“Hi, Ginny,” Tremaine said repentantly. “Sorry I missed your calls.”
His secretary, Ginny McClusky panted into the phone, her breathing ragged as if she had run a great distance. Tremaine frowned with an edge of concern.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” Ginny’s voice dropped to a whisper, and then trailed off into utter silence for long seconds. Tremaine heard the sound of a door opening and then closing. When Ginny spoke again, her voice sounded like an echo. “Steven,” she drew a deep breath, “… I think it’s really happening.”
“Happening? What, Ginny?”
“The end of the world,” Ginny whispered. Her voice became hoarse and strained. “I think your predictions are coming true.”
Tremaine felt a sudden ice-cold weight settle in the pit of his guts, and then something crept up into his chest and slowly wrapped its tentacles around his heart. He heard his breath catch. “What do you mean?”
“Haven’t you been watching the television?”
“No,” Tremaine said. “I’ve been on a beach. I was on vacation, remember.”
“Well get to a television, Steven. There must be a television in the hotel, for Christ’s sake.”
“There is, I’m sure,” Tremaine kept his voice steady. “But I’m not staying at this hotel.”
“What? Where are you staying?” Ginny’s voice became strident.
“In a hotel about forty-five minutes out of the city. A resort town called Castelldefels.”
“Where the fuck is that?” Ginny snapped. “I booked you a room at the hotel where the lecture was taking place.”
“I changed the booking.”
Tremaine heard Ginny’s deep breaths, simmering with her temper and frustration. She went quiet for a moment and her voice became almost hollow.
“America has been struck down by some kind of a pandemic, Steven. It broke out last Thursday at O’Hare Airport. That was ground zero. Since then it has spread right across the eastern seaboard.”
The cold coiling thing in Tremaine’s guts slithered. “What kind of pandemic?” he asked slowly.
“No one knows,” Ginny said.
“What is the mortality rate?”
“One hundred percent,” Ginny said.
Tremaine shook his head. “That’s not possible.”
“Neither is a contagion that re-animates the dead, Steven. But that’s exactly what’s fucking happening.”
Tremaine pulled the phone sharply away from his ear as Ginny’s voice rose to a scream. “Did you say re-animates the dead?”
“Yes!” Ginny had to fight to keep control of her panic. “Everyone who is bitten or scratched by one of the infected dies and then is re-animated as an undead corpse. It all happens within sixty seconds of cardiac arrest. They get up, Steven. They come back to life.”
“Ginny, that’s not possible.”
“Well it’s fucking happening, Steven. It’s fucking happening. It’s on every television news broadcast around the world.”
Tremaine felt the whole world tilt off kilter. He clamped a hand to his forehead, his thoughts swirling in chaotic confusion. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind – tried to separate the hysteria in Ginny’s voice from the few facts she had told him.
“Tell me everything that’s known so far.”
“There’s nothing more to tell, Steven,” Ginny cut across him brusquely. “The media are calling it the Raptor virus.”
“Raptor virus?”
“That’s what the news outlets are using.”
“Why?” Tremaine found that his jaws were tightly clenched and that his hands were trembling.
“It’s the way the infected act,” Ginny’s voice dropped as though she were sharing something secret. “They act like raptor dinosaurs. They hunt, Steven. They think on some basic instinctive predatory level. They’re cunning…”
“But if they’re undead…?”
“For Christ’s sake, Steven!” Ginny’s voice barked. “Something happens to them. They re-animate, but their senses seemed enhanced. It’s like they can smell blood.”
“What? Like sharks?”
“Like hunters. Predators. They’re killers, Steven. They hunt people down in packs.”
“Okay,” he said evenly, “What about the first patient? Or any patient struck down by the contagion. Has anyone done blood work?”
Ginny almost laughed, but the sound verged on the edge of morbid madness. “There are no patients, Steven. Everyone infected is an undead killer. Already the estimates are at four or five million, and that number is increasing exponentially by the hour. In seventy-two hours, America will be a wasteland. No one will be left alive.”
Tremaine felt the punch of Ginny’s words like physical blows that left him reeling, staggering for balance. He stared into space, his jaw slightly unhinged and the firm thin line of his mouth dropping slack with disbelief. He slumped against a wall and the cold dread in his guts became a fever-like flush across his cheeks. He recalled Maxime Boudin’s farewell and the sad expression on the little Frenchman’s face. Now the mysterious cryptic questions were beginning to make dreadful sense.
“Ginny, where are you?” Tremaine asked urgently.
“I’m locked in my bathroom,” she said, her voice suddenly very quiet.
“Your bathroom? Why?”
“Because they’re here, Steven. The contagion has spread to New York. The zombies are roaming the fucking streets,” suddenly the last shreds of her composure cracked, like the wall of a dam, and she began to weep softly. “They’re killing everyone. Men, women… and children.”
Tremaine felt a sob of sickening dread clutch in his throat. “Can you get out of the city, honey? Can you drive to your parents place in Ohio?”
For a long time he heard just the sound of gentle agonized weeping down the line. “Ginny…?”
“They’re dead,” her voice became small and faltering. “Ohio has been overrun. My mom and dad are dead. The contagion… one of the zombies broke into their house.”
Without realizing it Tremaine’s hands had balled into white-knuckled fists. “I’m sorry…” he whispered impotently.
Ginny sniffed into the phone and her voice shuddered tremulously. “The FFA grounded all flights, domestic and international. They did that yesterday, but it was too late. Japan has already recorded its first cases, and so has Singapore. Steven… the contagion will be in Europe within forty-eight hours. Nothing can stop this thing. It’s exactly what you have been predicting. Overpopulation is going to be the death of mankind. It’s in the cities and there’s no way to isolate those who have become infected…”
Tremaine pushed himself off the wall, his feet carrying him in a numbed daze along the hallway behind the stage, out through an exit door and into the grand foyer of the hotel. The décor was elegant; crystal chandeliers hung from the high ceiling, and the walls were hung with expensive original canvases depicting rural Spanish landscapes. In a darkened corner near the long reception counter there were nests of high-backed chairs around low tables. On the opposite side of the foyer were rows of dining tables where the hotel served complimentary breakfasts to its guests. Mounted on the wall were three television monitors. Somber, fearful crowds of hotel patrons were clustered around each screen, their eyes wide with shock and disbelief. Many were talking on their phones, their faces lifted and lit by the eerie glow of the televisions as they tried to connect with loved ones in far away places. Tremaine stood back from the crowd and looked over their heads at the shocking images that flashed across the nearest television.
“Steven…?”
“Yes,” Tremaine said into the phone. “I’ve just come into the hotel foyer. I’m watching a television right now. It’s the BBC’s news service.”
Suddenly Ginny made a soft stifled sound of horror and then said in a blubbering terrified whisper, “Oh, God!”
Tremaine’s expression turned sharp and dark. His eyes slammed into focus. He clutched the cell phone t
ightly in his hand. “What’s happening?”
“I think they’re here…” Ginny croaked. Her voice wavered and there was an agonizing silence. Then Tremaine heard a sound of shuffling feet. “There’s someone bashing on my apartment door,” Ginny cried softly.
“Call 911,” Tremaine urged.
“It’s too late. The emergency service overloaded and shut down.”
“Is there a window?”
No answer. Tremaine felt his heart thumping wildly in his chest. He crushed the phone to his ear and listened intently. He could hear muffled movement, indistinguishable, and then short harsh breathing.
“Steven, they’re inside the apartment,” Ginny wept into the phone. “I can hear them. They’re growling, shrieking.”
“Ginny, stay with me,” Tremaine tightened his voice. “Tell me everything that’s happening. What can you hear?”
“Just groaning and shrieking,” Ginny’s terror was transparent in the croak of her voice. “And footsteps… coming closer.”
“Stay calm,” Tremaine whispered helplessly. “Is there anything nearby that you can use as a weapon?”
Ginny said nothing and Tremaine felt himself hanging in the silence with the blood pounding at his temples and his hands beginning to shake. “Ginny…?”
“Steven?”
“Yes. I’m here, honey. I’m right here.”
“Find somewhere in Europe that will be safe. Find a haven that can be defended. You’ve got less than forty-eight hours…”
Tremaine was about to reply when suddenly he heard a shockingly loud pounding at a door, and then the blood-curdling scream of Ginny’s voice. Tremaine felt the prickling sting of tears in the corners of his eyes.
“Ginny!”
He heard the sound of the phone clatter to the floor and then the splinter of wood as the girl’s bathroom door crashed back against the hinges. There was a piercing shriek – the sound inhuman and sinister – and then a gurgling hiss of breath and the distinct shocking sound of bones breaking.
“Ginny!”
The scream in the girl’s throat was cut abruptly short and Tremaine stared, horrified, at the phone for long seconds, his body lathered in sweat, his heart thudding frantically in his chest and his hands shaking like a man in the grips of fever.
After a very long time Tremaine shut down his cell phone and turned to stare at the images flashing across the hotel monitors. He felt numb, hollow. Ginny’s voice, and the wrenching sound of her dying scream, seemed to echo hauntingly in his mind. Tremaine wondered absently why the television pictures were blurred. He blinked his eyes, and lifting his fingers slowly to his face, he realized without surprise that is own cheek was slick and wet with tears.
* * *
Tremaine did not return to Castelldefels. Instead he sat slumped down into one of the deep foyer chairs, staring out through the hotel’s full-length glass windows at the twinkling lights of Barcelona. In the background he could hear the sounds of the televisions, the voices of the news reporters strained as they broadcast each new atrocity of the horror that crept like darkness across the world.
Tremaine did not watch. His mind was seized in a revolving nightmare of memories and imaginations. He recalled the sound of Ginny’s terrified screams as she died, and her horrific cries would not leave his mind. The agonized sound of the young woman’s voice swirled amongst thoughts about his own predictions – the dire consequences of a contagion spreading like a wildfire as it was fed by densely packed populations. When at last he glanced numbly at his wrist watch, the time showed as 1:35 in the morning.
Tremaine shook himself. He felt physically and emotionally drained to the point of exhaustion. The fatigue weighed him down with an insidious lethargy as though he had drunk from a witch’s brew of hopelessness and despair. There simply seemed no escape; no way for the world to survive the global spread of the Raptor contagion.
Tremaine heaved himself out of the chair with an effort and stood, shoulders slumped and his head hanging. It gave him no satisfaction to know that his theories were being validated and that as he did nothing, his dire predictions for the extermination of the human race were being played out around the world in gruesome live broadcasts.
But what could he possibly do?
He thrust his hands deep into his pockets and walked slowly out through the hotel’s sliding glass doors and into the darkness. The evening was warm and balmy – a night sky filled with stars, and a thick slice of pale yellow moon. Somewhere far off he could hear the wail of a police siren, and on the streets surrounding the hotel people stood in small clusters as though to seek comfort from each other. Tremaine distractedly reached into his pocket and lit a cigarette.
For six years he had fought against the establishment just for the opportunity to have his theories heard, and over the past two years he had travelled the world speaking regularly at world summits and global conferences detailing the very real danger to mankind from an exploding population. The densely packed cities, teeming with humanity, were fuel for the fire of contagion. He had called on governments to stop relying on science to provide vaccines and reactive medical treatments. He had pleaded with them to reconsider urban designs; preventions rather than cures.
No one had listened.
Now it was too late.
The only chance of survival that people had left was to disperse into the countryside – to flee far away from population centers in the hope that the contagion would eventually burn itself out… or to find a city that could be fortified and quarantined… and such a place did not exist.
Tremaine stopped in mid stride with the cigarette smoldering between his fingertips as a new and startling thought suddenly slammed into his mind. He heard Ginny’s voice again – not the dreadful screams at the moment of her death – but her words… her last words.
“Find somewhere in Europe that will be safe. Find a haven that can be defended. You’ve got less than forty-eight hours…”
Suddenly an idea came creeping into his consciousness, tingling along the flesh of his forearms so that his whole body began to itch with exhilaration. The idea hung before him like a ghost of smoke – so tantalizingly close that he closed his eyes and tried to beckon it to him. It formed, then dissolved again. He wrung his hands in frustration and stood very still, willing the idea to materialize. His breathing slowed and his body went perfectly still. He could hear the echo of his blood beating at his temples…
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed.
There was a place – a city that could be fortified and defended against the contagion. It was the one city in the world he knew of where mankind could make its last stand against the spread of the undead plague.
“Avignon!”
Tremaine crushed the butt of the cigarette under the heel of his shoe and started to run. He could feel the urgent thumping trip of his heart and the adrenalin surge tremble through his fingers. His feet slapped heavily on the cobblestoned walkway, the tails of his suit jacket flapping around his waist like bats wings. He reached the hotel foyer, gasping, panting for breath, still trembling with suppressed excitement; it coursed through his blood, sizzling, as his mind raced ahead over a million contingencies, setbacks, obstacles and possibilities.
He checked his wristwatch again. 2 o’clock in the morning. It would be the same time in Paris. He wondered for a moment whether Maxime Baudin had flown back into the French capital yet – and considered the idea of waiting until the next morning.
“No,” Tremaine shook his head. Mankind couldn’t wait.
He stabbed at the cell phone with his fingers and when he heard the ring tone, he began to pace with urgent purposeful steps. Blisters of anxious and exerted sweat squeezed out across his brow, and he wiped them away with the rumpled sleeve of his suit. The ring tone went on for a very long time – and then the call disconnected.
“Fuck!”
Tremaine stormed to the reception desk. A pale-faced woman stood behind the counter, her gaze fixed on the televisi
on screens in the foyer, her mouth open and her eyes dark pools of dread. She caught Tremaine standing impatiently before her from out of the corner of her eye but the automatic smile that crept onto her lips was tight and strained.
“Yes, sir?”
“I need you to dial a number for me,” Tremaine said anxiously and it put a jagged edge to his voice. “Right away.”
The receptionist arched her eyebrows, taken back by the grim-faced man’s tone. She composed herself. “Who would you like to call?”
Tremaine thrust the phone at the young woman. “Him,” he said. “The French Minister for Health, Maxime Baudin. That’s his number displayed on the screen.”
For a long moment the receptionist was taken aback. She dialed the number from the hotel phone and stood with the receiver pressed to her ear, staring politely out through the tall glass windows, her expression blank.
Tremaine drummed his fingers on the polished wooden counter. After a full minute the receptionist carefully replaced the phone in its cradle. “I’m sorry, sir. There was no answer at the number you gave me.”
Tremaine snapped his hands into fists and clenched his jaw. He could feel a clock ticking down time in his mind, counting away precious seconds that could not be spared. He drew a deep breath, and then let it out. The tension remained etched deep into the lines of his face.
“Can you check the train timetables for me please?”
“Certainly, sir. Where would you like to travel to?”
“Avignon, in the south of France. As soon as possible.”
The woman tapped at the keys of a computer monitor and Tremaine stood impatiently, growing aware that suddenly there were more people standing behind him, waiting in line. He turned slowly and saw as many as twenty people with their luggage, lining up to check out of the hotel. The receptionist lifted her eyes and pressed a buzzer on the counter to call for assistance.
Tremaine frowned. The faces behind him were ashen with fear and nervousness. He looked past them to the nearest television and saw a yellow flashing ticker-tape running across the bottom of the screen beneath a broadcast that showed iconic images of England. Tremaine went with slow dread towards the monitor, his eyes narrowed. When he could read the urgent announcement, his blood turned to ice in his veins:
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