300 Minutes of Danger

by Jack Heath

  27:40‘How does it spread?’

  ‘Through blood and saliva. Hence the hand washing, and—’

  ‘Didn’t you just say they cough up blood?’ Audrey demanded. ‘What if I get some on me?’

  ‘If you do, clean it off right away—but like I said, the people you’re treating won’t be sick. And you’re already vaccinated, so even if you’re exposed to the virus you won’t get it.’ Hope checked off some things on her fingers. ‘It says this on the form, but don’t put through anyone over seventy or anyone under two for vaccination.’

  27:00‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s a live vaccine. Each syringe contains a modified version of the flyrus.’

  ‘We’re giving people the virus to stop them from getting the virus?’

  Hope looked like she had explained this many, many times before. ‘It’s a weaker strain, so it will teach the patient’s immune system to fight off the real thing. But very young and very old people don’t have strong immune systems, so we can only protect them by vaccinating everybody else.’

  The MTF shuddered to a halt.

  26:30Hope’s radio crackled. ‘We’re here,’ said Bergman, the driver. ‘There’s quite a crowd. Get ready.’

  ‘Got it. Thanks, Bergman.’ Hope put the radio away and looked up at the clock. ‘Time to open the doors. Are you good to go?’

  Audrey was still scared but also exhilarated. Yes, her friends in shops and restaurants probably weren’t as stressed—but she bet they hadn’t done anything so meaningful either. She was going to save lives.

  ‘Ready,’ she said.

  25:40Hope unlocked the heavy steel door and pushed it open. Immediately the noise hit Audrey—the shouting and muttering and shuffling and jostling of a desperate crowd. Through the gap Audrey saw a collage of desperate faces. The volume rose to a roar as everyone fought to be closest to the door.

  ‘There’s so many,’ she said. ‘Why are they yelling?’

  ‘They think there’s not enough vaccine for everybody.’

  25:00‘Is there?’

  Hope didn’t reply.

  Audrey grabbed the clipboard with the forms on it and held it up like a shield. Hope grabbed a man and a woman out of the crowd and dragged them both into the MTF. Then she shut the door again.

  The woman was a stout, dark-haired lady in a T-shirt and shorts. Hope sat her down in a chair and presented her with a form and a pen. Apparently she was going to do admin stuff as well.

  24:00Audrey turned to the man. He was tall, with luminous blue eyes and a thick mane of blond hair. He wore a motorcycle jacket, a hiking backpack, leather trousers and boots that looked like they were designed for walks on the moon. One of his teeth was chipped to a jagged point.

  ‘Hi,’ Audrey said. ‘I’m Audrey. I’ll just get you to take a seat here and fill in this form, then we’ll have you vaccinated in no time.’

  23:30She felt like she had sounded very professional, but the man didn’t look impressed.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘that’s not how this is going to work.’

  He pulled off his backpack and unzipped it.

  ‘You’re going to fill this up with the vaccine,’ he said, ‘and then I’m going to walk out of here.’

  23:05‘I don’t understand,’ Audrey said, still smiling stupidly.

  The man reached into his jacket and pulled out a small black cylinder with a yellow band around the middle and a ring hanging from the top.

  ‘Now do you understand?’ he said.

  Audrey’s brain completely froze up, like a computer running too many programs at once. The clash between the man’s demand and what she had expected, the suddenness of it, had overwhelmed her.

  The man pulled out the ring and held down the trigger of the grenade.

  ‘I’m waiting,’ he said.

  ‘Uh, Hope?’

  22:00Audrey looked over. Hope and her patient were already staring at the man in silent horror.

  ‘It has a seven-second fuse,’ the man said. He released the trigger. Audrey recoiled.

  The man squeezed the trigger again. ‘Now it has a five-second fuse,’ he said. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to see it go boom. Fill up the bag. Now.’

  ‘Audrey, do as he says,’ Hope hissed.

  21:40‘OK, OK,’ Audrey said hurriedly. ‘Take it easy. I’ll just go get the syringes out of the fridge.’

  ‘Take the bag,’ the man advised. He didn’t seem in the least bit anxious. Audrey wondered if he held up mobile treatment vehicles every day.

  Probably. If there really wasn’t enough of the vaccine to go around, this man could make a fortune selling it.

  21:00Clutching the bag in one hand, Audrey opened the fridge. The freezing air flooded out, sending swirls of mist along the floor. She grabbed shrink-wrapped syringes by the handful and started stuffing them into the backpack.

  18:30‘Hurry up,’ the man said.

  ‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ Audrey muttered.

  Soon the backpack was full. Audrey cast a mournful look at the depleted shelves in the fridge. More than half their supplies were gone. Even if the man left without blowing them all up, hundreds of people outside would go untreated because of him.

  Audrey turned back to the man. ‘Here,’ she said, thrusting the bag out.

  He ignored her. He was looking out the window, his knuckles white around the grenade.

  ‘Take it and go,’ Audrey said.

  The man didn’t react. He looked like she must have a moment ago—paralysed.

  Audrey followed his gaze—

  And saw the car.

  17:25It was a white sedan with a cracked headlight and paint scraped off both sides. Audrey could barely make out the driver, a gaunt man with scruffy hair and a bright red beard.

  No. Not a beard. His chin looked like it was smeared with blood. People scrambled out of the way as the car mounted the curb and zoomed towards the MTF at full speed.

  16:30‘Everybody down!’ Audrey shrieked. She just had time to follow her own advice, diving under the nearest table, when the car smashed into the side of the MTF.

  There was a mighty crash and the bottom half of the wall caved in. The whole world seemed to swing around as the MTF tipped over sideways. Audrey slammed into one of the walls as it became the floor. All the air whooshed out of her lungs and one of her ribs cracked with an audible snap.

  16:10The air filled with a hail of objects—papers, pens, wrapped syringes, rolls of tape and bandages, chairs and even people. In a blur of leather and blond hair, the man flew across the room and banged into the wall. The desk Audrey cowered under was bolted to the wall and shielded her from most of the debris, but it couldn’t block out the deafening racket.

  15:50When she opened her eyes, the MTF had settled on its side. The wall above her was a lumpy wreck. The wall below was awash with detritus.

  As her eyes focused, she saw the grenade lying next to her. The man had dropped it in the chaos.

  Audrey wasted a precious second staring at it before she came to her senses. How many seconds had it been?

  She grabbed the grenade and held the trigger down.

  One, two, three, four, five.

  Nothing exploded.

  She let out a shaky breath and stood up, holding the grenade in one hand. The surface had a papery texture. It was hard to believe something so light could do so much damage. But she didn’t doubt that it was real. There had been something about the look on the man’s face when he pulled the pin. And if she wasn’t imagining it, the thing smelled explosive too.

  Hope lay sprawled on the floor, unmoving. Her patient was facedown beside her. Audrey wanted to help them, but she had to deal with the grenade first.

  14:50There was no way to get it out of the MTF. The door couldn’t be opened since it was facing the ground. The window above Audrey was out of reach, hadn’t broken in the crash and wasn’t designed to open.

  Audrey rummaged around in the debris until she found a roll of tape. She peeled
off a strip with her teeth and wound it around and around and around the grenade, fixing the trigger in place. Then she took a deep breath and let go.

  The tape held. The grenade didn’t explode.

  13:40She placed it gingerly on the floor and then ran over to Hope.

  ‘Hope,’ she said. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Uhhhhhhh.’ Hope’s eyelids fluttered.

  Audrey felt a little fear melt away. Hope was alive!

  ‘Ugh hnnnn,’ Hope groaned.

  12:10Audrey touched her shoulder. ‘We’re trapped in here. The MTF is on its side. What should we do?’

  Hope’s eyes opened, but it looked like she couldn’t focus. ‘Gurruhhh,’ she said, and shut her eyes again. A purple bruise was already spreading across her forehead.

  Audrey turned to the other woman, trying to remember if she had heard her name. She couldn’t.

  She touched her back. ‘Can you hear me?’

  The woman didn’t respond.

  11:30Audrey very carefully rolled her onto her side. The woman’s nose looked like it was broken and one of her arms was twisted at an unnatural angle. But she was breathing, and she had a pulse.

  Audrey knew that real life wasn’t like the movies. A blow to the head strong enough to knock someone out was a very serious injury. Hope and the other woman needed medical help right away. But how could they get out with the door facing the ground?

  11:00The robber—or terrorist, or whatever—lay facedown in the corner. Audrey didn’t check him for life signs. She didn’t want to go anywhere near him.

  ‘Help!’ she screamed. ‘Can anyone hear me?’

  10:50No response. Audrey shivered. Since the crash there had been absolute silence from the world outside. Audrey had the uneasy feeling that the area might have been evacuated. Something about an overturned vehicle with a full fuel tank and a hundred live virus samples probably made people nervous. Plus, it was possible that someone outside knew about the grenade. Anyone who did would want to get as far away as possible.

  Audrey pounded on the wall. ‘Hey! Is anyone there?’

  She waited. But there was just silence from the other side.

  Her phone was still at the hospital, where she had boarded the MTF. It had been a legal requirement that she leave it behind. She wasn’t a doctor, but she would be meeting patients and would be exposed to confidential information. But Hope’s radio was supposed to be useful in an emergency.

  Audrey looked around for Hope’s radio. Soon she found it—well, half of it. The other half was presumably somewhere in the debris. Useless.

  09:30She shivered again. It was freezing in here. And suddenly she realised why—the door to the walk-in fridge had come off its hinges. The engine was still running, so the fridge was now cooling the entire vehicle.

  Audrey ran over to the fridge, looking for a way to shut it off. It was a walk-in, so she couldn’t just unplug it. She searched the stainless steel walls for a power switch or a thermostat, but there was nothing. Just row after row of icy shelves, half of which were above her head, the other half beneath her feet. She dug through the fallen syringes, but there wasn’t anything useful beneath them. The temperature must be controlled from the driver’s cabin.

  08:15She and Hope wore thin nurse’s scrubs. The unconscious woman was in a T-shirt and shorts. Having survived the grenade and the crash—not to mention the deadly virus sweeping the country—were they really going to freeze to death?

  It was possible. With so many cases of the virus spreading over the city, emergency services could take a long time to arrive.

  07:40Blankets. Hope had showed her where to find them, in case a patient fainted after the injection. The cupboard had been fixed to the wall—now the floor. Audrey ran over, lifted the cupboard door and snatched up the blankets. There were only two. She draped one over Hope and one over the mystery woman. The cold was more dangerous to them than it was to her.

  She rubbed her bare arms. Clouds of condensation wreathed her head with every exhale. How long would it be until someone came to rescue them?

  07:00She walked over to the front of the MTF. Maybe the driver was still here. Perhaps he would be able to hear her through the wall.

  She thumped on the formica barrier. ‘Hey! Bergman! Can you hear me?’

  No answer. She hoped he was OK.

  Hope’s lips were going blue. Her veins stood out like spiderwebs on her neck. Audrey wrapped the blanket a little more tightly around her, aware of how pitifully thin it was.

  She wasn’t a doctor. Not yet. But she couldn’t just sit here and watch these two women die. Not if there was something—anything—she could do to save them.

  06:25Her eyes fell on the grenade.

  No, she told herself. Too crazy. It nearly killed us all. But … perhaps it’s the only thing which can save us.

  The fuel tank was at the front of the MTF—Bergman had filled it up on the way here. The walk-in fridge was at the back. She headed down there to take a look. If she set off the bomb inside, it might blow a hole in the wall through which they could escape. If not, it might at least destroy important components of the fridge and stop them all from freezing to death.

  Or it could flash-fry everyone inside.

  She tried not to think about that.

  She would have liked to close the fridge door to muffle the blast. But if she could close the fridge door there wouldn’t need to be a blast in the first place.

  06:00She picked up all the syringes and tossed them up the other end of the MTF. The vaccine was precious. With any luck it would survive the explosion. Then she lifted the fallen fridge door. It seemed to weigh a tonne—hopefully that meant it was thick enough to be a useful shield. She dragged it, arms and spine aching, over to where the two women lay.

  Then she went for the grenade.

  05:05It took her a minute to find some scissors among the mess of junk. Her fingers trembled as she cut the tape. Was she really doing the right thing?

  Maybe not. But surely doing nothing wasn’t the right thing either.

  She propped the fridge door up so the two women were sheltered behind it. She cowered beside them, the grenade clenched in one sweaty hand.

  04:30This was the most important throw of her life. If she missed the doorway, the grenade could bounce back and blow them all to pieces. Maybe it would do that even if she didn’t miss.

  She hesitated for the longest time. It was like standing on the ten-metre diving board at the swimming pool, trying to work up the courage to step into the void.

  Come on, she told herself. Just do it!

  04:10She threw the grenade. Then with a little squeak of terror she ducked behind the fridge door.

  Nothing happened.

  She waited, her heart in her mouth. What had gone wrong? Had it landed on its trigger, suspending the fuse? Or had it been a fake grenade after all? Or had it—

  04:00BOOM!

  The fridge door hit her like a stampeding bull. She felt herself scream but couldn’t hear it over the world-destroying blast. Super-heated air rushed past her, burning all the hairs off her arms. Debris rained down on her, sharp edges pricking her skin. She was blinded by the light. It was as though she’d tried to take a photograph of her own eyeball with the flash on.

  Soon all she could hear was the shrill ringing in her ears. She blinked furiously, trying to get her vision back. But even when her sight returned, she couldn’t see much. She was lying facedown.

  03:30Audrey tried to get up. But she couldn’t move at all. Her arms and legs wouldn’t obey her.

  A chill ran up her spine. Oh no, she thought. I’m paralysed!

  Then she realised the fridge door was lying on her back. With a mighty heave, she rolled sideways and it slid off, hitting the floor with a clang.

  03:00The MTF was full of acrid smoke. It stung her eyes and tickled the inside of her nostrils. She could hardly see.

  But her ears were already recovering, and she could hear something. A distant siren. It was th
e first sound she had heard from outside the MTF since the door closed.

  She put her hands under Hope’s armpits and dragged her towards where the fridge used to be. Hope’s feet skittered across the shrink-wrapped junk all over the floor.

  What was once the fridge doorway was now a charred wreck. The closer Audrey got, the louder the outside world became. She could hear a howling wind, a squawking bird and the distant drone of traffic.

  02:30And now she could see daylight. She had hoped to create a hole wide enough to crawl through, but the grenade had blown the whole wall out. Coughing and stumbling, she dragged Hope out into the street. The square was devoid of people and cars, but the sirens were getting louder. Hopefully they were for her.

  Audrey hauled in a lungful of clean air and pushed back into the smoke to get the other woman. Syringes cracked under her feet and bled the precious vaccine into their plastic wrap. She wondered if the ones she hadn’t stepped on were still useful.

  01:50She almost tripped over the woman, who made a weak groan that sounded like the air escaping from a soccer ball. Audrey pulled her carefully out of the MTF and into the sunshine.

  She emerged just in time to see two ambulances screech to a halt next to the overturned vehicle. Paramedics jumped out and ran over to the two prostrate women. Someone shouted something at Audrey.

  ‘Huh?’ she said.

  ‘Are you injured?’ the paramedic said again. He was difficult to hear over the ringing that still filled Audrey’s head.

  ‘I’m OK, I think,’ she said. ‘Cuts and bruises. Help the others.’

  00:55‘They’re being taken care of,’ the paramedic said, shining a light in her eyes. He was a short guy with a round, friendly face and stubble on his upper lip. ‘Is anyone else in the vehicle?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Audrey said. ‘A criminal. I think he’s dead. But be careful with his body. He might have more grenades.’

  00:25The paramedic tried not to look alarmed and failed. He turned to the hole in the side of the MTF. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He’s right—’ Audrey turned around, and screamed.

  The smoke had cleared.