Flu (7 page)

    Jackson turned to look at Gallagher, who was standing by the door, facing the colonel as if on parade. "He's… already turned," he said, without pressing the red button.

    "Not quite, sir," Gallagher corrected. "He's in the later stages of his illness, of course, but still able to talk. I've been just with him, before we got the call from the gate advising of your approach." Gallagher pointed again to the mic, as if Jackson had forgotten it was there. "Sir, if you please…" he said, as polite as ever.

    Jackson looked back at the colonel, still drawn to his eyes. He hadn't noticed them blink since he had entered the room, as if the colonel was in some kind of trance. His hands clung to an old, bloodstained towel, now disused, as the effects of the flu were in freefall. Bloody mucus seeped from his mouth and nose, unchecked. He gurgled, as if choking. He spat on the ground beside him, clearing his throat. Jackson's hand reached for the red button, noticing how it lit up as he pressed it. The colonel didn't react, not seeming to hear the fuzz of the speakers kicking in.

    "You may wish to turn the volume up a little louder, sir," Gallagher whispered. "The colonel's hearing is failing, you see."

    "Of course," said Jackson, as he turned the dial, noticing the colonel suddenly looking around the room, as he heard his words.

    "Hallo?" the colonel said, "Is that you, Gallagher?"

    "No, sir…" Jackson said. "My name's Major Connor Jackson. I've been sent to… er…"

    "Replace me," the colonel said, calmly. "It was me who sent for you, sir. Welcome to the Chamber."

    "Thank you, sir," Jackson replied.

    "Of course," the colonel said, picking up a clipboard from the mess littering the table in front of him, "I'm led to believe this isn't your first time at The Chamber. Bit of an old pro, you are. Duties alongside Dr Gallagher in the early nineties, it seems. Capture and interrogation of prolific IRA operatives… those were your specialities, weren't they?"

    "Yes, sir," Jackson said. He reckoned that the clipboard contained excerpts from his personnel file. He knew what was in there, and felt a little uncomfortable at it being perused so liberally by the colonel, a man whom he had never met, in all his years of service. Those dark days seemed irrelevant to him, now. As if it were a different Connor Jackson detailed in that file. As if it had all just been a mix-up.

    "Yes, sir, indeed…" the colonel repeated, as if he were a headmaster chastising Jackson. Jackson was a bit taken back by that, but said nothing. "However, seems you weren't always best pleased at the kinds of practices which went on around here," the colonel continued. "Retired from the Army after a certain incident involving -"

    "Clearly, sir," Jackson said, interrupting the colonel and struggling to hold his cool, "there are things which a man must do in a war situation which are questionable." This was a dying man, he reminded himself. This wasn't the time or place for debating the rules of engagement. "I find I'm much more principled now, though," he said, feeling the stab of bitter memories from yesteryear. "What happened before -"

    "This is no time for principles," the colonel said, cutting over Jackson. "This is a time for doing what needs to be done, in whatever manner the situation requires. This virus, this fucking
flu
virus, needs to be contained," he said, stressing the word
flu,
as if marvelling at how something so trivial could cause such chaos. "Strong leadership is required to make sure that is what happens."

    Jackson said nothing, feeling suddenly aware of the cold-blooded doctor behind him, his narrow slits of eyes seeming to bore into the Major's head. He wondered why the colonel hadn't just passed leadership duties over to Gallagher. After all, he seemed to want someone to take over who fitted exactly Gallagher's profile.

    "I'll do my best, sir," Jackson said, calmly but not confidently. "Under your guidance, of course."

    The colonel laughed. "I'll be dead within the day," he said, a touch of anger resonating throughout his body in the guise of a wheeze. "But I've left strict instruction for my body to be
donated
to Dr Gallagher's project. Now, please leave me," he said. "I don't have long left, and I'm damn sure I'm not going to waste my final moments on a prick like you."

    Jackson couldn't believe the colonel had just said what he thought he had said. He looked over at Gallagher, his jaw hanging almost to the floor in disbelief. But Gallagher looked back at him, almost smiling beneath his benign expression.

    "If you could come this way, sir," he said, gesturing Jackson towards the door, as if he were a normal doctor, an ethical doctor. "It's time to leave the colonel to his final rest."

    Jackson moved out the door, knowing that the next time he returned, the man he had just been talking to would no longer be a man. In fact, he would no longer be alive, instead taking on the form of something that was, at best, imitating life. He was led to his quarters by Gallagher, where he was left to settle in. He had been given a modest room with the very basics a man required for life - a bed, a desk, a sink. On the wall was a single picture, a painting of a sunrise. It spoke of the only thing that Jackson could be sure of, anymore. That the sun would continue to rise. That the world would continue to turn. Nothing else was written in stone.

    "Good, you're awake…"

    Geri rubbed her eyes, too sleepy to notice that she was sloped over a chair, loosely tied. It was the tattooed man who addressed her.

    "Oh, the rope was just to stop you from slipping off the chair," he said, smiling as if there were some kind of joke in that sentence. He was talking to her through a glass door. She'd come to while they were tying her to the chair, but she had decided still to feign unconsciousness. It seemed that, while pretending to be unconscious, she'd actually dozed off.
Typical, really,
she thought to herself. She always did love her sleep, even though she hadn't really had any for the last week.

    Geri allowed her sleepy eyes to sweep her surroundings. She was in a glass patio at the rear of the house. It had obviously been an extension that was built fairly recently. They were popular for those kinds of terraced houses, offering some extra room and space to the rear of the house, where the gardens were often generously sized. The patio had been someone's pet project. Someone who was most likely dead… or undead… right now.

    "It wasn't my idea," continued the tattooed man, palm pressed against the glass door as he talked. "But McFall thinks you're infected. This is your quarantine."

    "I need to piss…" Geri said, uncouthly.

    "Then piss," he replied. She had heard him being referred to by the other man as 'Lark.' It had struck her as a rather strange name. Strange name for a strange- looking man. "You're not
really
tied to the chair. Remember? It'll be easy to shake yourself free."

    He watched her, almost leeringly, as if wanting to see her try that manoeuvre. But she didn't move.

    Lark was still rattling on, though, like the insensitive lout he was. "I'm sure you'll find a pan in the cupboards that you can use," he said, "or you can use the sink - I think it still drains okay." He smiled, somewhat politely or ironically (Geri couldn't be sure which) as he pointed over to the small sink and cupboards next to the washing machine.

    "Fuck you…" Geri said. She had decided he wasn't being polite, so why should she.

    "Listen, I'm sorry about this," he countered, "but we need to know you're clean. McFall said he saw you sneeze."

    "It's hay fever. I already told him that."

    "Sure, and if it doesn't develop into flu in the next couple of days, you'll be welcomed back into the house."

    "I just want to leave…"

    "Go back out there? Are you mad? Seriously, you're better in here. But I'm warning you, there'll always be one of us around, so don't try anything stupid."

    Geri got up from the chair, feeling the muscles in her leg seizing up. She rubbed them, trying to ease the stiffness. Her wounded foot still hurt like a bitch, causing her to limp. She grimaced with the pain, setting herself down in the chair, again. She looked up at Lark, but he had disappeared back into the kitchen, it seemed. So much for someone always watching.

    Her hand ran over the front pockets of her jeans. She checked for the bump in the denim - the bullet she had acquired from earlier still in her pocket. Again, she pulled her long t-shirt down to cover her pockets, smiling to herself. She couldn't believe those idiots had missed that one.

    She rose from her chair, limping over to the generously glassed patio windows. It looked out onto a small garden that had once been someone's pride and joy. There were colourful flower beds, pepper-dash stones and an ornamental fountain - all landscaped to perfection. Yet, without tending, the garden was becoming wild. A mass of sombre-looking green weeds threatened the daintily coloured tulips. Grass sprouted up through the stones like hands from a grave. From the sky, the evening sun looked on like a powerless god.

    Geri ventured over to the cupboards, wondering how best to take her piss. She fumbled through the cupboards, finding a sizable pan that should suffice. Nosily, she opened a couple of nearby drawers, finding nothing but scissors and plastic cutlery and other useless household items. She opened another drawer, noticing cotton wool, antiseptic, bandaging and waterproof plasters. She took the lot, throwing all the items into her new pseudo toilet bowl. Adding a roll of kitchen towel to the pile, she proceeded back to the white plastic dining table that looked out onto the garden.

    She sighed, setting up her makeshift toilet behind the table. In the dim, evening sun, she undid the button and zip of her jeans, rolled them down and squatted to piss into the pot.

    This is as bad as it gets,
she thought to herself.

    McFall stood looking out onto the street from the upstairs window. The light was dimming, evening's shadows moving in to throw a curtain over the day's events. He would be settling down to sleep soon, and it couldn't come soon enough. He felt knackered after all that had happened, all the excitement of the day's events. He promised himself never to go out there again, unless he really fucking had to.

    Through the flower-patterned curtains, McFall could see a couple of the dead wandering aimlessly through the streets. It was the same story every night, almost as if they were on some sort of evening patrol, but they never seemed to cotton on to the fact that there were survivors in this particular house. And even when they did, just like before with the girl, it seemed to leave their minds like goldfish when you tapped their bowl - suddenly and momentarily riled before becoming quiet again. Tonight, they didn't seem to know he was looking at them, but he was still careful to peek from behind the curtain, nonetheless.

    The house had been a great base for Lark and him for some weeks, now. Just how many weeks, he couldn't be sure. He'd found it pretty early on, pretty soon after meeting Lark for the first time. Was it three weeks ago? Four weeks ago? Hell, who was counting anymore, anyway? He wondered how long it would be safe to stay at the house. The longer they stayed, the more the dead seemed to multiply in number. He was worried that they would eventually sniff them out, and once that happened, he was sure it was game over.

    But that wasn't his only concern. He had others, all scrambling for airtime in the WORRY section of his brain. First of all, there was the flu. Why he hadn't caught it, he couldn't be sure. Deep down, he knew it probably wasn't anything to do with his obsession with the balaclava, but he still wasn't prepared to take it off.

Every little helps,
he said to himself, rhyming off the old supermarket slogan. But he could never be sure he was immune - people were catching it every day (if there even
were
many people left) and he knew he could just as easily be next.

    And then there was the whole problem with supplies. Yesterday's run had, obviously, been very unsuccessful. What with the whole mess with the girl, he'd ended up leaving all the stuff he'd got in the boot of the car. And it was becoming so heavily populated with dead out there that he couldn't imagine it being safe enough to retrieve it any time soon. They had some stuff left from the last run, but only enough to see them through another couple of days. And who was to know how many more of those things would be walking past the window tomorrow, or the day after.

    He thought back to his life before all of this had happened. He had been a taxi driver, and a damn good one. He worked long and hard and made good money. None of it mattered now, of course. His money was useless. The change in his pocket no better than the stones on the ground. His bank accounts no longer existed. Once mere numbers on a screen, his whole life savings had disappeared overnight - pretty much snuffed out at the flick of a switch. Twenty thousand odd quid blown like a faulty light bulb.

    McFall considered, for a moment, what it was that made him rich now. He was healthy - that much was true. The flu hadn't touched him. Of course, he was never a man who took ill very much - there just wasn't time to be ill. Or maybe it was something to do with all the people he was coming into contact with. Hundreds of people sitting in his car every week. People from all walks of life, some coughing and wheezing and sniffing with colds and flus and God-knows-what. The school runs he did, the hospital runs - all of them without even as much as a sniffle from his seat. His body had most likely built up a resistance to all of the ills of Belfast, maybe even including this most recent flu outbreak.

    But he wasn't taking any chances.

    Still keeping an eye on the street outside, he removed his balaclava. He felt in his pocket for the small bottle of herbal remedy he carried with him. His wife had turned him onto this stuff when she'd heard he was going to be working as a taxi driver. She had said it would help keep the cold and flu away. It tasted like acid, but he mixed a few drops with his orange juice every morning and drank it down. He unscrewed the bottle, removing the small dropper. He squeezed out three small drops over the mouth and nose of his balaclava. It was a soothing, minty smell that came from the bottle, so he guessed one ingredient had to be mint. He didn't know what else it was made from… His wife had become increasingly bored with life, reading all kinds of nonsense in books and magazines. God knows
what
she had put in it! McFall screwed the dropper back into the bottle, sliding it into his pocket again. He slipped the rather pungent balaclava back over his face.