The Survivors (Book 1): Pandemic

by Alex Burns

  “No thanks,” she said politely. He retreated with a nod.

  “Sorry,” she said to me. “I’m not really feeling that great. I’m even struggling with this wine to be honest.”

  I glanced down at her glass. I’d already drunk about two-thirds of mine, but hers still looked mostly full.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Probably nothing. Just feel like I’m coming down with something and my appetite’s gone out the window.”

  “Ah, no good. I hope you haven’t got what every second person at my work seems to have caught. It was half empty today. I thought I was screwed this morning. I slept in and missed a big meeting. Seriously thought I was going to get fired or something, but once I got there I found out it had been cancelled because everyone else was sick!”

  “Lucky,” Lucy said, but then frowned. “I had to send two girls home sick around lunch time. They looked terrible. I’ve probably got what they had.”

  “Don’t infect me!” I leaned back from her with a laugh.

  Lucy cringed and then laughed too. “Sorry mate. Well, it seems like every second person’s got it, so you can’t blame me. Actually I think one of my girls was just hungover, but anyway.”

  “Did you see that thing in the paper about the woman who died from the flu?”

  Lucy frowned. “No, what happened?”

  “She was just a year older than us. They think she caught some sort of flu overseas and it killed her. Sounded like they were worried it might spread.”

  “Shit, that’s terrible. You don’t think it’s why everyone’s sick, do you?” Lucy asked, worry in her voice.

  I shook my head. “Nah. Well, even if it was, she was probably just an anomaly. How do you feel?” I asked, not entirely believing what I was saying and a flash of my mother’s paranoia flaring up.

  Lucy shook her head slowly. “Like I might be coming down with a cold. That’s all. I’ll probably be fine as long as I get plenty of sleep and rest this weekend.”

  We kept sipping our wines and grizzled about our bosses and work for the next half hour. I ordered another glass of wine, but Lucy was making slow work of hers. She could usually drink me under the table, so it was a bit strange, but I brushed the nagging worry off.

  “Well, I’d better get home to Alan,” Lucy said after a lull in conversation. “He’s made beef stew apparently. I’d invite you over, but I know how much you love beef,” Lucy said, semi-apologetically. I wrinkled my nose.

  “Mmm. Well, thanks for the thought,” I said with a wry smile. “I’d better get home myself and feed my lord and overmaster.”

  “Gertrude?”

  “The one and only.”

  We went our separate ways; Lucy home to her husband and giant dog, me to the supermarket. I grabbed a few groceries for dinner and a bottle of wine. I knew I’d probably regret it in the morning, but the wine with Lucy had left me wanting more. I told myself I’d only have one more glass. All right, maybe two.

  I trudged the eight hundred or so metres to my little house. I could hear the cat run up to the door, bell jingling, as soon as she heard me fiddling with the lock. As soon as I managed to get the door opened, I was greeted by an excited Gertrude brushing against my legs.

  “Hello, my darling,” I cooed. “How are you? How was your day?” I picked the cat up and she head-butted me in what I liked to think was an affectionate way. “What did you do? Did that horrible black and white cat come to visit?”

  Gertrude meowed back at me, and I kept up the questions, not at all worried about sounding like an idiot talking to a cat. The cat started to try and groom my eyebrows. At least she wasn’t trying to groom my hair - she’d done that a few times and nearly choked.

  I sank down on the couch and Gertrude made herself comfortable on me, purring away. I spent a few minutes lavishing attention on her and scratching her under the chin where I knew she liked it.

  I poured myself a glass of wine and stood in kitchen, contemplating what to make for dinner. I missed Tristan. He was the cook. My diet had definitely gone downhill with him away. I wished it was Tuesday already. Mum had always told us not to wish our lives away, but I had no inkling that for the rest of my life I’d be wishing Tuesday never came.

  Saturday dawned. The last Saturday that was a real Saturday. I briefly woke up to the birds warbling and squabbling away, took one look at the time and pulled the blankets up over my head.

  I wonder now if I would have realised something was very wrong if I’d gone out for brunch that morning. The cafes of Melbourne were all usually crazy busy on weekends, with people venturing from near and far for good coffee and excellent brunches. As it was I decided to be responsible and make myself a coffee at home and use up the last of the avocado and goat cheese to make my own version of smashed avo. Not quite as tasty as our favourite cafe’s version, but much cheaper.

  I spent most of the day curled up on the couch binge watching Netflix, repeatedly promising myself I’d do the laundry and cleaning after the next episode, until it was finally time to start getting ready for Paddy’s birthday drinks. I poured myself a glass of wine, pumped up the music, and started pulling out dresses from my wardrobe. I found myself missing Tristan yet again as I tried on dress after dress. He had pretty good taste, for a bloke, and I always ran my outfits past him before leaving the house. Without him there, my indecisiveness just grew. The pile of discarded dresses grew. I thought about video chatting with him, to get his opinion anyway before realising it was way too late in Canada to be calling for dress opinions. Stupid time difference.

  Finally, I settled on a blue and green dress that Tristan had bought me a few months ago, with some tights and black boots that I’d bought last winter. I looked myself up and down in the mirror. I didn’t look half bad. I thought Tristan would have approved. Probably. I put on some make up and picked up my phone to check the time.

  A message from was waiting for me.

  Paddy: Sorry for the group message gang, but I’m going to have to cancel tonight. I’m super bummed! I’ve come down with that nasty flu that’s going around and I don’t want to infect any of you who’ve managed to miss it… although judging from the amount of last minute cancels I’ve had this arvo, I don’t think it’s really many of you… cheers for all the birthday love and sorry again! Hope we all feel better soon, and I’ll see you on the other side of this mountain of tissues.

  My heart sank. Not him too.

  I looked into the mirror again, my good mood dashed. Gertrude sauntered in and meowed at me.

  “What am I going to do, puss? I’m all dressed up and nowhere to go!”

  “Meow.”

  “You’re right,” I said, only slightly deluded that I could interpret her meows. “I should see if anyone else wants to hang out. Saturday night and all that!”

  The cat purred her approval (I assumed) and made herself comfortable in the nest of my discarded dresses.

  I sent Lucy a text first, but she replied confirming that she had indeed come down with a cold and was firmly entrenched in front of the television and heater and had no plans of moving all night.

  I wished my brother, Tom, still lived in Melbourne. He’d always been good for a last-minute catch up. My sister, Sarah, lived relatively close by, but you needed at least a two week notice with her these days. Kids tended to take you out of the running for last minute shenanigans. I chewed the inside of my cheek, running through my mental list of friends who lived close enough, didn’t have kids, and wouldn’t want to go too far away. I sent a few messages out, but it didn’t take long for my back up plan to be thwarted. Lochy was at dinner with his boyfriend’s parents, Leila was in Sydney for the weekend, and Aiko and Tash were sick as well.

  “Well, looks like it’s just you and me, Gert.”

  She seemed happy enough to have the company at least.

  I posed a couple of photos of myself and sent them to Tristan. I figured that at least one person should appreciate the effort I’d take
n to look nice. Photos sent, I pulled out my comfiest pyjamas. Netflix and wine with only a feline for company for the second night in a row. Not exactly how I’d pictured city-living in my twenties.

  Chapter Three

  A strange buzzing made its way into my dream. It wouldn’t stop. My sleepy mind finally switched on and I groggily reached for my phone. I opened one bleary eye and tried to focus on the screen.

  Ten missed calls from Mum. I felt hot all of a sudden despite the cold winter morning. What was wrong? Had something happened to Tom or Sarah? Dad? Mum usually wasn’t one for late night or early morning phone calls. The last time she’d called me at an odd time it was to tell me Grandma had passed away. I called her back.

  “Have you read the papers yet, Alice?” No greeting. Her voice was tense.

  “Huh?” I eloquently mumbled. If it was the news she was interested in, it was probably safe to assume my immediate family was okay.

  “The papers, the newspapers, Alice,” she said impatiently.

  “What’s wrong, Mum? Has something happened? There hasn’t been another terrorist attack has there?” A vivid memory of her coming into my bedroom and waking me up on a September morning in 2001 and saying, ‘get up, America’s been attacked,’ popped into my mind.

  “No, no, nothing like that. This flu that’s going around - I think it’s a bad one,” she said and then blew her nose.

  “Oh?” I sank back into my pillows and rolled my eyes. The flu? That was all?

  “People are starting to die,” she said.

  “Mum, people die every year of the flu.” As far as I was concerned this was not a valid reason to wake me up at 6:53am on a Sunday. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and turned on the bedside lamp. The cat was curled up at the end of the bed, blinking sleepily at me, obviously just as irritated by the interruption to our sleep as I was.

  “Yes, I know. But this is different. Young people are dying. People your age, Alice.”

  “What? Oh.” I remembered Naomi Lee. I hadn’t spared her a thought since that conversation with Lucy on Friday night.

  “You haven’t looked at the news then?”

  “Mum, it’s not even seven o’clock on Sunday morning. No, I haven’t checked the news. You woke me up.” I burrowed back under my blankets with the phone held to my ear.

  “Oh. Sorry.” She sounded anything but sorry. “I’ve been up since five. I thought you usually got up early.”

  “I usually do. On weekdays. When I have to go to work.”

  “Right. Well. Twelve people died yesterday. Some of them were on the same flight as that poor woman.”

  “Oh, shit. That’s terrible.” A small part of my brain was asking, ‘is that all?’ With the panic in her voice I was expecting hundreds. Although twelve people dead was still twelve families, twelve groups of friends, twelve sets of work colleagues who would all be in mourning. Hundreds of people.

  “Do you have any plans today?” Mum didn’t give me a chance to respond before going on. “I really think you should stay home, honey. Eleven out of the twelve dead were in Melbourne. One lived in Footscray. That’s close to you, Alice,” she said, as if I didn’t know the area I lived in at all. “You should probably stay home tomorrow as well. You need to be careful whose air you breathe.”

  “Whose are I breathe? Really, Mum?”

  I could just picture her standing there, nodding her head sagely, not realising how silly she sounded. Although in my mental picture she was always using the old rotary landline telephone we’d gotten rid of when I was fifteen for some reason.

  “Yes,” Mum said. “You need to be careful, Alice. I have a bad feeling about this one.”

  I bit my tongue. Mum had had a lot of bad feelings over the years. Y2K. SARS. Swine Flu, bird flu, ebola… basically any new or scary sounding bug that the media hyped up. Y2K had been fun. She’s been one of those people who were convinced planes were going to fall out of the sky at the stroke of midnight and that civilisation was going to collapse. She’d filled up our garage with cans and jars of preserved food, and more bags of rice and flour than I thought we’d ever be able to get through. I’m sure I would have been grateful for the food if civilisation had actually crumbled, but as it turned out, I just got heartily sick of eating tinned asparagus. When us kids had challenged Mum on why exactly she’d thought we needed so very much tinned asparagus, she’d sheepishly admitted that it had been on special the week she’d decided to stock up. Sarah had requested more black beans and canned peaches and mangoes the next time she prepared for an apocalypse.

  She’d also been convinced we were all going to get swine flu and die. She’d pulled Tom out of his school camp and refused to let him leave the house when that was going around. He’d been so mad. There was no talking any sense into her though, not when she got into paranoid mother mode.

  “I’ll be careful, Mum. Promise,” I said after realising I’d been quiet for a bit too long.

  “Tom said they’re getting overwhelmed with admissions at the hospital.” I narrowed my eyes. I felt like kicking my brother. He knew what Mum was like.

  “Well, hopefully it will pass soon. It usually does.”

  “I don’t know, Alice. This feels different.”

  I sighed. “It’s early, Mum. I’m gonna go now. I think I need some more sleep.”

  “Are you feeling okay? No fever? Sore eyes? Achey limbs?”

  I paused and checked my body for any telltale cold or flu symptoms.

  “I feel fine. Just tired.”

  “Right. Good. Just keep an eye on it. If you start feeling ill, let your brother know. He’ll tell you what to do. And let me know.”

  “Right, Mum. Talk to you later.” I hung up and shook my head at my phone.

  I put Mum’s dire warning out of my mind and tried to get some more sleep, but after tossing and turning for an hour I gave up. Golden morning sunlight was starting to peak through the blinds. I hobbled out of bed and pulled the blinds back. Blue skies and chirping birds greeted me. It looked lovely out.

  My winter weight was starting to creep up. I wanted to look good for when Tristan got back, although I conceded that going for a run a few days before he got back wasn’t exactly going to make much of a difference. I still pulled out my running gear.

  Peaceful was the word that floated through my mind once I got out of the house. The morning light gave everything a beatific golden glow. It wasn’t nearly as warm as it had looked from inside the house, but my nose didn’t feel like it was about to drop off either. I wished every day was a Sunday. The lack of traffic noise was noticeable. On a normal day we had hundreds of B-double trucks barrelling down the end of the street on their way to the docks, and depending on which was the wind was blowing, sometimes we could hear the freeway.

  The running trails were a bit less crowded than I expected, and the cafe I stopped at was all but empty.

  “Quiet morning?” I asked the green haired girl behind the counter.

  She nodded. “Yeah. We’re normally packed at this time on a Sunday!” We both looked around the almost empty cafe. Only one other patron was in there.

  “Yeah, I know. I guess it’s that nasty flu that’s going around.”

  The girl nodded. “Half our staff have been knocked out. I wasn’t even meant to be working today. Did you hear there’s been more deaths?”

  “Yeah…”

  I noticed a couple of copies of the morning paper sitting on one of the tables and wondered over to it while the girl made my coffee. The front page was all about the flu.

  RED FLU DEATH TOLL CLIMBING

  The confirmed death toll of the virus being dubbed ‘Red Flu’ has risen to twelve. Eleven of the casualties have been Melbourne residents, with the youngest being a fifteen year old high school student and the oldest a forty-seven year old father of two. No names have been released at this stage.

  Hospital emergency departments are being inundated. One mother claimed she’d had to wait twelve hours before her son was
seen by a doctor.

  ‘It’s total chaos,’ a nurse commented on condition of anonymity. ‘We’re completely overrun, and half the nursing staff are coming down with it as well. The flu vaccine doesn’t appear to protect at all against this new virus.’

  Health professionals are suggesting people who think they might have the red flu stay home and call their GP for advice. Only extremely ill patients are being admitted to hospital. There is concern that the influx of flu patients is causing people suffering from life threatening ailments such as heart attacks or strokes to not receive treatment in time.

  Red flu starts out like a normal cold or flu with general exhaustion, achey joints, sore throats and runny noses, but sufferers also develop bloodshot eyes and there have been reports of poryphia (bleeding from the eyes, ears and pours).

  The Premier is yet to comment.

  See our website for more updates throughout the day.

  “Alice?” I looked up. The green haired barista smiled at me, holding out my flat white.

  “Thanks,” I said, reaching out for it.

  “Well, here’s to staying healthy!” The girl gave me a cheery smile and waved as I left the shop. No one else had come in while I’d been there. Very weird for a Sunday morning in Yarraville. I looked up and down the street. It was empty apart from a lone dog walker a couple of blocks away.

  I walked slowly back home, frowning to myself. Surely my mother couldn’t actually be right? As soon as I got home I grabbed my phone.

  Me: Hey Luce. How’s the cold? You feeling all right? Let me know if you need anything!

  I stared at my phone for awhile, waiting for it to beep. I finished my coffee and still no reply.

  I sat down in front of my computer. Tristan must have been thinking the same thing, and was waiting for me online. Gertrude jumped up on the desk and tried to sit on the keyboard. I pushed her away.

  Tristan: Hey babe. How are you? You’re not sick are you?