Cities of the Dead: Winters of Discontent Read online

  Banchory, Scotland - Day 57

  Clennan stepped out of the shower and toweled off, staring at his skinny body in the bathroom mirror. His New Year’s resolution to go to the health club and put some muscles on his body had so far resulted in nothing noticeable. Maybe he needed more protein in his diet?He walked into the adjacent bedroom and pulled some underwear from the dresser, than sat down on the edge of the bed to put on some socks.

  “Elyse, it’s time to get up,” he said into the room, his wife still under the covers behind him.

  Nothing. She’d been running a high fever and vomiting the night before, and had gone to bed early, talking nonsense. Her body temperature had gotten so hot at one point that he had left the bed for the couch in the living room. On a normal weekday morning, she would already have been up, drinking coffee and getting ready for work at the flower shop. But he’d had to make the pot this morning, and the mug he’d set down on the nightstand on her side of the bed hadn’t yet been touched.

  “Elyse, honey, do you want me to call your father and tell him you’re sick and won’t be going in today?” he said, turning on the bed and gently rustling her lower back.

  Again, nothing. He pulled the covers down and gasped: bloody mucus slicked her chin and pooled on the pillow near her mouth; her skin was a dull, dry flaky gray and her hair was matted down with drying sweat. He shook her gently, again.

  “Elyse, honey, are you okay? Can you hear me?” he said, touching her cheek and feeling a change in the sagacity of her skin tone, her body not radiating heat. Her chest didn’t rise and fall with breathing.

  “Elyse, please wake up,” he said, panic froming in his chest. He rolled her onto her back, her body limp and lifeless.

  He bowed his head, his mouth trembled and hot tears let down across his face before he began to sob and weep.

  There was a vicious influenza going about the world at the moment, part of a global pandemic, but he hadn’t thought it had made it’s way into Scotland, yet. He looked down at his wife of nine years and stroked her brown hair softly, wishing he’d been able to say “good-bye” rather than only “good-night.” It hadn’t occurred to him that death could steal her from him so quickly.

  He pulled the covers over her body, dressed quickly and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. He called emergency services and was surprised he had to wait several minutes before his call was picked up. After taking his information, he was told there would likely be a lengthy wait for anyone to respond because the contagion had struck the town hard in the previous thirty-six hours, and the city’s resources were stretched thin.

  He slipped his mobile phone into his pocket and stared at the photos of him and Elyse that hung framed on the wall, images of them in Spain and Italy and Florida. They hadn’t had children, so they traveled. This year, Greece was on the docket. Tears coursed down his face and his jaw trembled as her thought of life without her. He walked across the room and pulled a whisky bottle off the shelf, figuring he’d fortify a cup of coffee when he glanced through the window and saw Rory MacMiller hurriedly packing his car, his wife buckling their two young children into the backseat.

  Clennan walked outside and across his modest front lawn.

  “Hey, Rory, what’s the rush?” Clennan asked.

  “Time to get the fuck out of here,” Rory said. “The infection’s sweeping town and you’d be best to get you and Elyse out now, too.”

  “I can’t do that. Elyse died during the night.”

  Rory paused after setting a canvas duffle in the back of the car. “Oh, my god, Clennan, that’s awful. I’m so sorry,” Rory said. “Was it the infection?”

  Clennan gave a brief nod.

  “But, still, you’d best consider getting out, now. It’ll be complete pandemonium within a couple of hours, so a head start before everyone else gets the idea would be in order,” Rory said.

  Clennan’s mobile phone began ringing in is pocket, so he fished it out and wandered back toward his house as he checked the display.

  “Tavish, what’s up?”

  “You seen the telly?”

  “The news about the contagion?”

  “Yeah, that.”

  “Just a little. Why?”

  “You and Elyse need to come meet me. Erskine and Mary are already on their way, then we’re going to head out to my summer cottage and wait this thing out. You don’t want to be in a city with this bug going around,” Tavish said.

  “I wish I could, but Elyse died during the night and I’m waiting for emergency services to respond.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the connection, then, “I’m sorry to here that. She was a good woman. But if she died of this plague, you’re going to need to get out of there right now. Just jump in your car and come here.”

  "I can’t do that, Tavish. I have to be here when the authorities come for her body.”

  Another pause. “Clennan, you can’t do that. Emergency services everywhere are overwhelmed, they won’t be coming for hours, if ever, if this outbreak is as bad as it sounds on Twitter. Get home, pack a bag, and get a move on.”

  Clennan stared around the neighborhood, bewildered at what was happening. What was happening? How had this bug caught the authorities unaware? He walked back to his house and sat down on the sofa, the television still going on about the sudden onset of the plague and urging people to stay indoors while the professionals dealt with maintaining order. The news presenters tried to maintain a sense of order and calm in their reports, but Clennan could tell whatever was going on had overwhelmed the government’s ability to respond. If they couldn’t send an ambulance for Elyse, if Rory’s family was fleeing, then the government wouldn’t be coming any time soon.

  He suddenly felt alone, lost, in a way he’d never felt before. His friends were heading out to the country to wait the plague out, but why? Why didn’t they trust the National Health Service to bring things under control? Not that he had any great faith in the government’s health system, but it was something meant to combat such an epidemic. If nobody trusted it, then what did that mean for society? His mobile phone twitched in his hand and made a tone. A text from Erskine.

  “just heard from Tav re: Elyse sorry that you’ve lost her

  you’ve got to get out of there now

  you know the people who die from this bug turn into fucking zombies don’t you

  GET OUT NOW”

  He didn’t want to believe that. Of course he’d seen the videos online of the infected, but it was almost always shaky mobile phone camerawork from too far away to see anything definitive. The only thing that seemed for certain at this point was that the plague was worldwide, fast-acting and deadly.

  He hated the thought of leaving Elyse lying in bed, dead, waiting for the authorities to come for her body. Clennan went into the bedroom and pulled out his nylon gym duffle from the closet and began stuffing it with extra clothing and grooming supplies.

  And then he heard the springs in the mattress squeak, the hair on his arms and neck suddenly electrified. He turned and stepped out of the bathroom, watching as his wife’s head lolled on the pillow, rolling back and forth, her eyes still closed. Maybe he had been wrong and she hadn’t died?

  “Elyse?” he said softly, stepping sideways to the foot of the bed. “Are you okay?”

  Her head bent up from the pillow and the eyelids slid open, her eyeballs initially twitching back and forth before coming to rest on Clennan. They were no longer green, but a mass of bloodshot whites around an inky dark circle, betraying rage behind them.

  Clennan felt a deep sadness as he took a step backward, watching as his dead - undead? - wife struggled in the sheets as she tried to get off the bed. She thrashed weakly for a few seconds and then rolled out of the bed onto the floor, still caught up in the bedding. He stared in horror as she shakily stood up, her lolling on her neck, her eyes fixing on him but not seeing him. Not seeing him as Clennan, her husband, but as something else. And then she snar
led in a tone that turned Clennan cold, a sound so angry and vicious he could scarcely believe it had come from his wife. She stumbled a step toward him and tripped in the bedding, slamming into the wall on her side of the bed. She growled lowly as she righted herself and tried another step, the bedding again her undoing as she fell onto the bed and small stream of dark fluid trickled from her mouth.

  Clennan stared for a moment more as Elyse fought her way back to her feet. And then he grabbed the handle of the bedroom door, tears welling in his eyes.

  “Good-bye, Elyse,” he said as he backed through the bedroom doorway, his voice cracking. “I loved you more than you could have known, and I’m going to miss you for the rest of my life.”

  And then he pulled the door closed. He could hear her banging on the walls of the room as he walked through the to the spare room and sat down at the computer in it - a room awaiting a child that had never come - and typed up a short message in 24-point Courier New font warning of his wife’s condition and location in the house. He read it, highlighted everything and applied bold to it for emphasis.

  He taped the note to the front door and looked around at the early morning quiet of the neighborhood, how ordinary it looked and sounded. Birds were chirping. It was hard to imagine a pandemic had just spread through town and that his friends were already on the way to a safer haven.

  He pressed his car clicker and unlocked the door, sliding in and starting it up, all the while staring through the windshield at his house, wondering when he would return to it, what would become of Elyse inside it. And then he heard the thundering of a half-dozen Army Wildcat Mk1 helicopters as they flew by overhead, banking sharply and descending as they approached downtown. That couldn’t be good, he thought, backing onto the street and driving away from his home. If the Army was arriving in force this early into Day 1 in Banchory, then the government had already determined things were much worse than it was letting on. But why was the government responding with the Army? What on earth could it do to fight a pandemic?

  He knew he was going to have to drive fast.

  ***

  A SLIM CHANCE AT A NARROW ESCAPE