Plague Nation

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘Destined for China.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to visit there.’

  The woman from earlier appeared in front of them. She squatted down and pulled out her pac-a-mac to shelter her legs from the drizzle. ‘’Ello again, love,’ she said to Leon.

  ‘Hey,’ said Leon.

  From beneath her mac she pulled out a couple of cans with ring-pull lids. ‘I’m not sure what’s inside ’em, but it’s better than having nothing.’

  ‘Oh, hey –’ he took them from her – ‘that’s really kind of you!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Freya. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Ah, that’s OK. There’s cans being passed all around. Us Brits aren’t complete savages.’

  ‘Agreed.’ Freya nodded. ‘Dunkirk spirit. Toodle-pip an’ all that.’

  ‘Oh, and I thought I’d let you know . . .’ She leaned forward. ‘There’s a rumour going around that they’re starting to load people aboard the ships tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m guessing they’ll be testing us or something?’ said Freya.

  The woman shrugged. ‘You know about the virus-really-hates-salt thing?’

  Leon and Freya nodded.

  ‘So it’ll be pork scratchings all round for breakfast.’ She cackled at her own joke.

  ‘Are you with anyone else?’ asked Leon.

  ‘Oh, aye. A load of us were making a go of things outside Chester. We heard rescue was coming so we all convoyed down. I was starting to worry this was a big mistake. We were doin’ all right where we were, really.’ She looked up at the glowing aircraft carrier. ‘But if the rumour’s true . . . then, well . . . we’ll be sorted.’

  She stood back up and adjusted her mac once more. ‘Enjoy supper, you two.’

  ‘Hold on!’ Leon emerged from the snug warmth of their anorak and stood up. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Cora.’

  ‘I’m Leon. And this is Freya.’

  Freya smiled. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Nice to meet you both,’ said Cora.

  Leon gave her a quick hug. ‘Oh . . . oh, dear me,’ she chuckled awkwardly as she patted him lightly on the back. ‘So you’re a hugger . . . OK, all right.’

  ‘Thank you for the food.’

  ‘That’s uh . . . that’s quite all right,’ she said, pink-faced. ‘Anyway, I better get back to my brood.’

  They watched her pick her way between huddled circles of figures until she was lost in the rain-glinting crowd.

  ‘Nice lady,’ said Freya.

  He nodded. ‘That kind of thing . . .’ He let the words go.

  ‘What?

  ‘Random stranger kindness.’ He puffed. ‘That’s what makes us worth it.’

  Freya’s eyes narrowed. ‘I really don’t do schmaltzy-sentimental.’ She made space for him as he snuggled back under their cover. ‘But I suppose I can make an exception for an idiot like you.’ She kissed him quickly on the cheek. ‘Now then . . . dinner?’

  CHAPTER 53

  ‘All right, can everyone hear me?’

  Tom gazed at the faces all the way along the mesh fence, crammed into every space available, with yet more faces peering over shoulders. The microphone and the PA speakers had been borrowed from the aircraft carrier. Tom wasn’t sure which Chinese character indicated on, off or mute. All he had to guide him was the small LED, which showed green right now.

  ‘Can you people hear me?’

  He heard his words bounce back from somewhere. It was on. And he saw a few heads nodding. To his side he thought he heard Captain Xien utter, ‘Tough crowd.’

  Tom almost did a double take at him. The crafty bastard DOES speak English.

  He turned back to the people packed into the pen. ‘All right, then. I know it’s going to be hard for you folks to hear what I’m saying with this damned mask on, and the address system ain’t great, but bear with me.’

  ‘We’re going to be testing you all for symptoms of infection, and then we’ll be allocating about two-thirds of you to be taken by representatives of the Pacific Nations Alliance, and one-third of you to American Cuba.

  ‘How we’re doing this is as follows: we’ll be processing batches of seventy-five at a time. Fifty will be tested and processed by PNA personnel in those tents over there.’ He pointed at a row of tents beyond the razor wire, dividing the camp in half. Since people were going to be escorted to and fro all day long, the barrier had been pulled to one side.

  ‘And the rest in our tents here.’ He pointed to his left. ‘We’ll be taking blood and testing for high levels of oestrogen and histamine. And I’m sure a lot of you are aware of the salt test. We’ll be testing for coagulation.’

  He was relieved this was a public address and not a question and answer. The question all of them must be wanting to ask right now was what happens to those who fail the test.

  ‘After testing you will be issued with one of these . . .’ He held up one of the red passports. ‘These are your Willy Wonka tickets off this island. They’ll be filled in with your name, age, profession and/or qualifications.’

  Tom opened the passport. It was plain red cardboard folded in half. On the inside were spaces where that information would be written, and spaces for four photographs.

  ‘Your photograph will be taken. But more importantly . . . and this is very important –’ he let the speakers echo that and fade away; he needed them to hear this next bit clearly – ‘we will require every person who passes testing to have at least two distinctive features that can be photographed. The list of features that may be included are surgical scars or scars caused by injury, but not burning scars. Body art. That means only tattoos, not piercing holes. Birth marks caused by pigmentation and not vascular marks. So distinctive or large moles, sometimes called cafe-au-lait marks or Mongolian spots. Red markings such as macular stains, haemangiomas and port-wine stains will not be allowed.’

  ‘Once you’ve had your red passport completed, you will be escorted along guarded channels to our ships or the PNA ships.’ Tom pointed to a corridor that had been constructed from the rear of their testing tents to the quayside. The corridor was made of flimsy two-metre panels of fencing that had been cable-tied together to form a continuous walkway to the waiting boarding ramps. The panels wouldn’t stop anyone determined to clamber over them, or stand up to anyone intent on flattening them, but they would help control the flow and separation of people. Tom didn’t bother pointing out the other channel that led out of the camp.

  Keep it positive.

  ‘We anticipate that each batch will take about forty-five minutes to an hour to process, which means, folks, I need you all to be patient and well behaved. I assure you, everyone here will be tested and evaluated.’

  He lowered the microphone from his mask and then fumbled with the slide-switch until the LED blinked red. The last sentence was a lie. A sickening one. As soon as they had their quota and the PNA had theirs, that was it. Time to leave.

  Once again he scanned the long row of hopeful faces pressed up against the mesh in the vain hope he’d recognize one of them.

  ‘Hold still, please.’

  Tom watched as the medical crew from the USS Gerald Ford processed their second batch. In each tent they had a gurney set up with a wheeled medical trolley beside it. They had one shoulder-high partition as a concession to modesty and functioning as a plain backdrop for face photographs. A spotlight with a diffuser loomed over the partition.

  Beyond it, two other people in the tent waited their turn, guarded by four marines, while the first one to be tested rolled up her sleeve. On the floor, tucked out of view was a pump, cylinder and hose. The cylinder contained a particularly nasty and strong blend of sodium hypochlorite. Beside that they had improvised a flamethrower, a fire-retardant blanket and a tazer.

  Stun. Spray. Burn. Extinguish.

  They’d all been drilled on what to do in the case of a positive result. The medical officer would raise a hand and signal them, then back out of the tent. The marines would do what n
eeded to be done, as quickly and quietly as possible.

  The last thing they needed was a sudden outbreak of panic. The last thing he needed the penned-in crowd to hear was gunshots and screaming.

  The testing process was going to work until, all of a sudden, it didn’t. Like all great military plans, it looked fine on paper. It was just waiting for the first road bump to shake it to pieces.

  The medic was busy taking blood while another staffer was asking the young woman on the gurney her details and writing them into the passport.

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Shelly, Maisy, Gower’

  ‘Gower . . . spelled Golf, Oscar, Whisky, Echo, Romeo? Is that correct?’

  ‘Uh, yeah. That’s it.’

  ‘Birthdate?’

  ‘Fourteen, third, ninety-six.’

  ‘Uh, ma’am . . . you mean, third, fourteen?’

  ‘Fourteenth of March, 1996.’

  ‘Understood. Occupation?’

  ‘I . . . well, I was a degree student when the—’

  ‘Majoring?’ The medic looked up through her mask, pen poised over the cardboard.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What subject?’

  ‘Oh. Contemporary Dance and Drama.’

  Tom watched as the medic finished extracting Shelly Gower’s blood sample and then squirted one drop into an analyser for the oestrogen and histamine tests, and another drop into a petri dish filled with a saline solution and a pigment-triggering catalyst.

  ‘Can you tell me two identifying marks we can log and photograph, ma’am?’

  The young woman lifted her jumper at the back. ‘I got a tattoo at the top of my bum. See it?’

  The medic nodded, picked up a digital camera, took a shot of it, then entered a description on to the passport.

  ‘And I’ve got this small scar on my knee.’ She rolled up the left leg of her khakis until a pale knobbly knee emerged.

  ‘That’s fine, ma’am,’ said the medic. She took another photograph, then wrote down a description.

  ‘And . . . I got, like, this raspberry-shaped mark thing on my . . .’

  Tom walked out of the rear of the tent and peered into the next one. A middle-aged man with a thick, dark beard and an arm tattooed from wrist to armpit was being examined. He glanced at the other two waiting with the marines to be tested next, and sighed again.

  Don’t you give up hope yet.

  Tom stepped out and poked his head into the next tent . . .

  CHAPTER 54

  Leon and the others were standing in a queue. He’d been fully expecting to be jostled and pushed around the entrance to the pen. But instead he’d been surprised to find everyone had calmly formed one long snaking line. A number of people had even appointed themselves as stewards, indicating where the queue should double back on itself and keeping an eye out for ‘corner jumpers’. The woman from last night was one of them: Cora, barking out instructions like a collie herding sheep. She smiled and nodded at Leon and Freya as she walked down the line.

  ‘I reckon it’s going to be quite a few hours,’ Leon said.

  Freya braced a hand on his shoulder and craned her neck. ‘Yeah.’

  Leon looked around again, hoping to catch sight of Naga and the others. ‘Hey, Fish, have you seen any sign of our lot this morning?’

  Fish looked as though he were about a million miles away, eyes wide and glazed over.

  ‘Fish?’

  He was holding Grace’s hand. She looked equally blank-eyed and distracted, but she stirred, aware that Leon had spoken. ‘No,’ she answered for him. ‘I don’t think they’re going to be coming, Leon.’

  ‘Well, they’re going to miss this if they don’t get a move on,’ said Leon. He continued looking around at the faces in the queue. In the last few months he’d come to know some of them – Naga, Denise, even Royce – well enough to care what happened to them. ‘We should have agreed on what to do if we didn’t report back.’

  ‘Naga’s not an idiot. She’s probably sent Royce and some of the knights already. Or maybe all of them are walking in.’ She started looking around. ‘They’ll be OK, Leo.’

  He looked through the mesh at the soldiers standing and watching. Some white-suited, some yellow, all of their faces hidden behind tinted visors or round goggles. He wondered which one had made the announcement. It had been hard to hear exactly what was being said. The speakers blasting out from each corner tower had echoed over each other, making the instructions almost unintelligible.

  He’d got the gist of it, though. Blood tests and body marks. As they shuffled forward a step, he catalogued what he had to show. No tattoos. No birthmarks. But there was an appendix scar, a faint circular patch on his arm from an MMR jab he’d got at school and one wart on his knuckle. Leon wondered whether Grace’s scars would qualify as one identifier or more. Maybe they’d need something else. ‘Grace, haven’t you got three moles clustered together like Mickey Mouse?’

  Again, she looked lost, somewhere far away. He waved a hand at her. ‘Grace?’

  She blinked and stirred. A flash of irritation flickered across the unscarred half of her face.

  ‘Jesus, Grace – Fish – what is it with the pair of you?’

  ‘Aw, leave ’em alone, Leon,’ said Freya. ‘They’re tired. So am I, for that matter. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night.’

  Leon was tired as well. But not totally zoned out like them. They needed their wits about them this morning. Not daydreaming. Not shuffling along like zombies. ‘Grace, Fish – you heard the guy? You’ll need two identifying marks. Grace, what have you got?’

  She cocked her head and glared at him with feigned indignity. ‘I’ll be telling the doctor, not you!’

  ‘So there!’ Freya chuckled. ‘You tell him to mind his own business.’

  ‘Name, please, sir . . .’

  ‘Joseph Anthony Garret.’

  Tom checked the watch strapped round the outside of his suit. It was eleven thirty. They’d been at it for just over two hours now. They were actually making good progress, working through the waiting evacuees quicker than he’d expected. They were on the fourth batch now, which meant that once this lot were done they’d have one hundred vetted British people billeted aboard their ships.

  One hundred done. Eight hundred to go. Sixteen more hours of this, provided there were no hitches or speed bumps. So far there hadn’t been a single positive result, which was pretty much what he’d been anticipating. If this virus really . . . really . . . could mimic humans as some of these Brits had been claiming, surely they’d be far too obvious. And, even if they looked convincing, surely they wouldn’t understand verbal instructions, or be able to partake in a conversation, give a name or a date of birth or a previous profession?

  Mimic humans?

  The idea sounded ridiculous. Far more likely that it was the manifestation of panicked minds. These people had been hanging on for nearly two years. Most of them in remote, isolated enclaves, no contact with the outside world, perhaps even convinced they were the last humans left alive. No wonder these poor bastards had been jumping at shadows. One person hollers ‘wolf’, and all of a sudden that wolf becomes a very real thing in the minds of those within earshot. Two years of survival. Two years of holding out on their own, and fighting off viral creatures that certainly were for real . . . Tom wondered if he’d have fared any better.

  ‘And your date of birth, please, sir? That’s month, day, year.’

  Leon weaved his way through the long snaking queue on his way back from the toilet corner. He’d hung on as long as he could, then checked with an old biker who was unofficially stewarding their section of the queue that he was OK to go for a leak and keep his place rather than going to the very back of the queue.

  He scanned the faces he passed, still hoping to catch sight of Naga and the others. He hoped to God they’d finally figured out what had happened, that they’d been picked up and rescued.

  He rounded another bend in the winding line and spotte
d Fish. But not in the queue. He was standing to one side of it, close to the pen’s fencing. He appeared to be with a group of about fifty or sixty people.

  Leon stopped. ‘Fish?’

  No response.

  ‘Fish!’ he called again. ‘What’re you doing over there?’

  The group seemed to be huddled together and holding hands like some sort of impromptu prayer meeting. He walked towards them. Close up, he could see some had their eyes open and were staring dull-eyed at seemingly nothing. Others had them shut, as if deep in prayer or meditation. No one was talking and they were standing unnervingly still, men, women, children alike.

  They didn’t appear to be members of one particular survival group. Leon had noticed over the last two years that hard survival had begun to make people who’d endured it together look vaguely similar. The learned habits, the layers and methods of protection defined to some degree how they dressed. This gathering of ‘parishioners’ looked as though they’d come from all corners of the United Kingdom.

  ‘Fish! Hey!’ He slapped his friend’s back gently to make him jump, partly because he was annoyed that Fish had just wandered off and left the girls unguarded.

  Fish remained inert. His eyes cracked open gradually and he turned slowly to look at Leon.

  ‘Fish . . . what the hell are you doing?’

  He frowned and for a moment it seemed he didn’t even recognize Leon. Then the stupor cleared from his face and he smiled. ‘Hey.’

  Leon looked around at all the others, stock-still and utterly silent, hands clasped. He cocked a brow. ‘Who’re your new . . . umm . . . friends?’

  He noticed Fish was holding hands with a middle-aged Asian man on one side and a large round-shouldered guy on the other.

  ‘Leon . . .’Fish hadn’t seemed to have heard the question, or was choosing to ignore it. ‘This has to be goodbye, mate.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I like you. Both of you.’ Leon guessed he was talking about Freya. ‘But I’m gonna say goodbye. I’m with these people now.’