by Casey, Ryan
She felt shuffling to her side. Saw Barney, her Rottweiler, staring up at her with his slobbering face.
“What, lad?” she said. “You’ve had your dinner. I dunno what else you’re after.”
Upon hearing the word “dinner,” Barney tilted his head and whined a little, a cry for attention.
Jasmine sighed. Wrapped her arm around Barney. He was her lifesaver. He was six years old now, and she’d saved him from a rescue centre a year ago. He didn’t like blokes, which wasn’t much of a worry for Jasmine because she never had any blokes around here. Didn’t have time for that.
And she wasn’t sure she wanted anyone to get in the way of her ambitions anyway. Not since Noah.
Her stomach fluttered a little when she thought of Noah. She thought about him a lot when she was alone at night. Wondered how he was doing. How he was getting on. Preston wasn’t exactly a huge place as cities went, but it was strange they’d never bumped into each other once since breaking up.
Probably for the better, really. She knew how much she’d hurt him when she broke up with him. It’s just there was pressure on all sides; pressure she couldn’t let derail her work, because her work was her life.
But she missed him sometimes. Especially on nights like these.
And especially after what’d happened with Kelly earlier today.
She thought back to the look on Kelly’s face as she’d delivered the bad news. And she felt so guilty about what she’d done. She wanted to take it back. She wanted to change her decision.
But then she heard her dad’s voice whispering in her ear.
“You can’t be emotional in life. You have to be pragmatic. Emotion never got anyone anywhere. Not even artists. They pretend they rely on emotion, but it’s just not true. The ones you hear about, they’re just as ruthless as the top businessmen.”
Words like that always stuck with her. The ambitions her parents had for her. And that guilt she’d feel if she didn’t live up to the high family standards set for generations. Her parents were well off, after all. Her dad was a stockbroker, and her mum worked as a solicitor, dealing with some of the most high profile cases the country had seen. She had an older brother, Sam, who worked as a banker in London, and spent a lot of time jetting around the world to a whole host of glamorous destinations. Not someone she’d ever been all that close with, really.
And Dad was so proud of Sam. Rightly so. He’d done well for himself.
But it just added pressure to Jasmine. A weight on her shoulders.
A sense that she had to climb the ladder.
She had to achieve.
She was the only one of their family who hadn’t gone to Oxford or Cambridge, which already irked Mum and Dad. And when she’d started seeing Noah, well. Cumbria University. Poor grades. Bouncing around in life with no real direction. They weren’t his biggest fan it was safe to say.
She remembered Mum wrapping an arm around her when she broke up with Noah. And the words she said to her—the most comforting words she could muster in that moment of great pain for Jasmine—she’d never forget.
“Some of us are achievers, and some of us marry achievers. You need to find yourself an achiever, Jas-bear. Someone going places. And we’ll still be proud of you. I’m always so proud of you.”
She didn’t say anything at the time, but those words acted as a call to arms to Jasmine. A call to arms to prove her mother wrong. To achieve.
And sometimes that meant making horrible decisions.
Like the one she’d made today.
She looked down at her phone. Hovered over Kelly’s number. She’d been debating ringing her all evening.
But what could she say? Sorry? Can we start again? No. That was pathetic. She deserved what was coming to her. She deserved friendlessness. Loneliness. She’d done this herself.
But as she hovered over that number, she found herself wanting to ring Kelly. Wanting to tell her that she was giving up at Henderson’s. That friendship and happiness meant more to her than achievement.
She tapped on Kelly’s name and waited for an answer.
“Sorry, the person you called is not available right now. Please leave a message after the—”
“Shit,” Jasmine said.
She tossed her phone to one side. Pressed her fingers against her temples.
And then she grabbed her phone again and opened up WhatsApp.
She went to send Kelly a message telling her she needed to speak to her about something important when she noticed something.
Kelly’s WhatsApp photo “Last Online” status was gone.
Kelly would never get rid of that photo or that status.
So it only meant one thing.
She’d blocked Jasmine.
From close friend and colleague to blocked, just like that.
Kelly wanted to leave her flat. She wanted to walk across town to Kelly’s. She wanted to tell her how sorry she was and how she was going to put things right.
But in the end, she just exited WhatsApp, threw her phone to one side, closed her eyes, and cuddled Barney close.
She didn’t see the Netflix home page time out and return to BBC News.
She didn’t see the reports of strange cases of illness and random acts of violence in New York.
And Berlin.
And Stockholm.
And Barcelona.
And Beijing.
And Moscow.
The blood.
The violence.
And the death.
And even if she saw them, she didn’t see the link.
Nobody did.
Not yet.
Chapter Eight
Peter Walmsley sat in the cabinet room of 10 Downing Street and wished he was anywhere but here.
It was a stifling hot day, for one. Far too warm to be wearing a full suit. Days like these were for relaxing by a pool with a glass of whisky in hand. Perhaps even inhaling a cigar, for good measure.
And sure. He might well be the Minister for Health. But he hated his job. It was all a part of the ladder climb to the top of the party, where he had sights set on their leader.
But, golly. He’d been put in this position. He was proud to be handed the responsibility, much as he didn’t want to be in this particular role. And he’d serve it to the absolute max of his capacity.
He looked across the table at Prime Minister Watson. He was short, with jet black hair and a little goatee. He was one of those people who was surprisingly uncharming and remarkably uninteresting in person, in contrast to his electric public image. He was viewed as in touch with the common people on the one hand, and a friend of the rich on the other. For the very first time in a long time, after a tumultuous few years for the nation, Prime Minister Watson had actually achieved a remarkable feat that even sceptics like Peter didn’t imagine were possible. He’d united the nation. He’d secured a devastatingly thumping majority that would ensure power for many years to come.
And now the nation could work on healing. “Cracking On,” as he aptly put it in his campaign speeches.
But there was a problem.
Prime Minister Watson was an idiot who could not be trusted.
He sat there and looked around the table of the cabinet meeting room at all of his front bench allies. He’d surrounded himself with a dangerous majority of, pardon the term, arsekissers, and advisers all with their own dark motivations.
He needed telling when he was on the wrong track.
And Peter feared Watson was desperately on the wrong track when it came to his plans for another round of public spending cuts.
And his ignorance over a looming public health crisis Peter feared was taking its grip on the world.
“The choice we face isn’t an easy one,” Watson said. “It’ll be a tough pill for the public sector to swallow, especially after the years of necessary pay rise freezes they’ve had to endure. But the global economy is in recession. We simply cannot deliver on our promise to increase public spending. We need to b
e responsible. We need to convey a message of unity that we’re all in this together. Each and every one of us. That means no more meals at lavish restaurants. It means no more paparazzi shots of us on holiday in the Caribbean. We are the government of the working person. We have to become the working person. They have to see us like that. Or they will abandon us, and they will punish us.”
Peter shook his head. Puffed out his lips. He could barely keep his dislike for Watson in check. It all stemmed from a very publicly nasty party leadership election campaign, where Peter entered as the frontrunner and was left victim to a nasty barrage of attacks from Watson.
What more, Watson knew he hated the idea of being Health Secretary. The NHS was a poisoned chalice, and being the figurehead in a time of more public spending cuts was going to break him completely.
It was all planned.
All calculated.
But there was something much greater on Peter’s mind.
“Something the matter, Peter?”
Peter looked around at Watson. Saw him and a few of his closest allies staring back at him, smirking.
Peter looked down at the papers in his hand and took a deep breath. “I’d like to request an urgent COBRA meeting on the recent swathe of violent deaths across the globe.”
A few sniggers. A few smirks. Particularly from Watson himself.
“My golly, Peter. If we had a COBRA meeting for every single darned violent death across the globe, we’d never get any work done.”
“There are similarities in the deaths,” Peter cut in. “First, a period of relative peace. And then a very sudden onset of dramatic symptoms. Nausea. Vomiting. Shivering. Splitting migraines. Eventually, people start bleeding from their orifices. Some experience severe delusional psychosis, leading them to violence towards themselves and to others. Some die. Others don’t die. Some show symptoms soon after coming into contact. Others take a lot longer—”
“And do you have a name for this virus, seeing as you’re the first to discover it? Or are you going to borrow one of the terms your favourite conspiracy theorist websites use?”
Laughs all around the table. All of them sneering at him, taking pity on him. He knew it sounded exaggerated. There had only been a few reported cases of some kind of bizarre random acts of violence and deaths around the world. Suicides. Delusions. Beatings. All of them apparently unrelated on the surface. But not to some. Not to those who’d done their research.
And sure. He might’ve stumbled upon spurious links on conspiracy websites.
But he was concerned.
“You might find this amusing,” Peter said, “but I don’t. We’ve had four deaths in Berlin. Three in the United States. And two on a plane that landed in Manchester two days ago. We need to keep an eye on this. Monitor it closely. Because this is how pandemics start. Complacency.”
“The four deaths in Berlin were cardiac-related,” Watson snapped. “They took place at a triathlon where the temperatures were off the scale. The three in United States were in two cases a murder-suicide from a deranged worker and the other a nasty case of influenza. And the cases in Manchester are being investigated, but it appears everyone who left that plane screened as absolutely fine. No symptoms. No trace of any kind of illness. Strange things happen, Peter. And I know you’re passionate. I know you can get a little… carried away. But you need to relax. You’re playing far too much Plague, Inc.”
He heard the laughs and the jeers again, and he saw the way they looked at him. He knew he didn’t belong here. He knew he was probably exaggerating the severity of the situation.
But he just wanted something.
He needed something.
“Peter,” Watson said, leaning across the table. “I understand your concern. It comes from a good place. But no other nation has issued a public health warning. No scientists worth their weight in gold fear this is anything other than a spate of unrelated deaths. No real climate scientists believe the hogwash about ancient amoeba and dinosaur deadlies storming victoriously from their ice cap slumber. And there are no signs China or Russia have any appetite for any kind of biological voodoo, especially with the state of the market. So relax. Please. Your heart is in the right place. You need to tell your head to catch up.”
More laughs. More chuckles. More looks of pity, too.
“I hope you’re right,” Peter said.
And then he sat back into his chair and listened to his Prime Minister talk nonsense about a country he barely knew, about people whose lives he had no real value for, and all he could do was stare with terror at the thought that this man was responsible for his great nation.
A trickle of blood rolled down onto his lip.
A taste of metal.
And a sudden, sharp pain in his skull.
And then gone.
He wiped the blood away without a single one of these aloof buffoons noticing a thing.
Swallowed a sickly lump in his throat.
Felt a chill creep across his body, then disappear just as quickly as it arrived.
Just the weather.
Just the stress.
It was nothing serious.
Nothing serious at all.
Probably.
Chapter Nine
Noah walked into his fifth storey flat and wished today was over already.
It was evening. He’d spent most of the day out and about in town, just trying to get what happened out of his head. He liked walking when he had something on his mind. No real direction in mind. Just set off and walk. Let the thoughts sort themselves out. Let the battles in his mind play out as much as they needed to in order to reach some kind of resolution.
But upon arriving at his flat, Noah saw no clean resolution. Not this time.
He desperately needed a new job. But at the same time, he needed money for his rent as soon as possible, too.
And his flat mate, Eddie.
The smell of Indian takeaway hit him the second he walked through the door. There was a pile of mail by his feet, untouched. Clearly Eddie hadn’t left the flat all day. He could hear the television speakers bouncing off the walls. No doubt some stoner comedy or other, probably one Eddie had seen a ton of times already.
Noah walked down the creaky corridor. He just wanted to lock himself in his room and go to bed. He wasn’t bothered about eating tonight. He didn’t want to have to spend any time in Eddie’s company. He didn’t want to have to tell him the news. The news that the pair of them were going to have to find somewhere else. Which inevitably meant Eddie becoming homeless. His parents both died in an accident three years back. Noah, being the good friend he was, had supported him ever since.
He’d bounced around jobs. Construction. Bar work. But nothing lasted. Nothing ever lasted in this city.
So Noah was doing what he could for his mate while he got himself back onto his feet.
But it was a hell of a long time out of work for Eddie now, and it didn’t look like he was all that motivated about finding anything new.
Noah walked towards the end of the dark corridor. Went to open his bedroom door.
“Noah?”
Noah’s stomach sank. He looked around. Eddie stood there, white T-shirt barely covering his rather large belly. A few orange patches covered it where he’d spilled his takeaway. He had longish hair and a bushy beard, with crooked, cracked glasses. He was a big guy. Something he always insisted he’d change. He’d have these days where he went out and bought a load of healthy foods, only to leave them in the fridge and order in a takeaway anyway. It’s like to Eddie the mere idea or intention of being healthy was enough to satisfy his delusion.
He worried about his mate. Because he was the only one he had.
And in a roundabout way, Eddie was the only person Noah was really close to, too.
“Grabbed us an Indian from Spice,” Eddie said, sucking his fingers. “King prawn bhuna. Your favourite.”
“Karahi,” Noah said.
“Karate?”
“No. Karahi
. Karahi’s my favourite. Not Bhuna.”
Eddie held up his hands. “Well sorry for thinking of you, you ungrateful git. I mean, oh well. A leftover bhuna. I suppose I’ll have to just finish it off myself…”
“Sorry,” Noah said. “Just been a rough day is all.”
“Freaky McFreakoid again?”
Noah held his tongue. He was annoyed at Eddie for sending that message about his boss right while he’d been in the midst of trying to save his job. But at the same time, Eddie didn’t know what the situation was. He didn’t know he’d be in there, or that Noah would drop his stupid phone.
But as Eddie walked back into the lounge, muttering to himself, Noah realised he couldn’t put off this impossible conversation he had to have any longer.
“I need to talk to you, Eddie.”
He followed Eddie into the lounge. The lounge was very much Eddie’s domain. An absolute dump, in other words. Empty crisp packets lay across the floor. Bottles of Pepsi, most of them half open and flat. A light smell of cannabis hanging in the air. And that fifty-inch television, far too big for this room, dominating the whole thing.
Noah loved his flat. He loved his space. It wasn’t an ideal location. He spent some nights wide awake because of some party upstairs or whatever.
But it was home.
Anything was better than moving back in with his parents.
Anything was better than accepting he wasn’t as responsible as he felt he was.
His parents would just love him to accept that.
“I need to talk to you about summat, too,” Eddie said, planting himself in the cove his fat arse had formed in the cream leather armchair. Custom-fit, Eddie always said. “Landlord bobbed round. Said he had something for you.”
Noah frowned. “Landlord? We never hear from the landlord. Did you ask what it was about?”
Eddie stared at the telly and shrugged, sipping from a bottle of Pepsi. “Didn’t ask. He said it was for you anyway.”
“Where is it? By the door?”
“On the kitchen table.”
Noah stopped. “So you could’ve picked up the rest of the mail while you were at the door, couldn’t you?”