No Escape

by Alex Scarrow

  “Not all of me is here, just a little. Enough to tell you what I have to tell you.”

  “This isn’t making… I…”

  “Freya, please!”

  “Grace, I… Shit…this is—”

  “You’re saved. I saved you. You’re one of us now.”

  “One of…?”

  “And you have a job. A very important job to do.”

  “A job?”

  “Let me explain it to you. Let me show you.”

  Chapter 25

  Flight Lieutenant Jamie Cameron glanced at the fuel display. “Ten more minutes of this, Steve, then we’ll turn this old bird around.”

  “Good.” His copilot nodded. “My eyes are starting to hurt.” Jamie tapped his throat mic. “Ten more minutes, guys.” The rest of the crew acknowledged him.

  Flying low at three thousand feet, beneath the top-heavy cumulus clouds, was tiring on the eyes, but the “floaters” had so far tended to hang at this altitude, pushed along more quickly by the lower and thicker air currents.

  Ever since the outbreak, they’d been tasked with the same thankless job: flying endless, languid loops around New Zealand airspace looking for floaters.

  The Surviving World had learned about the resistant effects of analgesics. The Surviving World had learned about salt—how to use it as a barrier, how to use it as a testing agent.

  The virus, however, was also learning to take better advantage of the world’s high- and low-pressure fronts and prevailing winds. It had begun to produce more ambitious airborne structures: membranous sacks given lighter-than-air buoyancy by the methane and helium contained within. These sacks, some of them larger than weather balloons—swiftly becoming known as “poppers” or “floaters”—contained thousands of infectious spores. It wasn’t enough to shoot these things down; they had to be shot down out at sea, so the fluffy, snowflake-like spores that erupted and descended from them hit seawater and died.

  During the first year after the outbreak, there’d only been a couple dozen floater sightings, and those had been heading southwestward, having drifted a long way across the Pacific, presumably from the North and South American continents.

  In the second year, the number increased radically, most of them drifting eastward from mainland Australia. There had been nearly two thousand logged sightings. Every single one of them easily popped with a burst of incendiary rounds, the flammable methane/hydrogen mix inside the sacks erupting with a satisfying bluish flash and the thousands of tiny spores sparkling like stars as they burned. In the last six months, the floaters had reduced to a steady flow averaging about a hundred per month. They were easy to see and quickly spotted on the radar. They drifted slowly enough to be less-than-challenging targets for the boys in the back of the plane.

  “Sir, I’m picking up a signal, zero-four-seven.”

  That wasn’t for Jamie; that was a message for the electronics officer, Lieutenant Talbot. The channels were all kept wide open—unless Carling and Jessop way at the back of the plane started bitching about one thing or another.

  “Got it on my screen now. Surface level signa— That’s… Whoa! OK. That’s big. Really big!”

  Jamie tapped his mic on. “Talbot, what’ve you got back there?”

  “We’re picking up a signal on the radar. Something big on the surface.”

  Jamie hoped to God it wasn’t another rogue oil tanker. There’d been one discovered over a year ago drifting listlessly on the ocean’s meandering currents. A team in biohazard suits had gone aboard and found the ship’s holds filled, not with oil but with tens of thousands of bodies, a last desperate bid to escape the outbreak. There’d been no sign of infection among them. But in a way that seemed worse. They’d died of thirst. They would have all been dead within a week of setting sail.

  “Freighter?”

  “Bigger.”

  “Tanker?”

  “No, mate. This is way, way bigger.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Talbot, stop pissing around and give me something more precise than ‘bigger’!”

  “What’s on my screen is about three miles across, sir. How’s that for precise?”

  “Three miles?” He exchanged a glance with the copilot sitting beside him. “How far away is it?”

  “Forty miles, at heading zero-four-seven.”

  About twenty minutes away from them, and judging by the heading, it was something that must have come in from the Pacific.

  “You sure it’s not weather noise?”

  “It’s not weather.” Talbot sounded irritated, like he’d been asked if he knew port from starboard. “It’s solid and it’s sea level.”

  For a cold-sweat second, Jamie wondered if he’d screwed up spectacularly on navigation. Satnav systems had ceased to function a long time ago. It was old-school navigation now, mark one, eyeballs, and time and speed calculations made on a paper chart.

  His copilot anticipated his question. “Relax. We’re right where we should be, sir, although…Talbot’s picked up something that shouldn’t be there.”

  “Right.” Jamie checked the fuel display again. The detour was well within their range. “We’d better go and take a closer look at this damn thing.”

  A quarter of an hour later, his copilot made a sighting. “Jamie, you see it?”

  He nodded. With a flat, uniform, deep blue sea, it was easy to spot—a block of faint gray on the horizon, “land” that shouldn’t be there.

  “Looks like a volcanic island.”

  Jamie adjusted the course slightly and reduced their altitude, so their first approach and flyby would be a relatively close one. The sea rushed beneath them, a glistening blur as they closed the last few miles.

  After a couple of minutes, Jamie could pick out a lot more detail. The structure was shaped very much like a volcanic island—a central steep, column-like volcanic spout surrounded by an apron of ejected debris that would comprise the “lowlands.”

  Except…it wasn’t colored the faint grays and greens he would have expected to see at this distance. Its overall hue seemed to be a deep red, the color of roasted beets.

  “Could be it’s a new volcanic island?” said one of the guys in the back.

  “We’d have picked up the seismic activity,” replied Talbot.

  “Yeah right…like someone’s still listening out for that kind of stuff.”

  “Pipe down,” said Jamie. He checked their altitude and brought them a little lower, to a thousand yards. Low enough to get good detail as they made one large loop around the thing. “Cameras on. Let’s get everything we can for the lab boys back home.”

  He studied the object as the plane dipped lower and their distance from the sea dwindled to less than two miles.

  No way that’s something geological.

  And it didn’t look man-made. Which left…

  Viral.

  He could see textures emerging from the side of the tall central cone: bumps and ridges that looked like thick tendons, circular ribs that ran around it like tide markers of growth. He could see motion on the far side of the cone, something large, flickering every now and then.

  As the plane began to bank to starboard, beginning a large clockwise loop around the island, the flickering object gradually emerged from profile.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  He realized he was looking at a sheet of membrane, a vast triangular sheet of membrane, almost a mile on each side, fluttering like an impossibly large spinnaker sail. As the morning sun shone through it, it glowed a brilliant, bloody red, silhouettes of dark, branching veins spreading out across it, converging in a central knot of thicker, darker material. The gigantic “sail” was a crimson nightmare, and with the knot of flesh in the middle, it looked like an enormous bloodshot eye staring directly at the approaching plane.

  “Looks like Sauron’s Evil Eye,” breathed
Talbot.

  Jamie nodded. Staring malevolently at their foolish approach.

  Above the tall central cone, he could see hundreds of floaters all tethered to the structure, bumping and jostling together like the gathered party balloons of a carnival vendor.

  The plane turned behind the island. Jamie could see a faint trail of white suds in its path, a line in the deep blue sea winding more or less in a straight line back toward the eastern horizon and the rest of the Pacific.

  A wake—a telltale indication that this so-called “island” was actually in motion.

  “It’s not an island,” he muttered. “It’s a goddamn vessel!”

  * * *

  Freya,

  The person who’s in charge here is called Lawrence. He reminds me of the guy who was running the Oasis place. What was his name? Oh yeah, Carnegie. He seems like a pretty decent type. Not a total power addict like Everett. We have group chores just like at Everett’s castle too—farming, fishing, cooking, foraging…repairing fishing nets (hate doing that).

  According to Lawrence, right at the beginning, just after the outbreak, the virus grew feelers up to the gap in the bridge, hung around for a few days, then went away. He said the road on the other side has been pretty much clear of it ever since—as if the virus has decided there was nothing to see here.

  But we think it knows there are people living here now. The old folks here are getting pretty anxious. They’ve had God knows how many town council meetings, each time it’s the same thing: “We have to go!”

  “Right, OK…but where?”

  I get why they’re so nervous. This is as close as the virus has ever gotten to them.

  At the last meeting, I stood up and told them that the bridge and its six-yard gap is the best defense they’re gonna find anywhere.

  We’ve just got to stay calm and sit tight and stop the virus from growing across the gap!

  That’s me. How about you? Are you out there somewhere writing me letters I’m never going to read?

  God, I miss you.

  Chapter 26

  “And…there’s some of it sticking out over there,” said Jake. Leon swung the hose to the left. He aimed the spray of seawater at a thick knuckle of viral growth that must have been missed by last night’s shift or had a huge growth spurt as the shifts changed over. It had meandered nearly a quarter of the way across the gap and was now bending under its own extended weight. As the salt spray speckled the surface, its tough-looking, leathery skin began to crackle and break up like popping candy. The branch began to drool thick strands of gelatinous pink down into the lively waves and froth below. Every now and then, small and startled scuttling creatures tumbled out of the artery along with the slime and plummeted to their death in the sea.

  Leon couldn’t help a slight grin of satisfaction as his spray of seawater wore the thick root down and pushed it back to the far side of the bridge within a couple of minutes.

  “Come on, it’s my turn now,” said Jake.

  Last night’s town hall gathering had ended with a resounding vote to stay put. If the one weapon they had against the virus was salt, then it made sense to stay right where they were, surrounded on all sides by an ocean full of the stuff.

  It had been a tense meeting. Some of the residents had raised concerns about the “snow clouds” and “soap bubbles”—the airborne manifestations of the virus that had started appearing more regularly out at sea. But since everyone on the isle was still taking meds twice a week and they had a stockpile that was going to last years, stealthy infection seemed unlikely. A swarming was the main concern, and if they could keep the virus from establishing a bridge to the isle, they were going to be OK.

  They had a four-person team working on it all the time now—two to take turns hand-pumping the water into a plastic tank, one to maintain the hand-pumped air pressure, and one to spray. The milder weather was cooling fast, and it looked like a long, hard third winter was on its way. If the virus followed the pattern of the last two, it would lie low and wait it out.

  Leon passed the hose, rubbed his frozen pink hands together, then swapped places with Jake. He was now on the pump, pulling and pushing the handle to suck seawater up into the tank; it was backbreaking work.

  Adewale was working the other handle, wheezing out a cloud of steamy breath into the cool air, exhausted from the exertion.

  “It’s enough now, I think,” he gasped.

  Leon looked up. Jake was spraying down the road on the far side to push the viral growths farther back.

  Leon nodded and both of them stopped pumping. Finley followed suit and stopped working the foot pump that was maintaining the air pressure.

  The hose died in Jake’s hands, and he let out a groan of disappointment. “Crap, I was enjoying that.”

  “I didn’t get a turn,” complained Finley.

  “You’ll get a turn this afternoon,” said Leon. “It’ll only take a few hours for that stuff to start growing back across.”

  Adewale swiped the sheen of sweat from his forehead. “Is it growing across faster?”

  “Faster and thicker,” said Jake. “I wonder if it’s trying harder to get across before winter kicks in.”

  Leon nodded. He hoped Jake was right about that. If it was trying harder, throwing its full weight into getting at them now, and this was its very best effort, then it looked like they were going to be safe while it “died back” during the winter, safe until at least next spring.

  He wandered over to the edge and stared across the gap at the road to the town. Six weeks ago, it had been nothing but cracked asphalt and weeds. Now, it was almost completely covered with a lumpy and dark lattice of viral threads of varying thickness. Here and there were arteries that converged into a knot, from which small termite mounds had grown upward like thermal vents. The highest of them was about a yard tall and topped with puckering orifices that every now and then opened to release a small scuttling scout or to allow one in. The virus clearly knew there was something good to be hunted down nearby, but so far, it hadn’t developed any sophisticated plans to get to them.

  He wondered if it was testing them, perhaps even toying with them. Or maybe it had decided that the recent onset of colder weather was an indication that conquest of this small spit of an isle could wait until the next warm spell.

  Freya, even if you and Grace are alive, we’re never going to see each other again, are we? Different islands in different parts of the world. I don’t see airline flights being an option anytime soon. What do we do? We just go on existing on our islands forever? Is anyone anywhere fighting back, building up resources, reaching out to other groups? Are your rescuers coming back here anytime soon? Or was that it—one rescue attempt and now we’re all on our own?

  Maybe I’ll find my own way to reach you. Somehow.

  “Ah now, Leon love, I’m getting to know that face.”

  Leon looked up from his bowl of fish chowder as Cora sat down at the table next to him.

  “Huh…what face have I got on, then?”

  “It’s your I miss her face.” She pulled a freshly baked brown roll into pieces and dropped them into her bowl.

  Leon gazed out of the wide window, across the narrow cobblestone promenade at the wooden jetty beyond. The old seafront restaurant’s “Ocean Spray Chippy” logo framed his view. Once, it had served cups of tea and the occasional bag of chips to senior citizens. Now it functioned as the community’s cafeteria with two meals a day served to over a thousand hungry mouths. The kitchen beyond the swing doors was constantly alive with the sound of freshly caught fish being slapped down, gutted, and boiled or griddled.

  “I looked for her as well,” said Cora. “When we got down to the camp. I looked for that anorak too.” She smiled. “I didn’t see it either. I’m guessing she made it.”

  “I’ll never get to see her again though.”


  Cora blew on her spoon. “No. I suppose you won’t. But believing someone you care for is alive is something.”

  “True.”

  “I lost Iain, my husband of thirty years, in the outbreak. Then I met a lovely man called Dennis. And we survived the first winter, and then I lost him too.” She sighed. “I suppose the lesson I should learn there is don’t get too close to anyone or you’ll break your heart again. When life becomes a matter of survival, best keep yourself to yourself. But…” She tested the broth with her lip and slurped some in. “But what’s the point in going on if you can’t allow yourself to love someone else again?”

  “Time to move on from her?” He flung a hand loosely around. Apart from themselves, the isle was like one big nursing home.

  “No. I’m just saying don’t give up on the idea of there being someone else.” She shrugged. “I was thinking about this last night.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “That nothing is permanent. We live for each day and can’t plan for a future. Especially now.”

  Nothing was certain. Sure, it looked like they’d have the Isle of Portland for the winter. But what developments would the next warm spell bring? Maybe next summer, the virus would’ve figured out a solution for its salt phobia. “You know,” she continued, “I used to watch the news and see those stories of waves of migrants in their dinghies crossing the Mediterranean to get into Europe. I used to wonder why they’d put themselves through all of that. And now that I’ve been a refugee myself…I think I understand.” She looked out of the window. “If there’s a pretty good chance there won’t be a tomorrow for you, or a next week, or a next year…if your life is a constant struggle for existence, you’ve got to grab any opportunity, haven’t you? No matter how hard.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And that tells me a lot about why they came. They were the ones who hadn’t given up, the ones who’d figured out that the future must be made better, or why bother living in the first place.”

  She sank her spoon into the broth and stirred it. Steam wafted up between them. “When nothing is permanent or safe or guaranteed…you give up. Or you move on.” She laughed. “Or you can just hope, I suppose.”