This Plague of Days (Omnibus): Seasons 1-3 Page 14

  In a converted industrial building off Riding House Street, Pete Grimsby had a fever. He told his family about the woman in red biting him. His sister-in-law cleaned the wound and bandaged his neck. The children were fascinated with the injury at first. As he told and retold the story (leaving out the part about kissing the beautiful woman’s neck) the kids shrank away, clutching their toys, their stuffed animals and each other.

  His older brother, Leland, insisted he take to his bed. However, as soon as Pete agreed, Leland locked the door behind him and taped the crack at the base of the door closed. A moment later, Pete heard the rustle of plastic as his big brother secured the sheeting to the door frame. “Just in case!” he called.

  “I’ll suffocate, Lee!”

  “Breathe out the window all you want, you fool. I just don’t want you breathing our way. Settle down and we’ll get you some soup to ride this thing out. People get sick of this thing. They get well, too. Don’t be a git about it.”

  He peed in a bucket and his piss was hot. An hour later, the thirst hit him. It was an overpowering thirst and he clamped his mouth on a bathroom faucet. Pete drank and drank but couldn’t seem to slake the dryness. He went back and forth from the sink to the toilet, drinking and pissing for so long he got bored of it. He yelled through the door, “I think that biter gave me diabetes!”

  “Piss off and get some sleep! You’ll be alright in the morning!” Leland yelled. “This is embarrassing. You’re being a baby!”

  The fever took Pete down until he became too weak to get up from the toilet. He slumped there, pants around his ankles and slipping into a dream. He saw the woman in red again. She had long fangs. He thought she must be a vampire, but somehow he knew she didn’t just want blood. She wanted meat.

  In the dream, he called out to her for help. She knew something he needed to know. At the pub, she’d said something about no more worries. He held to that idea now, worrying at it but coming no closer to understanding.

  The woman in red called back to him, inviting him to dinner.

  “But I hate you,” he told her. Even in sleep, his empty stomach answered her with a rumbling, gnawing hunger.

  “You won’t care about anything soon. You worried about money and your job and your health and what made you sad and what might someday make you happy. No more…just take one bite. One bite is best for now.”

  When Pete Grimsby awoke, he wasn’t Pete Grimsby anymore. He did not worry about money and comforts. The torn flesh at his neck was nothing more than an annoyance. He didn’t have a coherent thought in his head. His only concern was feeding himself. Nothing was left of Pete Grimsby but overwhelming hunger. He had no more conscience than wolves. Perhaps, much less.

  The rooms next door were full of children. A thin door and bits of plastic sheeting and tape were no match for that ravenous hunger.

  * * *

  Across London, in a fourth-floor room with a view of Buckingham Palace, the woman in red waited in the dark for her legions to assemble. She knew her emissaries were out in the night somewhere, recruiting. Her army would soon outnumber the many at her feet.

  The baby kicked and she placed a hand to her abdomen. A shoulder passed beneath her palm. She felt it roll over in her womb.

  “Still here? That’s a surprise, baby girl, but that’s okay. By the time you arrive, Mama’s going to make it a brave new world for you. No more bankers…no rich or poor. No undeserved pain.”

  She stared out the window at the brightly lit palace grounds. Silhouettes and shadows of security men patrolled the perimeter. “No more queens and kings…unless you count me, of course.”

  The next mutation of the Sutr plague claimed London as the infection spread: man to child; child to woman; woman to man. Wolf to wolves.

  No, she thought. Sutr-X was a sad infection, a failed experiment. Sutr-Z is an infestation, a brilliant invasion.

  Only Shiva knew why.

  The woman in red smiled wider. She wondered how Corgis might taste. A delicate little appetizer before the royal feast to come? She toasted the moon with a glass of red wine and waited for the big show to begin.

  Season 1, Episode 3

  I am the zombie queen!

  *

  We are slaves to our desires, our debts and our pasts. We can only break our chains when we cease to be enslaved to our identities.

  *

  People fear mortality because it is the death of the ego. It is wiser to murder the ego every day. If you can let that go, we are free. If you can let that go, teach me how.

  ~ Notes from The Last Cafe

  Zombies are the New World Disorder

  The Tube’s automated command to “Mind the Gap” still worked. It was a tiny reminder of the normalcy London had lost.

  Aadi Vermer walked to work from Knightsbridge station, limping a little in worn shoes. Officially, the Tube was closed. However, Aadi’s manager had procured a pass so Aadi could keep his job. Most of the other people who traveled the Underground were police or military. Passengers stayed away from each other and breathed shallowly, as if that would protect them.

  His cheap, black shoes cut at his heels. He stuffed newspaper around his socks for comfort in the long hours ahead. Aadi had to put off buying new shoes for another month or so. His two girls, Aastha and Aasa, were six and seven and growing fast. If there was extra money to be spent on shoes, his daughters came first.

  His wife, Riya, died in the early days of the plague, but with the help of some neighbors, the girls were cared for while he put in a shift to protect Harrods.

  Before the Sutr-X virus, Aadi reported for work just before ten in the morning and got home by nine to kiss the girls goodnight. The huge department store was closed, of course, but his manager called him each day to say the disease would abate soon and the store would open again. Aadi didn’t know what to believe, but he was glad to have the job.

  When currency wasn’t useful anymore, Aadi’s manager, Mr. Richardson, paid the security staff with food supplied from the store. “Everything will get back to normal,” he affirmed. “This is London. We’ve seen worse than this.”

  Riya’s death made the young security officer bold. “How could you have possibly seen worse, sir?”

  “We suffer, but we have to take the long view. People used to say, ‘Think globally, act locally.’ I say, ‘Learn from the past, think of the future and act in the present. London has seen fire, war, the Blitz and another, very notable, plague. God and the Devil can get together and do their worst. London is the one city that will stand forever.’”

  Aadi pulled the keyring from the clip at his belt and opened the glass door to Harrods, waving at the security camera. He assumed Dayo was watching from the back office, but he knew that could be hit or miss.

  Dayo had been a calm and steady security officer before the plague. Now, she shook when she talked. She admitted to Aadi that sometimes she fell asleep on duty for ten or even twenty minutes at a time. She couldn’t sleep when she was supposed to, but when wakefulness was required, she fought to stay awake. He couldn’t blame her. He had difficulty sleeping. “You’re anxious and I’m depressed,” he told Dayo. “But who wouldn’t be messed up somehow?”

  Before the plague, Aadi watched people from his station at Door 2 by the men’s tailoring department. He smiled and welcomed shoppers and asked tourists to take off their backpacks before allowing them to browse the world’s most famous department store.

  Aadi’s name meant first, as in important. His job didn’t make him feel that way. When Riya was alive, his importance definitely came last. With his wife’s passing, he was promoted to second, with his daughters tying for first place.

  He was about to lock the door behind him when his jaw went slack in shock. A small, naked woman walked down the middle of the street toward him. Aadi squinted. She looked about age sixty, perhaps more. The woman walked in a wide S pattern, as if leading an invisible conga line. A small dog — a cute, little brown mutt — trotted ah
ead of her and she seemed eager to catch up to it.

  As she came closer, Aadi could make out multiple bite marks, like bloody half moons, covering her shoulders, torso and legs.

  He opened the door and called to her. “Lady? Lady! Come here! You will be safe in here! Get out of the street! I’ll get you help!”

  She wandered his way, but seemed too confused to focus on him. She acted like she’d been in a car accident and suffered a concussion.

  Aadi stepped into the street, turned his radio on and keyed the mic. “Dayo! There’s a woman in the street! She’s been attacked!” Then, he called again, “Lady? Come here! I can help you!”

  The radio crackled a moment. “Door 2? Check in?” Dayo was awake.

  “Stand by, Dayo. We’ve got a weird one.”

  Aadi started toward her, waving his arms. “Lady? Who did this to you?”

  The woman straightened her course and dove on the dog. It yelped and barked and tried to get away as she gathered the small animal in her arms. The dog struggled as she crushed it to her breasts. It nipped the tip of her nose and barked twice more.

  The woman grabbed the dog’s snout and forced its head back. It had a second to whimper and void its bowels down her body as she buried her face in the little dog’s throat and ripped through its flesh. When she raised her head, blood dripped from her gore-spattered teeth and jaws. She chewed thoughtfully as she stared at the security guard with cruel, milky eyes. She smiled.

  But it wasn’t the ghoulish smile that made Aadi’s knees weak and his heart race. It wasn’t even the careless way she threw the dog to the side and ran at him that made him cold with fear. It was the mob of ghouls up Brompton Road, racing to join her.

  Aadi managed to get inside. The key clattered against the lock plate at the top of the door. He locked the door behind him just in time.

  The woman threw herself against the heavy door, heedless, like a bird flying into a window. He recoiled and fell on his back. She fell to the side, her forehead open and smearing an arc of streaked blood down the door.

  When the others arrived, they paid her no attention. They trod over her to smear the glass with saliva and blood, pounding on the glass, desperate to get in.

  No, he thought. Desperate to get at me.The world’s rules had changed more than Aadi, or anyone else, could have imagined. Amid the mob, he saw the young and the old. Middle-aged mothers and graying fathers and young and fit yobs alike head-butted the thick glass. He saw a beautiful young girl break her teeth on the door handle in her hunger for him.

  Aadi had seen poverty and desperation and tragedy in India. He’d endured great loss in his adopted country. He’d never seen ordinary people behave like rabid wolves.

  Aadi got his feet under him and keyed his radio mic as he ran. “Dayo, check the doors again to make sure they’re all locked.”

  “Already, done, mate.”

  “Do it again, or we’re brown bread!”

  “I did the rounds, I assure you,” she replied coolly. “Where’s the woman you —”

  He burst into the office before she stopped speaking into her radio.

  “Look at the Door 2 cameras! Help me double check the perimeter or we’re brown bread!”

  Dayo gaped at him as if he’d gone mad.

  “Dead! Dead Dayo! Dead Aadi! Move your arse out of that chair and check the damn doors again or we’re the running dead!”

  As soon as he could escape, he would run to his daughters. He would find them and protect them, if he could. Aastha’s name meant faith and trust. Aasa’s name translated to hope. If he lost his daughters to such monsters, he would lose the past, the future, his heart and his mind.

  Making history and the future poorer

  The family worked through the night to gather their things. Anna cried off and on. Jack was stone-faced but her movements were harried.

  “We’ll be right across the street,” Theo said, trying to soothe them.

  His words seemed to placate the women the first time but, after he repeated it several times, Jack blew up at him. “Damn it, Theodore! I know! I know! We’ll be right across the street. Across from our home. Away from the marks on the doorframe where I marked the kids’ heights as they grew. Away from all our things. It’s the safe thing to do, to move into Doug’s house, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy about running out of my home. We’re packing up here like we’re never coming back!”

  “We have to prepare like we aren’t,” Theo said evenly.

  She threw a sweater she’d been holding into a laundry hamper full of folded blankets. “I’m just sick of this. I’m sorry but this really sucks and…and…I want our life back. I want to wander around the mall and take the kids out for a movie and an ice cream.” She sat on the bed, defeat disfiguring her lovely face.

  “I know,” Theo said. He sat beside her and rubbed her back. “You’ve got cabin fever and switching cabins isn’t helping.”

  “That guy pounding on the window freaked me out,” she said. “We should go.”

  “I know. When you call me Theodore, you must be freaked out.”

  Jack melted a little. “Your hands are really warm.” She looked into his troubled eyes. “Did you load the van all by yourself?”

  “Jaimie helped. Doug said we should park it in his garage so, if that guy comes back, he won’t be tempted to give us the gift of four flat tires in the morning.”

  “You should have asked for more help packing up, Theo. You’re sweating something awful.”

  “I have cabin fever,” Theo said.

  “Are you okay? Really?” But she already suspected.

  “I’m very tired. That’s all. After we’re moved in across the street, I’m going to bed and I’m going to sleep until this is all over.”

  “How much longer do you think this can go on?” Jack said.

  “There’s no way to know.”

  “You could lie. You could tell me it’ll be over soon. A well-placed lie would be great right now, actually.”

  “You always know when I lie.”

  She smiled and leaned her head against his shoulder and then sprang back. “You’re too hot.” She put the back of her hand against his forehead.

  “I got a lot of exercise hauling stuff across the street. Let’s not try to take everything. We don’t have to empty out the house because of one nut. Douglas has a kitchen sink, so we can leave ours here. Let’s just call it a night.”

  Jaimie stood at the door, waiting for his mother to tell him to take a hamper full of clothes across the street. He watched his parents for a moment, observing the intermingling of their energies. He stepped forward and pulled his father away from Jack.

  “What’s wrong?” Theo asked.

  Jaimie shook his head. He clapped his hands together and then, mimed difficulty, as if his fingers were glued together. He then pulled his hands apart. Then he held his hands spread wide and shook his head more.

  “I don’t get it,” Jack said.

  Theo put a hand on his son’s shoulder and tried to smile. “Okay, buddy. Let’s get out of here. Take that basket, please. We’ll be right along.” Jaimie shook his head but Theo nudged him out the door. “I understand. It’ll be okay.”

  Theo turned to his wife. “He means I’m sick.” At the door he turned to look at her. “I never told you this, but you’re really bad at figuring out when I’m lying. Fortunately, it’s not something that’s come up much.”

  “I thought I knew.”

  “Maybe it was denial, but I don’t like that fish casserole of yours. I never liked your mom any more than I liked mine and all this perspiration is not exercise-related.”

  Jack gathered herself and slowly stood. “I wish you’d just spoken up about the casserole. I don’t like it, either, but I thought you did, you lying idiot.” Her eyes were wet.

  She moved to go to him but he shook his head and put his hands out to ward her off. He stepped backward, out through the bedroom
door and into the hallway. “It’ll be okay. But we need you healthy. Doug’s got a nice leather couch. I’ll sleep there tonight. Maybe this is just regular flu. Sutr isn’t the only game in town.”

  She followed him, but as if there was a wall between them.

  “Regular flu has a low chance of killing me and if it’s Sutr, I-I’ll make it.”

  Despite his claims she couldn’t tell when he was lying, Theo seemed certain that, if it was Sutr, he was dying. “You…bastard! Don’t even think you’re getting away from me.”

  Theo gave her a brave smile. He’d rehearsed this smile earlier that afternoon, as he felt the sickness slowly close him in a fist. “Well, thanks for making it easier to let go and go to the light.”

  “You don’t believe there’s a light to go to.”

  “Whenever there’s a light at the end of a tunnel, experience tells me it’s probably an oncoming train.”

  Jaimie returned from his errand to Oliver’s house. The boy stood at the bottom of the stairs behind his father. He watched the spots of black energy crawl over his father’s lungs, shiny at the edges, moving slightly in and out, a boiling soup of Sutr. His mother smiled at him, but a tear tracked down one cheek. Jaimie tasted chalk mixed with vinegar: hers was truly a bitter smile.

  Jaimie knew bees and birds and dogs and chameleons all have unique visions of the world: infrared, black and white, stereoscopic. Still, no one really knows how anyone else sees the world. The color-blind think they know what red is until they’re told that they aren’t in on the common agreement everyone else is party to. Jaimie pushed the thought away because with it came an unfamiliar feeling. Something shifted over his heart.

  That night, lying awake in Mr. Oliver’s bed, Jaimie pulled the covers over his head and flicked on the flashlight his mother had given him.

  “Don’t go near the window at the front,” she told him. “If you have to get up in the night, use the flashlight and be quick.”