Colin moved towards the car. He got right up close to the trapped soldier.
“Hello?” he called.
There was no reply. Colin hadn’t expected one. Maybe he just needed to hear a voice, any voice, even his own.
He opened the car door, finding the soldier’s face, bruised and sliced. One eye staring back at him. With his head raised and his face visible, Colin could see how young he was.
Just a child.
“Stop struggling,” Colin said. “You’re making things worse!” Blood was pooling on the dashboard. “Stop moving, for Christ’s sake,” Colin said again.
Colin rolled his hands into the cuffs of his cardigan sleeves. He tapped at the windscreen until it split into pieces, falling back onto the bonnet.
The lad pulled his head free, his body slipping down the bonnet and falling to the side of the car.
Colin exited the car, finding the soldier on the ground, choking.
“Think! Think! Think!” Colin muttered to himself, wracking his brain, trying to remember his first aid training.
He threw himself to the ground by the lad’s side.
With one hand, he forced the soldier’s mouth open, reached into his throat to find he’d swallowed his own swollen tongue. Colin searched inside, feeling the lad gag, warm, bloody juices belching through the gaps between Colin’s hand and the soldier’s throat. He found the tongue then pulled it free, relaxing it back into the soldier’s mouth.
Carefully, lest he break any more bones, Colin bent the wounded lad over his knee, patting his back like a sick child as he expelled the rest of the shit in his throat onto the stoned driveway.
“It’s okay,” Colin said as he continued to pat the lad’s back. “You’re going to be okay.”
CHAPTER SIX
18th June
They’d put both Sinead and the soldier in the spare bedroom. They lay in two twin beds, side by side.
Sinead was barely conscious. Her airways were clogging up with blood-filled mucus and needed to be cleared on the hour, every hour.
The soldier was seemingly not infected but still swaying in and out of consciousness. He was badly injured. It wasn’t just the cuts on his face and neck. His legs, neck and some of his upper body had suffered in the collision, meaning bones were most likely broken, perhaps beyond repair. Without proper medical help, he might die or, at the very least, his bones would heal wrong. It was hard to imagine the pain the young soldier was going through, but there was nothing could be done for him.
There was little could be done for either of them. Some water when they were able. Some soup through a straw. Yet either one of them could pass away in their sleep at any time. And with the way things were looking, that mightn’t be such a bad way to go.
As Vicky stood at the doorway, looking in on her former colleague, she remembered the girl Sinead used to be and would never be again. Bright, carefree. A people-person, born to do the job she did. Good with customers, laughing at their jokes, building rapport.
Everyone loved Sinead.
They hated Vicky.
In the old world, Vicky had been retreating into herself. Hiding in the office, going over sales figures, retail reports, dealing with invoices and purchase orders. She would only come out onto the shop floor to meet difficult customers, the arsey ones who didn’t respond well to Sinead’s soft approach. That was something Vicky did excel at: she could put the fear of God into anyone with little more than a look.
Vicky closed the spare room door, made for the bathroom.
She clicked the light on and locked the bathroom door behind her.
She washed her hands, scrubbing them feverishly with soap. Threw some water on her face, looked in the mirror. Her eyes were like tea bags. She felt old and withered. It was obvious she hadn’t been sleeping well.
Her make-up bag sat between the taps on the sink, unzipped. But Vicky couldn’t bring herself to retrieve anything from it.
She wondered when it was she had stopped caring about how she looked.
The general rule was that staff should wear products from the shop. Head Office would send them ideas on what new products retail assistants should be promoting. Staff would get huge discounts on these items.
Sinead and some of the others would put their own twists on Head Office’s ideas, but Vicky would wear them exactly as they were presented, the same accessories, same shoes and make-up.
But now, there was no model for Vicky to copy. No pictures or memos from head office. She was expected to put on make-up because she wanted to.
Vicky looked away from the mirror.
Her eyes fell upon the large corner bath.
Like everything in this fucking house, it was spotless. A few potions set along its sides. Expensive bath salts and cremes. Essential oils and a burner.
A razor.
Vicky’s eyes lingered on the razor.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The study was the only place where Colin had found any trace of clutter in the house, but even then it wasn’t anything to shout about. A few photocopies stacked by the computer. A coffee mug, stained at the bottom, resting on the desk near the printer. All things he would expect to see in the average house, but here they stuck out like sore thumbs.
He liked the study. Had spent most of his time over the last couple of days there. Sitting in the easy chair, thinking. Watching the news reports and updated YouTube footage on the internet. It had become his cave, somewhere to retreat to.
Something caught his eye now as he sat himself into the swivel chair by the computer desk: a single piece of notebook paper was taped to the wall. Colin hadn’t noticed it before.
He reached his hand, pulled the paper from the wall and peered more closely at it.
There was something scribbled in biro pen:
12/08
Looked like a date. Someone’s birthday, perhaps? Colin knew the date of Chris’ birthday but not Ben’s. He’d been to Chris’ 30th last year. Something of a knees-up it was, too, with beaucoup de booze consumed.
He smiled at the memories.
Colin visualised the pair now in their deathbed together. Sleeping peacefully. He knew he should have taken their bodies outside, but just couldn’t bring himself to move them.
He threw the piece of paper across the desk, switched the computer on.
Google’s search engine loaded up. Colin did a search on ‘the flu’. As expected, the news pages were completely swamped with headlines about the pandemic.
Colin left the news pages, finding YouTube. There were literally thousands of videos uploaded on the flu, most of them censored as soon as they were uploaded—seemed that YouTube weren’t keen on videos showing people dying.
Colin found one from Belfast that interested him and clicked in. The video began to play. An insane man was being dragged from an office building by the cops. They wore the same yellow suits as the ones who had come for Aunt Bell and Sinead. But the man was beyond angry, his jaws snapping at the cops’ arms as they tried to feed him into the back of a Paddywagon.
A noise from behind startled Colin.
He turned to find Vicky leaning against the doorframe. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he said, feeling flustered, like she’d just caught him looking at porn. “How’re you feeling?”
“Knackered. Haven’t been able to sleep.” She yawned, looking out the window. Evening was drawing in again. “Apart from that, I’m—”
Her eyes drifted over to the monitor.
Colin tried to minimise the YouTube video, but she stopped him.
“No, let me see,” she said.
Colin stepped back, resigned to her viewing the video. He didn’t watch the footage as it ran again, instead watching her eyes.
She stepped back and pointed at the screen. “What’s wrong with that man?”
“I don’t know,” Colin said, his voice low and measured.
“He doesn’t look right. What’s wrong with him?”
“I said I d
on’t know!”
Colin grabbed the mouse and closed down the page. There was a sound from the hallway, an almost animal-like rasping.
Vicky looked towards the door.
“What the hell was that?” she said.
Colin pushed past Vicky, following the sound to the spare bedroom. Inside he found Sinead, her breathing so laboured that he expected her to give up at any second.
He pulled several baby wipes from the tub by Sinead’s bed, cleaning her mouth and nose of the mucus, noticing how her breathing became steadier. He tried to get her to drink some water, managed to get some down before she rejected it, coughing and spluttering the water along with blood and thick globs of bile.
“I want her out of here,” he heard Vicky say from the hallway. “She’ll infect us all if she stays.”
“Well, why don’t you throw her out, then?! Right after you move Chris and Ben?” He turned to face her, rage and fear and grief exploding from within. “This isn’t the shop, Vicky! You’re not the boss lady now!”
Vicky turned and marched down the hallway. Colin heard the living room door slam.
“Fuck!” he said.
He ran both of his hands through his hair.
He could feel the dampness on his fingers. Sinead’s blood and germs.
“Fuck,” he said again.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Waringstown, County Down
Tom ran fresh tape across the wall above the bedroom window, resealing the clear plastic sheet that had come away.
He was running operations from his bedroom now. Everything had been moved upstairs. The important stuff, anyway: his computer, his old record player, the birdcage.
The bedroom boasted the only glass not boarded up. It was his window to the world. He stole a glance through the plastic sheet, finding the same yellow, sun-parched fields as always.
Nothing had changed.
Tom’s eyes searched each corner of the window for further signs of give. He cut another piece of tape from the roll with his teeth, running it along a corner that clearly didn’t need it. Then another.
He stepped back, appraising his handiwork. It looked secure.
Tom wiped his brow with an old handkerchief. This was thirsty work. A cup of tea would be good.
He headed downstairs, cutting through the living room, making for the kitchen. He almost tripped over a spent gas cylinder on his way. He’d still a few left. Should keep him in tea and baked beans for at least another while.
He fired up the gas, lighting the hob. He made his tea, poured it into his favourite mug. As he poured the tea, Tom noticed his hands were shaking. He’d run out of pills, scoffed the lot. He saw a bottle of vodka sitting on the worktop. It was his last one, and most of it was gone too. Tom added a drop or two to his tea. Maybe that would steady his hands a bit.
He carried the mug out of the kitchen, through the living room, heading for the stairs.
The smell of leftover food mixed with the ever-rank fumes coming from the toilet. It was getting too much to bear, and Tom made a mental note to tidy up later on, to seal all the rubbish in black bin bags and spray some more air freshener around the place, regardless of how much that shit hurt his throat.
Christ, he wished he could open a window, but he knew it would be suicide to do so.
This fucking flu.
According to the internet, it was everywhere now. All across Ireland. Cases reported in England, Scotland, Wales...
Yet still Tom saw no physical signs of the flu where he lived.
He reckoned rural communities would fare better as a rule. People were better at sharing, at trading without money and stocking goods. They kept quiet, too. Hid their sick and stayed out of sight.
Tom moved over to the computer, setting his mug of tea on the desk. He grabbed the mouse, doing a round robin of his daily haunts. It was all flu all the time. No one was talking about anything else.
The goons were getting more vicious. There were reports of death camps being set up. Of mass executions. Shootings on motorways.
One video caught his attention, and he hovered his cursor over the play button. The internet was slowing of late, but bit-by-bit the video began to play, delivering slices of another riot, this one from an apartment block in Finaghy.
The footage seemed to be taken by a mobile phone.
Two government types, maybe cops, were moving through a crowd of people, entering the apartment block. They wore oxygen masks and yellow plastic suits. “Good colour,” Tom smirked.
The crowd was getting wilder as the suits moved up the stairwell. The person carrying the phone was swearing at the goons, yelling.
Tom smiled gleefully at the tirade of abuse she was levelling at them.
They reached their destination, an apartment surrounded by a crowd of other government types.
Tom watched a quarantine take place. He’d seen a few, already, but this one was particularly gruesome. A perfectly well woman was trying to escape her house as the goons in yellow proceeded to seal her in.
“Bastards!” Tom shouted at the screen, shaking his fist.
The footage flipped to something coming from the back of the crowd and Tom thought he could make out a number of heavily infected people in the crowd. But they seemed riled, angry. They were struggling with other people in the crowd, people who weren’t goons.
Tom paused the video at that point, rewound. He squinted his eyes as the scene replayed, trying to work out what was going on. He saw the infected people again, seemingly agitated. He watched as other people—everyday, ordinary people—beat down the infected, some using sticks.
Why were they doing that?
He let the footage play on.
All hell broke loose.
People from the back of the crowd started to scream and push forward. Someone was shooting a gun. The crowd hemmed in on the cops, and they bolted for another flat, closing the door behind them.
The mobile phone shifted back to the crowd at the back. There was still some sort of disturbance going on, the other government types trying to fight their way out of the block while others pushed past them, heading for the flat the first two suits had disappeared into.
The phone zoomed in on the infected people. Tom leaned closer, trying to get a better look at him. There was definitely something not right here. They weren’t sick in the everyday sense of the word. They seemed feral, violent, as if the flu had twisted their minds.
The phone changed angle again, moving with the main push of the crowd towards the flat door. People were beating against it, the pressure soon pushing it through.
The crowd piled into the flat, finding the first two goons standing with an older lady and yet another heavily infected man. The phone seemed to pass hands at this point..
Tom twisted his eyes, trying to make out what happened next.
Filming resumed, the camera shaky with pressure from the surging crowd.
In the corner of the screen, Tom noticed the smaller goon draw his firearm and shoot in the direction of the crowd.
The footage ended.
Tom stepped back.
“Whoa...” he breathed.
He looked around the room, suddenly paranoid.
He clicked out of that footage, finding other popular videos in the same vein. He clicked into another, watching a similar riot, this one from North Belfast.
A crowd of hooded youngsters were facing off against suited police. Again, the camera shifted to find some heavily infected people moving amongst the crowds. But they didn’t look like people anymore.
They looked like monsters.
CHAPTER NINE
Waringstown, County Down, 9th June
The sun pierced the thin fabric of curtains, waking Shaun early. Beside him, Lize continued to sleep. Next to her was Jamie, wrapped up in the duvet like a pig in a poke.
Shaun reached out his hand and stroked Lize’s hair. They said that when you lost one sense, the others grew more sensitive, and Shaun believed that every ti
me he touched his wife.
He kissed her head softly. Ruffled Jamie’s hair then lay staring at them for a moment.
His family.
Dark thoughts intruded his mind. Shaun tried to push them away but failed. His wife had had an affair, and they still hadn’t talked about it. Both Shaun and Lize had just continued as normal, ignoring the huge white elephant in the room. For now it was more important to remain strong for Jamie, to provide a united front.
Shaun quietly climbed out of bed. He left the room, closing the door behind him as gently as possible.
He descended the stairs, entered the living room to find Martin hammering nails into a series of wooden sheets.
Fred circled the room, whimpering with each slam of the hammer against nail.
For a while, Martin didn’t see Shaun, his pursed lips suggesting he was whistling. When he did notice Shaun, he simply glanced at him and then checked to see if Lize or Jamie were there. Satisfied they weren’t, that it was just Shaun, Martin returned to the job at hand without uttering a single word.
Shaun’s heart sank.
At times like this he felt invisible. And God knows he felt that way a lot.
Once people realised Shaun was deaf, they would often forget he was even there. For some, it was simply ignorance: they treated Shaun the same way they treated someone in a wheelchair or someone with Down’s syndrome. With Shaun, the impairment wasn’t so obvious, so a person might talk to him, and he would read their lips and reply. But once they heard his voice, his twisting of certain words and letters, his speech a few decibels louder perhaps, Shaun would see the face in front of him change.
Sometimes, if Lize were with him, they would smile at Shaun benevolently before turning instead to address his wife.
Once, when Jamie had been no more than four years old, standing holding his daddy’s hand, he was asked, in front of Shaun, if someone normal was around to look after him—a real adult. And while this wasn’t something Martin had ever vocalised, it sure as hell was what he thought.
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