by Alex Scarrow
Leon nodded. ‘We . . . uh . . . We didn’t cope very well.’
Well, look, Leon, you’re going to be perfectly safe here. We have a contained, sealed, safe environment. Power and food and water for as long as we’re going to need it.’
‘How long do you think that will be?’
Ron smooshed his lips like a car mechanic totalling up a quote. ‘Who knows?’
‘The authorities, or, you know, whoever’s left out there and still functioning,’ cut in Freya, ‘are gonna need some time to get their act together before they start reaching out.’
Ron nodded. ‘We might have to dig in and cope on our own for quite some time.’
‘So you keep saying,’ said Freya. ‘That is if anyone does come.’
‘The authorities have contingency plans for all kinds of disasters, Freya. There’ll be an emergency authority hub somewhere outside London. If we’ve managed OK, I’m sure the prime minister and cabinet have too.’ He turned to Leon. ‘And your president and his people I imagine are just fine too, but I can imagine it’s going to be quite some time before a major relief effort gets going.’
‘Dave thinks the whole world is dead and gone . . . that it’s just us left.’ Freya turned to Leon. ‘He’s Ron’s assistant.’
‘Deputy manager, Freya,’ Ron chided her gently. ‘I think Dave is overly pessimistic. There’ll be relief efforts going on eventually.’
Leon nodded. ‘I’m sure you’re right, Mr Carnegie.’
‘Anyway . . . we’re just going to sit tight here for now. Freya?’
‘Ron?’
Leon noticed him stiffen at her cheeky familiarity. ‘Why don’t you show Leon around the tropicarium?’
‘I might just do that, Ron.’
CHAPTER 36
Grace lay alone in the chalet bedroom. The curtains of the small window were drawn to and only a trickle of diffused daylight leaked into the small room. She felt weak and hot, her mind slipping in and out of consciousness, not sleeping but not truly awake either.
She had a fleeting dream about much happier times. Back in their New York home. Christmas, that’s what it felt like. There were decorations and a tree in the corner of their lounge. Of course it was Christmas. Leon looked so much younger. Maybe ten or eleven. He was tearing the wrapping paper off a large Star Wars Lego set, squawking with delight. Weirdly, in the dream, she was the same age she was now. Twelve. That kind of made her the Big Sister.
A part of her fevered mind appreciated the irony of that. Leon had stepped up after Mom had died. He’d been doing his best to be an adult. Doing OK, under the circumstances. She knew she’d be long gone if it hadn’t been for him. So, now, in this pleasant dream, it was nice, if weird, to see him as a little kid once more.
She was unwrapping a new iPhone. Mom and Dad were there, smiling at each other. Her foggy mind couldn’t make out whether this was a dream or a memory, or some halfway house. She was older than Leon . . . a dream, then.
Gramps and Grandma were there too. They’d come down from Connecticut for Christmas and were cooing and enjoying watching the littluns.
A perfect, perfect dream.
Inside Grace, a colony of cells, alien to her body’s immune system, was doing its best to survive. A desperate struggle now that their world, the inside of Grace, had become a biochemical war-zone.
The immune system was fully mobilized and ready for a fight. These invaders had entered their world and they were on the prowl through the bloodstream, hunting down the unwelcome bacterial imposters who’d set up camp there. Busting down their cell walls when they found them, tearing apart their reproductive machinery.
These unwelcome invaders had a name in the universe outside: Staphylococcus aureus.
But there was another invader, much, much smaller, and it too had taken up residence. To these tiny life forms, the war between Staphylococcus and the immune system was a war between giant beasts, elephants locking tusks, while meantime they crept like mice around their vast stomping feet.
This second invader was infinitely smaller, but dangerously similar in structure, not like other viruses – just strands of DNA floating in a perilously thin casing – but these virus hijacked cells were complete. They were life forms capable of their own life cycle. The biological war of giants was of no concern to this virus, except that it was stirring up this world’s, this microcosm’s ‘little police’, the lymphocytes and macrophages. They smelled blood, and were out and about in great numbers doing their bit to help the giants take down the bacterial invader, looking for kicked-in cell walls into which to race, to raise havoc inside.
The virus was lying low for now, going dormant. Time to find a safe place to go to sleep until things calmed down.
Elsewhere, on a human scale, a hundred miles away, stood a building on the outskirts of a middle-sized market town. A three-storey building that was constructed in the middle of the nineteenth century, with large delivery archways at the rear for horse-drawn carts to deliver payloads of barley and hops. Once upon a time, the building had hummed with activity, producing hundreds of barrels of real ale, called Butchers Best. In recent years, it had been doing the same job, but on a much smaller scale. An old building now, it had been ripe for pulling down and redeveloping before the virus hit, but like a stubborn old man it had persisted and remained standing.
The building’s basement was vast: a storage cellar that had once been designed to store thousands of barrels was a labyrinth of low archways, tunnels, vacant wooden barrel racks and, until a few months ago, a thriving colony of rats.
A very different colony inhabited this space now.
In the darkness of this old brick cellar, safe from the uncomfortable penetrative UV rays, it was warm. Almost tropical.
There was life down here.
A sea of life.
An ocean of life.
To a casual observer, the basement floor appeared to be a seething cauldron of brown broth. It could have been mistaken for a sewage treatment vat, except that it didn’t smell of faeces. The odour could be described as meaty, cabbagey . . . the smell of a school or hospital canteen or a soup kitchen.
The virus had converged here in a good place. In microcosmic terms, this was a city. A mega-city. A place where many hundreds of thousands of mini-colonies had merged to share their experiences, their data.
Their knowledge.
And now sections of jigsaw-puzzle DNA were being played with, assembled together to see what they could form. In the darkness of the brewery basement, yet another genetic template was emerging from the crusty surface of the broth. An ambitious project this time, something much, much bigger than before. Over several hours, a small dimple in the surface of the broth became a molehill, then a hump the size of a pitcher’s mound. Its form became more complex, more refined, took on definition and complexity. Beneath the surface, billions of cells passed along Chinese-whisper-like chemical messages. Between them they agreed roles and formed a brittle skeleton-like frame. Some formed sinew-like material; others a facsimile of muscle tissue.
Finally, after many hours, the hump had become an organized sub-colony that could begin to articulate and move. The crusty surface tore open and a creature that bore just the vaguest resemblance to a cow staggered to its seven feet. Some legs worked as they should; others were withered and uncertainly formed. The creature’s head had the wedge-like shape of a cow’s. A noise emerged from its mouth. Not the deep lowing of a cow, but a warbling mournful shriek that sounded as chilling and unpleasant as the cry of an urban fox.
It staggered clumsily, wading drunkenly through the broth.
On the wedge-shaped head, an experimental organ attempted to function, a glistening dark orb that emerged from beneath a protective flap of membrane. One eye, blinking and rolling in the darkness. It detected a hazy pinprick of light coming through the floorboards above; detected the light . . . reported its presence down an optic nerve to a sub-colony of cells that had combined to form another very simple org
an about the size of pinhead.
The beast staggered another step, then finally collapsed back into the broth. Not a cow, not even close . . . but getting there. It was an incredible result that would be logged and stored in the collective memory of this basement city. The very complicated optic organ, and the other organ, a simple brain, had worked successfully together.
The short-lived creature began to break back down once again into the soup from which it had been made. This process was a lot quicker than the assembly. Cells rejoined the larger community, exchanging protein messages.
An hour later the DNA packet responsible for creating a viable eye, optic nerve and brain tissue, had proliferated across the entire basement of the brewery, and several hundred small articulated crablike creatures emerged from the soup, following a guiding tendril up the stairs to the ground floor, out of the delivery archway and into daylight. Some of them began to scramble across the ground on their thin pincer legs, sniffing for the outlier tendrils of a sibling colony; others dissolved in the sunlight and became small balls of fluff, like dandelions gone to seed, waiting for a stiff breeze to carry their spores away, each one containing news of this wonderful development.
CHAPTER 37
03.12.17
Dad, you out there still? You still alive? It’s been nearly seven months. The general feeling is that the world is actually totally fubared. No country survived intact. There’s no one left to pick up the pieces. But, maybe, there are lots of other survival enclaves like this one, keeping going.
We found one of them. Or, more accurately, they found us. They’re holding out at this luxury forest health-spa place. It’s basically a big plastic greenhouse with gyms and Swedish saunas and hot tubs and a small swimming pool inside. The place is sealed up like a drum. Virtually airtight, like some kind of Mars colony outpost. That’s how they survived: none of the virus could get inside. In fact, it’s a perfect survival stronghold. They’ve got solar-power panels, a wind turbine and even a diesel generator, so they’re good for power. Food and water isn’t a problem. When we need more, we send out a van to the nearest supermarket and fill it up.
Catching the virus isn’t a problem, Dad. We’re all immune here. Now I know why. It’s not hereditary – it’s chemical. It’s painkillers . . . that’s the cure! Which I guess means there’s more of a chance that you’re still alive. See, I thought it was hereditary, which meant if we got our immunity from Mum then the chances of you being immune too would be hugely unlikely. So, if it’s drugs . . . you’ve probably figured that out too. And as long as we keep popping pills we’re safe from catching it. That’s one thing sorted. Tick. The other’s not so easy . . .
There’s the things this virus is making. They call them snarks here. I don’t know if other survivors are getting the same weird creatures we are – we’ve got these small crablike things. Every one of them seems slightly different. Now and then you get bigger snarks. The biggest thing we’ve seen so far was the size of a cat or a small dog. I get the feeling the virus is trying to make new species, but it can’t do the big stuff . . . yet. Shit. Can a virus really do that? You know, think, plan, strategize? The idea of that really scares me.
08.12.17
Grace’s arm is all healed up now. She was sick for so long. I really thought she was going to die when we went back to the bunker. I thought the snark virus was inside her, but just taking its time breaking her down. Turns out she must have got an infection from something else.
Terry fixed her up by the way, Dad. He is a staff member here at this place. An ex-British Army medic, turned male nurse. There’s another guy who’s an ex-Army engineer, called ‘Spanners’. Then there’s the manager, Ron Carnegie. I reckon he’s what you’d call one of those rod-up-the-ass types. He’s a nice old guy, but everything’s by the book, health-’n’-safety and stuff. And his sidekick is this survival blowhard called Dave. I guess you know the type . . . Yup, they have ’em over here too.
The rest of the staff here are all much younger. They’re all jocks and phys-ed types. Friendly, though. Anyway, I wanted to special-mention Terry, as he’s the guy that you need to thank for Grace (if you ever get the chance).
21.12.17
I had a totally WTH of a nightmare last night. It was pretty bad. I saw it all again, Mum being overrun by those little crawly things. You know what her last words to me were? (Of course you don’t.) Well, I’ll tell you: ‘They’re inside me.’
Uh-huh, you read that right. ‘Inside me.’
That’s what keeps coming back to me the most. But, my God . . . she could feel those little bugs cutting through her and getting into her body. I don’t want to think about what that felt like. I try not to think about it, but, seriously, I get no frikkin say on what I get to dream about. Jeez. I do NOT want to go out like that.
‘She seems very popular,’ said Freya. She turned to Leon. ‘Everyone loves her.’
They watched Grace helping a couple of the spa’s groundsmen, Carlo and his young apprentice, dig up the decorative flower beds, and the plastic palm trees. Mr Carnegie had suddenly got a bee in his bonnet about self-sufficiency and turning the unused faux flowerbeds into genuine vegetable patches.
‘After all,’ he’d said at yesterday’s breakfast briefing, ‘we’re living in a giant greenhouse. Come on! Who fancies eating something fresh as opposed to tinned?’
He’d addressed that to an audience who were decades younger than him and quite used to the ping of a microwave. Leon suspected it had more to do with boosting morale than dealing with nutrition, something to keep his young staff busy. Grace was in among them. She’d managed to find a pair of kitchen rubber gloves from somewhere and was making them all giggle with her City Girl Does Rural act, hamming up her Big Apple accent, tutting at the muck on her gloves and curling her lips like a drama queen. Relishing the attention, the good-natured head shaking and eye rolling from the others.
‘Everyone always loves her,’ Leon replied. For the first time, he realized he’d said that with just a little pride, not as he would have done in the past, sarcastically and layered with resentment. He smiled. ‘She’s a natural at it. She didn’t just chatter at school – she networked.’
‘Unlike you?’
‘I’m the contrast, right?’ He turned to Freya. ‘The sibling who’s, like, the total opposite, the miserable loner.’
‘No! Just . . . you’re quieter. I’d say, a thinker rather than a talker.’
Absently, Leon ran a hand through his dark hair.
Freya snorted at that.
‘What?’
‘You! That! Doing the whole romantic, mysterious outsider thing.’
‘Huh?’
She mimicked him, running a hand through her hair, narrowing her eyes, jutting her chin, pursing her lips and staring off into the middle distance. ‘The whole brooding poet act.’
Leon closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Ah, did I just do that?’
She nudged his shoulder with hers. ‘Only works with pretty boys, I’m afraid.’
‘Charming.’ He frowned as he thought about something. ‘What do you guys call a dog? Oh, yeah . . . I’m a “minger”, am I?’
She smiled at his pronunciation of the word. He’d made it sound like ginger. ‘I love it when you Yanks try on our accent for size.’
‘Except I’m not a Yank. I’m a Brit.’
‘Bollocks to that.’
‘No, seriously. I was born in England. Mum comes . . .’ He dipped his head for a moment, then started again on a different tack. ‘I’ve got English grandparents, I went to elementary school here, I’ve got a British birth certificate an’ all. What more do I need to be one of you Brits?’
‘Drop a few “h”s and “t”s bruv . . . know wha’ I mean?’
‘Right, so you guys all talk like that when no one’s looking?’
‘Yeah. Wicked, innit?’
Leon winced. ‘Half the students in my college speak like that.’
‘College? What, like, degr
ee-college? I didn’t think you were that old.’
‘No . . . no. Sixth Form college. Same as US high school. I’m, like, seventeen.’
Freya looked surprised at that. ‘You look younger, but act older. So I had you as a really young-looking college-age kid.’
‘I hate looking so young. Maybe when I’m in my fifties I’ll finally get to shave.’
‘Leon, seriously, it’s the right way round. Better than looking older and acting all immature. Too many man-childs around.’
Freya watched Grace pottering around, offering unneeded advice and being generally no real help at all. ‘I often find myself wondering about how all the famous people have got on.’
‘Huh?’
‘You know, the Hollywood royalty, the billionaires, the catwalk models, the rap stars . . . Normally the real world never touches the likes of them. They live in their comfy bubbles and every now and then reach out to us with a tweet or an Instagram, usually something stage-managed. I wonder whether they all escaped to some mystery safety island somewhere in the Maldives . . . or whether I just squished one of them in the car last time we went out.’
Leon laughed.
‘Life’s lottery winners,’ she sighed. ‘They usually come out on top.’
‘I bet most of them were chomping pills of one kind or another.’ He nudged her. ‘Hey, maybe we’ll meet celebrity survivors.’
‘Oh God, kill me now.’
They watched Grace tiptoeing across the earth bed, trying not to soil her pink trainers, one uprooted plastic carnation in her gloved hands.
Standing to one side of the volunteers and watching them work was Dave Lester.
‘Come on, boys and girls, put your backs into it!’
‘Now, he’s the kind of douche that always survives,’ Freya said, nodding his way. ‘I’ve seen his chalet room. He has posters of girls in skimpy bikinis holding big guns.’ She cocked her head. ‘Bless.’
Leon watched him. Watched what he was gazing at. Claire was squatting down at the side of the bed. Dave was admiring the tattoo at the base of her spine.