Fever (Flu) (13 page)

It reminded Colin of a local history book that Aunt Bell had once shown him. There was a picture with lines of women standing rigidly at the factory, operating sewing machines. “See that one on the left,” Bell said, beaming proudly, “that was me.” And even when Colin looked closely, he still couldn’t tell her apart from the forty others in the picture with identical uniforms and hairstyles; their clock-in cards just visible by the door in the far left of the picture.

Colin was pulled out of his thoughts when the door crashed open.

“Okay, everyone stay cool!” yelled a thin man with tattoos and a shaved head.

He stepped through the door, brandishing a revolver.

He grabbed the security guard, the big man reaching for his own weapon.

“Don’t even think about it”, Tattoo spat, forcing the guard to put his gun down and lie on the floor.

Tattoo moved towards Colin, pushed him aside. His eyes were swollen and blackened, like the very thought of sleep was long forgotten. He seemed wired, waving the revolver at pretty much everyone who was looking at him until he reached the till.

The till operator panicked, slamming the drawer open, offering handfuls of money, eyes fixed squarely on the revolver.

But Tattoo laughed. “No cash. That shit’s useless,” he said.

He looked to Colin, then down at the basket in his hands. “Give me that,” he said. “All your food. Give it to me now!”

But Colin stalled, thinking of Aunt Bell, thinking of the soup.

Tattoo grabbed the basket roughly, pointing the gun straight in Colin’s face. “Don’t be a dumbfuck,” he said.

But Colin
was
a dumbfuck. He held on tight, staring into the other man’s eyes, begging, pleading, challenging.

Tattoo increased his grip on the basket handle. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “Not your day...”

He head butted Colin then pulled the basket away.

Colin fell to the floor. Reached for his nose, staring at the others who stood like useless statues around him.

Tattoo waved his revolver in one final warning and then turned to leave.

“Please,” Colin said, still on the floor.

Tattoo stopped.

“Just the soup. The mushroom soup. It’s for my aunt. She’s dying...”

The tattooed man laughed. It was a hollow laugh with a distinct absence of humour. It rang throughout the shop like breaking glass. He shook his head, muttered to himself then fumbled in the basket. He broke one of the tins of soup from the six pack and lobbed it.

Colin caught it.

He looked up in gratitude, but the tattooed man was gone.

Vince was growling.

Colin swore under his breath and drummed nervously on his steering wheel.

An accident on the Antrim Road stalled the light traffic. Two cars blocked the road, one having collided with the other.

A woman sat in the passenger seat of the offending car. She was screaming. From his vantage point, Colin noticed the head of the driver dipped forward to pierce the shattered windscreen.

The second car, the one they had driven into, was strangely empty.

Colin pulled up behind the two cars.

None of the other traffic stopped, instead mounting the pavement to pass.

This bothered Colin.

The incident in the Spar was still fresh in his mind; how food was seized from his very hands, yet no one offered him anything from their own baskets. He’d left the shop empty-handed, save for the single tin of mushroom soup—a mercy-throw from the man who’d robbed him.

Ironically, the tattooed man’s fucked-up benevolence proved the most selfless act Colin had seen all day. And now, as he watched each car pass, ignoring a woman in pain as she screamed out for help, Colin could feel nothing but anger.

His hand hesitated on the car door handle. He reached into his coat pocket and took out his phone. He found the same message from before: NETWORK UNAVAILABLE. Colin swore then tried his luck anyway, tapping in 999.

It rang dead, as he expected.

“Fuck,” Colin said.

The sound of the woman’s screams continued to haunt him.

He reached for the car door handle once more.

He wasn’t good with this sort of thing. The sight of blood terrified him. He couldn’t even get through an episode of
Holby City
without breaking a sweat.

Sighing, Colin stepped out of his car.

He left Vince revving, the familiar and healthy murmur somehow heartening.

From his new vantage point, Colin could see the woman’s car sat one third on the edge of the road, one third against a lamppost and one third up the rear of the still, dead car in front.

The screams kept coming. Colin felt his stomach knot as he began to imagine just what horrors lay ahead.

He made his approach, still looking around for someone more suited to this type of thing. Someone older, wiser or less tanned.

He pulled his Gucci sunglasses from his hair, feeling very aware of himself. This wasn’t the time for accessorising. This was serious shit,
real life
shit.

Colin reached the passenger side of the car, noticing how many tiny shards of glass lay on the ground. Most of them were stained. A reddish-pink that reminded Colin of strawberry syrup.

But there was something else down there. Something that looked like overstretched elastic...

Colin swallowed hard, not wanting to face the woman; her screams now spent, giving way to laboured, wheezy breathing. He was right beside the car window now. He was hoping to glance quickly then look away. But she was waiting for him, reaching from the car to grab his arm.

She went to say something, but the words were drowning in the frothy, mucus-filled blood gurgling from her mouth. It suddenly dawned on Colin what the elastic was on the ground: it was her entire top lip. Her two remaining teeth protruded from under her nose like tusks. They looked longer than he expected, more horrific than he could have imagined.

Two heavily bloodshot eyes, one semi-mangled by the piece of glass embedded in the socket, stared at him. A constant stream of red tears streamed from the bad eye, the good eye blinking constantly as if trying to dispel something unreachable.

Her hand searched Colin’s arm, finding his hand. She sputtered something, yet again it was indecipherable. Colin screamed. He couldn’t help it.

He wanted to go. Tried to pull his hand away, but she held firm, her vice-like grip cutting into his wrist like little razors.

Colin tried to avoid her gaze, looking instead to the clearly dead man in the driver’s seat. Part of his head was embedded within the remainder of the windscreen. The rest spilled out onto the bonnet.

Colin started to heave, managing to dip his head to throw up on the ground instead of over the woman’s face. He jerked his hand away from her grip, stooping by the car to finish retching.

When he stood up again, wiping his mouth before turning back to face her, it was too late. Her good eye stared dead ahead, as if there was someone important coming towards her. Her head rested against the car’s doorframe.

She was gone.

Colin ran a hand through his hair, squinting against the sun. He looked out onto the road, where a steady stream of traffic continued to pass by, each car filled with people only too eager to stare at him. He wanted to shout at them, scream at them like the dying woman. Why had they left him to deal with this on his own?!

He began to imagine the lives of the couple lying dead in the car, of how their family, maybe even young kids, could be waiting for them somewhere. He thought of reaching in, searching for a wallet or purse, checking for a number to ring, then remembered, with some relief, how his phone wouldn’t work.

Turning, knowing nothing else to do, Colin simply walked away.

The gruff chorus of traffic continued to fill his ears. As he drew closer to his own car, he could hear Vince’s engine still running smoothly.

The ambulance was the first thing Colin saw as he pulled onto his street. The second thing to strike him was how everyone standing around the ambulance wore protective yellow suits.

“Oh God, no,” he breathed.

Colin pulled up on the pavement, opening the car door. He left it hanging as he ran towards the house.

A tall, suited figure stepped forward to block him. He wore breathing apparatus, an oxygen tank strapped to his back.

“Can’t go in there,” his muffled voice came.

“My aunt...” Colin yelled, trying to push past. The suit struck him square on the chest.

Colin fell back onto the garden path. He pulled himself up.

The suit now held a police baton. “I said you can’t go in there,” the voice came again.

Colin stared into the suited man’s face, trying to find some glimpse of humanity. He found nothing, save his own reflection in the mask’s visor.

A sound from inside the house distracted him. A mechanical sound. Like the sound of a drill.

Colin stared back at the visor in front of him.

“Please! Tell me what’s going on!” he said.

Another sound, this one more fluid or gassy, the two sounds working their way, in disharmony, around the house.

Colin pushed forward, but again the yellow suit pushed him back, this time swinging the baton to connect with Colin’s head. The blow seemed to vibrate right through his skull, and he fell straight to the ground.

For a moment Colin lay still, dazed, the sounds swelling around him. When he looked up, he found not one but two masked heads staring back.

One of them bent down.

“Now look,” this one said, and immediately Colin could tell it was a different voice than before, “Your aunt is infected. She’s not even conscious. I know this is difficult, but we’ve had to quarantine her. The house is a no-go area.”

Colin tried to process the information but failed. The drilling noise continued making it even more difficult to focus. His head was starting to throb. It felt warm and soft at one side. Colin reached into his hair, finding dampness. When he brought his hand back, it was bloodied.

The second suit called over yet another suit. This new suit attended to Colin’s head, dressing the wound.

The friendlier suit continued to talk to him, battling to be heard over the noise.

“Have you somewhere you can go?” he asked. “Friends, family...”

Colin looked back towards the house, his home for the last year. Aunt Bell was in there, and she wasn’t coming out. Ever
.
The full reality of that dawned on him.

“Look, for what it’s worth,” the kinder suit said, placing his arm onto Colin’s shoulder, “I’m sorry...”

The sounds died down, more suits leaving the house, industrial gear in their hands.

Colin noticed metal sheets where his Aunt’s hideously mauve curtains used to hang.

The gentle suit stood facing Colin, as if trying to hide what was going on in the house. With the sun behind him, Colin could see the man’s eyes through the visor. His face looked tired, sad. His apologies were heartfelt, and in the moment that meant something to Colin.

“What’s your name?” he heard himself say, because somehow that was important, somehow it was vital to know the name of the man who called time on his Aunt’s life and locked up his home.

“George,” the suit replied. “Sergeant George Kelly. I’m a police officer.”

Colin sat in his car, staring out the window.

He was parked at the side of the Antrim Road, not knowing what the hell to do with himself.

He tried his phone again. It refused to work, so he slammed it into the seat beside him.

He began to cry.

His tears flowed unchecked, as if in allowing them, in welcoming them, Colin was honouring his Aunt Bell. She was a traditional, hard-working woman. A proper church burial would have meant the world to her. For those bastards to cage her up like that, without so much as a prayer...

Colin’s eye caught sight of the tin of soup, rolling on the floor under Vince’s passenger seat.

He thought of everything that had happened to him today: the Spar, the tattooed man with the revolver, the woman screaming then dying in the car as he watched, the yellow suits, Aunt Bell. The world was falling apart, yet no one wanted to admit it, no one wanted to shout out unless they were forced to, unless they were trapped and beat, dying or in desperate need of help. Society and every stitch that wove its fabric together were unravelling like a cheap sweater. And Colin could only watch, stand by helplessly, too sensitive to ignore it like all the others, yet too much of a fucking homo to do anything about it.

He thought of Vicky.

Until that point, Colin hadn’t known where he should go. He would have been happy just to start the engine, pull onto the road. Turn corners and find new roads. To motor on (as Aunt Bell used to say when each new day greeted her, along with her relentless pains:
We’ll just have to motor on, won’t we?
) until Vince ran out of juice. But now, he had a destination.

“Vicky!” he said, as if the word was magical. “Vicky, Vicky, Vicky.”

Vicky sat in her small bedsit on the Stranmillis Road, staring at the television. She was still in her bathrobe. She couldn’t remember getting up or if she’d taken a shower. The news report was a repeat, one she’d probably watched at least twice that day already.

Since closing up shop, she’d shut herself indoors. As much as she didn’t want to admit it, Vicky had no one to go to. And that was a shame; the end of the world should be something a girl shares with someone special.

Her bedsit was a mess. Glasses and cups—some with half-drunk coffee, others with her tipple of choice, Merlot—lingered on the window sill.

Outside was quiet. She heard random screaming coming from another flat across the way, but little else.

Her phone was dead, yet the television still soldiered on.

Another safety announcement was running, several actors in a lift dealing with the outrageous attack of another’s sneeze. A pious voice narrated, instructing the masses to blow their noses and then dispose of the tissue in an ‘appropriately marked bin’. These ‘appropriately marked bins’ were all around the city, the voice said.