Empty World

by John Christopher

  Neil thought of Ellen and her nightmares, and wondered about them. Perhaps they did not stem, as he had assumed, from love of her parents, but the reverse. Perhaps that was why the daydream was so persistent.

  He wondered too what the future would bring, for her and Hendrix. Most likely nothing: they were very young and there was no reason to suppose anything permanent, like marriage, would come of it. Though it might, of course. Hendrix enjoyed bullying, and Neil had an idea that a part of Ellen, at least, liked being bullied. Maybe they would marry, and she could change her nightmares to imagining her husband being killed.

  Again his thoughts surprised him. He looked up at the sky, nearly cloudless, where—he was fairly sure again—no invisible vindictive God lurked, reading minds and fashioning thunderbolts to toss down. The church was grey and squat, brooding over its generations of worshippers. All around were the quiet houses with, at this moment, not a person in sight. A car revved up the High Street and roared on towards Hastings, leaving velvety silence behind.

  Rye was a quiet town after London, but a Babylon compared with Winchelsea. He thought again how glad he was to be here, but thought that even here there were too many people. It would be nice to live on a desert island, with only a parrot for company. Though the parrot wasn’t really necessary, either: the sound of the surf or the wind in the palms would be company enough.

  His grandmother came out of the kitchen as he let himself in at the front door. She fussed him as usual, and he accepted it as usual, but refused her offer to make him a snack. She was a great believer in nourishment, and seemed to regard the day in school at Rye as roughly equivalent to an ascent of Everest. In the end he escaped on the double plea of not being hungry and having heavy Physics prep to do. She believed in prep as well, though she thought he worked too hard.

  That wasn’t true, in fact; he was still coasting for the most part, after Dulwich. He worked away steadily, though, glad to have something to occupy his mind so completely but undemandingly. Apart from Physics, there was English and History . . . witches putting the frighteners on Macbeth, Judge Jeffreys decorating the west country with gibbeted rebels. Violent death was something you might as well get used to; it had been around a long time. And only a fool looked for explanations of justifications.

  When he had finished he sat for a time, looking out. His room was at the top of the house and quite big. It ran from the front of the house to the back; his bed was under one window, and the desk at which he sat under the opposite one. This looked over the street, if anything so green and flowery could be called a street. Someone drove a car up, and parked it. Mrs. Mellor from over the road passed slowly along his field of vision, and disappeared. A tabby cat succeeded her, and all was quiescence again.

  Below and faintly he heard the theme music of BBC television news. He might as well go down and watch as not.

  In the sitting room his grandfather and grandmother were in their accustomed armchairs, with the third between them left empty for him. Neil stopped in the doorway, to see if there was anything interesting on. It was only something about the Calcutta Plague starting up again, this time in Karachi.

  2

  IT WAS STILL CALLED THE Calcutta Plague after it had spread south to Sri Lanka and leapt across the Indian Ocean to a new foothold in Mombasa. Sources of infection were next confirmed in Cairo and Athens. By that time, in recognition of the fact that airlines provided the main channels for its advance, strict checks were being applied to intending travellers.

  But however stringent the controls or co-operative the passengers, it would probably have made little difference. There was a period of some days, it appeared, prior to the fever which was the first symptom of illness, during which the disease was present in latent form; and in that time the victim was infective. A person conscientiously observing all the regulations could still have unwittingly had a contact, and be a carrier. And not many were scrupulous. Apprehension turned to fear and fear to panic as the hold of the virus spread and tightened.

  The Calcutta part of the name was dropped and forgotten. It was simply the Plague now, and people fled blindly from it, or tried to. The fact that it was the old who were attacked only made matters worse. The old who were poor were helpless, of course; but by and large the old were richer than the young, and were ready to use their money to escape the invisible death. The risk of carrying the disease to places still free of infection did not weigh too heavily with them.

  When its presence was admitted in Frankfurt, the Prime Minister made a speech on television. His manner had the right combination of concern and reassurance. The situation was tragic, but the medical resources of the world were concentrated on seeking a cure. Could anyone believe that science, which had overcome so many of man’s afflictions, would fail in this? No effort or expense would be spared; and Britain, with such names as Jenner and Lister and Fleming as proud a part of her tradition as Nelson or Churchill, would make her full contribution to the common task.

  Meanwhile we must thank God this little island had been spared the scourge. But thankfulness needed to be matched by vigilance. He paused, impressively, his expression becoming sterner, demonstrating practicality rather than hopefulness. A State of Emergency had been declared, and was effective forthwith. Certain orders were being promulgated by the Home Secretary, and one of these related to admissions to the United Kingdom from abroad. Until further notice no-one aged forty or over would be allowed entry, by any means of transport or from any part of the world.

  • • •

  Neil’s grandfather had been diffident about suggesting it, talking round the subject before coming to the point. Which was that the house in Dulwich was being sold. There would be things there Neil might want. If he didn’t feel like going back, perhaps he could make a list of what they were?

  For his part Neil did not hesitate: he said he would like to go with his grandfather and check things over on the spot. As a result they drove up together in the old Wolseley the following Saturday morning, through showers and bursts of sunshine. Neil noticed that they branched off the A21 south of Tonbridge and took the A20 into London; but he did not comment on it.

  Although he had spoken firmly, Neil had wondered what it would be like to see the house again. He had a moment’s forgetfulness when they turned into a familiar road, only about half a mile from their destination—a confusion with another time he had been taken home by his grandfather—and he imagined them all as being there. It only lasted a fraction of a second. There was the familiar jolt of sickness but that did not last, either. The equally familiar blankness took its place.

  They parked in the drive in front of the locked garage, and Grandpa let them in at the front door. The house had a strange musty smell, and although the furniture was still in place their voices seemed to echo. Someone had obviously been in to clean: it was all tidier than Neil remembered. There was a gap in the sitting room where the colour TV had been: it had been rented, and would have gone back to the shop.

  While Neil was picking out what he wanted, his grandfather went round the house making a separate list of things to be kept back from the sale of contents. He tackled the ground floor first, and Neil went upstairs. On the first landing the door of his parents’ bedroom was open; he looked, then went in.

  The beds looked very flat and tidy, and the rugs were neatly in place. His father’s slippers were tucked away, side by side, under a corner of the dressing table, and his electric shaver was in its box. On the dressing table his mother’s jewel box was locked, but the little silver ring-tree stood beside it. There was one ring on it, the opal which she did not wear because she thought it was unlucky. She always left that out, and he wondered if it had been because she thought the bad luck might spread, by contagion, to the rest.

  Neil picked up the ring and held it to the light. Sunshine made the colours dazzle in the stone; he could remember marvelling at that when he was very little, bar
ely able to reach the dressing table top. Bad luck? He looked at the ring a moment longer, then slipped it into his pocket.

  In the room he had shared with Andy, Neil set about the main task, picking things out and carrying them downstairs, a few at a time, to make a pile in the hall. Books were the chief problem—­deciding which to discard. In the end he was ruthless, keeping only a few he specially liked and a couple with childhood associations—The Wind in the Willows and The Borrowers.

  Andy’s things were mixed up with his own. He saw the portable radio Andy had been given for his last birthday, and remembered feeling jealous on that account. He switched it on, and listened to pop music. The number ended, and was followed by a newscast. Something political. A report on special police precautions being taken because of possible violence at a football match.

  “Finally, the Plague. Outbreaks have been reported this morning in the Rhineland, and in Zürich and Paris. From Berlin there are unconfirmed reports that the latest victims include people of a younger age group than previously found—a man in his early forties and a woman in her thirties. A medical spokesman from Guy’s Hospital suggests that this may indicate the emergence of a more viru­lent strain of the virus.

  “Back now to the Chicken Farmers, and their new single. . . .”

  Neil switched off. He stared down at the radio for a moment; then picked it up and carried it to put with the pile in the hall.

  • • •

  His grandfather said: “All done? I’ll give you a hand in loading.”

  They took things out to the car and stacked them in the boot. Neil returned from one trip to find his grandfather holding the radio and looking at it. He knew it had been Andy’s; they had gone to Winchelsea just after the birthday, and there had been a minor fuss about it being played all the time. Their eyes met, but nothing was said.

  They came out for the last time, and Grandpa pulled the door to behind them. Mr. Preston from next door was standing behind the fence. He greeted them, a bit too loudly.

  “How are you, Neil? You’re looking well, I must say. It’s pretty clear the Sussex air agrees with you.”

  He had always been nervous—Neil remembered his father being gently mocking about it—and was plainly embarrassed by the occasion. He went on, talking rapidly, to ask what the new school was like, had Neil been to Battle to see where Harold was killed by the Norman arrow, was he making lots of new friends . . . ?

  He looked even more embarrassed after he’d said that: it was too close to the subject that must not be mentioned. Grandpa was looking uneasy, too. He asked Mr. Preston about his garden, and the switch in conversation was gladly accepted. Greenfly was a safer topic. They were a plague this year—he had to spray his roses twice a day.

  From greenfly they got on to the Plague. Grandpa said that the immigration ban was the first sensible thing the government had done. Mr. Preston shook his head.

  “Too late.”

  “That’s being unnecessarily pessimistic. This is an island, thank God. There’s no reason why controls shouldn’t work, if they’re properly handled. And people are scared enough now to do a proper job. It’s not like rabies. They’re dying in Europe by the thousand.”

  “It’s already here.”

  “Of course it isn’t! If it were. . . .”

  “There’s been nothing in the news, you mean? There won’t be, either. The Emergency regulations include press and broadcasting censorship, remember. They’ve had panic on the other side of the Channel, and they want to avoid it here.”

  “You always get rumours.” Grandpa’s tone was cool. “I don’t think it helps to listen to them, or spread them.”

  “It’s not rumour.” Mr. Preston shook his head again. “I know someone who knows—how many cases, which hospitals. . . . We’ve got it, I tell you.”

  Grandpa brought the conversation to an end soon after. It wound up on the nervous boisterous note on which it had begun. Mr. Preston repeated how glad he was to see Neil looking so well, and hoped he would come and visit them some time. Susan would be sorry she had missed him; she and her mother were out for the day, shopping.

  Neil made a polite response. Susan was a year older then he, a bossy girl with a long nose. None of them had been able to stand her and Andy, following a visit to the Zoo, had nicknamed her the Tapir.

  On the drive back Grandpa was quiet at first, but later spoke about Mr. Preston. Rumour-mongers always flourished at times like this. Some people had a compulsion to invent things.

  “I remember in 1940,” he said, “when we were expecting the Germans to invade. One night in September I was on Home Guard duty and we heard planes overhead—wave after wave of them, like nothing we’d heard before. Going back home in the early morning I met a woman who told me, quite definitely, that there had been a German landing in Kent, and that a full-scale battle was going on. Deal had been taken, she said. She was an ordinary-­looking woman, respectably dressed, not at all hysterical in her manner, and I believed her. It was some hours before I could be sure there wasn’t a word of truth in it. There’d been no landing. The planes we’d heard had been bombers, on their way to the first night raid on London.”

  He drove on a while, before adding:

  “In those days spreading rumours was a criminal offence, and I think it ought to be again. But at least we can disregard them. I wouldn’t mention this at home, Neil.”

  He would be thinking of Grandma. Neil said:

  “I won’t.”

  “There’s absolutely nothing in it. I’m quite certain of that.”

  Neil realized something else. It was not just consideration for Grandma; he was afraid himself.

  He said, fibbing: “Mr. Preston always did stretch things. He’s well known for it.”

  “Yes.” Grandpa sounded more cheerful. “We’ve left it a bit late for getting back. I’ll tell you what—we’ll stop off and have a pub lunch. Good idea?”

  • • •

  The rumours were in Rye when Neil went to school on Monday, and by the time he returned they were in Winchelsea. That night on the News there was a formal government denial. Next day the rumours were even more positive and circumstantial. People were dropping dead in the streets of London . . . an Old Folks’ Home in Croydon had been wiped out to the last resident.

  In the evening the doctor called to see Neil’s grandmother. His grandfather mentioned hesitantly, when Neil got in from school, that she had been feeling unwell and he’d made her go to bed. Neil asked if he should go up and see her but was told she was probably sleeping—she’d had a disturbed night. He went to his own room and got on with his prep. He had nearly finished by the time he heard a car come up the quiet street and stop at the door. He looked out and saw the doctor, a jaunty figure swinging his bag, being admitted.

  He was in the sitting room when the doctor came downstairs. Grandpa was there, too, making a poor show of pretending to watch television. He switched off the set and asked, in too casual a voice:

  “How is she, then, Alan?”

  “Bit of a temperature.” The doctor was clipped and cheerful. “Sore throat, aches and pains. Could be ’flu—more likely a head cold.”

  “Nothing to worry about?” Grandpa went to the sideboard. “Scotch? Water with it?”

  “A touch. Whoah. Ah, that’s better. I was just about ready for that.”

  “Busy day?”

  “More than somewhat. Fair number of my senior patients down with Plague, or imagining they are. Not difficult to reassure them, but it takes time.”

  Grandpa said, shamefaced: “Hard on you. But with all the talk. . . .”

  “Oh, very understandable. I’m not complaining. Better imaginary illnesses than real.”

  “If it did come. . . .”

  “What? The Plague, you mean?”

  “Yes. How would you cope?”

  “Oddly
enough, fairly easily, I fancy. The initial fever’s mild, and there’s little you can do about it. Just the usual advice—keep warm, bed rest, plenty of fluids. And there would be even less point in trying to treat the second stage. They die of heart failure usually, not of anything specific. Once it really got going, I doubt if anyone would bother calling us in.”

  “It may never happen.”

  “That’s a point.”

  “All this ridiculous talk about it having got to England. . . .”

  “But it has.” He drained his glass. “More than a score of cases confirmed, and God knows how many in the pipeline. The horse was well and truly home before they locked the stable door.”

  Grandpa said, in a low voice:

  “So what will happen?”

  “Chaos, if the experience elsewhere is anything to go by. But it may not reach our little backwater.”

  “Do you really think not?”

  “Viral epidemics build up in densely populated localities. Like the common cold—carrying all before it in the initial stages and devastating the areas of occupation. Then resistance builds up, the enemy wavers, retreats, vanishes. That’s the normal pattern of events.”

  “You think it may stay confined to the cities?”

  “Well, no, but they’ll probably bear the brunt. And the more remote the area, the more chance of escaping. Incidentally, talking of people who may be under pressure, I can think of one profession that will know all about it.”

  Grandpa took the doctor’s glass and refilled it.

  “Which one is that?”

  “Thanks. The undertakers. Medical treatment won’t be a problem, but disposal of bodies will. I hear in Germany the crematoria are working flat out, round the clock, and they’re still having to dig mass graves. Lime pits, actually.”

  “Terrible.” Grandpa shook his head. “And there’s nothing anyone can do?”

  “They’ll probably come up with a vaccine eventually but the thing’s entirely new—nothing to go on. And by the time they do it will most likely have petered out. Leaving a million or so dead.”