I glanced past Bindy at Jamie. He caught my eye, smiled, and shrugged. Bravado.
‘Toby Parsons, please proceed alone to the road crossing outside the primary school. There you’ll be given more instructions, and any questions will be answered.’
I hated the sound of that voice, distorted by technology. The speaker could have been laughing or crying, and we’d never know.
The chopper lifted away quickly and disappeared over the rooftops, and Jamie gave it the finger.
‘What does all that mean?’ Bindy said. ‘What work are they going to do?’
‘Hopefully I’ll find out,’ I said.
‘Why just you?’ Jamie said. ‘Why the hell is it you who—’
‘Jamie,’ I said softly, quietly, and he listened. Maybe I’d never spoken to him in this tone of voice before, but it was about fucking time. ‘Stay here. Drink coffee. Have a wash. I’ll go and find out what’s happening.’
I glanced at Bindy, and though she was frowning, I could see that she seemed comforted somehow with me taking charge. Not that I wanted to. Last thing I wanted was these two hanging on my back.
The only thing I wanted . . .
But we’d been looking for three weeks, and if Fiona had been a victim rather than a zombie, I was sure I’d have found her by then. I knew all the places she knew. I’d checked all the places we’d been together. And if I really thought about it, I didn’t really want to keep looking at all.
I started along the street. It took me five minutes to reach the school, and all the while I could hear that chopper somewhere in the distance. It was the first time I’d been alone out on the streets since the Purge: every other time, one or both of the others had been with me. I thought I’d be scared, or at least nervous, but I found it quite settling. Most things had changed, but liking my own company was not one of them.
As I reached the zebra crossing by the school, I looked along the curving road at the roadblock. It had been there since the first plague outbreak in the town, and I’d seen it a couple of times in the past few days when we went looking for bodies in the school. But now it looked different - larger, for a start, and it had also been added to. Whereas before it had been constructed of a couple of cars turned on their sides and piles of sandbags, now there were several heavy, dark metallic structures behind that. Tall fences stretched away on either side, the one on the left disappearing behind a house and heading uphill, the one leading right forming a straight line across the school’s playing field, merging with the woodland beyond.
On either side of the road stood tall posts topped with cameras. They both turned slightly, and I imagined them as eyes observing my approach. Fifty feet away, an amplified voice said, ‘Remain where you are.’
I stopped, sighed. Everyone was shouting at me today.
A man appeared atop the roadblock, obviously standing on a raised section on the other side. He looked across the town behind me before focusing on my face. He appeared nervous.
‘Toby Parsons?’
‘That’s me.’
‘I’m Peter O’Driscoll. I’m a doctor assigned to the research team looking into—’
‘You’re one of the scientists that have been cutting up the bodies I’ve been hauling out of here.’
‘Yes, if you like.’ He did not seem at all perturbed by my comment.
‘So what have you found out?’
He paused, but only for a second. ‘I’m afraid that’s classified.’
I laughed. It was the first real laughter I’d uttered since the plague and since losing touch with Fiona. We’d been half a mile apart when the first attacks came, by my reckoning. Close enough to hear each other screaming.
‘You’re joking!’ I said. ‘What movie do you think you’re in?’ I laughed some more.
‘Your help has been appreciated,’ O’Driscoll said.
‘Got a medal for me?’
‘No, no medal.’
‘So what do you want? Is there another infection? Has it spread?’
‘It’s still contained,’ O’Driscoll said. ‘But there’s been a recurrence, yes.’
A recurrence
. My blood ran cold. The Purge was supposed to have been the end solution, the final cleansing of what had happened in Usk. Blame went everywhere from the moment it struck, the media filling the channels with political and religious pundits, ex-military personnel and any C-list celebrity who had a fucking opinion. When the military had issued assurances that the Purge would end the slaughter, such assurances were taken as an admission of guilt. How could they know how to stop it if they claimed not to know how it began?
‘Where?’ I asked. And then a greater chill ran through me, and I couldn’t prevent myself from spinning around. The chopper, the cameras . . . ‘In the town?’
‘No, Mr Parsons. Usk is clear . . . or so we believe. The recurrence was in one of the corpses you brought out.’
‘So the infection is still here.’
‘We hope not. We hope it was an isolated case, and we’re looking into it. But . . .’ He glanced down at something in his hand.
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So you’re watching us, just in case.’
O’Driscoll nodded, lips pursed. ‘Just in case.’
‘And if we’re still fine a week from now? Two weeks?’
He went to leave.
‘Hey!’ I called. ‘You can’t just go!’
He paused, squatting down ready to jump away from the roadblock. He seemed to have nothing else to say.
‘You can’t just leave us in here like this. We haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘But you might,’ he said, and dropped back into his world.
I was left staring at the roadblock while the cameras stared back. I gave them the finger. It felt childish, but it made me feel better.
Turning to walk back into town, I felt watched every step of the way. As I passed the school, I looked at the low brick building, infant-class windows splashed with colorful drawings. Self-portraits with big round pink faces, bright blue eyes, and smears of yellow or brown hair. If I went closer I’d probably see the names, but I had no wish to do that. I might end up seeing the cartoon face of the little girl we’d left back in the churchyard.
The chopper drifted in again, skimming low over the trees beyond the school and disappearing from view. I jogged along the street, eager to see what they were doing, and as I passed the burned-out fire station, I saw through a gap between buildings. The chopper was hovering above the four-storey block of flats - one of the tallest buildings in Usk - and two men were rappelling down a rope to the rooftop.
‘What the hell . . .’ I muttered.
Maybe they wanted us. They’d confine us somewhere, send in their teams of doctors and scientists like O’Driscoll with their syringes and knives, and slice us open one by one to see if they could find out what was happening. Because even if they’d known at the beginning, I had the feeling that they were lost now. The plague had progressed - evolved, perhaps - and with a recurrence somewhere beyond the town’s perimeter, their understanding of whatever caused the plague had lessened considerably. Desperate times called for desperate measures, I knew that. But suddenly I was very, very afraid.
We’re expendable
, I thought.
At least we know the town, the streets, know the places to hide
. . . But that was just foolish. If they sent in forces to find us, we would be found.
The two men on the roof did not look like they would be here for long. They were setting up a large tripod topped with a box, weighing down the feet, clipping some sort of cover over the box. The chopper had drifted away, but it was merely performing a circuit of the town.
More cameras.
Even as I realized that, the helicopter came in low and lowered a rope ladder, and the two men climbed back up.
I could just see the smooth movement as the camera turned this way and that. Someone back at control was testing it. I waved.
Walking back to the Queen’s Hotel, I heard and saw several more choppers coming in. They chose the tallest buildings.
‘What are they doing?’ Bindy asked as I arrived back. She was sitting on one of the hotel’s wide stone windowsills, waiting for me. For a moment I was irr - itated at her question, but then I sighed softly and sat beside her.
‘Setting up cameras to try and keep track of us,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘There’s been a recurrence in one of the bodies we took out. I guess they want to watch in case we’re infected too.’
Bindy nodded grimly. ‘So that’s it then,’ she said, and I couldn’t bring myself to answer. I didn’t want to admit the end of anything.
‘Where’s Jamie?’
‘Went inside. I expect he’s in the bar.’
‘Right. I need to tell him what’s going on.’
Bindy stayed where she was, which surprised me a little. I thought she’d latch on to me again like a lost puppy, her eyes wide and expectant. Maybe somewhere she’d found her own strength.
‘Bindy,’ I said from the main doorway. She glanced at me. ‘We’ll get out. When they’ve sorted it all, when they know exactly what’s happening.’
‘Thanks, Toby,’ she said. Then she looked away again.
I went inside to find Jamie.
The first plague victim I had seen was an old man who used to run an optician’s office on the main street. He was in the early, raging phase, and he stalked the street, smashing shopwindows with his own hands and head, picking up big shards of glass, and slashing at passersby. This was still early on and, though most people knew that
something
was wrong with Usk, few knew exactly what. People screamed, the old man shouted and growled, and then he pinned a woman down and started cutting her up. He was completely insane.
A teenager smashed him over the head with a golf club, five times. He fell on the bleeding woman and died in the street, and seconds later he hauled himself slowly upright again. The rage was gone now, and he started digging into the woman beneath him for her heart.
When I entered the bar, Jamie was raging.
My heart stuttered; my balls tingled with fear. I stood back against the wall and watched.
Jamie was overturning tables and chairs, smashing bottles, kicking out at the bar, spitting and shouting.
This is it
, I thought;
it’s all over for us now
. And suddenly, facing that, I found my purpose again: I could not die here, because I had to find Fiona.
As I was backing away, Jamie saw me. He stopped and fell to his knees, crying.
‘It’s not fair,’ he said. ‘None of it’s fair.’
I let out a breath, sagging against the wall.
Just drunk. Christ
.
‘You heard what I told Bindy.’
‘Through the window.’ He lay down among smashed glass on the whiskey-stained carpet, and I left him there. There was little I could do, and for a moment he’d scared the hell out of me. I wondered what they’d do if they saw him raging like that.
I went back outside, but Bindy had gone. So I went to look for Fiona.
We’d lived in one of eight flats in an old renovated church in the town square, and the building had been gutted the day of the outbreak. Fiona was gone by then, and since the Purge I’d been back into the church three times looking for her body. So I went there again, climbing the warped metal staircase. However hard I tried to avoid touching any surfaces, by the time I reached the first floor, my hands were black with soot. It was as if the air itself was stained.
Our flat was at the rear of the church, and I had to pass two others to get there. They were both ruins, and were empty of bodies or bones.
I reached the place we had shared and loved, and I was thankful that it looked nothing like home. That would have been hard to take. I felt no hint of nostalgia, because the place was black and burnt and there was little to recognize. The layout was familiar, but even that had changed where walls had burned through and ceilings had fallen. In what had been our bathroom, the floor was gone, and I could see the shattered remains of our bathroom suite in the flat below. In the bedroom, the bed was a charred mound, and none of the wardrobes had survived.