The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  She made her way west toward Hammersmith, studying the mass of people with a weariness that bordered on depression. She recognized her fatigue as the cause of her dour mood but she wondered if the virus had something to do with it as well.

  Almost before she realized where she was going, she reached Beryl Road, where Reg lived with Murph in a two-up, two-down flat, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the serried row houses. Why had she come here, instead of to her mother’s? Why not? Her mother had never forgiven her. She drove past rundown flat after rundown flat until she spotted Murph’s scooter. When she pulled up next to it, she just sat there for a moment, trying to decide whether to go inside. Perhaps Sally2 was right and she should visit her mother—one last time before the end.

  “Hey, Crimson.” Murph leaned out the upper-floor window, staring down at her. “You gonna sit there all day?”

  Reg leaned out the window next to him. “You here for a little action, Bluebell?”

  “What?”

  Reg leered. “I can kick Murph out for a half-hour.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Just a suggestion.”

  Sally23 shook her head. “I’ve had a bad day. I’ll see you later.”

  “Bluebell,” Reg said. “We don’t have to do it.”

  “Or if you want to do it with me,” Murph said. “I could kick Reg out for a half-hour.”

  “Cretins!” Sally23 turned her scooter around and headed off again, south and east across the Wandsworth Bridge towards her mother’s slightly more upscale flat. As she drove, she found herself looking at places she used to frequent—pubs and eateries, a few stores—with something like nostalgia. It felt like a farewell tour. Sally2 hadn’t said anything about the upcoming mission with Brosk, but it was likely to happen soon, without warning. And it was likely to be fatal. The fact that Sally2 hadn’t told her what her assignment would be made her nervous. Would she have to kill Brosk? Or Jones? Or was she simply bait?

  Did it really matter if she died a few days or weeks early? With the Susquehanna Virus increasing the death toll around the world, with Britain losing dozens every day, the end would come soon enough.

  Sally23 parked her scooter outside her mother’s flat. I can do this, she thought. He’s not there anymore. And she has no power over me now. She made her way up the stairs and let herself in. “Hello?” she called. “Mum?”

  Scheherezade, her mother’s cat, meowed and ran over to her, rubbing her side against Sally23’s leg. She reminded Sally23 of Muffin, her childhood dog, who died from some disease caused by a parasite that shouldn’t have existed in England, but that had migrated north with climate change. Muffin, who her father shut away in a closet while he did things to her, had been the only one she could turn to back then. That’s all over now. I’m past that.

  “Mum?” Perhaps her mother had gone shopping. Sally23 should have called first. But something seemed off. All the windows were open a few inches. That was odd. Her mother rarely left the windows open. Sally23 glanced around the flat, taking in the pictures and bric-a-brac her mother had accumulated over the years. Walking to the mantle, she searched for the vid-picture of Muffin. Oddly, it wasn’t there. Instead, she spotted it on the sideboard. Taking it down, Sally23 brought it back over to the mantle. She studied the vid-photo of Muffin wagging her tail as she stared up at the camera.

  Sally23 set the vid-photo next to her university graduation vid-picture. On the screen, she and her mother waved to the camera, she in her cap and gown, her mother in her best blue dress, strained smiles on their faces.

  Scheherezade meowed again.

  “Okay, I hear you,” Sally23 said. She walked down the hall, only then noticing the unpleasant odor emanating from the bedroom. She knew her mother was dead, even as she pushed open the door and caught the stench of excrement and saw her mother on the bed, fully clothed, her face contorted in pain, her milky eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

  She thought she might gag. She sank to the floor, unable to breathe. It felt as if her entire being had been removed from her body and all that remained was a vacuum—a null presence.

  I no longer exist. How could Mum be dead? She couldn’t catch the virus because she almost never leaves the flat. And even if she did, how could she die so quickly? Of course, Sally23 hadn’t seen her in weeks, so maybe it hadn’t been fast. But somehow, Sally23 doubted this was the virus. She recalled Sally2 telling her to visit her mother. Getting to her feet, she went to the windows and opened them wide. Then she stepped to the bed and reached out her hand, touching her mother’s cold, hard cheek. It took her a while to realize she was crying. Why would she do that? She backed away, stumbled to the kitchen and put on a kettle to make tea. She wiped her eyes and pulled down the good cups and saucers, placed them on the serving tray, then put away the dishes sitting on the counter. As she waited for the tea, she filled Scheherezade’s food bowl.

  Her first instinct was to kill Sally2—find a weapon and exact revenge. Even though she’d known for quite some time that her mother had to die eventually, even though she’d wanted her mother to die many times, it wasn’t supposed to happen this way. For Sally2 to accelerate the process, to murder her mother, or more likely have Andre do it, infuriated her. Did she think she was doing Sally23 a favor? Did she, in her twisted way, think that would somehow increase Sally23’s loyalty by severing her ties to the world? Or was it simply a message that she had absolute control, that she could take Sally23’s life at any time? Didn’t she understand that at some point, when death became inevitable, you couldn’t use it as leverage anymore?

  When the tea was ready, she took it into her mother’s room, set the serving tray on the bed and placed a cup and saucer on the nightstand. She poured tea for her mother and added two spoonfuls of sugar, stirring carefully so as not to spill. Faint tendrils of steam rose from her mother’s cup. She poured a cup for herself, added in a spoonful of sugar and a splash of cream, and sat in the chair beside the bed, the numb emptiness inside somehow spreading even though she was already completely hollow.

  She finished stirring the tea, put down the spoon, and powered up her PlusPhone to retrieve an old message from her mother.

  “Hi, Sienna, it’s your Mum. I’m worried about you. I know you’ve been angry lately. I know I never should have blamed you for your dad leaving. I still find it hard to believe he did what you claim. That wasn’t the man I knew. But I am sorry. Please call me. I’m all alone. By the way, I looked up this Gaia Manifesto. These people are fanatics. Eliminate humanity from the face of the Earth? That’s crazy! Please tell me those aren’t the people you’re involved with. I’m afraid . . . if you are . . . well, they don’t care about you. They’re just using you. Call me. Please.”

  Sally23 wiped her eyes again as Scheherezade entered from the hallway and rubbed against her legs.

  She couldn’t stay here. She couldn’t run. She was already infected with the virus, and without medication she’d just die that much quicker, that much more painfully. So she really had no choice but to return. And if she looked at it in the right light, she could even say that Sally2 had done her a favor—shown her the truth. Like all leaders, Sally2 treated her people as cogs in a machine. Her actions demonstrated just how necessary it was that humans become extinct—at least most of them. And as long as the list included Sally2, Sally23 could accept her own death.

  She finished her tea, noting that steam no longer rose from her mother’s cup. Collecting the cup and saucer from the nightstand, she closed the bedroom door softly, took the tray back to the kitchen and rinsed out the dishes, setting them to dry. Then she took the vid-pictures of her graduation and Muffin and called Scheherezade. Placing the cat inside her coat, she took a last look around. She locked the door behind her and climbed onto her scooter.

  It didn’t take long to get back to Reg’s place in Hammersmith. She let herself in, walked up t
he stairs and opened the door.

  Reg and Murph sat on the sofa, the pungent aroma of marijuana filling the air, an empty pizza box on the coffee table.

  “Hey, Crimson,” Reg said.

  Sally23 pointed at Murph. “He calls me Crimson. You call me Bluebell. Remember?”

  “Sorry, got a mite confused by the baked Italian.”

  Murph said, “We added a special ingredient to the ’za. Extra mellow, no anchovies. I’ll call you Bluebell if you want, or Watermelon or SnickBiscuit or PantDoodle—any nickname you want.”

  “Hey, DimTwaddle,” Reg said, “that’s my girl over there, or at least she’s more my girl than yours. Right, Bluebell?”

  Sally23 felt a laugh coming, but she was afraid to let it out. If she did, she might start crying again. he pulled Scheherezade from its warm confines of her coat and set her on the floor. “I brought you another cat.”

  “Cool,” Murph said. “Indifference will be entirely apathetic.”

  At the sound of his name, Murph’s cat Indifference got up, stretched, and sauntered over, touching noses with Scheherezade before turning and walking away. Scheherezade followed him.

  “We can always use another cat,” Reg said. “Taste like chicken.”

  Or greasy Spaniards,” he and Murph said at the same time. They both started laughing. Sally23 watched them for a moment, pitying and envying them at the same time.

  “What is it?” Reg asked, suddenly sobering.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong, Crimson?”

  “I’m in trouble,” Sally23 said. “We’re all in trouble.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Murph said. “Which is why we’ve chosen to combat the problem with high doses of baked frivolity.”

  “I sense something more,” Reg said.

  “I believe you’re right,” Murph said. “Very perceptive for a Neanderthal. What is it, Crimson? Tell us. We can help.”

  Sally23 shook her head. “You’ll only get yourselves killed.”

  Reg said, “As opposed to waiting around for this obnoxious sod to bore me to death with more prattle about hell on Earth and science as the only viable long-term solution to our woes?”

  “Or this lunatic spouting blather about souls and other religious pabulum while the fabric of society rips into shreds?”

  Sally23 stood for a moment, taking in the normalcy of the scene, the playfulness of Reg and Murph—two lovable idiots who had no idea what was about to happen to them—and realized she shouldn’t have said anything. Though, in their current state, they probably wouldn’t remember much of this tomorrow.

  “Goodbye, Murph. Goodbye, Reg.” She turned and walked out the door, hearing them struggle to their feet as she did so. By the time she reached her scooter, they were again leaning out their windows.

  “We’d really like to help,” Reg called down.

  “Except for Indifference,” Murph added. “He doesn’t care what happens to us.”

  “Right,” Reg said, “except for Indifference. We’ll be around, Bluebell. Let us know if there’s anything we can do to help.”

  Sally23 started her scooter, gave them a wave and drove off, back to Sally2, back to Trogan Brosk, back to her impending death.

  Chapter 9

  Aspen leaned against the wall near the main cave’s entrance and swallowed two more pills. She found it difficult to focus. This damn headache wouldn’t go away. Quekri, conducting the briefing from the center of the room, was explaining to a handful of miners that the Chinese ship had once again locked onto the New Dawn settlement’s comm-link to navigate. Also, the Escala sensors were now picking up a high-energy weapon signature—possibly a Las-cannon.

  Bilson, the balding, heavyset mine foreman who seemed marginally smarter than the rest of the miners, said, “So does that mean they’re gonna attack us? We got weapons, explosives. We can fight.”

  “No,” Quekri said. “We don’t know what it means. They’re steering straight for us at the moment, but that may simply be for convenience. And even if they stay on that course, we can’t assume they mean to harm us. They may be planning to shoot a meteor or an asteroid or they may simply be running tests on their weapons system. We have no way of knowing because they’re still not answering our hails. Aspen? You and the cadets have the most military experience. Do you want to share your thoughts?”

  Aspen glanced over at Benn and Addam, sitting beside Krall, Oggie and Poon—the three big Escala teenagers they’d befriended. She’d been having nightmares for a week: the Chinese ship landing just outside the tunnel entrance, soldiers emerging with Las-rifles and particle beam cannons blasting, bodies flying, Escala and cadets blown apart into bloody arms or legs, a few decapitated, while she tried over and over to load her Las-rifle, the chem-pack refusing to seat itself properly even as she kept skipping between the tunnels and the outside, where she found herself without a Mars suit, struggling to breathe, lost on a wasteland of orange-red nothingness, without any idea where the tunnel entrance was.

  She shrugged the nightmares aside and took another sip from her water bottle. The red dust settled everywhere. Her throat felt dry all the time and her headaches, probably caused by the lower atmospheric pressure, seemed to be getting worse. The pills didn’t seem to be helping, either. Why didn’t the other cadets have headaches?

  “It’s possible,” she said, “that the sensors only picked up the weapons signature recently because the ship is now close enough for them to do so. However, it’s also possible that the Chinese have hostile intentions. For our own safety, we have to assume that’s the case. And we should stop trying to communicate with them. They may be trying to make us nervous by refusing to talk with us. So let’s return the favor and go dark on them.”

  “But why would they attack us?” Zeriphi asked.

  The miners turned to stare at the lovely Escala. Addam stared too. He and Benn and the three Escala teens sighed as they took in her statuesque beauty. I don’t care, Aspen thought. I don’t love Addam anyway. And Zora’s gone forever now. She almost died and I didn’t know about it until way too late, and even if I had, there was nothing I could do about it and now she doesn’t have her implant anymore and pretty soon I’ll never hear from her again. I’ve got to be strong. I’ve got to be a leader.

  “It makes no sense,” Zeriphi continued, as if unaware of her effect on the men in the cave. “The most recent news reports out of China say this is an exploratory mission.”

  Quekri laughed bitterly, almost a bark. “It makes perfect sense when you think about it. How many times have people and countries taken actions against their own best interests? Wars, overpopulation, depletion of scarce natural resources. My guess is that they’re coming to ensure they can make a claim of sovereignty at some future time. After their skirmish with India last year and the ensuing sanctions by most of Earth’s nations, they probably believe they’ll be left out of decisions on Mars and its resources if they don’t have a population base here.”

  Aspen took another drink. She wanted to close her eyes and rest for a while, but she knew her headache wouldn’t allow her to sleep. She said, “I recommend that the miners make their weapons available to us.”

  “Not a chance,” Bilson said, the four miners sitting beside him murmuring their agreement. “We heard about what you did on the Moon.”

  Aspen shrugged. “Then you’ll have to take the point if it comes down to a fight.”

  “We ain’t afraid of them. Hell, we’ve survived up here without becoming like you Escala.”

  Yes, Aspen thought. Forty of forty-eight miners still alive after fourteen months on Mars. The next MineStar ship would arrive in twelve months. How many would still be alive then?

  Mining ships arrived every twenty-six months, when Mars and Earth were closest to each other, to drop off the new crew and return the old crew’s survivors to Earth. The hazard pay was good, she’d been t
old, but was it worth dying for?

  “We could always dig deeper,” Bilson added, “in case we have to fight.”

  “Good idea,” Quekri said as if she meant it, as if it would help against a Las-cannon attack.

  Should we take their weapons? Addam sent via his implant.

  Not yet, Aspen replied. We can always get them later, if necessary. By the way, where’s Phan?

  Plowing Shiloh and one of the Escala teens—Esbeth, I think. He’s a sex machine.

  Disgusting. I don’t want to hear any more.

  Quekri wrapped up the meeting and showed the miners out. As they left, Aspen kept an eye on them, making sure no one pilfered anything on the way. A number of tools had gone missing and she was sure at least one of the miners was a thief.

  Zeriphi stopped beside Aspen on her way out of the meeting and said, “How is the mind transfer data progressing?”

  “Pretty well. I’m running synaptic analyses at the moment. I should have a more complete picture in a couple hours.”

  “Good. Quekri and I will stop by to discuss it further. We’ll want to have as much information as possible before we try again.”

  “Shouldn’t we be worrying about this approaching ship?”

  “What can we do? Most likely, they can eradicate us from orbit if they choose to. So why fret about it? Besides, you’re the leader of the cadets. It’ll go a long way toward calming everyone if you show them you’re not concerned. At any rate, we may as well get on with our lives.”

  Aspen nodded, pretending agreement. “How are you feeling, with the pregnancy?”

  “Fine. Much better than last time. It helps being on Mars. Our bodies are acclimating well. How are you doing? You don’t look good. Maybe you should see Wellon.”

  Aspen took another sip of water. “I’ll be okay. Just a dry throat.”