Primeval Fic: There will be no history
Title: There will be no history
For: missyvortexdv (Purpleyin)
Author: curia_regis (Ayla Pascal)
Summary: “Nobody makes the connection until it is already an epidemic.”
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3300
Warnings: Apocalyptical AU, character death
Author Notes: Written for the primevalathon 2009. All my knowledge on viruses, USAMRIID and diseases in general come from my Google-fu, the movie Outbreak and Robert Ludlum’s Covert One series. Any mistakes are of my own doing. Thank you to brynwulf for her awesome beta!
General apologies for the cross-posting! *hides*
There will be no history
Nobody makes the connection until it is already an epidemic. There are over a thousand dead in the UK alone. Both France and Germany are reporting their first fatalities. Even in America, people are beginning to get sick.
The Prime Minister orders all borders to England to be sealed, but it is too late. Panic seethes on the streets. In Milton Keynes, a mob forms within minutes and rampages through a hospital demanding answers. They kill five doctors and two nurses before the army subdues them with gas. In some other cities, people remain locked in their houses, becoming frightened, eyes staring out of their front windows at the military tanks rolling by.
And at the ARC, James Lester is beginning to feel the start of a sore throat.
-
The newspapers call it a type of hantavirus that has scientists baffled.
The newspapers say that it is all under control.
The newspapers say a cure is imminent.
The last newspaper Abby can find said current estimates of the global death toll stand at over three billion.
-
Lester coughs and ignores the tiny splatter of blood on his palm. He looks up and looks at each of his team members. Abby is frowning as she runs her fingers through her hair. Nick has a hard look on his face, the same hard look he’s had ever since Stephen died. Connor is simply staring at the table blankly. Only Jenny looks normal, at least from a distance. Her face is perfectly made up and composed. Except, Lester thinks he can detect the slightest tremble to her hands as she gives each team member the daily briefing.
Lester wipes his palm on his trousers and tries not to think of the implication of the blood.
“Did we do this?” Connor bursts out.
Lester doesn’t know how to answer. There’s no proof, of course. No proof at all, because if there was, then the mob would have found them here.
“There’s no point assigning blame,” Jenny says crisply, her mouth set to a hard line.
A brief smile crosses Lester’s face as he watches her move decisively around the table. Everybody criticised him when he hired Jenny Lewis. She wasn’t considered strong enough, mentally or emotionally, for the job. He had heard Abby commenting on her tendency to over-dress for the job.
“We need to fix this problem,” Jenny continues.
“How?” Nick points out. “None of us are virologists. The best virologists in the world can’t figure it out. The CDC is baffled. Our own labs don’t have a chance because we all keep on dying.” Lester can't help but notice that Nick's gotten a lot bleaker since Stephen's death.
There’s a silence and Lester knows they’re all trying not to think of Caroline. How she had accompanied them on one mission. Leek had kept some of his plans to take over the ARC in the past, she explained and she led them right to the location. It had been a dirty, dank little cave, with rats everywhere.
“Be careful,” she had warned, pointing to the rats, “one of those buggers bit me a few days ago.”
Ten days later, Caroline stumbled back to the ARC, coughing up blood and wheezing.
Ten weeks later… Lester looks down at the tiny bloodstain on his trousers and winces. Ten weeks later and they’re all on a fast train to hell.
-
Joshua Cramer’s always been a healthy man. He’s been working on the garbage collection business ever since he was seventeen and he’s proud of the fact that he’s never had to take even one sick day.
“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it,” he always tells his children when they wrinkle up their noses.
But today, Joshua’s feeling a bit off.
He’s read in the newspapers that if you have symptoms that resemble a mild flu, with respiratory problems, that you should head to your nearest hospital. Apparently, there’s a new virus going around or something, but they all say it’s under control. Nobody Joshua knows seems even the slightest bit worried. He’s read about the crazies in Milton Keynes, and is glad none of that is happening here.
Joshua shrugs. It’s probably just allergies or something. He’s never even gotten the flu before.
He smiles at Mabel, the woman who looks after the cafeteria at the garbage depot, and leans over to grab a sandwich. He’s suddenly overcome by a coughing fit.
“What, you sick?” she teases. “I didn’t think you had been sick a day in your life.”
As Joshua makes his way home, sandwich in hand, he thinks he should probably have a lie down. He’s beginning to feel a headache.
-
In Brisbane, Australia, Jeremy Patterson gets off the Qantas flight, yawns and stretches. It’s been a long flight from Perth, he reflects as he makes his way down the terminal. He had been sitting next to a chatty older woman who had just come over from England. She had persisted on showing him photographs of all her grandkids.
“They’re living in Brisbane,” she had burbled, sniffling slightly. “Darned weather down under. I've got a cold now.”
As Jeremy retrieves his luggage from the carousel, he starts to feel a bit tired. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked those extra hours last week, he thinks as he heads outside into the steamy, humid air.
-
Lester hasn’t been into work today. Abby’s beginning to be worried. She knows that he was looking increasingly unwell in the past few days.
Jenny marches in, a steely expression on her face and a hard line to her mouth. She’s wearing a face mask and gloves. She holds up a box. “There is a mask and glove set for each of you.”
She doesn’t explain why, but she doesn’t need to. They all know why, and it occurs to Abby that if they had done this sooner then perhaps Lester would be here with them right now, donning his own mask. And then, somewhere in a selfish part of her own mind, she’s glad that she’s usually on the opposite end of the conference table to Lester.
-
Nick volunteers to go and check on Lester. He leaves the ARC, goes out into the world that still looks so calm and normal despite the martial law. Except, when he looks closely, he realises that it isn’t normal. Fear permeates the street and anybody with a cough or cold is given a wide berth.
He sees a woman wearing a face mask, much like the one he has in his own pocket. Nick hesitates for a second, and then pulls his own mask on and fits it over his nose and mouth. Immediately, the world feels different, more threatening. Even, the bakery down the road from the ARC looks different. There’s no freshly baked bread smell and very few people are going inside.
Strangely enough, people avoid him more when he has the mask on. The mask marks him as a harbinger of disease. Plague-ridden. A man to be avoided.
Nick shudders. If only they knew the truth.
-
Lester barely opens the door. “Go away.”
Nick frowns. Lester’s voice sounds different from normal. Scratchier. And there’s a note of hopelessness that he doesn’t like. “Open up,” Nick snaps.
As soon as the door opens, Nick almost wishes Lester hadn’t complied.
It isn’t just that Lester looks terribly, horribly sick. He does, but what scares Nick more is the expression of hopelessness on the other man’s face. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen James Lester look so scared. Lester’s always been the kind of man in control. He’s always been a stubborn jerk. But he’s never been the kind of man to give up.
Except now.
“They say it’s airborne,” Lester says and coughs into his hand.
Nick takes an involuntary step backwards. Then ashamed, he tries to apologise.
Lester just stares at him. “You know as well as I do that we don’t have a chance. Whatever kind of prehistoric hell we just unleashed on the 21st century, well… at least history won’t have a chance to judge us.”
It’s Nick’s turn to stare.
-
“All of our antivirals, all of our therapies, they’re useless.”
Brigadier-General Adam Johnston sits at his leather-covered mahogany desk, a desk that had cost him a good two months of wages, and stares at the frightened young lieutenant who is standing in front of him. Johnston normally prides himself on being tough on the young military scientists; get them to earn their stripes. But today, he’s too terrified by the new virus, just like everybody else.
“Sir?” There’s an edge of panic in the lieutenant’s voice, even though the young man maintains his military stance.
Johnston gathers his thoughts together and tries to smile encouragingly at the lieutenant. The young man’s a new transfer and Johnston suddenly realises he doesn’t even know the other man’s name. “Have you spoken to the other level four laboratories?”
The lieutenant nods. “The CDC’s as baffled as us. So is the NIMR. Reports from the other labs are trickling in but none look promising. They all agree that it has the shape of a hantavirus and that it brings on acute respiratory distress, and that none of our conventional therapies work!”
Johnston reaches up and loosens his collar. He can feel sweat beading up on his forehead. When he was first transferred over to Fort Detrick, he was told that this was an easy job. Babysitting scientists. He hadn’t expected to be in the middle of a viral outbreak. He doesn’t know anything about viruses and most of what the lieutenant is saying is going completely over his head and Johnston hates it when things go over his head. Besides, his wife is pregnant at home with their third child and he’s worried. This morning she had looked terribly tired. “Keep on working on it,” he orders. “No virus is going to beat us.”
The lieutenant salutes and leaves.
-
Abby feels like she’s walking a tightrope. If she steps off, she knows she’ll crack, but as long as she looks ahead and doesn’t think too much, she’ll be okay.
All around her, the world’s getting sicker.
They all go to Lester’s funeral. Abby watches as a silver-haired older woman brushes tears away from her eyes. From the set of her face and the expression in her eyes, Abby thinks she might be Lester’s mother.
“Should we really be here?” Connor whispers in her ear. Abby stares at him and he hurriedly adds, “With the epidemic. We shouldn’t be in a crowd. In a public place.”
Abby frowns. “We need to be here,” she says quietly. “Otherwise, what are the scientists saving? We’re showing our humanity by being here.”
Connor closes his eyes briefly. “I hope it isn’t at the cost of our own lives.”
-
They’re beginning to gather the sick into camps. Connor mutters something about concentration camps and Abby feels a shiver slide down her spine. There’s something eerily familiar about the hollow human faces being bundled into unmarked trucks and being driven away.
She knows they’re going to medical facilities.
Just like the German citizens sixty years ago knew the Jews were being put to work.
“We’re not getting out of this one, are we?” Connor says blankly one day as they watch Nick being taken into one of the white vans. They don’t protest as the army men in isolation suits drive away.
The street is empty, devoid of both cars and people. People are too terrified to emerge from their own houses.
The government tells people to tie a white pillowcase or sheet on the doorknob if there’s anybody sick in the house. As Abby looks up and down the street, she sees five or six white cloths fluttering in the breeze.
-
The world falls apart. Easily.
It only ever takes a little to push humanity over the edge.
This time, it’s the bombing of London, a hurried action pushed through by a terrified UN.
Too little, too late.
A mushroom cloud hangs over London’s remains for weeks afterwards.
-
Excerpt from a CDC report:
Incubation period of seven to thirty days, after which multi-organ failure appears in over 99% of patients. No known survivors. First symptoms may resemble that of a heavy cold or light flu and include sore throat, fever, headache, body aches and pains and facial swelling. Later symptoms include bloody vomit, tachycardia, dysphagia, bloody sputum, severe cough and pericarditis.
Origins still unknown. No cure as yet.
There’s a scribbled note below the official report, scrawled as if the author had quickly added it.
We’re all fucked.
-
Abby realises that she’s never been hungry before. Not really hungry. Not truly hungry. The hunger pangs she felt before were mere ghosts of what she feels now. It feels like her stomach is empty all the time. She finds herself kneeling in the dirt several times a day, retching up bile. She’s light-headed all the time and feels as though a light breeze could knock her down.
She looks around and realises that everybody else has the same staving look in their eyes.
Dysentery is rampant in their little community. There isn’t a single person who doesn’t at least have loose bowels.
It smells terrible, but Abby’s just glad to be alive. Jenny had insisted on moving the ARC operations into the countryside after the first riots.
Abby bites down on her lip and tries to remember Jenny as the bright, vivacious woman she was, rather than the skeleton she became as the virus ravaged her body.
-
They just call it the virus.
In the early days, the CDC suggested several names (the main name used was London fever; some called it a strain of Lassa fever, but that was soon disproved) for it but none had caught on.
Secretly, since the beginning, Abby’s been calling it the anomaly fever.
-
They’ve established a sick house. They’ve only got simple antiseptics and wet wipes, but they try to clean the place after every death. Every sick person ends up in there, but few return.
“I heard that we made the virus,” a plump woman says to Abby. “With all of our antibiotics, antiseptics and antivirals, we created a superbug. We made this hell.”
Abby bites her lip and shrugs.
-
They’ve taken to scavenging what they can. Their best find so far were two containment suits, like the ones the army used. It was only six months ago, Abby realises and shivers.
“I never thought about the consequences of …” Connor says and trails off.
Abby nods and reaches over to squeeze his hand. “I didn’t either. We’re not to blame. We’re not.” She isn’t sure whether she believes herself, but she knows she has to pretend. Jenny insisted that they were not to blame for this up until the day she died.
“This could have happened at any point,” she had insisted, her cheeks bright red with fever, and her eyes filled with pain. “We were not to blame!”
-
Abby isn’t sure why some of them are dying faster than others. She’s no virologist. She has no training in the area at all. All she knows is that sooner or later, she’ll be one of those bodies burning in the pit.
On a clear day, when the wind’s blowing in the right direction, they can smell charred human flesh.
It barely turns her stomach any more and she’s sickened by that. At times, Abby can almost imagine it was a roast, or a barbeque. It is times like this that she wishes she was religious and that she could pray to a God for forgiveness.
-
Abby does her best to help people, but there’s only so much she can do from an isolation suit. Abby realises that to the dying people, she must look like a giant yellow monster, but there’s nothing she can do.
There are protests from the rest of their community about her work.
“You’re endangering us all,” one woman screams at her.
Abby ignores her and continues her work. She heads out every day, in one of the cars that still has petrol, and drives to the nearest camp. She might not be able to help the sick, but she can make their last days a bit more comfortable. She has strength enough for this. It helps keep her sane. It helps her grip onto the last vestiges of her own humanity - the part that she’s terrified of losing.
-
Every day, Abby can feel a little bit more of her humanity slipping away.
After all, without law or law enforcement or bullets, they’ve taken to the old ways again.
The first time Abby saw somebody being beaten, she rushed to their aid.
The next time, she felt guilty as she walked past.
Now, she just looks on, stony-faced. Somebody who steals food from the community coffers deserves their punishment. They have little enough of it as it is.
She sees the same thing happen to Connor and it terrifies her. Yet, at the same time, she realises that Connor was tougher and stronger than she ever imagined. As Jenny was, Abby thinks guiltily.
-
The camp is dirty. Just about everybody is dead and dying.
All except one little boy.
He’s curled up in a ball, in the corner of a hut. He’s smeared with unmentionable liquids, wallowing in his own filth like an animal. Beside him are the rotting corpses of both his parents. He clutches at their arms as if they’re a lifeline back to the world they’ve all lost.
Abby swallows hard, walks over and kneels down. “Hi,” she says, “I’m Abby. Who are you?”
The boy lashes out and kicks at her suit. She retreats.
-
It takes Abby several days to convince people to come with her to rescue the boy. And even then, the people who agree to come want to wait a few more weeks.
“He’s not sick!” she tells them.
“Let’s make sure,” Tobias snaps at her, his black brows drawn together into a frown. “I will not be responsible for endangering all of these people’s lives. Do you want that responsibility?”
I already have that responsibility, Abby thinks. She wants to tell people at the community her role in all of this, the role of everybody at the ARC. But as Connor continues to remind her, it would be a bad idea. Perhaps sometime in the future, she could tell somebody and they wouldn’t hate and blame her for the pandemic. But now, while people are still sick and dying, they would just string her up to burn.
-
As they enter the camp, Tobias turns around and stares at her. His voice is muffled through the suit. “There’s nobody here.”
“Yes there is,” she snaps and marches towards the hut. It looks empty and she feels a sudden wave of fear. Maybe she was wrong? Maybe the boy is dead already. Then she spies a tiny movement out of the corner of her eyes. “There!” she shouts triumphantly.
He’s moved the bodies of his parents. They’re now sitting around the dinner tables, the corpses a grotesque parody of life. The boy is spooning liquid mud into his mouth with one hand while smiling at the rotting skeleton of his mother.
-
The words natural immunity echo in Abby’s mind as she stares around the meagre community of ragged adults and half-naked children. She looks down at the small child they rescued. He’s not much to look at. In fact, from up close, he looks half starved, especially in the huge isolation suit. Tobias said that they were not going to take any chances.
But there’s no denying it. He’s not sick at all. He had spent weeks in a camp full of dead and dying people, yet he’s come out of it all alive and well. And above all, the boy is healthy.
Now, all they need is a virologist.
She looks up and meets Connor’s gaze. There’s hope in his eyes.
There’s a scratchy feeling in her own throat, but Abby ignores it.
-fin
For: missyvortexdv (Purpleyin)
Author: curia_regis (Ayla Pascal)
Summary: “Nobody makes the connection until it is already an epidemic.”
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~3300
Warnings: Apocalyptical AU, character death
Author Notes: Written for the primevalathon 2009. All my knowledge on viruses, USAMRIID and diseases in general come from my Google-fu, the movie Outbreak and Robert Ludlum’s Covert One series. Any mistakes are of my own doing. Thank you to brynwulf for her awesome beta!
General apologies for the cross-posting! *hides*
There will be no history
Nobody makes the connection until it is already an epidemic. There are over a thousand dead in the UK alone. Both France and Germany are reporting their first fatalities. Even in America, people are beginning to get sick.
The Prime Minister orders all borders to England to be sealed, but it is too late. Panic seethes on the streets. In Milton Keynes, a mob forms within minutes and rampages through a hospital demanding answers. They kill five doctors and two nurses before the army subdues them with gas. In some other cities, people remain locked in their houses, becoming frightened, eyes staring out of their front windows at the military tanks rolling by.
And at the ARC, James Lester is beginning to feel the start of a sore throat.
-
The newspapers call it a type of hantavirus that has scientists baffled.
The newspapers say that it is all under control.
The newspapers say a cure is imminent.
The last newspaper Abby can find said current estimates of the global death toll stand at over three billion.
-
Lester coughs and ignores the tiny splatter of blood on his palm. He looks up and looks at each of his team members. Abby is frowning as she runs her fingers through her hair. Nick has a hard look on his face, the same hard look he’s had ever since Stephen died. Connor is simply staring at the table blankly. Only Jenny looks normal, at least from a distance. Her face is perfectly made up and composed. Except, Lester thinks he can detect the slightest tremble to her hands as she gives each team member the daily briefing.
Lester wipes his palm on his trousers and tries not to think of the implication of the blood.
“Did we do this?” Connor bursts out.
Lester doesn’t know how to answer. There’s no proof, of course. No proof at all, because if there was, then the mob would have found them here.
“There’s no point assigning blame,” Jenny says crisply, her mouth set to a hard line.
A brief smile crosses Lester’s face as he watches her move decisively around the table. Everybody criticised him when he hired Jenny Lewis. She wasn’t considered strong enough, mentally or emotionally, for the job. He had heard Abby commenting on her tendency to over-dress for the job.
“We need to fix this problem,” Jenny continues.
“How?” Nick points out. “None of us are virologists. The best virologists in the world can’t figure it out. The CDC is baffled. Our own labs don’t have a chance because we all keep on dying.” Lester can't help but notice that Nick's gotten a lot bleaker since Stephen's death.
There’s a silence and Lester knows they’re all trying not to think of Caroline. How she had accompanied them on one mission. Leek had kept some of his plans to take over the ARC in the past, she explained and she led them right to the location. It had been a dirty, dank little cave, with rats everywhere.
“Be careful,” she had warned, pointing to the rats, “one of those buggers bit me a few days ago.”
Ten days later, Caroline stumbled back to the ARC, coughing up blood and wheezing.
Ten weeks later… Lester looks down at the tiny bloodstain on his trousers and winces. Ten weeks later and they’re all on a fast train to hell.
-
Joshua Cramer’s always been a healthy man. He’s been working on the garbage collection business ever since he was seventeen and he’s proud of the fact that he’s never had to take even one sick day.
“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s gotta do it,” he always tells his children when they wrinkle up their noses.
But today, Joshua’s feeling a bit off.
He’s read in the newspapers that if you have symptoms that resemble a mild flu, with respiratory problems, that you should head to your nearest hospital. Apparently, there’s a new virus going around or something, but they all say it’s under control. Nobody Joshua knows seems even the slightest bit worried. He’s read about the crazies in Milton Keynes, and is glad none of that is happening here.
Joshua shrugs. It’s probably just allergies or something. He’s never even gotten the flu before.
He smiles at Mabel, the woman who looks after the cafeteria at the garbage depot, and leans over to grab a sandwich. He’s suddenly overcome by a coughing fit.
“What, you sick?” she teases. “I didn’t think you had been sick a day in your life.”
As Joshua makes his way home, sandwich in hand, he thinks he should probably have a lie down. He’s beginning to feel a headache.
-
In Brisbane, Australia, Jeremy Patterson gets off the Qantas flight, yawns and stretches. It’s been a long flight from Perth, he reflects as he makes his way down the terminal. He had been sitting next to a chatty older woman who had just come over from England. She had persisted on showing him photographs of all her grandkids.
“They’re living in Brisbane,” she had burbled, sniffling slightly. “Darned weather down under. I've got a cold now.”
As Jeremy retrieves his luggage from the carousel, he starts to feel a bit tired. Maybe I shouldn’t have worked those extra hours last week, he thinks as he heads outside into the steamy, humid air.
-
Lester hasn’t been into work today. Abby’s beginning to be worried. She knows that he was looking increasingly unwell in the past few days.
Jenny marches in, a steely expression on her face and a hard line to her mouth. She’s wearing a face mask and gloves. She holds up a box. “There is a mask and glove set for each of you.”
She doesn’t explain why, but she doesn’t need to. They all know why, and it occurs to Abby that if they had done this sooner then perhaps Lester would be here with them right now, donning his own mask. And then, somewhere in a selfish part of her own mind, she’s glad that she’s usually on the opposite end of the conference table to Lester.
-
Nick volunteers to go and check on Lester. He leaves the ARC, goes out into the world that still looks so calm and normal despite the martial law. Except, when he looks closely, he realises that it isn’t normal. Fear permeates the street and anybody with a cough or cold is given a wide berth.
He sees a woman wearing a face mask, much like the one he has in his own pocket. Nick hesitates for a second, and then pulls his own mask on and fits it over his nose and mouth. Immediately, the world feels different, more threatening. Even, the bakery down the road from the ARC looks different. There’s no freshly baked bread smell and very few people are going inside.
Strangely enough, people avoid him more when he has the mask on. The mask marks him as a harbinger of disease. Plague-ridden. A man to be avoided.
Nick shudders. If only they knew the truth.
-
Lester barely opens the door. “Go away.”
Nick frowns. Lester’s voice sounds different from normal. Scratchier. And there’s a note of hopelessness that he doesn’t like. “Open up,” Nick snaps.
As soon as the door opens, Nick almost wishes Lester hadn’t complied.
It isn’t just that Lester looks terribly, horribly sick. He does, but what scares Nick more is the expression of hopelessness on the other man’s face. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen James Lester look so scared. Lester’s always been the kind of man in control. He’s always been a stubborn jerk. But he’s never been the kind of man to give up.
Except now.
“They say it’s airborne,” Lester says and coughs into his hand.
Nick takes an involuntary step backwards. Then ashamed, he tries to apologise.
Lester just stares at him. “You know as well as I do that we don’t have a chance. Whatever kind of prehistoric hell we just unleashed on the 21st century, well… at least history won’t have a chance to judge us.”
It’s Nick’s turn to stare.
-
“All of our antivirals, all of our therapies, they’re useless.”
Brigadier-General Adam Johnston sits at his leather-covered mahogany desk, a desk that had cost him a good two months of wages, and stares at the frightened young lieutenant who is standing in front of him. Johnston normally prides himself on being tough on the young military scientists; get them to earn their stripes. But today, he’s too terrified by the new virus, just like everybody else.
“Sir?” There’s an edge of panic in the lieutenant’s voice, even though the young man maintains his military stance.
Johnston gathers his thoughts together and tries to smile encouragingly at the lieutenant. The young man’s a new transfer and Johnston suddenly realises he doesn’t even know the other man’s name. “Have you spoken to the other level four laboratories?”
The lieutenant nods. “The CDC’s as baffled as us. So is the NIMR. Reports from the other labs are trickling in but none look promising. They all agree that it has the shape of a hantavirus and that it brings on acute respiratory distress, and that none of our conventional therapies work!”
Johnston reaches up and loosens his collar. He can feel sweat beading up on his forehead. When he was first transferred over to Fort Detrick, he was told that this was an easy job. Babysitting scientists. He hadn’t expected to be in the middle of a viral outbreak. He doesn’t know anything about viruses and most of what the lieutenant is saying is going completely over his head and Johnston hates it when things go over his head. Besides, his wife is pregnant at home with their third child and he’s worried. This morning she had looked terribly tired. “Keep on working on it,” he orders. “No virus is going to beat us.”
The lieutenant salutes and leaves.
-
Abby feels like she’s walking a tightrope. If she steps off, she knows she’ll crack, but as long as she looks ahead and doesn’t think too much, she’ll be okay.
All around her, the world’s getting sicker.
They all go to Lester’s funeral. Abby watches as a silver-haired older woman brushes tears away from her eyes. From the set of her face and the expression in her eyes, Abby thinks she might be Lester’s mother.
“Should we really be here?” Connor whispers in her ear. Abby stares at him and he hurriedly adds, “With the epidemic. We shouldn’t be in a crowd. In a public place.”
Abby frowns. “We need to be here,” she says quietly. “Otherwise, what are the scientists saving? We’re showing our humanity by being here.”
Connor closes his eyes briefly. “I hope it isn’t at the cost of our own lives.”
-
They’re beginning to gather the sick into camps. Connor mutters something about concentration camps and Abby feels a shiver slide down her spine. There’s something eerily familiar about the hollow human faces being bundled into unmarked trucks and being driven away.
She knows they’re going to medical facilities.
Just like the German citizens sixty years ago knew the Jews were being put to work.
“We’re not getting out of this one, are we?” Connor says blankly one day as they watch Nick being taken into one of the white vans. They don’t protest as the army men in isolation suits drive away.
The street is empty, devoid of both cars and people. People are too terrified to emerge from their own houses.
The government tells people to tie a white pillowcase or sheet on the doorknob if there’s anybody sick in the house. As Abby looks up and down the street, she sees five or six white cloths fluttering in the breeze.
-
The world falls apart. Easily.
It only ever takes a little to push humanity over the edge.
This time, it’s the bombing of London, a hurried action pushed through by a terrified UN.
Too little, too late.
A mushroom cloud hangs over London’s remains for weeks afterwards.
-
Excerpt from a CDC report:
Incubation period of seven to thirty days, after which multi-organ failure appears in over 99% of patients. No known survivors. First symptoms may resemble that of a heavy cold or light flu and include sore throat, fever, headache, body aches and pains and facial swelling. Later symptoms include bloody vomit, tachycardia, dysphagia, bloody sputum, severe cough and pericarditis.
Origins still unknown. No cure as yet.
There’s a scribbled note below the official report, scrawled as if the author had quickly added it.
We’re all fucked.
-
Abby realises that she’s never been hungry before. Not really hungry. Not truly hungry. The hunger pangs she felt before were mere ghosts of what she feels now. It feels like her stomach is empty all the time. She finds herself kneeling in the dirt several times a day, retching up bile. She’s light-headed all the time and feels as though a light breeze could knock her down.
She looks around and realises that everybody else has the same staving look in their eyes.
Dysentery is rampant in their little community. There isn’t a single person who doesn’t at least have loose bowels.
It smells terrible, but Abby’s just glad to be alive. Jenny had insisted on moving the ARC operations into the countryside after the first riots.
Abby bites down on her lip and tries to remember Jenny as the bright, vivacious woman she was, rather than the skeleton she became as the virus ravaged her body.
-
They just call it the virus.
In the early days, the CDC suggested several names (the main name used was London fever; some called it a strain of Lassa fever, but that was soon disproved) for it but none had caught on.
Secretly, since the beginning, Abby’s been calling it the anomaly fever.
-
They’ve established a sick house. They’ve only got simple antiseptics and wet wipes, but they try to clean the place after every death. Every sick person ends up in there, but few return.
“I heard that we made the virus,” a plump woman says to Abby. “With all of our antibiotics, antiseptics and antivirals, we created a superbug. We made this hell.”
Abby bites her lip and shrugs.
-
They’ve taken to scavenging what they can. Their best find so far were two containment suits, like the ones the army used. It was only six months ago, Abby realises and shivers.
“I never thought about the consequences of …” Connor says and trails off.
Abby nods and reaches over to squeeze his hand. “I didn’t either. We’re not to blame. We’re not.” She isn’t sure whether she believes herself, but she knows she has to pretend. Jenny insisted that they were not to blame for this up until the day she died.
“This could have happened at any point,” she had insisted, her cheeks bright red with fever, and her eyes filled with pain. “We were not to blame!”
-
Abby isn’t sure why some of them are dying faster than others. She’s no virologist. She has no training in the area at all. All she knows is that sooner or later, she’ll be one of those bodies burning in the pit.
On a clear day, when the wind’s blowing in the right direction, they can smell charred human flesh.
It barely turns her stomach any more and she’s sickened by that. At times, Abby can almost imagine it was a roast, or a barbeque. It is times like this that she wishes she was religious and that she could pray to a God for forgiveness.
-
Abby does her best to help people, but there’s only so much she can do from an isolation suit. Abby realises that to the dying people, she must look like a giant yellow monster, but there’s nothing she can do.
There are protests from the rest of their community about her work.
“You’re endangering us all,” one woman screams at her.
Abby ignores her and continues her work. She heads out every day, in one of the cars that still has petrol, and drives to the nearest camp. She might not be able to help the sick, but she can make their last days a bit more comfortable. She has strength enough for this. It helps keep her sane. It helps her grip onto the last vestiges of her own humanity - the part that she’s terrified of losing.
-
Every day, Abby can feel a little bit more of her humanity slipping away.
After all, without law or law enforcement or bullets, they’ve taken to the old ways again.
The first time Abby saw somebody being beaten, she rushed to their aid.
The next time, she felt guilty as she walked past.
Now, she just looks on, stony-faced. Somebody who steals food from the community coffers deserves their punishment. They have little enough of it as it is.
She sees the same thing happen to Connor and it terrifies her. Yet, at the same time, she realises that Connor was tougher and stronger than she ever imagined. As Jenny was, Abby thinks guiltily.
-
The camp is dirty. Just about everybody is dead and dying.
All except one little boy.
He’s curled up in a ball, in the corner of a hut. He’s smeared with unmentionable liquids, wallowing in his own filth like an animal. Beside him are the rotting corpses of both his parents. He clutches at their arms as if they’re a lifeline back to the world they’ve all lost.
Abby swallows hard, walks over and kneels down. “Hi,” she says, “I’m Abby. Who are you?”
The boy lashes out and kicks at her suit. She retreats.
-
It takes Abby several days to convince people to come with her to rescue the boy. And even then, the people who agree to come want to wait a few more weeks.
“He’s not sick!” she tells them.
“Let’s make sure,” Tobias snaps at her, his black brows drawn together into a frown. “I will not be responsible for endangering all of these people’s lives. Do you want that responsibility?”
I already have that responsibility, Abby thinks. She wants to tell people at the community her role in all of this, the role of everybody at the ARC. But as Connor continues to remind her, it would be a bad idea. Perhaps sometime in the future, she could tell somebody and they wouldn’t hate and blame her for the pandemic. But now, while people are still sick and dying, they would just string her up to burn.
-
As they enter the camp, Tobias turns around and stares at her. His voice is muffled through the suit. “There’s nobody here.”
“Yes there is,” she snaps and marches towards the hut. It looks empty and she feels a sudden wave of fear. Maybe she was wrong? Maybe the boy is dead already. Then she spies a tiny movement out of the corner of her eyes. “There!” she shouts triumphantly.
He’s moved the bodies of his parents. They’re now sitting around the dinner tables, the corpses a grotesque parody of life. The boy is spooning liquid mud into his mouth with one hand while smiling at the rotting skeleton of his mother.
-
The words natural immunity echo in Abby’s mind as she stares around the meagre community of ragged adults and half-naked children. She looks down at the small child they rescued. He’s not much to look at. In fact, from up close, he looks half starved, especially in the huge isolation suit. Tobias said that they were not going to take any chances.
But there’s no denying it. He’s not sick at all. He had spent weeks in a camp full of dead and dying people, yet he’s come out of it all alive and well. And above all, the boy is healthy.
Now, all they need is a virologist.
She looks up and meets Connor’s gaze. There’s hope in his eyes.
There’s a scratchy feeling in her own throat, but Abby ignores it.
-fin