Contagion

by Contagion (retail) (epub)

  Shay trembles and steps through.

  CHAPTER 2

  SHAY

  I CAN’T TAKE THIS IN.

  Killin—quarantined?

  Kai goes slowly into town. There’s no one on the street or sidewalk; no cars move on the road. The sun shines on the snow on the mountain above. We head over the bridge, and there is music in the falls like always. Apart from that there is silence. On a sunny spring day like today the village is its usual postcard-perfect self, but there are no tourists on the bridge with their cameras getting in the way of traffic.

  It’s a ghost town, and the farther we go, the more an overwhelming sense of dread twists around my gut.

  Smoke hangs in the sky ahead as we start down the main street. In one house I think I glimpse a frightened face in an upstairs window, but when I look back again no one is there.

  The smoke is coming from the park. I tug on Kai’s shoulder to slow down as we near it; there are tents there too. “Pull in,” I say, even though I want to ride and ride fast, leave this place and never come back. I’m afraid of what we will find.

  He slows and stops, and I get off the bike, start taking off my helmet.

  “What now?” Kai says.

  “I need to go over there. See what’s what.” There are waves of dread, fear, and pain washing against me, like a relentless sea on an eroded coast—plucking at me, pulling at my resolve.

  “Are you sure, Shay? If it’s anything like Newcastle, well…Are you strong enough, so soon after being ill? And losing your mum. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Yes. I do. I have to see if there is anything I can do to help,” I say. Even though I struggle to say the words, I am sure that I must do this, that I need to know what has been happening here while I’ve been gone.

  The whole time I’ve lived here, I’ve wanted to be back in London, but now, suddenly, I feel the shift of allegiance that has happened inside without me even being aware of it. This is my home. I turn to Kai. “You don’t have to come with me. Wait here if you want.”

  He shakes his head and holds my hand firmly. “I go where you go.”

  We walk toward the gate of the park, not that it is really there anymore. The pillars are gone, and we soon see why as an army truck comes up behind us. We get out of the way, and it drives through a space that would have been too narrow if they were still there. There is a soldier in a biohazard suit just inside the park who speaks briefly to the driver of the truck—he’s in a suit too. The truck carries on, and the soldier by the park entrance turns to us.

  “What is your business?”

  “We’re immune. We want to help,” I say, and my voice only wavers a little.

  “We can use all the help we can get. Check in over there.” He waves us through, points to where the truck has pulled in ahead of us.

  There are tents arranged around this end of the park; smoke rises from the other end, by the tennis court. The truck has pulled in at one of the largest tents.

  As we walk over to the truck, there is a sound. It is both ahead of us and in the truck, louder now that the back of the truck is being opened, and it is something I’ve heard before. It is the sound I made when I was ill—crying, moaning, even screaming when I really couldn’t take it. The sound is pain.

  But it’s not just what I can hear. The closer we get, each step I take forward, I’m assaulted by agony. I feel what they feel. It started when we drove into town, and got stronger and stronger. Now it is all I can do to stay standing upright, to not curl into a ball on the ground and scream.

  Callie is next to me, staying close, and for once I don’t mind. You have to shield yourself, or you’ll lose it, she says.

  I answer her inside my head. Shield myself? How?

  Imagine there is a wall between you and the rest of the world, and they can’t get through it.

  Kai is speaking to the suited man who was driving the truck. He nods; I think Kai is introducing me, but I can’t hear what he is saying. All I can hear are the cries of pain, reverberating inside my head. I can’t think or move or breathe with the effort not to scream. Build a wall? How?

  Let me help, Callie says, and then she is there: waves of cool, soothing darkness I can plunge into to avoid the fire. The flames still lick the shore, but I’m safe.

  See? she says, and I do. If I visualize a barrier of cool darkness, I can still hear and feel the distress, but it’s held away.

  Thank you.

  Do what you have to do, but I won’t stay here. Callie blurs into the distance so fast she vanishes in seconds.

  Kai is getting into the truck. He and the driver start helping people down and into the tent.

  He passes me a little girl, maybe three years old, screaming for her mummy. There’s a boy several years older climbing out of the truck himself, but each step is strange and jerky, as if he’s concentrating hard to move at all.

  “Is this your sister?” I ask him.

  “Yes.”

  “Is your mummy here too?”

  “She’s in the other truck.”

  Another truck is driving in now, but it doesn’t stop where this one did. It goes past us, continues across the park on a rutted track worn by wheels in the grass. The boy starts to chase it. The driver who came on this truck turns, catches him, brings him back; he tells me to hold the boy’s hand tight and take him into the tent. Now the boy is crying too, like his sister.

  The driver turns to go, but I call him back. “Why weren’t they in the same truck as their mother?”

  “Because they’re still alive.”

  His words struggle for the meaning I know they have, but don’t want to believe. I look across the field; the other truck is being unloaded. The boy pulls to get free of my hand, howling.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “My mum died too.”

  He stops struggling, looks up at me with wide brown eyes.

  “Come on,” I say, and tug on his hand. He lets me lead him and his sister into the tent.

  Along with the others from the truck of the living, places are found for them in a sea of camp beds. There are a few army nurses in biohazard suits, and several people without suits or army uniforms who are helping. One I recognize. It’s the red-haired waitress—the one who was reading Fifty Shades. It’s not that many days ago, but it seems like a lifetime. She’s pale and looks like she hasn’t slept in ages, but when we walk over, her face creases into a smile. She hugs both me and Kai, hard.

  “Are you both immune too?” she asks.

  “Yes,” Kai answers.

  “That’s two more of us that beat this, then. I’m Lizzie,” she says, “and that one over there”—she points at a man who is carrying something toward the back of the tent—“is my brother, Jamie.”

  We introduce ourselves, but my eyes can’t stop looking at what lies around us.

  Camp beds. A hundred or more, in a large open space. Most are full.

  Some of the occupants are lying still, unmoving. Some are crying, screaming for help. Lizzie asks me to help remake beds now and I do, trying not to think why they are being changed. Kai is enlisted to help Jamie carry still forms away, and I avert my eyes.

  My barriers are still in place and with them comes a degree of calm. Yet I feel like I’m moving underwater, like the concentrated pain and misery in this place is thicker than air.

  A hand grabs my leg as I walk past to get more sheets.

  It’s Amy from school. Her skin is pale, her usually perfect blond hair lank.

  “Shay?” she whispers.

  I kneel next to her, hold her hand.

  “It hurts so much.” But she’s not in pain, not now; she’s past the pain.

  Her eyes are full of tears, but then it’s not tears; they’re red. It’s blood. Her hand slackens. Her head lolls to one side, her bloody eyes still open. They’re staring straight ahead. Not seeing anything, not anymore.

  But I am seeing. Amy’s mother dying. Her two little brothers. Her father. She watched them all die and then
was brought to this place. My barrier has slipped, and I see the pain and fear in a kaleidoscope that is spinning inside me, twisting and pulling me apart. I’m battered by Amy’s pain and the pain all around us. I let go of her hand and stand up. Stagger for the square of daylight where we came in, and leave the tent. Outside I breathe in again and again, wanting to clear my lungs of the air in that place.

  But then it’s worse. Out here, out of the tent, smoke is still rising from the other side of the park. The place the other truck went to—the one not for the living. The wind must have shifted, and the smoke drifts this way. I didn’t smell it before, and now I’m sick with it, with knowing what it must be.

  The stench makes my stomach twist, and as I breathe—which I only do as much as I must—I can taste who they are burning. The sweat and cigarettes of the grumpy guy from the Co-op; a boozy overlay from Mum’s jolly friends from the pub. The painful twist of sunshine and smiles of children from the playground. Soon there will be a whiff of Amy’s sarcasm and perfume to add to it.

  And they’re all mixed up. They shouldn’t be; each soul should have its own send-off to wherever they’re going now. Each mother should have a grieving daughter like mine did; every child, a family standing together to withstand the shock. It shouldn’t be like this.

  But when a whole family dies, like Amy’s, who can grieve for them? Maybe it’s better this way. No one is left behind to suffer.

  I want to scream, to throw myself on that fire. The urge to walk toward it is so strong that I’m shaking with the effort to stay still.

  Someone comes up behind me, and then there is a hand on my shoulder. It’s Lizzie. She passes me a cup of tea. She stands next to me for a while. Somehow her hand on my shoulder helps my heart stop racing enough that I can concentrate and shore up my barriers.

  “Do you know who else is immune?” I ask her when I’m able to speak again.

  She starts listing names; some I know, some I don’t. Some whole families spared. But not that many; not many at all from the whole village—how many lived here? Eight hundred, something like that?

  “Does that mean…is everyone else…gone?”

  “They haven’t finished checking all the streets. From what I’ve heard, everyone they’ve found lately is either sick or has already died.”

  “What about other places near here? Like Crianlarich, Monachyle, places around them?” Iona.

  “I don’t know. There’s a map on the BBC website that shows which areas are quarantined. You could try there, or one of the news channels. But I’m not sure how up-to-date it’s kept.”

  Iona’s family lives on an isolated farm miles from here. It’s so remote one of her brothers had to drive her to catch the school bus.

  Maybe it has missed them.

  CHAPTER 3

  CALLIE

  I WAIT ON KAI’S BIKE FOR A WHILE, but I’m soon bored. I wish I could go to sleep. Maybe I can, if I try really hard?

  I curl up on the grass by his bike and close my eyes. I try to empty my thoughts, think of nothing, but that doesn’t work. Then I count sheep, but whoever came up with that was stupid. Anyway, why’d I think it’d work now, when it never did when I was alive? That’s just plain crazy.

  I could follow Kai or Shay around, but when I peek back at what they are doing, I soon give up on that. Shay is in the main tent, doing her best to help with the sick; she’s not coping well. Kai is carrying bodies to the pyre on the tennis court, his face grim and set, like it was in Newcastle.

  I explore Killin. It doesn’t take long; it’s small, and besides—I’ve been here before with Kai, when we were looking for Shay. There’s a main street with shops and stuff, streets that lead off it with houses. All is quiet. Dead quiet.

  Then a few uniforms walk up the road toward the park. Minutes later, another group of them comes back this way. Shift change time? I follow the ones walking away from the park.

  They walk down the main street, then stop at a large tent. One of them says something to a guard outside and then they go in. There’s a decontamination setup, sheets of plastic, hoses. One at a time they go through, taking off their biohazard suits and chucking them in a huge biohazard bin. None of this is as high-tech as it was underground on the island where I followed the nurses. Finally they each shower and change, and go through a door at the end of the tent.

  It leads into a building. There are other army types there, looking at a big map on the wall with pins on it and red and green circles. An older guy barks at the others—he must be in charge.

  There’s some sort of meeting in progress between those here and other uniforms on screens.

  Behind them, someone else is drawing another red circle on the map, outside the ones already there, like rings on a tree stump. But within the red rings are a few small places circled in green.

  “How do you expect us to contain this increased area with the personnel we have?”

  “We’re all stretched to the limit. We’ll try to get more to you, but in the meantime you have no choice.”

  “We’ll have to cut back to single guards on all the roadblocks, not just the minor ones.”

  “Or withdraw from lost causes like Killin.”

  “We can’t do that!”

  “How many immune are in this village? They can continue what you’ve started.”

  A list is consulted. “Thirty-eight, but some of them are only children.”

  “There are two more to add—they came through a roadblock earlier today, though I gather they may not be staying.”

  “Names?”

  “Kai Tanzer and Shay McAllister.”

  “We’ll leave a command presence to enforce all containment measures. Everyone else is to pull back beyond the inner quarantine zones.”

  “But, sir—”

  “Do it.”

  CHAPTER 4

  SHAY

  EXHAUSTED BY THE END OF THE DAY, we finally leave the village behind and head up the hill. Away from the hospital tent, away from the burning, everything looks so ordinary. The mountain stands above and the loch glistens below like they have done since long before people ever came here. And will do so long after we’re dust.

  Kai turns down our lane and stops in front of our house. And it looks as it always does. The sun glints on the windows I washed at the front of our house; I can see the streaks where I didn’t bother doing a good job. Mum was bossing me around, and I was bored and annoyed. And that was the last normal day we had together.

  We get off the bike, and then I see something that doesn’t look as it should at all. “What happened to our front door?”

  “The old lady at the end of your lane said the army happened. When you didn’t answer when they came back to recheck your temperature, they broke in to find you.”

  “But all they found was an empty house.”

  “Yeah.”

  I step through the door. Mum’s Buddha is there, his belly shiny from us rubbing it for luck every time we come in the house. Can’t say we’ve been that lucky.

  Callie appears at my side just when I thought we’d finally lost her. You are lucky. You’re still alive.

  Exactly. I answer her in my thoughts before I remember I’m ignoring her, and she smiles.

  I roll my eyes. That just proves you are a figment of my imagination, I think at her. If you were real, you wouldn’t know what I just thought: that proves I’ve made you up. You’re an imaginary friend, like lonely little kids have sometimes. Must be all the trauma and stuff.

  You’re different now, Shay. We can share our thoughts, sense each other’s feelings.

  I frown. She’s not real, she’s not real, she’s not real…I chant it to myself silently, over and over again. If I do it often enough, maybe she’ll go away.

  No chance.

  I sigh.

  “Shay?” Kai says, and it’s like an echo—has he said my name over and over, without it really registering?

  “Hmmmm?” I look up, realize I’ve followed him into the fro
nt room and sat next to Ramsay my bear on the sofa without noticing what I was doing.

  His eyes are concerned, and worry rolls off him in waves. “You seemed, I don’t know, to zone out, same as you did when we first got to the park this afternoon. I said something to you, and you didn’t answer.”

  I stare back at him, afraid. I can’t let him know I’m losing it; I can’t scare him away.

  “Just thinking about Mum,” I say. And guilt slams into me that I lied and that it was Mum I lied about. He sits next to me, slips an arm over my shoulders, and pulls me close. I lean my head against his chest.

  Sharing thoughts: what rubbish.

  Or is it? I thought I shared Amy’s last thoughts. And Mum’s too—and not just as she died. Afterward too, when I was putting flowers in her hair.

  Can I share thoughts with Kai? I felt his worry. But I also knew he was worried; I saw that on his face. I didn’t need to read his mind to know it.

  No. No way. I sigh and wish Kai would kiss me to stop me from thinking about everything.

  He leans down and his lips are on mine before I even notice that was what I was thinking. But that doesn’t mean anything. When doesn’t he kiss me when the opportunity is there?

  I kiss him back.

  But didn’t he want to call his mum as soon as we got here?

  He abruptly stops. “I forgot. I should call my mother and let her know we’re okay.”

  I point out where the phone is to him, and he gets up and starts to walk toward it, but then stops, a puzzled look on his face. “My head feels all wrong,” he says. He frowns and picks up the phone.

  I don’t answer him; I don’t say or think anything else. I very carefully think nothing at him at all. Did that really happen? Did me thinking about something make him think of it too?

  Stricken, I look at the back of Kai’s head as he dials the phone. Maybe him kissing me and all this weight of feeling between us has only happened because I wanted it to. Maybe that is all there is to us.

  I shake my head; this is madness. He meant to call his mum when we got here, and he got up just then because that was when he remembered. That’s all.