Voices sounded nearby. Dan immediately pressed himself flush against the wall and Lucy copied. Two neighbors from their building were carrying out a body. From the age gap they looked to be father and son, although the face masks made the relationship harder to judge. Neither man paid her or Dan the slightest bit of attention, too preoccupied as they were with the disposal of what was presumably a family member. The younger man, who looked around thirty, put a hand on the other man’s shoulder, as the latter visibly shook with grief, surveying the body he’d laid out. The pair stood like that for a long minute before the son delicately led the father back into the building.
Dan held them in position for a further minute. Before they entered their building, they painstakingly wiped the soles of their hazmat suits onto the slimy entrance mat.
“We’re gonna need to think of an alternative to this,” noted Dan, looking at the sodden mat.
They repeated the immaculate wiping routine again on the eighth floor, checking each other’s soles for seeds at least three times before they felt safe entering their home.
When they finally got into their apartment, the last of Lucy’s adrenaline wore off. She slumped, sliding her back down the wooden door until she sat, legs splayed out on the floor before her. Her head pounded with thirst and hunger. Dan similarly succumbed to exhaustion and slumped adjacent to her.
“We can’t do it like this,” mumbled Lucy. “We need to drink. And eat. There’s no point having these suits if we starve inside them. I think we need to risk taking them off for both.”
“What we need,” considered Dan, dozily, “is a canary.”
“What?”
“Like miners used to have. They’d have a canary in the mine, which would die when the gas levels got dangerous. We need something like that in here. A pet – something that we can use to gauge if the air’s safe to breathe or not. The disease kills everything, right? So if we’ve got, like, a budgie in here, and it’s alive, then we can assume the air’s safe.”
“What if we take our suits off then the budgie dies?” countered Lucy. “Then it’s too late to save ourselves.”
“So we wait. Three hours – that’s what the radio said.”
“They said twenty-four,” corrected Lucy.
“Yeah, but three if it’s going to kill you. If we’ve got a canary and it’s still alive three hours after we get back, then we’d know the air’s safe, right?”
“What if our canary just so happens to have a natural resistance that we don’t?” frowned Lucy.
“Then we’re screwed,” conceded Dan. “But we’re also screwed if we don’t drink or eat. So on balance –”
“It’s worth the risk,” completed Lucy. She nodded, looking around their partially sealed apartment. It made sense; without a vent and an airlock, they needed some other indication of the air’s viability.
“Where are we going to get a canary from?” she asked, dreading the answer as she pictured them trying to break into a pet shop of different starving animals.
“The Spanish woman from downstairs,” said Dan, renewed purpose in his voice. “I bet you she had a pet – a cat, or something.”
“But she had the disease.”
“She might have caught it when she was out. She had her key in her hand, right? So she was returning to the apartment, not leaving it. Maybe she’s got a pet in there that’s still alive?”
It was worth a try, for sure. Lucy hauled her fatigued body up from the ground as Dan marched off into the bedroom determinedly, returning with two flashlights.
Lucy retrieved the Spanish lady’s bleached key from the sideboard where they’d left it the night before and steeled herself. “OK. Let’s do it.”
***
The door opened with a click. She checked Dan was still close by her shoulder then gently pushed it open. “Hello?” she called out, hoping desperately there’d be no reply. Lucy took a few steps into the deserted apartment, and as she did so began to notice details of the dead woman’s life.
The windows were covered by thin white embroidered curtains – the sort of ornate patterns that were all the rage a century ago. Hanging on the walls were a number of religious artefacts: crucifixes, pictures of the Virgin Mary, and figurines of assorted saints. In the corner, next to the TV, was a small prayer stool with a gospel resting on the shelf. Manuela had clearly been a devout woman.
On the kitchen worktop were two packets of medication.
“Take two tablets daily, orally, with water,” said Lucy, reading one of the labels aloud.
“Are you paying attention?” snapped Dan. “We’re on a mission here.”
She mentally swore at him, but didn’t pick a fight, knowing that he had a point. She placed the tablets back down and explored the apartment further. The woman’s bedroom was almost completely pitch black; the curtains were fully drawn and the lights were out. Standing on the threshold and peering in, Lucy cast her flashlight around the room.
She jumped and backed up a few paces as a scuffling noise from the dark corner startled her.
“Bullseye!” cheered Dan, appearing by her side and shining his light onto the terrified-looking hamster. “I knew she’d have a pet,” he chimed triumphantly, walking towards the cage and swearing loudly as he marched his shin into the side of the bed.
“I’ll get it, you point the lights,” said Lucy, handing him her flashlight and taking over as Dan nursed his shin.
Lucy moved the hamster cage into the middle of the main room and they hunted for the woman’s stash of pet food; the pathetic ball of fur looked as hungry as they were, and they needed it to not die.
“What kind of a grown woman keeps a pet hamster, anyway?” asked Dan, as they rifled through Manuela’s cupboards. “I take it back,” he said immediately. “She’s got Twinkie bars. She’s a saint. Rest in peace Manuela, bringer of Twinkies.”
“Knock it off, Dan,” grumbled Lucy. “You should respect the dead – especially in their own home. Now let’s go,” she said, standing up with the cage in one hand and an armful of pet food in the other. “We can always come back if we need more.”
“Fine,” said Dan, stuffing Twinkie bars into a box of cereal he’d also decided to appropriate. “Make sure we stick it by the front door, yeah? We wanna be able to see him when we get in. Oh, and shotgun choosing the name. I name you –” He paused, while Lucy walked towards the door with scathing indifference. “– Madonna, the Virgin Hamster. Presumably, I don’t know. Maybe this guy got laid a lot in high school. Or girl. I really don’t know much about hamsters.”
Lucy pressed on without responding, carrying Madonna the Virgin Hamster up the stairs, with Twinkie cereal boy in tow. She stepped back and let Dan open the door. “Welcome to your new home, Madonna,” she said, crossing the threshold. “Please don’t be infected.”
SEVEN
Canaries
________________________________________
The end-of-curfew siren woke Lucy with a jolt. Unlike the three blasts used to begin the curfew at night, the morning signal was just one blast of around eight seconds. It was an appalling way to wake up.
Dan, however, didn’t stir, the lucky bastard. Lucy instinctively went to rub her eyes, banging her glove-covered hands straight into her visor. She groaned, flopping back down onto the mattress where she lay, listening to the crinkling of her suit. An amplified army announcement from the street interrupted her wallowing.
She turned towards the source of the sound, her hazmat suit creaking and crumpling as it twisted beneath her. The truck slowly rumbled by, repeating the same message that KGO 810 had broadcast two nights previously: “All able-bodied citizens: report to City Hall for immediate reassignment. Rations will no longer be delivered. You must collect them in person. Report to City Hall.”
Her eyes fell upon a picture on her bedside table – a framed portrait she’d sketched of the two of them, illuminated as it was by the morning light. She turned again and looked at her sleeping partner now, noting thei
r matching plastic pajamas. Perhaps she should do them a fresh portrait.
She gave Dan a nudge, then a slightly less tender one which actually woke him up. “We need to go.”
Madonna was still alive when they awoke, so once again they took the calculated risk to remove their hazmat suits. Seizing the precious window of safety, they hastily ate, cleaned themselves using wet wipes, and defecated, before putting the suits straight back on. The suits were off and on again within twelve minutes (Dan timed them using the wall clock). The volume of food they had to gobble down left them both feeling physically ill afterwards, but it was necessary given that they didn’t know when, or where, it would next be safe to eat.
Once again they called on Manuela’s apartment for help. They needed to be out of the suits to be able to take a shit, which meant the hamster-certified air of their apartment was the only safe place to risk doing it. But they’d sealed up all the utilities, and an ever-mounting pile of sewage in the apartment’s stagnant toilet didn’t seem like a desirable plan. The inglorious resolution they settled on involved Dan’s bucket, a makeshift lid, and a shameful hurried journey downstairs wearing the hazmat suits to Manuela’s apartment, where they emptied the bucket into her disused toilet.
“We need to remember to flush that toilet when the power comes on next,” noted Dan, returning the bucket to their apartment before the pair of them set off out.
With calories at a premium now, they decided they should get the bus to City Hall. But thirty minutes elapsed and no bus came. Lucy had never felt so grateful for bus-shelter seats. The number of people waiting grew from three to twenty. Each new arrival eyed her and Dan up with deep suspicion, glaring at the fully suited couple from beneath their simple face masks and giving them a wide berth.
“Where’d you get those suits?” challenged a new arrival, staggering over to them. He was in his forties, unshaven, and drinking openly from a bottle of Scotch.
Lucy looked away, blushing.
“Hey! I’m talking to you!” he said, getting closer still. She felt the eyes of all twenty other commuters staring at her.
“Sir, you should be wearing a mask,” replied Dan.
“Masks are for pussies,” laughed the man, taking a swig from his bottle. “And those fucking things,” he continued, gesturing to their hazmat suits with derision, “are for faggots.”
Lucy looked at Dan, nervously, as the drunkard opened his arms wide, inviting retaliation.
Dan simply stared at him, blinking freely, not giving anything away.
“Yeah? What you gonna do about it?” said the man, swaying. “What you gonna do, Mr. Suit Man?”
Dan continued to look at the man, calmly.
“Fucking whatever,” spluttered the drunkard, dropping his hands back to his sides in disappointment. “Fucking suit people,” he mumbled, swearing at them and everyone else at the bus stop for good measure before staggering away, muttering to himself.
Lucy exhaled heavily and looked to Dan, whose expression had hardened.
“You OK?” she asked.
“Fine,” replied Dan, clenching and unclenching his fist. “He was just a bum. Not worth engaging with. Wouldn’t have done us much good if I’d laid him out on the sidewalk. He’s probably gonna be dead soon enough anyway, wandering around like that without a mask.”
“Unless he’s naturally resistant,” noted Lucy, “in which case god help us if we’ve got to rebuild mankind off of his shoulders.”
A police patrol slowed as it drew parallel with the bus stop. “This route is out of use, people,” said the officer, speaking through the bullhorn. “There’s still a bus route working over on Masonic Avenue, it’ll get you to City Hall,” she said, surveying the crowd.
Lucy shuffled her feet beneath the seat. It felt like the cop was staring at her and Dan. Did she know they were behind the office break-in yesterday? How would they possibly explain the stolen hazmat suits? What was their cover story?
The officer pulled away without further comment, and the tension gripping Lucy’s chest eased. She and Dan joined the trail of people now steadily making their way to Masonic Avenue.
The number of seeds drifting in the air had reduced again. Occasional yellow specks danced in the breeze, but it was a far cry from the blizzard they’d experienced before.
The number of bodies, however, continued to grow. Dozens more victims lined the sidewalk, their corpses pressing into the translucent layer of gloop that was replacing the fluffy mustard-yellow spores.
The bus-seekers quickly defaulted to walking on the road, to avoid passing the bodies littering the sidewalk. Lucy held back deliberately so that she and Dan could walk behind the crowd. She hadn’t anticipated how alienating their protective layer would be.
The wet spores made a loud patting sound underfoot, like walking through a shallow puddle.
While the streets avoided the problem of human bodies, they were dotted with the carcasses of small animals – mainly cats and rodents – which were seemingly being marinated in the slush.
The people ahead slowed to a stop as they reached a corner, which they began to bunch around. The sound of barking carried over, prompting Lucy and Dan to move to the edge of the group, where they could peer around the corner to see what was happening.
A dog stood in the middle of the street ahead, barking incessantly, and scarpering from one side to the other. Occasionally it stopped and pawed furiously at its head, then barked at the ground before jumping away and circling back on itself, or weaving across to another patch.
“It looks rabid,” said Lucy. “We need to keep the hell away from it.”
“I think these guys might be able to help,” said Dan, spotting a military patrol advancing down the street.
The dog turned towards the engine noise and increased its incessant barking, interspersing it with deep growls.
The patrol slowed until it was a few yards from the feral animal, then turned side-on. The passenger soldier drew his handgun and took aim at the growling dog, firing two shots directly into its body.
The dog crumpled with a yelp and lay twitching on the ground. The patrol drove on immediately.
Nervously, the group edged forwards, the other civilians talking among themselves as they pressed on, giving the dead animal a wide berth.
“Luce, what are you doing?” asked Dan, as she broke away from the group and knelt down close to the motionless dog. There were clumps of fur missing from its grimy, matted coat.
“I don’t recognize this breed,” she said, standing up and circling it slowly. “There’s something different about it.”
“Yeah, it was foaming at the mouth and ready to rip our legs off,” said Dan, impatiently. “We need to get a move on, Luce. I don’t wanna miss the only bus to City Hall and end up waking all the way there.”
He began setting off after the other walkers.
“It won’t be the only bus,” she said, catching up.
SPLAT.
“Fuck!” cried Dan, jumping to the side in disgust.
“Wow,” said Lucy, looking up to see if more were coming. Blue skies; nothing overhead but the occasional cloud and some lilting seeds. “That’s certainly a first,” she said, turning her attention back downward to the smashed-up bird by Dan’s feet. Its glistening white feathers were ruffled, sticking out at odd angles in line with the splayed posture. Its black eye stared straight up at the sky. Lucy crouched down and looked closely at the unfortunate creature. Large droplets of moisture clung to its entire body.
“Luce, the bus!” said Dan, pointing to the crowd of people who had begun to jog towards something around the next corner. Abandoning the bird, the pair of them ran after the group.
They caught up just in time, as the last person was boarding. It was standing room only for the entire twenty-minute journey. Lucy’s ears pricked at the slightest throat-clearing, turning each instance into the thundering death coughs of her deceased neighbor. She stared at the other passengers through her hazmat
suit. They looked so vulnerable in their jeans and hoodies. Were those face masks really going to keep them all alive? She felt like an observer in a laboratory, watching the busload of test subjects from behind a safety screen. A nearby passenger sneezed twice, making Lucy shudder.
Such a high concentration of people flew in the face of basic disease control. But with no cars running, it was the only way to get people to City Hall, and they needed workers to get power back online. Without power, there was no hope of modern medicine or sanitation being restored, and those things were key to the survival of the population in the face of this new disease. Or at least, that’s what Lucy assumed was behind City Hall’s logic.
The bus pulled into the City Hall complex where tens of thousands of people stood outside in long, snaking numbered lines. Each line filtered through to a different part of the building’s complex, and out of sight, so Lucy had no way of telling how long each one really was. But if the people outside were anything to go by, there could easily be a hundred thousand civilians gathered in total, if not more.
There was a heavy military presence; troops patrolled the lines, swiftly quelling any dissenters and dumping troublemakers to the back of the lines. Other soldiers patrolled the top of the City Hall building, scrutinizing the crowds.
Before anyone could exit the bus, a sergeant stepped aboard, holding a megaphone up to his mask.
“Listen up. There are five lines outside. You will go and stand in the line that best fits your skill set. At the end of that line you will be assigned your new place of work. At the end of your shift you will be entitled to collect your rations.”
“Wait, so they’re only giving out regular rations in exchange for work now?” said Lucy. But before Dan could reply, the sergeant continued.
“There are a lot of people here, so be prepared to queue for some time. Now I will only say this once, so pay attention. Line one is for military, line two is for medics, line three is for engineers, line four is agriculture, and line five is anyone else.”
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