Yes, they all had their personal stories. They had stories filled with horror, violence and, above all, loss. But the strangest story of all was Matteo’s.
“I was working in the microbial research unit at LMB when the first case arrived.”
“In the what?” Gloria asked.
“The Laboratory of Molecular Biology.” Matteo explained, “It’s where a lot of the most important discoveries have been made about cell biology, DNA structure, chromosomes, pathogens and, well, all kinds of other things. The microbial research unit was a government funded project to investigate certain diseases and their applications.”
“Their applications?”
“How bacteria, viruses, prions and the like might be used for, well, medical applications.”
“And biological warfare?” Sebastian asked.
“That was never part of our brief.”
“Hang on a minute,” said Jonathan, “You said you were a historian.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, you did. You said you were doing your PhD at Cambridge. Now, why would a historian be studying microbes?”
“Yes, that does sound improbable, doesn’t it. The historian bit wasn’t exactly true. I was at Cambridge. I was a PhD student, at St Dunstan’s College. But history was not my subject. That was a little something I invented when they came to round us up.”
“When who came?”
“The soldiers.”
Matteo’s Tale
On the night of the Great Snow, (said Matteo), I was out in the quad. There were quite a few of us. It was coming up to the start of Lent Term and some of the undergrads were there already. I’d been back quite a while. Graduate students don’t pay much attention to term times on the whole.
I remember the way the snow shimmered as it fell. I think I was pretty drunk because I got into an argument with a physicist. He had a theory that some sort of binary fluid mixture in the snow was causing the opalescence. As a biologist, I, of course, insisted that it was a bacterial effect. Certain bacteria have light scattering properties which can look quite beautiful. I seem to recall a geologist friend going on about refractive minerals from an Icelandic volcano which, in his view, might have been caught in the snow. We didn’t come to any firm conclusions on the matter because we had spent the earlier part of the evening in the college bar and were, by that time, quite drunk. So we decided to build a snowman.
After we built the snowman, a few of us went back to the rooms of Fergus Thripp, Director of Studies in French, who, at some point, had wandered onto the quad to inform us that we were walking on grass which was reserved exclusively for dons and which, therefore, we had no right to be upon. I argued that we weren’t walking on the forbidden grass but upon the snow that had settled on the grass. The snow was about two inches deep at that time so surely there were no college rules forbidding us to walk two inches above the grass. Thripp conceded that this was a sound argument which however relied upon the precise definition of the word ‘on’. Surely, he said, we live ‘on’ the earth even when we jump into the air. Therefore, we must be ‘on’ the grass even when two inches above it. This, however, was a philosophical problem that was beyond our capabilities to resolve, given our advanced level of intoxication. So Thripp invited us back to his room to drink vodka and orange – a concoction which, when sober, tastes vile but, when drunk, is pure ambrosia.
I have very little recollection of what happened after that. I’m not even sure how many of us were there. Five or six, I think. We boozed a lot, listened to Thripp’s compendious collection of Demis Roussos CDs which I remember thinking were among the best songs I’d ever heard (another indication of how incredibly drunk I must have been). I think we played bridge for a while, which is strange because I don’t even know the rules of the game, someone puked over one of Thripp’s Meissen porcelain figurines and, at some advanced hour of the morning, I trudged back to my room where I fell into a deep, drunken sleep from which I emerged shortly before lunchtime the following day.
My rooms were across the quad from the college Hall and usually I could dash across for lunch in about thirty seconds. When I saw how deep the snow was, though, I knew that I’d have to plan the journey carefully before embarking upon it. It is no exaggeration to say that I would have sunk up to my waist in the drifts up against the eastern wall of the college. So I put on a pair of Wellington boots, an overcoat and a scarf and I trudged slowly and with difficulty through the snow. But to no avail. The door to Hall was locked. I glanced in through the windows but there was no sign of the servants or cooks. Just long rows of empty tables and benches. I assumed that the snow was so deep that the college staff hadn’t been able to make it into work.
As I was feeling a bit peckish, I decided to go into town to get a sandwich. The gates, however, were locked and bolted. I went into the Porter’s Lodge and shook the snow from my coat and boots which caused old Pipply to yell at me for messing up his inner sanctum. I apologised profusely and asked him why the gates were locked.
“There’s been a bit of a palaver, sir,” he replied.
“Oh yes?” I said, “And what sort of palaver might that be, exactly?”
“You may have noticed the snow,” said Pipply.
I informed him that the snow had not escaped my attention.
“Well, it’s the snow what ’as caused the palaver,” Pipply replied.
Old Pipply can be elliptical, at times, in his manner of speaking. Elliptical bordering on the recursive. I informed him that I was fully kitted up for a stroll through the snow and I should be most obliged if he would open the gates so that I could avail myself of the sandwiches that lurked somewhere on the other side of them.
“Not within my power, sir,” said Pipply, “The Master has issued strict instructions that the gate must not be opened.”
“Sir Eric Martingdale has said that you cannot open the gates! Really? I might venture to suggest that in so doing the Master has exceeded his authority,” said I.
“Oh,” says Pipply, “it wasn’t his authority what forbade it, sir. It was the Chancellor.”
“The University Chancellor, you mean?” said I.
“The very same, sir,” said Pipply, “All the masters of all the colleges has been instructed to lock the gates and leave no one in and no one out until further orders.”
“Ha!’ I said, “Who does the Chancellor think he is? He has no such powers over the masters of colleges. Perhaps he’s gone potty? Experienced an attack of megalomania? We live in a free country, Pipply. Ours is not a country in which college porters tremble before the word of tin-pot University Chancellors. Come along, man, open the gate and I shall say no more of this.”
“Oh, it wasn’t the Chancellor what issued the decree,” said Pipply.
“If it wasn’t the Master,” I said, “and it wasn’t the Chancellor, then who the devil was it?”
Pipply grasped his lapels importantly and rocked back and forth on his heels. “It was the Prime Minister, sir.”
So I went back to my room. I made myself some tea and ate some biscuits. By then I was starting to feel a bit under the weather. It hadn’t hit me right away. It had crept up on me. I felt feverish so I went to bed to have a lie down. When I woke up I was in hospital. A nurse was tucking some blankets around me. I said, “Where am I?” and she said, “Don’t disturb yourself, now.” She had an Irish accent, I remember. I said, “What happened? Was I in an accident?” and she said “You’ve just been under the weather. Now, don’t you worry, you’ll soon be on the mend.” And then I must have dozed off again because when I woke up it was dark. There was nobody about. I was in a room all on my own, not a ward with lots of other patients. I pushed back the blankets. The sheets were all wet. I was covered in sweat even though I felt cold. I sat on the edge of the bed. I felt a bit dizzy. I got out of bed, stood up, and I nearly fell over. I sat on the edge of the bed for a while and then I tried again. This time I managed to get to my feet and balance myself. I was wearing striped p
yjamas with a cord around the waist, I noticed. I hadn’t worn pyjamas since I was about three years old. It struck me as funny that somebody must have decided to put them on me.
The door to the room was shut. I pushed it open and stood there, looking out into the corridor, for a minute or two. The corridor had pale green walls and a white linoleum floor. It was dimly lit by recessed lighting. At each end of the corridor there were glass doors. Set into the walls of the corridor there were numerous wooden doors. There were no people about.
I walked towards the glass doors at the left-hand end of the corridor. There were signs on the walls: Outpatients, Maxillofacial, X-Ray, Accident & Emergency. I pushed open the glass doors and found that I was standing in a stairwell. I went up one level. I found myself in a similar corridor to the one that I’d just left. I walked along it hoping to see a nurse or a doctor so that I might ask for directions. This corridor too had wooden doors on each side. I pushed a door at random and went into the room. It was a room like the one I’d woken up in. There was a single bed. A young woman was lying in it. She was writhing from side to side, moaning to herself. When I stepped nearer I saw that she had been secured to the bed with buckled straps and a gag had been tied around her mouth. When she saw me she suddenly tried to lunge forward but the straps restrained her. Her eyes were full of blood.
I left that room much faster than I’d entered it. That’s when I saw the doctor. He was hurrying down the corridor wearing a long white coat. I went to him. I said, “Can you help me?” He said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “I’m lost.” He laughed. “So are we all,” he said and rushed off. His white coat was spattered with blood, I noticed. He looked more like a butcher than a doctor.
I found some more stairs and went up another level. There were two nurses there. One was struggling to hold a boy. He can’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen. He was dressed in one of those hospital gowns that tie up at the back. He was thrashing around wildly and clawing at the air. I noticed that he too was wearing a gag. It was really just a roll of bandage that had been tied tightly around his face and into his open mouth. I later discovered that the gag was to prevent him from biting.
While one nurse held him, the other nurse was trying to inject something into his arm. I went to them. I said, “Let me help.” I held the boy in a bear-hug, keeping his arms pinned to his side. Between them, the two nurses managed to find a vein in his arm and inject him with the contents of the syringe.
Almost instantly the boy slumped in my arms and I lowered him gently to the ground. “Great God!” I thought, “What have I done?” It felt as though I’d taken part in an execution. It felt as though the nurses had put the boy to sleep the way a vet might put a sick dog to sleep for the last time.
But the nurses smiled at me and said, “Thank you. He’s one of the troublesome ones. Never wants to take his medication.” And I smiled and I said, “I’m lost. I don’t know why I’m here.” The two nurses looked at one another knowingly and seemed to be debating whether or not they should say something. Then one of them said, “You’ll be one of the Cambridge men, I suppose.” And I said, “Yes. Isn’t this Cambridge? I assumed this must be Addenbrooke’s Hospital.”
“You’d best go back to your room,” she said, “Do you know where your room is?” In all honestly, I didn’t and I told her so. She looked at my wrist then. I hadn’t noticed it before but there was a white plastic band looped around my wrist. She looked at the band. Then she looked at me. “Matt Sidoli,” she said. “Matteo,” I said. “You’re in 22C in the Robert Koch Wing. I’ll take you there.”
I told her I didn’t want to go there. I wanted to go back home. She said I couldn’t. I said of course I damn’ well could. There was nothing wrong with me so I was checking myself out. She said that I didn’t understand. I really couldn’t leave.
She took me to look out of the window. Dawn was breaking by now. A thin, wintry light illuminated a white landscape dotted with snow-heavy, bare-branched trees.
To the left there was another wing of the hospital. To the right there was a carpark leading towards the main gates. There were very few cars in the carpark. But there were several military vehicles and two tanks. There were also a great many soldiers with rifles at the ready.
“What kind of hospital is this?’ I said.”
*
I stayed in that hospital for a week. From then on, they kept my door locked throughout the night and most of the day. At ten o’clock each day, a man came to take me down to the ‘common room’ where I sat in a chair surrounded by people who either dozed or mumbled incoherently. None of them were able to communicate properly. I was the only patient who seemed, well, normal.
Twice a day, a nurse brought me some food. It was mostly tinned stuff. Soup. Baked beans. Sometimes bread or toast. The hospital was clearly grotesquely understaffed. Nobody ever cleaned my room or made my bed. I kept asking the nurse why I was there and when I could go. But all she said was that she didn’t know.
And then one day I went to the common room and there was a new patient. He was about my age, slim, dark curly hair. His face was covered in bruises. He had a broken nose. It was Freddie. How did he come to get the bruises and the broken nose? I asked him. He said that when the soldiers had taken him, he’d put up a struggle. One of them had hit him with the butt of his rifle. That’s what broke his nose. But still Freddie had kept fighting so they punched him to the ground, kicked him.
(Sebastian interrupted Matteo: “Freddie told you that? You mean he was coherent?”)
Oh, absolutely. He was the only patient there I could talk to. We found an old chess board and we’d sit for hours on end playing chess and talking. And then one day, the soldiers came for us. There was just me and Freddie. They weren’t interested in the others.
They brought us to Camp Jollity. And they started the treatment. Every day they injected us with something. I don’t know what. They wouldn’t say. And, gradually, day by day, Freddie got worse and worse. He stopped talking so much. And when he did talk it didn’t make much sense. Eventually he became as you see him now. As far as anyone could tell, just another burnt-out red-eye. And that’s all there is to tell. The rest you already know.
*
The room was silent for a while. The others were trying to take in the significance of Matteo’s story. His experiences had been different from everyone else’s. For all the other people in the room, the Great Snow had arrived as a natural calamity. The plague that followed seemed to come out of the blue. But if Matteo was to be believed, the Government had made preparations even before disaster had struck. An official order had been made to seal off Cambridge colleges, an isolation hospital had been arranged, the Army had started to take control – all within days of the first signs of the infection.
Eventually, Jonathan said, “So how come you recovered, Matteo, when Freddie didn’t? If you had the same injections that he had, why didn’t they affect you the same way?”
Matteo shrugged, “I don’t know. I don’t even know what they were injecting us with? Anti-virals? Some kind of bacteria or virus? My best guess is that whatever it was, I might have acquired some kind of resistance to it. When I was working at the microbiological research unit I was vaccinated against all kinds of pathogens – everything from smallpox to SARS. Maybe one of those vaccinations gave me some kind of immunity. At any rate, I quickly realised that anyone who didn’t respond to the injections in the way that Freddie did – anyone who stayed sane and lucid – well, they became a person of special interest. I saw three people like that. They were all taken away from the Camp. I didn’t know where they were taken to or for what purpose. But I decided it would be much safer not to stand out from the crowd. So whatever symptoms Freddie had, I copied. As far as anyone was concerned, I was just a standard case. Of no great medical interest.”
“And what about the doctors and the soldiers? What about the people running the Camp – people like Lieutenant-Colonel Digby and Captain Smedley? Why
did none of them get sick?”
“I don’t know the answer to that either,” said Matteo, “Maybe they were just lucky. Or maybe they are immune to the disease.”
Leila laughed. “Let me guess. How would all those people manage to be immune? Maybe if they’d had vaccinations before any of the rest of us even knew the disease was on its way.”
“Yes,” said Matteo, “That’s certainly a possibility.”
Radio True Britain
There were ten young people gathered in the candle-lit cellar of a deserted building: Jonathan, Geoff and Leila, Matteo, Sebastian and Freddie, Gloria, Keith, Helen and Dave. The cellar was large so there was plenty of space for them all. But it was also dank and smelled of mould and decay. Illumination was provided by candles. There were candles stuck with melted wax to bricks and old wooden boxes; there were candles on the floor and candles in alcoves. The ten young people sat and talked and in the background there was the crackly, wavering sound of an old, battery-operated transistor radio tuned to the medium wave: “This is Peter Quinn with all your favourite classics and rarities from the fabulous 1980s…”
“What are you going to do next?” Sebastian asked.
“Me?” said Jonathan, “I’m going home. If I can.”
He told Sebastian about the little cottage in Cornwall. He told him about the friend who had let him rent it for a pittance.
“He must be a good friend,” Sebastian said.
“He was,” said Jonathan, “The best. Only I didn’t know it at the time. His name was Justin.”
Jonathan told Sebastian that Justin had lived in London. He told him how he and Geoff and Leila had gone to London. They’d gone to Justin’s flat in Bayswater. But Justin had gone.
“Which was just as well,” said Jonathan, “These days, London’s a madhouse.”
“Where’d he go?”
“According to the woman in the flat next to his, he’d gone to Cornwall. To the cottage.”
The Exodus Plague | Book 2 | Imprisoned Page 21
