Flu

by Wayne Simmons

  The crowds outside were getting worked up again, and it was making George nervous. He fought to remain heard over the crying woman with the sick child, the swelling tide of people, that fucking swearing woman with the phone and his own dirty, guilty conscience.

  They left the flat, quietly. The woman probably didn't even notice them slip out. But the crowd was waiting for them. They went wild at first sight. It was as if George and Norman were celebrities, attending some movie premiere. Only the reception was far from positive. The reception was everything that was negative curled up in a fist. The screaming banshee woman had her phone out, as expected, piously recording everything that was going on. When she saw George exit, she immediately aimed it at him, her eyes almost radiant with sick delight.

  George couldn't have hated her more.

  Several others in the crowd were doing similarly. A sea of phones fought to record all that went on - some for altruistic reasons, no doubt, others not so much. George looked at them each in the eye, quietly judging them.

  Someone spat at him, the gob smearing across George's visor obscuring his vision. He wiped it off with a gloved hand.

  This is REALLY fucked up, he thought.

  The paramedics weren't faring much better. Two of them were embroiled in a very heated exchange. Other police had reached the scene, maintaining a perimeter around the flat's entrance by linking arms.

  Several yellow-suited men stood outside, tools, welding equipment and metal sheets at their side. They, too, wore breathing apparatus. George nodded to them, silently. They moved in without uttering a word. He could hear them firing up their gear as they got to work sealing her windows. This drove the crowd even wilder, surging them forward in an almighty push.

  The police, struggling to keep their arms linked, strained against the sudden pressure as the welding continued. One of the paramedics lost his balance, falling to the ground. An officer tried to help him up, before also succumbing to the riotous throng.

  The workmen exited the flat. The young woman from inside, realising what was happening, tried to follow them, but they closed the door on her. George could hear her pounding on the wood She was screaming. George turned away, catching Norman's eye.

  (REALLY fucked-)

  The crowd moved in, some breaking through the police perimeter. As George watched, Norman stood forward, brandishing his firearm again. It was an attempt to restore peace, but a young lad, barely in his teens, grabbed Norman's arm, wrestling the gun from his grasp. The gun went off in the heat of the moment, the young lad falling to the ground, wounded, before being trampled by the crowd.

  "Jesus " George whispered.

  His visor was steaming up again, lending the whole scene even more of a surreal feel. Through misty glass, he watched Banshee Woman recording the falling lad, enthusiastically, before shifting her phone camera's angle to record a baffled looking Norman. The other cameras didn't follow suit, though, and that struck George as odd. They were recording something at the back of the crowd, something, seemingly, coming up the stairwell.

  The crowd's pitch suddenly doubled. The paramedic on the ground had lost his breathing apparatus in the sudden jolt. He reached down to retrieve it but never made it back up again. The crowd surged forward once more. People were being squashed at the front, swearing and calling for help as others were pushed, helplessly, against them. Shrieks could still be heard from the other side of the door, where a young woman and her six year old were being sentenced to death. Someone, and George wasn't sure if it was by accident or design, had produced a gun of their own and managed to shoot themselves with it.

  George watched Norman fall to the ground, the big man's frame rolling up as he tried to defend himself. The crowd pushed further, some people tripping over him and scrambling to the ground as if playing some kind of chaotic rugby match. But Norman rose up like a big, ugly phoenix, gripping his breathing apparatus tightly with one hand, swinging his other to connect fist with face. His patience was obviously gone, making him as feral as the crowd.

  One of the welders, working on the door, turned, nervously, swinging his flame, by mistake, into the face of a middle aged man. The man grabbed at his suddenly melting skin, screeching. Blisters broke across his face like popcorn. The smell was terrible, the scream deafening. Even George could hear it, its shrill explosion high pitched over the mechanical sounds of his quickened breathing.

  George grabbed Norman by the oxygen tank on his back, pulling him quickly down the corridor. The crowd was getting even thicker, more and more numbers pouring up the stairwell. This wasn't just your average riot or disturbance. This was something worse than that. It had a rawness to it, a desperation George had never felt before.

  Noticing the door to a nearby flat open, George motioned to Norman. They both darted in, quickly, to escape the crowd. They slammed the door shut, tight, feeling the swelling numbers immediately crush against it. Norman locked it, slipping the key chain across as if it would make them more secure. Both men stood back from the door, breathing heavily.

  "Fuck me," said Norman.

  It was quiet once more. George could hear a different television broadcasting the same debate. This television was better, the sound clearer. The doctor's voice, older and more measured, tried, in vain, to interrupt the ranting of a younger man. The younger man had lost his whole family to the virus. He wanted to know what was being done, what measures were being taken. I'll show you what measures, George thought.

  An older woman with a tight, red face stood in the hallway, wrapped in her dressing gown. She was yelling at them to 'get the hell out of here'. She called George a 'pig'. He'd been called it many times before. Its familiarity almost comforted him. George raised his hand at her, shushing her. The old woman stepped back nervously.

  "Are going to shoot me!?" she exclaimed, pointing at him with a shaking hand.

  "What?!" he said, baffled. But he wanted to. He wanted to shoot all of them, suddenly. The old woman. The crowds outside. The swearing woman. The ranting man on the television. It was an instinctual reaction, born out of raw fear. Maybe he even wanted to shoot himself. "Of course not," he said, moving away from her, as if frightened he might shoot her. "We just need you to be calm."

  "There's nothing here for you," she said, suddenly, both hands vibrating, her head staring at the wall. "He's dead, you know. So you can both just leave."

  "Dead? Who's dead?" Norman asked, looking around him. But she didn't answer, still lost in the moment. She was shaking all over now, quivering like thunder. George could sense an anger and grief within her, tearing her from the inside out. It was beaming off her like fire. Lighting everything it touched, consuming her. A part of her, maybe, felt relieved to have someone to blame for everything, someone to transfer all of her frustration onto. The tears in her eyes erupted, as if volcanic.

  "Leave!" she yelled, at them. "Leave now!"

  "Listen, we're just going to move into the living room to make a call on the radio," George argued.

  "No," she yelled, "that's where Frank's resting."

  "Who's Frank?" asked George, baffled and exasperated. Couldn't he get just one word of sense out of anyone today? The crowd outside were clawing at the door like wolves. It was making George nervous. His oxygen tank was pumping air faster, noisier. They wanted blood. They wanted his blood. There seemed to be no escape, no respite. And George really needed to escape.

  He moved into the living room, despite the old woman's protests. The television was turned up loud, drowning out the sounds of the crowd. Floral wallpaper clung to the walls. Old, dusty furniture littered the room. A couple of china dogs stood by the TV, as if guarding it. A mahogany coffee table stood proudly beside them, polished like a shiny button. But then there was the sofa, blood stained and sweaty, like a pile of old rags. An older man lay across it. It was probably Frank. He was very clearly dead, all the tell-tale signs present and accounted for. The bloody gore gathering around the nose and mouth. Dead eyes, staring deep into space. A still
chest. One arm hanging over the chair's edge, limply.

  "W-when did Frank die?" Norman asked the old woman, uncomfortably. The big guy was still clearly shaken up by the little girl and all that happened outside. Such a hard man, yet this all had softened him.

  "About an hour ago," she said, still crying. Her tiny, sinewy hands clasped an old, bloody tissue as if it were made of gold. It was probably Frank's blood gathered there, George thought. He could only guess how many years the two of them had been together. He noticed a picture on the wall, presumably of the couple getting married, decades ago. This was her world. This dusty old flat with her pictures and her ornaments and her memories. The tissue. The things she considered important, precious. Outside, the rest of the world was crumbling, but hers had already been levelled.

  The crowds hammered at the door, viciously. He could hear them, now, over the television. It sounded like the drumbeat of a dead army coming. George turned to look back through the small hallway at the failing door. He could hear another round of gunshots, fired by God- knows-who. The sound of shattering wood. He watched with horror as the door caved in against repeated force, its chain snapping like thread.

  But then something very odd happened. A sharp movement caught the corner of George's visor. He turned back towards the sofa, as quickly as his bulky equipment allowed him to. He was just in time to see old Frank rise up from his deathbed, blankets falling at his feet like dead snakes.

  "Jesus!" he heard Norman cry from the corner of the room. Even Frank's wife was unnerved, scrambling away from her suddenly resurrected husband as if he were a ghost. And, by all accounts, he pretty much was.

  "Wait," Norman said, stepping backwards, himself. "Frank? Frank, are you-"

  "He was dead!" spat Mrs Frank, now hanging onto George as if for dear life. "I was a nurse! I should fucking know! My Frank was dead!"

  Like some stilted creature from a horror B-movie, Frank simply stood there, as if enjoying all the audience's attention, lapping up the dramatic intro music. Then he stepped forward, shuffling uneasily on his feet as if learning to walk again. A deep rasping sound crawled up his throat as he moved, yet his chest remained still, as if not breathing. George was quite sure he agreed with Frank's wife. This was a dead man walking before him.

  The door crashed open. George turned back towards the hallway. He raised his hand, not even getting time to shout out a warning before they were on him. Norman had taken out his baton and was feverishly attacking without discrimination. The old woman fell to the ground, still staring at her dead Frank. George shouted warning after warning at the crowd. But it was useless. No one was listening; no one cared.

  And in that instant, George snapped. He snapped like an overused elastic band. He snapped without thinking or considering what he was doing. It was almost like a reflex action. An 'act-first-think-never' kind of thing. The television man was still ranting, still asking what was being done. But George knew what was being done.

  He was doing it.

  He drew his own firearm. He aimed it, first, at the swearing banshee woman, now at the front of the crowd, no longer filming with her mobile phone, but still screaming and, seemingly, shaping those f-words at him.

  And he fired.

  Chapter One

  Six weeks later

  Geri stood statue still, holding the small bag of shopping above her head.

  She was standing on Belfast's Dublin Road, once a busy part of the city, now a dusty ghost town. Paper littered the streets like leaves in autumn, dancing sprightly in the light wind. Shop windows lay shattered on the pavements, tiny shards of glass strewn across the road like crystal bread crumbs. A bloody palm print stained the nearby wall. A bright red anarchy sign barked angrily from another, staining a sharply worded government information poster with its messy, free- styled paint. Other posters, less controversial, simply advertised gigs that would never take place. Never to be attended by people most likely dead. A number of cars were dotted throughout the road, abandoned.

  But there were no bodies.

  No signs of death, in the normal sense of the word.

  A light breeze caressed Geri's face, a red splash of hair falling over one eye. Her mouth and nose felt damp, but Geri still dared not move. She stood outside a small supermarket, staring into the face of a man wearing a balaclava and holding a gun.

  "Did you fucking sneeze?" he asked.

  "Yes, but it's j-just hay fever," she replied.

  Her hands were shaking. A random tin escaped from her white Tesco's bag. It rolled along the ground, almost cheekily.

  "Bullshit," Balaclava replied. His gun was aimed squarely at Geri. His hands weren't shaking.

  "I get it every y-year," she stuttered, fighting against the tears.

  "It's the fucking flu!" he yelled, voice dulled with the woollen muzzle. His eyes were wide and tense. He looked tired and out of shape, yet he was the still healthiest looking person she'd seen in days.

  "It's NOT the fucking flu!" she yelled, tears breaking from her eyes. Her raised voice rang out through the empty streets, crassly. Like a laugh at a funeral. Disrespectful. Bold. Antagonising. "I've had hay fever since I was a child! I take tablets for it they they're in the back pocket of my jeans."

  She looked him in the eyes, waiting for him to give her the go-ahead to retrieve the thin packet of tablets. Instead, he moved, slowly, around to face her back. She could hear his breathing in the still, dead air. It was steady - not laboured and wheezy and flu-ridden like most of the other people she'd encountered, recently. But she felt uncomfortably vulnerable with him staring, no doubt, at her arse.

  "Okay, slowly reach into the pocket with your left hand-"

  Geri reached down towards her back pocket.

  "Your LEFT hand!" he corrected her, causing her to jump. "And QUICKLY. They're fucking everywhere, today."

  She shot the offending right hand up into the air again, still holding the plastic bag. Another couple of tins and a bottle of water fell from the bag's grasp. They scuttled along the quiet street uncouthly, like a drunken brawl. Slowly, she reached her left hand into the back pocket of her jeans. She retrieved the flat packet of tablets, limply flipping them out of her hand. She heard the short slap as card hit pavement. For a moment, nothing happened. She reckoned Balaclava was probably examining the packet, most likely from a safe distance. She hoped he could fucking read, because her tablets were for general allergies. The actual words 'hay fever' were in small print at the back of the packet. She suddenly remembered she hadn't taken one this morning.

  The sound of commotion cut through the silent air, disturbing their moment. It was quiet at first, as if in the distance. But, as she listened, Geri could hear it grow in intensity. Slow, heavy footsteps. A guttural moaning. Deceptively amplified within the stillness of the city. These were familiar sounds. Sounds that wouldn't have made much sense, two months ago. Back when it was reasonable to expect a person to die, then stay dead. Left to the mercy of relatives and clergy and the cold, pale hands of morticians. To be buried within three days, with family and friends mourning by the graveside.

  But those days were gone.

  "Hello?" Geri said, still standing very still. She was terrified to turn her head. Instead, she spoke, again. "Listen can you hear them?"

  There was no reply. For long, stagnant moments she remained where she was. She tried to stay as still as she could, shopping bag (now half empty) hanging over her head. She didn't want to be shot, but she sure as hell didn't want to be around when the footsteps reached her, either.

  "HEY!" she shouted. "We need to get out of-"

  Was he even there anymore? She listened more closely, still not turning around. The footsteps from town were getting stronger, closer. The moaning was getting louder. They were tangible, now. She could out smell them. A cold, nervous sweat ran down her 'k, tickling her spine. Another light breeze caressed her hair, as if to gently remind her of the need to move. A car engine stuttered, some distance away. She turned, sharp
ly, her eyes finding Balaclava firing up an old Ford Escort.

  "Hey!" she shouted, dropping her bag and waving her hands in the air, as if Balaclava couldn't see her. "Hey! Wait for me!" she persisted, running towards the car.

  The Escort was halfway through a three point turn, set to burn down the Dublin Road, away from the incoming footsteps. Geri ran towards it, throwing herself onto the bonnet, just as the car was about to speed off. She didn't know what the hell she was doing. She hadn't planned any of this. But she knew she had to do something. She knew she had to fight for survival in any and every way possible.

  Balaclava yelled at her, his voice fighting against the Hilary revs of the worn-down engine. She gripped tightly unto the old car's wing mirrors, stretching herself across the entire width of the car. She suddenly realised she hail very long arms. She also realised how very silly she must have looked, but she didn't care. Who was looking, anyway? Except him, maybe. And possibly a mob of very pissed-off dead people.

  Balaclava's voice grew more agitated. From behind the steering wheel, he brandished his revolver, waving it at her threateningly. He looked in his rear view mirror, his eyes growing more intense. He glared at her, defiantly, revving the engine menacingly.

  Geri looked him in the eye, pleading with him. He hadn't shot her on sight after the sneezing incident, so there had to be some small trace of decency in him. If he would only stop the car, allow her to climb inside. Just to get away from them.

  The commotion was growing in intensity. More of them had appeared from the many streets running off the main road. They were closing in around the car from all directions. There was no way she could move past them, anymore. She had to just hang on, and hope for the best.

  Her eyes were drawn to them, like car crash television. She could see them very clearly, now. Their sickly appearance, all coagulated blood and dark, hardened bile. Their shiny, sun-bleached skin. Some naked, others wearing the deathbed uniform of hospital gown or pyjamas. Some looked quite human, as if walking amongst the others in disguise. But their eyes were dead, their stares cold and indistinct. Their shuffling steps hit heavily on the littered road, like a slow round of applause. Their voices, a low moaning growl, pierced the quiet air like a football chant. Angry and nonsensical. Babbling with drunken exhaustion.