Weep (Book 1): The Irish Epidemic

by Brady, Eoin

  By the time he reached his apartment the paper was useless, soaked right through to the agony aunt section. It was tearing apart in his hands. He lost count of the number of times he correctly entered the code into the door, but the lock was still engaged. It was just a matter of luck that he spotted a woman from his block leaving for work. She nearly closed the door on him, after noticing him sketchily eyeing up a route into the courtyard from the car park. Solene’s cats wove around his legs the moment he entered the apartment. Despite their incessant meowing, the place still felt empty without her.

  “How do you have so much to talk about?” he said, nudging them aside with his boot. They were irritable; Mooch tried to run between his legs and escape the moment the door opened. “I only need to keep you alive until she comes back. This will go easier on you all if you behave.” It had not seemed like such a difficult task until he saw the full litter box.

  They ignored the food he poured out for them. Solene had filled the press with twice as much as was needed. Fin only noticed how bushy their tails were when he turned the light on. They hid in their cosy spots. “I was only messing when I said all I have to do is keep you alive.” A pang of worry blossomed at the thought that Solene might return and they would be sick, or worse. He knew that whatever happened to them, he would experience as well.

  There was a note inside the fridge. ‘So you don’t starve to death while I’m away.’ Each shelf was full of food. The cupboards too. All of it healthy, not much of it appealing. While breakfast sizzled on the pan and the coffee brewed, he checked his phone. No response from Ciara. Alongside the weather warnings, there were breaking news articles talking about several reported flu deaths. Merry Christmas. Without reading any of them, he sent a link of the article to his father. ‘Have you gotten a flu jab this year? This is not me trying to call you old, I just want you to be able to enjoy the few years you have left.’

  His response was swift and expected. ‘Go away out of that, I’m not that old yet.’

  ‘Last I checked there wasn’t an age limit you had to reach before you could die of something.’

  ‘Knowing my luck I’ll get sick over the holidays. Happens every year. Are you free to call? It’s taking too long to reply by text.’

  Fin put his phone up to his ear. “Hey Dad, considering the speed you text at, I think you should consider getting a shot.”

  His father ignored the comment. “See there were a few deaths over the last few days. It’s some respiratory infection, I think.”

  “Should we be worried that there are enough cases to make the news? I mean doesn’t the flu claim a few people every year?”

  “Aye it does but… I don’t know, these people weren’t all old, a few of them were young with no underlying health issues by the reports. Might be a case of a bad batch of drugs in Dublin, a few people from the same club were struck down with something.”

  “That doesn't make sense, there’s a rake of people sick here. Now, I’m going off of what a taxi driver told me.” Fin stepped away from the pan to better hear the conversation.

  “I went to check on your granny. They’ve stopped visitors going to retirement homes.”

  “Ah I wouldn’t worry about that. They’d be afraid if they let a moist breeze in, the place would be empty by evening.”

  “She’s fine, thanks for asking. She sends her love, mostly to Solene. Will you be all right down there? News is saying to avoid public places – bars, cafes, buses and hotels.”

  “That’s easy enough to do with the storm. The hotel will be empty before I head in tonight and then I just relax until it opens again. Easy money.”

  “Have you heard from Solene yet? How was her flight?”

  “Her first one was delayed and then cancelled. She’s supposed to be getting one tonight. She filled the house with food and little notes for me before she left.”

  “You don’t deserve that woman.”

  “I know.”

  A silence remained long enough between them to become awkward. “I don’t like the thought of you down there by yourself,” his father said.

  “Well then think of how I’ll be making more money in a week than I normally would in a month. That’s what’s getting me through it.”

  “The taxman will be delighted. Don’t forget to bring your camera to work with you, that storm will be ravaging the west coast. I’d say you’ll be glad there’s four floors tonight when the first two are underwater.”

  “That’s not a bad idea, there’s a little snug on the top floor in front of a massive window. Perfect view of the bay and mountain from there. Pint and a book with the camera at the ready.”

  “It’s well for some. Go on, I’ll let you go. I’ve to do my shopping. I leave it until the last minute, happens every year. Do you think you should get a booster shot, what with being around so many people?”

  “If there’s something going around, I already have it. If you’re chatting with granny again, let her know I was asking after her.”

  “Listen, she’s in the best place for her to be.”

  “It’s terrifying to think that one day that’ll be us lying in bed most of the day in a home, with all our time behind us.”

  “Awful maudlin for a man that’s going to be living in a massive hotel alone for the next week. She’ll be grand, though she won’t appreciate having that conversation with you.”

  “What I was getting at was, you best get me a decent present this year or else we won’t be putting you in a home, we’ll find a field with a view and ditch you there.”

  “I changed your nappy enough, now it’s your turn to change mine.”

  “Go on. Good luck.”

  “Love you.”

  The line went dead, the phone hung limp in his hand. He rarely heard his father say he loved him, it was something unspoken. Things must be worse than he let on to warrant a ‘Love you.’

  Light shone through the corners of the blackout blinds, but it was the noise of the shoppers rushing below his window that kept him tossing and turning in bed. He ran himself a bath, dug out a few of Solene’s lavender bath bombs and candles from the press under the sink. He dropped two of them into the hot stream. He videoed the result and sent it to Solene with the caption ‘it does not feel like home without you, but I’m getting by’.

  Opening the book she had bought him, he lay down in the purple, pink and perfumed water. Music and rain drowned out the noise from the busy market street. After the water became too cool to be comfortable, he moved upstairs. Several hours later, with a lot less light in the world, he was frightened awake by the game controller slipping from his lap and loudly hitting the ground. The cats scattered, their little claws scraping on the tiles.

  Several people in the car park beeped their horns. He looked through the blinds. The place was a mess; shoppers ran to escape the rain, cars sped off and it looked like a fight was about to start between three people over a cart full of food. Somebody pulled out without looking and broke the lights of a car already on the road. Neither of the drivers stopped to exchange details. He was glad he had decided to leave most of his Christmas shopping until the January sales. Solene loved surprises and the best way to keep her presents a surprise was to keep them a mystery to himself. Lying back on the couch, he hit the snooze button five times before getting ready.

  No taxi would take him to the Quay, many of the numbers he rang went straight to voicemail. It was pitch dark when he set out on the long walk to work. His umbrella caught in the wind and broke the moment he opened it. A pity, it was an expensive one he had stolen from the hotel. It went into the first bin he came across. Christmas lights swung in arcs across the road. Rain pipes throbbed and gurgled, streams of water shot out across the paths and flowed down the tarmac. The gutters were full, little rivers nearly mounted the kerb. The storm would wash through town.

  There was little relief from the sharp rain on the walk in. He was running late and fighting against the wind slowed him further. Nobody would min
d that much on the last day. Leaning into the wind, it was a struggle to keep his footing. He had to cross the road to avoid the swaying trees on the grounds of Westport House. It was the first time he had seen the harbour so full of boats. They rattled and roared, banging against tires lining the pier wall. Even in the relative safety of the harbour they looked to be in danger of damage. He tasted salt from the spray in the air. It was too dark to see far, but he could hear waves crashing over the storm wall in the distance. He could only imagine what it must be like for the residents out on the islands in the bay.

  When the electric doors of the hotel hummed open, he was greeted by an empty lobby and the same old Christmas songs. He stood under the heater until he could feel his cheeks again. Rebecca walked out from the back office behind the reception desk. Her hard expression softened only moderately when she saw that it was not a customer.

  “What the hell are you still doing here?” he asked.

  “Since you’ve left, hardly anyone has come to work. There was one lad in the kitchen to do the breakfast, but there was nobody to cook for. Two housekeepers were in for I’d say half an hour before they left too. Never said a word, they just ran out of the building.”

  “Are you serious? Ciara was supposed to be on this evening. Have you called Andrew?”

  “I have. His number just rings out and that’s only when I actually get connected to him. I’ve tried all the managers, duty managers, even the owners. Nobody is answering. Some people can’t make it in with the weather. That, I understand. Others are sick. I couldn’t even reach you.”

  “Oh, I turn my phone off until I’ve to be in so that I can’t be reached. Must have been a really good night then on the staff party to have so many absent. How’s your hangover?”

  “Head’s still at me, but more from anger now than anything else. I was supposed to be at home hours ago. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to close the bar but I had to because I can’t be everywhere at once.”

  “You’re not thinking of driving out to Achill Island in that, are you? It’s the highest weather warning they can give. Trees, electricity and phone lines down everywhere. At least ten thousand homes are already without power,” Fin said, parroting off the information he had heard on the radio. “Not even Teresa Mannion would head out to make a warning video in that. I’ve the back-up generators should it go down here, so I’ll have plenty of ice for the odd gin and tonic and the fridges will keep the beer cold. Honestly, I don’t think you should chance it. Sure there aren’t street lights for most of the journey and it’s an hour long, on a good day. Stay here, I’ll set you up in the suite. I’d feel much better if you did.”

  “I was tempted to stay. Wasn’t looking forward to the drive home even when it was still bright out.” She rattled the keys in her pocket while she thought. “Okay, I’ll stay, on the condition that I get room service.”

  “I’ll get a porter right on that. I’m going to make myself a brew before my fingers fall off, do you fancy one?”

  “Dying for a coffee but before we do, we have to put the storm barriers up over the windows.”

  Fin let go of the zip of his jacket just before he could pull it down. “Just the two of us? That’s a four man job.”

  “We’ll have to make do.”

  It took them the guts of half an hour to bring the thick, perforated metal sheets out of storage. They protected the windows from whatever the storm threw at them. Beyond the shelter of the hotel the wind nearly knocked them off their feet. They carefully leaned the shields close against the wall before locking them into place. A gust of wind got behind the sheet and it took every ounce of strength Fin had to keep it from flying off.

  With the job finished, they locked themselves in the hotel. They shivered in front of the coffee machine, listening as it ground the beans before pouring steaming coffee into two mugs. The heat in his hand defrosted his fingers. Outside, the noise of the storm was so intense that they could barely hear each other speak, let alone their phones. Rebecca's face went white when she checked hers. She listened to a voicemail and played it back again on loudspeaker so Fin could hear.

  “For the love of God will you pick up, Becca! There was an accident on the road to the island. If you’re not hurt and I go looking for you, you’ll be worse off than if you did crash.” She tried calling back but the storm was interfering with the network signal. She sent a text instead.

  “I told you,” Fin said. “It’s madness to head out in that weather. Only stupidity and necessity would make somebody attempt it.”

  Fin checked his phone. Above the Met Éireann weather service storm alert, there was a warning he had never seen before, a government-issued, health service notification. ‘Suspected dangerous influenza outbreak.’ Fin clicked on it and was directed to a website that suggested safety precautions.

  Rebecca looked at his screen. “I got that one too. Avoid crowds and other people. That’s not hard for you, you work so late that half the staff have never even seen you.”

  “I don’t remember ever getting something like this from the government before.”

  His internet connection was spotty, but a string of breaking news articles popped up on his screen.

  “What do you think this is about?” Rebecca asked.

  “Nothing good. Will you have a pint with me and we’ll put the news on?”

  “Sure.”

  4

  Bad News

  The storm swallowed the world. Visibility was reduced to the orbs of light surrounding the street lamps. Heating remained on throughout the hotel, but Fin still felt a chill. They sat in the camera's blind spot on the top floor. Their little table was stacked with empty, suddy pint glasses, a bucket of melting ice, and the end of a bottle of gin. Sloppy sandwiches made from microwaved bacon and hot wok chicken went down a treat.

  Rebecca downed the rest of her drink and mixed them another.

  “That looks like it’s more gin than tonic,” Fin said. He kept drinking but still felt too sober.

  The alcohol did little to make the news on the large function room television any easier to watch. His stomach heaved, an acidic taste lurking in the back of his throat. He sat forward, back arched, elbows resting on his knees. The volume was set to maximum, to be heard above the storm. Wind warped and battered the windows. Rain turned to hail; cold radiated from the dark glass. More cars than he expected on such a night went past on the road below.

  “A few storm watchers, perhaps,” Rebecca said.

  “This storm is a killer, if you’re stupid enough to let it get you. Your folks will be alright, won’t they?” Fin asked.

  “The island will still be there in the morning,” Rebecca said. She poured a little more gin into her glass.

  Neither of them spoke as the news developed. Usually the night would be full of reruns of the day’s events, or pundits talking about politics and sports. Now, primetime reporters were still up, having not left their desks all day. An average story could be chewed over until there was nothing left to it, but the spread of this suspected new strain of influenza was developing at a rate the news teams could barely keep up with. As soon as they started talking about one breaking story, they had to move on to another, more striking incident.

  They only saw the full scale of it when they went online. At first, it was a suspected bad batch of poorly prepared drugs going around Dublin. A hospital was inundated with young people from the same street of nightclubs. Brief glimpses of those infected showed them babbling, incoherent and nearly manic. All of them had elevated heart rates and an inability to speak from sore, restricted throats which caused them difficulty breathing. When enough cases appeared across different hospitals around the larger cities of the country, it was clear that this was not isolated. Old or young, the reports showed the disease did not differentiate between the healthy and the sick.

  Rebecca inhaled sharply and showed Fin a video on her phone of a young woman strapped down on a gurney, wailing in agony, sweating profusely and b
egging for water.

  “That doesn't look like the flu,” Rebecca said. “It’s everywhere. There’s a suspected case of it down the road in Castlebar.”

  “Maybe the storm will stop it spreading,” Fin said.

  “That could be the case. Or, it’s the reason we aren’t seeing too many people in hospital – either the roads are impassable or phone and electricity lines are down and the emergency services are already too busy to answer all the calls.”

  They watched the television late into the night. There was no end to the reports, they kept coming in. Stories broke first on social media, then news networks tried to play catch-up, censoring the worst of the footage. People in different time zones started paying attention, watching in fascination to see what would happen when Ireland woke up to an apparent epidemic. Fin was about to call it a night when the first deaths were announced. Respiratory complications. Panic online was immediate and Fin’s was dulled only slightly by the alcohol in his system.

  Public health warnings were upgraded, the wording more severe in tone. Earlier suggestions now read like orders. Emergency councils were convened in Dublin; the Taoiseach and President were woken. Government alerts flashed up on his phone as frequently as if they were from a needy partner. It was declared a health emergency of international concern. Every station they switched to carried the story. Ports were closed, all planes across the country were grounded. Solene, I hope you got out. Football matches, concerts and all public events were cancelled. Authorities across the world started the hunt for similar outbreaks in their own countries. The pundits now speculated on the origin of the new disease, the likely candidate in their eyes being antibiotic-resistant bacteria, though a target growing in popularity online was anti-vaxxers.