Noah groaned and swung his feet off the bed. He rubbed his hands down his stubble-covered face. He would have to shave today. He was told if he went in looking like a homeless person again he would be sent home and docked a day’s pay.
Jane, his supervisor, was such a bitch. Super Jane they called her behind her back; always rushing about, mostly when management was around.
Simon and Jean were both away this week. Why Super Jane let them both have the same time off; he will never know. It just meant more work for everyone else. And of course, ever since the misunderstanding, where Noah thought the freezer was empty, so he closed it on the way to lunch, only to find, when he returned, that he had locked Super Jane in there for almost an hour, he now found he was marked down for all the early shifts for the next week.
Super Jane. Super Bitch.
Noah snatched up the TV remote and flicked it on from standby. He did not care what was on; he just liked the sound of people talking; it made him feel like he was not alone.
The channel was set to CNN. He loved to listen to the America news network. Everything was so dramatic and sensationalized. And, if he was honest, he liked the sound of their accent.
“...In other news, a group of nine loggers were airlifted out of a work site next to the Nosivolo River in Marolambo, Madagascar, and taken to Cape Town, South Africa, after apparently suffering from some unknown malady.
“Reports are sketchy at the moment, but what is known is within eight hours of the helicopter leaving for the Mananjary Airport, eighty-one miles away, the Madagascan government declared Marolambo, in the Atsinanana Region, in the Province of Tamatave, a quarantined area. All twenty-six thousand residents are said to be under house arrest.
“Also, the city of Mananjary, Fianarantsoa, where the plane took off from, has also been quarantined, with an estimated twenty-eight thousand civilians under house arrest.
“As the news comes in, we will update you.”
Tens of thousands under house arrest. And I think getting up at 6:35 AM is bad. Then again, if I was under house arrest, I wouldn’t have to go to work.
Noah contemplated phoning in, saying he was ill. However, unless he took a doctor’s note in, he was docked a day’s wages. At first, they believed him, and even paid him for a few sick days. However, they soon realized after working there for almost a year that he had a few too many upset stomachs.
The worst thing about his flat was that the toilet was downstairs. He lived above a fish and chip shop, and shared a back door with them. After entering his flat, next to the stairs, was his freezing cold toilet. Last year, one of the pipes burst because it froze.
He started the shower, turning it on piping hot, while he sat on the toilet, letting the steam warm the room. The whole bathroom was covered in tiles, including the ceiling, and was an off-white colour with mold growing in the grouting, regardless of how much he scrubbed the things with bleach.
He rested his head on the sink as he sat on the toilet, and with a jolt realized, he had fallen asleep. He napped for ten minutes. His routine was to the minute, and if he did not rush, he would be late for work.
Noah rushed his shower, and then shaved over the sink. He did not like shaving; the razor gave him a rash for the rest of the day. Nevertheless, for some reason, Super Jane would rather see an unsightly, raw rash than a little manly stubble.
After shaving, and cutting himself twice, he raced back upstairs. He grabbed a gaudy-green and black shirt off the couch. He sniffed under the arms. It looked like an elephant had slept on it, but he did not have time to iron it. In fact, he could not even remember where the iron was. It also had a tidemark around the collar.
Who would see that if the top button was done up?
His black trousers were just as bad. They even had a small rip in the back on the pocket line. However, he was dead set on buying the new Call of Duty MW3 X-Box game, and he could not afford new trousers as well, not when the game cost forty quid and it was over two weeks until the next payday.
His black shoes were so scuffed they almost looked grey. He did not own shoe polish or brushes. He used a greasy dishcloth, which was draped over the dirty dishes in the small sink, to give them a quick wipe.
Noah checked himself out in the mirror next to his desk. He was five feet six inches tall, and skinny as a rake, with what looked like a runner’s body. No matter what he did to his light-brown hair, it always stuck up everywhere. Some people paid good money to make theirs look as causally scruffy as his. All he had to do was wake up, shower, and then ignore it.
Noah pulled on his coat.
The TV was showing images of a deserted city.
Possibly, one of the two cities in Madagascar, Noah thought, but gave it scant attention. Just as he was about to flick the TV off, the scrolling line across the bottom announced that Cape Towns International airport and surrounding three-mile area was under quarantine.
Jesus, they always overreact; he thought, as he grabbed his wallet, mobile and keys off the table and headed to work.
2
Noah sat in the breakroom for his forty-five-minute lunch break.
His morning was hectic.
Saturdays were the busiest day of the week. Just keeping the milk stocked up was a full-time job by itself, but he had to keep one whole side of the aisle stocked.
Customers complained when the milk ran down, and they had to reach back to get the jug from the bottom of the trolley.
People are so lazy; they want everything handed to them nowadays.
He rushed to fill up the yogurt, the cheese, and packaged meat sections. However, it was a hopeless task. The large cages, full of products, would have to be on a conveyor belt to keep up with demand. But they weren’t. He had to walk to the chillers, out the back of the store, fill the cages by pulling the stock off the shelves and pull the heavy cage back out onto the shop floor, then unpack, stack, and tidy as he went.
Halfway through a cage he would have to rush back to grab more trolleys of milk.
Also, customers would ask where a product was, even though each aisle had the contents written on huge hanging signs, and he wasn’t allowed, due to company policy, to just point and grunt; he had to personally walk the customer to the exact location on the shelf.
Noah sat looking down at his lunch. Shepard’s pie with peas and gravy. It was one of the few good things about working for a large food outlet; the meals were crazy cheap. He only snacked at home, and ate all his main meals at work.
He had twenty minutes left on his break, so he sat gripping his Samsung Galaxy Note.
He did not check his Facebook page, as everyone else seemed to do every ten minutes, because he did not have one.
Noah did not have any family, due to his mother dying when a car hit her when he was young, and he never knew his father, and subsequently; he had worked his way through Social Care as an orphan. Therefore, he had no family to chat with, and upload photos about. He did not even have any real friends, just a couple of people he worked with.
Society would class him as an introvert. However, he was not too big on tags.
Therefore, instead of checking out what people were currently complaining about on their Facebook pages, he sat checking the Sky News App.
The top stories were: Child Abuse Web Images Must Be Blocked; Three Britons Killed in Welsh Helicopter Crash; Mosque Blast Suspect Held Over Woman’s Death, and hidden away next to Superman and Batman Battle in Man of Steel 2, was South Africa Closes its Boarders Due to Quarantine.
Noah clicked on the link.
Whatever was infecting the loggers was spreading fast. The report stated that there was concern that Mananjary, and Cape Town International Airports were not shut right away, and the potential for the virus having hitched a ride on one of the one hundred and seventy-eight flights, which had taken off since the loggers arrived, could be a potential time bomb waiting to happen. It finished by saying that unlike the bird and swine flu, this might become a real pandemic.
> With a few minutes left of his lunch, he quickly checked out who would be playing Batman in the new Man of Steel Movie.
The rest of his day was even worse.
Noah crushed a finger between two cages. Tipped over a trolley of two-pint semi skimmed milk, splitting four of them all over the docking bay area. In addition, he accidentally hit a middle-aged man in the shins with a trolley; he spent twenty minutes in an office filling out accident paperwork, in case the man sued.
By the time 4 PM arrived, he was dead on his feet.
His day was made even worse when he popped into the local Game Store and found they had run out of Call of Duty MW3, and would not be receiving more until Monday.
Noah walked home with his head down, trying to keep the bitingly cold December wind out of his face.
It was almost dark already, due to the early nights. The colorful Christmas decorations swung across from building to building down the main shopping streets.
Noah did not bother with Christmas. He had no tree or decorations at home. Why bother when it was just him? No one had ever been in his flat, apart from his landlord. The computer game, when he could get hold of a copy, would be an early Christmas present to himself. He could honestly say he had never received a Christmas card in his life.
“Hi Noah.”
“Hi Roxi. How’s life?” Noah asked as he walked through the back door that he shared with the chip shop, while trying to get his keys ready.
Roxi was a washed-out middle-aged rocker chic who worked part-time in the chip shop. Her hair had been dyed so much over the years it was hard to tell what colour it was supposed to be. It looked like brittle, nicotine yellow straw. She was a little on the plump side, which was held in place with tight, worn jeans and a tee-shirt with a band called Bam Margera and the Fuckface Unstoppable. Her bingo-wing arms had faded tattoos of wolves, bears, flags, and children’s faces. She had more studs and rings in her face than looked healthy, and probably made putting on makeup difficult. She held an apron in a hand that had at least ten rings on it, and a wrist weighed down with bracelets, which sounded like a percussion orchestra falling down a flight of steps every time she moved.
“You know love, same old, same old,” she stated, while blowing smoke into the dark, cold sky.
Noah had nothing against Roxi; it was just she could talk for England. If he didn’t get his door open straight away, he would be stuck chatting with her until Eric, the chip shop owner, came out to see what was taking her so long.
Roxi spat out a bit of tobacco from her rolly and gave a cough that sounded like an old diesel engine starting up.
She had a good heart, and raised seven children on her own, but she was oblivious to other people’s time and needs. She was one of those people who just does not know when a conversation should end, or to take a hint when you are not interested, and she never listened to the other side of the conversation; she simply waited for you to finish talking so she could carry on with what she was saying.
“Did you hear the news about Ronald?”
“Gotta run Roxi, I’m expecting a phone call any minute,” Noah lied as he swung the door open before she could utter another word.
The flat was cold. It had no central heating, and he could not afford to keep the small electric heater on all day. The flat had a coin meter at the bottom of the stairs, which the landlord emptied once a month. Noah was sure it was set wrong, and he was paying too much for electricity.
He switched on his laptop, letting it boot up while he flicked on the kettle for a cuppa tea. He undressed, tossing his work clothes onto the couch. He knew he should pop to the launderette, that was only a few shops away down the street, but he just could not be bothered. He decided he would do it tomorrow.
He sat at his battered desk with his pajamas, and a thick nightgown and slippers on, and a plate with a few slices of toast with plain Philadelphia, vanilla and strawberry jam.
The TV was on in the background. CNN was covering what they had simply named The Virus. Cases of outbreaks were now popping up in major cities with international airports, all over the world.
Noah muted the TV as he slipped his gaming headset on. He logged onto his online Steam account and booted up one of his favorite games, Left 4 Dead; an apocalyptic zombie shoot ‘em up. He would play on his laptop until he could get hold of the X-box game he wanted.
In the virtual world, he ran around an abandoned fairground, shooting zombie clowns and pedestrians. Three other players ran at his side as he battled, shot, and bludgeoned his way through the levels, leaving a mass of carnage in his virtual wake.
3
Sunday 16th December 2012
Day 2
Sunday was Noah’s day off. He eventually rolled out of bed at just after 11 AM. He spent thirteen hours playing a variety of PC and X-box computer games. He moved only to go to the toilet and to make toast or fill his coffee cup.
In the background, unheard due to his headphones, the news reported the spread of the virus. At the last count, nine countries had confirmed cases.
Even though so many people were being infected, and across so many countries, the news seemed a little sparse on the details. Whenever an outbreak was registered and confirmed, the military – in whichever country concerned – swooped in and took over, quarantining the area.
The Public Health, an agency of the Department of Health, was giving out a few details. If you felt dizzy and nauseous, with constant blinking of the eyes, which form a bloodshot clouding over the cornea, then you were to phone an emergency number set up for your individual County.
A new organization called The UK Plan for Rare Diseases, which had only just been passed through The Commons, and was run by the Department of Health, was being inundated with inquiries.
The Health Minister Lord Howe gave a news conference, telling people to use the numbers for their particular area.
Even though, as of yet no confirmed cases were reported in the UK.
However, that did not stop over twenty thousand calls an hour blocking up the emergency phone lines. Anyone who had a headache or a cold was trying to get through.
Bruce Keogh, the Medical Director for the NHS, backed-up Lord Howe, and went on the BBC News at Ten asking people to stop phoning 999 and use the number for their district.
A scrolling bar rolled across the bottom of the TV screen stating the number for Noah’s area. The English Riviera Centre, in Torquay, was being used for the county of Devon.
Noah missed all of this while he played computer games. A few of the gamers commented on the virus while waiting to respawn, but they were soon told to shut up and concentrate on the game.
4
Sunday 23rd December
Day 8
The week got worse.
Noah struggled with the week of early mornings. In addition, because of two people being away, and it being so busy, Noah had to work on his day off.
Super Jane had been busting his balls all week, stating if he went any slower, he would clot. He noticed, apart from walking around pissing people off, that she never actually did any real, physical work. She had also commented on his clothes again, saying he looked like he slept in them.
The supermarket was busier than the normal Christmas rush, what with it being the last shopping day before Christmas. People were spooked about the outbreak that was spreading across the world, and they were starting to horde food and drinks.
Some were even wearing respiratory paper masks. One old man even walked around doing his shopping wearing an old-fashioned scuba diving breathing apparatus, with the big goggles covering half his face, and a large air tank on his back. Noah had even looked down at the floor, expecting him to be wearing flippers, but he wasn’t.
No one talked about anything else. It consumed every TV station and conversation.
By the end of the first week, seventeen countries had confirmed cases. However, the World Health Organization had still not classed it as a pandemic, because as of yet, apart fr
om severe side effects, no one had died from the virus. Nevertheless, that did not stop people from panicking.
The food was flying off the shelves faster than it could be restocked. The supermarkets were having trouble keeping up with demand. The shelves were starting to have large gaps. The frozen-food section was practically empty.
Fights would start over the last carton of long life milk, or a packet of cereal bars.
One couples trolley was full of cheap dog food and two-liter bottles of Asda’s own lemonade. Noah hoped they had a dog.
While walking home on Friday, Noah could not believe how deserted the streets were. There were no people ambling along, window-shopping. No prams full of screaming children. No one sat on the public benches. No street performers filling the pedestrian precinct with their renditions of famous songs. No teenagers slamming around on battered skateboards, trying to impress a ring of girls sat on the ground. Even the roads were empty of cars. All that seemed to be around were lorries and vans trying to keep up with the food demands.
Most of the shops were closed by the time Noah finished work. Normally, they stayed open beyond 4 PM – if they had opened at all. The only shops that were open were the food outlets.
The public waste bins were overflowing, with rubbish piling up and blowing through the streets. The wheelie bins were wedged up against the houses, also unemptied with black bin bags thrown up against them. Animals had ripped bags open; household waste was scattered across the pavements and roads.
The five-minute walk home seemed surreal, as if he had walked onto a movie set.
The strangest thing was the silence, as if everyone was holding their breath. No music blared from open windows. No conversations carried on the breeze. Mainly, because every window was closed tight.
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 24