Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 (13 page)

‘Mike, are you okay?’ he heard a voice ask. The answer was low and unintelligible and the same voice said, ‘Do you think you’ve got it?’ The answer must have been a negative because the voice said, ‘I think you’re wrong, Mike. I think you’ve caught it. You’re boiling up, man. You should have told me.’ The voice sounded young and full of more regret than a young voice should be able to hold. It had a Liverpool accent, both soft and harsh, like a war ballad. ‘You should have told me, Mike,’ it repeated. Whatever Mike whispered next made the voice sadder. ‘I’m sorry, Mike,’ it said. ‘Sorry, man.’

Jeb must have guessed what was going to happen next because a shudder ran through him. There was the sound of a gun being cocked and someone – Mike – shouted something that was all fear and panic, not a word at all, but unmistakable in its plea. There was a crack of gunfire, a flash in the dark, brighter than the lights on the gun sights that had led the men there. The soft Liverpudlian voice said, ‘Sorry, mate.’

There was a moment of not quite silence, a sound of rustling and Magnus guessed the soldier was stripping his dead companion of useful kit, then the light resumed its stare down the tunnel. It puddled inches from where their feet stood, side by side in the recess.

They were dead men. Jeb’s penknife was a child’s toy, effective against a half-starved convict, but useless against an armed professional. Magnus wished that he could pray. Now was the time to commend themselves to their maker.

‘Don’t worry, lads.’ The voice was stronger, as if the act of killing had fortified it. ‘I’ve had enough. You go your way, and I’ll go mine.’ The soldier paused as if he were waiting for a reply, but speaking would give away their position, and Jeb and Magnus kept their silence. ‘Okay.’ The voice sounded at a loss. ‘I guess there’s nothing much to be said, except that I’ve got a gun for each hand now, so go the other way, if you want to keep on going.’

There was another pause, and then the footsteps resumed their contact with the gravel, fading into the distance. Magnus and Jeb stayed where they were, upright in the open recess, like mannequins in a display case, rooted to the spot until long after the sound of the soldier’s retreat had vanished.

Seventeen

They travelled north through the dark, side by side, in silence. Magnus was glad of Jeb’s presence. It was good to know that there was someone else alive, even if it was a man who knew how to kill quickly and who had been locked up for crimes unknown. Magnus would have liked to talk. Silence allowed too much space for his thoughts, which were all of home: his mother and sister, his cousins, even his brother-in-law. Davie was not a bad guy, just a wee bit too concerned with his own comfort for Magnus’s liking. Rhona ran around after him as if it were the 1950s and Davie a limbless invalid.
They might all be dead
,
a cruel voice whispered in his head,
dead and no one there to bury them
. He started to sing again, softly under his breath:

Scots, wha hae wi Wallace bled,

Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,

Welcome tae yer gory bed . . .

‘Shut up.’ Jeb sounded weary. ‘We don’t know who’s out here. And you’ve got a crap voice.’

Magnus had always finished his act with a song, like the old comics on the circuit used to. Stanley Baxter, Frankie Howerd, Morecambe and Wise: those boys had known what they were doing and it was all there for the taking if you watched their acts. Not the jokes themselves, time had moved on and they had dated, but their patter, the way they moved, the way they were with the audience. They had honed their techniques over decades of performing live, before they got their big breaks. He would watch them late at night on YouTube, the screen of his computer glowing in a dimly lit hotel room, a miniature of Famous Grouse in a tooth-mug by the bed. He wondered if it was all gone, hotel rooms, the Internet, YouTube, Famous Grouse . . .

I fought at land, I fought at sea,

At hame I fought my Auntie, O;

But I met the Devil an’ Dundee,

On the Braes o’ Killiekrankie, O.

A hand slammed against his back and Magnus stumbled forward, only just managing to avoid falling flat against the track. ‘What the fuck?’

‘I told you to shut up.’

Magnus had not realised that he was singing. Jeb’s voice brought him back to himself, back to ratty blackness and hunger.

‘Who put you in charge?’

‘You did.’

Magnus tightened his fists, but he was too tired for another fight. ‘Soon as we get out of here we split.’

‘Why wait?’

‘Because this tunnel only has two directions and I’m not going back, not after walking all this way.’

‘Reckon I could make you.’

Reckon you could
, the soft voice in Magnus’s head whispered.

‘I won’t sing if it annoys you that much . . .’ Magnus stopped mid-sentence.

They had been stumbling like prisoners on an enforced march, along a curve in the tunnel, one or other of them occasionally touching the damp wall for guidance. Now they had reached the turn of the bend. A faint light shone ahead.

‘Shit.’ Jeb’s voice was as soft as a bird’s wing flapping into flight.

Fear cramped in Magnus’s belly. ‘What do you think it is?’

‘Something.’ The light was too far away for it to illuminate their features, but Magnus could hear the shrug in Jeb’s voice. ‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t like it.’

‘Thank fuck for that. At least it means you won’t feel a song coming on.’

Magus ignored the jibe. ‘It could be anything.’

‘Light at the end of the tunnel, that’s meant to be a good thing, isn’t it?’

Jeb’s voice was resolute, but Magnus thought he could hear a shiver of apprehension in it. Magnus said, ‘That soldier’s probably clear by now. There’s nothing to stop us going back.’

‘If you don’t mind being a poof.’

It was strange how the darkness Magnus had feared had become the thing to hold on to, the light something to be afraid of.

Jeb said, ‘I had a girlfriend that was into hippy shit.’ It was the first time he had mentioned anything about his life before prison and Magnus found himself paying attention. ‘She used to say, put the bad stuff behind you and go forward. She was right about that. Always go forward, never back.’

‘Ever gone too far?’

Jeb’s laugh was deep and humourless. ‘Far too far.’

He started to walk on, his feet crunching against the gravel and after a moment Magnus followed him. It was like a near-death experience, walking the long dark tunnel towards a pinprick of light.

‘I keep expecting a voice to tell me to
turn back, it’s not my time yet
,’ Magnus whispered.

‘Be nice to wake up and find out it was all a dream.’ Something about the light in the darkness seemed to have made Jeb more confiding.

Magnus said, ‘That’d be grand, right enough.’

He imagined himself in his old room on the farm, eleven or twelve years old. Woken by the sound of the kitchen door shutting as his father came in from early-morning milking, the rattle of metal on metal in the kitchen below, as his mother set the pans on the range, ready to make breakfast. His loathed school uniform hanging from the peg on the back of his bedroom door. Hugh still alive; knowing they would meet later at the turn in the bend where the school bus stopped. Nothing special, just an ordinary school day. Tears were running down his cheeks. Magnus let them take their course until the light threatened to touch his face and then he rubbed them away with the back of his hand.

It was a subway train, sitting tight against the walls of the tunnel, its windows illuminated from within. Jeb slid along the side of the train.

‘Check this out.’

Magnus followed. It was what he had wanted to avoid, being constricted between a subway train and a tunnel wall, another rock and a hard place.

‘We can go through it.’ Jeb pointed to a smashed window. He took off his jacket. ‘Give us a leg-up.’

Magnus helped to boost Jeb up. Jeb slung his jacket over the jagged edge of the broken window and slid inside, head first. It was a tight fit and he kicked his legs as he wriggled through. He stuck his head out.

‘You coming?’

‘What’s it like?’

‘More of the same.’

Magnus muttered, ‘More of the same.’

He took a deep breath and climbed on to the side of the carriage. Jeb reached out and dragged Magnus through. The jacket was still draped across the broken glass, but Magnus felt it scrape against his belly as he slid inside the compartment. They would have to be careful. Scrapes and cuts could turn septic and there was no longer the guarantee of a friendly doctor armed with antibiotics, ready to patch them up.

The brightness of the carriage hurt Magnus’s eyes, but it was mercifully empty. Had he ever been in a completely empty London Underground carriage before? Maybe in the dim light of half-dawn after a heavy post-show session, but then his senses would be dulled by drink and tiredness, the taste of sulphate coating the back of his throat.

‘You said it was more of the same.’

Jeb had put his jacket back on and was already starting down the carriage to the connecting doors and the next compartment. He glanced back at Magnus.

‘What would you call it?’

‘I thought you meant more bodies.’

Jeb opened the door and stepped through.

A thin man was slumped in the corner of the compartment, his face hidden by long dreadlocks that had fallen forward, obscuring his features.

Jeb said, ‘Be careful what you wish for.’

The carriage smelled like long-ignored refuse from some downscale grill house. Meaty leavings that had been locked in a tin shed for days in the middle of a heatwave.

Magnus pulled the neck of his T-shirt up over his mouth and nose.

‘It took some people suddenly,’ Jeb said. A phone rested on the seat beside the dead man. He picked it up and tossed it to Magnus. ‘ET phone home.’

‘Don’t you want it?’

The mobile was turned off. Magnus switched it on, wincing at the sound of its wake-up tune: loud and stupidly melodic. The battery was almost full, but as he had expected there was no signal. He glanced at the log. The last call had been two days ago, to
Mum
. It had gone unanswered. Magnus turned the mobile off again and stowed it in his jeans pocket.

Jeb was at the door to the next carriage. ‘Guess you feel sorry for me. The end of the world and there’s no one I’d like to call.’

Magnus caught the door as it was about to slam shut and followed Jeb through.

‘Who said it was the end of the world?’

‘Looks like it, from where I’m standing.’ Jeb’s voice was belligerent. As if he had just begun to comprehend the magnitude of what was happening and was working his way up to expressing it. The next carriage was empty too. A tatty copy of
Metro
lay crumpled on the floor. Jeb picked it up and shoved it at Magnus. ‘Here you go. You like reading the news.’

The newspaper felt thin and insubstantial, a half edition. Its headline was to the point:
SWEATS KILLS BILLIONS
.

‘We’re not the only ones who’ve survived.’ Magnus folded the
Metro
into a baton and slid it into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘A bunch of lads left the prison with us, and there were plenty of soldiers about the jail. London’s an overcrowded shithole.’ He had loved the city, loved the anonymity it conferred, loved that he could walk for miles without anyone hailing him to ask his business and tell him theirs. ‘It was bound to get hit hard. Things will be different in the countryside. I bet the sweats have hardly touched the islands. People are always behind the times up there.’

No they’re not
, the voice Magnus feared whispered in his head.
Once maybe, but not any more
. Orkney had Internet and drugs, a giant Tesco. There was no more relying on catalogues for clothing. Girls had the latest fashions delivered to their door and when they were dressed for a night out you would be hard pushed to tell them from Londoners.

Surely someone on the council would have got wise and set up a quarantine zone, he consoled himself. As soon as it became clear what was happening they were bound to have halted trains, flights and ferries, switched off the constant stream of tourists.

Money
, the cruel voice whispered.
All those hotels, B&Bs and restaurants; the cafés, craft shops, excursions and galleries.

The carriages were mostly empty, but occasionally they passed bodies lying where they had died. ‘It’s like going to sleep,’ Magnus’s mother had said to him of death. ‘You close your eyes and don’t wake up.’

His father had been caught in the combine, his flesh hacked, his bones and organs crushed. The doctor said death had been instantaneous, but Magnus had dreamed about the moment his father finished clearing the blockage in the combine’s blades. There must have been a shit-sinking second when he knew, as the machine growled back to life, that he had neglected to take the keys from the ignition.