Turning, he found Lize.
“What are you doing?” she said.
She looked through the glass, her face twisting, losing colour as she no doubt found what he was watching. “Don’t look,” Shaun said, grabbing her. “Come on! We have to go!”
“Wh-what is that!?” she stuttered.
But Shaun pulled her away, both of them running back towards the car.
CHAPTER TWO
Waringstown, County Down
He usually tuned in for the weather forecast. It was a habit more than anything else, one that gave his day routine. But today was the first day that it didn’t broadcast and, for a man like Martin, that was a worry.
Sure, he’d seen the news reports: riots in the city, hospitals on the brink of closure, sanctions on trade and travel. But all of these things seemed distant to Martin, as if part of some end-of-the-world movie. None of it was real in his world.
But no weather forecast...
He looked out the window, trying to formulate his own forecast. The sky was a rich blue colour. A few clouds moved in from the west; Martin wondered if there’d be rain later on. He hoped so. His vegetable patch out back was dry as a bone and, with things going the way they were, he might be needing a bit more growth out there.
Martin switched the television off, sick of the same old footage; the same debates and interviews; the same announcements from the same politicians saying little about anything. The TV channels were repeating everything on a constant loop; helpline numbers and out-of-date ‘community announcements’ rolling along the bottom of the screen. Curfew times for each county. Wasn’t there anything else to report? Was anyone actually out there recording anything new, reporting on what was going on now? Or were the journalists just as scared as everyone else?
Martin wasn’t scared. Martin was prepared. He’d stocked up early, filling his locked garage and shed with as much food and bottled water as he could get his hands on. The house was secure. The doors and windows were locked.
He wouldn’t be walking into Waringstown village, where everyone was talking crazy talk, like old Tom at the boot sale, spreading rumours about locals who hadn’t been seen in a while. Caught the flu, they whispered. But they may as well have been saying, Caught the plague.
Martin wondered if the internet would have anything different. He thought so, but with no connection in his house, no computer even, there was no way of finding out. Martin was a proud technophobe. He liked the radio or the television or the newspaper; tried and tested ways of getting information across in a way which didn’t require some whizz-kid on stand-by, lest your system crash, or whatever.
He heard a familiar noise.
He looked down, finding Fred staring up at him, head poised to one side, concern in his eyes. Martin ruffled the dog’s fur. Even old Fred could feel the tension in the air. Maybe the dog could sense that something was about to happen, that visitors were coming. Like most dogs, Fred wanted his whole pack together. And Martin felt the same right now: he’d talked to them on the phone only an hour ago, but he couldn’t fully relax until Lize and little Jamie were in the house and he could lock the doors up tight.
But that dumbo, Shaun...
It wasn’t that Martin hated the man. He just hated him being with Lize. She was his little girl, after all. He’d brought her up single-handedly after her mother had died in childbirth, and while Martin would have to admit that he hated her in those first weeks, blaming her for taking the only woman he’d ever loved, he soon grew to love little Lize for the very same reason: she was all he had left of his wife, Liza.
As the years went by, all he could see was Liza in her. In fact, he meant to name Lize after his wife, but a careless scribble on some form or other and she was registered as Lize. And so it stuck. In a way, it suited her very well. To Martin and everyone who knew her, Lize was one in a million.
Where was she?
Martin lifted his phone and punched in some numbers. The dead tone screamed in his ear like a siren. He slammed the receiver down, swore loudly.
Damn phone company!
Fred sloped off to the back of the room, hiding under the dining room table.
Martin was all worked up now. He hated himself for that. He should be calm, relaxed.
He cracked his knuckles, paced the living room. Blew some air out of his mouth then breathed it all back in again.
He switched the television on again. Still the same old footage and numbers and announcements on repeat, over and over and fucking over again. Martin wanted to put his foot through the bloody thing.
Suddenly, Fred’s ears pricked up, and he ran to the door barking.
A car had stopped outside the house.
Martin followed the dog to the door, unlatching the safety and turning the key in the lock.
CHAPTER THREE
Ballynarry, County Armagh.
They’d pulled off the motorway at Portadown.
Colin said they should avoid the town centre, head straight for the country roads, and Vicky wasn’t going to argue. She’d seen enough of urban life back in Belfast. She was ready for a bit of country air.
Soon the world turned green around her. Cattle and sheep stood huddled together by hedges. Even the birds seemed quiet, their normally cheerful chorus muted against the overwhelming sound of silence.
They passed a few houses, mostly barricaded from within, crudely erected signs saying things like ‘Trespassers will be shot’ or ‘Beware of the dog.’ Country folk weren’t fond of townsfolk, period. But this was a whole new ball game.
“Are we nearly there yet?” Vicky said for the fourth time within twenty minutes.
“What are you, four years old?” Colin said. He sighed. “Okay, yes. We’re nearly there. It’s just up here to the right.”
Sure enough, they followed a small lane off the main road. Furrowed mud had dried in the shape of large tractor wheels, leading as far as the eye could see. Fields flanked each side of the lane.
They passed by an old-style barnyard, small cottage by its side. Again, if anyone were in, they weren’t for advertising the fact.
Eventually, they neared another house, a newly built bungalow with a wide lawn and freshly stoned driveway. Hedges shaped like animals guarded a beautiful flowerbed and artificial waterfall.
But still no sign of life.
“Are you sure they’re expecting us?” Vicky asked. Colin didn’t reply.
“Maybe they saw the car coming,” Vicky pointed at the solider lodged into the windscreen. “I know I would hide from that.”
Colin parked the car on the driveway, opposite the garage.
“Oh, thank God,” Vicky said, swiftly exiting and putting some distance between herself and that bloody soldier she’d been staring at for the last hour. She stood by the waterfall, carefully brushing the glass from her clothes using the rolled up cuffs of her sweatshirt.
“You stay here,” Colin said to her. “And watch the car.”
“Yeah,” she said, looking once more at the soldier in the windscreen. “Like it’s going anywhere.”
***
The house belonged to Chris Lennon and Ben Reilly. They were friends of Colin’s. That much was true. But Colin hadn’t talked to them in weeks. He’d lied—told Vicky the couple was expecting him just to get her out of the city.
The last time Colin had visited Chris and Ben, they had just moved in, and had been were boxes all over the place. There were no floors laid, and everything was cold to touch. The couple held a painting party, paying guests with beer and wine. Colin got very drunk. He stayed over on their couch, remembering the white dust from the concrete floors being everywhere. It was like talc. Got into his hair, between his fingernails. It was infectious.
Now, of course, over a year later, the house was a veritable palace. Chris and Ben were country boys at heart, so this was their dream home, both of them selling their apartments from Belfast to move here.
Ben was self-employed and conducted most of his busin
ess online.
Chris was in sales; he worked for some pharmaceutical firm and found that the more travelling his job involved, the less it mattered where he was based. He just needed to be near the motorway, and, regardless of how remote it seemed out here among the cows and turf, he was only half an hour from the nearest slip road.
Colin knocked the door lightly. There was no answer, so he gently pressed the doorbell, listening as a familiar gong sounded from inside the house.
He looked over to the garage window, noticing both cars inside. They were obviously scared of looters, even out here. A house like theirs was already going to draw attention, so no need to give the wrong sort any other excuse to stop by.
Colin wondered what kind of reception he was going to get. Perhaps the couple had spotted Vince coming down the drive, just as Vicky said, and decided to lock down until the sorry looking car moved on. You could hardly blame them.
Colin stepped back from the doorway.
He looked at the side window, finding the blinds open. He stepped closer, cupping his hands around his eyes then pressing against the window, but he couldn’t see anyone..
He wandered round the house. Reached the back door, looked through its glass into the small utility room. Nothing.
He was just about to give up, return to the car and the inevitable earache from Vicky when something startled him. It came from inside the house.
Colin reached for the door handle, slowly twisted it. It wasn’t locked. He looked around then pushed the door open.
He stepped onto the ivory-coloured tiles of the utility room floor. A washing machine and tumble drier stood side-by-side. A radio was plugged into a nearby wall, an almost inaudible hiss escaping from its silver speakers.
Colin approached the door straight ahead, knocking gently.
“Hello?” he called out. “It’s Colin. Ben? Chris? You guys home?”
There was no reply, so he pushed the door open. It led into the kitchen cum dining area.
His eyes traced the room.
Everything looked so clean. There was not as much as a used cup in the sink.
A red plastic clock with no numbers kept time. A single plastic coffee table sat in the corner. A naked Barbie doll sat on top, its head turned slightly to one side, its arms raised and pointing forwards. It was staring at Colin as he moved through.
“Guys?”
Still no one.
Colin began to wonder if they were gone.
Maybe Chris had scored a ticket on some private plane, and the couple had left this godforsaken island altogether, heading for sunnier climes. That was the kind of people Chris dealt with, after all. People with money. People with class. People with the kind of capital that could afford fancy cars and villas on the continent.
Colin could imagine Chris and Ben relaxing in Spain, cocktails in hand.
But why leave the door open? The cars in the garage? The radio on?
Colin moved through to the hall, finding a rich red carpet.
A strange smell greeted his nostrils. It was like treacle mixed with bleach. It was unpleasant, even though he couldn’t put his finger on why.
He wondered if the smell was coming from his own body, all that excitement from earlier making his sweat all the more pungent. He checked under his arms, finding a slight hum, effectively masked by a familiar brand of deodorant—expensive shit he’d picked up from House of Fraser.
The living room was the next door along, and Colin peeked his head though, still calling as he went.
He made his way along to the next door, finding the study. It was empty. Just a desk with a computer. Bookcase in the corner.
The next room was the bathroom. A huge corner bath sat next to a separate walk-in shower. Toothpaste and two brushes rested in a stainless steel cup by the sink.
But still no sign of life.
The smell from before was in the bathroom, and Colin wondered if it was a burst pipe or some blockage in the system. The more pungent it got, the less pleasant it became. Colin unrolled some toilet roll and blew his nose, dropping the spent tissue in the toilet and flushing it.
The next room was a bedroom—one of three, it seemed. Colin pushed this door like all the others, calling as he went.
He stepped inside.
The air was thick in here, the acrid smell catching in his throat like out-of-date milk. He immediately felt himself gag and bent over to wretch onto the floor. When he backed up, he saw the source of the smell, the bodies of his friends side by side in bed together.
A cold, icy sweat broke across Colin’s back.
Ben was hardly recognizable. He’d always been slim, but he’d lost even more weight, his bones now stretching through parched skin, scarlet-stained teeth protruding through pale, narrow lips.
His eyes were barely human, no longer fixed on any particular view but instead blending into his skull like dusty old glass. They reminded Colin of the eyes of dead fish when they were washed up and left to fester on the beach.
The poor bastard had clearly reached the latter stages of flu, his nose and ears clogged with hardened blood.
Chris, however, looked healthy. As healthy as a dead man could look. There were no signs of infection, his body unmarred by the symptoms that Ben displayed. Instead, his face portrayed sadness, emptiness. And while Colin suspected that he had taken his own life, it seemed easier and more romantic to assume he had died of a broken heart.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Where is he?”
Vicky was never the patient type, and on a day like today, her nerves were shot.
She stood, arms folded, a safe distance from the car. She was staring over her glasses at the sight of the soldier buried in the windscreen. In the back was Sinead. Poor little infected Sinead. Riddled with the very pandemic that was killing half of Ireland.
Vicky held a handkerchief against her mouth. She didn’t trust the freshness of the country air to dispel an airborne virus, a virus Colin thought it wise for them to carry around in the back seat of the car.
God, he was a prick sometimes.
She approached the back window and peered inside.
Sinead was half awake. Blood gathered around her teeth like messy lipstick. She started coughing. A pink gob slapped against the window. It held, sticky like jam, before sliding down and discolouring the clear, sun-sparkled glass.
Vicky inched away, finding her back against the fountain in the garden.
She looked towards the bonnet of the car, the body still buried in the glass, both arms hanging from its side as if the silly twat had taken a running fucking dive for the windscreen.
She remembered, as a child, being alone in the car with her dad. She couldn’t remember where they were going, just that it was only the two of them in the vehicle and it was dark. A bird slammed into the windscreen. Vicky could hear the crack of its breaking bones, even now. She remembered her dad turning to her, swearing loudly, and then laughing. It was her first memory of death.
She had buried that memory. But a regressive therapy session unearthed the bird, cleaned its tiny corpse, rotting in the back of her mind for nearly thirty years, and presented it to her like a proud cat.
“Why do you think your dad had laughed?” the counsellor asked her.
Vicky didn’t know. She thought it might have something to do with him being a drunken prick who beat her and her mother on a daily basis, but she couldn’t be sure.
What’s keeping Colin?
She stared towards house. No sign of him.
She lay down on the grass lawn, looked up into the sky. The sun was still blinding. There were very few clouds.
Vicky was just beginning to relax a little and enjoy the sunshine when the body on top of the car began to move.
***
As Colin looked at the two bodies on the bed, he recalled the young woman he’d found at the car crash earlier. How he’d watched her fade from life like steam from a teacup. But this was different. These were people he’d known in life, s
pent time with.
He thought about Aunt Bell, and a heavy weight seemed to fill the empty pit of his stomach. He wondered how she would spend her last moments. He wondered if she were still waiting for her soup, if they’d given her anything to drink or some fresh blankets. Had they explained what was happening, why they were in the house, barricading her inside? Did she try to resist or just quietly roll over and let the virus take her?
Colin moved closer to the bed. It smelled of sick and sweat.
He moved one shaking hand over Ben’s eyes and closed them. The poor bastard had obviously struggled towards the end, trying desperately to cough up some lump in his throat or fight for his last breath.
Colin wondered who had gone first. Had Chris decided he wouldn’t be able to watch his lover die and selfishly ended his own life before the flu took Ben?
Colin knew he’d have to drag their bodies out into the garden, along with their bedding, and burn them. He knew that the whole house was likely to be contagious. But what did it matter? The flu was everywhere now, rampant throughout Ireland, thick in the very air he breathed into his lungs.
There was no escaping it. It was all around him. He could be next.
Colin opened the wardrobe, finding a blanket. He spread it across the two friends on the bed.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
Then he heard Vicky scream.
CHAPTER FIVE
When he reached the car, he found Vicky on the lawn, scrambling backwards, eyes wide, and her glasses on the ground.
On the car bonnet, he found the soldier’s body shaking, arms flapping. He was struggling like a frightened fish, head still wedged in the windscreen, blood spreading through the shattered glass.
“J-Jesus.” Colin said. He didn’t want to look but couldn’t tear his eyes away.
He ran to Vicky, scooping her up in his arms.
She released an ear-splitting shriek that he would hear ringing in his ears for hours afterwards. Her glasses flew from her head, her eyes narrowed, wrinkling at the corners as tears rinsed out. Colin tried to pull her close, but she struggled against him, her fingernails digging into his back, fists flying. She was inconsolable, so he released her, left her on the grass, writhing and keening like a woman possessed.
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