imagine it as one giant web. Of course, there were no people, at least not
alive but the water was teeming with bodies, as if they’d jumped from the
embankments like lemmings.
     
    Boats got bigger as I moved downstream and the river widened to
accommodate them. Tower Bridge loomed ahead and wrapped around its feet was a
line of barges, all joined together like a string of sausages. As I neared I
realised the barges had been carrying a cargo of London’s waste, the
half-sunken containers spilling their festering contents into the water and so,
for a while, I was weaving through a layer of black bags and nappies.
    I vaguely remember passing the unmistakeable dome at Greenwich, which
had undoubtedly hosted its last event. There was a chop on the water when the
Thames barrier loomed out of the fog, towering above me as I passed through.
Spray slapped me in the face as I cut through the waves. A little further and
I came across a number of ocean going ships, a couple of them oil tankers. A
pipeline must have burst somewhere, oozing a thick slick of oil which spread
out downstream from the tanker terminal, coating the sides of my tiny canoe and
the paddle with treacle-thick oil.
    Cranes, and the vast, hulking forms of container ships appeared
ghostlike through the fog before it really closed in; a thick white blanket,
tinged with yellow. I knew now there were no river banks here; it was a
shoreline and I’d entered the open sea. At least it was calm, and I only received
a small buffeting and not enough of a splashing to sink the canoe.
    All I could do was laugh like a maniac, wondering whether I really had
lost my mind. The complexity of the question made me laugh harder; a