The World's Last Breaths: Final Winter, Animal Kingdom, and The Peeling

by Iain Rob Wright

  A doctor put his hand up, a younger man with floppy Hugh Grant hair. Zantoko acknowledged him and let him ask his question. “Are we treating the infection?”

  “In triage no, but the supervising doctors in Wards 3 and 6 are administering penicillin and vancomycin. We don’t yet know if it’s having any effect.”

  “What about the lock-in procedures? Who barricaded us in here? Are we in contact?”

  Zantoko couldn’t maintain eye-contact for this question, and he answered it with his eyes on the ground. “I believe Public Health are in charge of the hospital quarantine, but we are yet to receive any directives. In fact, to my knowledge, all lines out of the hospital are blocked.”

  “They’re going to get us all killed,” a nurse muttered.

  Zantoko eyeballed her. “What happens to the people in this hospital is down to us. We shall deal with the greater scope of things later. All I shall say is that someone outside must feel it prudent to seal this entire building.”

  “Which means they know what this is,” said Devey, surprising himself with the sound of his own voice. “Someone outside is taking extreme measures. No government official would risk the public backlash from this unless the greater good were at stake.”

  A smattering of nodding heads told him he was right. Zantoko sighed. It was a statement he obviously wished had not been made publically. “Ladies and gentlemen. This is Devey Singh, who has been a great help during this morning’s events.” He eyeballed Devey for a moment, then said. “And unfortunately I agree with him. The only situation in which I can envisage these kinds of absolute measures is to prevent an outbreak of something so deadly that it would threaten society as a whole. The only way the public would forgive actions like these is if the alternative is even worse.”

  “Oh God,” said Dr Hugh Grant. “Then we really are screwed. What chance do we have?”

  “We have every chance,” said Zantoko. “We already know transmission can be avoided. All in this room are healthy, despite being around sick people all day. This hospital is big enough to keep everyone apart, so we work to that end. Keep the healthy away from the sick.”

  “Where are you putting the sick?” asked Devey.

  “Sub-basement 1. The oncology department and rheumatology take up most the floor, but there’s also a pair of high-risk wards. Devey, that was where you were placed when you first got here.”

  “And the paramedics and the police officers with me?”

  Zantoko nodded. “Let’s focus forward. Devey, let people know the virus is contained--that the only thing that could jeopardise us now is people trying to hide an infection. You did the right thing telling us about the child.”

  Devey’s cheeks grew hot, and he looked away. “Didn’t feel like it.”

  “The right thing is rarely the easy thing.” Zantoko said it in a tone suggesting he knew from experience. “You saved lives by doing the right thing, Devey, I promise you. We have this thing contained.”

  “Is that true?” He didn’t get the impression anything was contained at all. A huddled mass of frightened people was not containment, and in the last hour he’d seen people funnel off into a dozen stairwells and corridors. Infected people could be everywhere. “Is it really under control?”

  Zantoko folded his arms and exhaled. “The infection will be contained so long as the situation is. Twenty-eight people handed themselves into our care, and in the last hour only four new patients have displayed symptoms. Once people know the new cases are lessening in number, they might remain calm until real help arrives.”

  “And what is the real help?” Dr Hugh Grant asked.

  “Whoever removes the barricades and tells us they’ll take it from here,” said Zantoko. “We won’t be expected to deal with this indefinitely, I’m certain. Someone with greater authority will come.”

  Devey felt a shiver down his spine at that. Whoever was outside didn’t care about the people inside this hospital. If the barricades came down, he wasn’t sure he would like what came next. But Zantoko seemed hopeful, so he held onto that.

  After more brief discussion, the doctors and nurses went on their way, all with their own specific set of instructions to carry out. Zantoko was clearly the man in charge, but Devey wondered why that was—so he asked the man while he was getting a cup of water from the cooler. “Are you in charge of the hospital, Dr Zantoko?”

  “Ha! Heaven’s no. I’m head of A&E, which makes me the obvious candidate to man the front lines. The administrators are in charge of the hospital but they work in a building down the road. There are other consultants and surgeons with the same seniority as me, but they are all holding the fort in other areas—we still have a hospital full of ordinary patients to attend to. All hands on deck, I’m sure you can understand.”

  Devey nodded. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Just what you have been already. Keep your ear to the ground and help where needed. Get others involved, too, if you can. People behave better if you empower them.”

  Noise erupted outside, and the door sprung open and crashed against the wall. A nurse staggered back into the room with her forehead bleeding. “Help! Help me!”

  Zantoko ran to her, catching her before she fell. He asked her what happened, but she wouldn’t focus on him enough to answer, too dazed, too confused. He helped her over to a small couch and then marched out the door into the waiting area. Devey was right behind him.

  The waiting area played scene to yet another riot, but this one was worse than the others. Blood ran everywhere as people kicked and punched one another like spooked mules. It was obvious to see why. Devey spotted a dozen people with bleeding, festering wounds. Many bled from their faces, but others tried to hide their shame. They weren’t fooling anybody.

  Zantoko didn’t react for a moment. He stood there with his jaw hanging open. “No, no, no. This is wrong. I don’t understand.”

  Someone with half their face missing like Phantom of the Opera saw Dr Zantoko and came racing towards him. Devey shoved the doctor back into the office and closed the door. “Stay inside and lock the door!”

  The infected man turned his focus on Devey, angry at him getting in the way. He reached out with his infected hands, seeming to understand that his touch was a death sentence. Devey dodged out from behind the nurse’s station, dragging a chair with him. He shoved it into the speeding man’s path and sent him tumbling like a skittle. His arms went out to break his fall, which caused the skin to slough off from his elbow to his wrist. He came to rest on his side, bleeding. “I’m so sorry!” Devey said before rushing off into the fray.

  It was all over. All chance of keeping the infection isolated had evaporated. A third of the crowd bled from infection, and their blood coated everything. The crowd succumbed to mass panic. The infected clawed and begged the healthy to help them—spreading the infection further. It was over. They were all going to die.

  Despite that realisation, Devey still fought to keep his distance. He backed away until he hit something, and when he turned around, he saw the vending machines. A slash of blood ran the width of their glass fronts, and finally he understood what had doomed everyone—himself included.

  The Black Sabbath fan had been heading to the vending machines when he’d first seen her. She’d bought a bottle of water, prodding the buttons with her infected fingers—the same buttons he had later pressed. As he now looked down at his fingertips, he saw clusters of tiny blisters, so small it was no wonder he hadn’t noticed them until now. He pressed his thumb and forefingers together and felt the blisters pop like bubble wrap beneath his skin. A trickle of blood appeared on his left thumb. That was the reason so many people had wounds on their faces—they used the vending machine and then touched their face.

  Just like he had. He was going to die.

  The screams intensified as people scattered, seeking clean air to breathe. The infected clutched at anyone within reach, murdering with their touch. Children screamed for their mummies. Mummies screa
med for their children. Nurses lay on the floor, knocked out and powerless.

  Ken appeared amidst the chaos. “Devey! The infection is everywhere. We need to get out of here.” Devey dodged back before the orderly could touch him. “I have it!” he said. “The infection is all over the vending machines—probably a dozen other places too. Don’t touch me. Just… go somewhere and hide. Maybe you don’t have it.”

  Ken looked Devey up and down, searching for wounds, and it seemed to take him a while to understand. “I… I’ll head to the maternity wards. They have extra security and it’s been locked tight since this whole thing began. Join us there if things turn out okay. If not, I’m sorry, mate.”

  Devey nodded. “Just go! Dr Zantoko is in the nurse’s lounge. Take him with you.” “Okay, good luck.” Ken sprinted away and just like that, Devey was alone in Hell, surrounded by demons bleeding death upon the earth.

  Devey watched the world end with a strange sense of detachment. The blood and carnage should have been enough to double him over in revulsion, but since finding Mary on her kitchen floor he had encountered one horror after another. Could a person become desensitised so quickly?

  The waiting area was no longer bustling as people fled into the bowels of the hospital. Now it resembled a film set—the Haunted Hospital--and rubbish and flesh littered the rows of benches. The floor was awash with coffee cups, handbags, shoes, and blood. Half a dozen bodies lay mangled, trampled to death or brained by one panicking brute or another.

  Besides the dead, there were living too. Several frightened faces peered from behind desks and other cover. No one spoke. No one tried to help. The only person not hiding was an old man, the same one from earlier who had been cradling an old woman. Devey had refused to help him then, but perhaps he could do something now. He took a seat beside the old man. “Are you hurt?”

  The old man didn’t react to Devey’s presence at first. He stared into space, exhaling slowly. Blood streaked his craggy cheek, but it didn’t seem to be his. “We like to think ourselves civilised,” he eventually muttered, “but we are animals. Put a flame to our feet and we will always leap into the trees.”

  “People are trying to save themselves,” said Devey.

  The old man continued staring into space, blinking once or twice. “Yet they succeed only in doing the opposite. I’m ashamed to be human today. I’m ashamed this is what we are.”

  Devey didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. His eyes couldn’t help but search the room, scanning every morbid detail. What looked like an obliterated eyeball lay squished on the tiles near his feet, and his eyes followed a slick trail to the body of an old woman ten feet away. Devey realised then that the old man wasn’t staring into space, he was staring at this body. It was the old woman he’d been cradling before. Her head had been stomped to mush, and the only part of her recognisable was her bloodstained cardigan. “I’m sorry,” said Devey. “I should have helped you earlier.”

  “No,” the old man said. “You were helping a little girl.”

  “Still…”

  The old man looked at him with watery, grey eyes. “My name is Derek. My wife’s name was Stella. She’s only here because she wanted to come with me to get my blood taken. I’ve always hated needles, you see. She was supposed to outlive me. We both knew I would never cope on my own.”

  Devey rubbed his hands together in his lap and saw blood smears on his palms. It didn’t seem to matter. “What happened to Stella?”

  “Heart attack, I think. When all the commotion started, she got anxious. It was too much for her. Eighty-six, she was.”

  “Wow! And how old are you, Derek?”

  “Eighty-two. Not a bad age to end on, I suppose.”

  It felt like a point to argue—to say something like: you could live another ten years yet!—but they would have been empty words. No room for platitudes when you were surrounded by the dead. “Can I do anything for you,” Devey asked. “Not everyone is infected. There might still be a way out for some of us.”

  “No, I think I’ll just stay here with my Stella. She was always afraid of being alone.”

  Devey stood and wiped blood from his palms onto his postal uniform. The crimson matched the Royal Mail insignia on his breast. “You sit tight. I’ll come back later.”

  Derek stared at his wife in silence.

  Someone rose from behind a bench and bolted for a nearby corridor. Devey paid them no attention and wondered why they were even running. No one was trying to stop them. What would happen next, he wondered, now that things had reached their climax? Before things had deteriorated, the infected were being led to the sub-basement. Would that be the best place for him? Zantoko said patients were being treated with drugs. Might those drugs work?

  He raised his hands and inspected them. His right palm had split open in a bloody chasm and several fingers on both hands were blistered and peeling. The patch of skin beneath his nostrils was also itching fiercely, but he dared not find a mirror and look. He couldn’t stay in this waiting room though, surrounded by flesh and filth. So he headed to the lifts. Like everything else, they were covered in blood. He reached out to press the call button.

  The lights went out.

  His finger jabbed the call button, but it was dead. The corridor fell to pitch-blackness. Without his sight to navigate by, his other senses increased. The coppery twang of blood grew stronger in his nostrils.

  He stumbled away from the lifts, squinting to see the green and white signs hanging from the ceiling. He knew the stairwell was nearby, so he felt his way along, seeking the next doorway he could find. Somewhere in the depths, voices shouted and argued, but he was all alone in this particular piece of darkness. Despite being in his twenties, Devey still kept the hallway light on in his flat while he slept. Ever since he was little, total darkness had always provoked his imagination to run wild. The memories of his father closing his bedroom door and demanding him to grow up and go to sleep were still fresh in his mind. The feeling of laying there trembling all night, missing the light. Missing his mum.

  Devey’s groping hands slipped from the wall and clutched thin air. Some kind of alcove. Stepping into it, he found a door, and when he opened it he saw the hazy shape of a staircase. He’d found what he was looking for.

  He held onto a handrail on the wall as he descended, taking each step carefully as he felt his way with his feet. The lower he went, the more he worried about what he was sinking himself into. The lower floor was where the infected were, which meant he would likely encounter a whole lot of sick people. In the dark, he wouldn’t even see them coming. He had little choice but to keep going, but what he wouldn’t do to get the lights back on.

  The stairwell lit up, a glowing blast hitting him in the face. He cried out.

  “Who’s there?” a voice barked at him from a few steps below.

  Devey shielded his face, trying to see through the blinding corona. “I-I’m Devey.”

  “Devey Singh?”

  “Yes! Who is that?”

  The light lowered and Devey blinked away his blindness. In front of him stood the police officer with coppery sideburns. He looked glad to see him. “It’s me, Officer Mitchell, but you may as well call me Mike. Seems our paths are destined to keep crossing.”

  “I’m glad to see you, Mike, but don’t get too close. I’m infected.”

  The officer took a step lower. “Ah, sorry to hear that. I’ve been waiting for them to cut the power.”

  “Waiting? Why?”

  “Let’s go downstairs. We don’t have long.”

  Devey followed the officer to the bottom of the stairs, and they entered one of the wards of the lower floor. Devey recognised it as the one he’d been kept in. Doctors and nurses rushed back and forth, lighting candles and switching on torches.

  “Who cut the power?” Devey asked as he continued walking with Mike. “And why?”

  The officer stopped walking and faced him. “Them outside. They cut the power.”

 
“Why?”

  “Because they’re planning to come in, guns blazing. It’s textbook. Secure the perimeter, cut the power, storm the gates. We’re about to get slaughtered. Not that it’s a bad thing. A mercy at this point.”

  In the growing candlelight, Devey glanced inside the various side rooms at patients lined up in beds. Doctors and nurses moved between them. He looked again at Mike. Mike who seemed to know everything, so long as it was bad news. “How long have you been down here? Is the treatment working?”

  “Not that I can see, and certainly not fast enough if it is. My partner has it—that’s what I’m doing down here. Both paramedics too. Guess I’m the only one with any luck out of the four of us from this morning.”

  “I wouldn’t call any of us lucky. Still, you should get out of here. The healthy have made their way to the maternity ward. Go there.”

  He headed for one of the open doorways. “It won’t matter where any of us are soon. I’ll stick around here, thanks.”

  Devey was struck by a smell as he entered the room alongside Mike. Six beds took up the space, each surrounded by curtains. A nurse supervised, but she looked ready to drop. Her left arm was wrapped in a bloody bandage, and a sore had opened on her cheek. Her own dying didn’t stop her from visiting each bed with medicines though. From where Devey stood, only the first patient was visible—an unconscious young man. His lower jawbone was exposed. “What does this?” said Devey, his tongue thick with saliva. “Natural or man-made, this is wrong. No one deserves this.” He looked at his bloody hands. “I don’t deserve this.”