by Alex Scarrow
01.06.17
So this is what we think. We *think* the virus is dead already. We think that it’s a victim of its own efficiency. It was so frikkin good at spreading that it hit everything it could affect within a couple of weeks and then had nothing left to infect after that. Maybe it was consuming what it infected as a food source, and now that’s all gone it has withered, dried up, blown away . . . or something. I don’t know. But all I do know is that we haven’t seen any sign of it for weeks now. The last sign of it I saw was one of those pollen clouds, I guess over a month ago.
Mo suspects it must have been an engineered virus, totally manmade. Because it makes no sense, in, like, an evolutionary way, to be so damned quick and efficient and not make some attempt to preserve its hosts. He said it’s like the way a farmer preserves a proportion of his crops for the winter. It might have been a bio weapon? Or a research project, a cure for cancer, say, that just got to be a little too effective and saw everything as a cancer cell? Whatever . . . the greedy stupid bastard of a plague has left itself nothing to chew on. And now it’s dead and gone too.
So, whether we were/are immune or not, we’ve decided that it’s probably safe enough to go look around, see if there are any other survivors. Because the alternative is to stay in this dark dungeon until the food eventually runs out. We’re going to Norwich. That’s where we were heading anyway. Maybe Grandma and Grandad made it through? I guess we’ll find out if one of them has got that immunity gene too.
There was a logjam of vehicles that had built up on the slip-road on to the A14 just outside of Ipswich. They had to spend several hours picking their way through the vehicles. On several occasions, Leon and Mohammed had to brush aside the dried bones and rags (some still strapped in place by their safety belts) to take the driver’s seats, turn over the engines and steer to one side those vehicles that needed moving to make way for their van. In most cases the engines all started perfectly. Leon suspected that wouldn’t be the case six months from now. Batteries would finally be completely drained, the elements would have started to corrode the more vulnerable engine parts, the tyres would be flat. He imagined ten, twenty years from now, this logjam would be a rusting, decaying mass, gradually merging into a soup of flaking oxidized metal, leaving behind only the plastic components just as the virus only left behind bones.
Beyond the jam, the A14 was empty and Leon soon got the hang of riding the gears smoothly all the way to the top, despite his mother’s frequent, insistent nagging to keep the speed down.
‘It’s not a race, Leo.’
Twenty-five miles south-west of Norwich, near a place called Stowmarket, they spotted a sign for a service station. The van’s tank was showing less than a third full and needed topping up with petrol.
Leon steered them on to the slip-road, up towards an empty roundabout.
‘Why don’t we have these back home?’ said Grace.
Mum shrugged. ‘They had intersections instead of roundabouts. I think they were starting to install them in California before—’
‘They’re cool,’ pronounced Grace as Leon swerved round the overgrown grassy island in the middle then took the exit into the service station’s car park. They’d expected to find an empty acre of tarmac, instead it was almost completely full of cars, in some places vehicles parked in orderly rows between the white lines, in others, cars parked erratically as if the final spaces had been fought for.
Leon looked for a sign that would lead them to the petrol pumps. ‘Where’s the gas station?’
‘Stop over there first,’ said Mum, pointing. ‘We might as well take a look inside and see if we can pick up some more supplies.’
Leon parked the van near the entrance to the glass-fronted service station shop, and they climbed out.
There were the usual humps of clothing dotted here and there. It was a sight that had become so common that they barely noticed it anymore; certainly, they no longer bothered to give the piles a wide berth for fear of infection. They were just harmless relics to be ignored . . . except where they converged in groups and told a story. Here their story was quite clear. Bodies were piled up along the glass front, packed more deeply around the wide double doors.
They wanted to get in. But someone inside wasn’t letting them.
Leon could see the grease of palm prints, scuff marks and scrapes, and in several places hairline cracks in the thick plate glass. In his mind’s eye, he could see the crowd clamouring to be let in, begging for compassion from those lucky enough to already be on the inside. Parents holding their little children up above their heads like green cards. Curses and threats hurled through the glass as, behind them, a billowing cloud of white flakes slowly drifted across the car park like an advancing bank of fog.
Leon shaded his eyes, pressed his nose close to the plate glass and peered inside. It was gloomy-dark in there. Today’s August here again, gone again sunlight was playing peek-a-boo from behind scudding clouds. Its light made short, momentary advances across the floor inside, and as it did he caught glimpses further in of more deflated humps of material and bone.
The virus still managed to find a way in.
Despite the locking of doors, despite the efforts of those within – perhaps the service station’s staff – it had all been futile. He imagined the horror not just for those standing out here, but perhaps more so for those cowering inside. They would have had a perfect ringside seat. The perfect panoramic observation window to watch at leisure as the virus did its work on those outside. To see each grisly stage of breakdown and liquefaction, to see people dropping to their knees, flopping to the ground, cries of panic turning to keening whimpers of grief. To witness through scuffed glass a mother watching her baby cough blobs of blood on to its dribble bib, to see another holding her dying children in her arms, to watch those forms glisten wetly and merge like wax figures held too close to a roaring fire. Merging: a return to the mother’s womb in a horribly different way. To see husband and wife, mother and father, embracing and dying . . . to watch a Greek chorus of figures slump to the ground, slowly withering and merging into one wet mass.
Those inside would have seen all that play out against the smeared glass. They would have witnessed in close-up detail the process, and they’d have known that was inevitably going to happen to them too.
Leon felt his scalp prickle and the skin along his arms began to goose-bump.
Jeez.
‘Leon!’
He turned at his own mother’s voice. ‘Whuh! What’s—?’ She’d been saying something to him.
She was standing a dozen metres back from the service-station frontage, holding Grace’s hand. ‘I said . . . you need to stand back. Mohammed’s going to have a go at getting us in.’ She nodded towards the sound of an engine being revved nearby.
Leon backed up a few metres then watched as a white Ford Mondeo lurched forward from one of the parking bays, bounced over a kerb, knocked a waste bin and a wooden picnic table to one side and then finally smashed heavily into the plate glass. It shattered and a blizzard of glass granules cascaded and rattled on the bonnet and roof of the car.
Mohammed waited until the last fragments of glass had finished dropping then emerged from the car rubbing at a smear of blood on the bridge of his nose.
‘You OK?’ asked Mum.
‘Ach. Banged my nose on the steering wheel.’ He said ‘nose’ like ‘dose’. He tasted blood on his lips. ‘My nose is bleeding.’ He pinched his nostrils to stem the flow.
‘We’ll find you some tissues,’ she said, stepping over the crackles of glass. ‘Come along.’
CHAPTER 30
Inside it was dark, but at least lighter than the total dark of the bunker they’d been hiding away in for the last three months.
Leon did his best to forget about the clothes and bones piled up outside and the few dotted around inside . . . and the scene that must have taken place here weeks ago. All ancient history now, he told himself. No more relevant or shocking than the anc
ient fossilized foetal-position remains of Pompeiians.
They split into two groups. Mum and Mo headed one way, Grace and him the other.
Leon carried a shopping basket in each hand while Grace led the way with the torch, panning it along aisles of convenience snacks in the service station’s WHSmith. Their van outside was laden with survival essentials: water and canned food, packets of rice and dried pasta. Sensible, nutritious food portions designed to keep US missile crews functional for months and months.
Nutritious . . . and utterly tasteless.
What had been sadly lacking over the last few months had been the sweet stuff: packets of Haribo and Fizzy Cola Bottles. Leon grabbed a few fistfuls from the shelves and chucked them into his basket.
Grace tutted. ‘Your teeth will all fall out.’
‘Maybe,’ sighed Leon. ‘But who’s gonna see, huh?’ There was that small consolation: if they were the last people of Planet Earth, there was no need any more for vanity.
‘All the same . . . you don’t need to binge-grab this stuff.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s, like, gonna be literally everywhere. For free . . . as much as you want. Forever.’
‘It’ll go off.’
She raised her thick dark eyebrows like a drawbridge. ‘Seriously? This sugary stuff is all chemicals – it’ll last forever. It’s the healthier stuff that won’t last long.’ She pulled a graze-bag of nuts and dried fruit slices off the shelf and held it up for closer inspection. Spots of blue mould dotted the dark raisins within. ‘See?’ She tossed it back. ‘All the healthy stuff is already going mouldy.’
Jennifer and Mohammed meanwhile were in the Tesco Express, across the station’s coffee area on the far side. They were each carrying a shopping basket and filling it up with their own treats. Mohammed was piling up tins of dates in syrup in his. Jennifer decided to pick up some instant coffee and as an afterthought some packets of biscuits. She walked a little further down the aisle and found a temptation she couldn’t pass up. She placed several bottles of red wine into her basket. Mohammed heard the bottles clinking in her basket as she returned to join him.
‘Why?’ he asked, panning his torch on the wine. ‘You do not need it.’
‘Oh, yes I do.’
‘No, you do not. It does not help.’
‘Well, I beg to differ.’
He scowled disapprovingly at her. ‘I have never understood why people choose to ingest a drink that is designed to provoke a toxic response in the bloodstream.’
She cocked her head. ‘Are you doing the religious abstinence thing on me?’
‘It is a common-sense thing, Mrs Button. We should keep our wits about us at all times.’
She closed her eyes and rolled them, then eventually nodded. ‘I suppose there’s that. Very sensible of you.’ She pulled them out of her basket and placed them on the rack of crisp packets beside her.
‘There are actually practical reasons behind the tenets of my faith.’
‘Really? How about polygamy . . . forced marriage?’
He cocked his head. ‘That dates back to the time of the Crusades. There were many more widows than there were men back then. It is . . . it was meant as a practical measure. A charitable thing.’
‘A form of enslavement, more like.’
He shrugged. ‘That is all gone now, old customs, prejudices—’
‘And religions?’
‘If there are other survivors out there, it will be a new world. Perhaps a better culture will be born from this.’
‘For better or worse.’
‘Perhaps more tolerant.’
She looked longingly at the bottles of wine beside her. ‘Perhaps one that allows the occasional glass?’
‘Moderation in all things is a good thing.’
She laughed sadly. ‘Including moderation . . . as my dad used to say.’
‘And he may yet still, Mrs Button. If you and your children are immune, then it is likely that at least one of your parents is also.’ He smiled. ‘I would very much hope to meet them.’ He picked up his basket and wandered a little further down the aisle.
‘Mohammed?’
He turned to look at her.
‘Did you ever fight over there . . . in that war in Syria?’
‘I told you before. I only healed—’
They heard Grace scream: one short, sharp, shrill bleat of alarm.
Jennifer dropped her basket and sprinted down the aisle towards the pale daylight glow of the foyer, Mohammed just behind her.
‘Grace? . . . GRACE!’
She wove her way through the leather coffee-shop chairs towards where another torch beam was flickering to and fro across the low ceiling and the shelves of magazines at the back of the store.
She heard Grace yelp again before she and Mohammed rounded the end of an aisle of sweets and confectionary. Grace and Leon were backed up into a corner against the end of the magazine racks. Leon had one arm protectively across Grace’s collarbone and shoulders. With the other, he was sweeping the torch’s beam backwards and forwards across the floor.
‘Leon! What happened?’
‘Shit . . . Mum . . . we saw something moving!’
‘What?’
‘I dunno . . . I dunno. Something.’
‘Well . . . what? Big? Small? What?’
‘Small,’ said Grace.
‘Where?’
She pointed with a shaking finger. ‘There . . . right there! Among those p-packets of sweets!’
Mum turned to Mohammed, grabbed the torch from him and swung the light on to the rows of packets dangling from the display hooks. The plastic packets glinted under the glare as they swung gently. Shadows danced wildly around them.
‘What did you see?’ asked Mohammed.
‘I’m not sure . . . it was small . . . white . . .’
‘A mouse?’ He looked at Mum. ‘We know fish are immune . . . perhaps mice—’
‘No!’ Grace shook her head. ‘It was more like a . . . a c-crab . . . or a spider. I just saw it for a second . . . I w-was . . . I was—’
‘She was reaching for a packet of those,’ cut in Leon, waving his torch again at the sweets. ‘She was sorting through them and—’
‘It was h-hiding! I moved and it came out from behind and scratched—’
‘It touched you?’
She nodded, her lips trembling as she did so.
Mum started to step towards them, but Mohammed reached for her arm to prevent her.
‘Let go!’ she snapped. ‘We’re immune, aren’t we?’
‘That is not proven yet!’
‘Let me go!’
‘No, to be safe . . . you must not touch—’
‘Get off!’ She shook him off and hurried forward. ‘Grace, where? Which hand?’
‘Mom . . .’ she whimpered, ‘look . . . It was just a touch . . . not even a scratch . . . Just—’
‘Show me! Your good hand?’
Grace held out the other arm, the one that had been broken. The bandages and cast had come off weeks ago; the inflammation had gone down. The antibiotics had done their work.
Mum grabbed Grace’s hand and shone the torch at her palm. Then she turned her hand over and saw it. The faint red stripe of a scratch. She had the flash of a memory from when she was parent helper in Grace’s elementary schools: two little girls accusing each other of biting and scratching. She’d easily managed to identify the victim and the culprit from the fading red welt on one of their wrists.
Mohammed took one small step closer. ‘If it’s a mouse or a rat—’
‘It wasn’t a m-mouse,’ Grace whimpered.
‘Whatever – another animal – it could be a carrier of the virus. Mrs Button, for your safety, you should not touch her.’ He looked at Leon. ‘Or your son.’
She turned to look at him, her face struggling to find an expression somewhere between outrage and disbelief. ‘You think I give a shit?’
She stared back at the red mark. It wasn’t fading like a naughty chi
ld’s scratch. The small straight mark remained clear, raised, pink . . . and now glistening.
‘Grace?’
‘It r-really d-doesn’t hurt, Mom. I’m OK . . . I’m OK . . .’ She wasn’t OK – she was terrified.
‘Mum,’ said Leon, ‘we should get out of here. Get outside.’
‘Yes . . .’ She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, let’s get out—’
A packet of M&Ms suddenly dropped off the display hook and on to the floor. Leon swung his torch down on to it. Caught in the glare of the light, they all saw it this time, scuttling off the top of the packet and on to the floor. Small, about the size of a fifty-pence piece, as pale and fragile-looking as some peculiar figurine made from shellac. It scuttled on delicate legs, six or seven of them, as thin as wire, one way then the other, seeking to evade the pool of light in which it was caught, but uncertain as to which way to go. It paused, reared up on its legs and raised one leg that seemed slightly thicker than the others: a small, barbed spear with serrations down one side.
The thing reminded Leon of one of the many weird bottom-of-the-ocean creatures that had yet to be named and categorized: pale from never having experienced sunlight, almost transparent in places and defying the norms of nature with its asymmetrical body, its odd number of legs and its one serrated leg.
It made a noise . . . a soft clicking.
Instinctively, Mum stepped forward and stamped on it. Its fragile form crunched like a potato crisp beneath the sole of her shoe. The sound reminded Leon of a time he’d unintentionally stepped on a snail after about of rain. Why, he’d wondered. Why do you small idiots all decide to race across the sidewalk whenever it rains?
She lifted her foot and they stared down at the pale smear of slime and shards of shell on the floor. They had a moment to inspect it, a moment of silence, then . . . it began . . .
CHAPTER 31
It sounded like the hiss of rainfall on forest leaves, a tap-tap-tapping that merged into a soft and soothing white noise. It was inside the store. It was all around them.
