As Singleton and Handley approached Denny’s closed door they exchanged a concerned look. In the last two weeks his door had always been open except when he was having a meeting with someone, and as they knew that Lewis was not with him now it seemed strange that his door should be shut. They knocked and waited but heard nothing. Singleton knocked again, louder and after a pause Denny answered.
“Yes?”
She opened the door wide enough for both of them to peer in. “Sir, we’re going to check on the patients. Just wondered if you wanted to come and see them for yourself?”
“No. That’s fine.”
“How much longer do you want to keep them confined? If they seem normal are you happy for them to be released?”
He was staring absent-mindedly out of the window as she spoke and so did not answer immediately. Finally she prompted him again.
“Sir?”
“What? Oh yes, whatever you think. What do you think?”
“Well as they weren’t actually bitten, if they still seem fine then we had thought it would be okay to allow them to leave confinement.”
“Yes of course, that sounds absolutely reasonable.”
Singleton and Handley stood waiting for him to say something more but he had returned to his contemplation of the evening’s darkness outside.
They closed the door and again exchanged glances as they walked soundlessly on the carpeted corridor towards the patients’ rooms upstairs.
“He seems a bit odd,” Handley mouthed.
Singleton nodded feeling worried. On the way they stopped at Lewis’s room. The door was open and it appeared as though he had just arrived there himself. He glanced up as they approached, raising his eyebrows quizzically. Despite everything that had happened, and even though the two of them did not always see eye to eye, Singleton marvelled at how normal and relaxed he appeared. She could recognise the indicators of stress and grieving on most of the base personnel, herself included, but he still seemed to be handling everything remarkably well. She wondered if it was all a front, but even if it was, it was good for the morale of others.
Lewis noticed the look of concern on her face and put down the tray he had been holding.
“Have you got a mo?” she asked him.
“For you? Certainly doc.” He flashed a genuine smile at her. It was the first warm gesture she had received all day and she felt disproportionately grateful to him for this small consideration.
“We’ve just been to see Denny to ask him if he wanted to come and check on Pethard and Wood with us. He seems really rather distracted, he could hardly concentrate on a two minute conversation. I think maybe the stress is getting to him. I know we’re all up tight at the moment and everyone is grieving for somebody, but I just thought it was worth mentioning, that’s all.”
Lewis’s face dropped as she spoke. The playfulness vanished and he now looked at her with a truly serious expression. “Yes, I had thought exactly the same. Actually I was going to come and talk to you. I think he is certainly feeling the pressure of trying to carry us all and he’s starting to behave somewhat unpredictably. I’ll look in on him in a sec, and let’s all keep an eye on him; and on each other.”
Lewis watched the two doctors continue on towards the patients’ rooms. It was the first conversation he had had with Singleton for a while that had not carried an irritable edge. He was starting to realise that with Denny acting more erratically, he and Singleton would rely on each other more and more. Lewis made his way first to speak to Straddling and Hutchison, who he found chatting furtively in a dark corner of the ante-room which had previously been used for coffee after dinner, and then on to see Denny. The door was closed again so he knocked loudly twice and waited. As before there was no answer so he just opened the door quickly. Denny was sat in his chair staring out of the window into the dusk as he had been when Singleton had left him alone. To Lewis’s alarm he was holding his revolver casually in his hand, as though it was a pen or a mobile phone. He did not look round when the door opened. It was only when Lewis cleared his throat that he acknowledged him. He turned and to Lewis’s shock there were tears in his eyes.
“Sir, are you okay?”
Denny smiled weakly when he saw the expression on his colleague’s face, looked briefly at the gun and lowered it to the table.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. It just makes me feel comforted, the feeling of cold, hard metal. Something tangible and real, you know? When we’re surrounded by all this craziness.” Then he changed the topic radically. “Thomas, do you believe in God?”
Lewis was taken aback. “Well, yes, I was born and raised a Catholic, and yes, I guess I still do believe.”
“Despite all this?” Denny waved a hand at the window indicating the world outside.
Lewis scratched his head and thought for a moment before answering. “Yes, I do. People tend to either blame God for natural disasters and large losses of life or say that these events prove that there is no god. The typical argument would be, ‘how can there be a god if he allows this to happen?’ I don’t agree with either argument, I see it differently. For example, should God intervene every time there is a catastrophic loss of life? If so then at what stage should he stop intervening? I mean, if there is an earthquake and a thousand people die, does that mean there cannot possibly be a god that allows that to happen? If a plane crashes and a hundred people die, does that mean there can’t be a god? What if a car crashes and four people die? And so on. At what stage do you just say, ‘do you know what, that is the way of the world; that is just how life happens’?
“I don’t expect him to intervene if there’s a tsunami that kills thousands, and I don’t expect him to intervene if little Jonny falls over and bashes his head. So all this happening at the moment, I don’t know, it’s terrible and horrific and any other word one cares to use, but is it God’s fault? Or does it mean that there cannot possibly be a god who would allow this to happen? Personally I don’t think it means that at all. Unfortunately it’s just the way of the world.”
Denny’s eyes were shining and he was leaning forward and listening intently now. He shrugged and turned back to the window and waved at the dark sky. “Maybe so Thomas, maybe so. But do you know what? I don’t think you are right. I don’t believe in any god any more. If he ever existed then I think he has abandoned us. Out there, out there are a hundred billion galaxies, each with hundreds of billions of stars and immeasurable billions of planets. The universe is so inconceivably immense. Here, you and I, those of us surviving on this base and any survivors all over the world even, we are so infinitesimally small and insignificant. The universe doesn’t care what happens to us today and it won’t remember what happens to any of us in years to come. It really won’t affect anything beyond the confines of our miniscule planet. Tomorrow, next year, next century, when we are all dead the universe will go on just as it has for billions of years and no one or nothing will care. What does it matter what happens to us?”
“It matters to me. And it matters to everybody on this base.”
“Really?” There was a note of scorn now in Denny’s voice.
“Yes. Absolutely. There’s no point in thinking that our lives don’t matter. They do; they matter to us, right now. And maybe in a hundred years it won’t matter anymore, but all we can do is what is right for us, for everyone on this base, right now, today, tomorrow, until we are all dead.”
“So what would be your survival aims then?”
Lewis answered without hesitation. He had put a lot of thought into this already. In fact it seemed to him as though most of his waking hours of late had been spent furthering this aim. “Short-term, day-to-day survival, we make Headley Court as secure as possible. We ensure procedures off base are as tight as we can, and we try to keep everyone feeling positive.
“In the medium term we amass sufficient supplies to maintain us for a while and develop basic farming practices within the base. We find other survivors, as there must be some ou
t there, and perhaps find other locations that we could move to at short notice if need be.
“In the longer term we try to outlast the infected, as sooner or later they must surely die of starvation or through killing each other or something. Or perhaps better still, we try to find an antidote and save as many people as possible. We set up a new society and rebuild. Slowly.”
He waited for a response and Denny seemed not to have heard him as he did not answer for a while. Finally he just said “Highly admirable. I wish you good luck with all that.”
Both the brevity of his answer and the look of finality in his eyes were disturbing.
“Sir, are you sure you’re okay?”
Denny saw Lewis glance nervously at the Browning and pushed it gently across the desk away from himself. “Yes, Thomas. I’m fine.” He smiled again. “Really, don’t fret about me, I’m just a little tired, that’s all. Look, what will be, will be. We’ll muddle through as best we can, as that’s all there is left for us to do. And really don’t worry.” He glanced down at the weapon. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m saving that for those buggers out there.”
Lewis left feeling more troubled than before. He had intended to ask if Denny wanted to help them plan their next scavenging mission but now thought it best to leave him in peace for a while. Hopefully a little less responsibility and stress might be good for him. Hopefully his irregular behaviour was just a momentary blip and he would return to normal soon. Hopefully - but somehow Lewis did not really believe that.
Singleton and Handley opened the door to Wood’s room to see him sat on the bed with Corporal Collins beside him. There was an awkward silence and then Collins stood up, red in the face presumably from crying and smoothed her blouse down.
“I’ll see you later,” she murmured to Wood, then turned and nodded politely to the doctors, brushed past them and left.
Singleton turned back to Wood. He seemed calm and examined them with a measured expression. Singleton could not help but feel that they were the ones under scrutiny, not Wood. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Ma’am,” he stood now, always very respectful, bordering on cold or aloof, even though he was her subordinate, in theory at least. Standing this close to him she was reminded of how quietly commanding his presence was, without his even doing anything at all. “I feel absolutely fine. I appreciate that these procedures are for the benefit of us all on the station, I don’t have the slightest problem with that. But really, I am not infected. Hungry and bored? Yes. But infected? No. How long do you need to keep me here?”
Singleton looked at Handley who nodded almost imperceptibly.
“I think you are fine to go now,” she said.
“Thank you, ma’am, I appreciate that.” He nodded and moved past them with a certain confident ease of movement, leaving them in silence.
As they opened the door to Pethard’s room he did not get up off the bed where he lay, nor did he look to acknowledge them. The tranquilisers he had been given had done their job but the sound of the door opening did cause him to stir a little. Gradually he came to and looked in their direction. Singleton approached and sat on the bed next to him, taking his hand in hers, feeling his forehead and assessing his demeanour.
“How are you feeling Reggie?”
He tried to answer but found his mouth too dry again so took a slurp of water from the glass beside him. “Okay thanks. I think I have been out cold all this time, but I feel a bit better for it.” There was great sorrow in his eyes but no hint of insanity.
“Do you feel strange, any headaches, fever, anything at all?”
“No ma’am. I don’t think I’m diseased. Just tired. And sad.”
Singleton took his pulse and temperature, both of which seemed normal. The two doctors looked at each other with less certainty than with Wood, but finally Handley just shrugged and said “I guess so.”
Singleton turned to Pethard. “Look, it seems as though you are fine. I think you are okay to go to your room or maybe go get some food from the kitchen if you are hungry?”
“Do you mind if I stay here for tonight?” Pethard asked in a husky voice. “I don’t think I can face going back to our room. Not just yet.”
Singleton blushed. She had almost forgotten for a moment the reason he was in confinement. “Of course, that’s no problem at all. I am sure we can get you another room in the mess if you like?”
“No that’s okay thanks. I’ll be up to going back to it tomorrow; it’s just tonight I can’t really face it.”
As they left him and closed the door he lay back down on the bed and was asleep again almost immediately.
Singleton and Handley wandered slowly away. “We still don’t really know much about this condition, do we?” she said quietly.
“No not really.” Handley stopped and turned to face her with a look of doubt. “Why? What’s on your mind?”
“Only that we have just allowed both men out of quarantine, but in reality we have no idea how long it might potentially take for different people to be affected.”
“You mean individual susceptibility?”
“Exactly. As we’ve already discussed, it may take one person less than twenty-four hours to show any symptoms, yet another might take significantly longer.”
“That’s true. So what can we do about it? It’s not really practical to keep them in quarantine indefinitely.”
“No. I guess not. All we can do is to keep a close eye on them both, check on them regularly and look for the first sign of any unusual behaviour.”
“And then what?” Handley asked.
Singleton had no solution to the question and left it unanswered, as so many questions were of late.
Wood was just wandering into the dining hall when he found Sergeant Vallage pottering around and managed to tease some food out of him. Lately it seemed possible to find Vallage ensconced in the kitchen at just about any time of night or day, and although he was always somewhat gruff to those who arrived out of meal times, he never failed to come up with something simple to eat. He had never been so accommodating in normal life before but realised that morale was at an all-time low and quietly did his part to try and help people get through this nightmare. He complained incessantly whilst he prepared Wood’s meal but it was more for show than genuinely intended, and his grumblings were often accompanied with a glint or wink.
After eating, Wood paced along the corridor in the direction of Collins’s bedroom and passed the ante-room. There were raised voices coming from within and as the rest of the building now seemed devoid of life he glanced in their direction. For a moment he observed the animated discussion discreetly, quickly taking stock before entering and interrupting the dynamic.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked pleasantly, pretending he had not noticed the heat being generated.
Lewis was talking with Straddling and Hutchison. Maps and charts were illuminated by the candles and as often seemed to be the case of late, Straddling was being uncooperative and tetchy. He looked up and scowled as Wood came towards them.
Wood raised his hands, defensively. “Don’t worry, I’m not sick. I heard voices, that’s all.”
“Please,” Lewis gestured to a vacant chair with a flicker of relief passing across his features. “We’re just discussing the next outing for tomorrow. Given that the one today failed, we’ve got to go out again.”
Wood settled into an armchair slightly set back from the table. “Mind if I ask what you have planned?”
Over the last couple of weeks Lewis had become aware of everyone’s military history and Wood was one of the most experienced there. His Special Forces background and front-line exposure leant the others to view him with a certain amount of awe, although no one had really delved too deeply into his past and he had kept himself largely to himself. Lewis had not had much of a chance to speak with him in depth so far, although he was aware that he had arrived at Headley Court in pretty bad shape and had sustained some sort of back in
jury. Further than that, Wood did not seem to be the type to volunteer personal information, and there was something about him that made Lewis uncomfortable prying. He had not yet made up his mind about him but was grateful for any advice from anyone with relevant skills. The three men shuffled around and made a space for him to join them. Lewis quickly outlined the intended route for the next day’s outing and what they were hoping to find. Wood sat quietly throughout, gently pulling at his lower lip.
Sergeant Wood was not an overly big man, perhaps a shade over six feet tall, but he had an athlete’s poise, looked fit and toned, and perhaps for that reason he seemed more physically intimidating than his size would otherwise suggest. The sleeves of his khaki, army shirt were rolled up revealing taught forearms like those of a cat’s lean limbs. He carried no extra flesh and through years of active life was honed ready for swift, decisive action. He had self-possessed, brown eyes that held one’s gaze unnervingly. Lewis could not help but wonder what atrocities he had seen in his life in the military, or perhaps more poignantly what atrocities he had himself committed.
When Lewis finished Wood just grunted and nodded. “Seems fair enough, you’ve clearly thought through exactly what supplies you need and where to get them from. That’s good. No point in wasting time out there. How many people are you taking out with you?”
The Blood of the Infected (Book 1): Once Bitten, Twice Die Page 24