Chapter 15

Linda, June and Jill were up and about when Mike woke in the morning. He dressed inside his sleeping bag and emerged, dishevelled but decent, just in time for a cup of tea and a bowl of porridge.

‘Powdered milk in the porridge, of course, I’m afraid.’

‘It’s a treat to have porridge at all. Who was that coughing during the night?’

‘Melanie. A real horrible chesty cough. Made her rib hurt dreadfully, you could tell, though she didn’t say much. She thought that what brought on the coughing was lying in one position all the time, trying not to disturb Linda. The coughing woke Linda up, and she came in my bag with me to give Melanie a chance to change position, which certainly seemed to help.’

Melanie still hadn’t woken up by the time they’d planned the day’s movements. June was to take Linda to Auntie Alice’s, then go and check the house for the possible arrival of her Giro – generally considered unlikely – followed by a visit to Jenny and her mum before returning to Auntie Alice’s. Mike was to go to see how Tony was, visit Mr Jordan, and join June and Linda at Auntie Alice’s. If June had a Giro, they would set out on another shopping expedition. Jill was to stay wih Melanie, and was expecting at least one of them back early in the afternoon. She’d ring the other hospitals when Melanie woke up.

Ruth was on duty at East Park Upper School. She looked even more tired than before.

‘Hello, Ruth.’

‘Hello...?’ She seemed to be puzzled as to who he was.

‘I’m Mike. I was here yesterday.’

‘Oh. I’ve seen hundreds of people in the last few days – Oh! Of course! Mike. You’re the chap who fainted, and who told us about the Middle School.’

‘That’s me. You look whacked. When did you last get any sleep?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve lost track. I’ve been dozing here, on and off.’

‘Haven’t you been relieved at all?’

‘Not since Penny was admitted on Sunday morning. I don’t want to go home to an empty house anyway, I’d rather sleep here. Geoff takes a turn on the desk every now and then. He’s asked at the hospital for another worker for here, but they’re short there too. No-one’s volunteering any more. But it’s not so busy any more, either.’

Why ever not? Are admissions at last beginning to diminish? Are people not coming to enquire? I don’t understand.

‘Why’s that? I’ve not heard anything about things improving.’

‘I’ve no idea. I’ve heard no news for days. No-one’s told Hugh anything new about treatment, though.’

‘How’s Tony? Tony Ramsden.’

Ruth couldn’t find him on any of her lists. ‘That means he’s okay, not really getting better yet, but not serious either.’

‘Hey, look, I don’t have any medical experience, but I could sort out your paperwork for you. Make an alphabetical list of all the admissions and mark up the current status of each.’

‘But that’s a tremendous job, keeping proper patient records! That’s why we only made these lists in the first place.’

‘I don’t know what a ‘proper patient record’ is. I was just thinking of putting a letter by each name, corresponding to your categories of Critical, Recovering, Discharged, plus one for dead. At the moment, you can’t tell, if someone’s name isn’t on any list, whether they’ve never been here, or they’re new admissions that aren’t on any list yet, or whether they’re dead. And your lists must be a substantial proportion of all admissions by now.’

‘I don’t think they are, actually, but I can’t say for sure. A lot of people came in on Saturday and Sunday, and most of them aren’t on my lists yet, I don’t think. But it’s not worth bothering anyway. Very few people are coming to ask about anyone. I think they’re just sitting at home trying not to meet anyone who might infect them.’

‘There’s no evidence that it’s infectious anyway, is there?’

‘Not just by meeting people, anyway. They seem to think it spreads by contamination of food and water, to judge by the precautions they suggest. But I think people are scared.’

‘What had happened at East Park Middle?’

‘Oh! Goodness. Geoff went round there, and sure enough, every door was locked. He climbed up onto the window sills and peered in here and there, and there were classrooms full of patients, just like here, but no sign of any staff. Hang on a minute, here comes Geoff now.’

Geoff came in carrying a child. ‘Can you take this little mite down to Hugh, Ruth? I’ve another one out there.’

Both the children looked very sick, pale, with sunken eyes.

‘They belong to that woman I took home just now. Her husband isn’t well, either, but he wouldn’t come in. I couldn’t persuade him that there was any point. He knows there’s no cure, and couldn’t understand that we could do any good just by treating symptoms, as he put it. He said he’d stand the pain, and his wife needed him to look after her.’

Geoff finished the story of the locked school. He’d been on the point of breaking in when a car had arrived with the missing receptionist and a couple of other people that Geoff didn’t know.

Early that morning the poor receptionist had begun to wonder why she hadn’t seen the other staff for so long. She wasn’t overly worried, because she assumed that if anything was wrong, one of the others would have come to tell her. It had been so long – she didn’t know exactly, but she thought several hours – that she went to look for them.

She found the doctor, collapsed in a corridor, apparently dead. At first she couldn’t find Mary, the nurse; she became frantic, and looked everywhere, in the most ridiculous places. Eventually she thought of going back into a classroom and asking a patient, if she could find one awake. She found Mary semi-conscious in bed, just another patient with an intravenous drip.

She tried to ring the hospital, but the phone was dead. She was expecting the taxi-driver allocated to them to turn up for the day about eight o’clock. She waited for him, getting more and more worked up about the delay in attending to the doctor, if by any chance he might still be alive. When the driver hadn’t turned up by half past eight, she set off on foot for the hospital.

‘Pity she didn’t think to drop in here,’ Geoff concluded.

‘Our phone was as dead as hers, and you weren’t here anyway.’

‘Was the doctor okay?’

‘No. Stone dead. He’d had a heart attack, presumably on his way to ask Rose to ring for a relief nurse.’

Mr Jordan wasn’t at home.

Mike arrived at Auntie Alice’s before June returned. He found the old lady and the two children absorbed in another game of Monopoly. Linda was winning convincingly; Auntie Alice was almost bankrupt.

‘You take my place, Mike, and I’ll get a kettle on.’

‘No, don’t worry, I’ll do it.’

‘No, I’ll do it. I’ve got some things in the oven I ought to have a look at, too.’

Mike was bankrupt before the tea was made, and he and Auntie Alice discussed the state of the world while the children battled on. David had done particularly well out of Mike’s bankruptcy which gave the game a new lease of life.

June arrived just in time for lunch. She had bad news: Jenny was ill, and Vicky was dead. Their mum was all alone, and in a dreadful state. The news brought Linda back to reality with a jolt. She curled up in her chair and wept silently. She couldn’t be comforted, and wouldn’t come and eat her lunch. Auntie Alice put it under a bowl in the still-warm oven, and they left her to her private grief while they ate.

They’d discharged Vicky. She didn’t seem a bit well, but they discharged her. She didn’t seem on the brink of death, either. Jill! Don’t die, Jill.

Get a hold on yourself, Mike. The odds must be very much against what happened to Vicky happening to anyone else.

By the time they’d finished eating, Linda was ready to be cuddled. She let June slide down beside her in the chair. They put their arms around each other, Linda’s head on June’s breast, and she broke down into proper sobbing.

After a while she looked up, and asked to borrow a handkerchief. Auntie Alice produced a box of tissues. While Linda dried her eyes and nose, Auntie Alice asked, ‘Would you like your lunch now?’, and Linda nodded, with a wan smile. She was so unsteady that she almost spilt it down June and herself, and the meal eventually was a co-operative effort, June holding the dish in her free hand, and Auntie Alice spooning the food into Linda’s mouth. None of them could help laughing, Linda through her still plentiful tears.

June had not received a Giro, and Mike went back to Melanie’s leaving June to do a little shopping for Auntie Alice before bringing Linda back.

Jill was sitting on Melanie’s bed, talking on the telephone, when Mike arrived.

‘That’s Mike home now. We’ll talk again another time. You did get our number, didn’t you. Goodbye for now.

‘Oh, Mike!’

She stood up, buried her head in his chest and burst into tears. He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. ‘What’s up, love?’

Jill looked up and started to speak, but choked on her words, gave up the attempt, and just held him tight and shook with sobs. Melanie answered for her, ‘When I woke up, we rang the hospital. Adrian’s dead.’

‘Oh God.’ Mike bent down and kissed Jill’s head again. ‘I’m sorry love.’

Jill squeezed him tighter for a moment. He picked her up gently and sat down with her on his lap. They all sat in silence for a while.

Eventually Melanie said softly, ‘Angie died last night too. Jill’s mum’s back on the critical list, and Steve’s critical too, now.’

‘Our news is bad, too. Jenny’s sick and Vicky’s dead.’ Jill pulled herself together enough to ask about the Jordans.

‘I don’t know. There was nobody there. I’ll go round again later on.’

‘Stay here, Mike. Mr Jordan doesn’t need you; if he’s okay, he must’ve gone to see someone himself. I wish you didn’t have to go to Auntie Alice’s. I wish she was on the phone. Don’t leave me again, Mike. It doesn’t do him any good for you to ask about him, and I’d as soon not know how he is, if it means you can stay here with us. He knows we’re here if they discharge him.’

God, how the world’s changed in the last week. Not, ‘when they discharge him’ but ‘if they discharge him’.

Then, Will we be here, anyway?

Another long silence.

‘Who was that you were talking to on the phone when I came in?’

‘Roland. Roland Metcalfe. I know, you’ve never heard of him. Neither had we. It’s a long story. You tell him, Melanie, while I put the kettle on.’

‘Don’t be daft, love. You stay there, I’ll make the tea. The story’ll keep five minutes, I’m sure.’

‘I’ve been making teas all day.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Time you had a break. You’re in no fit state to be out of bed.’

Tea for three. Melanie had just begun to tell Mike that they’d tried the telly, and found nothing on any channel, not even a printed message, when June and Linda arrived. Mike stretched the tea out with some extra hot water, while Jill brought them up to date with the dire news.

Linda had another fit of weeping; but she allowed June to hold her, and went to sleep in her arms after a while. When June was sure she was well away, she whispered, ‘She’s got two more boils, one each side of her tummy, just where her belt rubs them. I’ll get her to change into a dress when she wakes up.’

Melanie told them how Jill had gone down to Mrs Halstead’s flat to see if she could get anything out of her telly, in case it was simply Melanie’s telly that had packed up. Nothing doing. They’d tried to get Tyne Tees on the telephone again. Still continuously engaged. Directory Enquiries: no answer.

After trying every channel of telephone communication they could think of, they’d hit on the idea of trying random numbers, with city codes from the book. They got a lot of ‘number unobtainable’ tones, and a lot of unanswered ringing, but eventually got through to an old lady. They explained what they were trying to do – only really working it out in their own minds by having to explain it to someone else. The old lady wasn’t interested.

Roland Metcalfe was their second contact. He was only too pleased to talk to someone. He’d been wondering if he was the last man on earth. He was an old chap living on his own in an isolated house at the end of a long straggling village near Hebden Bridge. He’d been ill, and none of his neighbours had come on their usual two-or-three-times-daily visits. When he recovered sufficiently to walk down to the next house, he found nobody there.

There was no-one in the next house either.

‘By that time, he was too tired to face the walk back up the hill, so he sat down in his neighbour’s armchair, and went to sleep. He didn’t wake up until after dark, and still no-one had returned. He made himself a cup of tea and put the telly on. He was shocked to find only one channel working, and that displaying the printed message we all know and love. It was the first he knew about the epidemic. He tried to ring the village shop, and friends in the village, because he was running out of food at home, but there were no replies. In desperation he tried the doctor’s surgery and the police, the operator, and finally 999. No replies at all.

‘Eventually, after a period of panic followed by a period of despair, he decided to investigate his neighbour’s larder, and estimated he’d got a couple of weeks’ food if no-one came home.

‘We rang just as he was beginning to despair again. He’s going to continue with our random ringing policy, and hopefully we’re going to start a network, all giving each other any contacts we find.’

All that afternoon they tried random numbers. They made a few contacts, and talked briefly to a few people who weren’t interested. They worked out a standard introduction, with a short series of questions which elicited a little interesting information even from some of those who didn’t want to remain in the network. Linda slept in June’s arms the whole while.

‘Hello. My name’s Melanie Downs. I’m trying to find out a bit more about the epidemic, and I wonder if you’d mind answering a few questions?’

‘Are any of your household sick, at home or in hospital?

‘When did they fall ill?

‘Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Do you have any neighbours to help look after you?

‘I’m sorry, there’s absolutely nothing we can do from here. We’re just a group of friends in Burnfield. We’ve no transport except a couple of bikes.

‘Yes of course we’ll ring again. You can ring us anytime too. We can put you in touch with a few other people by phone, too.’

Early that evening the phone went dead.

‘I rather doubt if we can get it fixed until all this is over!’

‘First the telly, now the phone. Try the telly again, Mike. Let’s see if it’s come back on.’

But it hadn’t.

‘It’ll be the electricity next, I suppose.’

‘That’s a dismal thought. Half the food we’ve got’ll be useless if we can’t cook it. And there’s a fridge full of stuff that’ll go off.’

‘Linda’s asleep, isn’t she, June?’

‘Mmm.’

‘I’m wondering whether you and I should do some careful looting, June, before the rush starts. And the backlash. Not so much food, as a gas stove and come cylinders. I bet not a lot of people have thought about the ’lecky going off yet. I’m sure it will soon.’

‘Mike! Don’t leave us!’

‘It could be that or starve, love. There’ll be two of us, to keep an eye on each other. Don’t worry. Are you game, June?’

‘I think you’re right anyway, whether I’m game or not. I’d love to know how one loots carefully, that’s all. While we’re out, I reckon Jill ought to fill every available container with water, too. I dare say the water’s not so likely to go off, but we’ll be really stuck if it does. Ought to cook everything from the fridge that’ll keep better cooked, too. Are you up to that, Jill?’

‘Perhaps we should do that before we go, June. I’d rather go later in the evening anyway.’

‘You mean you’re a bit afraid, Mike. I reckon dusk is the best time. It’s the hardest time for anyone to see. With the street lights still working, night-time’s not so good, and with no-one about to speak of, daylight’s hopeless. But you’ve got to work out what you intend to do before you go. I think we ought to leave it twenty-four hours, and hope that every Tom, Dick and Harry hasn’t had the same idea by then.’

‘Where do you intend to get a stove and cylinders, anyway? Carter’s and Oakenshaw’s will both have alarms, probably linked to the cop-shop. I haven’t a clue who else would have any.’

‘All the shops’ll be alarmed. With luck the link to the police would be out of order, courtesy of British Telecom, but I wouldn’t like to rely on that. I was thinking more of finding someone’s caravan.’

‘You’d get a stove like that, if it wasn’t too thoroughly built in. But I bet you’d find the cylinder was in the house.’

‘Probably empty anyway.’

They talked in circles for a while, then decided to get the water drawn and the cooking done. When they looked at it, there wasn’t a lot that would keep better cooked than raw – they didn’t have a great deal of fresh meat. They made a strange meal composed of the most perishable items.

They woke Linda to eat it. Her boils were troubling her dreadfully; one of them had burst. She was a bit dopey with sleep, pain and tears. June took her to the bathroom to dress the boils and change her clothes for something more comfortable.

Mike had a brainwave. ‘They’ll have stoves and cylinders down at the sewage project at Wood Lane. And I bet there’s no guard dog any more!’

‘They’ll have damn big cylinders, too. You’ll be a bit obvious carrying one, if you can manage it at all, all that way. I suppose they might have some smaller ones for some portable equipment, that might have the same connections. It might be our best bet, at that.’

They didn’t think of anything better that evening. Mike, Jill and June went off to sleep quite early, leaving Linda and Melanie playing cards on Melanie’s bed.

During the night Melanie was coughing again. It woke Mike. He was conscious of Jill’s breathing again – the same pattern as the night before. Was that a hint of a wheeze on the deep breath? It was there next time the deep breath came round, just as slightly, but now he was sure.

He moved his shoulder a little to try to improve her airway, hoping not to wake her up in the process. A little pain jabbed him in the muscle under his armpit, making him start slightly. Jill stirred, coughed slightly, and settled down again. Mike felt sore under his armpit.

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