Fear of the Dead (Novella): Contagion Read online

  Xiang unzipped her bag and reached inside it for one of the sugary snacks she always kept there for just such an occasion as this, as she felt a wave of giddiness wash over her once more.

  As the train she had been waiting for all this time now speeded out of the tunnel and headed towards her platform, Xiang felt a sharp shove to her back.

  Tumbling forwards, she lost her footing on the edge of the platform and found herself tumbling to the tracks.

  Before she could even think of getting up, Xiang looked up and saw the speeding train she had been waiting for rushing full break-neck speed towards her.

  Xiang never stood a chance.

  She was killed instantly.

  Behind her, back on the platform, as people all around him started screaming, Xiang’s killer simply turned around and blended back with the crowd.

  Chapter four: Lockdown

  By the time China closed its borders and began to implement full lockdown, it was already far too late.

  New cases of a much more deadly and virulent strain of the disease had already begun cropping up all across the globe, in parts of the U.S and all across central Europe.

  Reports that China were burning their dead in mass funeral pyres started to emerge, but remained largely unconfirmed because of the media blackout.

  The Chinese government, by then, only telling people, or the rest of the world for that matter, what it wanted them to hear.

  Many people took this as further evidence that China was the one responsible for creating the virus in a lab in the first place.

  All in all, it was a conspiracy nut’s wet dream.

  But that didn’t mean the theories were unfounded.

  Though outside of China the U.S saw the highest number of new cases emerging, in Europe, Italy initially was the hardest country hit, closely followed by Spain. As the death toll continued to rise, both countries followed China’s example and implemented a full lockdown.

  Travel to and from Europe instantly became restricted; all schools, bars, restaurants and non-essential supermarkets were shut down, and armed police and soldiers began patrolling the streets to enforce the new laws that had been put in place. People were allowed to leave their homes only to buy food, or travel to and from work, and then only if it was absolutely essential – so only doctors and nurses and emergency personnel for example – and anyone else who left their homes without the proper paperwork or authority did so at the risk of being shot. With the reports of some people who were infected turning violent, the Spanish and Italian Police were not prepared to take any chances.

  The whole situation was totally unprecedented.

  For most people, it was the first time they had encountered anything like this in their lifetime – the last outbreak of this scale, other than the AIDS epidemic, being the outbreak of Spanish Flu way back in 1918; arguably one of the deadliest pandemics ever recorded in recent history and one that few who were alive could even still remember.

  Ironically those most vulnerable, and the highest at risk, were those very same people old enough to remember Spanish Flu – the elderly – but it was not just them who had something to worry about. Those with already underlying health problems or poor immune systems were also classified high risk.

  But in truth they were not the real danger.

  The real danger came from children, or those who were otherwise young, fit, and healthy, who might not even realise they were infected. They might feel a little sick, or slightly unwell, and not even realise they had contracted the H1N1-Z virus, but by going about their everyday lives, posed the very real threat of spreading the disease even further.

  This was why lockdown was such a good idea.

  It slowed down the infection rate of the virus and kept people out of immediate contact with each other.

  Unfortunately, by the time the world’s governments made the decision to implement such measures, it was already much too little too late.

  Chapter five: Stuck on the roof (continued)

  Day 2 (part 2)

  I remember well the day lockdown came to the U.K.

  By then, the virus had been running rampant across most of mainland Europe for a little over a month.

  We had all seen the pictures of overcrowded hospital beds on the news and the TV. We had all seen the video footage of the Gendarmerie Nationale in France, the Civil guard in Spain, and the Carabinieri in Italy patrolling the streets, weapons at the ready to deter looters or to fire at anyone who might pose a threat to them – including some of the infected themselves – but I think, even then, many of us were still in denial.

  Although it was our closest neighbour, still Europe felt very far away right then.

  Watching the news, for many of us, it all still felt like a dream, or else something from a movie.

  None of it felt real.

  There was a very real and genuine sense of detachment from it all, as though many of us felt like although we could see it happening on T.V, such a thing could never possibly happen to us.

  We were wrong.

  Oh, were we wrong.

  Even when the first cases started occurring over here, it took a long while for a lot of us for it to start to sink in. By then, Europe, America, China and Japan were all starting to get a hold of the virus, and the number of new cases being diagnosed was slowly starting to drop.

  Over here though, the virus was only just getting started.

  For the first few weeks, the government tried to play down the outbreak.

  Able to cross species almost indiscriminately, at first the government tried to claim it was only pigs and cattle that were being affected and that the strain we seemed to be getting here posed very little threat to humans, unlike across much of the rest of the world.

  But this was just the government trying to prevent panic.

  It didn’t work.

  As more and more cases of people being admitted to hospitals with H1N1-Z started making the news, so the government were forced to admit they had underestimated the virus. What had started out over here looking like a much weaker strain had in fact been misdirection.

  It was almost as though the virus was playing with us. Waiting until we had let our guard down, before hitting us even harder than it had in Europe.

  Shit started getting real when it quickly became apparent that one of the reasons the government had been playing down the crisis was because we were ill prepared for it. The NHS was simply not geared up to cope with so many people falling ill, all at the same time.

  And although it had been widely publicised that only the elderly and people with underlying health conditions were the most at risk, suddenly perfectly fit, able and healthy people started dying as well.

  One of the scariest things I saw on T.V, and that really brought it all home to me, was when they started converting exhibition halls, football stadiums, and sports parks into emergency hospitals in anticipation of a sudden influx of new patients that existing hospitals simply would not be able to cope with.

  And over it all, the looming threat of a potential lockdown slowly began to draw even closer.

  For reasons only he could fathom, the Prime Minister resisted calling for a full lockdown. He kept saying he was waiting for the opportune moment when it would have the most direct effect on slowing down the virus and this, he did his best to reassure us, was not yet the right time.

  “We are facing the worst public health crisis of our generation, and there is little doubt, right now, that some of you watching this will probably not see the other side of it,” he told us all, in what had become his daily briefing during the crisis. “Many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time before this current crisis is over, and we are doing all we can right now to reduce the number of people who might have to go through this, but we cannot...and I…ah…cannot stress this enough…we cannot peak too soon. If we act before the virus is at its peak, any steps we take may well prove ineffective to slow the spread of the virus and right now,
that is the best that we can hope to achieve. Not to halt the virus in its tracks, but to slow its progress in order to give the NHS the best fighting chance to try and deal with the vast numbers being affected busy it.

  “In due course, I will be announcing further measures but for now, my…ah…best advice, my only advice, is for everyone to take suitable precautions as laid out by my Health Minister and the NHS, and to keep calm and carry on.”

  It was almost another full week before he finally announced a lockdown in line with what other countries across Europe had already done, and had proven to be effective, but even then, when he did, the Prime Minister still refused to define it by those terms – supposedly trying to avoid mass panic.

  But everyone knew what he meant.

  They simply chose to ignore it.

  ***

  Even before the final announcement was made, one of the last the Prime Minister would ever get to make from his home and office at 10 Downing Street, people were already starting to panic.

  They had seen the scenes of what had happened over in Europe when lockdown had been announced, and now started stocking up ready for an extended stay in their homes.

  But the things they started stockpiling simply made no sense.

  Honestly, you really could not make it up.

  People began buying toilet rolls by the dozen, and all multi-packs as well so anything up to a hundred rolls at a time. They would fill their trolley, take them out to the car, then send their husbands, partners, or significant others in to buy some more.

  Pasta too.

  If you went into any of the supermarkets once panic buying had begun, you could not lay your hands on any pasta for love nor money.

  But not sauce.

  Bizarrely, to start with, there was an ample supply of pasta sauce on all the shelves, jar after jar of it.

  Of course, that didn’t last – before long, people were buying all that up too - but to start with it seemed like it was mostly just dry pasta they were buying. Which made little sense, seeing as how long pasta lasts and just how many meals you can make out of just one packet.

  If anyone had just bought a little, enough to keep them going rather than packet after packet after packet of it, then there would have been enough to go around.

  But hive mentality had sunk in, and people were no longer thinking straight.

  Bread was the next thing to disappear off the shelves.

  So much so that in some neighbourhoods, people began having to chuck it out where it had started to go off before they had a chance to eat it, they had bought so much.

  It was crazy, all of it, and this was before even a full lockdown had been announced.

  Even after the Prime Minister’s announcement, people neglected to listen.

  Because he had not called his latest measures a lockdown by name, people still continued to gather in large groups despite the calls for social distancing.

  Though officially all bars, pubs, and restaurants were closed, some less scrupulous establishments started letting people in the back door, rather than losing all their stock.

  It was madness, it was suicide – people seemed to fail to realise that the more they congregated in large groups, the more people they put at risk including themselves, and the more people ultimately were going to die.

  Some of us listened.

  Some of us took note and did as we were told.

  And so when Z-day did eventually arrive, we ended up being the ones who were the most prepared.

  Chapter six: Don’t stand too close to me

  Six days.

  That was how long Melissa had stuck it out.

  Six days…but now, now she needed to go shopping.

  Supplies were running low, and with no idea how long this ‘lockdown’ was going to last – for essentially that was what it was, even if the Prime Minister didn’t have the balls to actually come out and say as much – Melissa knew she now had no other choice but to go out and brave the shops.

  She had been putting it off until now, but Melissa knew she simply could not afford to put it off any longer.

  It wasn’t just her.

  It was her two cats as well.

  Melissa didn’t mind going a bit hungry, had no problem rationing out her food if that was what it took, but her two fur babies were animals and didn’t understand, and there was no way she was prepared to let them starve.

  So, with great reluctance, she had decided to brave the local supermarket.

  Though some supermarkets across the country had already started limiting how many customers were allowed in the shop at once, her local branch had not yet caught onto that idea.

  They were advocating social distancing, so that was something, but so far they seemed to be doing very little to enforce it.

  As soon as Melissa realised there were very few precautions out in place, she nearly turned around and went straight home.

  But then she thought about her two cats.

  She couldn’t go home with nothing – it wouldn’t be fair to them.

  No, she would just have to dart into the shop, pick up what she needed, and get back out again as quick as possible, she decided.

  Melissa donned a pair of disposable gloves, grabbed a trolley, and then proceeded to enter the store.

  It was almost like the sort of scene you might expect to see in Russia, she thought. Most people had obviously already been in before her, and ransacked many of the shelves like a plague of locusts, because there was very little left down any of the aisles. Melissa was still able to pick up a few bits she needed, but as she passed one of her fellow customers arguing with a shop employee, she listened in to their conversation whilst pretending to browse one of the almost empty shelves.

  “But why is there no rice or pasta?” The woman was demanding. “You are supposed to be a supermarket, you’re supposed to be keeping the shelves stocked up, so why are over half the shelves in the store all empty?”

  Melissa glanced in the woman’s shopping trolley, and saw it stacked up with more toilet roll than she would probably need in a year – let alone in a few weeks or months.

  Because greedy cows like you are going around stockpiling, is what Melissa wanted to say, but instead decided discretion was the better part of valour and elected to keep her mouth shut.

  “Because, at the moment, in our current situation, we can’t keep up with the demand,” the young shelf stacker said, doing his best to try and explain. “We are getting regular deliveries, but the problem is stuff is flying off the shelves as quickly as we can stack them and with limited staff, even when we do get a delivery, there isn’t always enough staff on shift to get it out on the shop floor immediately. We are only a small, local branch and so if we get a lot of people through the door, that means more of us need to man the checkouts which means we can’t stack the shelves. I can assure you, Madam, we are trying to do the best we can here.”

  “You should get more self-service tills then,” the irate woman continued to protest. “Then you wouldn’t need as many people to man the shelves and then you might be able to stock them much quicker. I need my pasta, I can’t do without it - I’m on a high carbohydrate diet – so what am I supposed to do now?”

  “I don’t know,” the poor young shop assistant said. “Maybe try shopping at a different store?”

  The woman looked at him as if to say, ‘just who the hell do you think you are? You can’t speak to me like that!’ then instead just tutted loudly, turned her trolley away and stormed off, nearly colliding with Melissa and her own trolley as she did so.

  The woman gave a Melissa a filthy look as she barged past, eyeing up the face mask she was wearing as though it were a personal attack on her person.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she spat out at Melissa as she passed her. “I haven’t got it, I’ll have you know. I’m clean!”

  But how do I know that? Melissa thought, and started to push her trolley further down the aisle away from the rude, indignant woman
.

  “I’m sorry about that,” she said to the young shop assistant as she drew near. “You shouldn’t have to put up with people speaking to you like that.”

  “It’s okay,” the young lad told her. “I’ve had worse. Why, earlier today, I had some bloke spit at me because we’d run out of beans, and another woman tell me to ‘f’ off and calling me the ‘c’ word.”

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Melissa told him. “You shouldn’t have to put up with all that.”

  “It’s okay,” the young boy said, who looked no older than her nephew – barely out of his teens if that. “People are scared, they don’t know how to react. They’re frightened is all. If people get really threatening or violent, the store security will soon step in. But honestly, I think you just have to give everyone a little bit of slack is all.”

  “You’re a good lad,” Melissa told him. “I bet your mother is proud of you.”

  The young lad blushed as Melissa pushed her trolley and began to walk away.

  “Watch what you’re doing, ffs,” someone bellowed at her, as he came around the corner too quickly almost causing a head-on collision. The guy, tall and in his forties with a skin head, glared at her and looked her up and down in disgust.

  “Jesus, why you all dressed up like that for, in your face mask and your gloves? It’s just the flu, love, it ain’t gonna kill ya. More people die every year from normal flu than have died so far from the virus.” He shook his head.

  “Jesus, talk about over-reacting.”

  Melissa ignored him, moved her trolley around him, and proceeded to move into the next aisle.

  “Stupid c…” Melissa heard him starting to say as she turned the corner.

  A few aisles later, she encountered him again.

  “Hey, hey, look up. It’s Typhoid Mary again,” he joked as he went past. Melissa clocked him eyeing up the contents of her trolley. Only bread and milk so far, a couple of packets of diced beef so she could make a stew in her slow cooker, some cat food and a couple of large packets of toilet rolls.