“Shit. I’ve only got five percent,” said the girl apologetically.
Leon shuffled around until he could see the screen. The red BBC logo was up, but the page was just a blank gray placeholder. He looked at the expectant, anxious expressions around the phone.
Finally the page loaded. One picture, one headline. The picture was of the British prime minister. He looked haggard, pale, and terrified.
West African Virus in UK: Emergency Measures in Full Force.
“For God’s sake…someone read it out loud!”
The young woman nodded. “‘The prime minister declared a state of emergency late last night. All airports, ports, stations, and motorways are closed with immediate effect. Everyone is instructed to stay in their homes, to only drink bottled water, not tap water, and to wait for further announcements.’”
“Is that it?”
She shook her head. “‘COBRA, the emergency authority mobilized in times of extreme crisis, has declared a number of martial laws with immediate effect. One: full home quarantine—no one is to remain outside. Two: army and police have full authority to shoot on sight anyone breaking home quarantine…’” She looked up from the screen. “OhmyGod.”
“Is there any more?”
She looked back down at the screen. “‘Three: COBRA, military personnel, and police have full authority to requisition any supplies and resources required to remain operational.’”
“That’s crazy!” someone barked out.
She shook her head. “There’s another article… ‘Cases of infection have been reported in most if not ALL countries. Media services, internet services, and phone services have gone down in many places…’”
“This has got to be some kind of reality-TV joke, right?” said one of the beered-up lads from train car C. He looked around hopefully.
“‘…the virus is able to cross all animal species barriers without exception and is lethal in all cases, although the rate at which it kills seems to vary. The etiology as yet is unknown.’”
“This isn’t happening,” insisted the young man. “Come on. It’s clearly a joke.”
“‘The origin is suspected to be either an artificial, genetically engineered pathogen, or, as some experts have suggested, quite possibly something extraterrestrial in origin…’”
The man laughed, relieved. “There you go, then! Alien invaders! OK. This definitely is a jo—”
“Shut up, mate,” said his friend. “Just shut the hell up.”
“‘…possibly an organism carried in dormant form on a meteorite and revived on contact with liquid-form water…’” The young woman stopped. She swiped at the screen.
“Is there more?”
She shook her head. “It’s buffering again. Hold on…” They waited in silence for a full minute, listening to the breeze stirring the stunted branches of the trees planted along the top of the bank. Leon looked up and noticed there were no birds singing. It was ominously quiet. No distant hiss of traffic, no buzzing of insects. Just the breeze herding the heavy, low, gray clouds along above them.
“It’s… The article’s gone!” she said. She looked up at everyone, her eyes wide and moist with tears, her mouth hanging open. She turned the phone around to show everyone.
Leon leaned forward to see what was on the dim screen.
BBC news service suspended: 7:43 a.m.
“That was posted over two hours ago!” cried someone.
Leon turned and looked for his mother. He found her staring at him, mouthing his name. Leon?
“Mom, it’s gone. The BBC’s gone!”
It suddenly became very noisy. The young woman wanted to use whatever charge she had left in her phone to try to call her parents while she had a signal. The young man was still insisting this was some extreme reality-TV-show stunt and was being told to shut up by his friends. A woman who’d been repeating what the girl had been reading out for the benefit of those out of earshot started to cry. Eva’s loud voice was booming, imploring them all to stay calm.
Leon pushed himself out of the knot of people toward his mom. “What’re we gonna do now?” he asked.
She held out her hand, grabbed his, and pulled him toward her. “I don’t know, Leo, I just don’t know… I…I…”
She’s the brittle type, Leon. Ben’s words were there in the back of his mind.
“It’s cool, Mom. It’s fine. We’re just going to keep going toward Norwich, right?”
She nodded, distracted. “Yes…yes, Norwich. That’s…”
“Mom?” He looked around. “Where’s Grace?”
“She said she needed to go to the bathroom.”
Leon shook his head as though to say, You just let her wander off like that? He was going to say more when he caught sight of Grace standing up from behind a tall cluster of nettles at the top of the bank. She was starting to pick her way down the slope toward them when she stopped where she was, craned her neck curiously, and scrunched up her eyes.
She’s seen something.
“Mom!” she called out.
Their mom turned toward Grace’s voice, relieved.
Grace said something else, but it was lost beneath all the other raised voices. She pointed a finger.
Leon and his mom turned to look in the direction she was now pointing: back down the tracks. It looked like a blizzard of feathers billowing up the long, straight track toward them, carried along on the fresh breeze, swirling in lazy, unpredictable circles. Feathers, as if some children’s pillow fight had gotten out of hand or a flock of pigeons had smacked into the windshield of a truck on a highway.
It was almost pretty, like cherry blossoms rolling along an abandoned train track beneath a dark foreboding sky. It was a movie poster. A piece of hotel lobby art.
He looked at his mother. “Mom?”
“Is that…is that…?” Her mouth hung open, unable to finish her question.
The flakes. Dad’s flakes.
“Mom…that’s the virus! It’s got to be!”
She was just staring at it, rooted to the spot, mouth hanging open…entranced by it, or too stupefied or terrified to snap out of it.
“Mom!” He grabbed her shoulder roughly. “Mom! We gotta go!”
It looked like it was coming slowly, idly. A jog across flat ground could easily have outpaced it, but they weren’t on flat ground. They were in a long, straight gulley, flanked by steep banks covered in thick tangles of weeds. Trapped in its path, unless they made a start at climbing out of the way…right now.
Leon’s mom nodded. “Eva!” The woman was just a few feet away, talking animatedly with a woman from another train car.
“Eva!” Leon echoed. He headed over and grabbed her arm. “Look!” he said and pointed down the tracks at the approaching cloud of particles.
It was much closer now. A slight updraft was carrying the white flecks up into the sky, while the banks on either side channeled it toward them. Leon wondered if there was any way of avoiding it, whatever they did.
“Ohmydays!” she gasped, confused for a moment by what she was looking at, but sensing immediately it wasn’t a good thing.
“It…it’s the virus,” said Leon. “I think—”
“The virus!” she screamed. All heads turned to look in the direction her long fingernail was pointing. “Look! Iiit’s comin’!”
The effect was instant. Panic. There was none of that stiff-upper-lip reserve anymore, that uniquely British incapacitating fear of looking like an idiot…of embarrassment. Leon pulled on Eva’s arm and pointed up to Grace, still standing at the top of the small slope.
They scrambled off the tracks and ties, off the gravel, and up to the bottom of the steeply ascending bank.
Leon’s mom joined them. She grabbed Eva’s other arm. “Come on!”
The woman was large and struggling in her impr
actical work heels. She kicked them off and bent down to pick them up. “Ow! There’s prickles an’ stuff!”
Leon looked over his shoulder—the cloud was now only about a hundred feet from them. The banks on either side of the tracks were dotted with people following their lead, scrambling uphill through waist-high weeds.
“Keep moving,” said Leon’s mom, tugging Eva’s arm.
One of the beer lads from train car C joined them—not the one who thought he was on some reality show, but the one who’d told that idiot to shut up.
“Come on, mate,” he said to Leon. “I’ll give you a hand.” He planted his hands against the small of Eva’s back and pushed.
Eva yelped as bristles and nettles and sharp twigs stabbed at her bare feet.
The man managed a grin. “We’ll look like idiots if that’s just the stuffing from some kid’s teddy bear.”
Leon turned to look again and wondered whether the man was right. It actually looked just like that. Not feathers, but soft-toy stuffing.
He turned to watch the dozen or so people who’d chosen to remain on the tracks, either because they too thought it was the stuffing from a toy or pillow, or maybe because they were too tired to react, too bemused by the sight, or too afraid of looking foolish…or, like that young man down there, still utterly convinced that this whole thing was some elaborate reality-TV stunt.
As the cloud began to engulf them, Leon saw the man who was convinced he was being filmed by secret cameras stare at something on the back of his hand. He flapped his hand vigorously as if he were trying to shake off a horsefly.
The feathers are sticky?
The fluff was settling as the light breeze abated and the particles began to seesaw lazily down.
Leon turned back to the task at hand and pushed Eva from behind more insistently. She was puffing and wheezing as the incline steepened. “I can’t go any faster, love,” she gasped.
Grace was hopping up and down at the top, screaming and pointing. “Oh my God! Look! Look!”
Leon’s mom glanced back over her shoulder. Leon looked again. Others down on the tracks were now beginning to do the same thing as the disbelieving city lad: frantically rubbing at their hands, their cheeks, their arms.
Leon met his mother’s eyes.
She nodded. “Come on! For God’s sake, move it!”
“I’m…trying… I’m…” panted Eva.
They were two-thirds of the way up, the incline now at its steepest, and the nettles and brambles thickening.
We’re not going to escape it.
As if to confirm his suspicion, Leon spotted a solitary particle of white fluff lightly settling on the topmost leaf of a tall stinging nettle just ahead of him.
“Shit!”
Leon turned in time to see the man beside him flick his hand. Their eyes met. “It’s nothing,” he said quickly. “Nettle sting.”
They were nearing the top now. Grace was shifting from foot to foot anxiously. “Over there!” she shouted, pointing to something beyond the bank. With a last team effort and a cry of exhaustion from Eva, they emerged from the brambles on to the ridge of the embankment.
“Over there!” said Grace again. “There’s a barn!” Leon looked across a field striped with deep plow lanes and rows of dark-green florets of broccoli, toward a rusty-looking corrugated-iron barn where several tractors were parked.
“OK,” said Leon’s mom. “Let’s head there.”
The others began to make their way slowly across the field. But Leon hesitated. He turned to take one last look down the bank at the people still on the tracks. No one seemed to be sick…yet. But they did all seem to be preoccupied with rubbing furiously at their skin.
He saw the young man, star of his own reality show, sitting down heavily on one of the rails, no longer rubbing or scratching the back of his hand, but instead dipping his head to one side as he closely inspected his hand. The stupid, bemused, Hey, I’ll play along grin was beginning to vanish from his face.
Chapter 22
They were now well away from the curious cloud of fluff as they crossed the field. All the same, they hurried, looking furtively up at the sky as they stepped from plowed rut to plowed rut, winding their way diagonally across the field toward the tractor barn.
Five minutes later, they made it under the corrugated-iron roof, just as a few drops of rain started to patter lightly against it. Eva sat down heavily on a low stack of wooden pallets, her bare feet so caked in mud that they looked like a new pair of misshapen ankle boots.
All of them were struggling to catch their breath. “OhmyGod, ohmyGod,” wheezed Eva over and over again.
“Do you think… Just a sec…” started the young man. He sucked in a breath a couple more times to recover his voice. “Do you think that was it…the virus? Or did we just run from, I dunno, a bunch of pollinating dandelions?”
Leon was slumped against the large, ridged tire of one of the tractors. “I saw it settling on them and sticking to them, like…” He tried to think what it was like. But he couldn’t come up with anything. It was like nothing he’d ever seen.
“I saw that too,” said Grace. She shook her head as if she didn’t want to agree with her brother but couldn’t deny it either. “Those people on the track were rubbing and scratching…like it was starting to hurt or itch them or something.”
The light tapping of raindrops on the corrugated roof increased in tempo and insistency.
“Maybe it was some kind of industrial pollutant,” said Leon’s mom. She looked at her kids hopefully. “A truck carrying something could have rolled over on a highway nearby, or it—”
“Oh…it’s the virus.” Eva spoke with such certainty that everyone turned to look at her. She held out her right arm and twisted her hand palm upward to reveal the slightly paler skin near her wrist. There was a mottled dark patch. “Flake went an’ touched me right there.” She bit her lip. “I was hoping maybe the stinging was a nettle.” She shook her head. “I’ve got it now…haven’t I?”
Leon’s mom instinctively tugged at Grace’s hand and pulled her back a few steps. “I don’t know, Eva.” Leon could see it on Leon’s mom’s face—she did know.
“Have we got it too?” asked Grace. “We were touching her!”
She shook her head firmly. “No. You’re OK, Grace. I’m OK.”
Leon looked at the young man standing beside him. He had one hand tucked behind his back.
“I…look, sorry…but something happened to you too. I saw you shaking your hand back there.”
The man shook his head. “It’s nothing, mate. Really.”
“Show us,” said Leon’s mom.
He wheezed a laugh. “Nothing. A scratch.” His hand remained behind his back.
“Show us,” said Leon’s mom more sharply. She softened her tone quickly. “Please…you have to.”
The young man’s face flickered with shame or pain. He held his hand out. The back of it was mottled red and glistened wetly where a weeping sore was beginning to develop. “Shit,” he hissed angrily. “I’ve got this thing too, right?”
Leon’s mom shook her head. “I don’t know. But…please stay back.”
He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to touch anyone.” He stepped slowly past Leon, crossed the muddy floor and sat down next to Eva. “I think you and me, we’re out of the gang now, love,” he huffed. “Which is bloody typical of my luck.”
He looked up at Leon’s mom and rattled out a humorless laugh. “Figures…I got top six-month salesperson yesterday. That’s what me and my mates were drinking to. My big win.”
Eva was staring at her arm. The mottled pattern on her skin was spreading. The skin itself was glistening and blistering like a burn. She probed it lightly with her finger and the skin gave way and tore open like wet tissue paper, spilling a thin rivulet o
f blood down toward her palm. At the sight of her own blood, her shoulders began to shake and she started sobbing. “This isn’t happening to me.”
“Looks like we’re going to be melting buddies, love,” said the man. He grinned drunkenly and offered her his uninfected hand. “I’m Greg, by the way.”
Bemused, in shock, Eva squeezed his hand in response, then dipped her head down, cradling her face in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” whispered Leon’s mom. “I’m so sorry. I wish we could do something to help.”
“Don’t think there’s much you can do,” said Greg. “It looks like we’re both screwed.”
He sat back and smiled. A pink-stained tear rolled down his cheek. “Actually, do you have anything to drink? My mouth’s dry as shit.”
She shook her head, but then Grace said, “Sure.” She dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a bottle of grape-flavored water.
“Grace! No!”
She stepped forward and was handing it to him before Leon’s mom could intervene. Greg reached out for the bottle, careful to make sure there was no skin contact. “You know…I can’t give this back to you, love?”
She nodded, smiled. “It’s OK. You can keep it.”
“Thanks.” He pulled the lid off and took a deep swig, swilling it around in his mouth before swallowing it. He held the bottle out to Eva. She took a sip, then handed it back.
“How are you feeling?” asked Leon.
Greg frowned and grinned at the same time. “Weird. Dizzy. Kind of like being drunk. Like, first-pint-at-lunchtime drunk, if you know what I mean?”
“Eva?” asked Leon’s mom. “How about you?”
She sat up straight, her eyes firmly closed. “I feel tired. Very tired…like it’s my time. My time…to go.”
She eased herself back on the pallet, so that she was lying down, comfortable, looking up at the corrugated-iron roof and the shards of gray light spearing through its rusted holes. She half smiled. “I think…I think that’s the Lord reaching down for me.”
Greg chuckled at that and lay down beside her. “More like being stoned on a good joint.”