Red Fever

by Caroline Clough

  When the two boys went into the cabin, Sylvie was looking a bit better. She was sitting up in bed combing Henry’s hair.

  “Oh no!” she squeaked. “Don’t bring the dog in! It’ll eat Henry!”

  “It’s OK, it’s OK, Sylvie. Belle’s tied up outside,” Toby assured her. “This is Jamie, the boy I was telling you about.”

  Sylvie suddenly burrowed down into her bedclothes. “Hello,” said a much muffled-sounding Sylvie.

  Toby laughed. He’d never seen her act shy before.

  Sylvie was so curious to know what he was laughing about that she soon popped up, clutching Henry in her hand. The rabbit had a surprised look on its face.

  Toby laughed louder. It was a relief to laugh after all the tension of the day. Toby sensed his anger against his dad and Jamie subsiding.

  Jamie was sitting quietly on the other bunk. He had an aura of peace and calm about him. Sylvie, her shyness forgotten, appeared to be mesmerised by him and sat staring at the pale boy.

  Jamie cleaned and dressed Toby’s hand, carefully cutting the dead skin away with a pair of Sylvie’s craft scissors that he’d sterilised in hot water. Toby bit his lip and tried to think of ice cream with chocolate flakes to take his mind off the pain. Sylvie couldn’t watch and hid under her bedclothes.

  “Is it safe to come out yet?” came a dim voice from under the duvet.

  “Yep, I’m done,” said Jamie, tidying away the tissues and iodine that he’d used. “You need to keep that clean, Toby. There’s still infection in the wound.”

  Toby mopped his face with a tissue. He didn’t feel great. He felt like he was burning up. Globules of sweat glistened on his forehead, and the sick feeling had returned. He threw off the heavy layers of clothing he’d been wearing.

  “It’s hot in here!” he gasped hoarsely. His throat was parched and he was so thirsty. “I need a drink of water.”

  He stumbled out of the cabin towards the stack of bottled water, but he didn’t make it. He collapsed with a thud on to the floor.

  10. A Crazy World

  When Toby woke up he found himself in his own room in the lighthouse in Collieston.

  I’m dreaming, he thought. Must be. The last thing I remember was, er … was chatting to Sylvie and … Jamie?

  He sat up in his bed then winced. There was a large white pad on his right hand. He remembered now. Jamie had put a fresh bandage on his hand, and then?

  “Hi! How are you feeling?” asked his dad, rubbing his eyes. “I’ve been sleeping right here, to keep an eye on you.” His dad unfurled himself from the old armchair by the window.

  “How long have I been here?” croaked Toby. His throat still felt sore and dry.

  “A couple of days. We got back not long after you passed out. You’ve had a fever,” said his dad.

  “I feel … I’m not sure yet. I feel a bit funny. Sort of light-headed. Is this what a hangover feels like?” asked Toby, propping himself up on his pillows.

  “I don’t know, haven’t had one since I was a student. You gave us a nasty fright. Jamie thinks you had blood poisoning from that wound on your hand. When you started to burn up, I didn’t know what to do. In the old days, the doctors would have pumped you full of antibiotics. But we’ve not had much luck finding any of those, have we?”

  “So what happened?” asked Toby. He was puzzled. How come, according to his dad, he was dying one moment, and the next … well, here he was.

  “It was Jamie. I’m not quite sure what he did. He made a poultice for your hand, out of seaweed or something. Then he made this weird-smelling drink out of some dried fungi he had in his pocket. Next thing I know, your temperature has dropped and you’re sleeping like a baby.”

  “Are you sure? That sounds so weird,” said Toby.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. But why didn’t you tell me you’d hurt yourself? I could have dressed that for you before it went septic!” His dad was trying hard not to sound cross with him, but Toby could see that he hadn’t needed anything else to worry about. He looked exhausted.

  “There wasn’t time, Dad. Everything happened so quickly,” said Toby. “I didn’t realise how bad it had got.”

  “OK, I know, Tobes. It was a pretty rough mission, wasn’t it? Eh? Well, we’re home again now. Trouble is, we’re no better off then we were. We didn’t find any medicines. In fact, we’re worse off. We’ve got another mouth to feed now.”

  “Two. We’ve got two extra mouths to feed now,” Toby corrected him.

  “Huh, if Jamie thinks I’m going to feed that enormous dog, he’s mistaken. He’ll have to scavenge for it, on his own.”

  “Be fair, Dad. He can’t do that. From what you’re saying, he saved my life. And maybe he’ll be able to help Sylvie. We’ll give him our scraps to feed Belle.”

  “What do you mean scraps?” snapped his dad. “We’ve never any leftovers. Anything we don’t eat goes into the soup pot or the chickens’ feed.”

  Toby sighed; he didn’t feel up to arguing with his dad. His body ached and his hand throbbed. He wanted to sleep and wake up to find all the problems and worries of his world had been solved by someone, as if by magic.

  I can’t think right now, I’m so tired, and I just want to go to sleep. I’ll think about this later.

  Toby yawned, turned over and was asleep in seconds.

  His next visitor was Jamie, who crept into his bedroom and peered quizzically at him.

  “Hi, Toby, how’s it going?” said Jamie quietly.

  “Oh, oh,” groaned Toby. “My head hurts, in fact everything hurts.”

  “Here, drink this.” Jamie held out a chipped mug full of a pink gooey substance that Toby wouldn’t have described as a drink.

  “What’s that?” asked Toby, pulling himself carefully into a sitting position.

  “Call it a health drink,” said Jamie. “I’ve been out gathering berries and stuff. Did you know you’ve got a really good harvest of blaeberries on the cliffs round the corner?”

  “Blaeberries?” said Toby. “On the cliffs? What were you doing on the cliffs? Don’t you know it’s dangerous? What if the dogs had seen you?”

  “I had Belle with me. She stands guard whilst I forage for anything that might be of use. You’d be amazed at what’s out there.”

  “Yeah? I’d be amazed if there was anything nice out there,” said Toby ruefully, “especially anything worth the risk of being attacked by the dogs!”

  “Do you have much trouble from the local dogs?” asked Jamie.

  “Yeah, some,” replied Toby gruffly. “That’s why Dad put those huge gates up outside the compound.”

  “This is a great place,” said Jamie, wandering around Toby’s bedroom. “Must be really cool to live in a lighthouse.”

  “It was a right dump when we moved in, but Dad’s done a lot to it,” said Toby. He swung his legs out of the bed. “Hey, I’m feeling a bit better now. My head’s stopped throbbing. Pass me my clothes and I’ll get up and give you a tour.”

  Toby started his tour of the lighthouse at the very top. The boys climbed up the wooden ladder into the sun-filled lamp room.

  “This is the best room in the house,” said Toby. He loved it up here. He felt like he was in a balloon, floating over the blue sea, with the gulls calling to him as they flew alongside. There were huge windows all the way round through which the sunlight danced, bouncing off the massive silvery lenses in the centre.

  “Wow!” exclaimed Jamie. “What a view!” The expanse of sparkling blue sea stretched out below them for miles and miles and miles.

  “Dad’s got the light working again,” said Toby, proudly, pointing to the eight highly-polished lenses in the middle of the room. They sat on a circular frame under which there was a whole arrangement of brass cogs and wheels.

  “See,” he pointed to the lamp in the centre, “that’s the source of light. These lenses magnify it and send the light out for miles. This mechanism under here rotates the lenses on this frame so that a different pattern of ligh
t is sent out from each lighthouse. Clever, eh?”

  “Why’s that then?” asked Jamie.

  “So the sailors knew where they were from the different patterns from different lighthouses, you muppet,” laughed Toby. Sometimes, for someone who appeared to be so clever, Jamie was incredibly stupid.

  “Dad and I take it in turns to keep watch up here. See, we’ve got a telescope too.” Toby pointed to the tripod and large telescope which sat in the narrow galley that went round the room between the lenses and the windows. “Have a look.”

  Jamie pulled the telescope eyepiece towards him.

  “Can you see Aberdeen from here?” he asked.

  “Yeah, on a clear day. You can see the tower blocks down by the beach at the Bridge of Don,” replied Toby.

  “How far is it from here, by boat I mean?” Jamie asked.

  “I’m not sure really. Can’t be that far. It used to take us less than an hour by car to get to Aberdeen, and if anything it’s nearer by boat. You can travel as the crow flies, straight there.”

  “Really?” Jamie swung the telescope round to face southwards. “Yes, you’re right, I can see the tower blocks poking up.”

  “D’you know Aberdeen at all?” asked Toby.

  “My mum and I lived there. Then when Cerberus took over, we moved out to Newburgh, where the experimental station is.”

  “Whoa, whoa! Hang on a minute. Who’s Cerberus? And what do you mean took over?” exclaimed Toby. Jamie kept his eye fixed on the distant spot that was Aberdeen.

  “Cerberus is the leader of the dogs in Aberdeen. He controls the whole city now.”

  “What? You’re trying to tell me that this Cerberus is in charge of all the dogs in Aberdeen? That’s barmy! How can a dog do that? And who called it Cerberus anyway? You’ll be telling me next that dogs have learnt to talk!”

  “My mum called him Cerberus, after the three-headed hound that guards the gates of hell. And no, they haven’t learnt to talk, but they have learnt how to work together to survive. They already knew how to communicate, just not in words,” explained Jamie.

  “How come you know all this?”

  “My mum, I told you, she’s a scientist. She used to work on human behaviour at the Rowett Research Institute, but since the dogs went wild, she’s been studying them.”

  “So where is she now?” Toby was intrigued. This story was getting weirder and weirder.

  “Aberdeen,” said Jamie quietly.

  “What? You’re joking? Aberdeen’s been a no-go zone for over a year now. She doesn’t stand a chance … she can’t still be alive …” Toby suddenly realised what he was saying. “Sorry, Jamie, I didn’t mean …”

  “No, you’re wrong. I know she’s still alive. I can sense her. I’d know if anything had happened to her.”

  Toby felt overwhelmingly sad. He could remember how he had reacted to his mum’s accident. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. And afterwards, sometimes, he had sensed her, as if she had never gone away.

  “Look, Jamie, I know how you’re feeling right now. Believe me, I do. But you need to come to grips with the loss of …”

  “She is not dead, I tell you!” Jamie screamed back at Toby.

  “OK, OK, so she’s not dead. Calm down. You’ll upset Sylvie if she hears you shouting.” Toby tried to soothe the boy who was facing him, with his blue eyes staring piercingly at him.

  He looks scary when he does that!

  Jamie’s outburst shocked him. He hadn’t seen much of Jamie since they rescued him, but he’d got the impression that he was a very quiet, almost withdrawn boy. He was obviously wrong.

  “I’m sorry,” said Jamie. “But she really is alive. She went to Aberdeen to study the dog packs there. I saw her a couple of months ago. She came back to the station for a few days to see if I was OK.”

  “What? She left you at Newburgh on your own?” said Toby incredulously, but then remembered that his dad had sent him alone on to an oil platform.

  “I wasn’t alone. I was with a girl called Maggie who used to work at the same place as my mum. But then this man came and Maggie wanted to go with him, so I had to go too. They forced me to go with them. That’s how I ended up at Cruden Bay.”

  “So as far as you know, your mum is still in Aberdeen?” asked Toby.

  “Yes, she was supposed to come back and fetch me once she’d finished her research. But she never came. So Maggie said she wasn’t coming back and we had to move because the packs were getting nearer.”

  “What d’you mean, the packs were getting nearer?”

  “It’s like I told you. The dogs are getting organised. The packs are coming out of Aberdeen under Cerberus’s command and taking over everything.”

  “This sounds so weird. You’d better tell my dad. Come on, let’s find him.”

  Toby’s dad was outside in the yard splitting logs for the stove. The yard was inside the lighthouse’s compound, with tall walls surrounding it. They had fixed reels of barbed wire on the top of the walls to stop the dogs jumping over. Outside the compound were more gates and wire fencing to stop the dogs getting on to the promontory on which the lighthouse stood.

  “Dad!” Toby called. His dad came over to the two boys. “You need to hear what Jamie has to say about the dogs,” Toby told him. The three of them sat on an old bench and Jamie repeated what he had just told Toby. His dad rubbed the sweat from his brow with a grimy hand.

  “I’d heard stories from folk who’d stopped in Aberdeen. It sounded pretty grim. One of them had seen a big black dog leading a pack of dogs. The guy said that the pack seemed to be patrolling the harbour, on the lookout for new ships coming in. The folk thought it was too dangerous so they didn’t get off the boat.”

  “Patrolling? Are dogs clever enough to do that?” asked Toby.

  “Yes, according to my mum, they are,” said Jamie. “She said that Cerberus appeared to have organised the dogs into battalions, y’know like an army has? Each battalion was given its own area to patrol.”

  “What’s your mum doing there?” asked Toby’s dad. Toby could see that his dad was taking Jamie’s story seriously.

  I think the boy’s mad! I mean, some cranky crackpot story of dogs acting like soldiers! How nutty does that sound?

  “She’s been studying the dogs for about two years now. She knows Aberdeen really well; she grew up there. Her dad, my grandpaps, was a caretaker at Marischal College. When she was a girl he showed her a set of passageways under the college. I think they were part of the ancient sewerage system running under the city. She’s been using them to get about and spy on the dogs.”

  “That’s a very risky thing to do,” said Toby’s dad, the concern showing in his face. “What if they smell her? Dogs have a highly sensitive sense of smell.”

  Jamie smiled the first smile that Toby had seen on his face. “Mum has a way of dealing with that. She found a dead badger and cooked it. Then she sprayed the juice all over herself. Dogs hate badgers and won’t go anywhere near them.”

  “Yuck!” said Toby and his dad together.

  “Yeah, right! Pretty gross, eh?” said Jamie. “Mum’s great. She doesn’t care as long as she gets the job done.”

  “D’you know why she’s doing this?” asked Toby’s dad.

  “She thinks the dogs are evolving at an extra quick rate,” replied Jamie. “Something to do with cross-infection with the red fever virus. The dogs’ powers are super-evolving and they’re getting cleverer and cleverer. That’s her theory, anyway.”

  “Super-evolving?” quizzed Toby’s dad. “Cross-infection with the virus? I don’t know, Jamie. It all sounds a bit iffy to me.”

  “My mum’s a scientist. She has two degrees!” Jamie stared defiantly at Toby and his dad. “Who are you to disagree with her?”

  “Er, yep, I’m just a humble engineer. You’re right, what would I know about dog behaviour and evolution? But are you sure your mum was … well … was thinking straight when she came up with these ideas? They do sound a bit craz
y.”

  “Crazy?” shouted Jamie, standing up and facing them. “Hasn’t the whole world gone crazy? Isn’t it crazy that red fever has wiped out most of mankind?” His hands were clenched into tight fists and he looked like he was about to hit one of them. Then, before Toby or his dad could say a word, Jamie turned on his heels and stormed off.

  11. Arrival of the Foot Soldiers

  Later, when Toby had finished his chores, he began to feel a little queasy and light-headed again. He decided to go and lie down on his bed for a nap. As he was going up the stone steps which coiled around the inner wall of the lighthouse, he passed the door to his dad’s bedroom. Here his dad slept, with a small truckle bed in the corner for Sylvie. During the day Sylvie was carried downstairs to lie on an old sofa in the kitchen so she could watch all the comings and goings of the house.

  The door of the bedroom was slightly ajar. Toby could hear hushed voices coming from inside. He stood at the door listening. It was his dad talking to Jamie about Sylvie. A rush of jealousy ran through Toby. His dad never talked to him like this about Sylvie. He was explaining how Sylvie’s health had been slowly getting worse and how her symptoms were so changeable. Some days she appeared to be getting better and other days she was weak and feverish with pains in all her limbs so bad that she couldn’t walk. She had got weaker and weaker as her appetite got less and less.

  “But Toby said it wasn’t red fever,” said Jamie. Toby held his breath. Would his dad be mad that he’d said that?

  “We’d thought she was immune to red fever,” interrupted Toby’s dad. “We thought we all were … but she’s been so ill — what with the rash and the feverishness — I’ve been so worried. She’s been getting weaker and weaker. I’m scared we’re going to lose her.”