This Plague of Days Season One (The Zombie Apocalypse Serial) (22 page)

Jaimie plucked the washcloth from Theo, rinsed it in the bowl of water on the floor and wrung it out before placing it carefully on his father’s forehead again. His father stirred and shifted and then settled back down into a snore.

The boy thought about his father’s friend. Kenny was a dead boy who sounded very much alive to his father. His memory had made his father so sad. Memory could be dangerous and, Jaimie thought uncomfortably, his own memory was excellent.

As the boy climbed the stairs to bed, he wondered if ghosts were made real through the power of memory. He thought about the definition of “haunted”. The feel of the word on the page matched the feeling he got when he had touched his father’s forehead. D’Arcy Kennigan was still alive somehow. His father had the power to make the long dead live.

Jaimie had read Halloween stories about ghosts and curses. When his mother noticed him reading one of those books, she often said, “You know none of those stories are real, right?” But the boy knew his father tended to remember bad things very well while his mother seemed to remember only things that pleased her.
 

When they argued, his mother sometimes asked Anna, “Do you wanna be right or do you wanna be happy?” That binary choice seemed to sum up his parents. Theo chose being right. Jack chose to forget.

Haunts and curses and ghosts. These things seemed to be coming back alive as the world that was, real and regular, slowly ground to a halt. Jaimie climbed into bed, content as he fell asleep, because sleep was the only time he wasn’t bombarded with flashes of light and disturbing colors and more information than he wanted.
 

Like a vampire in sleep, the boy closed a lid on a box, blocking out insistent perception. He did not suffer dreams. Sleep brought the relief of darkness. Everyone worried so much about the end of things. Jaimie didn’t understand their concern. He thought death would be black and empty.
The word for death is so stark and beautiful
, he thought, as he slipped into darkness:
Oblivion. Such a beautiful word.

But living without his father’s presence, his protection and his hand to hold? That worry chased the boy into a fitful sleep.

If he could have seen the disaster unfold in London, the boy wouldn’t have slept at all.

Now rabid wolves wear the crown

B
ored, the woman in red traipsed around the fourth-floor office of the building on Birdcage Walk. The man who owned the office stared up at her from the floor by the photocopier. The hole in his forehead was small and neat. The hole at the back of his head was not.

“Poor wage ape. I’ll call you Allen.” Shiva mused. “You’re going to miss the party, Allen.”

As if she’d voiced a magic spell, she heard the first screams rise. Her wolves were loose. “Ha! Ha! They’re playing my tune, Allen! Sutr-Z has come to call! I wish you could see this, Allen, but you can’t seem to take your eyes off me. Can’t blame you, though. I look great in red. I am the Red Death.”

She went to the window and watched the guards at Buckingham Palace’s outer perimeter. They cocked their heads, turning this way and that to divine the direction of the climbing terror headed their way. Screams bounced and echoed off towers and through the concrete and stone canyons of London’s streets.

“My army is coming, boys. And so many of them. And so hungry. And so angry.”

The screams grew. Many voice became one choir, united in fear.

“Like Genghis Khan, I drive the innocent before me.” She laughed and poured herself another glass of Chardonnay.
 

To her left, she saw the civilians trying to outrun her army. Precious few were fast enough. A few athletes who looked like they’d be at home on the soccer field ran by fast, wisely not daring to look back.
 

After them came security men running for their lives like rabbits from a relentless predator. The hunters had become game. The police officers, most dressed in riot gear, cast off their armour as they ran, trying to gain speed and headed for the fortress that was Buckingham Palace.

Shiva toasted their efforts. “Allen, I think this is an excellent time to quote Lewis Carroll. My father wanted me to become an English teacher instead of a virologist. Imagine what would have happened if I’d let him have his way? Today would be just another boring day of slavery.”

Men, women and children, young and old, were driven before the horde. Any who fell were set upon with teeth. The slowest were swallowed into the crowd and, with one bite, added to Shiva’s army.

Shiva cleared her throat. “Pay attention, Allen. I recited this in school and haven’t lost a line, I’m sure! ‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Callooh-effin’-Callay!’ She chortled in her joy!’ Well…I skipped over a lot to get to the meat of the issue.”

The woman in red took another sip of wine and pulled her chair up to the window to watch her army’s rampage. Below her, a man — well, what had once been a man — launched himself at the legs of a woman carrying a child. He sunk his teeth into her calf before she hit the pavement. Two women, dressed as nurses, went for the child, each pulling an arm as if in a tug-of-war. The dispute was settled when another ghoul ripped the child away.
 

“Allen, this is getting distasteful. I think it’s time I let the authorities know they aren’t the authorities anymore.”
 

She opened her purse and took out her cell phone. She put the battery back in and sat back to wait. Before she took two breaths, her phone purred and vibrated.
 

* * *
 

 
Dr. Craig Sinjin-Smythe ran from the thunder. The pounding of thousands of feet came first. Then a shout followed by screams. Then more screams until the shrieks built to an unholy din.
 

The doctor broke into an office building off Maiden Lane. He noted there was a North Face store nearby. If all went according to plan, that could prove useful. Alarms sounded, but security forces were spread far too thinly for him to worry about the police. But Interpol worried Sinjin-Smythe. Since the compromise of the isolation unit at Cambridge, undoubtedly he would shoulder the blame.

His dentist, Dr. Neil McInerney, operated a clinic in a second floor suite of the building. From his vantage point, the running crowds below were far too close. The uninfected were driven from their homes by the infected and run to ground, rabid hounds on timid foxes.

Sinjin-Smythe’s cell battery flashed low and he was grateful to find that the power was still on. He’d grabbed his charger in his rush out of his office, but he hadn’t dared to put his phone’s battery back in place until he was miles away from the explosion.
 

He also had a memory stick with all the research files he had on the Sutr Virus. If Interpol showed up, he might have to bargain with that to live. He reasoned he was too valuable to jail. But it wasn’t beyond the authorities to put him back to work, jailed in a lab.
 

He’d been trying to call his fiancée for hours, always on the move and far from the ruins of his laboratory and not daring to go home. If Interpol had Ava, they would answer and tell him to give himself up for questioning. It was reasonable to assume the love of his life, Ava Keres, was dead of the virus.

He tried calling her again from the dentist’s phone. He hadn’t had much hope since the landlines were usually clogged. Not so, now. It rang.

The landline worked, but he got Ava’s voicemail: “I’m not available to take your call right now. I’m probably in the loo or handling some desperately dangerous chemicals so if you could leave a message, that would be brilliant. Or, if you’re calling to sell me something, please do kill yourself. Cheers!”

As the mob careened by below him, he put one hand over his other ear to block out the fear.

Sinjin-Smythe left a voice message on her phone: “Darling, if you get this message, I want you to know that I still love you and whatever is going on, we can work it out somehow. I’m sorry if I did something which would make you…which would make this happen. The lab’s gone red, Ava. You and I are the only ones who got out. The powers that be will have questions.
 

“I’m going to turn my phone on and off sporadically because I want to talk to you before I talk to Interpol. If you can get this message, you can call me. Call me, Ava. I love you and I think I have a way for us to get away from this mess and work out some answers. Call me, please. I need to know you’re okay.”
 

He would have cried, but there wasn’t time. In case Ava was alive, he had to arrange the escape route he hoped for. He looked to the wall. Opposite the dental chair where he’d received his last cleaning, Sinjin-Smythe gazed at the framed photo of Dr. Neil McInerney, standing proudly at the helm of his 24 foot sailboat.
 

The virologist stabbed a button on the office phone marked “home” and called his dentist for an emergency appointment.

Human jaws become monsters' maws

J
aimie wandered downstairs, ravenously hungry. It was 11 a.m. His mother gave him a nod and a bowl of the canned stew.

Anna was reading a book called
Murders Among Dead Trees
at the kitchen counter. She glanced up at her brother and smiled. “Siddown, sleepyhead. There are fires downtown. There’s nothing on the radio about it, but you can see plumes of smoke from the backyard.”

Jaimie spooned the stew into his mouth in a hurry and returned to the stove for more.
 

“No, Jaimie,” Jack said. “You can’t have more.”

Jaimie stood still, holding the bowl out to his mother.
 

“We’re rationing.” She was stern. “Go look that up. Rationing.”

Anna got up and took the bowl from her brother. “Easy, mom. He can have my share. I can’t eat, anyway.”

Jack put her hand to her daughter’s cheek. “Are you feeling okay?”
 

“Sure,” said Anna. “I felt a bit queasy this morning but I’m okay now.”

Her mother stared at her, weighing her daughter’s words.

“I’m fine,” Anna said. “No fever.”

“You look flushed.”

“That’s just healthy. You’re too pale, Mom. Please just let Jaimie have my stew. I can’t even look at it. If he has my share, what’s the difference?”

“You’re sure? We have to make the food last. We’ve been slow about this, but you understand Mr. Oliver is right about saving the food, making it last until things get back to normal?”

“That might be a long wait.”

“It’s a flu. The flu comes every year. This is worse than normal, but it’s still just a flu. Someday we’ll look back on this — ”

“And laugh?”

Jack heaved a sigh and stared at her daughter. Jaimie could see a new thought forming as the colours of her aura changed. His mother’s energy field charged up, from green to a sickly yellow that quickly slid into an angry crimson.
 

“Anna! I’m worried about you getting sick, but…is there a chance you’re pregnant?”

“Mom!”

“Because there really couldn’t be a worse time!”

“Mom. Stop talking.” Anna said. She handed Jaimie her bowl.
 

Jaimie sat at the table, opened his dictionary and paged through to the
R
s. His mother hovered a moment, unsure whether to attack or retreat.

“Dad was so hot when I checked on him, he started taking his clothes off. He was mumbling and shivering,” Anna said.
 

His sister’s face pointed at him as she spoke, but it was her mother she was speaking to. Jack’s heels struck the hardwood floor hard up the hallway as she stalked away, toward her husband.

Jaimie wondered if his mother had noticed Anna had not answered her question. When he finished the stew, he picked up his dictionary and went to the front room. He sat in the doorway and listened while Mr. Oliver and his mother spoke in hushed tones by his sleeping father.

* * *

Douglas Oliver knelt beside Theo, his eyebrows knit together above his sharp blue eyes. “Comes in and out of it,” he said to Jack, “but your husband will be okay. Just give it time and watch the kids for any sign they’ve caught it. We should be keeping them away from him.”

“They seem fine,” Jack said, “although this thing seems to have quite a variable incubation period.”

“Yes. That’s one of the reasons it has spread so well. We fly all over the world picking up bugs here and there and transporting them back home. Sometimes these strains jump species, getting stronger with each jump. Now it’s come for us. We’ve been overconfident.”
 

The old man looked up and caught Jack’s annoyed look. “Sorry. I should be taking care of Theo. No one else. I’m immune. In fact, if I’d thought of it sooner, I would have put up some plastic over the door or kept your husband over at your house instead of bringing him to mine. We have to keep the kids away from him. It’s especially important for your daughter to stay away from him.”

“
Especially
Anna? Why?”

The old man felt for Theo’s pulse and stared at his watch, perhaps taking a count, perhaps playing for time to choose his words carefully. “Pardon me for asking, but uh…were you planning on having any more children?”

“
What?
No! I’m done having kids. I’m past that.”
 

“Sorry,” Oliver said, “but Anna is not past child-bearing age. In the near future…well…” He shrugged.

“What are you saying? That’s it’s up to my daughter to repopulate the Earth? This is absurd.”

“I don’t think it’s absurd at all. It’s not like I expect her to be a baby factory all on her own. It’s just, I look around and I think of Kurt Vonnegut.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Things come apart. After Vonnegut saw how Dresden fell in one night to Allied bombs, he was surrounded by carnage. We’re surrounded by carnage, but the houses are still standing, so you don’t see it yet. This is a stealth Apocalypse. You wander around the neighborhood and it feels like everything’s pretty much the same except it seems especially quiet. I’ve seen more wildlife lately. Deer, cats…a lot of rats.”