Outside, a car’s brakes screech, but it doesn’t stop.
PART TWO
INTO THE RAIN
Fellows steps from the shower, both the day’s heat and the drink from the previous night making him feel sluggish. The events of yesterday don’t seem to join up in his head to where he is now; what he remembers from the previous night doesn’t seem like it could possibly have happened...
Still naked, Fellows goes to the window of his bedroom, through which he can feel an overbearing heat despite it only being mid-morning. He looks up and down the street but can’t see any traffic; not unusual since the unity government introduced petrol rationing. So no way to see if people are still driving on the left, matching Boursier’s story but not his own memories. Have I had it wrong, all these months in the quarantined city? he thinks. He doesn’t actually drive anymore (the thought brings goosebumps despite the heat) so could he somehow have been mistaken, until Boursier made him see it?
He dresses slowly, his crumpled linen suit seeming an absurdity in the heat despite its thinness. The view from his window is as absent of clouds as automobiles, and he vaguely wonders when he last saw or felt rain. Although today is especially hot, the heat-wave had started with the quarantine, as if an invisible dome had been laid across the city, letting more heat in than out.
Right then, Fellows thinks, trying to shake the torpor from himself. He pats his pockets; the first task of the day is to find some of the pre-quarantine pounds and pence to pay the bookseller with. Maybe Gregor at The Carousel will be able to put him in touch with someone. Once he has bought the five remaining stories he’ll get some of the piss that passes for beer in the city nowadays, and return to his house to read them in its comparative coolness. He’ll not let things that don’t concern him as a pedestrian worry him unduly.
Thinking so, he steps out onto the landing and the broken body of the ghost comes at him.
He jerks away before it can touch him, his body suddenly shivering. Despite its eagerness for him it is easy to avoid, for the ghost’s twisted limbs didn’t let it move quickly, barely let it stand unaided. Even as he watches it, the ghost totters and collapses soundlessly to the wooden floor, without disturbing any of the dust. It keeps its round, boyish face fixed on Fellows, although it is hard to tell from its pupil-less eyes whether it is looking at him or not. Fellows takes another step backwards, back into his bedroom so that the thing is out of sight. He shivers again as he realises his mistake: there is no other way out of the bedroom. There isn’t even a door to shut. He thinks of dragging the bookcase across to block the doorway, but it is surely too laden with paperbacks to do so.
He stands, not knowing what to do, feeling the heat from the window on his back. The ghost or demon or entity is always completely silent, and out of sight it is hard to believe its broken form is just a few feet away, straining towards him. And why is he so afraid of it touching him, anyway; surely the one thing ghosts can’t do is touch?
Maybe it has already faded—Fellows waits, watching the doorway. When something streaks into the bedroom towards him he cries out even as he realises it is too fast and low and black to be the crippled ghost.
“George!” Fellows says; the damn cat is slinking round his ankles wanting to be fed. He reaches down to pet him, still keeping a wary eye on the door. George has never reacted in the slightest to the presence of the ghost, so his being here now and hungry is no guarantee the thing isn’t still soundlessly dragging itself across the dusty floorboards to reach him. Nevertheless, if the ghost had been outside George must have ran through it to reach Fellows, and the impossible picture this summons up in Fellows’s mind gives him some confidence. He cautiously approaches the doorway, ignoring George’s mews as he does so.
Just then he sees a small hand waver in the air before gripping the peeling white woodwork of the doorframe; one of its fingers is bent back and so can’t grip, and Fellows sees how dirty the pad of it is, black as ink. The hand is about an inch from the floor, and as he watches appalled a second grips the doorframe a foot higher, as if the kid had sprawled onto its side and has grabbed for the doorframe to pull itself forward. The hands tighten, as if preparing to heave that sightless face into view...
When the hands fade, they do so suddenly, and leave no trace of their grime or blood on the peeling white paintwork.
Fellows remembers to breathe, then gags slightly, tasting stale alcohol rise in his throat. This is getting stupid, he thinks, this is getting worse. He tells himself he must do something about it, without having the slightest idea what. An exorcist—he doesn’t know for sure if such people really exist, or if it is ghosts they cast out or demons. He supposes the boy could be either, if what it is even has a name. He can’t comprehend how he could talk to someone about it without knowing what to call it. He hasn’t spoken of the haunting to anyone, not even his best friend Georgia. You twat, she says in his head, and even that calms him somewhat.
His dread of the ghost often fades almost as quickly as its form does, and already the image of the hands gripping the doorway seems like something from a moment so far past it can’t touch him here. Something not quite real, and certainly not as real as the increasingly agitated cat still pestering him for food, or as the ugly sound of the motorcar passing outside...
Fellows runs to the window, just in time to see the black car turn the corner at the top of his street. On the left, he thinks.
But that is another thing he can let George distract him from confronting for the moment.
~
Outside, the heat makes him pause—surely this is not a day to be walking halfway across the city and back. The sky feels oppressive above him, its light changing the way his world looks, everything hazy and already beginning to shimmer. He heads towards The Carousel, hoping one of the inside tables will be free. He glances around the café twice as he enters, once to see if there is, and once looking to see if the waitress with the black, curly hair is working today. He sees her reflection in one of the mirrors on the wall before he sees her. Her reflected smile just makes him feel sad and old, for it is the lovely professional smile she would offer to any of the regulars who came in.
He places his order with Gregor at the counter, and takes the newspaper back to his table to read; he sees how its cheap quality has already stained his fingers before he has even finished the front page. All the stories are either about the heat-wave or the quarantine, or about the growing groups of protestors against the unity government and against the quarantine itself. Idiots, Fellows thinks. He doesn’t actually mind the quarantine that much, other than the fact it has stopped his favourite drinks being available anywhere other than the black market. The quarantine has been in place all this hot summer, but given Fellows doesn’t actually want to leave the city why should he care? They must have good reason for it, he supposes.
The waitress comes over with his coffee, looking flustered.
“This heat!” she says, and Fellows tries not to look as she flaps her blouse collar to air her neck.
“I know,” he said, “there’s something not quite right about it, isn’t there?” He is aping something he has just read in the paper. She nods but doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move away either. “Almost too hot to walk in this weather,” he continues clumsily. “But then you might drive here I guess..?”
“Drive?” She cocks her head. “No point learning to drive when no one can drive a car is there? Or afford one. Besides, I live close,” she adds. “Just round the corner in the old town.”
“I used to be able to drive,” Fellows says. “Well, I’m sure I still could but I feel like I can hardly remember how to. Hardly remember we drive on the right...” He forces a laugh.
The waitress looks confused and is about to say something, when Gregor calls across the café at her.
“Leianna! Customers!”
With an apologetic smile and a glance that doesn’t quite meet his, the waitress turns to deal with an impatient sailor at the tab
le behind him; Leianna, Fellows thinks. He takes a sip of his coffee, clutching the cup in both hands as if it were winter. He shivers again despite the intense heat coming through the café windows.
After he finishes drinking he goes up to the counter to pay, putting an overly generous tip into the jar in the hope Leianna might be watching and forgive him for getting her in trouble. He sees Gregor is typically unmoved by his generosity. Fellows wonders about asking Gregor again if he could take some of the pre-quarantine money from the bottom strata of the tip jar, but that had not gone too well last time.
“Gregor,” he says, “you know people who can... get things, right?” He gestures at the bottles of wines and spirits behind the man, who remains impassive. “I want to find someone who can get me some of the old money. The pre-quarantine money.”
“Why?” Gregor says.
“Because... I need to buy something from someone who will only take...”
“What?”
“What? Some, well, some books,” he says, feeling as stupid as Gregor’s look obviously implies him to be; he imagines the waitress, Leianna, smiling mockingly behind him where he can’t see her and he flushes.
Gregor stares at him for a long time.
“The only idiots who want the old money are those protestors. A group of them think if the old money is reintroduced it will help lift the quarantine.”
“I don’t think it quite works that way!” Fellows says, his laugh dying in the face of Gregor’s silence. “So, do you know, uh, where...”
“The church,” Gregor says, “with the fish. There’s a square in front of it. They’ll be handing out leaflets there at midday.” The Mariners’ Church, Fellows thinks. Something of a tourist attraction, until the quarantine.
“Thanks,” he says, feeling compelled to add another coin to the jar, which Gregor doesn’t acknowledge. He’s just about to turn away when he remembers something.
“Can you drive, Gregor?” he says.
“Yes.”
He opens his mouth to ask which side, but then just laughs. Pointless. He leaves Gregor looking even more nonplussed than before as he exits the café.
~
“Christ what are you doing here?” Georgia says, one eye peering above the chain on her door. “Even I know it’s too early for a glass of wine.”
“Can I come in?” Fellows says; it is too soon for him to head to The Mariners’ Church. Georgia is, he supposes, the only friend he has in the city; he struggles to think of his friends the other side of the border, and what would be the point anyway?
“Come on then,” Georgia says, taking the chain from the door and letting him in. “The corkscrew’s over there.”
“But I thought you said...”
“I know what I said. Twat.” That word again, Fellows thinks.
“I read one of his stories,” he says to Georgia when they are settled on her sagging sofa; he has to admit the cold wine is refreshing, despite the vinegary taste, and he fights the urge to gulp it. It is hot in Georgia’s flat, even though her curtains are drawn over the view of the old town outside. “One of Boursier’s.”
“Really? He’s actually real?” Georgia pauses to stare at him, her glass halfway to her lips.
“Well, this story is, at least. It’s called A Hint Of Paprika. It’s...” Fellows goes into a long rambling account of the story before Georgia stops him.
“Woah, woah there. So what is it? Like... science fiction? The future? That sort of boy’s stuff doesn’t interest me. Escapism doesn’t interest me—I want stories about here.”
“No, you’d like it,” Fellows says, “it’s not like science fiction...” But he can’t explain what it is like, or the effect it had on him; he can see Georgia is losing interest.
“Not for me,” she interrupts him again. “Still, you’re obviously smitten. Has it inspired you? Made you want to write again?”
“No, that’s behind me, I’ve told you that...”
“I think it would be good for you,” Georgia says softly. “Would help.”
“Help? What do I need help with?”
“Oh fuck off,” Georgia said, laughing. He isn’t sure what she is getting at, isn’t sure he wants to know, so he changes the subject.
“Can you drive, Georgia?” She looks at him, raises her wine glass.
“I’m sitting drinking this piss before the sun’s even finished rising; do I seem like the kind of person who ever learned to drive?” she says. “Twat. She was always hassling me to,” she adds, referring to her ex he supposes; it had been Fellows who had inadvertently and drunkenly broken them up. “And I kept saying, what’s the goddamn point? To drive from one end of this city to the other? There’s nowhere to bloody drive to!” She takes a gulp of her wine. “It’s fucking hot,” she says, almost to herself.
“Wait, wait,” Fellows says, “weren’t you seeing her before the quarantine?”
“No, no don’t think so,” Georgia says, and Fellows is confused; he’d met the couple on the first night after the quarantine had been declared, so Georgia must have been with her for at least a few weeks prior.
“How long do you think the quarantine has been in force for?” he says, feeling a sudden yet obscure panic that somehow their timelines won’t match.
“Six months,” Georgia says, “almost to the day.” Fellows is relieved, and he lets himself be distracted from his unease. Maybe the wine so early in the day is affecting him more than he realises.
“You’re pretty weird today,” Georgia says. “More than normal I mean. I swear, you even smell weird.”
“Smell weird? That’s a... weird thing to say,” he says teasing.
“Piss off. So, stay and have another with me?”
“No I... I’m going to try and buy the rest of the stories. Boursier’s.”
“Well that won’t take all day will it?”
“But I need to get some old money first,” Fellows says. “The bookseller wants paying in pounds,” he adds, almost defensively.
“Where the fuck are you going to get some of that pre-quarantine money from?” Georgia says. “They made people hand most of it in didn’t they?”
“Apparently you can get some from the protestors; they think using the old money will help. Idiots,” he says. “Idiots anyway,” he says, suddenly feeling annoyed. “What’s the point of trying to get the quarantine lifted?” Fellows doesn’t know quite why the thought of people trying to get the quarantine lifted annoys him. There is just something about his life that feels settled, here and now, and the protestors, like the ghost or the motorcars on the wrong side of the road, feel like things trying to shake that feeling from him.
“It would mean we could stop drinking this vinegar,” Georgia says, raising her nearly empty glass. But her gaze doesn’t quite meet his, and her smile for once doesn’t shine in her eyes. Fellows sees her glance towards the window and he wonders if she is apprehensive about something.
“Georgia?” he says.
“God,” Georgia says, shaking her head and body as if throwing some troublesome notion from herself. She looks away from the window; grins. “Pour us both another then, if you’re staying.”
“But I’m not...” Fellows starts to say, then stops himself. Course you are, you twat, he thinks.
~
As a consequence of the second glass of wine, it is sometime after midday when Fellows nears the Mariners’ Church. Fortunately the sight of its fish-shaped weathervane had been all the guidance he needed through the city’s streets, for there had been no one around to ask for directions. Most people are keeping inside as the heat of the day nears its peak. Fellows’s shirt is damp and sticks to his skin like he has been caught in a rainstorm. Whenever he pauses in the shadow of the tall, white-stoned buildings in this part of the city he shivers, a sensation almost pleasant in this heat.
The movement of people in the square in front of the church seems almost unnatural after the still and deserted streets he has walked through. There is a man
selling watermelons from the back of a cart, as well as iced tap-water for over-inflated prices. Fellows doesn’t care at that point, and he shivers again as the cool water slides down his dry throat; he feels the urge to tip the water over his head. Feeling more refreshed he looks round the rest of the square—a huddle of people are standing in the shade of the church, somewhat forlornly clutching pamphlets.
They are a mixed group, some look like office workers or officials of some kind, some maybe sailors, some maybe servants for the rich folks of the Enclave, some farmers whose land is on the other side of the border. They all look slightly ragged, dejected in the heat that has defeated them. They have damp brows and are so wet with sweat they look almost bedraggled. They attempt to stand a little taller as Fellows approaches.
“Hi,” Fellows says weakly; he feels compelled to take a leaflet when, as if in surprise the man nearest hands him one. The mimeographed pamphlet is limp; maybe it is the heat but it feels sticky as if the ink has not properly dried. It sags in his hand as he makes a pretence at reading it.
The contents surprise him—he had expected practical measures meant to apply pressure on the unity government to redouble their efforts to get the quarantine lifted. But no, the pamphlet contains tips about how people can make their life more like it was before the quarantine, as if that life could just be recreated; there’s a quasi-mystical feel to the text, as if the quarantine being lifted depended on enlightenment and epiphany, and not the actions of a group of bureaucrats from outside the city.
Idiots, Fellows thinks, crazy bloody idiots, but he sees that one of the things the pamphlet suggests is for people to use the pre-quarantine money again, so he has an opening. But before he can speak, the man who had handed him the leaflet looks over his shoulder; his overly-prominent Adam’s apple bobs as he gulps.
“Oh shit,” he says.
“What?” Fellows looks round, and see two Guardia have just entered the square, heading first to the entrepreneur selling watermelons. The protestors begin hiding their leaflets and literature—although the various protest groups aren’t illegal and the right to free assembly hasn’t been curtailed (yet—the paper is constantly suggesting it will) it’s well-known that the unity government takes a dim view of the protestors and the police have taken to moving them on or otherwise inconveniencing them for the most spurious of reasons. Although this has stirred up some resentment, most of the public (including Fellows himself) are not putting themselves out to defend the protestors, especially as their demands are so quixotic.
The Quarantined City Page 4
