No Escape Read online

  Also by Alex Scarrow

  Plague Land

  Plague Land: Reborn

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  Books. Change. Lives.

  First published in the United States in 2019 by Sourcebooks

  Copyright © 2018, 2019 by Alex Scarrow

  Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks

  Series design by Elsie Lyons

  Cover image © studioalef/Getty Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  sourcebooks.com

  Originally published as Plague World in 2018 in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Children’s Books, an imprint of Pan Macmillan.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Scarrow, Alex, author.

  Title: Plague land : no escape / Alex Scarrow.

  Other titles: Plague world | No escape

  Description: Naperville, IL : Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, 2019. | “Originally published as Plague World in 2018 in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Children’s Books, an imprint of Pan Macmillan”--Title page verso. | Summary: After annihilating all of humanity except for those in three refugee communities, the virus approaches the remaining humans with a choice that will ultimately decide their fate.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019008619 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Survival--Fiction. | Virus diseases--Fiction. | Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.S3255 Pj 2019 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019008619

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part I

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Part II

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Part III

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  To Debbie, beta reader of my first drafts

  and editor of my life.

  Thank you for giving me your love

  and taking my name.

  Part I

  Prologue

  Two and a Half Years Ago

  Freya woke up bleary eyed and still dressed from last night.

  She’d gone to sleep late—it was after two o’clock when she’d finally closed her laptop and turned off the TV. She’d plumped up the cushions so she could continue looking out of her bedroom window at the small cul-de-sac. Her mind had raced in the dark for several hours as she replayed the day’s headlines about the virus. The tone of panic in them had been increasing throughout the day and evening. Her Facebook feed had become littered with desperate posts from friends around the world, grainy images of bodies in the street that could just as easily have been piles of clothes and trash.

  People really did panic way too easily on Facebook.

  Freya was half-certain that by this morning, the story would have run out of steam and become another overnight Social Media Big Nothing, and half-worried that this was it—today would be the Day the World Ended.

  She stretched out her aching legs and shuffled her numb rear until she was sitting up and looking down at the houses and driveways across the street.

  It looked quiet and still out there as Freya checked her watch: quarter past ten.

  She looked up and down the cul-de-sac at all the cars that were usually gone by now. Sunday mornings sometimes looked like this. But today should have been a normal working Wednesday.

  And it was way past when she was normally up. Mom should’ve knocked on her door to wake her a while ago. End of the World or not, she was supposed to go to school this morning, and if her watch was right, she’d already missed the first class.

  “Crap!” she hissed. “Mom!” she called out. “I’m late!”

  No answer. She pulled herself up, wearily wincing at the ever-present aching pain in her hips, and reached for a couple of aspirin on the bedside table, knocking them back with the cold dregs of last night’s tea. She reached down for her laptop on the end of her bed.

  That’s when she saw them through the window: snaking, dark lines running across the road and driveways, like zigzagging pencil scribbles. She leaned over the bed, bracing herself with one hand on the windowsill to get a better look outside. She followed one line across the road, up a driveway, and up to the front step of number 9. The front door was ajar, and the dark scribble seemed to continue on inside.

  Or maybe it had come out?

  Next door at number 10, she could see a number of lines converging on a dark hump of clothes lying on the driveway. It looked like one of those grainy images on the internet.

  “Mom!” she called out again, starting to panic.

  No answer, but she could hear voices downstairs. The TV was on.

  She staggered across the bedroom and picked up the walking stick by her door. She stepped out into the hall and glanced through the open door into her parent’s room; the bed was made.

  Mom usually made it when she came back after her morning shift at the pharmacy. Maybe she hadn
’t gone in this morning.

  Freya made her way down the narrow and steep steps, one at a time, her walking stick leading the way.

  “Mom? Why didn’t you wake me up? I’m late!”

  She could hear the TV. It wasn’t news. It was a rerun of Friends. Maybe Dad was off today as well? “Dad? You in?”

  No answer from him either. She reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed the living room door open to see the TV merrily chatting away to itself. Joey and Chandler were messing around in their apartment.

  “Dad?” Freya peered around the room. She could see unfinished cups of coffee on the coffee table, Dad’s tablet on the sofa, Mom’s phone on the table. She never went to work without it.

  Down the short hall, the kitchen door was slightly open.

  Maybe they were both in there.

  Taking the few steps to the door, Freya felt something soft and unpleasant ooze beneath her left shoe. She looked down and saw a dark, sticky line. It looked like someone had poured a thin trail of balsamic vinegar onto the carpet.

  Mom wouldn’t leave something like that un-scrubbed, even if meant turning up late for work.

  She pushed the kitchen door open, expecting to see at least one of her parents at the breakfast bar. Her moan at Mom for not waking her up was instantly forgotten as her eyes struggled to make sense of the nightmare scene spread out across the kitchen floor.

  Chapter 1

  The Present

  Freya jerked awake. The nightmare was a rerun of the one she had far too often. Always the same sequence: waking up, coming down the stairs, opening the kitchen door, and… A memory she’d done very well to box away. It was only in her dreams that the lid creaked open.

  She stared up at the stained gauze mesh of the bunk directly above her, listened to the steady throb of the ship’s diesel engine and the wheezing, snorting, whispering, and fidgeting of all the other refugees crammed into the bunks around her.

  For a hazy moment, she was confused, startled by her surroundings.

  Where am I?

  Then it came back to her all too quickly. None of it was a dream—all of it had been horrifically real. The last two years: surviving the plague’s outbreak, meeting Leon and Grace, escaping that camp in Southampton when everything went sideways, and finally, managing to be one of the lucky few to get aboard a U.S. Navy ship.

  She had a folded piece of red card in her hip pocket, and she was guarding it like a Willy Wonka Golden Ticket. Her ID card. Since being bustled aboard this ship, she’d only had to show it a few times and only once been asked to open it to reveal the photo inside. On that occasion, she’d flashed it quickly to the harried-looking marine—a picture of a dark-haired teenage girl called Emma Russell. It was sheer luck that she’d managed to pick up an identity card belonging to someone who bore a vague resemblance to her.

  If you squinted. A lot.

  The soldier had nodded, not even looking, and waved her through into the ship’s cafeteria to line up for the daily meal along with everyone else.

  Right now, the small fleet of ships was at sea somewhere in the English Channel, heading west into the cold, gray Atlantic. Their American rescuers appeared to be relaxing the panicked safety measures ever so slightly. Now that they were safely away from land, everyone aboard had a “red” on them, which meant they’d been blood tested ashore and cleared.

  Freya hoped she was the only person on board carrying someone else’s red in her pocket. She knew she wasn’t infected, but she was damned if she’d blindly trust anyone else. So it was a touch disconcerting that she’d gone three days aboard this ship and no one so far had noticed that she was not the same girl as the one in the mugshot. She’d even once idiotically introduced herself to another evacuee as “Freya” not “Emma.” So surely it was only a matter of time before she was found out.

  Then what? I get thrown overboard?

  She doubted that. More likely they’d make her do a blood test again.

  But…

  Shit. Shut up, brain.

  But…there’ve been people infected without them even knowing, right?

  Freya balled her fist and thumped her hip softly. She knew she was clean. She’d never made direct contact with a viral. Crap, they’d gotten close but not touched.

  Leon. Her mind replayed their narrow escape from the underpass just outside Oxford: both of them cornered in the dark, those repulsive, crablike creatures closing in on them. They’d been rescued at the very last moment by Corkie and his squad of soldiers.

  So where the hell are you, Leon? Freya swore under her breath, and the person in the bunk above grunted down at her to shut up.

  She was pretty sure he wasn’t on this ship. She’d checked the bunks and the sleeping bags laid out on the hangar deck and scanned the people in line at meal times. Leon wasn’t aboard the USS Gerald R. Ford as far as she could see. But he might be on one of the other ships in the small fleet heading west. Or, if not one of those, then one of the other Pacific Alliance ships.

  Dammit. Her memory of the mass breakout on the Southampton waterfront, the chaos, the panic…it was all so fragmented. She’d been separated from her friends by the surge of people. She had no idea if Leon and Grace had gotten out of the quarantine pen and, if they had, which way they’d run. They could be on one of these U.S. ships heading southwest to Cuba or the Chinese one going south.

  Or they could—

  No. Shut up, brain. They’re not dead. They’re not infected. If sixth sense was a genuine thing, if there was a possibility of “knowing” someone was alive, then yeah…somehow, she knew Leon and Grace were both alive.

  Somewhere.

  Their chances had to have been better than hers. If she could manage to escape, hobbled by her MS, dragging that useless, waste-of-space left leg behind her, then those two, able-bodied and quick-witted, must have managed to get away.

  But was she going to see either of them again?

  Ever?

  A solitary tear rolled down the side of her cheek and tickled her ear.

  Piss off, she chided herself. I’m not giving up on them yet.

  There had been two other boats on the American side of the rescue camp. There’d been three Southampton rescue ships in total, which had joined up with four ships that had collected refugees from Calais. All seven ships had rendezvoused in the English Channel yesterday, and there was talk that some of the British refugees had been transferred across to one of the Calais ships because it had more space. Presumably, at some point, someone was going to take down names and assemble a list of all those who’d been rescued. Maybe en route, maybe once they’d gotten there.

  Freya hoped it would be sooner rather than later. They’d been told that it would be a week or so on this crowded ship before arriving in Cuba. She assumed they’d be offloaded into another wire-mesh holding camp. Leon would be looking for her too. She could imagine them backing up Scooby-Doo style into each other and jumping into the air with fright, then clumsily embracing, clunking their coconut heads together like a pair of uncool idiots.

  Chapter 2

  “Repeat your last. Over.” Tom Friedmann listened to the radio speaker whistling and spitting out white noise.

  “I will repeat…” Captain Xien spoke slowly. His English was fluent, but the radio signal had been weakened by the growing distance between both small fleets. “We have begun repeating test of all British refugees,” continued Xien. “I advise that you do this also. Over.”

  Tom looked at Captain Donner, the U.S. destroyer’s CO. He nodded. They’d discussed the matter just this morning. The ship’s departure had been utterly chaotic. Shambolic. There was not enough certainty that every civilian packed into the corridors and passages belowdecks was clear of infection. In the confusion of those last few minutes, as the ships had all begun to back away from the Southampton docks, it was very possible some untested refu
gees had slipped aboard.

  “Understood, Captain Xien. I will discuss this with my senior officers. Over.”

  The speaker whistled and hissed for a moment, and they caught the tail end of Xien’s reply.

  “…ing procedure. I will wish you safe travel until we talk next time. Over and out.”

  Tom set the radio handset back in its cradle and gazed out of the one-hundred-eighty-degree windows of the ship’s bridge at the flat and gray Atlantic beyond.

  The ships that had collected refugees from Calais had managed a much more organized departure—not entirely without drama, of course. The several squads of U.S. Marines he’d assigned to them had to hold a perimeter, firing into the air to keep those they couldn’t take from surging forward. The captain of one of the other U.S. Navy ships had said it was like the fall of Saigon all over again—people clinging to the railings, dangling from mooring lines. Total madness.

  Both mixed fleets met up in the Channel and redistributed their loads of refugees to balance them more easily among the ships. So they now had mostly British survivors on board this ship with a mixture of Europeans and some from as far away as North Africa. It was clear to Tom that there must be small pockets of survivors left all over the world, but with every passing month, more and more of them would fail and perish.

  “We’re going to have to test them all again,” said Tom. “The Brits and the others. All of them. Ship crews as well.”

  “I think that would be very wise, sir.”

  Tom was still holding on to a thread of hope that his kids, Leon and Grace, might be lurking in a passageway aboard this ship or one of the others sailing nearby. “And we need to draw up a complete passenger manifest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And no more ship-to-ship movement of people until every last one of us has been tested.” He turned to look at Captain James Donner. “Can you make a start organizing that, Jim?”

  Donner nodded again. “I’ll liaise with the other ships’ captains immediately.”

  “Good.”

  Tom turned back to look out of the broad windows at the stern of their ship, plowing southwest through a gently breaking sea. There’d been a moment two days ago when the fleet had divided: the U.S. ships continuing west to cross the Atlantic, the others heading south for a much longer journey to New Zealand. Tom had been almost tempted to order his fleet to go south with them, but he hadn’t.