In the following weeks he’d stayed indoors the whole time, having made sure all the windows and doors were closed properly and locked. And then it came. Gradually at first, but rapidly increasing in frequency, he heard the effects of the plague as it spread like wildfire through the town, causing terror and chaos: muted somewhat by his double-glazed windows but frighteningly apparent. Frequently he would hear the chilling screams of people in pain or anguish from nearby houses and sometimes out in the streets. The cries of children were hardest to bear and he was often in tears. Police and ambulance sirens were a constant occurrence. Often there was the sound of people running down the road, of shouting, or of breaking glass. Once there was the frantic ringing of his doorbell and banging on his door; he didn’t dare to go to the door, but stayed in the kitchen with the rolling-pin in his hand.
All he could do was try to close his ears to it all and sit there terrified. He felt horrified at the suffering going on around him, and also a bit guilty: unable to help anyone or do anything. It seemed to go on for ever before gradually becoming quieter in the following weeks.
Occasionally he thought of things he’d neglected to get, which he wrote down, thinking to go out when it might be safer. He had a stock of disposable dust masks to put on for when he did need to go out; that had been the medical advice that was broadcast on the news. The problem, though, was that the masks soon became damp from exhalation, especially in the cold weather, quickly rendering them ineffective. The medical broadcasts didn’t mention this, but there was nothing else they could do. The general advice was to stay indoors and have no interaction with other people, but how could that work in the real world?
He had trouble remembering the exact timescale now, but his last phone-call had been with his brother, who’d lived just over a mile away in Sidley, on the northern edge of Bexhill. Dave had rung him in tears to say that his son and daughter had died in Eastbourne, and that he and his wife now had the symptoms as well. His brother had implored him to keep away and to stay indoors, even though he had wanted to go round to see him. Their mother and sister in London had already died two weeks earlier and he was still reeling from the shock and grief of that, along with the deaths of his nieces on his sister’s side. It had been a relatively short conversation, filled with tears. There wasn’t much to be said, really. What can you say to someone who will be dead in a day or two, apart from that you love them? He’d come off the phone and broken down, sobbing uncontrollably and cursing. He couldn’t even go to see his brother one last time to hug him and tell him that he loved him.
When he’d stopped crying, he turned on the TV to see if there was any news. Most stations were already off-air. The BBC still had some broadcasts, but even they were breaking down rapidly. There was some pre-recorded newsreel footage of looting, mayhem and terror all around the country, and then the broadcasts had stopped abruptly. He’d tried the local radio stations and it was the same with them.
Although Bexhill Hospital didn’t have an A&E unit it was swamped nonetheless. Hundreds died there before it shut down; overwhelmed by the number of infected and many of the staff dead or dying. Most people died at home, either by themselves or with loved-ones, and many were too weak to go out again once the infection took hold. A certain percentage, inevitably, avoided the plague’s clutches due to being housebound by old age, illness or disability. Once the utilities had failed, though, and unable to fend for themselves effectively, they soon perished from a combination of dehydration, starvation and weakness. The vast majority were just completely caught out by the rapid escalation of events, the high rate of infection and the incredulity of it all, with not enough time to prepare adequately.
Ten days or so after his last conversation with his brother he had become sick himself. The streets had become eerily quiet, with hardly any sounds of people or vehicles. The only regular sounds were the plaintive cries of seagulls, as always, and he’d thought it should be safe to go out wearing a mask. The streets were empty, and the two people he saw while on his way to the supermarket were in a great hurry and looked desperate. Aldi was deserted; the doors were wedged open and the aisles strewn with trampled produce from people panic-buying. There were no staff members anywhere in the shop and many shelves were bare. He managed to find a few bottles of cooking oil and some other items, including- miraculously- two bottles of whisky lying on their sides on the top shelf. He then walked down to Sainsbury’s and it was the same story there. He found a few useful items, along with some tobacco and cigarettes, and put them in his rucksack. As he was leaving, a woman turned the corner and ran into him, dislodging his mask. She was red in the face and breathing heavily, her hair matted with sweat. She didn’t stop or say anything, but ran off, coughing.
By evening of the third day he was sweating profusely and sneezing. He had a terrible headache, was aching all over and his breathing was laboured. It felt like someone was kneeling on his chest. He coughed in the bathroom and saw blood on the wall, and then vomited. Shit! This was it. He didn’t know what to do and panicked, before realising there was nothing he could do, so he got a bottle and a glass from the drinks cupboard and sank down onto the sofa in despair. He had an air of resignation to it as there was no one he could go to for help or to talk with about it. He picked up his mobile phone and tried some numbers but there was an automated message every time saying it had not been possible to connect his call and to try again later. He didn’t even bother cooking an evening meal, but drank a lot of whisky and spent the evening thinking back over his forty-two years, frequently in tears. He remembered things he’d done, friends and family, women he’d loved but never got to be with. Around midnight he passed out and collapsed on the sofa.
When he’d awoken it was light, and he assumed it was the following day. He was amazed that he’d woken at all and was still alive. He tried to get up, but was so weak that he fell back down again. His head hurt and there was vomit on the floor next to the sofa, mixed with blood. He struggled to the bathroom and was sick again, then went into the kitchen, leaning heavily on the surfaces for support. He was desperately thirsty and opened the taps, but only a trickle came out. He opened a bottle of water and drank a pint straight down, then made up two sachets of Dioralyte rehydration powder and drank them. After that he made some strong coffee with lots of sugar and some salt. He had terrible hunger pangs, but didn’t feel like eating anything yet.
He sat on the stool and looked at his watch: he didn’t know why- what did it matter what the time was? He noticed the date window, but couldn’t focus properly to read it, so he found his reading glasses and looked again. He did a classic double-take. What the hell? It was six days since he’d passed out, as far as he could recall. He’d lost six whole days! No wonder he was weak. He guessed he’d slipped into some kind of coma… He had no idea what had happened, but he was alive. He didn’t know whether he had a natural immunity to the plague bacterium, or whether he just had a great immune system that had fought the disease. They’d said the mortality rate was approaching a hundred percent, which meant there was a small chance that a few people might survive.
It took over a month to regain his health properly, during which he ate as healthily as his food supply allowed, resting frequently and also taking vitamin supplements. As he felt vigour returning he exercised to regain strength. Meanwhile, in turn, all services and utilities had failed completely. There was no sound at all from the surrounding streets.
When he felt strong enough he worked outside in his small courtyard. His cordless drill’s batteries still had full charge, so he rigged-up a shelter to enable him to cook outside with wood that he would collect, thus saving valuable fuel. The containers he’d put out to collect rainwater were full, so he put lids on them. In the third week of his recuperation he found an envelope stuck through his letterbox that he’d missed. It was a letter from the guy upstairs, saying that he and his partner were infected and were going to his mum’s to spend their remaining time with her. There was a key to t
heir house and he told him to help himself to anything useful. He ended with the lines Ain’t life a bitch! Good luck. Curious, he went upstairs and let himself in. He found that Paul had also stockpiled supplies and, importantly, there were many packs of bottled water, plus many boxes of dried and canned food.
For the next few weeks he became aimless and depressed, unwilling and scared to go out and face things; but eventually he’d snapped out of it and ventured out as his food supply diminished.
Four
The next morning, during breakfast, he was undecided on his next course of action. He wanted to go back to the angling club to pick up the oars and fishing tackle, then find a suitable boat for fixing the rowlocks to so he could get out on the sea to fish. While that would be good start to becoming self-sufficient in terms of fresh food- especially protein- he realised that he needed to get properly organised. There was no point fetching and arranging things for his future survival without first finding himself somewhere more suitable to live. There was no more room in the flat, anyway.
He also wanted to try out his bike with the new paniers, as he needed to start collecting water instead of using up any more of his precious bottled supply. But the same consideration applied to that, too: until he found a new home he didn’t really need the bike for water collection, as he could walk to Egerton Park for it, which wouldn’t be much of a problem. He could forage for shellfish for protein while he was still in his flat, and maybe fish from the beach if he needed to. And, with his new-found knowledge from the plants he’d identified, he could have fresh greens. Therefore, the most important thing, in his mind, was to find a new place to live first, and then start organising things for his future. These were important concepts for survival, and who would have thought that, in the twenty-first century, he would have to think of such things?
He decided to begin searching at the western end of Bexhill towards Cooden, which was just over a mile away. He knew there were many large properties in that area, with large gardens to match. He thought of South Cliff; the houses there backed onto the promenade and beach and had direct access from the gardens. While they would be nice and convenient, he also thought they might not be conducive to growing vegetables and other produce, being at the mercy of strong sea winds that battered the coast regularly. He thought maybe he should be looking one or two roads back from the coast, to give some protection from the winds. He wanted a south-facing property, if possible, to get maximum sunlight for growing things, a large garage to use as a workshop, a conservatory that would double as a greenhouse for growing tomatoes and other plants, and open fires or wood-burning stoves.
He decided to go by bike; the area he intended to cover wasn’t that big, but getting there and back would be far quicker by bike. He packed what he would need in his rucksack, including food, water and a few tools. The bolt-cutters he strapped onto the bike rack; they might prove useful, even though they were heavy.
It proved to be a slow process and far more time-consuming than he had imagined, as well as being very harrowing. A house might look suitable from the front, but when he looked round the back he was disappointed. And sometimes it was difficult to gain access to the back gardens, involving climbing walls, fences or gates- often to be disappointed. Some places were suitable in some respects but not in others. He looked through many windows and broke into several places- in some cases the doors were unlocked- to see if there were open fires or log-burners and to get a general feel for the suitability of a property. Death was present almost everywhere he went; people alone, couples, entire families- sometimes in bedrooms and sometimes all together in the lounge. In one house he found the bodies of a couple lying on the floor in the lounge in front of a cross on the wall.
By late afternoon he was frustrated, exhausted and sick to his stomach by the stench of death. He hadn’t found anywhere that ticked all the boxes on his list in the roads one or two rows back from the sea. He thought, though, that he had the answer to something that had been bothering him: why weren’t there more dogs around? He had wondered about it and found it strange; he’d imagined there would be packs of them roaming the streets. It seemed, though, that most had died indoors with their owners; whether from the plague or from dehydration he didn’t know. He had heard some dogs barking over the last months, but relatively few.
He did, however, have one lucky find: he gained entry to one house he thought might be suitable, only to find that the rear garden was mostly paved over. Damn! In the master bedroom, a couple rotted in their bed; on the bedside table were an empty bottle of whisky and two empty pill bottles. They’d obviously taken a less painful death, rather than waiting for the plague to finish them. Good for you. Rest in peace. In the next bedroom, which had been turned into a study, there was a gun case on the wall containing three shotguns, all twelve-bores: one side by side and two over and unders. He smiled to himself; Yeah, baby, come to Papa! On the walls were many photographs of the owner at clay pigeon shooting competitions, at clubs, and out in the countryside shooting game. He used the bolt cutters to cut off the lock and removed the guns.
Underneath was a locked cupboard that he broke into, containing many boxes of cartridges in varying shot sizes. He knew from his old fishing days about sizes of lead shot- the higher the number, the smaller the size, and it was the same for shotgun cartridges. The boxes varied from No.9 down to No.4, which was fairly large shot. Each lead ball in the cartridge was over 3mm diameter and they would pack a hell of a punch. There was also a boxed kit for gun maintenance and cleaning, service manuals and two shoulder bags for carrying them. On a bookshelf were many books on shotguns, shooting and hunting. He knew nothing about guns apart from what he’d seen in films or read in novels, so he picked two that covered gun maintenance, shooting and hunting techniques and put them in his rucksack, along with all the boxes of cartridges and the cleaning kit; it was bloody heavy!
Outside, he strapped the shotguns to the bike rack and cycled home slowly due to the extra weight; a little frustrated at not finding a suitable house, but at the same time elated with finding the guns. He hoped he’d never have to use them on people, but was aware of the possibility with the way things were now, and he felt a lot safer having them for self-defence as well as for hunting.
That evening he drank a bottle of red wine and listened to music on his MP3 player; he had two solar-powered chargers for various sizes of batteries and also for his MP3. The track Sovereign Light Café by Keane was very nostalgic as he’d often gone to that café on the seafront before the plague, and it brought back memories of how life used to be; he got upset and turned off the music.
He felt lonely: he’d always been comfortable with his own company and had lived alone since his divorce many years earlier, but the new status quo changed everything. Before, if he’d felt the need to be among people, he had only to visit one of the many cafes in town; that ability was now gone, obviously. Bexhill had become a ghost-town and walking the silent streets was creepy and infinitely depressing. The prospect of never again hearing a child’s laughter brought tears to his eyes whenever he thought of it.
He wrote a few lines in his diary; he’d tried keeping a log of events since it had started, but had often lapsed. On a whim, he scrolled back through the diary to a point where the pandemic had begun; he couldn’t remember exact dates, so just chose the beginning of the year. He decided that there should be a new calendar system of year-classification to replace B.C. and A.D. as they seemed somehow irrelevant now. On the 31st December he wrote B.P. (Before Plague), and on the 1st January he wrote A.P. (After Plague, or even Anno Peste; year of the plague). So he was now living in the year 1AP; if the human race ever recovered, he wondered if his system would be adopted and gave a little smile. He then read sections from the shooting books and practised stripping the guns down for cleaning and maintenance before going to bed.
The next morning was wet and cold. He awoke early, feeling strangely refreshed and clear-headed, and sat on the stool in the kitchen
with a cup of coffee and a cigarette, remembering his last thought before he’d fallen asleep. He now had three shotguns: the two over and under guns he decided to leave as they were as they were easier to aim when hunting. The side-by-side, however, he decided to cut down and turn into a sawn-off: that way, it would be about two feet shorter and would fit into his rucksack, making it far easier to carry around and turning it into an effective self-defence weapon, should he need it. It didn’t take too long to cut the barrels off with his hacksaw, and he filed and sanded the ends smooth to remove all burrs. He felt like a gangster in some East-End film getting ready to rob a bank and smiled!
Afterwards, he took it down to the beach, along with one of the other shotguns, and fired off some practice shots at signs and at one of the groynes to get a feel for handling the guns. Satisfied, he went back to prepare some food.
During breakfast he decided to look at the houses along South Cliff after all, despite his previous thought that they would be unsuitable as they backed onto the seafront and would be too windy. He packed everything he might need into his rucksack, including the sawn-off shotgun, loaded with No.4 shot, and spare cartridges in his pockets and rucksack. He decided to walk this time as he hated cycling in the rain, so he left the bolt-cutters behind as they would be cumbersome.
He walked along Terminus Road, looking up at the sky as he headed west. The rain clouds were hastening eastwards and the sky ahead was getting brighter and clearer, which was good news. He turned left after the surgery and into the pedestrian underpass for the railway. In the middle of the tunnel, against the wall, was a corpse that had been picked at by birds or foxes: it had no face left but was wearing a distinctive coat with a patch that looked familiar. He realised it was a guy he’d known from the pub across the road. They hadn’t been friends as such, but he was shocked nonetheless as they had often talked together over a pint. He shook his head and carried on in a sombre mood, exiting the underpass and then across Wickham Avenue and down Brockley Road to West Parade, coming out at the Sovereign Light Café on the seafront. Heading west on the promenade, he looked at the beach as he went, noting patches of sea kale and sea beet that he would soon start harvesting. He reached South Cliff and began searching for his new home.
The Hoffmann Plague Page 3
