National Emergency

by Jobling, James

  “Don’t have a problem with that,” Ethan said. “You need to stop pointing that gun at my boy, though.”

  “Why did you bring him here?”

  “We didn’t. You shot us off the fucking road, remember? He’s sick, that’s all. Are you people really that far up your own arse that you can’t cope with a little vomit?”

  “He’s not sick, he’s infected, you bloody fool. Have you not seen the news?”

  “I’ve seen all kinds of shit tonight. And much of it wasn’t on TV. My son is sick, not infected. He’s probably scared shitless after having a fucking shotgun fired at him!”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Earl Topinka said. “Hold on here a second, will you?”

  “Thought you wanted us gone?”

  “Please, just stay here for a second. I believe I have something you’ll want to see.”

  “Why can’t you just tell us?”

  “Please, just one second.” And with that he was toddling back into the darkness of morning, taking the double-barrel menace with him.

  Ethan immediately crossed to Karris and kissed her rain-soaked forehead. Lincoln had stopped being sick, but he was still burning a worryingly high temperature. Ethan handballed the rockery at the front of the car away, then climbed back behind the wheel of the taxi. He fired up the engine, relieved when it roared to life with the twist of the key. He reversed onto the road and ordered Karris and Lincoln back inside. Dave remained in the pouring rain.

  “You getting in or what, mate?” Ethan asked through the disintegrated passenger window.

  “Don’t you want to see what he has to show you?” Dave asked.

  “Couldn’t give a toss, pal. The guy’s a bloody fossil.”

  “What if he’s right?”

  “About what, Dave?”

  “What if Lincoln’s infected?”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Ethan, just think about it.”

  “I don’t have to. We don’t have time for this. We need to get back to help Mum and Lee.”

  “I know, but…”

  “What is there to think about, Dave?”

  Before Dave could answer, Earl Topinka waded his way back across the road. He no longer had the shotgun – he must have left it inside – and he approached the droning taxi with a flashlight in one hand and a mobile phone in the other. He also had a red bandanna tied around his nose and mouth. He beckoned Dave forward.

  “Should I go?” Dave wondered.

  “Thought you wanted to see what he had.”

  Dave glanced awkwardly at his youngest brother, then marched across the road, stepping in an ankle-length puddle and cursing as dirty rainwater soaked his foot.

  “The TV stopped broadcasting a few hours ago. All they’re showing now is a public service announcement.” Earl informed them.

  Dave nodded. “I know. We’ve seen it. They killed the Mayor of London.”

  “That’s right. But you probably haven’t seen this.” Earl tossed an iPhone over to Dave, who caught it adeptly. Ethan climbed out of the taxi to see what his brother was looking at.

  BBC news webpage: a white Transit van on fire, flames licking through the shattered windscreen, a shopping cart pushed over onto its side next to the flaming conflagration, a young rioter wearing a grey hooded top and a scarf covering the lower half of his face, proudly staring into the camera. Above the picture, in bold capitals, was the headline SPORADIC TROUBLE ERUPTS IN ENGLISH CITIES – IS INFECTION TO BLAME?

  Ethan’s eyes narrowed and he quickly scanned the bulletin over his brother’s shoulder.

  Civil unrest broke out tonight in every major city in Britain, with shops and even homes being looted and set alight. There have been as many as a thousand deaths as the police lost complete control of the streets to the rampaging hordes and have had to depend on the intervention of the military to try to restore order. The Prime Minister is due to make an announcement at 7 A.M. outside Downing Street condemning the needless deaths, but some critics think he should have been more active throughout the night. Mayor of London, Kenny McKay, was murdered by a hooded menace called Daryl Duncan, and his death has since been paraded on the internet.

  “We know all this. It’s not news. Come on Dave, let’s go.”

  “My daughter lives in Nebraska,” Earl said into his red bandanna. “She rang an hour ago and said a new strain of flu has swept across America and those showing symptoms of illness are behaving violently. Reports of disturbances started in Nebraska and have since spread throughout the Midwestern United States. Facebook and Twitter have gone into meltdown due to the number of people around the world reporting this infection. People are saying that it is the infection that is making them act this way.”

  “What does any of this have to do with my son?”

  “It only infects children.”

  Ethan chuckled humourlessly. “Only infects children?”

  “That’s what the Internet is saying.”

  “Well, if it’s on the Internet then it must be true.”

  “There was a hospital porter who gave an interview to a journalist, claiming the government was injecting newborn babies with a fluid that had the potential to turn them into these violent teenagers come puberty. I know it sounds farfetched, but Google deleted the video twenty minutes after they posted it. If you search for it now, your computer downloads a virus. Why would they do that? What have they got to hide?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t give a rat’s arse. We have to get back to save Mum and Lee.” Ethan walked back to the taxi. “Let’s go, Dave.”

  Dave Hardcastle looked at his brother, a flicker of guilt and shame in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Ethan, but I can’t come with you.

  “You can’t? What do you mean?”

  “If Lincoln’s infected, then I can’t get in the car.”

  “He’s not infected! He’s sick! Why are you listening to this relic?”

  Dave glanced over to the watery vomit on the ground. “I can’t get in that car. I’m sorry. If Lincoln does have this… this… infection, then he could pass it on to me. I could infect Marcel when he gets back.”

  “Lincoln is your blood.”

  “I know. And I love him, you know I do. But there’s something not right with him.”

  “What about Lee? What about Mum?”

  “Go and save them. I know you can do it, Ethan.”

  “You’re a fucking coward!”

  “I know.”

  Ethan marched across to his brother and stopped directly in front of him, shaking his head in disgust. “I killed for you tonight.”

  “I’m sorry.” Dave opened his arms to embrace Ethan, but the builder declined the offer, rolling his fingers into a meaty ball of knuckles and crunching it into his brother’s jaw. Dave stumbled backwards, whipping around, not exactly going down but stumbling awkwardly, bottom lip bloody. “Ethan, I’m so sorry.”

  “Not as sorry as I am, brother.”

  Ethan jumped behind the wheel and fired up the engine, roaring back home for one final confrontation.

  PART 4

  CHAPTER 21

  Ethan stopped the taxi at the top of the driveway. He didn’t want to garner any unwanted attention and, pulling over on a grassy verge in front of the wooden gate, he found he could not shoo away the palpitations of fear tormenting his heart. From this position, he could see that the pouring rain had doused the burning cars. Columns of smoke still spewed towards the drenched night sky, painting the front of his home in clouds of acidic smoke. Ethan turned off the vibrating engine, pushed open the driver’s door and touched down on home soil.

  Lincoln was sprawled on the backseat, sleeping. It was not a deep or undisturbed slumber, though. His body was plagued and racked with a high temperature; sweating, spasms, limb convulsions. In one of the winding country lanes leading back home, Karris had made Ethan pull over so she could peel her son’s eyelids apart, only to discover his pupils were dilated. Even though he was unconscious, his leg
s constantly kicked as though he was having a nightmare. His Curious George pyjamas were clammy with perspiration and stuck to his body.

  Ethan closed the driver’s door as quietly as he could, then made his way to the rear of the taxi. Karris had removed her coat and had blanketed Lincoln with it. She wrenched the side window down, poking her head out.

  “Stay here with Lincoln. I’m going to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Seems quiet.”

  “Too quiet.” Ethan agreed. “If anything happens whilst I’m gone – and I do mean anything – I want you to press the horn, okay?”

  “Okay. Be safe.”

  “As houses, baby.”

  “I love you.”

  “I know. And I love you. The hammer is on the passenger seat; in case you need it.”

  “That’s quite possibly the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me.”

  Ethan smiled and stroked the side of her face with his thumb, kissed her lips. They pressed urgently against each other, tongues clashing, hands wandering. Ethan groped the same swollen area that the little bastard outside of the kebab shop had earlier, reclaiming what was rightfully his. Karris responded with the same flurry of passion. For once, she didn’t complain about his stubble or ‘beard burn’. Ethan reluctantly pulled away, breathless, forcing himself to break free before he jumped on top of his wife and started removing her clothes. Stumbling awkwardly away from the car, he tried to ignore the pressure in his loins.

  Shit, if we live through tonight, she’s not going to be able to walk for a week!

  Crunching his way down the driveway, it was then that Ethan first saw the dark smears on the gravel. He knew right away that it was blood. He stopped for a second, feeling as though he was being watched—hunted—and then he saw the naked body crumpled on the soaking wet ground.

  “Lee?” Ethan whispered to himself, not sure if the form was his brother. “Lee? Lee, is that you, mate?” Ethan raced forwards and flung himself onto his knees beside the blood-caked body. His eyes searched for that thumb-sized birthmark on Lee’s left arse cheek that had been the subject of numerous butt jokes by Ethan and Dave throughout the years, but there didn’t seem to be an inch of his body not covered in blood. Ethan rolled him over.

  The horrific sight reviled him, revolted him, made him want to take a bottle of bleach and a scouring pad to his brain and scrub the image free. In the flutter of a heartbeat, everything changed forever. The Saturday night beer and Nintendo retro-ritual was gone; the yearly ‘Jolly Boys Outing’ to Margate, inspired by Del and Rodders, said Bon Voyage; the daily text joke; the afternoon pint; the days out; the nights in. It was all gone in the blink of an eye. Lee Hardcastle lay dead at his younger brother’s feet.

  They had shot him in the head from close range, the bullet smashing into his skull like a meteorite smashing into Earth. Bone cracked. Teeth had pulverized. Embedding bony-shrapnel into his tongue and the roof of his mouth. A puddle of tacky blood had spread out at the back of his head, tiny globs of pink and grey brain matter dotted here and there. Thankfully, his eyes were closed. It looked as though someone had painted his face bright red.

  Why are you naked? What did they do to you?

  A fading flame flickered inside of him. It wasn’t so much the dwindling light of eternity, but rather a torturous, inconsolable flame of hatred. He wanted to destroy something beautiful; wanted blood to stain his hands. Closing his eyes, Ethan saw the black youth from Dave’s complex - the kid he had stabbed to death – and Ethan smiled. He released his brother’s cold hand and, with a sniffling kiss, roared into the darkness. The scream was inhuman, animal-like, and, if it hadn’t emanated from his own lungs, he would have doubted its authenticity. He ran his fingers through the gravel of his driveway, digging fingernails in deep, demanding to feel pain, looking towards the dark house and knowing what he had to do next.

  “Sorry, bro.”

  Kissing Lee on what remained of his blood-soaked forehead, doing his best to ignore the burnt bacon-like stench wafting from the gaping cavity, Ethan climbed to his feet and wiped tears from his eyes with the back of his hand. He unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, revealing naked arms and a sodden vest to nature’s tears. Draping it over his dead brother, he looked over to Harold, who was still sprawled beneath the blue tarpaulin.

  “Look after him, Harry.”

  Ethan walked over to the front door and went to press down on the handle. It was already open, barely still on its hinges. Somebody had kicked it in.

  The hallway was dark and empty. And there was certainly no point in playing the stealth card anymore; that grief-stricken roar had been loud enough to hear in the neighbouring riot zone. Slapping on the fluorescents, he groaned loudly, the grief crawling from the void of his stomach and scrambling upwards again, firing another arrow of sorrow into his broken heart. He stumbled back against the closed door.

  Bella was lying dead on the hallway floor. Her brown and white fluffy fur was now completely red, clumped together, tacky, gummy with blood. Ethan dropped to one knee and saw that someone had stabbed the dog multiple times. The carpet beneath her was blood-logged and they had trashed his gallery of beloved comics. He stroked Bella’s stiffened fur and rose to his feet before staggering into the kitchen.

  There was nobody in here either, but that didn’t surprise him. The front of the house was swamped in blackness. He crossed to the sink, not bothering with the lights, and peered out of the dark window. He could barely make out the black skeleton of the taxi parked at the top of the driveway. They would be safe up there. They were out of the way. Ethan turned the tap on, no longer caring if he was heard (something dead and cold inside of him wanted to be heard) and he roughly washed his hands, feeling as though there would never be enough soap in the world to cleanse them of the blood from his dead brother. He turned the tap off and, without bothering to dry his dripping hands, pulled a steak knife out of the block on the side. That was when he realised that the bread knife was already missing.

  He walked back through the dark kitchen, holding the knife by its wooden handle, and stepped back into the smoky hallway. When he had been a child, his next-door neighbour (a beast of an alcoholic) had slipped into a vodka-induced coma one night, leaving the indoor heater turned on. At some point, it had overheated, setting his house on fire. The old lush had survived, but the place had gone up, quite literally, like a house on fire, nearly taking Ethan’s with it. It had taken close to three weeks for his mother to get the stench of stale smoke from their house. Ethan wondered how long it would take to get the smell out of here.

  He paused in the brightly-lit hall for a second, looking down at a corner table. There were two framed photographs perched on top. One was of him and Dave at a fancy-dress party a few years ago. Dave had grown out his beard and had the whole Wolverine gimmick going on. Ethan had gone as Rocky Balboa, complete with fake broken nose and Italian Stallion silk gown. They had had a right laugh that night. Lee had been dressed as the Joker and, of course, had got so steamed that he ended up brawling with a very convincing Captain Picard. The photo beside it was Lee and Ethan at the top of Ben Nevis. They had climbed the mountain for a cancer charity. Ethan placed one of the photographs down on its glass frame and left the other proudly on display.

  Ethan looked up when a shadow spilled into the hall. A young boy of about ten or eleven stepped in front of him. Ethan gripped the handle of the knife tighter. The youngster – wearing a black tracksuit and trainers – had a wicked-looking red welt rising on one side of his face. He waltzed around Ethan’s family home with the cocksureness of a spoiled brat from an American reality TV show. The boy paused upon seeing Ethan at the end of the hall and turned on his heels, but the builder ran forward, grabbing the boy by the throat and slamming him against the wall. The boy grunted as the back of his head whacked the wall, but he swung both fists against Ethan’s skull, stunning and surprising him with his raw vehemence. Ethan clenched a fist and raised his arm…

  But he
couldn’t do it. Couldn’t bring himself to punch a child. No matter what had happened to Lee, he could not bring himself to punch a child.

  And that would be his downfall.

  In the split second that Ethan hesitated, the boy uncoiled like an angry rattlesnake, firing a knee into Ethan’s crotch. The builder grunted as though he was lifting a sack of rocks, and fell far enough from the boy for him to wriggle free and run down the hallway, screaming at the top of his lungs. Ethan staggered like a drunk after him. Using the wall to prop himself up, he managed to grab the little cunt by the hood and propel them both through the closed door, landing in the dining room. Ethan’s thighs ploughed painfully against the dining table, his bodyweight flinging him over it, steamrolling into chairs and crash-landing on the floor. The boy landed in a jumble of Ethan’s arms, legs, and chairs. He barely had time to take in his surroundings before the builder lunged forward.

  The TV mounted to the wall was still turned on, still on mute, still replaying that same public service announcement repeatedly. Ethan couldn’t believe this was the very room where his wife had treated him to a birthday-blowjob only a few hours ago. Things had spiralled so quickly out of control since then that he had forgotten it had even been his birthday. He grabbed a handful of the boy’s jumper and yanked him forward.

  “Who killed my brother?”

  “Go fuck yourself!”

  Ethan climbed to his feet, dragging the foul-mouthed youngster with him. The boy was limp, as if he had developed cramp in a particularly deep stretch of water. Curling his fingers into a tight fist, the builder sprung his arm back, preparing to smash it into the boy’s jaw and only stopping when he saw the three other occupants in the dining room. He stared, slack-jawed, at his mother and Bryan who were sitting side-by-side, gaffer tape strapped across their mouths and wrapped around their wrists, securing them to the chairs. Bryan was bleeding from both nostrils, bloody mucus bubbling as he glared at Ethan with wide eyes. Ethan looked at the teenager standing behind them, recognising him immediately as the acne-riddled youth who had called Karris a bitch earlier. Ethan’s fingers tightened around the handle of the steak knife at that memory. He looked at the huge muzzle of the handgun that was pointed at his mother’s head.