He looked in the mirror, tried to steady himself. He blew his nose, dropped the tissue into the toilet and flushed it. Come on, he told himself. Keep it together. He looked into the mirror again, practised a smile, holding it as he reached to open the door.
He found Jamie standing on the other side of the door, like he’d been knocking.
Lize was on the stairs behind him, a worried look across her face. “What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing,” Shaun said, his smile still holding. “Is Jamie packed?” she asked.
Shaun looked to Jamie.
“Not yet,” the boy answered for him.
“Did you talk to Martin?” Shaun asked Lize, careful to hide his angst.
“Not yet,” she said. “Phone’s playing up. Mobile’s no better. Seems to be a common problem. It’s all over the news.”
“Try mine,” Shaun said, reaching into his back pocket. As he pulled it out, the card and photo tumbled across the floor.
All eyes stared at them.
Shaun placed his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, leading the boy back into his room. “Come on, son. Let’s get you ready,” he said.
He glared at Lize as he passed.
He could see the guilt in her eyes, and it broke his heart.
CHAPTER TEN
“Aunt Bell?”
Colin placed a hand on his aunt’s shoulder.
She was getting worse. Lying in bed with her hair net on and no make-up, she looked every second of her age and more. Her small body looked frail. Her skin was so hard and dry that Colin worried it might crack open.
This fucking flu...
“Peggy...?” she muttered, half awake.
“It’s me, Aunt Bell,” Colin said quietly, wiping the dried blood from her nose.
“Ah,” she said. “Did you bring the soup?”
“Soup?” he said, discarding one wet wipe and picking out another.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes opening. “I’ll have the mushroom. Always liked mushroom soup.”
A moment of lucidity seemed to flow through her as she looked at him. One bony hand moved up to touch his face. “Colin,” she said. “I’m so cold.” Her face screwed up like newspaper. Her pain was tangible.
Colin left her, moving downstairs to the phone once again. He tried the emergency helpline from the television, getting the same pre-recorded message he always got. He left his name and address on their answer machine, listening again to the first aid instructions, almost able to recite them in time with the nice English lady’s voice at the other end of the line.
Colin entered the kitchen.
He stood for a second looking around, like he’d forgotten what he was there for.
He remembered: “Soup,” he said, raising his finger in the air.
He searched each cupboard, finding teabags and sugar, tinned beans, Jammy Dodgers. But no soup.
Aunt Bell hadn’t eaten anything today. Colin tried to give her all the things he’d seen her eat over the years: salted porridge, well done toast with thin slices of cheese and lashings of butter, spaghetti hoops, Jammy fucking Dodgers, but she turned her nose up at them all. And now she was asking for mushroom soup, which Colin had never once seen her eat.
“Soup,” he said again, wondering if he could check to see if any of the neighbours would spare some. But most of them were gone, packing up their cars and hitting the road. Those left were bedding in, probably too scared to open their doors. Probably stocking up every last scrap of food for themselves.
Colin would have to go out.
He went back upstairs to Aunt Bell’s bedroom.
She was sleeping, the fever still damp across her brow, the hair net soaked. She was so hot that Colin could feel the heat in his own throat. The infection was radiating from her. He wanted to kiss her but stopped himself, instead kissing his fingertips and pressing them gently against her chapped lips.
He left the house.
Outside, it was quiet. Tense.
The doors and windows of most of the houses were boarded up. Colin also wanted to flee. But with Aunt Bell so unwell, he knew it was a bad idea. She needed to rest. She needed sleep and comfort. And now she needed soup.
His car, nicknamed Vince, stood solemnly in the driveway as if waiting for him, begging him to hit the open road. Colin opened the door and climbed inside. He sat for a moment, checked himself in the mirror, noticing he hadn’t combed his hair today. Must have forgotten.
“Come on...” he whispered to himself. “Get moving.” But the car remained still. Colin realised he was scared.
He picked his phone out of his pocket, called up his contacts list and hovered over the name VICKY, then, thinking again, threw the phone to the passenger seat. This was no time for weakness. He needed to be strong. He needed to be in control. He needed to be manly.
He stuck the keys in the ignition, firing up Vince and pulling out of the driveway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vince was a green Volkswagen Beetle. Having bought it second hand, Colin had owned the little car for almost ten years, Vince being the single constant in his life. And the Beetle was loyal to a fault. Even when Vince broke down, his sputters and squeals were tepid, as if embarrassed about falling ill. Thankfully, he was revving like a beast today.
Colin drove down the Antrim Road, towards town. The streets were so deserted that it seemed like the world had already ended and Colin somehow missed it.
He stopped just short of Belfast’s city centre, spotting a small Spar corner shop still doing business.
Colin pulled up on the pavement just outside the shop, wanting to keep Vince well within his sight. He ignored the double yellow lines roughly painted next to the pavement. A parking ticket was the least of his worries.
Colin locked Vince before walking towards the shop.
A wide-eyed young woman exited, knocking against him. Something fell out of her pocket and Colin stopped to pick it up, calling her back. It was a packet of hay fever tablets.
She turned as he called. Her red hair was almost golden in the sun.
Colin reached the tablets to her.
She grabbed the packet from him, without saying a word, before moving on.
Colin shook his head.
He opened the door and entered the shop.
Inside was a queue of people, moving all the way around the walls, stocking their wire baskets with pretty much anything they could grab.
A wiry Goth lad stood busily restocking the emptying shelves, but everyone just pushed past him, lifting goods directly from his trolley.
An older man, still wearing his Spar t-shirt, stood hunched over the only functioning till, scanning bar codes and piling the goods into bags.
A tall security guard with a perfectly pressed uniform and slickly parted hair stood by the door, holding a gun. He looked scared, displaced.
Colin joined the queue, meekly smiling at an unhappy couple at the tail end.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket, noticing the message NETWORK UNAVAILABLE written across the screen. He put it away again.
He was in the queue for at least an hour, and, in that time, the wiry Goth managed to empty five trolley loads from the storeroom. Colin was counting, all the while stacking his own basket to overflow, making sure to include a six-pack of mushroom soup.
Two people were ejected from the shop.
The first one, an older man, lost his head whenever the till operator refused to take card or cheque. The customer (if you could call anyone that in this glorified bread line) tried to make a break for the door, basket in hand, shrieking like a child as the tall security guard quietly blocked his exit, calmly prised the man’s hands from the red plastic handles of the shopping basket, then pushed him out the door.
Not a single person offered to help or pay for the poor bastard’s purchases. Colin watched on with shock, but, like everyone else, did nothing.
Another customer, this one looking like a student, tried to make a grab-and-run for a packet of ci
garettes. He too was evicted from the premises in the same manner, the security guard grabbing him literally by his collar and sending him on his way with a push from his size tens.
It was Colin’s turn to line up and pay the man. He made sure to have the cash ready in his hand, smiling at the morbid till operator.
Face to face, he realised the man was younger than he at first thought. His hair, thinning and combed to the side, fell against a red glowing forehead. His eyes held nothing even resembling emotion. He was lost in the till, scanning items with robot precision.
It reminded Colin of a local history book that Aunt Bell had once shown him. There was a picture with lines of women standing rigidly at the factory, operating sewing machines. “See that one on the left,” Bell said, beaming proudly, “that was me.” And even when Colin looked closely, he still couldn’t tell her apart from the forty others in the picture with identical uniforms and hairstyles; their clock-in cards just visible by the door in the far left of the picture.
Colin was pulled out of his thoughts when the door crashed open.
“Okay, everyone stay cool!” yelled a thin man with tattoos and a shaved head.
He stepped through the door, brandishing a revolver.
He grabbed the security guard, the big man reaching for his own weapon.
“Don’t even think about it”, Tattoo spat, forcing the guard to put his gun down and lie on the floor.
Tattoo moved towards Colin, pushed him aside. His eyes were swollen and blackened, like the very thought of sleep was long forgotten. He seemed wired, waving the revolver at pretty much everyone who was looking at him until he reached the till.
The till operator panicked, slamming the drawer open, offering handfuls of money, eyes fixed squarely on the revolver.
But Tattoo laughed. “No cash. That shit’s useless,” he said.
He looked to Colin, then down at the basket in his hands. “Give me that,” he said. “All your food. Give it to me now!”
But Colin stalled, thinking of Aunt Bell, thinking of the soup.
Tattoo grabbed the basket roughly, pointing the gun straight in Colin’s face. “Don’t be a dumbfuck,” he said.
But Colin was a dumbfuck. He held on tight, staring into the other man’s eyes, begging, pleading, challenging.
Tattoo increased his grip on the basket handle. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “Not your day...”
He head butted Colin then pulled the basket away.
Colin fell to the floor. Reached for his nose, staring at the others who stood like useless statues around him.
Tattoo waved his revolver in one final warning and then turned to leave.
“Please,” Colin said, still on the floor.
Tattoo stopped.
“Just the soup. The mushroom soup. It’s for my aunt. She’s dying...”
The tattooed man laughed. It was a hollow laugh with a distinct absence of humour. It rang throughout the shop like breaking glass. He shook his head, muttered to himself then fumbled in the basket. He broke one of the tins of soup from the six pack and lobbed it.
Colin caught it.
He looked up in gratitude, but the tattooed man was gone.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Vince was growling.
Colin swore under his breath and drummed nervously on his steering wheel.
An accident on the Antrim Road stalled the light traffic. Two cars blocked the road, one having collided with the other.
A woman sat in the passenger seat of the offending car. She was screaming. From his vantage point, Colin noticed the head of the driver dipped forward to pierce the shattered windscreen.
The second car, the one they had driven into, was strangely empty.
Colin pulled up behind the two cars.
None of the other traffic stopped, instead mounting the pavement to pass.
This bothered Colin.
The incident in the Spar was still fresh in his mind; how food was seized from his very hands, yet no one offered him anything from their own baskets. He’d left the shop empty-handed, save for the single tin of mushroom soup—a mercy-throw from the man who’d robbed him.
Ironically, the tattooed man’s fucked-up benevolence proved the most selfless act Colin had seen all day. And now, as he watched each car pass, ignoring a woman in pain as she screamed out for help, Colin could feel nothing but anger.
His hand hesitated on the car door handle. He reached into his coat pocket and took out his phone. He found the same message from before: NETWORK UNAVAILABLE. Colin swore then tried his luck anyway, tapping in 999.
It rang dead, as he expected.
“Fuck,” Colin said.
The sound of the woman’s screams continued to haunt him.
He reached for the car door handle once more.
He wasn’t good with this sort of thing. The sight of blood terrified him. He couldn’t even get through an episode of Holby City without breaking a sweat.
Sighing, Colin stepped out of his car.
He left Vince revving, the familiar and healthy murmur somehow heartening.
From his new vantage point, Colin could see the woman’s car sat one third on the edge of the road, one third against a lamppost and one third up the rear of the still, dead car in front.
The screams kept coming. Colin felt his stomach knot as he began to imagine just what horrors lay ahead.
He made his approach, still looking around for someone more suited to this type of thing. Someone older, wiser or less tanned.
He pulled his Gucci sunglasses from his hair, feeling very aware of himself. This wasn’t the time for accessorising. This was serious shit, real life shit.
Colin reached the passenger side of the car, noticing how many tiny shards of glass lay on the ground. Most of them were stained. A reddish-pink that reminded Colin of strawberry syrup.
But there was something else down there. Something that looked like overstretched elastic...
Colin swallowed hard, not wanting to face the woman; her screams now spent, giving way to laboured, wheezy breathing. He was right beside the car window now. He was hoping to glance quickly then look away. But she was waiting for him, reaching from the car to grab his arm.
She went to say something, but the words were drowning in the frothy, mucus-filled blood gurgling from her mouth. It suddenly dawned on Colin what the elastic was on the ground: it was her entire top lip. Her two remaining teeth protruded from under her nose like tusks. They looked longer than he expected, more horrific than he could have imagined.
Two heavily bloodshot eyes, one semi-mangled by the piece of glass embedded in the socket, stared at him. A constant stream of red tears streamed from the bad eye, the good eye blinking constantly as if trying to dispel something unreachable.
Her hand searched Colin’s arm, finding his hand. She sputtered something, yet again it was indecipherable. Colin screamed. He couldn’t help it.
He wanted to go. Tried to pull his hand away, but she held firm, her vice-like grip cutting into his wrist like little razors.
Colin tried to avoid her gaze, looking instead to the clearly dead man in the driver’s seat. Part of his head was embedded within the remainder of the windscreen. The rest spilled out onto the bonnet.
Colin started to heave, managing to dip his head to throw up on the ground instead of over the woman’s face. He jerked his hand away from her grip, stooping by the car to finish retching.
When he stood up again, wiping his mouth before turning back to face her, it was too late. Her good eye stared dead ahead, as if there was someone important coming towards her. Her head rested against the car’s doorframe.
She was gone.
Colin ran a hand through his hair, squinting against the sun. He looked out onto the road, where a steady stream of traffic continued to pass by, each car filled with people only too eager to stare at him. He wanted to shout at them, scream at them like the dying woman. Why had they left him to deal with this on his own?!
He b
egan to imagine the lives of the couple lying dead in the car, of how their family, maybe even young kids, could be waiting for them somewhere. He thought of reaching in, searching for a wallet or purse, checking for a number to ring, then remembered, with some relief, how his phone wouldn’t work.
Turning, knowing nothing else to do, Colin simply walked away.
The gruff chorus of traffic continued to fill his ears. As he drew closer to his own car, he could hear Vince’s engine still running smoothly.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The ambulance was the first thing Colin saw as he pulled onto his street. The second thing to strike him was how everyone standing around the ambulance wore protective yellow suits.
“Oh God, no,” he breathed.
Colin pulled up on the pavement, opening the car door. He left it hanging as he ran towards the house.
A tall, suited figure stepped forward to block him. He wore breathing apparatus, an oxygen tank strapped to his back.
“Can’t go in there,” his muffled voice came.
“My aunt...” Colin yelled, trying to push past. The suit struck him square on the chest.
Colin fell back onto the garden path. He pulled himself up.
The suit now held a police baton. “I said you can’t go in there,” the voice came again.
Colin stared into the suited man’s face, trying to find some glimpse of humanity. He found nothing, save his own reflection in the mask’s visor.
A sound from inside the house distracted him. A mechanical sound. Like the sound of a drill.
Colin stared back at the visor in front of him.
“Please! Tell me what’s going on!” he said.
Another sound, this one more fluid or gassy, the two sounds working their way, in disharmony, around the house.
Colin pushed forward, but again the yellow suit pushed him back, this time swinging the baton to connect with Colin’s head. The blow seemed to vibrate right through his skull, and he fell straight to the ground.
For a moment Colin lay still, dazed, the sounds swelling around him. When he looked up, he found not one but two masked heads staring back.
Fever (Flu) Page 10
