The Peeling Trilogy Read online

  THE PEELING Trilogy

  By Iain Rob Wright

  THE PEELING Trilogy

  Published by Silk Raven Associates

  Copyright 2012 Iain Rob Wright

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used factiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Other titles by Iain Rob Wright

  The Final Winter

  Animal Kingdom

  ASBO

  Sea Sick

  Sam

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Peeling Of Samuel Lloyd Collins

  The Peeling Book 1 (Jeremy’s Choice)

  The Peeling Book 2 (The Stadium)

  The Peeling Book 3 (Warriors)

  Preview of The Final Winter

  THE PEELING OF SAMUEL LLOYD COLLINS

  Thursday

  My big toenail fell off today. That leaves three on my right foot and two on my left. It stung at first, but now my toe just feels…hot. I’m keeping the nail in an ashtray in the kitchen.

  My name is Samuel Lloyd Collins and I suppose, in a way, this is my last will and testament, except I don’t have anybody to leave anything to, so I guess this is really just my last testament. Or maybe writing this is merely the closest thing I have to company.

  I don’t have to be alone. I could go next door and take part in one of their endless political debates that echo through the walls and keep me awake at night. Sometimes I think about yelling at them to ‘keep it down’, but what would be the use? Politics are high on everybody’s agenda right now. One would expect them to be.

  Everyone has their own theory on how ‘The Peeling’ started, but I personally think it was the Arabs. It’s always the Arabs, isn’t it? Saddam is dead and the Yanks finally got Osama. So what choice did they have left but to go for broke? Everyone assumed their master plan would culminate with a nuclear attack on a major city, but in many ways this virus is worse. We may have snuffed out the leaders, but their passion for killing, it seems, will never die. You cut the head off a chicken and it runs around like a maniac, spraying anyone nearby with blood. That’s what ‘The Peeling’ is: arterial chicken blood spraying us all with its infectious filth. I guess the Arabs won in the end…

  I came down with the sickness on Tuesday. Two days ago. I’ve already lost a bit of hair and some skin off my testicles, and you already know about the toenails. Funnily enough, my fingernails are currently unaffected, probably the only reason I’m able to write this. I thought about typing this on the computer, but somehow it felt like a man’s final words should be in ink, don’t you think? Maybe when it comes right down to it, paper is more permanent than a collection of cheap circuits.

  My future is laid out for me now. I’ll be dead within a week, give or take a day. The beauty of the Peeling is that it leaves no room for hypothesising. No room for hope. It kills every time, no exceptions. In a way that certainty has allowed me to come to terms and accept my fate. This time next week I will be a bubbling oil-slick of rancid, dissolving flesh. Somehow I’m fine with that.

  But I need to know who is responsible for the pain I’m in. I already told you I think it’s the Arabs, but unless I know for sure…Well let’s just say that knowing for definite would bring a certain degree of closure to the situation. Of course, the honourable men and women of the Government’s various agencies are urgently investigating the origin of this disease and those responsible, but as each second passes, Great Britain withers and dies beneath its second great plague. I just hope to be alive when they determine the guilty party.

  Already know it was the Arabs, just need to know for sure…

  Friday

  I woke up this morning stuck to my pillow. Not because I had been drooling in my sleep, but because the skin below my left eye had rotted and fused with the cotton. I had to rip the pillow away and half of my face with it. The resulting meld of infected flesh and sickly white cotton reminded me of a surrealist painting, beautiful in a way. Maybe I’ll have it framed before I die.

  What an odd thing to muse upon! It would not surprise me if I have gone quite mad. I’m already starting to feel delightfully delirious (or maybe that’s just the throbbing and burning where my face used to be).

  Such good bone structure I was blessed with, but did not know of, until I was today faced with it in the mirror. The bone of my cheek now shows right through, covered only by several, thin slivers of sinewy gristle. I look like the Phantom of the Opera (albeit a grizzlier version). I wonder what part of me will dissolve tomorrow. That’s the fun part of this sickness, I suppose, not knowing which chunk of skin will decompose next. It isn’t like typical flesh-eating diseases; they have a point of infection and usually spread systematically. But The Peeling strikes the body at random, necrotising a man’s feet before popping up a day later and doing the same to his ears. I’ve seen hundreds of case photographs and no two victims follow the same path of infection. The only non-variable: it’s always fatal. No one understands this disease at all…

  …and no one can stop it.

  I think it’s starting on my chest…

  Saturday

  I can see my ribs. Two of them, glistening at me like curved piano keys. It’s amusing, in some morbidly fascinating way, to see one’s inner workings. The pain is starting to subside, and thankfully only throbbed for a few hours in the morning, but the cloying odour inside the house is repugnant. Ideally, I would open the curtains and windows, but I don’t wish to be disturbed by the outside world. I would only become resentful of those who still have all of their skin. Besides, it was being around other people that infected me in the first place, sealing my fate, and I hate them for that! But retaining my humanity is all I have left to focus on for now and resentment will only make that task harder. I have decisions ahead of me that should not be made in temper…

  I have been corresponding all day with a trusted associate that is supplying me with up-to-date information on the current pandemic, along with the progress of the on-going Government investigations into the crisis. So far it seems clear that this was a premeditated and focused attack on the western world. The Peeling has, so far, hit 90% of Europe and is seeping its way into the East. USA and South America are also stricken, worse than we are in fact, but it is unsurprising to me that, as yet, the Arab world is unaffected. I am eager to see just how far into the East the disease spreads before ceasing its journey of human pestilence. I’m guessing that it will be shortly after it runs out of Christian nations to infect.

  Sunday

  I lost a hand today. Thank God it was my left and that I can still continue writing this. I now have a withered stump that drips periodically with a viscous yellow discharge. It looks similar to the contents of a Cadbury Cream Egg but smells worse than anything I could ever hope to describe to you now. I suppose it’s the aroma of lingering death.

  Next door are still at it. Talking incessantly at all hours. I need peace and quiet right now. Time to think. I already informed my colleagues that I would be working from home for the next week and am not to be disturbed under any circumstances. They were not happy, but I’m the Boss, so they’ll have to cope. They don’t know that I have the sickness, of course
, probably too wrapped up in their own fear of it to even consider the possibility. People only worry about themselves nowadays.

  My associate emailed today and told me that the infection was definitely engineered – Wow. What a revelation! – and that it was unleashed upon the world at strategic locations: Major cities, along coastal areas so that the disease would work inwards from all directions, eating around the edges of England as though it were a Jaffa Cake with a chewy orange centre…

  God what I would do for a box of Jaffa Cakes right now! The stump of my wrist is itching just thinking about it. Perhaps it’s excitement?

  Anyway, I have sent a reply email asking what is currently known about WHO engineered the disease. That is what I have to know.

  Then maybe I can do something about it.

  Monday

  I have lost an eye today. It is indeed unfortunate, but in a way I am blessed to have persevered this long anyway. Many do not, and at least I have the other eye. My left one just dribbled out of its socket today like an under-boiled egg with its top sliced off: all foamy white and custardy-yellow. I almost laughed when I looked in the mirror. I look like a zombie-pirate.

  At least it doesn’t hurt. Not physically.

  I suspect I have little time left now and I am anxiously awaiting news from my associate. I can feel the illness seizing my internal organs in its corrosive grip and it’s only a matter of time before they start to decay completely. I have already taken to soiling myself involuntarily, so I assume that my intestines are already rotten. I would take a shower to get clean, but the pressure would only shred what remaining skin I have left. For now I will sit and wait for my associate to provide me the information I so desire…

  Who is responsible? Who turned me, and most of the free world, into a quivering mass of mutilated flesh?

  I wonder if there’s any Jaffa Cakes in the pantry.

  Tuesday

  It has now been one week since I first noticed the skin under my armpit was peeling away in pus-filled chunks. One week since I realised I was a dead man walking.

  Dead man peeling! Ha!

  But I am still alive, devoid of nearly all my skin, granted, but alive nonetheless. Moist splatters of pungent flesh litter my home now, whilst foul scabs fall from my body constantly. The only merciful thing about this disease is that I feel nothing.

  Nothing except for the soft scraping of insanity inside my fleshless skull.

  Wednesday

  Today will be my last. I can feel it. My lower legs snapped today when I got out of bed, too rotten and malformed to bear what little weight my frail body has left. It is of no importance however, as I awakened to something wonderful: You have mail.

  I am about to drag my withered limbs over to the computer right now, to see what my trusted associate has for me. I will record the email, and my response, for you right here, as I feel it will be important.

  Dear Prime Minister.

  I sincerely hope that you are keeping well in this time of dire need. Great Britain is within the talons of great turmoil and despair, but I trust that your inspired leadership will see us through as ever. This shall not be the end of our endless empire and the good people of this nation will go on stronger than before. That is our way and always will be. May Angels sit on our shoulders as God guides our souls through the times ahead. Long live Great Britain.

  But without further ado, Prime Minister, I will provide you with the Intel you require. It was discovered at 0300 GMT today that the disease is not contained to western nations as first assumed. In fact we now have reliable information that the infection, commonly referred to as ‘The Peeling’, was contracted in Turkey and has quickly spread as far east as Japan. I’m sure you can appreciate, that with the USA also affected, it effectively means the disease has travelled the entire circumference of the world… Yet there is one country that has shown no effects of the illness, despite being surrounded by it on all borders. We have tried to contact that nation’s Government but they have declined all opportunities to reply. It now seems a reasonable assumption that the country in question is responsible for this worldwide plague.

  That country is North Korea.

  As always, I await you orders on how to proceed, but I implore you to act wisely.

  Yours,

  General Harvey Whitehead

  ———————————

  Dear Harvey

  I was certain it was the Arabs! Guess we can all be wrong sometimes…

  Regardless, since my dear Martha and the children were taken from me by this wretched sickness, I have had no time to mourn them, so I regret to inform you that this will be my final act as leader of this nation. I hope that you and your family are well, and remain so. I wish the same for Great Britain.

  Without continued procrastination, my orders, in regards to the Godless entity of North Korea, are as follows:

  Send the Nukes.

  Send them all…

  They will not take this world as their own.

  Yours regretfully,

  Prime Minister Samuel Lloyd Collins

  The Peeling: Book 1 (Jeremy’s Choice)

  The Never Stop News Studio seemed cramped and small with all the bodies that currently occupied it. Its typical skeleton crew of six or seven had swelled to at least four times that amount, and people now crammed together in front of the station’s news desk while two young reporters prepared to go live with the evening’s stories. The overcrowding had made Jeremy’s job difficult.

  Jeremy was a security guard for Never Stop News, responsible for keeping out anyone not invited to be there. With the news studio and its roaming reporters providing content twenty-four hours a day, live, there was always a risk that some anarchic member of the public, with a grudge and a message, would try to sneak in front of the cameras to interrupt the feed. With current events, and the public being as frightened as they were, the risk of a security breach had skyrocketed. People wanted answers, and when people wanted answers they came after the Government first and the journalists a close second. With so many people filling up the claustrophobic studio, it was extremely difficult for Jeremy to keep his eyes on everybody. It was even harder to keep his mind on them.

  There was just one more hour to go before Jeremy was relieved from his post by the night guard – just one more hour. But he couldn’t deny that he dreaded being there even another minute longer. Bad things were happening, started almost a full week ago, and the situation didn’t seem to be getting any better. He didn’t want to be here anymore; didn’t want to hear another thing about the peeling.

  The studio was silent and the lights went down as the countdown till live began. The network was currently running a pre-recorded football report on its dedicated satellite channel and on its website; it would turn back to the studio’s anchors in less than seven-seconds.

  “Okay, guys,” one of the production assistants said. “You’re on in three…two…”

  Sarah Lane, one of the two young news anchors, cleared her throat then said, “Good evening, guys. Things are still pretty bad in the UK right now, but rest assured me and Tom will be bringing you all of the latest news for the next several hours. Get yourself a nice hot cuppa and snuggle up on that sofa. Never Stop News will be looking after you tonight.”

  Jeremy still struggled to accept such a casual approach to the news. Sarah and Tom were only mid-twenties, and were allowed to dress and talk as such. Never Stop News’s whole premise was to provide the day’s events with a laid-back and youthful approach. Their slogan was: All the truth. None of the nonsense. Jeremy found it even more surprising that such an approach had been successful. Never Stop’s hip approach to the news had gained them a younger audience unattainable to the traditional networks. It had even started to eat into the more mature demographics as well. It seemed that people were tired of the stuffiness of days gone by and were happy to get the news from a bunch of bubbly youngsters. As a consequence, the Never Stop News Corporation was one of the fastest
growing media companies in the world. Jeremy imagined that the lovely Sarah Lane had at least a small part in that success. Her shapely legs and curved figure, always on display beneath the glass news desk, were a constant feature of trashy celeb magazines.

  The equally attractive and immaculately-groomed, Tom, took the lead from Sarah and got started with the programme. “As we’ve been reporting all week, the current crisis in the UK and – it now appears – many other parts of the world, has escalated to devastating levels. It has been reported that upwards of four-million people have been affected throughout the nation so far, and that number has been rising, hour-by hour, since the crisis began. With no end in sight, there is great fear that the current number of casualties is just a small percentage of what will be the final number.”

  Sarah Lane took over. “While both Private and Public sectors are working tirelessly to find both a cause and a solution, it is clear that the world is suffering under what can only be described as – a global plague. Commonly referred to as the peeling, the unknown virus has spread throughout our nation and others, with virulence never before seen. Affecting the young and old alike, there is currently no clear vector for contraction. Government officials admit to knowing nothing about its origin and very little about its pathology. As previously stated, all members of the public are advised to remain inside their homes and avoid all contact with anyone besides their immediate family. The military are permitted to use force, where necessary, in ensuring the spread of the infection is contained.”

  Jeremy swallowed back a mouthful of stomach acid. His reflux was bad, but his pills were at home (he only usually suffered heartburn in bed). If he’d a job someplace else, he would be home right now, but the news was a national requirement while the crisis lasted, and so too was the safety of its messengers. Jeremy’s job, in many ways, was a matter of national security. Pity for England he was just a middle-aged man with bad acid.