The Next Big One

by Derek Des Anges

  Ben leaned on the dashboard, which buckled slightly under his weight, and readjusted himself to sit upright again.

  “I was given an injection,” said Natalya said, her hands tightening on the steering wheel. “Which I did not see, but which I believe may have been infected fluids. I was kept for a period of time I am informed was three, maybe four days; after a while one of the others, who also had an accent from either London or Essex, said they should ‘dump him back’.” She gave the car in front of them a disapproving look, “and shortly loaded me back into the vehicle. I was left on the pavement outside my flat with my hands bound in Sellotape, and with what turned out to be a Virgin Active tote bag over my head.”

  “Jesus wept,” Ben said.

  “A neighbour helped me up,” said Natalya, “and she called the police for me.”

  “Do you have any idea who—” Ben began, and Natalya nodded grimly.

  “Several,” she said, “but what I lack is any evidence.”

  “The police, though,” said Ben, “that’s their job, right?”

  “Yes,” Natalya agreed. “Yes, they have been very helpful. They have searched my statement for inconsistencies. They have asked how long I thought I was in the car, how I was returned, and they have kept the bag for analysis, although I think it would be a very inept kidnapper who allowed his DNA to fall into the hands of someone who knows as many forensic scientists as I do.”

  Ben nodded, unsure of whether the hot and cold running horror in his skin was due to what he was hearing or to his cold.

  “And you want me to—”

  “I have cleared with the police,” said Natalya, “and they think it … not prudent but not imprudent.” She took her hands off the steering wheel at last. “My article is pulled, but yours remains. So I ask for your help.”

  “Actually,” said Ben, sniffing, “mine got taken down at some point. I found out this morning.”

  Natalya stared at him for a moment. “Was there explanation for this?”

  Ben nodded. He’d called the paper on his way over, in need of a distraction as much as an explanation. “They ‘couldn’t confirm with Dr Yagoda that you’d given this interview’, and were pretty annoyed with me for apparently wasting their time.”

  “Yes,” said Natalya evenly, “I had been abducted. It makes difficulties in answering the phone.”

  “Are you sure you want to put this out there?” Ben asked, after a moment. “I mean, you’re taking this very well but—”

  “I had my hysterics at the police station,” Natalya said with the skeleton of a smile. “Am too tired now to feel anything.”

  “—but the timing was…dodgy,” Ben persisted. He couldn’t really see her having hysterics and wondered if she was making a kind of sad joke. “What if they read it and decide on a more drastic course of action?”

  Natalya snorted. “Not convinced these men with their van and their Romford voices,” she said, “are censoring my output.” She put her head back against the headrest of her seat, which wobbled dangerously. “Guerrilla tactics and health policy do not mix often.”

  “Okay,” Ben said, giving up.

  “I will need blood tests,” Natalya added, in a far-away voice. “If suspicions are correct, I am infected.”

  Ben said nothing.

  “HPA places me on mental health leave for trauma,” said Natalya, with a certain degree of contempt for the notion. “Cannot ask Rhiannon or Anil or David to take blood from me without proper precautions, cannot access the laboratory to take it myself.” She slumped against the seat, which bounced. “There are solutions but I am too tired to think of them,” she concluded, irritated.

  “Er,” said Ben. “When you were missing.”

  She said nothing, and closed her eyes, but he ploughed on.

  “When you were missing, I called Dr Bill — um, Dr Greenhill, he’s on TV sometimes — for advice. I thought perhaps he’d know what to do. He was, uh, he was right about that, maybe he’d know what to do about—”

  “He also writes,” said Natalya, her eyes still shut. “No one pulls his articles. Even the contentious ones. They sue, but they do not remove. Perhaps he should write this.”

  “Perhaps,” Ben suggested, feeling a little robbed but a lot relieved.

  “He is a belligerent man,” Natalya said with some satisfaction. “Infamous for causing trouble with unsatisfactorily rigorous reporting. Yes, I will talk to him.” She opened her eyes at last and appealed to Ben, “You have his number?”

  Ben nodded, and pulled out his phone to offer it to her. “Do you want me to say something first or—?”

  “He will have heard of me,” Natalya said. It might have sounded like arrogance on another woman, but on her it was a statement of fact: she’d put her name and the name of her team to the triple-test, and she’d made at least one contentious claim about the origins of a high-profile disease, and then he’d been called in over her vanishing — there was no earthly way for Dr Bill to have not heard of her.

  Ben brought up the number and passed her the phone.

  After a very short ring, the call connected.

  “Natalya Yagoda,” Natalya corrected, presumably on being addressed as Ben. She listened for a moment: Ben blew his nose. “I am. I have been speaking to the police. I wish to speak to someone who can make my voice heard.”

  Ben stuffed the tissue back in his pocket.

  “I was abducted,” she said, very simply. “I require your help.”

  Ben wished he had anything like this kind of mastery of direct conversation and wondered if it was because Natalya was a scientist or because she was a Kazakh or because of some other alchemy of influences he couldn’t hope to replicate.

  “Yes,” said Natalya, “At once.”

  Ben gave her an enquiring look, but she ignored him.

  “There is one more thing,” Natalya said. “It is possible that I have been infected. I need to confirm this one way or another.”

  There was a long pause, during which some children stared into the window of the car. Ben sunk down in the seat and immediately regretted it: there were only springs to sink into.

  “Only with due precaution,” Natalya said, not apparently satisfied, and, “We will come at once.”

  She hung up, and gave Ben his phone back. Then she extracted some alcohol wipes from underneath the driver’s seat, and methodically wiped the surface while he held it.

  “Progression to salivary glands should not occur so quickly,” she said, “but it is better to be sure. And I cannot put your phone in an autoclave.”

  “It’s fine,” said Ben, trying not to touch the screen.

  “Bill has agreed we shall speak to him at once,” Natalya informed him, yanking the seat into position with the brutality of a steel-worker. She slammed her seatbelt into place. “You will come?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said Ben, taking out his tissue again.

  Natalya began backing her car out of the parking space. “I must eat,” she muttered, twisting around to stare behind her. “And you should bring another.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Bring a friend,” said Natalya, still staring over her shoulder. “Today I am paranoid. I ask for company.”

  While Natalya raided a Tesco express, presumably trying to fill the gap of several days of starvation so that she didn’t faint either while driving or while having blood drawn, Ben took out his phone, and glanced around the street.

  He wrapped his index finger in another tissue, and very awkwardly and with a good deal of autocorrect, composed an email.

  To: "Khoo, Daniel"

  From: "Ben M"

  Subj: Huge things afoot at the circle K

  Not enough time to explain but NY is back and we’re going to Dr B’s for blood tests? Can you get away and meet us there? Address is 34 XXXXXXXX Road, NX XXX. NY wants company. Can ask someone else if busy but thought you’d want to know.

  Natalya returned to the ca
r with a bag full of junk and sat down heavily. “Can no longer tell if I have an appetite or not,” she said baldly.

  “Should probably eat something though,” said Ben, who hadn’t for a day and a half because he couldn’t make himself give enough of a shit.

  She nodded, and opened a bag of crisps. Ben’s phone buzzed and blonked.

  To: "Ben M"

  From: "Khoo, Daniel"

  Subj: re: Huge things afoot at the circle K

  I’m not wasting keystrokes on asking what the fuck you’re talking about or why you think I need to know about this but is there anything I need to bring?

  Ben glanced at Natalya, typed nitrile gloves, deleted it, and wrote just yourself.

  Daniel was at the end of Dr Bill’s road by the time Natalya pulled up there, and greeted Ben with a shake of his head. He’d finally succumbed to a coat, which looked an awful lot less like a bag than the duffle coat Ben had struggled into that morning, and he regarded Natalya with a frown.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her, without bothering to introduce himself, then added, “Daniel Khoo. Colleague of Gina Norris.” He offered his hand, but she didn’t offer hers.

  Natalya acknowledged this with a twitch. “Which is 34?”

  Daniel pointed down the street. “Didn’t want to show up without you guys.”

  Dr Bill met them at the door, and reversed down the hallway with surprising speed. “Which one of you is Ben?” he asked, looking between Ben and Daniel, once they’d made it into the living room.

  Daniel pointed at Ben, and added, “I’m Daniel Khoo.”

  Dr Bill raised his eyebrows, and said, “Oh, Bornaviridae.”

  Daniel looked startled.

  “I remember your thesis,” Dr Bill explained, “so I looked up what you were moving onto.” He gazed back at Natalya a moment later, and added in a lower voice, “are you sure you should do this immediately? Most people would go home and rest.”

  Natalya, who had perked up somewhat after eating an entire multipack of crisps, said, “And if my flat is not safe?”

  Dr Bill acknowledged this. He pulled on his beard for a moment, and said, “I am not wholly sure I can guarantee that anything I write about you won’t be taken down immediately as well. I’ve noticed a certain pattern regarding disappearing articles of late. Not just your piece on familiar gene sequences and Ben here’s interview, either. There was some interesting work done tracing back the origins of KBV, factoring in the known latency period, regarding the University of Tashkent. I say: was, because the article only appears on Wayback now.”

  Ben looked around him, feeling mildly extraneous. Dr Bill’s living room was unusually broad, for one in London, and his bookshelves mercifully short — Ben supposed this was sensible given that the person who used them couldn’t stand up for very long. He spotted a whole run of elderly-looking Agatha Christies and a cheap laptop resting next to a much more expensive one before his attention returned guiltily to the conversation.

  He felt he needn’t have bothered: Natalya, with an almost robotic simplicity, recounted to Dr Bill and to Daniel what she’d already told Ben, and he was distracted by their expressions more than by what she said. Daniel looked actually shocked, whereas Dr Bill only became more and more serious, and pulled at his beard a few more times.

  “I agree,” he said, when she’d finished. “We need to confirm whether that injection was genuine infection or a scare tactic. Fortunately,” he said, with a small smile, “when I’m not shouting at people via every medium available to me, I do occasionally still practice and I remember quite well how to take blood.”

  “I am on medical leave,” Natalya reminded him. “Denied access. How is it to be tested?”

  Daniel said — half-raising his hand as if he was in a classroom. “Look, people send samples to HPA all the time from GP surgeries. All Bill has to do is label you up as a patient and mark it as urgent or priority and it’ll get to your colleagues, won’t it? All you have to do is call them up and let them know it’s coming.”

  Natalya sighed. “You see,” she said, “no sleep and no food for four days makes the mind slow.”

  Ben had, at one point in his life, been subject to regular blood tests. He’d hated the process, the bruise, and the feeling that he was going to be bollocked regardless of the outcome, and he couldn’t help a resurgence of that feeling as Dr Bill and Daniel calmly cleaned up a steel side table and assembled equipment in a room which was alleged to be a “a very underused surgery” and which looked more like a utility room.

  Natalya watched proceedings with a sceptical look. “You will need to take more precautions than that,” she insisted, as Ben tried to stay out of the way but look as if he was poised on the brink of being actively useful.

  “Are you telling me how to take blood now, Dr Yagoda?” Dr Bill asked mildly, and with no animosity.

  “I am telling you how to handle fluids which should only be handled in BSL-4 conditions,” Natalya said, without a trace of humour.

  “How do you think the bloods get taken in the first place?” Dr Bill asked, as Natalya lay her arm down in front of him, and he slipped the tourniquet on. “I guarantee no phlebotomist working out of, oh, High Wycombe Health Centre is going to be donning a Racal suit or have a negative pressure room and a bleach shower to fall back on.”

  “It’s not bleach,” said Natalya, but she stopped quibbling beyond, “At least wear more than one pair of gloves.”

  “All right,” Dr Bill said placidly, and nodded to Daniel, who passed him the glove box. “As long as you don’t jump or shout boo I’ll be fine.”

  “How many infections from needle-stick,” Natalya complained. “This country needs better blood facilities.”

  Ben leaned back, and then averted his gaze, as Dr Bill drew the first vial of blood.

  “This country,” Dr Bill agreed, “needs more investment in the NHS. Two. Few more to go.”

  Daniel drew back from the table and came to stand by Ben. “What’s up with you?”

  “Don’t like needles,” said Ben, which wasn’t strictly speaking the problem. “Don’t like blood very much either.”

  “Five,” said Dr Bill. “Also, we’re grotesquely understaffed. To train the nurses up to the standard you need for this, they need time away from the wards, which they can’t have, because there aren’t enough of them to replace them.”

  Ben blew his nose.

  “Please do not share that with me,” said Daniel, leaning away from him. “Seven. He’s almost done, you can look in a minute.”

  “You think I’m being a massive baby,” said Ben, in an accusative tone.

  “I think,” said Daniel, after a long pause in which Dr Bill said Right, almost there. “I think there’s some shit about you that’s not immediately apparent and I can’t work out whether I’m intrigued, exasperated, or full on fucking worried that it’s going to be the kind of shit that comes back and screws me over. Which is it?”

  “No,” said Ben, confused, and then, “none of them. Just had too many blood tests.”

  “For KBV?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “Nine,” said Dr Bill. “I’m just going to cover that over and then I think we should probably have a cup of tea. “Ben! You look like you’re in need of a cup of tea, the kitchen’s back up the corridor and on the left. Go and make us some.”

  Two more days passed, and the wind finally brought rain in with it, much to Ben’s disgust. It also, however, brought a clearer head and sinuses that no longer felt packed with sand, and so he trudged back to college to pick up all the assignments he’d missed, apologise incoherently to everyone who wanted, needed, or asked for one, and then trudged back home again.

  Missing his bus, then catching one of the bigger rain showers of the day, he arrived up the stairs beside the corner shop drenched, and managed to eject Kingsley from the bathroom so that he could shower without too much in the way of argument.

&nbs
p; “How’s um, whatshisface,” Ben suggested, once he’d got out of the shower and into the jumper and jogging bottoms that passed for indoor clothing.

  “Thinks he’s fucking invincible,” Kingsley said, “but happily he is not my problem any more. He’s been moved onto specialist KBV workers, so I’m starting off with some little arse called Raynese.”

  “How is that a real name,” Ben said, making himself a sandwich.

  “Don’t make more sandwiches,” Kingsley pleaded. “Don’t do this to me. Eat something with a vegetable in it.”

  Ben politely gave him the finger, and went to check his emails.

  He was expecting updates on the next of Gareth’s projects; on Gareth and Ina’s latest fight; on whether Molly had got them a gig at The Queen of H as promised; from Melinda, to ask him if he needed money; from Tasneen, to tell him he was a lazy arse, and probably from Sherazi, since he’d asked to speak to her but missed her.

  Instead, he found an email from Natalya Yagoda with a number of other email addresses CC’d in. He recognised Daniel’s, Dr Bill’s, and guessed given that the others were all HPA addresses that they were her co-workers.

  To: Dr Bill Greenhill; Khoo, Daniel; Ben M; Hepworth, David; Groat, Rhiannon; N209* Anil

  From: Yagoda, Natalya

  Subj: Police enquiry.

  I have spoken to the police again this morning. From “We are confident we have this under control and we will keep you updated on our progress” they have moved to “we don’t have any evidence you were abducted and we think you are insane”. As Ben would say the timing of this is suspicious considering the publication of Bill’s article so recently.

  If the aim is to make me believe that there is someone with more influence than a vanload of men with masks involved, it is succeeding.

  Ben tried to come up with a list of reasons why else the police might suddenly change their tune on this front but came up with nothing but confusion.

  “Catching flies,” said Kingsley, entering with a plate in one hand and a cat in the other.

  “Weren’t you seeing someone tonight?” Ben said, automatically.