Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 (40 page)

‘He’d like to though, wouldn’t he?’ Jeb had said, with a grin. He smiled more now, Magnus noticed.

It was cold on deck. Magnus rubbed his hands together and blew on them, wondering if there was a pair of gloves tucked somewhere in the cabin below. Something broke the water on his leeward side, huge and black. Magnus swore. He killed the engines, his heart beating a tattoo. ‘Shug!’

The boy must have heard the urgency in his voice because he came up on deck straight away, rubbing his eyes. Magnus was relieved to see that he had kept his life jacket on as he had told him to.

‘Look.’ He pointed at the shining mound of black as it broke the water again. There was another beyond it and another beyond that. Magnus laughed, though there was danger in the sight. ‘Minke whales.’ The boy stood by his side and leaned his body against Magnus. His head rested against Magnus’s ribs. ‘Do you know what they are?’ The boy stared out into the sea. Magnus started to explain, but how did you explain a whale? ‘They’re big sea-beasts. Gentle creatures, harmless.’ Unless they tip the boat, he thought but did not say. ‘We’ll find you a book on them when we get there. I’m betting you’re a good reader.’

He looked at the boy, but Shuggie kept his eyes trained on the school of whales, swimming towards their mating grounds in the North Atlantic, and gave Magnus no clue. The boy had not spoken in the time they had been together, though once or twice Magnus thought he had seen his lips moving when he was playing alone.

‘You speak when you’re ready, son.’ He ruffled the boy’s hair and then, thinking he might be cold, took off his cap and put it on the boy’s head. ‘Most folks talk too much anyway.’

The van had felt quiet without Belle’s chatter and Paul’s attempts to impress her. The roads were quieter too. He and Jeb had stopped three times, lowered the van’s windows and exchanged news that was no news with other survivors.

Most of the world was dead.

There were fires in the cities.

Tribes were beginning to form in the countryside.

Women, guns and food were currency.

It was best to be careful.

Magnus suspected that children might be currency too and so each time they had encountered someone, he had told the boy to hide in the back of the van beneath a blanket. He and Jeb kept their guns loaded and near to hand.

Magnus let out a cheer when they passed the Old Man of Hoy, the skinny finger of rock, narrowed by aeons of wind and rain, pointing tall and steadfast at the sky. The boy caught some of his excitement and jumped up and down on deck, one hand clamped to the too-big hat on his head.

Magnus saluted him. ‘Not far to go now, Cap’n.’ Fear of what he might find when they got there knotted his stomach.

Newcastle had lit up the night sky, a blazing orange glow. Magnus and Jeb had been forced to take a detour and found themselves on a hill above the town. They got out and looked down on the furnace. They were miles away, but the throat-scraping stench of blazing chemicals and charred flesh reached them.

Magnus said, ‘What do you think causes the fires?’

‘Who knows?’ Jeb’s voice was soft. ‘Electrical faults, arson, a power surge. Maybe they’re a good thing. They’ll dispose of a lot of bodies and help clear the place of infection.’ He nodded at the van where the boy lay sleeping. ‘You should wake him up. This is the kind of sight he’ll remember for the rest of his life.’

Magnus shook his head. ‘I think his memory bank is probably full enough for now.’

Jeb said, ‘You could be right. Do you remember the Angel of the North?’ He did not wait for Magnus to reply. ‘I wish we’d been in time to watch it burn. I hated that smug bastard.’

It amazed Magnus that he could still laugh. But they laughed a lot on the journey, even though he felt the loss of Raisha, the loss of the world, heavy and cold, like a stone in his belly.

It was deep in the night when Jeb told Magnus about Cherry. The boy was curled beneath his blanket, asleep in the back of the van and they were driving through the dark, along a narrow country road bordered either side by dry-stane dykes.

Jeb said, ‘Raisha died a good death.’

Magnus kept his voice steady and his hands on the wheel. He stared into the blackness; on the alert for the shining eyes of a rabbit, deer or pack of roaming dogs. ‘I can’t think of it like that.’

‘You should try. She died trying to warn people what Wingate was doing. It was fast too, she didn’t suffer, not like the poor sods he poisoned or people who caught the sweats.’

Magnus was driving without headlamps, for fear of attracting unwanted attention. It was tricky anticipating the road’s turns in the dark. He pressed the brake pedal gently.

‘Do you still miss Cherry?’

Jeb was silent. Magnus wondered if he had overstepped the mark, but then the other man said, ‘Part of me is glad that Cherry and Happy escaped all this, but a bigger part wishes they were here.’ He paused. ‘What happened was my fault. I was sick and tired of the deceit. That’s the real reason I told Cherry I was with the police. I should have known she wouldn’t be able to handle it, but I told her because I thought it would make me feel better.’ He drifted into silence again. Magnus thought the subject was closed, but then Jeb said, ‘It was like she was possessed. She screamed at me to go. I tried to calm her down, but everything I said made things worse. Eventually I went into the bedroom and packed a bag. When I came out, Cherry was sitting on a chair on the balcony with Happy in her arms. I don’t remember what I said, but she turned and looked at me. Her hair was wild. I thought of it today, when we watched the city burning. She looked beautiful, but I was sick to death of everything.

‘Cherry stood up and pushed the chair against the balcony railings. I knew that she wanted me to tell her to stop, but I just stood there, even when she climbed on to the seat, still holding Happy in her arms.’

Magnus kept his eyes on the road. The moon was hidden behind clouds and the night was pitch-black, but he could see the woman in his mind’s eye, her untamed hair catching the breeze as she mounted the chair.

Jeb’s voice thickened. ‘She told me that she was going to jump and I said, ‘Fucking do it then. Let’s see if you can fly.’ Jeb sniffed and Magnus realised that the other man was crying. ‘I turned to go. I honestly didn’t think for a minute that she would do it. She loved that child.’ Jeb took a deep shuddering breath. ‘I was at the sitting-room door when Cherry let out a shout and I heard the chair falling over. When I looked back, she was gone. I told her to jump and she did.’

They drove on in silence. After a while Magnus said, ‘You couldn’t know—’

Jeb interrupted him. ‘I bloody know now though, don’t I?’

They had gone their separate ways the next day. Magnus had wondered if Jeb had waited until he had decided to go, before telling the rest of his story. Or if it had been the other way around and once the tale had been told, Jeb had no choice but to move on.

They had dropped him where he had told them to, on a deserted roadside. Magnus had offered to help him find a vehicle of his own, but Jeb had been determined to walk. ‘I’m not in a rush.’

‘You know where we’ll be, if you need us.’

‘Sure.’ Jeb had shaken Magnus’s hand and then the boy’s. ‘Maybe I’ll see you there some time.’

There was a stile by the road. Jeb climbed it awkwardly with the help of his crutch and crossed into a field where some scraggy-looking sheep were grazing. The sheep raised their heads, but Jeb kept a city boy’s distance from them and they turned their attention back to the grass.

Magnus sat Shuggie on the bonnet of the van and they watched Jeb limp away. His jacket and gun were twenty-first century, but his receding figure might have come from an earlier age. They waited until he passed over the brow of a hill and then Magnus helped the boy down and they continued their journey.

Magnus steered the boat for one of the natural coves where he and Hugh had often landed. The sands were holiday-brochure white. He sank anchor, helped the boy into the dinghy and rowed them towards shore, jumping out when they reached the shallows and pulling the rubber craft with the boy in it up on to the beach. He reached for Shuggie, but he was standing up in the dinghy, pointing at the sands beyond.

Magnus turned and saw a tall, slim woman with
café au lait
skin and cropped hair, standing on the dunes. She had a rifle in one hand and was holding the collar of a large dog with the other. Magnus held up his hands to show that he was unarmed and then turned and lifted Shug from the boat. They walked hand in hand across the sands to where she stood. Magnus said, ‘I’m Magnus McFall and this is Shuggie.’

The woman had a London accent. ‘I’m Stevie Flint.’ She nodded at the dog. ‘And this is Pistol.’ Her expression gave no hint of how she felt about the arrival of new survivors.

Magnus said, ‘I’m looking for Peggy and Rhona McFall. Do you know if they’re on the islands?’

Stevie’s eyes met his. ‘I’m sorry, they’re not here.’

Magnus looked at the ground. The boy’s hand tightened in his and Magnus smiled at him, to show things were okay, although they were not. ‘Are there any McFalls that you know of?’

She held his gaze. ‘I know everyone on the island, there’s no one of that name.’ They stood there for a moment, the tall sea grasses on the dunes bending to the wind. Stevie said, ‘I’ve got a van. If you come with me we can find you a change of clothing and something warm to eat.’

Magnus would have liked to have filled his pockets with stones and walked back into the water, but he had the boy to think of and so he followed her, over the dunes, towards the road.

Acknowledgements

The Black Death may have been named for the way its symptoms affected its victims’ bodies, or it may have been so called because of its scope and dreadfulness. It is impossible to know true figures for how many people died, but it is generally agreed that the first wave of the pandemic (1340–1400) killed at least a third of the population of Europe. The Black Death was a democratic killer. The young, the old, the poor and the rich, the educated and uneducated, religious and irreligious were all at risk. Everyone who survived had lost someone they were close to and had lived with the imminent prospect of their own death.

The first wave of the plague pandemic left the world altered. There were more jobs, higher wages and increased social mobility. Some people with no expectations of ever inheriting anything became wealthy as a result of the deaths of successive relatives. A lack of manpower meant that women were able to access economic and social freedoms previously denied to them. The arts were also changed; inspired by the knowledge that death is everywhere. I am fascinated by the survivors of the Black Death. How must it have felt to still be alive in such a changed world?

The Bubonic Plague still exists in parts of China and America. Its final outbreak in Glasgow, the city where I live, was in 1907 and was quickly dealt with. We need not fear another mass outbreak of the disease. But scientists are agreed that there will be another pandemic at some point in the near future. What it will be, when it will hit, and how many will die is uncertain. All we can be sure of is that it will come.

Thanks are due to several people who helped me during the writing of this book. Roland Philipps and Eleanor Birne of John Murray have both been enthusiastic supporters of the
Plague Times
trilogy. They have given me invaluable care and editorial advice.

My agent, David Miller of Rogers, Coleridge and White, cast his beady eye over the manuscript several times and discussed it with insight and good sense. He has saved me from devastating geographical mistakes and much more.

As usual I have neglected my friends and family in favour of books and the blank page. Thanks once again to them for sticking with me.

Special thanks are due to my partner, the writer Zoë Strachan who has been living surrounded by plagues and pandemics for a few years now. She read this book at the early and later stages and it is much improved for her rigour and expertise.