by Terry Tyler
The air of peace in there, the dark and cool, almost made me wish I was a believer.
The vicar looked as if he was about to collapse.
I didn't see one business open, not even the pubs.
How were they going to get all this sorted in just one week, in time to remove the cordons?
I tried Lawrie at the Seagull, but he didn't answer the door, or the text I sent.
Back at home, I tried Dex again. The phone had been disconnected.
On Wednesday, I got through to Mum.
"We're absolutely fine, darling, I do wish you'd stop worrying! Look, Dex is a sensible chap, and if he's been doing all his naughty anti-government stuff he's probably keeping a low profile! But you mustn't worry about us, we're perfectly okay, and if we have to stay here until this wretched disease is stamped out, well, then we'll have a long holiday, won't we?" She laughed, and I smiled through my tears.
She and Dad were happy, that was what mattered.
On the lunchtime national news, there was word of several more 'isolated' outbreaks of the fever around the country. On the six o'clock news, the Prime Minister spoke. He applauded the people of the UK for pulling together, and assured us of his confidence that busy experts working round the clock would soon come up with a cure.
I think he even said 'Blitz spirit' at one point.
The news then reported several deaths in the quarantined North Norfolk town of Shipden, and quickly added that vaccinations were being 'fast-tracked' for the whole town and surrounding area. Yet again, we were assured that the outbreak was under control.
The people of Shipden were informed that the whole country's thoughts were with them. Cue film of brave campers.
I couldn’t help feeling we weren’t being told the whole story. Lottie suggested looking at the news sites of other countries, but every time we clicked on a likely link, we were told the content was not available in the UK.
That evening, some of the scheduled TV programmes failed to run.
YouTube showed the real story. Videos were posted showing looting in London, Birmingham and Manchester, with people holding up their spoils. Bit less of the Blitz spirit there, then.
More riots at the vaccination units. Mile long queues at petrol stations, fights at the pumps.
Where were all those people going, I wondered?
As fast as the videos were taken down, more appeared. Everyone was posting the Prime Minister's speech. I only bothered to read the first twenty or so comments under one of them, and these told me enough.
"Bet that wanker's safe in his bunker!"
"Easy when you're rich and important enough to get the vaccine. Doesn't say where he is, does it? He'll be in some swanky resort, sitting it out."
"END OF DAYS"
"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."
On Thursday, newscasters asked us not to panic buy from supermarkets, not to go to hospitals, not to call out the emergency services, and gave phone numbers we could call for essential medicines.
'The Secretary of State for Health has issued a statement to say that the emergency services have the situation under control, and his department has every confidence that a cure will be found within days. In the meantime, it is possible that domestic utilities might be disrupted due to employee absenteeism, so he asks for the public's full co-operation and patience during this challenging time. To read the full statement, please go to www.virus.gov.uk.'
'Challenging', indeed.
The situation was escalating on an hourly basis, and I felt angry with Dex all over again, but then I'd remember that he'd got us the vaccine, and feel guilty. He'd kept us alive, which was hardly to be sniffed at. But as far as I could see, all these hush-hush trips to Northumberland had achieved precisely nothing. He'd left Lottie and me to face this alone, and for what?
The quarantine was clearly not going to end any time soon. As for the food distribution points, they provided only keep-you-alive basics such as white bread, soup, pulses and toilet paper, and Tracy told me they'd more or less run out. Yet they expected people not to panic buy? Not to loot? I couldn't condone that, but I could understand it. If Lottie was hungry, I'd do whatever I had to.
Yet again, I thanked Dex. We didn't have to worry about food.
Not yet, anyway.
Air and sea ports around the country were closed, as was the Channel Tunnel.
Mum and Dad weren't coming home in the foreseeable future, then.
If the government and NHS were in control, why take this enormous step?
Tracy knocked on my door, insisting on giving me yet another sweaty hug in exchange for the vaccines. "I don't think many people outside Shipden have got it, so the quarantine has worked, hasn't it?" She was doing it again. Looking at me for reassurance. "It says on the Private Life bulletins that there are only isolated cases in the rest of the country."
If I heard the term 'isolated cases' once more—
She got her phone out of her pocket and showed me the Private Life 'Keep Britain Safe' reminders, with newly issued government warnings about washing your hands a lot and staying at home if you felt unwell.
I decided not to tell her to look on YouTube.
"Oh, I know what I wanted to show you!" She tapped the screen a few times, and thrust it at me; I took it from her, expecting to see a reassuring news item, but what Tracy thought so important for me to see was a video of a golden Labrador puppy having a rough and tumble with a group of fluffy kittens. "Isn't it just gorgeous? That little tabby one, she looks just like Amy's Pansy, doesn't she?"
"Yes, it's really sweet," I said, and forced a smile.
"You get loads of cute cat videos on here, I think it's to cheer people up so they don't think about Bat Fever!" She giggled. "I'm addicted! I wish you were on it, so I could share them to your page. Go on, sign up!"
That night, Lottie told me she'd heard the Clifton Hotel had been ransacked by people looking for food.
Months later, Phil talked to me about the 'tipping point' in a crisis such as we were facing now, when the balance of a society breaks down.
"In the case of a pandemic," he said, "it's when there are more cases of infection than can be controlled by isolation—and, later, when there are simply not enough healthy people in authority to keep the basic needs of a society going, or to maintain order. Which is when chaos takes over. The problem is that no one recognises that the tipping point is about to be reached until it's already passed."
On Friday the news reported more cases, with a map showing the locations. Red for over a hundred reported cases, pink for fifty, and so on. Shipden was one big red dot. Very few areas were clear, just some in Wales, Scotland, Cumbria and the bottom of Cornwall.
"If someone in your household dies," they said, "please consult the website or call the Virus Hotline. Do not ring the emergency services."
That weekend, the second of our new reality, the internet and phone service began to falter. Tracy told me that down in the town people were fighting in the streets with the soldiers and each other; I couldn't process that, couldn't imagine it at all.
"Jason said some lads he knew from school looted Billings Electrical, then set fire to it. They were trying to sell the stuff they nicked, but no one's interested. And some junkies he knows broke into the pharmacy in Boots, but when they rang the police they said they hadn't got the manpower to deal with it."
Eight days, that was all the time it had taken.
I'll tell you when the full horror hit me. It was when the white vans started to come round. Lottie called them 'the dead wagons'. At first, bodies had been taken away discreetly, but I suppose after a while there were too many for them to make any pretence about what they were doing.
Lottie looked on the website, which had been updated to include the local numbers to ring if any
one in your household died.
I saw men in those white papery suits removing the bodies of the Robertsons, and Amy and Jack Williams; I ran out and asked where they were being taken, if there would be proper funerals. They wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Sorry, Ma'am, we don't have that information." That was all they would say.
Claire's sister Karen, the smart, pretty girl who Dex had flirted with at the barbecue, stood in the road crying as the van drove off. I saw her walk off down the road with a suitcase, sobbing as she went; I never saw her again.
Bob Newnham no longer stood in his garden having a rant to anyone who would listen; all the curtains in his house were closed.
I hadn't seen Linda Thomas since Wednesday, either. Linda, who'd been so worried about getting her roots done.
I knocked on her door, but no one answered. I'm guessing the wedding she had to go to never happened, either.
The dead wagon took body bags out of number three, next. That was where the Hanns lived; Brett, Susannah, and their daughter Celia. I wondered who'd called the number to report the deaths. Perhaps they rang themselves, when they knew there was no hope.
I went back inside to YouTube.
It had become the only site I looked at, and I did so constantly.
The latest Bat Fever video made me gasp in horror.
A shaky film, only thirty seconds long, had been taken on a phone in a large outbuilding outside a hospital in North London. One huge room, piled high with bodies wrapped in black polythene or sheets. I played it over and over, freeze-framing; it appeared that at first the bodies had been laid out on the floor in body bags with space around each one, and name tags, but then the space had run out and they'd just been piled in like rolls of carpet, wrapped in bin liners or sheets, one on top of another. Twenty-five seconds into the film, a voice shouted, "Get out of there. You! Out!" Then the screen jumped all over the place and went black.
The video had over six million views.
I found Lottie lying on her bed, watching a DVD; some daft teen film.
"I don't know what else to do, Mum," she told me.
I sat down on her bed. "The Robertsons are gone," I said. "I saw Karen leave."
"Yeah, I know." Her face was blank.
I took her hand. "I suppose we'll just have to wait it out. See if Dex can get back."
"Mm-mm." She didn't take her eyes off the screen.
"Do you want anything? Something to eat or drink?"
"Yes please." She looked up and smiled at me; it was so good to see her face come to life again. "Shall we watch some films? We could have that toffee cheesecake. I keep wondering when you're going to crack it out."
I bit my lip, and blew out, loudly. "I don't know. I don't know if I could. I mean, if I could concentrate on something trivial. It doesn't seem right. Indulging ourselves. You know, Claire and her family; we should be out there trying to help people—"
She sat up, drew her knees up to her chest and clasped her hands round them. "Mum, if you've got it, you die, right?"
"Seems that way, yes. They're not even pretending on the news that it's anything other than fatal."
"So we can't do anything to help anyone. You haven't got any more of those vaccines, have you?"
"No."
"Well, then. I know it's, like, seriously crap of me to say this, but sitting here moaning and wailing and being depressed won't help anyone, will it?"
I'd forgotten how it felt to be sixteen. "No, but we could go and see people, bring meds, get them food and water, at least try to make them a bit more comfortable," I said. Then I thought about Claire, who'd wanted only her family around her.
"Okay. But could we do that tomorrow?" Lottie rested the side of her head on her arms. "It's not self-indulgence. It's enjoying today. We're alive. If all the stuff I've ever watched and read about big worldwide diseases and zombie apocalypses is right, we'll soon be eating boiled seagulls and dog food. So we might as well make the most of the toffee cheesecake now, mightn't we?"
"I suppose so."
She grinned. "You go get it, then, and I'll sort the films. Shall we do Harry Potter?"
My first duty was to my own family, and the only one I had around me was Lottie. If this was what she wanted, that was what we would do.
"We will." I gave her a hug. "Just let me go and knock on a few doors, first, okay?"
No one answered except old John at number eleven, who said he was perfectly fine, but if I had a drop of Scotch going spare he'd be much obliged.
I took him the one bottle I had, then went back to dig out the toffee cheesecake and join Lottie in fantasy land.
I couldn't concentrate, though. I just pretended to for her sake.
Later, I thought again about what Dex had told me. Remove the power and water, and it's only a matter of time before the whole structure of society collapses.
I wondered if that would happen.
And if he would somehow get back to me before it did.
Chapter Seven
The Beginning of the End
The hours merged together; when I think back, I can't differentiate between the days. I'd like to be able to say, on such and such a day Twitter disappeared, then two days later it was the whole internet, and then the phones, but I can't pinpoint the exact days. It just felt like everything was disintegrating around us. My world became my house, Lottie, and the screens on which we watched the world. I gave up looking at my phone to see if Dex had got in touch. From Tuesday I couldn't get Mum. That was a hundred times worse. I felt so sick with fear that I hardly dared talk about it, but Lottie, my dear daughter who supported me more than I supported her, half the time, said this to me:
"They were fine last time you spoke, weren't they? She said they're not going out anywhere, so they won't catch it, and if they get ill, at least they're together. But I bet right now they'll be sitting by the pool with their mates, drinking G and Ts, having a laugh and talking about old times. You know what Gran's like when she gets on the 'do you remember' stuff!"
Her words helped even though I knew that, if Mum and Dad were okay, they wouldn't be laughing and drinking gin, they'd be worried sick about everyone at home.
One day, I think it was the second Tuesday, late in the afternoon, I walked down the coast road into town. Everywhere was quiet. Soldiers strolled around, but I saw little in the way of disturbance. Some of the broken windows were boarded up, most just left. Inside, the shops were in darkness, empty.
I wandered up Parkin Street. The huge plate glass window of Sarah Jane's fish and chip shop was smashed in, and there was mess everywhere, as if someone had taken the bottles of sauce and ketchup and had a party. No sign of life at the Seagull. I walked on. At the top of the road, I saw two dead wagons go past, turn up the Holt Road, and disappear out of sight.
Outside the community centre was a notice saying 'Food Distribution Centre. 9-11 each morning'. The door was locked, one window smashed.
I stood for a moment, thinking of one Saturday afternoon only a few weeks before, when I'd come down with Claire because Lucy's school was holding a bake sale in aid of the homeless. I bought twelve banoffee cupcakes, and we ate most of them later, with Lottie and Lucy, in her garden. Claire and I drank Prosecco, which I found a bit odd, with cake, but Claire was one of those women who bought into the whole 'I am female, therefore I go silly over wine and cake' thing, and posted lots of giggly references to this on social media.
She wasn't really my sort of person, and we would probably never have been friends if we hadn't been neighbours, but she was a kind soul, and I cried every time I thought about her. I did now; I sat on the low wall outside the community centre until it passed.
Over the road, Shipden Indoor Market was in ruins. On the only section of window still intact, a sign advertised local produce, fresh every day.
I wandered into Church Street, just looking, thinking, remembering.
Our town.
The carnival.
The switching on of th
e Christmas lights, usually by some minor local celebrity. Everyone crowding around the tree in the churchyard. Shops open, handing out mulled wine and mince pies.
The first warm days, when all the cafés put their tables and chairs out on the pavement for the first time.
Someone had torn the fascia from Kelvin's Hardware; underneath was an old 1960s style sign for R Cox, Groceries and Provisions.
It was like waking up in the Twilight Zone, when someone steps out of their house and finds that everyone but them has disappeared.
It was just so fucking sad.
They'd started putting up the bunting in readiness for carnival week, before all this. Bright colours fluttered in the breeze; if I narrowed my eyes I could see the floats that should have trundled around the busy streets. Mine and Lottie's costumes hung in the spare room, forgotten.
I kept thinking, we can recover from this, can't we? When the disease has run out of steam, we can get the world back to normal, can't we? I wanted my town back. My home, my life.
I didn't care what Dex said, the vaccinations worked. Every time someone got the shot, it meant another person alive to help rebuild. Another person who wasn't going to die.
A few people drifted about, going nowhere, like me. I saw one or two that I recognised, but they just ambled past, lost in their own thoughts. The presence of the men with guns cast a shadow of gloom over that sunny day, a bright, beautiful day when the town should have been buzzing, doing business with holidaymakers, happy residents looking forward to getting off work so they could get down to the beach or sit in a pub garden with a cool beer.
Just ahead of me, in the churchyard, I saw a group sitting on the grass amongst the flowerbeds, so carefully tended to burst into glorious bloom in time for Shipden's summer visitors. Seven or eight of them, drinking out of bottles; lager, alcopops. As I got closer I saw they were young, around Lottie's age; I noted one girl tipping away a third of each alcopop and topping the bottles up with vodka before handing them out to her friends.
