by Rhys Thomas
There was more shouting. The situation was on the brink of chaos. The balance of the room was swirling. A solitary security guard barged past the gang and into the ward.
‘Get away from that trolley,’ he shouted to the leader.
The man stopped. He seemed to be thinking about something.
‘You can’t just take them,’ Miriam’s mother said.
The leader looked at her for a moment, lowered his head as if in submission, and then lifted his shirt. From his belt he pulled a gun. Miriam screamed. The nurses, doctors and gang backed away, leaving the leader in his own large circle of space.
‘I am taking them. You can’t hoard them for yourselves. We all pay our taxes. They’re as much ours as they are yours.’
The doctors raised their hands to the air.
‘Please,’ said the smaller one. ‘Take them. But leave some for us.’
‘If you had just given them to us we wouldn’t have had to do this.’
The shorter doctor tilted his head. ‘Please, leave the trolley. Take the boxes and needles, but leave the trolley. We have sick people here.’
‘Yeah, leave the trolley, mate,’ said one of the members of the gang, ‘we’ve got enough here.’
The leader of the gang was holding his gun up but not pointing it in any one direction. There were several seconds of silence.
‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s go.’
The gang backed slowly out of the ward and when the doorway was clear the leader left with them. At the door he turned back into the ward, looked at the two doctors, at the trolley of medicine he had left behind, and walked away.
Miriam ran up the corridor to her mother. She was shaking with anger. How dare those men come in and take the medicine? The only way to survive was to hold strong together. Everybody. How could they not see that?
She hugged her mother. ‘Don’t do things like that,’ she said.
‘I had to say something.’
Her mother was trembling. Her body felt small in the embrace.
‘We have to be careful,’ said Miriam. As she spoke the words she knew that they were the same words used by Joseph, and which she had ignored.
She lifted one of the vials. The contents were milky.
‘What is it?’
‘Just antivirals,’ said the doctor. He pulled his mask down off his face. It left a red imprint. ‘These masks are pointless.’ He lifted the elastic strap over his head and threw the mask on to the desk. ‘They probably thought it was some miracle cure.’ He shook his head, visibly shaken. He lifted up a vial, plunged a needle into it, unrolled his shirt sleeve and injected himself quickly. The speed of movement seemed reckless. ‘These things aren’t going to do anything anyway.’ He threw the empty needle down on to the trolley and took a deep breath.
‘Are you OK?’ said the nurse.
He breathed in and out. ‘I’m fine.’
‘We’ll be OK.’
He laughed. ‘Will we?’ He wiped some sweat from his forehead with the crook of his wrist. ‘Miracle cure. We don’t even know what it is. How can we cure something that doesn’t even exist?’
The other doctor stepped towards the trolley. ‘That’s enough, John.’ He looked at Miriam and her mother. ‘We’d better give you your jabs. In case they come back.’
The doctor lifted a needle and vial from the trolley and Miriam rolled up the sleeve of her shirt.
‘These are a new type of antiviral,’ he said. ‘
Why did you move the patients around last night?’ she said. ‘How do you know what makes them violent?’
The taller doctor snorted. ‘We moved out the pricks and kept the nice people,’ he said. ‘It’s as simple as that.’
Darkness fell as they left the hospital. Floodlights had been erected outside and bathed the main drag in front of the building in white light. The sound of rushing traffic filled their ears. The ever present sound of sirens wailed somewhere in the city. Everywhere now, a great tide was being fought, the defences stretching to breaking point.
Miriam checked her watch. The kids wouldn’t be far away by now. She tried to call but there was no network again. She stared at the useless luminous screen of her phone. A yellow smiley face grinned back at her.
There was activity at the pagoda-like army marquee on the left. There had been only two soldiers there that morning but now they numbered fifty at least. They wore gas masks and held rifles casually at their sides. Six trucks were parked up on the lawn next to the marquee. The guy ropes holding it in place glowed silver in the light. An entrance awning had been erected and ropes had been slung around the perimeter. People dressed in normal clothes were being held inside its confines. The noise of many people speaking at once drifted across the lawn.
It was clear what was happening. They had been rounded up. The difference between those affected by the illness and those unaffected was obvious: those unaffected were talking and gesturing loudly at the troops. The ill ones were standing still and mostly looking at the grass around their feet.
There was a metallic sound as the back doors of one of the trucks opened. An army officer stood on top of a box, brought a megaphone to his lips and pulled his gas mask on to the top of his head.
‘Bring them in.’
The troops stationed at the entrance awning beckoned to the people nearest them. They were reluctant to move. Some of them eased backwards.
‘It’s all right,’ came the amplified voice. ‘We are here to help you.’ The voice was emotionless. It did little to placate the crowd. ‘Two family members may travel with the sick to the new hospital. We are moving out of the city. You will be safe.’
Inside the marquee the first few rows of the crowd started to move tentatively towards the truck.
‘There seem to be an awful lot of them,’ said Miriam’s mother. ‘I thought it was only supposed to be a small number that became violent,’ she said.
‘They don’t look very violent to me,’ said Miriam.
The army did not look right set against the backdrop of a normal city. Their uniforms and their machines and their artillery were like rips in the blanket of society.
Miriam noticed that all the infected people were men. They watched for ten minutes until one man being passed into the truck stopped. His family, which consisted of two women, said something to one of the armed guards. The guard gestured and pointed to the side of the truck. The family moved to one side and the stream of people continued to flow. Soon the first truck was full. The doors were closed and bolted shut with ominous slams. The truck rumbled over the lawn and down the road.
A second vehicle was brought. The family who had refused to board were still waiting. An officer came over. He was not wearing the fatigues of his subordinates. The armed guard spoke to him and the officer looked at the family. He went over to them and started talking. He pointed at the second truck and shrugged. He looked at the ground and placed his hands on his hips. One of the women spoke to him. Her neck leaned forward and her palms were outstretched. She was trying to persuade him of something. The officer shook his head. He swung his arm around in a sweep behind him and brought it to a rest, pointing at the armed guards. The woman who had been speaking slumped her shoulders. The family remained where they were for a moment until the officer stepped towards them in a friendly manner and placed his arm around the infected man. He ushered him over to the truck and he climbed aboard. The two women were pointing angrily at the officer and he held his hands up: it’s not my fault.
The children had been quiet in the back seat for the last half-hour and in that time many things began to settle. Driving relaxed him, and the streets were clear. He was able to focus. A huge void had opened in his heart but he could see it clearly now. It was something he would have to find a way to accept, though he knew it was important to keep the void as it was, to give the wound space to breathe, to oxygenate it before any cauterization, so that it would never fully heal over.
He pulled into the side
of a road and switched on the little overhead light to check the map. He was almost there. As he made a mental plan of the final few streets he saw a garage across the road. There were cars there, but no queues. Not like the other garages, which had been either crammed or closed. They must have just had a delivery. He checked the gauge, started the car and it bumped on its suspension springs as it climbed into the bright lights of the forecourt. The children stirred and looked out of the window.
He filled up the tank and as he did so he looked around him. The garage was silent. Apart from the man filling up at the next pump there was nobody in sight. They nodded to each other and smiled. Through the window a cashier leaned over his desk reading a magazine as if it was just another ordinary day.
With the petrol tank full, Henry’s father took the children into the shop to pay. The light was so bright it made his eyes feel swollen. The shelves were half empty but he picked up some sweets and the last two loaves of bread. From an unseen speaker somewhere in the shop a saxophone and piano played a bland, inoffensive melody. He went to the checkout and the assistant seemed aggrieved to be pulled away from his reading. Reluctantly, he tapped some keys and the receipt roll chugged and the price appeared as green digits on the little black display panel above the till.
The wind touched the back of the old man’s neck and he felt one of the children pull at the hem of his sweater. The cashier’s face stared past Henry’s father and fell blank, and then Henry’s father felt afraid as he turned round. His whole body surged and jarred with chemical shock under the force of the bang. His eyes snapped shut and behind him he heard the cashier shout something, something like ‘Please don’t hurt us,’ but his mind couldn’t process the words. There was a smash somewhere in the shop. He grabbed the children and looked at the naked man who had stepped in through the doorway. Oh God, he thought. We were so close.
They found their way along the busy road that led to the hospital and were soon passing down quiet residential streets. The sight of people sitting on the walls gazing balefully at the cracks in the pavement was becoming normal now.
Up ahead the silhouette of a woman cut a dark space in the amber light. She was holding what looked like a stick. She ambled slowly down the pavement.
Miriam and her mother moved closer together. As they neared her they saw that the object the woman was carrying was leaking something. The end was bulbous, with tendrils of material dangling from it. The leaking fluid pattered into the concrete. They passed the woman and only at the last minute did they understand that the object she was carrying was a human arm. The arm was naked and blood dripped from the shoulder blade, which was somehow still connected to the humerus bone, like a giant chicken wing.
She was small, with short, straggly blonde hair; perhaps only twenty years of age. She wasn’t even a woman really; more like a girl. In the street lights they saw specks of blood on her face. She did not stop walking and she did not look their way. When she was behind them, her voice called out.
‘I only found this,’ she said.
Miriam and her mother stopped and turned. The girl held up the arm. She was speaking slowly, in the way that all the infected people at the hospital had spoken, how Dorothy had spoken, how Henry had spoken.
‘I didn’t take it.’
They smiled, turned back and started walking again.
‘It belonged to my father. I don’t have the Sadness. I’m not ill. Honestly.’
Miriam whispered to her mother. ‘Shall we stop?’
‘The kids will be home soon.’
She looked at her watch. ‘We have time.’
‘Are you sure you want to stop?’
Miriam thought about this. ‘Yes.’
They turned. When they stepped towards the girl she took a step away from them. They took another step forward and then she sat down in the street, holding the arm in her lap.
‘I’m not ill. I don’t have it,’ she said, as she stared vacantly into the road.
Miriam and her mother glanced at one another.
‘How long have you felt like this?’
The girl’s face fell blank. It was boyish and pale, her eyes two black holes. Her lips started to tremble and she brought a blood-smeared hand to her mouth. Tears fell from her eyes.
‘I’m so scared,’ the girl cried.
Miriam’s mother sat down on the pavement next to her and placed a hand on her shoulder. The girl took shallow breaths before each sentence.
‘I’m going to die.’ Her hand clutched the wrist of the severed arm tightly.
Miriam had not seen this before. The girl was infected but she refused to accept it. She was still a human being. In the others the illness had swept everything away and left no sense of awareness.
‘I’m only nineteen and this is it,’ she said, staring down at her feet.
‘Come on,’ said Miriam’s mother. She exchanged glances with her daughter. They had to do this. They couldn’t just leave her. ‘We’ll take you home with us.’
The girl’s name was Dora. They had managed to get that much information from her before she refused to speak any more. They cleaned her face and arms and found an old T-shirt of Miriam’s to put her in. They checked her clothes for a wallet or a purse or something that might tell them where she lived but she had nothing on her at all. Her pockets were empty.
They changed the sheets in Dorothy’s bed and tried to persuade Dora to go to sleep but she refused. She wouldn’t get into the bed so they took her downstairs to the living room at the front of the house. She sat in the old armchair in the corner behind the door and rested her arms in her lap.
‘Let’s just leave her there,’ her mother said. ‘We’ll need the spare bed anyway.’ She picked up her daughter’s worry as if it was nothing. ‘Just relax, Miri. They’ll be here soon.’
Miriam tried calling Henry’s father but the signal had dropped yet again. He was late.
‘Please,’ said Henry’s father. ‘Just let us go.’
Outside, the bright neon lights that illuminated the petrol pumps made everything hyper-real.
‘I am evil,’ said the naked man. He stroked the barrel of his pistol and smiled. ‘I am the very thing you never imagined you would see in this world. But here I am.’
A streak of blood that had spat cartoon-like from the cashier’s head, like the juice from a squashed fruit, stained the naked man’s chest.
‘I always knew I would be like this in the end,’ he said.
‘Please just let us go.’
The man screamed to silence Henry’s father. It rang around the forecourt.
‘You don’t understand. You can’t see it.’
Henry’s father thought he could see regret in the naked man’s eyes, as if there was a second person inside the body, trying to get out. He just had to keep his attention.
There was a second man, an uninfected man, creeping along behind the row of shelves, out of sight of the naked man with the gun. He had told Henry’s father not to give away his position by raising his finger to his lips, and shown him the baseball bat he had taken from the shelves.
‘I feel like I’m . . .’The naked man trailed off, scrunched his eyes tight, shook his head violently as if trying to get the demons out, and then he held up his gun decisively and pointed it at Mary, and fired.
‘No!’
Edward threw himself in front of his sister. There was a mass of movement. The man behind the shelves ran out from his position and clubbed the gunman on the back of the head. Edward and Mary fell to the ground as one. The gunman fired off another shot. It pinged into the shelves behind the counter. Henry’s father rushed across to the gunman and kicked the gun from his hand. It spun across the tiles and collided with the drinks stand.
‘Edward,’ said his grandfather, scooping him up, his body firing with panic. Edward’s head fell limply back over his arm. ‘Tell me where it hurts, Edward. Tell me where it hurts.’
The boy was sweating.
Mary was crying hyste
rically.
‘Get him out of here,’ called the man who had attacked the gunman. He was lying on top of the naked man, trying to pin him down. But the naked man was struggling. His body was pulsing with movement, his flesh slapping against the hard tiles. ‘I don’t know how much longer I can hold him for.’
The old man looked at the gun lying on the ground. He hoisted Edward up and hurried past the two men. Mary ran out after him.
‘Thank you,’ said Henry’s father. ‘Thank you so much.’
They ran out on to the garage forecourt.
‘Mary, sit in the front seat, darling, there’s a good girl.’
He opened the back door and laid Edward along the back seat. He unbuttoned his winter coat. A patch of blood was seeping through his sweatshirt at his side.
‘Oh God.’
He laid the overcoat over Edward and ran round to the front of the car. The sound of Mary’s crying rang in his ears. He got into the car and started the engine.
Mary was still on the forecourt. He lowered the electric window.
‘Mary, honey, get in.’
The little girl was crying uncontrollably.
Another gunshot exploded from the garage shop. The naked man was running for the door, gun lifted towards the car. He fired. The glass door shattered but the bullet sang past them uninterrupted. Henry’s father leaned across and pushed open the door.
‘Mary, get in!’
At last she did as she was told. The naked man was in the open now. Henry’s father pushed his foot against the pedal and swung the car towards the exit. The naked man ran out in front of him and raised the gun again. Henry’s father ducked. The frame of the car above the windscreen thudded as the bullet slammed into it. He kept his foot on the accelerator. The bonnet struck the naked man across his hipbone and the car jolted. The man fell back into the path of the car. The tyres lifted up over his body. Henry’s father changed gear and accelerated again. The car engine roared and they sped off.
The old man’s hands clutched the wheel tightly. His heart thumped in his chest. How could this have happened? he thought. They were so close. He looked back at his grandson lying prostrate across the back seat.
