The Stolen Days of John Mann

by Charles Barrow

  ‘Party?’ Mann and Keen both jumped at the sound of Amir’s voice and turned together to see him standing in the doorway. Keen stood quickly and moved to Amir’s side.

  ‘He had the dream again.’ She said.

  ‘I gathered.’ He replied.

  She smiled sadly at Mann and then she led Amir from the room.

  Mann wouldn’t sleep again so he wrapped himself in a blanket and headed out into the garden, where the dream nagged at him until he ran it again in his mind, beyond the point that had broken his sleep.

  He had awoken back then beneath a damp sheet. He could barely move for the pain that wracked him each time he drew a breath, the weight pressing down on his chest had been unbearable, so he lay for a while not daring to move, trying to make sense of his surroundings.

  He was naked and he was lying on a sacking sheet on the ground. There were lots of dim lights overhead, he could see them through the weave of the cloth over his face, and he was sure the room he was in must be large, very large. There were faint sounds coming from beyond walls that he could tell were some distance away. It was cold, and there was an unpleasant stink lurking beneath the smell of his own rank sweat. He had a burning thirst that made it difficult to swallow and as he reached a hand up to his parched lips he felt a crust of dried saliva over his mouth and chin. Fragments of the party suddenly flashed before his eyes and as the memories returned his panic rose like bile in his throat. He sat up suddenly and the sheet fell away as the spin in his head made him retch.

  There were shrouded bodies on the floor all around him, in rows stretching away to the walls of what looked to be a warehouse with corrugated metal walls. He jumped to his feet, swaying and breathing hard, clutching the sheet to his waist. He caught the smell of wood smoke in the air. He knew just where he was and what was happening here but he desperately searched for another answer he could make fit. He stepped over to the nearest shroud, it would make sense they’d be closest to him. He pulled the sheet back to stare at Anna’s livid, blue tinged face. Beyond her he found Jonas Pike and three bodies to his left Tom. Hot tears filled his eyes and a sob burst from his mouth. They’d all been brought here from the barn, they thought him dead too, how was he not? He must get out. He clamped his hand over his nose and mouth and began to back into a far corner, shouting for help.

  Behind him a harsh squeal of metal signalled huge doors being swung inwards, he span around at the sound to see two masked men in uniform enter the warehouse. Beyond them, in the dim daylight he could see the massive pyre, already burning, built to consume the dead.

  Thank God, he thought, and began to leap over the bodies in his haste to reach the doors. Both soldiers had levelled their guns at him and ordered him to stop or they would cut him in half with their bullets.

  Keen joined Mann in the garden, he was sitting beneath the apple tree, watching two ravens soaring high over the woods.

  ‘Do they still pay out the bounty on them?’ He asked.

  ‘I used to bring them down with my slingshot.’ Keen replied.

  ‘In France they are said to be the souls of wicked priests.’

  They sat for a few minutes in silence. Keen shivered, ‘Come, Amir has a patch for you.’

  Chapter Seven

  Amir lay down the inked bamboo needle and washed his hands in a bowl of hot water. Mann pressed a wad of cotton to the beads of blood on his forearm then studied the curious marks Amir had tattooed into him. He could make no sense of them they were simply the latest glyphs in a string of code that ran up and down his, and everyone else’s, arm detailing inoculations.

  ‘Keen and I got ours in Shale so best you stick to that.’

  Mann nodded, ‘Any chance it was a true one this time?’

  ‘Don’t get spun by the broadcasts, John, you know full well there is no vaccine. But it makes the Government look good and gives the people hope.’

  Keen entered the room. ‘There is talk of a Cobra.’

  Mann frowned, ‘As I was known?’

  Keen nodded, ‘The chatter was coded but that word sang out clearly. It’s hard to reason any other cause than you.’

  ‘And too timely to be coincidence.’

  ‘Unless there’s a real cobra free and about.’ Amir chimed in, ‘Which is unlikely I’ll grant you.’

  ‘Who is talking and who are they talking to?’ Asked Mann.

  ‘I reason that the talk is in response to a message that went out two days ago. It sparked a flurry of excitement then and what I heard was the echoes of rumours still circulating. It streams from Brighton.’

  ‘A nest of vipers.’ Said Amir, ‘It follows.’

  Mann stood, ‘Then that’s where I have to head.’

  ‘No point trying to talk you out of such folly?’ Said Keen.

  Mann shook his head firmly.

  Amir stood, ‘Then you’ll need goods to trade.’

  Amir left the room. Keen looked concerned, ‘There’s no guarantee this talk is about you. There’s no guarantee this Gunnar is in Brighton, or that he still has David, or…’

  ‘I made a promise before God. Do we still have a contact there?’

  Keen sighed in resignation. ‘Treader.’ She passed him a slip of paper with an address noted down. ‘He has a set if you need to contact us.’

  ‘You trust him?’

  ‘No. You never met him but he played a part in hiding us after we sprung you. Don’t think to be grateful, he was paid well and he’ll expect payment this time too.’

  ‘And if someone else pays more?’

  Outside the day promised rain from the dark clouds massing on the horizon. Amir brought out three more boxes to load into the boot of Mann’s car.

  ‘You’ve tinctures, balms and powders. Don’t take less than a treatment is worth. If they can’t pay don’t offer it.’ Amir gave Mann a stern look, ‘Supplies are low and our profits dip every time you’re gulled by a rheumatic widow.’ Amir turned back into the house and passed Keen on her way out to Mann. She pressed several small plastic cases into his hand. He recognised them in a moment. He lifted the lid of one to reveal a neat row of micro-syringes.

  ‘Brighton’s worse than when we knew it.’ She said ‘Lawless and run by a mafia, even the military seem to have turned their back.’

  Mann looked at the small darts. ‘I swore not to carry these again.’

  ‘Well you’ve sworn to track a dead boy since.’

  Mann smiled ruefully.

  ‘Fill them and keep them close. For me.’

  ‘For you?’

  ‘I’d press a gun on you but I know you won’t take it.’ Keen looked into Mann’s lined face. ‘I should have trimmed your whiskers while I had the chance.’

  Mann pulled his thick green muffler up to his nose. ‘Haven’t you heard I spit poison?’

  They were still laughing when Amir reappeared with a dozen candles to add to the stash in the car boot. ‘An evening of grim with us and then funny as you leave? Your visiting skills need polish John Mann.’

  Chapter Eight

  ‘With respect Sir…’

  ‘Doctor Russell,’ Colonel Smith’s rough voice cut easily through Russell’s. ‘It can’t have escaped your notice that food riots are threatening all over this zone and such manpower as I have is needed for more immediate problems.’

  ‘A unit, Sir, is all I ask.’

  ‘To chase a ghost.’

  ‘One isolated victim, no chain of infection, no outbreak. His work is as unique as his fingerprints and his fingerprints were all over the body that was discovered, he has far more heft than a ghost I assure you.’

  ‘You suggest he infects people deliberately?’ Smith seemed surprised.

  She realised she may have been selling this wrong, perhaps there was a soldier lurking somewhere inside Smith’s old carcass after all. ‘John Mann is dangerous Colonel, it’s not too fanciful to think of him as a weapon, especially if he were to fall into the wrong hands.’

  Smith was lost in thought for a mom
ent. ‘How is it that Mann survived exposure, Doctor?’

  ‘Colonel, it’s a complicated tale of physiology and pathogenesis.’

  He gave her a fierce look, ‘Then indulge me Madam. And in plain English.’

  ‘Sir. There are survivors of exposure to any given outbreak, this is common else the human race would have died out when the virus spilled over, made the leap. That doesn’t mean these people remain immune though. The virus mutates often now and a new strain of it will bloom in time that will finish them when it enters their orbit. John, however, perpetually manifests symptoms of a strain that is incredibly virulent and kills others in moments, but he himself never succumbs.’

  Smith pulled at a loose thread on his sleeve, ‘And you don’t know why.’

  ‘No. I was unable to establish why he should be immune to exposure. He was an adolescent when I last studied him and, hormonally speaking, a landscape in flux and that made it difficult to get a fix on his unique biology or to generate a viable vaccine from him. But he’ll have matured now and the virus he generates may possibly have stabilised into something I could produce a serum from. That is why it is so important that we locate him.’

  Smith fixed Russell with a hard stare. ‘You think anyone would view assigning resources to such work as credible after the catastrophic failure of AG5?’

  Her anger flared, few beside she herself still kept faith with the idea of a vaccine. ‘You see doing nothing as an option?’

  ‘I think Madam, that if we fail to find enough food to see three thousand locals through the winter then we’ll have no need of your vaccine.’ Smith suddenly felt very weary. If what Russell said were true, why hadn’t the Government or his predecessors either trapped or terminated Mann years ago? How had this woman and her quarry suddenly become his headache? ‘You don’t seem to hold out any hope that we can otherwise outrun this thing. Out flank it. Move beyond it.’

  ‘None whatsoever Colonel.’ She didn’t hesitate to be blunt because he didn’t deserve a honeyed vision of the future.

  Smith sighed, ‘So you once had this…this saviour of the human race locked away safe Doctor and then you lost him.’

  ‘He was sprung by a terrorist cell. A young nurse here…’

  Smith stopped listening. The woman riled him beyond endurance. She took responsibility for nothing, and it irritated him that he had no direct authority over her, outside of an emergency. And she clearly enjoyed someone’s patronage, perhaps someone in Whitehall, and the fact that she was a Yank probably meant there were working links with Washington too and he certainly wasn’t going to war against both Governments much as he wanted rid of her. Besides, deep down she scared him. She chose to lock herself away with every known strain of the virus and that alone made her little more than a lunatic by his reckoning and potentially a dangerous enemy. But what if she did manage to brew up a vaccine and it came to light that all he’d done was run interference? What if this fugitive really was some kind of magic bullet and was recaptured on his watch? There was promotion in that for certain, perhaps up and out of this Facility, perhaps even as far as London. He’d have to throw her a big enough bone to keep her happy but out of his hair. His attention was caught by a plea.

  ‘Please Colonel, a small team is all I ask.’ She had said this through gritted teeth, she’d never had to beg for anything in her life. ‘He has to be found and brought in. Whether I find a vaccine or no, that’s on my head, but he has to be taken out of circulation and made secure back in the Facility. Under your command, Sir, to your credit.’

  Ah, he thought, now we dance to the same reel.

  Russell careered down the corridors back towards her office, and general staff scurried out of her path as if an ill wind blew before her. I hate this pissant country, she thought. She could scarcely believe it had once ruled the largest empire in history, when it couldn’t organise a tea party now. She longed to be back in the States where they’d have had Mann dissected and bottled into a mouth spray by now, and probably warheads too she thought ruefully.

  The State Department had twice refused her request for repatriation saying her work on investigating and recording British outbreaks was invaluable to them. But she knew she was becoming increasingly irrelevant, a lone sentry in a remote outpost with nothing to report that the CIA couldn’t already guess at. Ten years was a long time to be away from the centre of things. Finding Mann would make her work, and by extension she herself, relevant again and she could use him as a gaming chip to win her passage home. She’d load him on a plane to Andrews and the President himself would kiss her backside.

  She reached her office and flung open the door and strode past the young soldier standing beside her desk. How many times did she have to tell these goddamn people that no one entered her office without permission? She scowled at the soldier who reeled off his name with a crisp salute.

  ‘Get out.’ She growled in reply, dismissing him with a curt wave of her hand and after hesitating for a moment he left the room closing the door behind him. She’d had enough of the army for one day. Smith had condescended to give her three people to progress her search. She’d had three staff before just to file her notes when John had been in the tank. ‘I’ll allow you a little latitude.’ Smith had said. The gall of the man. She’d have his stripes and see him culling crows in the fields once John was secured again.

  Chapter Nine

  The old woman sat quietly, hands in her lap, and a harsh winter cast to her face as her husband slipped away. He lay in their narrow marriage bed under a thin blanket, he was gaunt and older than she and he’d been hard and stubborn in life, his face told that story, but he was leaving it gently enough. His breath came in shallow gulps and the gap between each was noticeably longer, twice now Mann had thought he’d gone but the old man would suddenly suck in another soft gasp and live on. It was a good way to die, of old age and in a bed. Many would trade for this. Mann had already whispered the last prayers, the woman joining him for a croaked Amen. He knew it was a comfort to her and that God heard too and prepared a welcome for another soul. He himself always felt honoured to be present at another’s passing. Except for when he was the means.

  He’d passed a rag tag party of travellers earlier who had told him about the old woman in distress. They were heading south, they’d heard there was work in the brick fields that had once been a large town. There was a small, hard living to be had collecting bricks, flex, metal for Government builds elsewhere. They had seen the blue flash that signified Preacher on the front of his car and hailed him. He had thought to remove the flash and perhaps avoid being flagged this day for any of a number of reasons; a naming, a marrying or a death such as this old man's, but the penalties would be severe if he was caught and besides it was the trade off for the vehicle and access to rationed fuel.

  On a shelf in the old couple’s darkened bedroom he noticed a book that he’d once owned, or rather borrowed from Dr Penn. It seemed out of place in this house. It held pictures of the inside of homes as they used to be before the calamity hit. There were pictures of all manner of furniture, floor coverings and tech that people could buy. Some of the tech he couldn’t reason people ever found a need for, things that seemed like fictions to him but he knew they had existed because he’d seen their battered casings on town edge tips. His biggest frustration was the puzzle of the Web, which was beyond his ability to fathom despite Penn’s best efforts to explain. Who had conceived of such a thing? It all but ran the world, flowed through every home, and held answers to every question you could ask and more. Mann would like to have seen just one picture of it and wondered why no one had thought to put one in the book.

  Dr Penn had told him that when the Web was lost a vast sum of knowledge went too, which is why he and other thinking people had started to cache all the books they could, because if they were lost then the human race really was doomed. Mann had had access to Penn’s library, which is how he knew as much as he did, others mostly didn’t know even half as much, but
he sometimes wondered if he wasn’t the poorer for knowing what had been lost. A soft rattle sounded from the bed and Mann knew that the old man’s soul had finally left.

  Less than two hours later he turned his car back onto the motorway and continued his journey. He’d helped the widow wash and wrap her husband’s body and then she’d given Mann a bowl of thin soup. He’d left her with some of Amir’s candles. She’d need the welcome light on the dark nights ahead of her.

  The stretch of road before him was particularly bad, rutted with potholes and cracks through which weeds and grass sprouted. Life struggled to survive everywhere, he thought. Would he have wanted to live in that old world, he wondered, life would surely not have been such a struggle then. The people must have lived happier lives, they had all the food, water and warmth they needed and could never have gone lonely. He’d read that 65 million people had lived here at peak. It boggled his mind. There could only be a fraction of that number now.

  Mann slowed his speed as a line of military vans passed him heading in the opposite direction, armed guards riding shotgun in each cab. He hadn’t seen such a convoy before and wondered at its purpose and destination. A chill ran through him still at the sight of any green military flash. The vans weren’t dissimilar to the one that had moved him from the warehouse where he’d woken to the Facility that was to become his home for the next five years.