9781629270050-Text-for-ePub-rev (12 page)

He wrapped her in the duvet and lifted her. He expected his back to scream some more,
but it had settled into a dull ache that the slight weight of his mother’s frail frame
did not inflame.

He walked slowly downstairs, being especially careful of his footing on the stair
carpet. He walked back through the kitchen, trying with only partial success not to
bump his mother’s flopping head on the work surface as he passed.

His grief had been subsumed in the anguish of trying to get someone to help dispose
of her body and the exertion of digging the hole. It would no doubt bubble to the
surface at some point, but for now he moved purposefully, methodically, as though
burying a friend’s dog, not his mother.

Tom stood over the hole and knelt. Back and arms complaining anew, he lowered the
wrapped form into the hole. It was not quite long enough, but by manoeuvring her in
such a way that her knees bent, she slipped in and landed at the bottom with a small
splash where ground water had seeped in.

Now the horror of what he was doing momentarily threatened to overwhelm him. Tom scrabbled
on his knees away from the hole and vomited a thin, acidic stream into the grass.
Knowing that he needed to act quickly before his mind shut down, he stumbled back
and began to shove the pile of extracted earth back into the hole. He didn’t feel
his grasp on reality begin to return until the last of the duvet was covered.

An hour later, muddy and sobbing, he patted down the mound of earth with the back
of the shovel and threw it aside.

He didn’t have energy remaining with which to go hunting for materials to fashion
into a cross. He bowed his head for a moment.

“Goodbye, Mam,” he whispered. “Although I can’t remember the last time I told you,
I did love you.”

Tears coursing flesh-coloured tracks down his muddy cheeks, Tom returned to the house.
His mother had a spare bedroom upstairs, but he made straight for the living room
settee and collapsed into it without pausing to remove his mud-caked shoes.

He awoke nine hours later to thin daylight and a cold breeze coming through the open
back door. He stumbled to his feet, stiff and aching, shut and locked it.

It was only while splashing water onto his face and into his dry mouth that he realised
it was not only his back and arms that were sore: so was his throat.

He decided to drive straight home. This time, the only vehicles he saw were military,
but only one or two and only in the distance. He had the M4 to himself.

As he neared the exit road that meant he was only a few miles from home, the tickling
cough began.

Part 2:
In the Bleak Midwinter

Chapter Ten

S
ilence.

Silence of a world gone to hell.

He came to awareness, but did not attempt to open his eyes. He wasn’t yet certain
where he was. He wasn’t yet certain
who
he was.

He lay, not moving, not sure if he was breathing.

So he started by listening to himself. A faint, regular sigh of exhalation. Yes, he
was breathing. He extended his aural senses.

A
tip
, a
tap
. . . a brief cacophony of
tips
and
taps
. . . drops of water. Rain. Rain spattering against a window pane.

Further away, fainter, a
whooshing
sound, building swiftly, fading instantly to nothing, the crescendo coinciding with
the spattering rain.

Wind. Gusting wind.

No other sounds. Only his own breathing, rain and wind.

Other senses, then.

Smell. He closed his mouth and breathed in. Nothing . . . no, something. An odour:
sour, unpleasant, familiar. . . .

He rolled his tongue around his mouth, trying to taste. The mouth was dry, the teeth
coated and furry. He tried to swallow, but there was nothing to go down. Water; he
needed water.

For the first time since awaking, he moved. First, his fingers. He spread them flat
and moved his hands from side to side. A material of some sort. Cotton? Warm. Damp.
Next, his feet. He wriggled his toes against more material, thicker but also warm
and damp. A duvet? Finally, his eyes.

They wouldn’t open.

He brought a hand up to his face—it felt heavy to lift—and touched it. Bristly hair
that rasped faintly as his fingers stroked it. Above the bristles, the skin felt tightly
stretched, like an overtaut drum. Cheekbones jutted, protruding as though they would
break through if he pressed too hard against the skin.

His fingers brushed against the eyes and felt a crustiness like the surface of a cooled
crème brulee. Tentatively, the fingers explored the crust. With a fingernail, he scratched
at it; gently at first, then more vigorously, feeling the material begin to crumble
away. He gasped as a larger chunk broke off, searing the eyelid, probably taking eyelashes
with it.

His other hand came up to work on the other eye. More pain. With it came a memory:
a beach; a young boy running along the sand; a man watching, coughing thickly into
a handkerchief.

The pain in his eyelids—and the memory—stimulated his tear ducts and the crust softened,
coming away more easily, like fresh putty.

The first memory had been the first drip from a breached dam. As the last of the crust
came free, other memories returned: a trickle, a stream, then a raging torrent as
the dam burst.

He gasped again and dropped his hands to his sides.

Now he knew where he was; he knew who he was.

Tom Evans opened his eyes.

* * * * *

Inaction did not suit Troy Bishop. He preferred to be on the go, a man of purpose
and intent, a man who made things happen.

Being cooped up in the hotel for almost a week was driving him a little stir crazy.
The television channels had stopped broadcasting old shows and movies a couple of
days ago. The last local news broadcast had gone out this morning. A teary, coughing
technician—all the usual presenters were dead or comatose—had mumbled incoherently
for twenty minutes, expounding his theories on why the plague had come, as if there
was anyone left who gave a shit. Bishop lobbed wads of moist tissue at the screen,
roaring with laughter when he scored a direct hit on the technician.

Now there were emergency messages on two channels, playing on a loop, exhorting any
survivors to collect as much water and tinned food as they could carry and leave the
cities where pestilence from decomposing flesh was otherwise likely to finish what
the Millennium Bug had started. On the other channels, blizzards played to the sound
of a clearing throat.

While there had still been a skeleton staff manning the hotel, Bishop had made full
use of the room service facility. He gathered that he was the only fit guest. When
the last remaining member of staff solemnly informed him that she was leaving her
post to go home and to bed, she handed to Bishop her master key that would allow him
access to any part of the hotel.

“Thanks,” Bishop said. “I hope the fridges are well stocked.”

The girl looked at him wonderingly from her streaming eyes. Bishop sensed the puzzlement
in that look and also something more. Resentment? No, strangely no resentment. What,
then? Pity? Yes, that was it . . . pity.

A cold fury ignited in Bishop. How dare she feel pity for him! His hands clenched
into fists and he took a step forward, but the girl had already turned and was trudging
down the corridor. For a moment, Bishop considered going after her and showing her
who should pity whom. But he stayed still and allowed the fury to seep away. Now was
not the time to allow the primal instincts of another species to dominate him. He
needed to keep a cool, calm head. There was still much to be done. Soon, he would
be able to get on with doing it.

In the meantime, he roamed the hotel, finding his way to the kitchens. They were indeed
well stocked and he would eat like a king for his short remaining stay. He did not
need to break into any of the provisions he had brought with him.

He made his way to the roof and sat in the sun in the small terraced garden that he
found there. This became his favourite place to while away the hours, looking out
over the glittering city, soaking up the bright sunlight, feeling his cells react
to the energy, absorbing, strengthening. Bishop had lived all over the world, but
had settled for the last seventy years in Australia, attracted by the climate and
the outgoing nature of the population. Well, the second factor would no longer be
relevant, but he still wanted to return here after the Great Coming. He now considered
it to be home, a concept that Bishop still struggled to fully embrace.

The noise of the city lessened with each hour that Bishop spent on the roof terrace.
At first, he could still hear the hum of traffic as stragglers fled the city, but
soon all sound of road traffic ceased. It was replaced by the distant wails of alarms
that he could only hear if he turned his head in certain directions. Whether vehicle
or building alarms, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care. Within a couple of days they,
too, had ceased.

He heard the rattle and pop of gunfire one afternoon. It had died away by the evening.

The wide blue emptiness of the skies was only punctuated by the occasional drone of
a police or military helicopter. They swept the city and hovered over the streets.
Sometimes the faint echo of a metallic human voice reached Bishop’s ears as the aircraft
addressed the city over tannoys. A military chopper passed quite close to the roof
of the hotel, close enough for the occupants to be able to see Bishop sitting in the
sun, and he waved a hand lazily in its direction. It did not deviate or respond in
any way. Bishop laughed and gave it the finger.

After a few days, he stopped seeing or hearing any aircraft and the sky became the
sole preserve of birds and insects.

The city became calm and peaceful. A state of serenity settled over it like a balm,
a state that had not existed here since before the first European settlers had started
to encroach on the region. Bishop found it a little tedious.

He spent the last couple of days of confinement amusing himself in other ways. He
outfitted himself in designer clothes from the hotel’s boutiques. He visited each
of the hotel’s three-hundred and forty rooms. Around three quarters of them had been
occupied during the outbreak. Of those, perhaps a hundred rooms had emptied, presumably
when the occupants decided to leave the city in a vain attempt at avoiding contamination.
Thirty or so rooms had been occupied by people with the presence of mind to lock them
securely from the inside before retiring to what they must have thought were merely
their sick-beds, not their death-beds. Bishop pressed his ear to these doors but could
hear nothing from within any of them. He moved on. There were plenty of rooms to which
he could gain access.

The occupied rooms announced their status as soon as Bishop opened the doors. The
stench made him grimace at first, but he quickly became accustomed to it. Without
exception, these rooms had their blinds and curtains tightly closed. Some had blankets
thrown over the windows, too, secured by packing tape. Most occupants lay putrefying
in bed, a process hampered by the hotel air conditioning that continued, for now,
to pump out cool air. Bishop was therefore able to remove gold watches from wrists
that had swollen and blackened, but had not yet begun to grow furry and weep and slough
away.

Rings on fingers he ignored—the only way to remove them was by also removing the swollen
fingers that the bands had sunk into. It wasn’t that Bishop didn’t possess the stomach
for such a procedure; he just didn’t feel that his need was that great to go to the
trouble. In truth, he had no need for any of the items he took back to his room and
placed in one of the suitcases. For years he had been accumulating a cache of gold
against the day when paper currency became worthless. When gold and silver and precious
stones became the new world currency, Bishop would still be extremely wealthy.

Besides, there were plenty of such items lying on bedside cabinets or stuffed into
underwear drawers. Also, the hotel safe, once he had found the combination on a sticky
note on the back of a cupboard below the reception desk, had provided a treasure trove
of diamonds, rubies and precious metals. He left the passports and cash there.

Not all occupants had died in their beds. Some lay blackening on bedroom floors, maybe
having fallen out of bed in a death throe or having got out to go to the bathroom
before discovering that they no longer possessed sufficient strength to make that
journey or to get back into bed. One man he found sitting naked on the toilet, hunched
forward with forearms resting on knees. Bishop prodded him curiously on one cold shoulder.
The man toppled sideways and into the open shower, rigor mortis ensuring that the
corpse retained its hunched over posture.

In the unoccupied rooms, Bishop amused himself by eating peanuts and chocolate from
the mini-bars, or taking a shower and using the free range of toiletries, or jumping
up and down on the beds as though they were trampolines, or smashing mini bottles
of wine and spirits against the walls or against television screens. He had no other
use for the alcoholic beverages—the only alcoholic drink he could tolerate was beer
and he preferred the taste of lemonade. If there was one thing, apart from the sexual
act, for which he slightly envied the human race, it was for their obvious enjoyment
of alcohol. It merely made him piss more as his body ejected the poison.

It was in almost the last room that he entered, the room closest to his own, that
he found the woman. His senses were assailed by the usual sour stink as he opened
the door, but with a small difference. The stench in this room was warmer, moister,
fresher, as though the air conditioning had more than a rotting corpse to contend
with.

“Interesting,” Bishop murmured.

As usual, the occupied room was tightly shuttered against daylight. Bishop flicked
the light switch, casting away the gloom. From the doorway, he could see that the
bed was empty, the bedclothes thrown back. He strode into the room and glanced at
the floor either side of the bed. Empty, too. The bathroom door was closed. He approached
it and turned the knob. Locked.

To enable parents to extract children who had managed to lock the bathrooms but could
not then unlock them, the locks were fitted on the outside with a groove into which
the edge of a coin or butter knife could be inserted and twisted to disengage the
lock. Bishop scanned the room and located a woman’s purse. He opened it and glanced
at the credit card: Miss A. Anderson. He grabbed a coin and threw the purse onto the
bed. In a few seconds, the bathroom door swung open . . . then stopped as it hit an
obstruction. The gap was wide enough for Bishop to squeeze around and, with a grunt,
he was in the bathroom.

A young woman was lying on the bathroom floor. She wore a dirty white nightdress that
had pulled up, exposing lithe, creamy thighs. Her chest rose and fell in short, shallow
breaths. Her eyes were closed and a dribble of spittle ran from her open mouth to
pool on the tiled floor.

Bishop knelt at the woman’s side. She was of slight build and Bishop barely grunted
as he got one arm under her knees, the other under her shoulders and lifted her. Nevertheless,
she was starting to feel heavy as he climbed the last few stairs and emerged onto
the roof terrace.

As soon as the bright sunlight hit her face, the woman moaned and turned into the
crook of his arm, trying to escape the glare.

Bishop carried her to the wall that ran around the terrace. It came just past Bishop’s
midriff and formed a wide ledge that Bishop had to bend as far forward as he could
manage in order to see over. The hotel was seven storeys high and if Bishop had been
one to suffer from vertigo, he would not have been happy to gaze over the ledge; the
pavement below looked a long way down.

He placed the woman on her back on the ledge, his arms burning a little, glad to be
free of her weight.

She immediately turned her head towards him, away from the sun. Her eyes flickered.

“Help me. . . .”

It was little more than a croak. Her lips were caked in dried phlegm.

“What’s you name, Miss Anderson?” Bishop said. “Anne? Amy? Amelia?” He laughed. “Let’s
be honest, is there anyone left who cares?”

“Please. . . .” Her eyes opened and Bishop was struck at their greenness; cat’s eyes.
She must have been quite a stunner before she fell ill. “Help me. . . .”