by Louise Welsh
‘Shug? … Magnus?’
She saw them on the opposite side of the atrium. Magnus had one arm slung around Shug’s shoulders. The boy limped unevenly towards her, buckling beneath his father’s weight. Stevie jogged towards them, Evie heavy against her body. Magnus was muttering something, perspiration dripped from his face, but he showed none of the swollen pustules that disfigured Bream and so many other victims of the Sweats.
Stevie held the child’s face against her chest and lifted Magnus’s other arm around her shoulder, taking half his weight. She gripped his free hand. Magnus’s breaths were rasping and laboured, his skin clammy.
Shug said, ‘Where’s Willow?’
‘She went on ahead.’ The words caught in Stevie’s throat.
They were half-carrying Magnus down the staircase, their arms still linked around his shoulders, like a ghastly chorus line. Magnus’s foot missed a tread and all four of them nearly tumbled.
Shug said, ‘You shouldn’t have let her.’
A sob rose in Stevie’s chest. The child had fallen asleep. She hugged her closer.
‘I didn’t want to, but she wouldn’t … ’
Magnus lurched, almost tumbling them over again.
A man sat on the bottom step. He looked up, his face pale and sweaty, his chest bubbled with sores.
‘I need you to …’ He clutched at Stevie’s leg as she passed. ‘Please …’
She tried to pull free, but desperation lent the man a surge of strength. He held tight to her ankle and she was forced to kick him away.
Stevie whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’
The man started to cry. He said, ‘Why will you save him and not me?’
She had no answer.
The guards had vanished from the entrance hall, except for a big man sitting on a chair by the door. He looked up as they passed, but did not say anything.
It was dark outside. The air cool, shot through with stabs of rain. Fires burned in large oil drums around the square, illuminating the smiling faces of the missing pasted to the walls of the abandoned shopfronts and bars. A breeze trembled the photographs’ ragged edges, as if the people in the portraits were applauding the Sweats’ latest victory.
Stevie and Shug guided Magnus between the armoured tanks parked outside. His feet were becoming less sure, his weight heavier.
Shug paused to heft his father more firmly around his shoulder. He scanned the square and shouted, ‘Willow?’ The girl’s name rang across the open space. He called again at the top of his voice, ‘Willow?’ He turned to Stevie. ‘Where is she?’
Stevie touched Evie’s head. The child was warm, but her skin was dry, her breaths even.
‘I told you, she’s waiting for us.’
Magnus was a dead weight. They would not be able to carry him much further. Her mission now was to get the child to safety on the islands, but Stevie would not leave Magnus to die alone on the street.
Shug sounded scared and suspicious. ‘Where is she waiting?’
People were moving on the edge of the square. Stevie could see them, dark shapes, in the blackness.
‘I told you, up ahead.’
Beyond the light thrown by the oil drums, there was darkness. Stevie hesitated, unsure whether to push onwards, or lead them back to the City Chambers and wait for dawn.
‘Where up ahead?’
She turned on the boy. ‘If you’d trusted me in the first place none of this would have happened. Your father and I have killed for you and now he’s …’ She stopped and drew in a deep, juddering breath. Somewhere a dog was howling. ‘Willow is waiting for us, up ahead. Right now we have to think of what to do for your father and Evie.’
The shapes of the people hidden by the dark were coming closer. Beyond the square, towards the east, there was a hint of dawn. The sound of howling reached them again and from somewhere in the darkness came a shout of ‘Plague-bringers!’
Shug took a step backwards, pulling Magnus and Stevie with him. ‘Fuck.’
Someone else shouted, ‘Feed the Sweats and starve the fever.’
Stevie reached for the revolver she had taken from Willow’s corpse.
Shug shouted, ‘Willow?’
Stevie readied herself to fire into the darkness. ‘Shut up, for Christ’s sake. Do you want to draw more attention to us?’
Shug’s panic must have reached Magnus through the fog of his fever. He muttered, ‘It’s all right, son. Mira’s waiting for us. It’s home soon and light the fire.’
‘Fucking plague-bringers …’ A stone flew across the square towards them. It missed, but it was followed by another that caught Stevie on the shoulder. She let go of Magnus and ducked, putting both hands around Evie who woke and started to cry.
‘Make for the Chambers.’ She grabbed Magnus’s arm and turned, ready to beat a retreat, but a figure was silhouetted in the firelight. The provost was standing in front of the line of tanks, leaning on the weapon Stevie had left behind, as if it was a walking stick. His voice was broken, but he raised it as high as he could and took up the cry.
‘Plague-bringers!’
Another stone whizzed close to Stevie’s head. It was followed by a bullet.
She shouted, ‘Get down!’
Someone was running towards her. She raised her gun, the firelight caught against its metal surface and she squeezed the trigger.
An Australian voice shouted, ‘Don’t shoot.’
Shug said, ‘Fucking shoot him.’
Finn grabbed Magnus. Shug tried to fight him off and the Australian delivered a push to the side of boy’s head. ‘It’s all right, I’m a friend.’
They half-carried, half-dragged Magnus to the middle of the square, where the helicopter was waiting. Evie screamed at the top of her lungs. The stones were coming fast and thick, the crowd building. Stevie looked back and saw that the provost was on the ground, though whether he had been felled by a missile or had reached the end of his strength she could not know. At the last moment Shug refused to get into the helicopter until they found Willow. She put the gun to his head and forced him on board.
Finn shouted, ‘All aboard the Skylark,’ and started the engine. ‘Let’s hope none of the bastards’ aim improves. All it needs is for a stone to hit the rotors and we’re toast.’
There was no time to strap Magnus to the helicopter’s stretcher. They settled him on the floor and buckled themselves in, Shug still protesting that they could not go without Willow. The engines started.
Stevie shouted, ‘How did you know we’d be there?’
‘I didn’t.’ Finn shoved his cap on his head and started fiddling with the controls. ‘But after I talked to you, some things that’d been bothering me fell into place. I was coming to tell Bream to shove his New Corporation.’ He pulled on the joystick and they rose, awkwardly at first, then wonderfully sure, into the night.
Over in the east the sky was turning pink. Finn righted the helicopter and set course towards the dawn.
Fifty-One
Magnus was not sure where the sky ended and the sea began. He was above them both, looking down on the blue-white as if he was in heaven. His mother took his hand and squeezed. It was a long time since he had seen her and the touch of her made his eyes tear.
‘I thought you were dead.’
His mother did not say anything, merely squeezed his hand again.
He said, ‘Is Rhona with you?’ And there she was, his sister, not angry with him as she so often was, but smiling. He smiled back and held out his other hand. ‘Rhona.’
‘Dad … Dad …’ Shug was calling him. ‘Dad …’
He opened his eyes again and saw the sea below; bright-blue, tipped with silver. White horses shining like fish scales. His islands were coming into view.
After the Sweats he had thrown off the ambitions of his London life and remade himself as a man his ancestors would recognise. A robust crofter, unfazed by harsh winds and bleak weather, a man fond of a dram, with a stock of good tunes to brighten a dark night,
but who never forgot he had beasts to feed in the morning. It was all gone. All that remained was the core of him, and that was love.
His mother was at his shoulder again, his sister Rhona on his other side. Magnus said, ‘Is Dad with you?’ Neither of them answered. He turned his head and saw Stevie. She looked like she had been crying. Magnus tried to tell her it was not as bad as it looked, that nothing was, not even death, which they had done so much to avoid.
Stevie tried to smile. ‘We made it. We’re almost home.’
‘Dad … Dad …’ Shug was in his ear again. ‘Dad, don’t go. Willow’s dead. You can’t go too. You’re needed here.’
Magnus saw the blue sea, the brown and green of his islands. His mother touched his shoulder, his sister Rhona was by her side. He could feel his father’s presence some way off.
Stevie said, ‘We’ll be home soon. A few more minutes and we’ll be there.’
‘Dad …’ Magnus heard his son whisper. ‘Dad … please, Dad … stay with me.’
He squeezed Shug’s hand. ‘I’ll never leave you.’ But his son was crying and Magnus could not be sure that he had heard him.
Afterword
The world has changed more than I anticipated in the five years since I first sat down to write about a contemporary, worldwide pandemic. As an imaginative child, raised in the seventies and eighties, I grew up with a consciousness of nuclear bombs, military coups and natural disasters. My apocalyptic vision has been honed by horror movies, thrift store paperbacks and genuine political discord. But my vision of the world is underpinned by the belief that most people are essentially good. Call it naive, but it’s a conviction that helps me get through the day and like Stevie and Magnus, I refuse to let it go.
There are many people to thank. Eleanor Birne and Mark Richards for their astute editorial advice and patience in the face of drifting deadlines. Thanks too to Becky Walsh for her editorial input – especially for noticing that my characters all initially had curly hair – how did I miss that?
I am very grateful to the University of Otago and the Wallace Arts Centre for a three month residency at the Pah Homestead in Auckland. I met with a great deal of kindness during my stay in New Zealand and would like to thank in particular Professor Liam McIlvanney, Sir James Wallace, Matthew Wood and Zoë Hoeberigs. Thanks too to the Women’s Bookshop, Ponsonby Road, Auckland for making Zoë Strachan and I so welcome when we were far from home.
My family are steadfast supports who are rewarded with neglect. Thanks for letting me disappear into the page.
Thank you, too, to my partner and first reader Zoë Strachan.
My agent David Miller died suddenly, soon after Christmas 2016. Plague Times is a trilogy full of death, but I find myself inarticulate when faced with the real thing. David was one of the anchors of my literary life. He was a man who held the whole of the London Underground in his head, who read widely, with enthusiasm and insight, often out loud, and who generally contrived to bring the conversation back to his literary love, Joseph Conrad. David was passionate about music. He knew about the world, was clear-sighted, but never cynical. He could be tough, but was kind by nature and never cut an unfair deal.
David Miller was there at the start of my career and I had assumed, without thinking about it, that he would always be there. He steered me through all of my books, including this one, which I have dedicated to him.
