by Casey, Ryan
And in that moment of total clarity, she realised what she’d done. Barney’s head on her lap. Whining. Crying.
She’d made a mistake.
She’d made a horrible mistake.
She rushed to the bathroom. Vomited right away. She dialled 111, and they’d told her to dial 999 and report it as an emergency right away.
She went into hospital. And she wanted someone beside her. She wanted someone to hold her hand. Someone to tell her she was okay.
But nobody ever came.
She didn’t tell a soul.
She didn’t want them to see her weakness.
She wanted them to see her as strong.
So she hadn’t told anyone about that incident to this day.
She heard another yelp inside the house. Tried to figure out whether it was Barney. It was hard to tell. But she couldn’t stop seeing Barney in her mind’s eye. Staring back at her. Sadness to his eyes. Hurt. Injured.
No.
She walked further down the pathway towards that bloody handprint. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Who did it belong to? Lisa? Someone else?
She didn’t know.
Only that she felt in danger. In trouble. Like anyone could be in there. The relative safety of living in a city like Preston disintegrating in a flash.
She reached the door. Stopped. Heart racing. Holding her breath.
You’ve got this. You can do this.
She pushed the door open.
The entrance hallway to Lisa’s home was just as beautiful as you’d imagine from the state of the garden. Cream walls. Photographs of dogs everywhere. Lisa cuddling up to a pair of Bichon Frise pups, beaming white smile on her gorgeous face. Photos of her and her boyfriend, Ralph, on holiday somewhere, their perfect figures a source of envy if they weren’t such nice damned people.
She listened to the silence in that entrance hall. A silence only broken occasionally by a yelp from a dog coming from the conservatory area.
You need to turn back. You shouldn’t be here. You should be somewhere safe. You should be—
Another whine from the conservatory.
Jasmine held her breath. “He—hello?”
No sound in response.
She pulled her phone from her pocket with her shaky hand. Dialled Lisa’s number again. This could still be a misunderstanding. It could still be some kind of false placed suspicion on her part.
She had to hope.
She had to hope...
And then she heard something.
Vibrating.
From the lounge.
Jasmine lowered the phone, cancelled the call. Lisa’s phone was here. Her van was out front.
Which could only mean one thing.
She was home.
She walked to the lounge door. Took a few deep breaths. You’ve got this. Don’t lose your shit.
She lifted a hand.
Grabbed the handle.
Held her breath.
Heart racing.
Head spinning.
And then she took another deep breath and pushed the door open.
The lounge was just as beautiful as the rest of the house. An ornate fireplace with photographs resting atop its stone exterior. A big fluffy white rug, right in the middle of the light green carpet, so warming just to look at. Cream leather sofas, with home improvement magazines tucked down the sides. Half-empty coffee cups with love hearts and little animal images embossed on them sat on the glass coffee table.
And then there was the conservatory.
The conservatory was where Lisa kept her dogs. Jasmine remembered the first time she visited here, seeing all those dogs playing around in this area of their own, where they had unlimited access to the large, fenced garden at the back.
She remembered the good feelings it sparked in her. The trust it built.
And then she saw the conservatory.
There were five dogs in there. Four of them stared back at her from behind the glass, the sun beaming through.
One of them lay flat on its side.
Jasmine covered her mouth. She couldn’t see Barney anywhere in there. And there was no sign of Lisa, either.
She walked slowly towards those conservatory doors. The four dogs jumped up, scratched at the glass. A couple of bichons. A westie. A Rottweiler.
The Staffordshire Bull Terrier lying dead in the middle of them.
And something struck Jasmine, then.
Something sparked a sickness inside her.
The blood around that terrier’s nose.
And the blood dripping from the eyes of the Rottweiler, too.
Jasmine turned away and cried. She didn’t know what this was. But she knew what it looked like.
The virus, if that’s what it was.
It didn’t just affect humans.
It affected animals, too.
And she had no way of knowing whether animal to human transmission was possible.
She wanted to go in there. She wanted to help those dogs. She wanted to set them free.
But then she saw the chaos outside. She saw that video from Paris replaying in her mind. She heard the sirens and remembered the warnings about staying indoors at all costs.
And before she could do a thing, before she could make a choice of any kind, she heard something else.
The front door slamming shut.
A footstep creaking its way into the house.
Chapter Eighteen
Noah fell back against the ground and tried to wriggle free of the psychotic homeless man perched atop him.
The sun beat down, made him squint. The man above him looked furious about something. He kept on shouting at Noah. Blood trickling down from his bushy beard, splashing against Noah’s face.
“You’ll pay for what you took from me, Lydia! I’ll make you suffer!”
He slammed Noah’s head against the ground. Kept on slamming it repeatedly, making him dizzy. Noah tasted the metallic tang of blood. Didn’t know whether it was his own or this guy’s. He just knew one thing, in this frantic haze.
He was fucked.
This guy was infected with whatever devil virus was going around. He’d watched him change in an instant from a bloke who cared about a fallen police officer to this enraged, manic psychopath.
And he had his blood all over him.
He was fucked. Totally fucked.
But he still felt that urge to fight back.
“I’ll make you suffer, bitch! I’ll make you—”
Noah swung a fist at the guy’s face. Cracked it against his jaw, hard. So hard his knuckles ached. His fist swelled up in an instant. He hadn’t thrown a punch in God knows how long, which didn’t seem like a bad thing until you needed to.
The man flopped to one side. Blood splattered from his mouth. He crouched over Noah, dazed for a few seconds.
And Noah had to take that opportunity.
He clambered his way from underneath the man. Staggered to his feet. He wanted to run back onto the Main Street, make a break for his home immediately. But then the pain in his right knee came back to him in an instant. Still bleeding badly. Shit. He needed to get to the emergency surgery. He needed to get it seen to. Stitched up. Immediately.
But then he saw the homeless man look back at him, blocking his path towards the high street.
He saw something light up in his enraged eyes.
“You think you can slap me, bitch? You think you’re gonna get away with that.”
And then he jumped up, blood oozing from his ears, his eyes, his mouth, his nose.
And he started racing towards Noah.
Noah spun around and ran down the alleyway, ran towards the bottom of the hill. He tried to run faster. He wasn’t exactly speedy, but he was quicker than this. He could do better than this.
But that knee.
That aching, throbbing knee.
He couldn’t go as quickly as he knew he could. That knee was holding him back.
He was going to collapse.
That bloke was going to catch up to him.
And judging by the anger in his eyes and the rage in his voice, he wasn’t going to let him live.
He looked over his shoulder. The man got closer. He might be desperately ill, but he was catching up with Noah.
And as Noah ran as quickly as his wounded leg allowed him, he wondered what was going on with this guy. Why had the police officer just fallen? Why were people reacting in different ways? What the hell was going on?
He turned around again, and he saw something else entirely.
The man. He was on his knees. Eyes rolled back into his skull.
And a look to his face.
A look of total sadness.
Noah stopped running. He knew he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t help it.
Because this man.
He was saying something.
Muttering something to himself.
Crying.
Noah walked back towards him slowly. Inched towards him. He wanted to hear what he was saying. What he was muttering. Something drew him towards him. He was covered in the guy’s blood anyway. He was fucked. No point fighting for survival when he’d already been caught.
He stopped a good few metres from the guy. Enough leeway to give him the chance to run again if he needed to.
The guy crouched there. Crying blood. Sobbing his heart out.
He sounded like the saddest guy Noah had ever come across.
And then he mumbled something.
“I’m sorry, Lydia. I didn’t... I didn’t mean to hurt you. Just—just come here. Come here. Please.”
Noah’s heart raced. Coldness engulfed his body.
And as much as he wanted to run away, he found himself feeling sorry for this man.
Because he was suffering.
He hadn’t chosen this fate.
If he could help him in even the smallest way...
“I’m sorry, Lydia. Forgive me. Please forgive me.”
He swallowed a lump in his throat.
Took a deep breath in, right through his nostrils.
“I’m not Lydia,” he said.
The man’s eyes rolled back into place, then.
He looked at Noah with total clarity.
“No,” he said. “No, you’re not.”
And then he launched himself to his feet.
“You’re the one who took her from me!”
He raced towards Noah.
Launched at him as Noah stumbled back.
As the pain in his knee seared through, made him topple over, made him fall back.
“You took her from me!”
And Noah scrambled around. Scrambled around for something he could use. Anything he could use.
A hammer.
A workman’s hammer lying right by his side, discarded, abandoned.
The man launched himself towards Noah, closer, closer.
“You took her from me. You took—”
It all happened so fast.
Noah grabbed the hammer.
The man threw himself at Noah.
Noah closed his eyes, and he swung that hammer.
Hard.
He felt the weight of the man’s skull as the hammer cracked against it.
Heard something split, crumble beneath the weight of his hit.
And then he heard the weight of the man’s body thump against the ground beside him.
He dragged himself back. Covered in blood and sweat. Heart racing. Struggling to breathe.
The man lay beside him. Twitching.
A pool of dark red blood oozing around his disfigured skull.
Noah threw up acidic bile. He tossed the hammer to one side.
And then he looked back at the man as he lay there—the man he’d killed—and he cried.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit—”
And then he heard it.
The footsteps.
The voice behind him.
“Noah?”
Chapter Nineteen
Jasmine heard the front door creak open, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood right on end.
Her heart raced. The bright, airy living room she stood inside suddenly grew suffocating, intense. The dogs in the conservatory started barking again, whining again. And Jasmine could barely bring herself to turn and look at them.
She didn’t want to be reminded of the dead one.
And she didn’t want to be reminded of the one with blood trickling from its mouth.
It was too much to take.
Footsteps creaked through the hallway. She heard panting. Shaking. Barney. It had to be Barney.
But then the bloody handprint on the front door.
And the sight of these others dogs, there in that conservatory.
She didn’t know what kind of a state Lisa was in.
And she didn’t know what kind of a state Barney was in, either.
She walked through the lounge, slowly. Backed up towards the kitchen. She’d take the back door if she had to. She didn’t want to abandon Barney. She didn’t want to leave him behind.
But she’d seen the condition people on the streets had been in.
She’d seen that video clip on Twitter. The one of Paris.
And the one of the nightclub incident.
And a question formed in her mind. A question she didn’t want to ask.
What if they were related?
What if those random acts of violence she’d read about on the news all linked back to this... well, whatever the hell it was?
She took another step back when she heard something that made her body freeze completely.
“Is someone there?”
That high-pitched voice. That shakiness to the words.
There was no denying who it was.
Lisa.
Jasmine swallowed a lump in her throat. The dogs started barking. Jumping up at the glass, just behind her. Growing more restless.
“I’m—I’m calling the police,” she called. “I’ll... I’ll give you five seconds to give yourself up.”
And as Jasmine stood there, clueless about what to do next, about whether to run, or whether to give herself up, she thought about the sound of Lisa’s voice.
She sounded okay.
She sounded scared.
Which was totally understandable.
“I’m serious,” Lisa called. “If you don’t give yourself up in the next five seconds, I’ll—”
“It’s me,” Jasmine said.
A pause. “Hello?”
“It’s Jasmine. Barney’s owner.”
“Jasmine?”
She stepped around the doorway.
Lisa stood at the entrance to the lounge. She was a short woman. Short blonde hair with dark streaks through it. Piercings in parts of her ear she didn’t even know could be pierced.
And by her side, Barney stood, tugging at his lead.
“Barney,” Jasmine said.
She didn’t even hesitate.
She didn’t hold back.
Infected or not infected, nothing was standing between her and her dog.
She launched herself at Barney. Felt his tongue licking her face. And she cried. She held him, and she offloaded. She didn’t like showing her emotions. She didn’t like breaking down like this.
But it just felt like all the day’s trauma had built up to this one moment, where she couldn’t keep the mask in place any longer.
“What—what happened here?” Lisa asked.
Guilt washed over Jasmine, then. She stood up, still ruffling Barney’s fur, feeling better already just for being in contact with him.
She looked at Lisa. Saw the way her eyes stared, wide and open, at the dogs in the conservatory.
The paleness of her face.
The tears in her eyes.
“Mutley?” she said. “Is—is he—”
“Lisa, you need to stay away from there.”
But Lisa wasn’t listening.
She pushed past Jasmine and Barney. Rushed towards thos
e glass conservatory doors; towards those dogs jumping up, scratching at the glass.
“Mutley,” she said. “What happened to him? What did you do to him?”
Jasmine shook her head. “It wasn’t me. I came here for Barney. Your phone. I tried your phone, but I couldn’t get hold. Something’s happening, Lisa. Something... something terrible.”
Lisa stared at those dogs behind the glass. Outside, Jasmine heard more sirens. She heard shouting in the street. And she heard the sounds of society slipping out of control. She wondered what would come next. How was the government going to respond to this? What kind of measures were they going to put in place?
And why the hell weren’t they doing anything already?
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Jasmine said, as Lisa sobbed at the glass doors of that conservatory right before her. “But—but something is. Something big. And you can’t go in that conservatory, Lisa. You can’t risk it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But it looks like dogs can get it, too. And it looks like two of those dogs have already got it. And one of them hasn’t made it.”
Lisa edged towards those conservatory doors. And then she took a step back, put her head in her hands, cried. That instinct to help these animals. That instinct to come to their aid. It was horrifying to witness.
Jasmine turned around to the television. It was all she could think of to convince Lisa of the severity of the situation. She switched on the television.
And right away, an emergency news broadcast covered the screen.
Blue background.
Bold text.
A high pitched tone, ear-piercing, on every single channel.
THIS IS AN EMERGENCY BROADCAST.
REMAIN IN YOUR HOMES. AVOID PHYSICAL CONTACT WITH STRANGERS. WAIT FOR QUARANTINE AND EVACUATION.
And that was it. Those four sentences. No attempt to reassure. No “we’ve got this under control” bullshit.
This was serious.
This was real.
This was now.
She looked around and saw Lisa sitting at the glass, staring into that room. The Bichon with the bloody nose licking the window, wagging her little tail.
“We’ve got to lock the doors,” Jasmine said, realising full well any attempt to get back home was suicide at this point. “We’ve—we’ve got to shut the curtains. And we need to make sure we don’t go in that conservatory. We keep an eye on them. We find a way to feed them. To give them water. But we do not open those doors. Okay?”