by Brady, Eoin
“I don’t know how you feel about wearing other people's underwear,” he said. “But there’s a selection of jocks, socks and granny knickers in the drawer.”
“Granny knickers?” Rebecca’s eyebrows raised with her smile.
“Yeah, she took all the fancy ones with her – actually, should I be worried about that?”
She scoffed, sat up and hunkered over the side of the bed. Fin turned the heater on when he noticed her shivering. She sneezed, her nose red and running. She looked up at Fin, worried what his reaction would be. “I’ve been out in the open air in the middle of winter and I’m saturated. It’s just a normal sneeze. You don’t look much better. Once I’m warmed up, it’ll be gone.”
Fin could not hold his breath any longer. “I’ll leave you to get dressed,” he said quickly and rushed from the room. Gulping down air in the bathroom, he wiped his face with a damp towel. “I’ll be upstairs, when you’re ready,” he said, loud enough for her to hear him through the closed door. The misted mirror returned only a blur of a reflection.
The kettle boiled and cooled three times before she left the room.
“I never thought I’d feel warm again,” she said, taking the offered mug and sitting on the recliner. She wrapped herself in a blanket from the back of the couch, pulling her knees up to her chin. “Can we put the television on?”
“I avoided it until you were up. Didn’t feel like watching it by myself.”
Rebecca took the remote and threw it to him, not wanting to take the blame for what they saw.
“Can I finish my tea first?” he said.
“World’s not going to be set to rights after a cup of tea.”
“Yeah, but it’s not a bad brew, is it?” He took a sip and scalded his tongue.
“I tried ringing my parents again when I was getting dressed. Nobody answered,” Rebecca said.
“Don’t think too much into it, mine didn’t either for a long time,” Fin said.
“They quarantined Castlebar, I checked online. Military are enforcing it. Other than emergency vehicles, they’re not letting anybody through. People are being removed from their homes.”
“It’s the closest hospital aside from Galway. I doubt many people are heeding the news. They can’t keep them away from care.”
“They’re trying to, at least. Those medical centres are open Petri dishes.” Fin braced himself and turned the television on.
An advertisement for a new car played on the news channel. The price that flashed quickly at the end would have taken all of his annual wage and most of Solene’s for two years. Following that, there were four different ads dedicated to selling a fragrant shampoo, perfume, sore throat lozenges and a cold and flu medication. That’s disgustingly cheeky.
“It’s kind of disturbing isn’t it? The ads are taking much longer than they normally would,” Fin said.
“Those are prime slots now. Think of how many people are tuning in to the news, millions of fresh views. News outlets are going to make a fortune, raking it in, so long as people are desperate for answers,” Rebecca said.
“At least show something useful. Personally, I don’t care if my hair smells of raspberries right now. It’s a bit daft, imagine a few months from now and somebody’s in the shower, they get a hint of raspberries and get instant negative associations and PTSD, bringing them right back to this night.”
The ads ended and the news returned. To save the reporters from having to repeat themselves, a title card played before video footage; it warned of shocking and graphic content. The clip was filmed on a camera phone. It followed a man slowly walking along a motorway. The road was full of empty cars. Some engines were still running and doors open. The man cautiously approached a car that had mounted the verge, two people sat in the front seats. They watched him, but did not respond to his calls.
“We snuck around the army cordon,” the camera man whispered. “This is what they’re hiding.” He had a Northern Irish accent.
The car shuddered and the engine cut out. The image shook as the person recording got a fright.
“Where did all the people from those other cars go?” Fin asked.
The man cursed, steeled himself and approached the car. A young couple stared back at him. The sound was muffled by the door but the microphone picked up the sound of their weeping. Sweat bubbled from their emotionless faces. The footage was paused and the reporter started talking over it.
“That quarantine zone is around Belfast,” Rebecca said, reading the banner at the bottom of the screen.
Not wanting to hear any more casualty estimates, Fin walked to the window to investigate a commotion in the car park. People queued at the bus stop across the street. “This will spread from sheer stupidity.”
“We need a plan,” Rebecca said. “We get to the hotel and hide. Then what?”
Fin filled the kettle and put it on again. “You’re asking as if I have a clue about what’s happening right now.”
Rebecca gasped. What now? Fin had to force himself to turn and look at the television. A fresh reporter looked as haggard as if she had been on all night. She talked over aerial drone footage above Dublin City. Crowds ran between a frozen metal river of traffic. Military checkpoints were on O’Connell Street. Statues and snipers watched over the crowd with similar coldness. Soldiers panicked in the face of so many people running towards them. Some opened fire, spraying bullets into the crowd.
“What the hell are they…” Fin stopped. People climbed over dead and writhing bodies to avoid the gunfire. Some did not, standing defiant. They kept walking towards the soldiers only to be put down.
“They move like the man on the Greenway.” Fin felt strangely disconnected from what he was watching. The drone was too high to capture faces.
“Do you think it’s an antibiotic-resistant superbug? Or it might be one of those things that moves from animals to people. Remember the Ebola outbreak? That was all they showed on the news. There was genuine unease but that was a world away. How the hell did this happen in Ireland?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Rebecca said. She was exhausted. “I don’t remember seeing the military shooting civilians during the Ebola outbreak though.”
The weatherman appeared on screen. He read the forecast from the teleprompter; storm warnings still in place. He grit his teeth at the effort of getting through what he had to say. When he finished, he just stared slack jawed at the camera. “Stacey…” It cut back to the main host before he could finish. A new reporter sat behind the desk, her earpiece dangled over her shoulder, her tie undone. When she spoke, she sounded like she was reading an essay in front of a class for the first time. “While fear of global pandemic rises, hospitals across the country are no longer able to cope with the infected. Emergency staff cannot continue to give care to the sheer volume of admissions. The government are set to release a document this afternoon on the methods for dealing with the infected. People are ordered to stay home, for their own safety. The following quarantine areas are in effect, enforced by the Irish Army.”
She started naming off cities first and then towns.
“She should have just displayed an atlas of the country,” Fin said. “There was a reason I avoided the news. It has crossed my mind that I’ve gone mad and this is a dream or hallucination.”
“Well stop and let me off,” Rebecca said. “Those stories broke on the internet hours ago. I’d like to imagine the news rooms are just playing catch-up, but there’s no way they could filter through the amount of stuff coming in. It’s a time capsule for what’s actually happening. You come off the internet and look at the old stories on the news and almost get nostalgic for better times.”
“Better than this?” Fin asked. “How’s it spreading so fast?”
“Kindness. This has really brought the best of us to light. There was a call for help online and people answered. Taxi drivers waiving their fees, school buses collecting the sick, and carpools bringing people to hospitals,” Rebecca said.
“Think about it. Those that only had a cold, or a touch of paranoia, came into contact with those who were actually infected. It’s not the flu, Fin, I don’t know what it is but it isn’t that. Can I see your phone?”
He unlocked it and handed it over. She gave it back with a video already playing. The view count was in the millions. It was from the waiting room of a Dublin hospital, filmed by a receptionist on her phone. The staff were hiding behind safety glass and security doors in reception. The A&E waiting room was packed with the sick, dying and the worried. Orderlies passed out face masks. Garda officers in green jackets stood by the doors, stopping others from coming in. They looked terrifying, like modern-day plague doctors, their faces completely covered.
“It spreads as if it were fire and we were fuel,” Rebecca said.
The person taking the video was shaking, making it difficult to focus. She zoomed in on a woman lying on a gurney, fighting against the restraints. Muscles bulged and the veins in her neck stood out as she reached indiscriminately for those around her. Her skin pale, her right arm was broken, a dark bruise forming where the edge of the bone pressed against the skin like thick, syrupy cordial, slowly diluting. A nurse administered something and stepped back. It had no effect on the patient. Another nurse in the background blessed herself. An orderly pushed through the crowd, heading for the door. It was only then that Fin realised the officers were there to stop people leaving.
Covered bodies filled trolleys while the infected grew sicker on the floor. A body beneath a sheet sat up, the sheet bundled in his lap. The person operating the camera focused on his vacant stare, a peaceful, serene look of indifference. His skin was waxy, almost like a mannequin. When his partner saw him up, she broke down and started undoing his restraints. Her eyes were red, Fin was not sure if it was from crying or infection. She held him close, her face contorted with emotion and then confusion. She seemed only slightly surprised when he bit into her shoulder, until the pain set in. She screamed and tried desperately to push away but he appeared to have bitten down to the bone. He flailed back as if he had suffered a terrible spasm. Colour drained from her face as blood flowed down her front.
Chaos engulfed the room. The gardaí rushed over. The woman holding the camera ducked behind the reception desk. Two gunshots went off, the sound so loud it crackled over the mobile’s speakers.
“Let us in!” People begged and banged on the bulletproof glass.
Fin looked up at Rebecca. His lips remained a stark, thin line that kept his emotions in check; when it cracked, he was relieved it was with grief and not laughter.
The woman holding the camera composed herself and turned the lens on her face giving a panicked, last message to her family. When she saw how many thousands of people were watching her livestream, she asked for help, but the bounty of attention was meaningless.
She stood up and pointed the lens at the lobby. Bodies were trampled. Some people wept hysterically. There were two groups: people desperately trying to escape and those chasing them.
Fin lost track of time watching the video. For most of it, the receptionist hid beneath a table with her colleagues. When she braved looking out, infected watched her from the other side of the glass. Fingers found and slipped through the talking holes in the partition. One man kept hitting his head against the glass, like a bluebottle confused by a window. They were all weeping, but the audio seemed out of sync with the video, because none of their faces matched the sounds they made.
The woman could not stand under the docile scrutiny of so many infected and darted around the reception area. Beneath every desk other masked staff members hid. A few hissed at her to get down and not make a sound. But she was manic with terror. “We have to get out of here, they’re going to get in. We’re trapped!”
Before anybody could stop her, she pulled apart the barricade and opened the door wide enough to get through to the main hall. More bodies lined the corridor. It looked more like an exposé on a scandalously run abattoir than a national hospital.
She knocked into a glass door and pressed a keycard against the lock. The light turned from red to green. She slammed the door shut, hunkered down to catch her breath. The sound of hands slapping against glass startled her. Some of the survivors in the office followed her, they screamed to get through, but it was already too late for them. There was a scuffle. She dropped the phone and screamed.
“Will you put it off please,” Rebecca said. “I don’t want to hear the rest.”
Fin exited from the video and saw scores more like it, his feed constantly updating. The highest viewed on the trending page was drone footage above the streets of Dublin. People ran in all directions. There were small pockets of fighting, where people could not escape crazed infected that attacked randomly and relentlessly.
The drone hovered above the River Liffey. Families and strangers held each other as they threaded water and watched the madness unfold on the streets. A fallen tower crane blocked the road to the port. People climbed through and over the wreckage. Videos came in from Cork, Dublin, Galway, Belfast. There seemed no end to the uploads.
Fin looked to Rebecca. He could not think, let alone speak. He lay his phone on the coffee table and turned the television off. Every sound made him flinch. Poncho’s paws twitched as he dreamed in his basket.
“I think we should head back to the hotel. Less people, stronger doors. We have the height. It feels like we’re surrounded here. Too many windows,” Rebecca said. Mooch made her jump by landing on her lap. He walked around in circles before kneading his paws into the blanket and lying down to rest.
Fin’s insides felt restricted, like a spring that kept winding beyond a critical breaking point. Poncho got a fright and ran for cover when Fin pushed his chair back and dashed to the sink to throw up. Afterwards, he sat on the cold kitchen floor. The taste of vomit kept his stomach from settling. He blew bile from his nose. Wrapping his arms around his legs, he lay his head on his knees and wept. “What’s happening?”
Rebecca looked him dead in the eye. “Zombies.”
8
Unexpected Guests
After dinner, Fin washed the dishes, Rebecca dried. The work was done in silence, just like the meal, which had been a chore, something to be done while they waited for the crowds to thin. Fin started scrubbing the countertops when it was done, just to focus on anything other than reality. The bubbles in the sink burst like impermanent pearls as the water loudly slurped down the drain.
“I don’t think I can do it, Rebecca. I doubt I’d even be able to make it far from the front door.”
“I know.”
“That wasn’t what I was hoping to hear.”
“Will we take it in turns, being the strong one?” She put the last plate away. “I can’t bear the thought of being out there with them, but I don’t feel safe here. Too many windows and we’re in the middle of town. Best to be in the hotel. Even with all the food we took, there’s still plenty there to do us. I don’t think I can do it either, but I know I have to try. Just think of the pint we’ll have when we get to the hotel.”
“I could do with one before it.”
The basil and thyme plants drooped in their pots from lack of water. He buried his nose in the leaves, then ran the pots beneath the tap. He opened the window and left them on the sill.
“What are you doing?” Rebecca asked.
“They’ll die if I leave them. At least this way they’ll get rain and a bit of sun.”
“The temperature will kill them.”
“I know, but now they have a chance.”
When he looked up, he caught the eye of a couple in the apartment across the street. They waved, which was completely off-putting considering there had been an unspoken tradition of pretending the other was invisible. They drew the curtains and opened their window. Aside from the flickering glow of a television, they were in complete darkness.
The man checked the street before leaning out. Fin’s mind began to race. What if they ask for help
? Did they hear us speaking about the hotel? He felt ashamed of those thoughts.
“How’s it going?” the man said. “Have yous been watching the news?”
The sink stopped Fin from leaning out too far. “There can’t be many that don’t know. Sorry, guys, we’ve been neighbours for nearly a year now and I still don’t know your names. I’m Fin, this is my friend Rebecca.”
“I’m Mel and this is Matthew. We used to make up stories for you and the other woman that lives with you. Jobs too.”
“I can promise you the reality is more disappointing,” Fin said.
“See Castlebar is under military curfew?” Mel said.
Rebecca came to the window. “It’s quarantined. They think that the infection would have had a harder time spreading, if not for so many flocking to the hospital. Everyone had the notion that they could get vaccinated for the flu and would be safe.”
“We were thinking of trying for it tomorrow,” Mel seemed unphased.
“You can’t see it, but from the other window in this apartment we’ve a clear view of the Castlebar Road. There must be a block further along because people have just abandoned their cars. You won’t drive it.”
“We could walk. Leave in the morning and get there before the crowds,” Matthew said.
Rebecca pinched him out of view of the others, but she did not need to. He was not going to risk infection for familiar strangers.
“I wouldn’t chance it, guys. The advice everywhere is to stay inside and avoid contact with others.” He stressed that last part before they suggested joining up. “If you go to Castlebar, you’re likely going to get sick. I don’t think it’s the flu virus either. That vaccine won’t do you any good.”
“I read online that if we expose ourselves to it, our bodies will be able to fight it off. Something to do with white blood cells,” Mel said.