by Unknown
“Lisa! Is that you. . . . ?”
A robotic voice intoned: “This number is currently unavailable. Please try again later.”
Tom lowered the phone and stared it for a long moment, his mind awhirl, trying to take in everything Lisa had said.
Then, grabbing his coat and car keys, he ran from the house.
Chapter Nine
As the desert sun rose higher and Diane was able to turn down the heat on the car’s air conditioning, she became aware of a steady increase in traffic in both directions. A continuous line of traffic seemed to be heading away from Las Vegas; another stream of cars and vans passed her, heading away from Los Angeles. The vehicles all had one thing in common: they were packed with possessions and people.
She wondered idly where everyone was headed. If those coming from Vegas thought they might find safety on the west coast, they couldn’t be more mistaken. And those vehicles overtaking her might as well have stayed put as make for Vegas. If the virus hadn’t yet reached Vegas, it soon would, coincidentally at about the same time as she arrived. Diane snorted; it was the closest she had come to laughing in months.
The rest stops were very busy with people wanting fuel, food and toilet facilities. Diane continued to stop at each one and stretch her legs. She kept the fuel tank topped up and made sure she always paid with well-fingered cash.
As she continued eastwards, Diane considered, merely to pass the time, where she would go if she was in their shoes. North, she decided. Deep into Nevada, then on to Idaho, sticking as far as possible to back roads. Ignoring rest-stops unless she needed to stop for fuel; then remaining in the car, tipping the pump boy handsomely for filling her tank, but feeding the cash though a slightest crack in the window and turning her head away as he reached for it in case he coughed or sneezed.
Then she would continue north to Canada, drive through British Columbia and not stop until she reached the permafrost of Yukon. Maybe that’s where she would make base. Or head into Alaska. Either way, she would make a cosy little log cabin for herself and hunt moose and bears.
She did not allow the fact that she had not the slightest notion how to make a log cabin and had never so much as hunted rabbits, let alone creatures with long teeth and sharp claws, to spoil her fantasy. She expanded it, inventing ingenious ways to melt ice and snow to provide a permanent supply of running water, then moving on to imagine ways of cultivating the frozen ground and building a loom so she could spin her own clothes from bear fur. . . .
It kept her amused all the way to Vegas.
* * * * *
Like their political counterparts, religious leaders weren’t averse to a spot of finger-pointing. Islam blamed Christianity for the Millennium Bug. Catholics blamed Protestants. Sikhs blamed Hindus. Everyone blamed the Jews.
But the Millennium Bug did not favour one religion over another, one denomination over others. It killed almost everyone, ruthlessly and efficiently, whatever deity they chose, or chose not, to worship.
Unsurprisingly, most religions were in accord that the virus represented humanity’s Final Judgment: man has been measured and been found wanting, was the common theme.
Religion, both mainstream and at the margins, organised and off-the-cuff, gained a massive, though all too brief, swell of popularity. Atheists became agnostic; agnostics became believers; believers became zealots.
In Britain, New-Ageism enjoyed a revival. A mass celebration of the Winter Solstice was planned to take place at Stonehenge. A tentative suggestion that, perhaps, it might be wise to go ahead and hold the celebration immediately, rather than wait for the actual Solstice in case, you know, there’s no-one left to celebrate it was, unwisely, ignored.
Churches and chapels and mosques and temples throughout the world had never been so full, the congregations so fervent, except those that had been hastily converted to makeshift hospitals or mortuaries, though they, too, did not lack for attendees.
Throughout those first few days of realisation that a deadly pandemic was sweeping the planet, huge religious rallies took place at which bold, and ultimately inaccurate, statements were made that only the true followers of that particular doctrine would survive.
These meetings and marches and gatherings faded as quickly as they had sprung up as followers took to their own or hospital beds and had to settle for making peace with their maker alone.
While spiritualism provided solace for many hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people as they lived out their final hours, the more sinister aspects of cultism and extremism made a blessedly short-lived appearance.
Bombs were set off in Cairo, Mexico City and Rome, killing hundreds; the tolls would have been far greater had not the streets been so deserted.
The Middle East erupted in violence as Arabs and Jews took their last chance to air ancient grievances and hatreds, but this soon died down like a guttering flare when there was nobody left fit enough from either side to continue. So ended one of the world’s most bitter religious conflicts.
In Utah, Zimbabwe and Brazil, hundreds of people encouraged or forced their children to gulp down orange juice laced with strychnine or cyanide, a la Jonestown, before swigging it themselves.
In Brighton on the south coast of England, a hundred or so people of both sexes and most ages from twenty upwards, crowded the Royal Pavilion where, under the startled gaze of those brave enough to venture outside into the winter weather, they proceeded to dance and chant and remove their clothes before strolling calmly down onto the beach and into the sea. They kept walking until they disappeared beneath the waves.
In New York City, thirty or so members of an extreme allegedly Christian cult, stormed the Empire State Building, overpowering the security guards, who were short-staffed due to sickness absences, and ascended to the observation platform armed with powerful bolt cutters. There they jammed the lifts and doorways to the stairwells and proceeded to cut through the curved safety railing that extended around the perimeter of the deck, removing it on two sides of the square, shrugging off the few half-hearted attempts to interfere by the dozen or so watching tourists. Those tourists clasped their hands over their mouths, some looking away, as the thirty-odd group members climbed unsteadily onto the waist-high wall to which the railing had been affixed. They formed a chain with their hands and stood gazing out over Manhattan, the wind ruffling their hair and clothes. On a count of three, they stepped off the wall together. Two passersby were killed on Fifth Avenue.
There were many other random and isolated acts of madness, but in the main people preferred to slip away amongst their loved ones or alone and did not attempt a last grand statement of whatever.
* * * * *
Tom drove the three miles to town in a daze. He passed only one other vehicle on the way, a khaki jeep driving rapidly in the opposite direction. The armed soldier sitting in the back stared at Tom as they passed each other.
As he turned down the road leading to the sport centre, Tom slowed down. He resisted the urge to rub his eyes in disbelief. A hundred yards ahead, completely blocking the road, was an army truck, parked sideways across both carriageways.
He drove on, slowing to a crawl as he approached the truck. A man stepped from behind it and motioned to Tom to stop. The man wore a protective suit of some shimmery material that extended over the head. His face was covered by a gas mask. Across his chest he held a carbine.
Tom brought the car to a halt and stepped out. Immediately, the soldier raised the weapon and pointed it at Tom’s chest.
“Whoa!” said Tom, automatically raising his hands in a placatory gesture. “What are you doing? I just want to get to the sport centre.”
“Negative. Turn around and leave.” The soldier’s voice sounded metallic and inhuman from behind the mask.
“What is this?” Tom pointed behind the soldier. He could make out the flat roof of the centre. “My girlfriend’s in there.”
“This area is under martial law,” said the soldier. “Turn around and
leave. Now.”
“Hold on a minute,” said Tom, taking a step forward. “This is Britain, not some tinpot—” He froze as the soldier cocked the rifle and raised it, sighting down it at Tom’s face.
“Leave. Now. This is your last warning.”
Tom felt afraid to move. He gazed at the soldier’s face, trying to make out the man’s eyes behind the Perspex of the mask. All he could see was a grey reflection of the sky.
“Okay,” Tom said, though it came out as more of a croak. The bore of the gun barrel looked deep and dark, like infinity.
He took half a step backwards. The soldier didn’t move. He took another backward step and another until he could see his car door from the corner of his eye.
The soldier didn’t relax his stance until Tom had performed a three-point turn, his hands clammy on the steering wheel, and driven back the way he had come. Tom could see the soldier slowly lower his weapon as he moved further away, but he was still staring after Tom through that faceless mask as Tom pulled out of sight.
Tom slammed on the brakes and slumped over the steering wheel. His hands and shoulders shook like leaves in a summer squall. He sat like that for minutes, waiting for the shock to pass, before he felt capable of driving again.
He turned on the radio and headed for the motorway. The radio was full of the news that Parliament had sat in emergency session and had declared the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland an area of martial law, effective from nine o’clock that morning. Never before had martial law been declared on mainland Britain.
All routes into and out of the U.K. had been suspended. Civilians were being advised to remain in their homes.
The M4 was all-but deserted. He saw maybe ten civilian vehicles during the twenty-minute drive to Swansea, but twice as many military vehicles. He received stares but no interference.
Tom pulled up outside his mother’s house as it was approaching noon. He strode up the path and rapped on the front door. Nothing. The house was as silent as the street.
Fumbling his keys from his pocket, he found his mother’s and inserted it into the lock.
The stench hit him immediately. He stumbled and almost gagged. The acrid smell of urine mixed with the cloying stink of vomit. Smells he associated with hospitals. Death smells.
Holding a hand over his nose, he glanced quickly into the kitchen and living room, neither expecting nor finding them to be occupied.
He took the stairs two at a time, almost slipping onto his face, and gained the landing. The stench here was stronger, so thick he could almost see it.
Swallowing hard, he faced his mother’s bedroom. The door was closed.
“Mam?” he called, softly. Then louder, “Mam?”
He strained to hear if there was any response, then placed his fingers to the door, unable to put off the moment any longer. He pushed and the door swung open.
The air that met him was humid and foetid in equal measure. He swallowed hard again, but did not gag. His nose was growing accustomed to the assault.
He stepped into the room. It was like stepping into a greenhouse whose contents had spoiled. And it was dark. He could only make out the vague shape of the bed in the pale light spilling through the open doorway.
He moved to the curtains and pulled them open. It took him a moment to realise why the room was still in darkness. Black polythene bin bags had been taped to the window frames. He tore them away and at last grey, wintry light could enter the room. He turned to the bed.
Tom’s mother lay on her side in the foetal position, facing away from the window. A duvet covered her to the waist and a stained nightdress clung damply to her back. He stepped around the bed so he could see her face.
His mother’s chest rose and fell in time with her short, shallow breaths. Tom breathed out deeply, hardly realising that he had been holding his breath from fear that she was already gone.
Her eyelids quivered—her lashes were crusted in thick, orange muck—and she moaned. Sallow, sunken cheekbones; dark hollows beneath each eye.
Tom reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder, almost recoiling from the heat. He shook it gently.
“Mam? Mam? It’s me. Tom.”
Her eyelids flickered again but did not open.
Tom reached for his phone and punched in 999. He couldn’t remember ever ringing the emergency services before, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t supposed to get a recorded message. The voice was tinny, reminding him of the soldier with the rifle:
You have reached the emergency services. All lines are currently busy due to unprecedented demand. Please consider whether the reason for your call is, in fact, an emergency. If so, please state clearly after the tone which service you require, the brief reason for your call and the address, including postcode, at which you require the service.
As Tom waited for the Beep, he rummaged on his mother’s dressing table for an item of mail or anything containing her postcode.
“Er, yes, I require an ambulance for my mother. Urgently. It’s definitely an emergency. I think she might be in a coma. The address is. . . .”
He grabbed at the bank statement hiding beneath a pile of old letters and read out the address and postcode. The line beeped again and he pressed the disconnect button.
A thought struck him and he started pulling open the dressing table drawers, looking for clean night clothes and underwear so that he could make up an overnight bag for her. A slight noise behind him made him whirl around. His mother had turned onto her back and was trying to open her eyes. Tom reached the bed in two strides and sat next to her, clutching her frail right hand in both of his.
“Mam? It’s okay. I’m here. And there’s an ambulance on its way.”
Her eyelids flickered again, more urgently, and Tom realised that she was struggling to part them because of the orange gunk. He ran to the bathroom, grabbed a flannel and soaked it under the tap. He ran back to her side and wiped gently at her eyes, softening and removing the crusted matter.
Her eyes fluttered open and closed again immediately. Then, scrunched up against the light, they opened a fraction and she peered at him.
“Mam. It’s me. I’m here.”
A ghost of a smile formed on her cracked lips. They moved. It was barely a whisper and Tom had to strain to hear what she said. Just two words.
“My boy.”
Her eyes closed as the effort of holding them open even a crack grew too much. They didn’t open again.
Tom stayed at her side, holding her hand, until the end. It didn’t take long.
* * * * *
The sun moved behind her as Diane neared Las Vegas. The stream of traffic leaving the city had dried to a trickle by the time she passed through. She arrived on the Strip in the early evening.
She had filled up with gasoline and bottles of water and snacks in the city, and there was really very little reason for her to tarry. She had visited Vegas as a tourist once and had hated every inch of its glitz and glamour.
Last time she was here, the Strip had been a parade of stretch limos and Continentals and fin-tailed Buicks, dropping off the rich and the beautiful and the brash to whichever casino they wanted to give their money to. Flat-bed trucks carrying billboards advertising topless bars and high class call girls had driven slowly up the Strip, turned around and driven slowly back down again, pretty much all day.
Now, apart from the occasional vehicle that appeared to be leaving town, the Strip was empty. Diane was able to pull over to the side without any difficulty. She turned off the engine and got out.
Although the sun was dipping towards the horizon, the evening was still bright and none of the neon lights had yet come on. It was warm, too, for December and she didn’t need her coat. She stood for a moment, the wind rustling her hair, marvelling at how quiet it was. The clanging chimes of slot machines and fanfares and announcements designed to lure the undecided inside had not yet begun their nightly clarion calls, and the only sound she could hear was the wind. She
walked towards the centre of the road and stood looking first one way, then the other. Not a vehicle moved. If a bolt of tumbleweed had come rolling down the Strip, she wouldn’t have been surprised. It was as though she had the place to herself. Then a truck turned out of a side street and the illusion was broken.
Diane stepped back to the sidewalk. She could not see any people, apart from what looked like a hobo shuffling down the sidewalk away from her on the other side.
More out of curiosity than anything else, Diane walked to the nearest hotel and entered the lobby. The casino was just beyond. She pushed against the door and peeked around it.
The rows of slot machines flashed and bleeped and pinged, but nobody paid them any attention. Looking beyond them, Diane could see a roulette table with a croupier and three customers. The table was in operation, but none of the players seemed particularly animated. She suspected that if she moved closer, she would be able to hear them coughing and see them wincing as they swallowed their drinks. None of the other tables—blackjack, crap, poker—was occupied. Out of habit, she moved inside to the nearest machine and ran her fingers over the flashing buttons, smearing them with the last of the powder on her fingers.
She left and walked back to her car. Leaning over the driver’s seat, she removed the canister from the knapsack on the passenger seat.
The Strip was quiet again. She walked back to the outside lane of the three-lane stretch of road and took one last glance around to make sure nobody was watching her. Then she unscrewed the top of the canister, removed the inner disc and held the canister horizontally in her right hand. Tipping it forward, Diane spun on the balls of her feet. The remaining creamy-white powder poured out to be immediately caught by the wind and dispersed behind her, settling on the verges of the Strip and beyond.
Diane stopped spinning, feeling a little dizzy. She looked into the canister.
“All gone,” she remarked to no-one in particular.
She replaced the disc and top, returned to her car and threw the empty canister into the back.
Setting the car to the east, Diane drove away from the setting sun.