Fear of the Dead (Novella): Contagion

by Woods, Mark

  Contagion

  A　Fear　of　the　Dead　novella

  By

  Mark　Woods

  © 2020, Mark Woods, Black Hart Press

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International copyright law and any unauthorised reprint or use of this material in any way, shape or form is prohibited. No part of this book, including the cover and photos, may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author/publisher.

  Any resemblance to any persons, living, dead, or undead, or any places or locations in real life is purely coincidental.

  No infected were hurt in the production of this book.

  This book, as always, is dedicated to Catt Dahman for starting me off on this whole crazy ride in the first place.

  This is all your fault – and if it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t be where I am today so thank-you.

  Also to a certain local librarian for supporting me, you know who you are.

  Chapter one: Stuck on the roof

  Day 1

  Dear Diary....Yesterday was my Birthday. No-one noticed. Nobody wished me Happy Birthday or anything, but that’s okay. It’s all fine. Because yesterday was also The Anniversary; The Anniversary of Z-Day, the day the whole world went to shit…

  No-one ever mentions Z-Day, ever. You’ll never hear it brought up in any conversation. No-one ever asks you “Do you remember where you were when...” because everyone knows where they were. They were here - trapped up here on the uppermost floors of this tower block that has since become our prison.

  You can always tell when The Anniversary is about to come rolling round again, and when the date is starting to get imminent, because everyone starts getting really tetchy and irritable for whole days at a time beforehand. For a period of about forty-eight hours before, you can’t even talk to anyone. Then the day passes and everyone is fine again. Well, as fine as anyone ever can be nowadays after all that’s happened to us this past couple of years.

  The Anniversary is our annual day, once a year, for reflection and remembrance. The day in which everyone takes a moment to stop and think about all of those that we have lost, and the day in which we all give silent thanks for our continued survival. It is a very personal day for all of us; a day when everything else we have endured so far all just seems irrelevant and unimportant in the wake of what has happened to the rest of the world, and what is still going on even now. It is also the one day when we are much more likely than most to end up losing someone as they make that final choice, the ultimate decision, not to carry on....to give up the fight that each day has become, and finally choose to end it all. In the last two years since being up here, we have lost a total of twenty people in all and of that number, eight of them committed suicide on The Anniversary; three of them taking their lives in the first year and then, yesterday, another five deciding finally that enough was enough and that they just could not take any more of this sorry existence of ours. Five people all deciding to kill themselves on one day is pretty hard to deal with - especially when you consider it is us survivors who are then left to dispose of the bodies – but is it selfish of me that yesterday when we discovered that we had lost more people, all I could think about was how it now meant that we had less mouths to feed?

  Day 2

  Dear Diary...As I mentioned yesterday, the second Anniversary of Z-Day - the day that no-one wants to talk about any more, the day that the Dead returned to feast upon the living - has now come and gone for yet another year. How many of us will live to see another Anniversary roll around again next year? Who knows?

  I remember that day, way back then, when the whole world went to Hell, and I remember it well. I remember everything that happened that day, as clear as day - not least because, in case I haven’t mentioned it enough already, it was also the day of my birthday.

  In the days and weeks that followed, many people started turning towards religion to try and find some kind of answer for what was happening, but while there were some that claimed that what was happening was ‘Judgement Day’, or the arrival of ‘God’s Rapture’, the truth was, whatever you chose to call it, it all amounted to the exact same thing.

  The dead were coming back to life.

  But that’s not where this story starts…oh no.

  Even long before Z-day, this world was already starting to go to hell….

  Chapter two: The initial Outbreak

  It all started in China.

  Or at least, that is where the first cases were reported.

  Xui Wan Province to be exact, which is why they called it H1N1-Z - though later people would come to think the Z stood for zombie.

  It appeared to have originated in a seafood market where various different wild animals such as marmots, birds, rabbits, bats and snakes were all being traded illegally alongside Chinese swine, and the first reported victims of the virus were all reputed to have been stall holders who were thought to have contracted the disease through contact with infected animals.

  But even early on, there was a lot of misconception and misinformation about where the virus might have started.

  While some virologists claimed the genetic mark-up of the virus was 96 percent identical to a strain of mutated avian flu found in bats, others claimed a strain discovered present in pangolins and swine was even more closely similar to the human variant of the virus. And when people with no connection to the market likewise started falling ill, that then threw the whole origin of the virus out of the water, suggesting in fact that the first victims of the H1N1-Z virus actually predated the initial outbreak in and around the Xui Wan Province markets.

  Immediately, as soon as the first victims started falling ill, the Chinese government started closing ranks. They shut down all links to the worldwide media and quickly began controlling and withholding any and all information on the disease. The markets thought responsible for the outbreak were all shut down, inspected, and throughly deep cleaned, but already it was too late as medical personnel and health officials likewise started succumbing to the disease.

  Within a matter of days the H1N1-Z virus had already begun to spread and once it had started, there was simply no way of stopping it. But in most cases, in those early days, the virus was not fatal. Most people who came down with it exhibited only minor symptoms – such as a high fever, coughing, and a dry throat common with most types of influenza – whilst of the remaining cases, only something like 14 percent found themselves in a severe condition, with only 5 percent of them becoming critical, and usually then only in combination with already pre-existing medical conditions such as Bronchitis or Emphysema.

  It wasn’t until after the virus had already left the country, that it began to mutate again.

  This time into a much more deadly variant of the disease.

  Before long, new cases were being reported all across mainland Europe, in parts of the U.S, and even in parts of Britain, but even then people did not start to take the virus seriously.

  Not until people started dying.

  And not just in their tens, but in their hundreds.

  And in their tens of hundreds.

  Before long the World Health Organisation was left with no other choice.

  They announced a worldwide pandemic.

  And then, and only then did people begin to panic.

  Chapter three: China crisis

  Doctor Xiang Chao fled down the busy, crowded street, bustling crowds all around her, her face mask still tightly fastened around her mouth offering only minimum protection, trying
to make her way towards the other side of town. Xiang had no idea where she was headed, but what she did know for certain was that before this night was through, she needed to get out of the city.

  People were after her, she was sure of it – she had felt rather than noticed herself being followed ever since she had left the hospital which was why she had elected not to return to her apartment. She had no idea who it was that might be after her, or who it was that might be following her – the Chinese government, someone from the hospital, or someone else entirely – but one thing she was fairly sure of was that they definitely intended her harm.

  She should have kept her mouth shut, she thought.

  She shouldn’t have been so outspoken.

  Already two of her colleagues had failed to turn up for their shifts the last two nights and they, like her, had likewise been very outspoken about how the hospital they were working for was dealing with the virus.

  Word was, the virus was man-made and had been released from a lab on the outskirts of the town – whether by accident, or on purpose as a means of population control, or as an experiment to see what would happen if such a virus was released – but there was no proof of that.

  Up until now, it had all been hearsay.

  But she had watched the military presence increase over the past few days at the hospital, had seen them escorting several patients away to who knew where despite the protestations of the doctors who were treating them, and had slowly started to suspect that the stories she had been hearing behind closed doors were true – the Chinese government knew more about the virus than they were letting on.

  Today had been the final straw.

  An old lady she had been caring for and treating for the virus had disappeared off her ward. When Xiang had questioned her hospital supervisor where her patient might have gone, she had been told that the old lady was being transported to a specialist facility. The woman had no surviving family, so over the past couple of days Xiang had become quite close to the old lady and had taken the news quite badly. She had rushed down the corridor, and had just been in time to see her patient being wheeled into a lift on a gurney.

  When she had attempted to follow her patient into the lift, two armed guards had blocked her way and stopped her.

  Her supervisor had been forced to drag her aside.

  He had taken her into a utility cupboard and told her not to be so stupid.

  “But it is not fair,” Xiang had protested. “That old lady has no-one, no-one. No immediate family, no-one. We were caring for her here. She was already getting the best treatment we can give. Where are they going to take her where they can give her anything more? Everywhere else, all the other specialist hospitals, are just as busy if not more so than we are!

  “It is not right, Xuan. They have no right to take our patients! No authority, and no right!”

  She had stormed out of the utility closest at that point, and would have charged off back down the hall to confront the two armed guards once more, but her supervisor, Xuan Xuiying, grabbed her by the arm and stopped her.

  “Let me go, Xuan,” Xiang demanded. “Someone has to say something. Someone has to tell the media what is going on. We cannot keep covering for our government anymore. We have to tell the people what is happening, just how bad this virus is. We have to warn them.”

  “Don’t be so stupid,” Xuan hissed. “You know we cannot do that. At the very least, keep your voice down. You never know who might be listening…”

  “No, Xuan,” Xiang insisted. “I will not be silenced. I have seen patients being escorted out of here in the dead of night in unmarked trucks; I have seen the armed guards patrolling our halls. Someone needs to say something!”

  Her supervisor had told her to take the rest of the shift off.

  “You have been overworking yourself,” he told her. “You have just pulled a double shift and you are overtired. Go home. Go back to your apartment and get some rest. Come back later in a few hours once you are rested and are in a clearer state of mind and if I am still here, we will talk some more. But do not make any rash decisions now and please, Xiang. Think before you speak and about what you say before you speak it out loud. I implore you.”

  Xiang had reluctantly taken her supervisor’s advice.

  She had got changed out of her scrubs, and dressed back in her civilian clothing to go home.

  She had not travelled far when she first began to suspect that she was being followed.

  ***

  Now, Xiang changed direction and headed towards the subway.

  She knew there was no point heading back towards her apartment because by now, they would have done a check on her and found out where she lived.

  No doubt there was already someone waiting there already to take her out.

  She knew how these things worked.

  Either she would have an ‘accident’ and fall down her apartment steps, or else she would disappear forever.

  That wasn’t her being paranoid, she just knew how these things worked.

  Xuan had been right, she realised now. She shouldn’t have been so outspoken back at the hospital, but she had been tired and she had been angry.

  She had also been afraid.

  Everyday she stared death in the face.

  Especially lately.

  Every day she was surrounded by the sick and the dying, as more and more people succumbed to the effects of the virus that the Western World was calling H1N1-Z.

  But that didn’t scare her.

  That was her job.

  What scared her was the conspiracy of silence that seemed to surround the whole entire hospital like a protective bubble.

  People out here on the street, the very same people she was passing by even now, had no idea of the severity of the virus…and that was because they were not being told.

  She would go to her sisters, she had decided.

  Her sister who lived far, far out of town towards the mountains.

  She would go there, and she would stay there, and she would contact the Chinese media from there.

  But if she was going, she had to leave now, tonight, before the Chinese authorities decided to lock down the whole city – something she had been assured was very imminent and would be occurring much sooner rather than later.

  But first she had to lose her tail.

  She could lose whoever was following her in the crowded subway, she thought. She was sure of it.

  They would never be able to follow her down there, let alone track what train she got on. By the time, they realised where she might have gone, she would be well away.

  Xiang started to descend the stairs.

  There were more people down here than she’d realised, she thought, as she tried to fight her way through the crowd. It made her descent much slower than she’d hoped, and there were as many people pushing their way back up as there were going down.

  For a second, she began to question whether this had actually been the right move. Everyone knew the virus spread much more prevalently in crowds, and her face mask only offered the bare minimum protection.

  But Xiang still believed it offered her the best hope for losing whoever it was that might be following her.

  Eventually, she made her way down into the station.

  Just as above, all the station platforms were more crowded than she had ever seen them. Maybe more people had heard about the potential lockdown than she realised, she thought, and were now, like her, trying to get out of the city.

  Or maybe it was just rush hour.

  She had no idea what time it was; she had been working so hard these past 48 hours that she had lost all sense of time and no longer even knew what day it was, let alone what time of day it might be.

  Xiang looked at the overhead display, discovered what platform she needed to be on, then descended another set of stairs to get to where she needed to be.

  She had lost that itchy feeling between her shoulder blades now that had suggested she was being follow
ed, so thought her plan might possibly have succeeded and that she had now lost her tail.

  But she still needed to be careful, she thought.

  The next train was in ten minutes.

  Ten minutes.

  That was all she needed to kill.

  She cursed herself, silently, under her breath at her poor choice of words.

  Xiang glanced all around her, and tried to keep one eye on her fellow commuters. Many of them were wearing face masks too – some of them homemade and so far less effective than even her own primitive, government sanctioned version was.

  No-one struck her as immediately suspicious.

  But then that was kind of the point.

  A tail was no good if it was blatantly obvious.

  The person following her could be anyone – any one of the people standing here on the platform with her.

  Or there could be no-one following her at all, and her suspicions all in her head.

  A blast of cold air started rushing down the tunnel from where the train she was standing here waiting for would very shortly emerge, and she thought she could hear it speeding down the tunnel towards her.

  Early, she thought. That makes a pleasant change.

  She pushed the small handbag she was carrying further up her shoulder where it had slipped down, and prepared to push forwards so she would be one of the first on the train. That way, she thought, she could better lose herself amongst the other passengers on the train.

  Xiang felt a sudden sharp sting on her neck, and raised her hand instinctively to cover where it felt as though she had just been stung, as someone brusquely brushed past her, bowing their head in silent apology for bumping into her.

  Except it was the wrong season for wasps.

  Xiang bowed her head in return, in acknowledgement for her fellow commuter’s apology, then held a hand out to steady herself as she found herself suddenly coming over all dizzy. She hadn’t eaten much today – or much at all in the last 48 hours of her shift – so simply put it down to low blood sugar.