by Unknown
* * * * *
The president of the most powerful nation on Earth made a live televised address that was beamed around the globe at 9:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
As he appeared on television screens throughout the world, people watching gasped at how haggard he looked; he seemed to have aged thirty years in less than a week. The make-up that he wore for the TV cameras couldn’t completely mask the dark shadows, the red bruising around the eyes, the hollow cheeks.
The president fixed the camera with his famous glare that did a far better job of hiding his illness than the make-up girl had done, and addressed the world.
“My fellow Americans. . . . No, strike that. I know this is going out live to every free nation on this planet and it is my fervent hope that it will be seen in many of the less free nations. We’re all in this together. So let me start again. . . .
“My fellow humans. It is my grave duty to address you on the eve of what is likely to be mankind’s swansong. A virus that some have dubbed the Millennium Bug has caused worldwide illness and death. Every one of you has lost someone precious. I have lost someone precious. The First Lady passed away six hours ago. I was at her bedside.”
The president paused, blinked, coughed and took a sip of water before continuing.
“Every one of you is likely to have someone precious suffering from this virus as I speak. So have I. Both my children are currently in bed, too ill to have even got out of bed to be with their mother at the end. . . .”
For the first time, his voice broke. He took a moment and another sip of water to compose himself.
“I have not long come from a meeting with my Joint Chiefs of Staff—at least, those who were well enough to be conscious—and the top medical advisors this great country has to offer. We made the decision for me to address you now, while I still can. They wanted me to treat this as any other speech, but I refused to have it scripted.” He made a noise in the back of his throat, almost a snort.
“Votes, popularity, opinion polls. . . .” He held up his hands, palms upwards, and shrugged. “What does any of that matter now? No, the only thing that matters is that I share the truth with you. Everyone deserves that much.
“So. The truth. This administration has been in constant consultation since the start of this crisis with leaders of every other major nation on this planet. Even when nuclear war was a very real threat, we continued to converse—behind the scenes, as it were, in some cases—with each and every one of those nations. All the top scientific minds throughout the world have been working on the problem constantly. Even when they have fallen ill, these wonderful men and women have worked from their sick beds. We have shared and pooled our resources and I firmly believe that every other country has shared everything they can about this threat. Nothing has been held back.
“Every effort has been made to find a cure for this disease.
“Nevertheless. . . .” The president paused again and his expression became, if that was possible, even graver.
“Nevertheless, it falls on me to inform you that we have failed. I am told—I am no scientist—that this virus is like nothing we have encountered before. It is totally resistant to every treatment known to man. If some drug or other shows any signs of being effective, the virus mutates into something else, constantly shifting the parameters within which it attacks the human body, making sustained treatment impossible. It is as though the virus has been created specifically for killing humans—it appears to have no adverse effect on other creatures, not even members of the ape family.
“We do not possess the technology to artificially create such an organism. No country on earth has such technology. So, there is no need for mistrust of our neighbours. This Millennium Bug has not originated from mankind. Where did it originate? From outer space? No-one can say and I see little point in speculating further.”
Pause; cough; sip of water.
“I am told that if we could slow down the effects, then a cure might be possible in three, four, maybe six months. But even then, a cure is not guaranteed. Our knowledge of the structure of DNA and its manipulation would have to increase tenfold . . . heck, maybe a hundredfold, before we could even begin to experiment with possible cures. The harsh reality is that we may never find a cure if we had another hundred years to spend searching. And many of us may not even have a hundred hours remaining. . . .”
The president removed his spectacles and rubbed tiredly at his eyes, before sliding the spectacles back on.
“I appear before you as a sixty-three-year-old. Heck, I feel ninety-three! I will stop speaking shortly, but first I want to address a special group of people.
“It is possible—maybe even likely—that a small percentage of humans will survive the Millennium Bug. Please don’t let this raise false hopes. I am advised that even if such a miracle comes to pass, that we are talking about a fraction of a fraction of one percent of the entire pre-virus world population. That equates to roughly one and a half million people. Sounds a lot—it isn’t. They will be spread throughout the world and may include elderly and infirm people.
“In other words, the human race, even if that infinitesimal survival rate actually materialises—and I pray to God that it will—will become what the scientists refer to as ‘functionally extinct’.
“But if you are one of those people who lives through this, I urge you to forget about race or nationality or creed or colour. Forget politics. Forget religion. Forget property and ownership. Such concepts will become meaningless in a world whose population numbers less than two million. The only meaningful ideology, the only ideal worthy of pursuit, will be simple survival of the species.
“So, if you are one of those people, don’t hide away in fear of other survivors. Seek them out and extend the hand of friendship. If you don’t speak the same tongue, invent a common one. Heck, draw pictures in the dirt if you have to! But find one another and then find more. Protect and nurture each other. Rebuild communities.”
The president paused for the last time. His hands were clasped firmly together on the desk in front of him, but some sharp-eyed viewers noticed that they were shaking.
“Hundreds of thousands of people have already died. Millions more . . . billions, are dying. To those lucky few who may survive: I am leaving instructions that all power plant facilities and food production sites and medical supplies, and whatever else occurs to us, be left running and unlocked. Use them for good.
“Please . . . take this opportunity to build a better world.
“I beseech you.
“Goodbye.”
* * * * *
In New York, Milandra switched off the television.
“That was really quite moving,” she said. “Could almost feel sorry for them.”
“Almost,” said Grant.
“Yes,” said Milandra. “Like I said.”
* * * * *
In the Ambassador Suite of the Park Plaza in Melbourne, Bishop laughed and flicked a peanut at the television as the president’s face faded.
“Wanker,” he said.
* * * * *
Tom Evans did not watch the speech. He was too busy digging a hole in the wet, heavy soil of his mother’s back garden.
The ambulance had never turned up. Tom had tried again to ring the emergency services but once more got the recorded message. He disconnected before the voice could finish speaking.
He rooted around until he found the telephone number of his mother’s GP. No reply; no recorded message.
Next he tried the local hospital. Same result.
Finally, in desperation, he found the number of a Swansea funeral director and rang it. After about ten rings, he was about to hang up when it was answered.
“Yeah, hello?”
“Er, is that the funeral director?”
“Yeah, but we’re closed.”
“Closed? But, it’s my mother. She’s . . . dead.”
“Sorry, mate. I can’t help you.”
Tom did not know w
hat else to say.
“Look,” the voice continued, “we’re backed up. Same with the morgues. You’ll just have to make your own arrangements, or. . . .”
“Or what?”
“Leave her where she is. Sorry, don’t want to sound harsh—”
Tom hung up.
For a moment, a fleeting moment, he considered walking away and leaving her in bed. He immediately felt guilty and started to hunt for a shovel.
Drawing a blank, he went outside and knocked on neighbours’ doors. No answers; no movement of curtains; no passing pedestrians or vehicles.
He went back inside and out of the back door of his mother’s terraced house. He climbed the fence into the neighbour’s garden and broke into the shed. It was still daylight, but nobody shouted at him. If anybody did see what he was doing and called the police, they’d be lucky if the police came. Besides, he thought, Let them come. They can help me dig the hole.
By the time he had finished digging a pit that he hoped was deep enough, Tom’s arms and back felt as though someone was whipping them with red hot wires. Night had fallen: the pitch darkness of deep winter that was only marginally relieved by distant street lamps.
He trudged into the house and upstairs to his mother’s bedroom. Even with the window thrown wide open, the room still smelled of defecation and death.
Tom bent forward, the muscles in his back screaming in protest, and gently turned back the duvet, revealing his mother’s face. He placed a light kiss on her cool brow, automatically bringing his sleeve up to wipe his lips as he drew back, only just stopping himself in time.
He wrapped her in the duvet and lifted her. He expected his back to scream some more, but it had settled into a dull ache that the slight weight of his mother’s frail frame did not inflame.
He walked slowly downstairs, being especially careful of his footing on the stair carpet. He walked back through the kitchen, trying with only partial success not to bump his mother’s flopping head on the work surface as he passed.
His grief had been subsumed in the anguish of trying to get someone to help dispose of her body and the exertion of digging the hole. It would no doubt bubble to the surface at some point, but for now he moved purposefully, methodically, as though burying a friend’s dog, not his mother.
Tom stood over the hole and knelt. Back and arms complaining anew, he lowered the wrapped form into the hole. It was not quite long enough, but by manoeuvring her in such a way that her knees bent, she slipped in and landed at the bottom with a small splash where ground water had seeped in.
Now the horror of what he was doing momentarily threatened to overwhelm him. Tom scrabbled on his knees away from the hole and vomited a thin, acidic stream into the grass. Knowing that he needed to act quickly before his mind shut down, he stumbled back and began to shove the pile of extracted earth back into the hole. He didn’t feel his grasp on reality begin to return until the last of the duvet was covered.
An hour later, muddy and sobbing, he patted down the mound of earth with the back of the shovel and threw it aside.
He didn’t have energy remaining with which to go hunting for materials to fashion into a cross. He bowed his head for a moment.
“Goodbye, Mam,” he whispered. “Although I can’t remember the last time I told you, I did love you.”
Tears coursing flesh-coloured tracks down his muddy cheeks, Tom returned to the house. His mother had a spare bedroom upstairs, but he made straight for the living room settee and collapsed into it without pausing to remove his mud-caked shoes.
He awoke nine hours later to thin daylight and a cold breeze coming through the open back door. He stumbled to his feet, stiff and aching, shut and locked it.
It was only while splashing water onto his face and into his dry mouth that he realised it was not only his back and arms that were sore: so was his throat.
He decided to drive straight home. This time, the only vehicles he saw were military, but only one or two and only in the distance. He had the M4 to himself.
As he neared the exit road that meant he was only a few miles from home, the tickling cough began.
Part 2:
In the Bleak Midwinter
Chapter Ten
Silence.
Silence of a world gone to hell.
He came to awareness, but did not attempt to open his eyes. He wasn’t yet certain where he was. He wasn’t yet certain who he was.
He lay, not moving, not sure if he was breathing.
So he started by listening to himself. A faint, regular sigh of exhalation. Yes, he was breathing. He extended his aural senses.
A tip, a tap . . . a brief cacophony of tips and taps . . . drops of water. Rain. Rain spattering against a window pane.
Further away, fainter, a whooshing sound, building swiftly, fading instantly to nothing, the crescendo coinciding with the spattering rain.
Wind. Gusting wind.
No other sounds. Only his own breathing, rain and wind.
Other senses, then.
Smell. He closed his mouth and breathed in. Nothing . . . no, something. An odour: sour, unpleasant, familiar. . . .
He rolled his tongue around his mouth, trying to taste. The mouth was dry, the teeth coated and furry. He tried to swallow, but there was nothing to go down. Water; he needed water.
For the first time since awaking, he moved. First, his fingers. He spread them flat and moved his hands from side to side. A material of some sort. Cotton? Warm. Damp. Next, his feet. He wriggled his toes against more material, thicker but also warm and damp. A duvet? Finally, his eyes.
They wouldn’t open.
He brought a hand up to his face—it felt heavy to lift—and touched it. Bristly hair that rasped faintly as his fingers stroked it. Above the bristles, the skin felt tightly stretched, like an overtaut drum. Cheekbones jutted, protruding as though they would break through if he pressed too hard against the skin.
His fingers brushed against the eyes and felt a crustiness like the surface of a cooled crème brulee. Tentatively, the fingers explored the crust. With a fingernail, he scratched at it; gently at first, then more vigorously, feeling the material begin to crumble away. He gasped as a larger chunk broke off, searing the eyelid, probably taking eyelashes with it.
His other hand came up to work on the other eye. More pain. With it came a memory: a beach; a young boy running along the sand; a man watching, coughing thickly into a handkerchief.
The pain in his eyelids—and the memory—stimulated his tear ducts and the crust softened, coming away more easily, like fresh putty.
The first memory had been the first drip from a breached dam. As the last of the crust came free, other memories returned: a trickle, a stream, then a raging torrent as the dam burst.
He gasped again and dropped his hands to his sides.
Now he knew where he was; he knew who he was.
Tom Evans opened his eyes.
* * * * *
Inaction did not suit Troy Bishop. He preferred to be on the go, a man of purpose and intent, a man who made things happen.
Being cooped up in the hotel for almost a week was driving him a little stir crazy. The television channels had stopped broadcasting old shows and movies a couple of days ago. The last local news broadcast had gone out this morning. A teary, coughing technician—all the usual presenters were dead or comatose—had mumbled incoherently for twenty minutes, expounding his theories on why the plague had come, as if there was anyone left who gave a shit. Bishop lobbed wads of moist tissue at the screen, roaring with laughter when he scored a direct hit on the technician.
Now there were emergency messages on two channels, playing on a loop, exhorting any survivors to collect as much water and tinned food as they could carry and leave the cities where pestilence from decomposing flesh was otherwise likely to finish what the Millennium Bug had started. On the other channels, blizzards played to the sound of a clearing throat.
While there had still been a skeleton staff man
ning the hotel, Bishop had made full use of the room service facility. He gathered that he was the only fit guest. When the last remaining member of staff solemnly informed him that she was leaving her post to go home and to bed, she handed to Bishop her master key that would allow him access to any part of the hotel.
“Thanks,” Bishop said. “I hope the fridges are well stocked.”
The girl looked at him wonderingly from her streaming eyes. Bishop sensed the puzzlement in that look and also something more. Resentment? No, strangely no resentment. What, then? Pity? Yes, that was it . . . pity.
A cold fury ignited in Bishop. How dare she feel pity for him! His hands clenched into fists and he took a step forward, but the girl had already turned and was trudging down the corridor. For a moment, Bishop considered going after her and showing her who should pity whom. But he stayed still and allowed the fury to seep away. Now was not the time to allow the primal instincts of another species to dominate him. He needed to keep a cool, calm head. There was still much to be done. Soon, he would be able to get on with doing it.
In the meantime, he roamed the hotel, finding his way to the kitchens. They were indeed well stocked and he would eat like a king for his short remaining stay. He did not need to break into any of the provisions he had brought with him.
He made his way to the roof and sat in the sun in the small terraced garden that he found there. This became his favourite place to while away the hours, looking out over the glittering city, soaking up the bright sunlight, feeling his cells react to the energy, absorbing, strengthening. Bishop had lived all over the world, but had settled for the last seventy years in Australia, attracted by the climate and the outgoing nature of the population. Well, the second factor would no longer be relevant, but he still wanted to return here after the Great Coming. He now considered it to be home, a concept that Bishop still struggled to fully embrace.
The noise of the city lessened with each hour that Bishop spent on the roof terrace. At first, he could still hear the hum of traffic as stragglers fled the city, but soon all sound of road traffic ceased. It was replaced by the distant wails of alarms that he could only hear if he turned his head in certain directions. Whether vehicle or building alarms, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Within a couple of days they, too, had ceased.