Plague Nation

by Alex Scarrow

  ‘What’s wrong with you? You can’t just—’

  ‘Leon!’ Fish hissed under his breath. ‘You have to go! This is not a good time!’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Just go!’

  Leon reached down to grab one of Fish’s hands.

  ‘DON’T!’ Fish snapped angrily. ‘GO!’ There was something in his wide eyes and the hardness of his expression that suggested the next time he said ‘go’ it was going to come with a shove.

  ‘OK . . . OK . . .’ Leon raised his arms and hands in surrender and backed up a step. ‘You know where we are.’ He nodded over his shoulder. ‘In the queue over there, but we’re getting quite near to the gate so . . .’

  Fish nodded, the hardness melted away. He tipped him a nod and offered a faint smile. ‘See you around, mate . . . soon.’

  Tom watched the three evacuees leave, clutching their red cardboard documents as if they were winning lottery tickets. A marine waved at them to follow him along the marked channel towards their ships.

  One hundred and seventeen passed, he calculated. They’d rejected only about half a dozen people so far. Not because they’d found a viral imposter – which, frankly, he was beginning to suspect was a load of paranoid hokum – but because they hadn’t got enough acceptable identifying marks to log. Tom had been tempted to step in and overrule his medics at one point. It had been a nine-year-old girl for God’s sake – of course she didn’t have any bloody tattoos or scars. But then if he started bending the rules, making allowances and exceptions, berating his personnel for following orders to the letter, this process was going to descend into chaos.

  Watching the little girl being escorted into the ‘rejected’ channel without the card had been hard.

  With some of the others, though, the ones who grumbled angrily, ungratefully, at their week-long incarceration, the lack of creature comforts, he’d been tempted – God, he’d been seriously tempted – to fail them. Every person issued with a red card meant one less space aboard for Leon and Grace.

  The next three candidates were led in. Tom glanced at their faces then excused himself to check in on the neighbouring tent. He stepped in to find the process was already underway with the first candidate.

  ‘Name please, ma’am?’ asked one of the medics, passport flattened out on her clipboard and pen in hand.

  Another one was busy uncapping a new syringe.

  ‘Name? Please?’

  ‘Uh . . .’ The woman looked confused, as if she’d been turfed out of a comfy bed two minutes ago and was still trying to figure out if she were awake or not.

  ‘I need your name, ma’am. First, middle and last.’

  The medic with the syringe slipped a pressure band over the woman’s bare forearm and cinched it tight.

  ‘Martell. J. T.,’ the woman replied sluggishly.

  ‘Uh . . . ma’am, that’s my colleague’s name.’ She looked at the name badge taped to the front of the hazard suit beside her. ‘I actually need your name.’

  The other medic was shaking her head irritably as she stared at the pale arm. The pressure band had been tightened, but she was struggling to find a vein. She cinched it tighter and looked again, but found nothing into which she could tap.

  ‘Miss . . . are you or have you ever been a heroin addict?’

  The woman was staring at the glistening needle poised above her skin, which hovered like some bird of prey looking for a hapless scurrying field mouse below.

  ‘Miss?’

  Tom noticed the other two candidates she’d come in with were shuffling uncomfortably: two men, one black, one white, both in their thirties, he guessed. They took a step towards each other. He saw them reach out and clasp hands tightly.

  Well, OK . . .

  ‘Miss, I need you to look at me and listen!’ The medic, Martell J. T., was getting frustrated. ‘I can’t find a vein we can use in your arm, ma’am. So we’ll need to try the other . . .’

  She loosened the clip on the pressure band and tried to slide it down her forearm. But it was stuck.

  ‘Uh, hold on.’

  The woman’s skin seemed to be stuck to it. ‘I guess that was on pretty tightly. Just bear with me . . .’

  Martell tugged at the pressure band a little more firmly. This time it slid easily down her arm, but the woman’s skin peeled away with it, tearing all the way down her forearm like wet tissue paper.

  ‘What the . . .’ The medic stared at the exposed muscles and tendons, a perfectly flayed arm dribbling dark strings of viscous liquid on to the woman’s jogging bottoms.

  CHAPTER 55

  ‘But why’s he gone and abandoned us?’ asked Freya. ‘Was it something I said?’

  Leon shook his head. ‘Fish has been acting weird for the last couple of days. I don’t know what the hell’s wrong with him.’

  ‘He said he was just going for a pee,’ said Freya. ‘He just wandered off, didn’t say anything about leav—’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘You don’t think he’s . . .’ Freya left that question hanging in the air.

  ‘Come on. Seriously? When? How? He’s just . . . I don’t know, being an asshole, I guess. Which is a shame, ’cause I kinda like the guy.’

  ‘No, Leon. No.’ Freya didn’t accept that. She shook her head. ‘He has been really distant and weird since we got here. Thinking about it, even before that. When we left Naga and the others, he wasn’t saying much. I thought he was sulking about something. Maybe sulking about being overruled by Naga. You know, when he said about testing the kids?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  Freya glanced at Grace. ‘What’s he been like with you? You two have been getting quite clo . . .’

  Grace was staring intently at something outside the pen. Freya and Leon followed her gaze. There was a commotion going on inside one of the tents. The steady clinical illumination by strip lights inside had made the canvas material of the tents glow like a row of Chinese lanterns for the last few hours, but now one of them was flickering, the colour changing from a sterile cyan to a modulating amber.

  Leon saw a tall shadow diffused against the canvas moving in front of a light source. He thought he saw the material of the tent bulge and quiver as something bumped against it from within.

  Then they heard it, a gunshot.

  Followed by another.

  ‘Shit!’ hissed Freya.

  Leon finished her thought. ‘They’ve found one.’

  The material at the top of the tent began to darken. The steady glow of the cyan strip light suddenly winked out, leaving just a flickering amber glow within, casting tall distorted shadows that reminded Leon of American Indians dancing around a campfire. The material right at the apex of the tent gave way and ribbons of flame burst out through the ragged hole.

  The tent was on fire, spreading, exposing the metal support frame and the goings-on inside. He could see an impossibly tall figure, seven foot, eight foot, staggering around with tongues of flame rising from it, a silhouette that looked like a totem pole of human arms and unfolding claws and spines.

  Then something started inside the crowded holding pen. He heard screaming and turned to see a wave of movement making its way through the long, winding queue.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Leon’s attention was drawn in the direction of Fish, a hundred metres away with his new weird, silent, hand-holding buddies. All heads were now turning that way. Something was happening over there.

  People backing away, with cautious What the hell? retreating steps quickly escalating to get me the hell out of here scrambling.

  Over the heads and shoulders of the mass of fleeing people, pushing past and tangling with each other, he saw what was causing the stampede.

  Another top-heavy many-limbed totem was rising from the crowd like some parade-day effigy hefted up for all to see. That was the last thing he glimpsed before the surge of panic hit them like a tsunami.

  Everyone coming at them at once.

  Everyone heading toward
the pen’s entrance.

  Leon floundered in the press of bodies, picked up and carried forward like debris on a furiously surging river. He twisted left and right, desperately trying to keep sight of Freya and Grace.

  He could see the top of Freya’s head being pushed in the same general direction, but a growing number of people were filling the space between them, separating them.

  ‘Freya!’ he shouted across to her, but then everyone was shouting. Leon’s voice was lost in the cacophony of panic. He could see her looking at him, eyes locked on him.

  I see you, Leon . . .

  He nodded. As long as we keep sight of each other . . .

  The white biohazard-suited soldiers guarding the entrance made a stoic effort to hold their line, first firing a warning volley of shots into the air, then as the surge of people spilled through the opening in the fencing and the weight of bodies collapsed the panels either side of the entrance, the soldiers began to fire directly into the crowd.

  Too little too late.

  They were quickly overwhelmed, guns wrestled from their hands, some of them shot by their own weapons, some clubbed to the ground, some just left empty-handed and ignored as people streamed past them.

  Leon found himself propelled outside the pen. He staggered out of the flow of people to an empty space beneath the corner tower guarding the entrance. He scanned the stream of faces pouring by, hoping desperately to spot Freya and Grace as they were pushed out past him.

  Tom had collapsed on to his butt, fighting his respirator for air. Panting hard as he sat on cold concrete and watched the testing tent twenty metres away burn like a ritual pyre. It had all happened so quickly.

  . . . The woman’s skinned arm moving suddenly.

  . . . Those two men holding hands.

  . . . One of the marines in the tent spiked by a long, jagged spear from behind.

  . . . The tip bursting out of his chest and his biohazard suit . . .

  . . . The woman thrusting her freshly flayed arm at the medic . . .

  . . . Something bloody exploding from the palm of her hand on to the medic’s face plate.

  . . . Gunfire.

  The other marine had reached for the gasoline, ignoring the whole carefully discussed and rehearsed routine:

  1. Taser target

  2. Burn

  3. Extinguish

  4. Bleach everything.

  The tent suddenly reeked of carelessly sloshed fuel. The two male candidates he’d spotted holding hands seconds ago began to merge into some bizarre swirling mess of dripping white and black skin from which hard-edged limbs were beginning to rupture and sprout.

  Tom had staggered backwards out of the tent, continued staggering backwards, not able to turn his back on the unfolding, flexing nightmare, not able to run for his life, only to keep taking idiot reverse steps until finally he collided with something, lost his balance and tumbled heavily on to the ground.

  He was panting with exertion, with fear, in shock for perhaps thirty seconds before he pulled his wits together and sat up.

  The tent was fully aflame. The two-man nightmare was staggering around on fire, flailing its long articulated limbs at the marines who were firing automatic volleys at it. Tom saw something flick out and lasso one of his men, wrapping itself round his neck and dragging him in towards the flames.

  He became dimly aware that there was gunfire going on elsewhere in the camp. He pulled himself back to his feet, not an easy task with a heavy air cylinder on his back.

  The pen . . . Oh, shit, the holding pen.

  He saw the flood of people surging out of it and realized there was no hope of regaining control.

  Freya lost her grip on Grace’s hand. She’d let go for a nanosecond to protect her face from some idiot’s swinging elbow. Then back again, expecting Grace’s small hand to still be there, to fold round her own, but she was gone.

  Freya looked around her.

  No sign.

  Leon was five, six metres away from her. She could see him trying to get close to her over the turbulent sea of heads and shoulders.

  ‘GRACE!’ she screamed. ‘I LOST HER!’ But her voice was just a drop of water in a deafening waterfall. Somebody shoved her roughly from behind and her useless left leg buckled and betrayed her. Freya collapsed to the ground and instantly felt boots, trainers, wellies stamp on her hands, her wrists, the small of her back as she became nothing more than uneven ground for unthinking feet to traverse.

  She pulled herself up into a tight foetal position and waited for what seemed like ages, waiting for the flow of crushing feet to thin out enough for her to try to pull herself up. Finally, there was enough room for people to spot her on the ground and step around her. Painfully, with difficulty, she manoeuvred herself into a kneeling position, then, by reaching out and grabbing on to some random arm, she managed to get back up on her feet again.

  Behind her, she heard screams . . .

  Not human ones, but that inhuman wailing chorus she’d heard at the castle. She followed the flow of movement towards the exit, and was finally spat out past the wire-mesh boundary, nearly tripping over the white-suited body of a soldier. She looked left, right, expecting to see either Grace or Leon somewhere ahead frantically looking around, waiting for her.

  But nothing. No sign of either.

  Leon? Grace? Where the hell are you?

  She twisted one way, then the other, suddenly so aware of how useless and vulnerable she was on her own.

  She staggered past one of the burning tents, and past another from which half a dozen suited soldiers had spilled out. She expected at least one of them to stop her, level a gun at her, but they hurried by, passing on both sides of her as if she weren’t even there.

  No plan of action now – every man for himself.

  She kept going. Without her walking stick, her left leg was dragging like an anchor on a gnarly seabed. She kept going alongside the row of tents, not really sure why she was heading in this particular direction.

  She stopped and cut into the space between two tents.

  To her right, the entrance to one flapped open, and on impulse she stepped into it, hoping to find someone in authority to help her, to at least tell her what to do. Where to go. To tell her what was happening.

  Inside it contained what she’d expected to see: medical equipment, a gurney, syringes, blood samples, a bright spotlight on a stand . . . but no one left inside doing their job.

  A small table had been knocked over and a clipboard and pen along with dozens of those little red passports the man had been waving around earlier that morning were scattered across the ground. She bent down and picked one of them up. It had a mugshot photo of a dark-haired female roughly her age. She suspected that clutching a red passport in her hand might save her from being gunned down by some panicking soldier with his finger resting too heavily on a trigger. She doubted, however, that it would get her past anyone bothering to inspect them closely.

  She clambered awkwardly towards the far side of the tent and an exit flap. She stepped out of the clinical glare of the tent and into drizzling grey daylight.

  ‘STAY WHERE YOU ARE!’ screamed a muffled voice.

  Freya saw a yellow biohazard suit and a gun aimed shakily at her. She instinctively held both her hands up because that’s what people did in movies.

  ‘YOU BEEN TESTED!’

  She realized he was looking at her raised hands, the card clearly held aloft in one of them. She understood it wasn’t a question. It was a statement.

  ‘Yeah . . . I’m good. I’m not infect—’

  ‘GO . . . GO . . . GO . . .’ The soldier waggled the muzzle of his gun to the left. ‘THAT WAY!’

  Freya saw he was indicating a channel flanked by mesh panels.

  They must have gone past me.

  The surge of people streaming out of the pen was lessening now, and those left inside were pretty much the infected. Leon felt like an idiot just standing there. Grace and Freya must already be waiting
somewhere else for him.

  He scanned the open compound. It looked like footage of some sort of bizarre ComicCon sped up: people milling frantically in all directions with no clue which was the right way to go. To his right, tents were on fire, flames curling into the wet air. To his left, soldiers in yellow were huddled together in uncertain groups, some firing warning shots into the air, some impassively waiting for orders, and some still attempting to herd people back into the holding pen.

  The American side was a shambles. There was no semblance of containment or order left; it had borne the brunt of the chaos.

  Over on the Chinese-led side, there still seemed to be some sense of cohesion. Half a dozen white-suits were pulling loops of razor wire from the quayside across the open expanse of concrete. The border, which had been opened earlier to allow for the easier movement of people, was now hastily being dragged back into position. Leon could see more white-suited soldiers hurrying down the ramp from the Chinese carrier and forming into a long thin line, assault rifles raised and ready to use if the razor-wire barrier failed.

  Beyond them, a significant number of people who’d escaped the holding pen were loose in the international half of the camp. Some were being gunned down, others randomly rounded up. He could see more personnel in biohazard suits streaming out of their row of testing tents, some of them carrying equipment. All of them hurrying towards the carrier’s broad embarkation ramp.

  Breaking camp. Game over.

  They’re leaving us.

  Tom fought the urge to break down at the appalling sight in front of him. The whole thing had fallen apart frighteningly quickly – from the woman’s skin peeling away like tissue, to the mass breakout from the holding pen – it must have occurred in less than a couple of minutes.

  From order to anarchy in less than the time needed to boil a kettle.

  Over the last week he’d become concerned at the sheer number of people who’d turned up and were still arriving. There’d been three mistakes that had led to this. One: he’d underestimated how many people would respond to the rescue broadcast. Two: there were not enough boots on the ground. Trent had let him take just one company of marines, which he’d had to split between Calais and Southampton.