Plague World Read online

  ‘That’s right, it’s you next, sweetheart. Roll your sleeve up, love . . .’

  Grace looked anxiously back at the queue of people lining the bulkhead all the way down the Chinese carrier’s hangar deck. There were soldiers in yellow biohazard suits standing every couple of metres.

  ‘Come on, we haven’t got all day, love,’ said the Australian officer impatiently.

  Grace stepped forward and peered through the open door. The room was a small storage hold that had been hastily repurposed into a clinical testing station. She stood in the doorway, one foot hesitantly perched on the hatch lip as she took it all in. They weren’t taking any chances here. One crewman was wearing a cumbersome flame-retardant suit and holding a fire extinguisher. Another was wearing the same, and holding what looked like a flame-thrower. There was a third in a yellow biohazard suit with a clear faceplate, holding a syringe in his thickly gloved hands.

  ‘Go on . . .’ said the Australian. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  The process was intended to be quick and certain; no room for grey areas or ambiguities. No interviewing, no questions, no words exchanged; just a sample of blood taken and then tested for a reaction in a Petri dish. If the blood didn’t coagulate, then fine.

  But if it did . . .

  The small room was empty of things that might catch fire, the bulkheads stripped back to plain metal panels. The consequence of a positive result would be resolved quickly.

  ‘You next!’ said the Chinese soldier beside the door.

  ‘Stop pissing around, love,’ urged the Australian. ‘We’ve got a lot to get through.’

  ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered.

  ‘Nothing to be scared of.’ The Australian officer wasn’t wearing a protective suit, and until now had kept several paces back, letting his Chinese counterpart make contact. He stepped forward.

  ‘No!’ barked the Chinese soldier, intercepting him.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ cried Grace.

  He stopped and stepped back. ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘For your sake,’ warned Grace. ‘Stay well back.’

  One of the men inside the testing station waved impatiently for her to step in.

  ‘They just want to take a little of your blood, sweetheart. That’s all.’

  ‘There’s . . . no need for that.’

  ‘We have to test everyone again, love.’ The Australian mimed an injection. ‘It’s just a quick little scratch and then you’ll be done. All right?’

  ‘No, really,’ Grace said firmly now. ‘The test isn’t necessary.’

  The Chinese soldier looked as though he’d had enough. ‘You go now!’ He stepped forward to grab her.

  ‘STOP!’ she screamed, and raised her hands. Her voice echoed across the hangar. Civilians queueing on the far side of the hangar deck turned to look her way.

  Grace turned to face the people who were behind her in the queue. ‘All of you should step back.’ She turned to the Australian officer. ‘You too.’

  ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ He was starting to sound wary.

  ‘I’m infected,’ she replied.

  Her words had an instant effect. Both men drew back, the Chinese officer levelling his gun at her. The three men inside the testing station backed up; the one with the flame-thrower stepped quickly round the sample trolley towards her. Behind Grace, the queue recoiled as those who’d been standing nearest to her hurried backwards.

  Make it clear. Quickly!

  She sat down on the lip of the doorway and folded her arms like a disgruntled toddler on a naughty step. ‘I am infected,’ she repeated. ‘But I am not going to do anything!’ She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Tell them quickly!’

  The Australian barked a word or two in Chinese. The flame-thrower was levelled at her, and she guessed there was still a gun pointing at the back of her head.

  ‘I am infected! But I’m here so we can talk!’

  The five men stood frozen like statues. A moment of stillness. Even the civilians just outside were perfectly still. No stampede. Not yet. A perfect bubble frozen in time, ready to burst into a screaming, flaming hell at any second.

  Grace raised her voice to ensure she was being heard. ‘I’m more than just infected,’ she continued quietly. ‘I’m remade. I’m a viral manifestation. A human copy.’ She turned her head slightly for the Australian officer’s benefit. ‘Tell them I’m here to help. Tell them I won’t move a muscle.’

  He repeated her words in fractured Mandarin.

  ‘Tell them I’m here on behalf of the virus.’

  He translated her again.

  Stay calm, Grace. Calm.

  ‘I’m here to talk. To learn. To tell you about the virus. Why it’s here. What it wants.’

  As he repeated her words, she could see the look of panic in all their eyes.

  She could see the soldier holding the flame-thrower was one command away from filling the doorway with flames.

  ‘If you try burning me, I’ll break up into those crabs! Hundreds of them!’ She shot a glance at the Australian. He was standing there, dumbstruck and open mouthed. ‘Translate me!’ she snapped.

  He started doing so.

  ‘Hundreds! And you won’t get them all! They’ll get among all of these people. You’ll have dozens of infected within minutes! This ship will be overrun within an hour!’

  The Australian was jabbering her words out in bad Chinese, but she could see by the looks on their faces he was getting her point across. They’d all seen that happen first-hand; they knew she was right. They might be able to burn her . . . but possibly not all of her.

  ‘Get your leader!’ she said. ‘I need to talk to him!’

  She waited for the officer to finish translating, hoping it would end with one of the Chinese soldiers pulling out a radio and talking into it.

  But nothing. Everyone was still playing statues.

  ‘NOW!’ she screamed.

  The soldier holding a gun slowly lowered it and pointed a shaking finger towards her. He muttered something.

  ‘What did he just say?’ asked Grace.

  The Australian cleared his throat. ‘He . . . uh, he asked if you could t-take a step or two back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To, uh . . . to let him out? So he can go get the captain?’

  She was standing on the lip of the only doorway.

  ‘Right. Of course.’

  She took several steps backwards into the main hangar and watched as the silent crowd around her drew away to keep their distance from her.

  The Chinese soldier stepped out of the testing station and edged away from her, finally, half a dozen metres away, turning and running.

  ‘You . . . you’re not . . . going to—’

  She looked up at Australian officer. ‘Erupt? No. I just want to talk.’

  CHAPTER 4

  ‘Don’t open it!’ said Leon.

  The banging on the delivery doors grew more insistent, both of them rattling in their frames under the heavy impact. Leon looked around at the others. His eyes settled on Cora – she was the one who’d assumed the role as their small group’s leader. He was looking at her, as were the others; if she wanted to lead, she’d better make the decision. And she looked like she was wavering, undecided.

  Leon had his own opinion. ‘Don’t open it!’ he said again.

  They’d been holed up in this building for four days, a small warehouse filled with cages of various sizes. Cages that contained the mummified corpses of animals, most too withered to be identifiable. This building had been the first one that they’d come across that was open and looked secure enough for Leon and the others to hide in as they’d fled the carnage down on the Southampton quayside.

  That awful night, order in the quarantine pen had descended into chaos in the space of minutes. The few soldiers on guard had been quickly overrun, the chain-link fences woefully inadequate as the thousands of penned-in refugees had stampeded across the encampment away from the viral outbreak t
hat had begun to erupt among them.

  God knows how many of them had secretly been virals. It was as if some pre-agreed signal had triggered the infected people to make their move all at the same time. Some had spontaneously dissolved into the smaller scuttling creatures, others – in twos and threes – had merged into towering, nightmarish totem poles that had speared and clawed and lashed out at the fleeing crowd.

  Panic had rippled across the thousands of incarcerated refugees, fences collapsing under the crush in a sky lit up by sweeping searchlights and flames.

  A nightmare.

  Leon had lost sight of Grace, lost his grasp on Freya’s hand. They’d vanished in the mayhem, caught up in the thick river-like press of bodies. Finally he’d found himself with a dozen other people running for their lives, away from the screaming, the lights, the gunshots, the flames, the departing ships . . .

  And this building was where they’d ended up, hurling themselves into the dark interior and jerking the doors closed behind them. Through that first night, they’d listened in petrified silence to the noises going on outside.

  Screaming voices begging to be let in, fists banging on the delivery door. Those bloodcurdling screams turning to whimpers of defeat, followed by the sound of receding footsteps as they gave up hope of getting in and sought some other place to hide. Then later the unbearable sound of insect-like legs, scraping, checking, probing the perimeter of their building for weaknesses, for a way in. It was a sound that echoed and reverberated around the warehouse, merging to become white noise, like the rattling hiss of tropical rain spattering on a corrugated tin roof.

  Every now and then they heard the thump of something significantly larger testing the strength of the cinder-block walls, the boom and shaking of the doors as something heavy thrashed against them. Leon wondered if they were the same nightmare totem poles that had erupted in the containment pen, monsters two storeys tall, staggering beasts that defied description. Creatures that constantly shifted form as they prowled around the outside of the building.

  The second night had been quieter, except for the sound of a window breaking in the office above the warehouse. They went to check it out, finding broken glass and a brick on the floor. Someone –hopefully someone human – must have been trying to get in that way. Then came a banging on the delivery doors. Not something trying to break in, but someone trying to get them to open up.

  Cora made a move as if she was going to respond to it.

  Leon grabbed her arm. ‘It can’t be human. Not now.’

  The same something pounded against the bay doors and began begging to be let in.

  ‘Please! Please! I know there’s someone in there! Please!’

  They all sat still. No one daring to move.

  ‘I saw your lights last night. I know someone’s in there. PLEASE!’

  They kept quiet.

  ‘It’s just two of us. Me and my little girl. Please just open. We’re not the virus!’

  Leon looked around. Nobody seemed willing to look at anything other than their own feet.

  ‘Just some water, then. Please! Just a bit for my little girl . . .’

  ‘They can copy us,’ hissed Leon. ‘Talk just like us.’

  Whatever was out there carried on like that for about ten minutes until suddenly the soft pleas became a frantic scream. ‘OhmyGod!’

  They could hear the approaching sound of that insect-like hissing and tapping. It reminded Leon of the sound a wave makes as it draws back across a shingle beach.

  The screaming stopped and the last vaguely human sound they heard was a woman’s voice tearfully murmuring . . .

  ‘Don’t look, sweetheart, just don’t look—’

  Then came the brief sound of screaming and thrashing. Leon didn’t need his imagination to know what was happening – he’d seen it happen too many times. Something large had just torn the woman and child to pieces. Brutally efficiently.

  At least it had been quick.

  The third day and night were mercifully quiet – perhaps too quiet. Leon had too much time to think. His mind replayed feverish snatches of the events in the containment pen, mixed with all the other moments of horror he’d experienced over the last three years. Before the outbreak, the most grisly thing he’d experienced first-hand had been the knobbly skin stretched over a quarterback’s broken forearm.

  He’d nearly barfed his guts up at the sight of it.

  Since then . . . he’d seen too much: broken bodies, corpses reduced by the virus to festering pools of organic sludge, and, emerging from them, creatures large and small that defied all laws of nature.

  He’d also seen what fear and paranoia could do to people – he’d witnessed his sister being set on fire because she hadn’t ‘looked right’.

  His thoughts returned to the chaos of three nights ago.

  I escaped. Freya and Grace were with me most of the way to the pen’s exit. Right? They had to have made it outside too, but must have gone in a different direction to him. He’d run towards the warehouses and storage containers; he could only hope the girls had run the other way. In which case, perhaps they’d both managed to get on one of the rescue ships? It really didn’t matter whether they’d boarded the American or Chinese ships, as long as they’d survived.

  The alternative wasn’t worth thinking about.

  They escaped, MonkeyNuts. They got away. He was happy to go along with that assurance.

  OK, so now I can worry about me.

  We’re really going to die in here.

  They had drinking water, lots of it, in large plastic drums, presumably a precautionary measure for the animals that had once been kept here.

  But no food.

  This morning he’d been looking out of the damaged corner window of the small upstairs office. Leon suspected there had to be tons of food sitting in the many warehouses nearby. They were in the middle of the freight-processing zone of a major international port. He was looking out at a labyrinth of flat corrugated roofs. A few hundred metres away, he could see a vast Jenga landscape of Maersk freight containers, with tall loaders looming over them.

  Somewhere out there, there had to be food that was sitting in tin cans, so temptingly close, but given the gauntlet they’d have to run, it might as well have been on the other side of the English Channel.

  The ground outside their building was criss-crossed with a dense latticework of viral threads and tendrils. Leon noticed they were concentrated around the doorways and loading bays of the various warehouses. He guessed they were there to act as trip wires or alarm sensors. Clearly the virus had sniffed out which of the nearby buildings contained people hiding away and was covering their points of exit.

  His mind drifted back to that underpass on the outskirts of Oxford. He and Freya had wandered through it way too casually, too distracted by the logjam of abandoned vehicles to notice that huge dangling root above them. Perhaps too distracted to have avoided stepping on some hair-thin thread-like feeler. They had alerted the virus to their presence on the way through and faced the consequences on their way back.

  He couldn’t see any viral creatures moving around at the moment, but suspected that thousands of them were tucked away in hiding. Some beneath the delivery trucks parked in the loading bays, others in the dark, cavernous interiors, ready to swarm out at the first tingling of their warning thread.

  There was little to see during the day, but at night, he knew, they all came out – he could hear them. On several occasions over the last couple of days they’d heard haunting animal-like sounds like the bellowing of a wounded cow, or the mournful lowing of whale song. Leon wondered if the virus was experimenting, producing larger creatures.

  The fact that they only came out in numbers at night supported someone’s suggestion that they were uncomfortable in daylight; that UV rays might be harmful to them.

  So far, the virus had tested the broken window only once. Leon, and a guy roughly his age called Jake, had used duct tape to seal the gap.


  That morning Cora had come upstairs to look and let out a blood-curdling scream. The entire window had been covered by a membranous purple skin that fluttered like a sail. A thick nodule of fibrous tissue had grown around the broken pane, probing the tape for a way in. It could ‘smell’ there was an opportunity here, but hadn’t found a way to exploit it yet. Realizing there was no way through, it had soon gone.

  Stuck in here with no way out, their small group had had plenty of time to talk, to get to know a little about each other and speculate about their predicament and how long they were going to last in here without any food.

  Cora was the woman who’d spoken to him and Freya briefly in the containment pen. Broad-framed and ruddy-faced, she was the kind of person Mum would have called a ‘no-nonsense northerner’.

  Finley was fifteen. He had frizzy black hair side parted, and thick glasses that reminded Leon of Milhouse.

  Artur was a middle-aged Hungarian man with limited English. Piecing together his sentence fragments, they’d worked out that he’d once had a job driving a truck. He’d been the one who’d reinforced the doors, barricading them with animal cages and heavy water drums and then, later, improvising a locking bar through the door’s handles.

  The other four in their small group were less forward in revealing anything about themselves. There was a young girl called Kim, a large round-shouldered man called Adewale, a slight and pale man called Howard and a middle-aged woman called Dawn who used to be a policewoman.

  Just random people. Not strong survival types. Ordinary people, who were still alive because . . . well, they were just lucky.

  Through the window, Leon watched the low and heavy clouds scudding by and raindrops racing each other down the unbroken glass panels.

  He wondered if they should have stayed put.

  If you’d stayed put, what . . . in Norwich? At Everett’s castle? You’d be dead already, asshole. Listen. Grace and Freya are probably in a better situation right now than you are. It’s time to sort your shit out, Leo.