Without the distraction of compiling the report ...well, that initial feeling of displacement, the feeling of disorientation, had crept back in. Hardly surprising given the circumstances, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. Didn’t mean he could deal with it.
The last few days had been strange to say the least.
Still difficult to credit where he was. Sitting in an emergency government installation designed for catastrophe scenarios. Collected and transported to that installation because of something he’d signed without thought. Brought to a place designed with the sole purpose of maintaining the administration if any given scenario became so grave as to potentially endanger the continued existence of the establishment itself.
And that signature? A digital signature that, in hindsight, he’d not even paused at. On a document that he’d not studied that closely. He did vaguely remember the merest stirring of self-importance as he scanned it.
Julian worked as an analyst and forecaster for a government funded agency. That was the only reason that he was here. The only reason that he was lucky enough to be here.
That and the fact that he hadn’t succumbed to the illness that had swept the country.
Swept the world.
By the second day of the crisis he’d been aware that something major was occurring. That impression was confirmed when he received notification that he was being assigned to the CIMC.
The Central Interim Management Complex.
A wonderfully innocuous label for what was, to all intents and purposes, a hardened bunker village concealed beneath Whitehall. The CIMC centre was more myth than reality, its very existence unacknowledged. Officially there was no such place.
In reality, the facility had been around for decades in various incarnations. Originally a crisis command centre dating from the Second World War, it had been renovated and expanded in the late seventies and early eighties to serve as a protected control hub in the event of nuclear war or civil unrest. As the years rolled by and fears of nuclear conflagration became more difficult to justify it might have been reasonable to expect it to fall under the axe of government cuts.
Quite the opposite happened. Successive administrations improved and developed the centre in response to growing anxieties over the threat of terrorism, hypothetical chemical strike or potential biological attack. Of course, it helped that the nukes never really went away.
And the governing elite would always need somewhere to run to, a get out of jail card. It all made even more sense when money was no objection.
A short time after getting the notification call, he answered the door to a slightly scary-looking black man.
Dark nondescript casual clothes, authoritative air, uncompromising demeanour.
“Julian Holloway?”
A large and vaguely intimidating man. Eyes flickering down at a hand held mobile device and instantly back up.
Julian couldn’t see the screen but he had a fairly good idea that the man was comparing him to a picture on the mobile.
“Err, yes, I’m Julian. Are you from the CIMC? Got to admit, I was a bit surprised to get the call. I’m just an analyst, not really very high on the ladder, hardly what you’d call a big fish.”
Julian had thought he might be gabbling but it hadn’t stopped him from gabbling.
No reply from the big guy, just the smallest of nods.
“Sorry, I’m nervous, don’t really know the drill. Do you want to come in?” Julian said, fighting the absurd desire to apologise.
“If you can collect whatever you need, we’ll get going. Please bring essentials but keep it to a minimum.”
Like an online airline baggage instruction. No emotion and little leeway.
The man made no move to enter.
Julian had scuttled round, throwing a few clothes and necessities into a holdall and packing his laptop, tablets, and electronic paraphernalia into a big I am Legend shoulder bag.
His escort was polite but uncommunicative. Nods, shakes of the head, single word answers. They drove at speed through the unnaturally quiet city and entered the complex through an anonymous, multi shuttered underground car park.
Corridors, elevator, more corridors. As they moved, the man perfunctorily explained access procedures, interior locations and general layout, before eventually showing him into his room and then immediately leaving without further comment or farewell.
Julian wondered what his name was, he hadn’t asked, and wondered if he would see him again.
<><><>
A tall greying man had appeared shortly afterwards and introduced himself. Entering without knocking as Julian sat at his desk.
“I’m Dr Thornton. De facto senior centre administrator at the moment. We’re a bit thin on the ground to be honest. Approximately forty of us so far. Most of which are like yourself, ad hoc secondments.
I’m one of the few that has Centre training. The ...err, flu has taken quite a toll on official designates. Good job we hold an extensive list of appropriate resource from which to draw upon in the event of the circumstances requiring it.”
Thornton had paused to consult a clipboard and then resumed. The unmistakeable odour of officious prick began to permeate Julian’s nostrils, the smell floating palpably in the conditioned air.
“You’re an analyst it says here?”
Thornton looked up from the board and down at Julian.
“Yes, the Statistical Analysis and Forecast Unit.”
“Well, best get analysing young man. I need you to prepare an evaluation of the situation and a presentation of such to the relevant personnel. The truth is, we don’t really know what’s happening.
People are collapsing in huge numbers and everything has ground to a halt. No doubt, it’ll all sort itself out. These things have a habit of doing so you know, however disastrous they appear. Still we need to be proactive and seen to be getting a grip on the situation.
You’ve got a day or two so best get weaving. There’s a folder on the work station there that should contain everything you need to get up and running. If you need me I’ve set up camp in the canteen. Did ...err,” Thornton consulted the clipboard again.
“Did, Pearcey show you that, where it is? The canteen?”
“Pearcey? The talkative guy who brought me in?”
“Yes. Security chap.”
Thornton seemed like he had finished the conversation before answering the question.
Julian glanced away to order his thoughts, looked at the folder by his laptop and turned round and nodded.
Thornton had already gone.
<><><>
He got to work.
His task was to build a picture of the crisis, try to analyse it, find patterns and collate data. He immersed himself in it as he would any other task.
The setting unnerved him somewhat. Snatched from everyday life and deposited underground. The strangeness and the insipient claustrophobia.
But working alone was nothing new. Being alone full stop was nothing new in truth.
He had little contact with family and most of his friends were remote.
His parents lived in Singapore.
Mother unemotional and removed. Father a distant and coldly logical man. A retired diplomat who’d grudgingly secured Julian the quasi-governmental job. Presented it to him like a gift that was undeserved and never spoke of it again.
Julian’s elder brother pursued a lucrative career in banking in America. Seemed close their parents, seemed to frequently visit them.
Julian hasn’t seen any of them for the best part of three years. Rarely speaks to them. Swaps Christmas and birthday cards and does that as a guilt-ridden, complexity-plagued after-thought.
He doesn’t miss them anymore than an amputee would miss a limb he’s learned to live without.
In his late teens, he’d finally arrived at the conclusion that he didn’t really like or respect any of his immediate family. In the ensuing years, it became apparent that they felt much the same abou
t him.
If ever there was cuckoo in the nest it was Julian Holloway.
And who cared about the cuckoo once they acknowledged that it didn’t really belong?
This task was in many ways the biggest challenge he had ever faced, if for no other reason than things had degenerated so swiftly that information had stopped flowing.
Information was his stock in trade and the lack of it threw him into the uncomfortable arms of those old whores, extrapolation and projection. They weren’t bad girls in themselves, but if you didn’t have sufficient hard fact to balance them, they had a tendency to leave you somewhere public with your pants down and your old man hanging out for all the world to see.
Julian wasn’t the sort of young chap to relish that prospect in the slightest.
Unprecedented circumstances though and there weren’t exactly a long queue of candidates for the job.
So many people were simply absent, too ill to be where they should be and doing what they’d normally do. There had been no warning, no build up to the current situation.
One day everything ticking over as normal, the next day, and more than half the population was too ill to function.
Half was an estimate, there was no way to know for sure, and after that first day the task of trying to get a handle on it became a progressively uncertain guessing game. A bit of a challenge.
A bit? It was hopeless from a statistical viewpoint.
Julian submerged himself in the networks. Trawled social sites. Logged into every government portal across the globe to which he had access.
Hacked into surveillance systems.
Fired emails at any contact that he had.
Made countless, fruitless phone calls.
Regardless of his disaffection with them, he tried to contact his family and failing that, their friends and acquaintances.
Worked, drank, ate a little and rested less and then started again. A picture began to form despite the paucity of direct information. Data piled up and facts started to coalesce into recognisable patterns.
The patterns were alarming.
Staggering really.
Beyond any comparison.
The world has stopped.
Julian was one of the minority, one of those who was unaffected, apparently immune.
There was no known reason for immunity.
There didn’t appear to be a definitive vector for contagion and the few scientists who were unaffected had made little progress in identifying the precise nature of the disease.
Just a few days after the first overwhelming flood of cases, those who were free of the infection seemed to be staying free of it. At least some still broadcasting. A very small number still seeding, still transmitting.
What they were sending was disturbing in detail and scale.
He found a late night TV news broadcast that someone had posted to YouTube. Sat in his underground cell, gripped by the short recording.
The programme opens with a simple text title, not the polished multi-dimensional graphics sequence as would be the norm.
A single camera angle focuses on the presenter, Gavin Kovak, bearded, looking subtly dishevelled, seated in a black swivel chair. His guest seated to his left.
The background is a plain white boarding, the panel joints clearly visible.
Gavin appears pale and coughs several times, his hand moving up to his mouth whilst his other hand shakily holds on to a sheaf of notes.
“Welcome to a Newsnight Special Edition. With me is Sophie Hawes, assistant to the junior minister for culture. Before we begin, I must tell you that we are operating with limited personnel this evening and apologies in advance if we encounter any technical problems.”
Gavin stops and coughs again as the camera zooms out to include a nervous looking guest.
“Sophie, thank you for agreeing to come in on such short notice”, Gavin says, turning to her.
He is clearly struggling and looks to be in some discomfort as the camera closes in on him. Pale and sweating, dark smudges under his eyes.
No make-up.
He runs a hand over his face and of some his beard comes away with his hand. A small clump of hair hangs, wavering uncertainly on his chin, and then detaches itself and floats out of view.
“I hope you’ll excuse the bluntness of this opening question but given the current circumstances,” Gavin gestures tiredly, “I think it’s time to dispense with the usual niceties.”
Sophie simply nods and awkwardly smiles in acknowledgement.
“Do we have a functioning government anymore? Emergency services not responding, empty offices, closed shops. And silence from most government departments. Even you weren’t who we were expecting tonight.”
To all intents and purposes, Sophie appears to ignore the slight, but some sort of emotion shifts across her face. The viewer can’t possibly know what she’s thinking but she appears apprehensive.
Sophie knows that she’s a poor substitute and, frankly, it’s pretty low down on her list of priorities. The country is going to shit in a hand cart. Being insulted personally, however obliquely, doesn’t seem that big a deal.
She’s only here because Tom Crabtree told her to be here. And Tom is a big deal. In government circles anyway. Nevertheless, she’s beginning to think agreeing to being here was a bad decision, however scarily persuasive and powerful Tom Crabtree might be.
Before she can reply, the presenter is racked by a series of rasping coughs.
Sophie sits nervously through the coughing fit.
“The situation is ...errr, serious and the government is working tirelessly ...” Sophie’s voice peters out as the camera turns jerkily from her and zooms to Gavin.
Palsied looking.
Unwell.
He opens his mouth to presumably pursue the point and grimaces sickly, winces as though in pain.
The camera zooms out again as Gavin vomits brackish fluid, spews it out uncontrollably, splashing down the front of his sober suit jacket, white shirt and elephant motif tie, hitting his equally sober trousers and pooling at his feet.
His notes drifting from his hand and see-sawing across the floor.
“Sorry, sorry,” the presenter mumbles.
As he seems to deflate and limply falls, his chair swivelling out behind him, scooting away to bump and softly rebound off the white background panels.
His arm folding beneath his body as his head hollowly thumps on the studio floor. The noise huge and horrible in the less than optimum production values of the understaffed broadcast.
Sophie Hawes, to her credit, leaves her seat and bends to comfort him, the disgust on her face barely visible as her moderately heeled shoe slips on the vomit slick surface of the floor. The picture skews and loses focus as the camera man abandons his post and appears in the shot, rushing to the presenter’s side.
Dead air follows for several minutes until a recorded loop kicks in.
Despite all that he’d seen, whatever knowledge he’d gleaned, this struck him as hard as any of it. Julian had grown up watching Gavin Kovak. The man was a respected journalist, accomplished media host, a consummate professional. To see him prone and unconscious, his trousers and socks slowly absorbing his own vomit, was ...offensive. It was utterly unacceptable, more of a personal affront than not being able to contact his own parents or friends.
He went back to some of the social stuff he’d sampled. Activity was very limited, a few tweets and posts ranging along the normal spectrum, stupid to desperate. There was a Pinterest page that held his attention.
Titled: Images of the Illness.
A New York photographer.
Numerous pictures of unconscious people, several of which show signs of having vomited. Some close up images of faces that appear swollen, almost tumorous. Many images of unsmiling, pallid faces, eyes underscored with dark smudges. Many images of swollen hands.
Julian added it to his file. A file which was beginning to trouble him quite deeply, beginning to scare him re
ally rather badly.
He didn’t realise at that point, but being scared was about to become a much more familiar sensation.
Chapter 8.
Tom Gets All Turned Around.
Tom Crabtree fumbled with the keys.
Fucking bastard, cunting-useless, bastard old fucking keys. Too many keys and too many locks.
Found the correct one and then swore venomously and with breathless gusto as his hand skittered and jittered the end of the key around the keyhole.
Come on, come on, ya fucking virgin on a first date.
He was shaking that badly that the key was jiving about with a life of its own, like some newly landed slippery fish, going just anywhere but where he needed it to go.
“You fuckin’ wastrel piece of shit-useless cunting thing. Get in there, get in there for fuck-cock-sucking sake,” he hissed at his treacherous hand as it refused to mate the key and lock.
Glancing over his shoulder for signs of pursuit.
Nothing yet but they’d be there, he was sure of that. Oh yeah, they’d be there. They’d chased him for the last ten minutes without any indication that they intended giving up.
A relentless pack of snarling things that might have been people a little while back, before the onset of the disease, but were now nothing short of animals.
Fucking animals. Not normal cunting people. Not even close.
He wished to beardy-bastard Christ in the Great Cloud above that he’d been a little less conscientious and joined the tattered remnants of the administration as they headed to the CIMC bunker a day earlier.
Not his way of doing things though.
Keep the wheels turning as long as possible, that was Tom’s mantra, and it had served him through the good times, the bad and the ugly.
He could be accused of many things, most of them unpleasant and most of them deserved, but shitty rat tailed sinking ship-jumper wasn’t one of them.
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