by Meg Mundell
His eyes remained wide open, fighting the urge to blink, and I felt ashamed: what was I doing? But a churlish part of me, some small hurt child, persisted. ‘Hey,’ I said, laying my hand on his leg. ‘Remember me?’
‘Back to bed,’ said a stern voice. ‘Let Stewart rest.’ The head nurse, Billie.
I shuffled off, embarrassed, as if I’d been caught harassing a senior citizen for spare change.
Cooped up in that limbo-place, your mind went round in circles. Musing on Stewart’s silence got me nowhere – was he in the closet? Regretting our encounters? Was he traumatised, or did he blame me for his ordeal, assume I had infected him, and not vice versa?
From then on, walking to the loo became a grand production: I had to shuffle right past him, close enough to touch, while he stared off at nothing, avoiding my eye.
But the sight of him had sparked a memory. Before I’d escaped that terrible sick room, as the fog of my own illness began to lift and consciousness returned in snatches, I’d witnessed a distressing scene: my handsome sailor in the grips of fever, acting like a man possessed – rambling madly, fighting the nurses, screaming for a priest; hysterical and paranoid, yelling the place down, convinced he was not long for this world. Too weak to move, I was reduced to watching in horror.
He didn’t get his priest. But some strange things passed his lips.
It wasn’t me, I swear! Bastard took it. Poison money … Devil water …
So unlike the cool, assured man who held me close in that dim-lit cupboard, kissed my throat as mops swayed and buckets clanked and oblivious boots tramped overhead.
Poison money. What feverish scenario had sunk its hooks into him? Asking him outright was clearly not an option. No hallucinatory bonding on the cards for us; my fascination with this beautiful Scotsman now a one-way street.
Pointless trying to untangle the fevered ramblings of a man I did not know: just an excuse to fixate on him, I scolded myself. No doubt I’d also blathered nonsense, in my own delirious haze. Agnostic or not, I too had fallen back on religion, my addled brain conjuring up that exercise in solemn optimism, sung in B-flat major: Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
Where was it? Just on the other side of that door, my friends. Right next door.
~
Pacing the short passageway, wrestling with a bout of cabin fever, I was caught off guard when the door to the recovery ward flew open.
The Scots nurse: Billie.
‘You okay out here?’ she asked. ‘What you doing?’
I jerked my head towards the clinic. ‘Feeling cooped up. Just checking my legs still work.’
‘Know what you mean. It’s cramped alright.’ She stepped into my small oblong of space, pulled the door shut behind her. ‘Mind if I sit? Need a breather. I’m due to knock off but my doffer’s gone AWOL.’
‘Make yourself comfortable,’ I said, gesturing at the floor, and we sat down opposite each other. Her suit crackled as she settled against the wall. ‘Your doffer?’ I asked, making conversation.
She waved a weary arm across her hazmat. ‘Cleaning crew. They help us in decon, change our gear, make sure we don’t spread infection.’
‘Aha,’ I said. Hadn’t thought about the backstage stuff.
‘I’d kill for a smoke.’ Her sigh muffled by the ventilator. ‘Not very medical of me, I know.’
‘It must be exhausting. Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.’
She gave me a funny look. ‘Likewise, Teach.’
I stared down at my bony knees, my emaciated legs. Recalled her voice urging me awake, her hands cupping my skull as my body lurched beneath me like a demon. Holding the bucket ready, soothing the retch. Expertly catching my stomach contents as they gushed from my throat, like it was no big deal.
‘We owe our lives to you,’ I declared, like some half-rate actor. ‘To all the nurses, the doctors.’ Billie made a dismissive gesture. ‘You know it’s true,’ I insisted. ‘There’s no way to ever pay you back, but I want to thank you.’
She’d gone quiet now, staring at the floor, and I feared I had embarrassed her.
‘You’re a great nurse,’ I ventured. ‘I’ve seen you with Mia.’
‘I’m not a real nurse.’ A pause. ‘And we haven’t saved everyone.’
I let this sit awhile, then couldn’t help asking: ‘How many?’
‘Dead?’ She examined her gloved hands, adopted a cool tone. ‘Too many.’
I took the hint. ‘How are the kids? The deaf boy?’
She lit up at this. ‘Cleary? Doing his best. Stoic little fella. I’ve promised him Cate’s on the mend, but I’m not sure he believes me.’
‘Would you say hello from me?’ A shameless bid to remind her of my own connection to the kids, my personal stake in their wellbeing. ‘Could you ask him … is he looking after my binoculars? He borrowed them just before everything went to hell.’
‘He loves those binoculars.’ An unexpected smile, a short laugh, a glimpse of crooked teeth. ‘Wore them to bed once, got the cord all tangled up around his neck.’ When I heard the warmth in her voice it dawned on me: someone was taking care of the kid.
‘He watches the seabirds,’ she said. ‘Makes up names for them.’
She was more open than usual – fatigue, or just a rare moment of privacy. So I broached the subject that had been looping in my head, a rumour passed from bed to bed.
‘The other doctor, the Welsh guy …’
‘Owen,’ she said, making no effort to hide her disdain.
‘He reckons there’s been talk. That this was some kind of terror attack. Biovigilantes, anti-migration gangs.’
A snort of irritation. ‘Fucking bampot. He’s paid to be a doctor, not a gossip.’
‘Potentially a terror attack, he said. But how? And why?’
‘You’re asking the wrong person. Got my hands too full for rumours.’
I pressed on: ‘But what do you think? Is it possible?’
She eyed me warily. ‘Who knows what’s possible these days? The world’s fucked up.’ I didn’t contradict her. ‘Listen,’ she went on, ‘rumours can be poison. Why tie yourself in knots? You should be resting, recovering.’
‘But …’ I prompted.
‘Yeah,’ she conceded, ‘I know. Something doesn’t add up.’
‘We all did the superscreen. It was guaranteed failsafe. I’ve got that in writing.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But remember the airports. Chimera 9 – they dropped that thing direct into the water supply.’
A bell chimed faintly in my head: It wasn’t me, I swear! Bastard took it. Poison money … Devil water …
‘Devil water,’ I heard myself say.
‘What?’ Her voice sharp, suspicious.
‘Stewart. When he was ranting and raving, wanting a priest. That’s what he said: There’s something in the water.’
Billie launched herself upright. ‘It’s cold out here,’ she said. ‘You should be back in bed.’ Conversation over.
Struggling to rise I faltered, my muscles unresponsive. She took my arm in a practised grip, lifted me upright, held the door open.
I paused on the threshold. ‘You’ll say hello to Cleary for me? He’s welcome to keep those binoculars, they’re all his. Will you tell him that?’
‘Course I will,’ she said, then moved her head close. ‘Watch what you say in there. Don’t upset the other patients.’
~
Surfacing from a doze, I discovered we had company. At first I thought it was some foreign insect, an oversized bug hovering at the porthole. Then I recognised its shape; the way it floated and dipped with a mechanical intelligence, as if driven by a joystick. Mineral, not animal.
Finger raised, voice croaky from sleep, I announced our visitor: ‘Drone!’
The guard swore, leapt up to sla
m the porthole shut and taped a towel over it, blocking the thing’s view. Its survey of our wasted selves.
A piece of trivia sprang to mind: there are no insects at sea.
This horror was almost over. Drones are a sign you’re nearing land.
9
CLEARY
A low smudge on the horizon: Cleary’s heart clenched in recognition. Everyone crowded onto the upper decks to watch that far-off line become a solid mass. Land at last. People were crying openly, men and women both. Billie put her arms around his chest and hugged him close.
With this new country in sight the ship felt more substantial, no longer dwarfed by the surrounding vastness of the sea. Help was close, if his ma could just hold on.
I’ll see you soon, my darling: her last message. Six words penned in Billie’s spiky hand. An ache in his chest, like a stone lodged there.
Please get better, he prayed. Please be well again. Please come back to me.
But the land stretched on and on, the ship giving no sign of stopping. For days they sailed along an empty coastline, skimming the belly of this new landmass, a low-slung presence over to portside. Not long now, Billie promised him. Doctors were waiting with new medicines, hot showers and clean sheets. His ma was going to be fine.
One evening, as dusk descended, they drew close enough to make out signs of life: a lighthouse perched on a cliff, homes scattered amongst trees, the twinkling progress of car headlights. New smells, the warm greens of plant life mingled with the ocean’s mineral tang.
Just on dark the Steadfast dropped anchor outside a narrow harbour entrance, a stretch of water that boiled and bulged with hidden currents. Beyond the headlands, in the inner reaches of the bay, glittered the lights of a distant city. Then everyone was ordered below decks, the portholes covered up. The screens in the saloons went black.
~
The spacemen came that night. Woken by the cabin lights Cleary saw a man’s face floating centimetres from his own, encased in a yellow helmet. As the man’s lips moved behind his visor, Cleary caught the faint buzz of his voice, just audible, as if amplified.
Lumbering men in yellow spacesuits were ushering the nurses out of bed. Billie stood defiant, hands on hips, bare-legged in a t-shirt. Holly clutched her blankets to her chest, jabbing a finger at the door: ‘Out! Get out!’
The intruders withdrew, leaving a single guard in the doorway, his broad back to the room as the women hurriedly dressed. Billie helped Cleary down from his bunk, and they set off through the maze of corridors, his shoelaces flapping. As she took his hand, he realised they’d left their masks behind.
Outside the air was warm, the deck awash with people. Searchlights swung pale arcs into the darkness. A buffeting wind, the air flickering overhead as a chopper dipped over the ship. Billie wound her shirt around his head like a turban, leaving a gap to see through. It smelt of disinfectant and her sweat.
Confusion, flashing lights, the crowd milling. Burly yellow spacemen herding people into lines, strangers in white hazmats waving blinking devices. Soldiers in gasmasks prowled the edges, rifles at the ready and batons thrusting from their belts.
He’d expected a city, but the air smelt of dry grass and trees. Across the water floodlights revealed a small pier and a pale strip of beach. Boats zipped between ship and shore, the blackness beyond pinpricked with intermittent lights. He could just make out a hillside thick with trees, a low-hanging slice of moon.
The chemical stink of decon wafted from a strange machine. Manned by two yellow-clad astronauts, it sprouted a spaghetti-snarl of tubes culminating in an empty doorway. People filed towards it, adults and kids, passengers and crew, each person photographed in a pop of light then scanned with a twinkling device. Then one by one they raised their arms and stepped into the doorway that led nowhere. Pale jets of foam shot down from all directions, drenching pyjamas, soaking uniforms, plastering hair to skulls.
Billie raised her arms and moved forward into the machine. Reappearing soaked on the far side, she waved for Cleary to follow. Dazzled by the camera, he hung back, but hands pushed him forward; acrid white foam splattered across his face, blinding him, cutting off his air. Close to panic, he surfaced coughing and spluttering into Billie’s waiting arms.
Hours passed, stillness falling across the crowded deck. Children slept in parents’ laps, wet clothes drying in the warm night air. Ghostly figures trod between prone bodies, handing out fresh face masks and bottles of water, while down the far end an army of yellow men hoisted mattresses and pillows over the gunwale, out of sight.
Back in their cabin at last, Cleary realised what the yellow spacemen had been doing: their bedding was gone, their bunks stripped down to bare hard surfaces.
In the small hours of that morning, while they slept, the ship crept into the harbour.
~
Billie squeezed his foot to wake him. As they headed up to the top deck, the floor seemed to ripple beneath his feet. The ship was at anchor, the harbour flat, but his body still retained the surge of those great ocean swells.
Outside, a lazy sea flashed and glittered. Hazmatted officials swarmed the upper decks and soldiers scanned the sky, heads swivelling like robots. The air was thick with heat, the sky a vast blue dome, the light raw and unfiltered.
Cleary and Billie took turns peering through the binoculars, tracing the harbour’s wide curve, the small settlement laid out beyond the pier. The place looked abandoned: old wooden buildings set on a sweeping lawn, a line of wonky gravestones, a tall brick chimney pointing at the sky. Seagulls perched atop a monument, opening and closing their beaks as if commentating. Armed soldiers paced the beach and burly men in yellow hazmats stacked boxes on the pier.
All that space: grass, sand, solid earth. An invitation to run freely, accelerate to his body’s limits, charge around until he collapsed on the grass, spent and breathless, inhaling its green scent. The urge to run was like a kind of hunger.
Zooming in close, the image trembling, Cleary deciphered an ancient sign, its letters paled by time and coastal weather: No person ordered into quarantine shall commit any breach of the regulations. Along the coast lay a row of abandoned beachfront homes, their windows dark, their foundations half submerged in the sea. In the far distance a cluster of city towers poked through a brownish haze.
Strangers in white hazmat suits skimmed a fever scanner down the breakfast queue. The kitchen staff had been replaced by more hazmats, the usual stodge by fresh bread and fruit, huge vats of sausages and baked beans, a quivering mass of real scrambled eggs.
Unused to eating in the mess-room, the nurses formed a huddle. Passengers and crew were all mixed in together, and the air carried a buzz of nervous energy. A dull-eyed officer forked eggs into his mouth, boxer shorts showing beneath his uniform jacket.
Cleary took great care to avoid the stare that lay in wait across the room; that dark blur of beard a warning beacon, a treacherous rock he must navigate around. He must perfect the trick: keep the man in sight, but don’t look at him directly. And never turn your back on him.
He’d eaten half a watermelon when the white-suits came to take Billie away. She scribbled a promise: she’d bring news of his ma. Meet me near the front mast after lunch. She pinched his earlobe and was gone.
~
Lunchtime came and went, Billie nowhere to be seen. Seabirds flapped in the rigging, and Cleary watched a speckled juvenile jostle for a spot. Same size, same markings, same wonky leg: was this the bird he’d seen way out at sea? Could it have trailed the ship for such a distance?
He scanned the harbour, then trained his binoculars on the object now approaching from across the water. The new ship stopped a short distance away. Twice the size and bulk of the Steadfast, it dropped anchor with a whale-sized splash. The white hull marked with a red cross, a name spelt out in black letters across the bow: Nightingale.
BILLIE
&n
bsp; Their new overseers swung into action with military zeal. Billie was marched onto a transfer boat where Kellahan and Owen waited. A soldier gunned the engine across the water to the hospital ship.
A floating cordon now encircled the Steadfast: yellow tape affixed to buoys, the words Quarantine zone – do not cross repeated in a loop. Soldiers hoisted the cordon aloft to let them through. A shadow skimmed the water, and Billie spotted a drone’s black silhouette overhead.
The hospital ship was immaculate, all white paint and orderly signage: Authorised Personnel Only. Sterile Zone. Infection Control Station. Outbound Waste. Officials trussed up in full PPE escorted them to the local incident commander’s office.
A no-nonsense man with minimal small-talk, the incident commander kept his audience standing and his summary short: the entire patient cohort had been transferred to this medical vessel. Several patients were still in serious condition, one deemed critical, but most had stabilised, and those in recovery appeared to be out of danger. There were grounds to hope the virus could be contained, any further deaths prevented.
‘But we need to remain vigilant,’ he warned. ‘There’s no guarantee this thing has run its course. That we won’t see further cases.’
The entire incoming cohort, present company included, would be fitted with subdermal tracking devices as a precautionary measure. Regular fever scans should weed out any potential viral exposure, but their own responsibilities were not over yet.
‘You’ve seen firsthand how this sickness manifests,’ said the incident commander. ‘We need you to actively monitor the population, be alert for any early signs. Keep your eyes and ears open.’
Owen tried to get a word in, some bluster about the limits of visual diagnosis, but the commander spoke over him. ‘You can discuss the details with my medical staff,’ he said, turning away. They were dismissed.
Two local medics in full protective gear led them to a state-of-the-art donning chamber. This was to be a ‘briefing tour’ of the onboard clinic – the briefing part, as it turned out, a largely one-way affair; the three of them were to provide verbal case notes to supplement the patchy written record. They were shadowed by silent lackeys in headcams, recording everything.
