Day Four (41 page)

HF
: I was in mourning. And I’d seen enough. I’d seen the lowest people could go.

We are sorry for your loss, and appreciate you talking to us.

HF
: I’m not doing this for you, or for the families of those who have lost people. All I ask is simple, that after you’ve done whatever tests or whatever it is you have to do, that Elise’s ashes are scattered next to her husband’s.

And where is that?

HF
: I don’t know. You can find these things out, can’t you? What have you done with Elise’s body?

I can assure you Ms Mayberry’s remains are being—

HF
: I should have gone with her. I should have gone with her when I had the chance. Only . . . only . . .

[Subject becomes visibly distressed]

[Interview suspended]

>>Zimri, Jesse C/ Interview #2/ Page 2

JZ
: I’m not well. I’m in no state to answer your questions. I got to . . . I think I’ve got the noro. About fucking time.

Dr Zimri, according to Madeleine Gardner, you were among the party who left the ship. Can you confirm this?

[Subject continues to protest that he be allowed back to his room]

[Interview recommences after medical intervention]

JZ
: Jesus. What did you give me? Diazepam?

You are feeling stronger, Dr Zimri?

JZ
:
Ja
. Much. Achy, but okay.

Dr Zimri, according to Madeleine Gardner, you were among the party who left the ship. Can you confirm this?

JZ
:
Ja
.

Can you confirm who was with you?

JZ
:
Bin – Jesus, Bin . . . Fuck. That security guy, Devi, though he was still in a bad way. Maddie, the woman who worked for Celine del Ray. And some guy I hadn’t met before.

Paulo, my old cabin steward, if you can believe that, was driving the boat. I didn’t know he had it in him. I didn’t get much of a chance to speak to him, because although we didn’t have to go far, less than a kay, probably, I got sick almost the second I climbed on board. So did Bin. The closer we got to shore, the realer the whole thing became. I was zonked when I saw the coastline for the first time on the cruise ship. Thought I was imagining it. Now we were coming face to face with buildings with smashed windows, no cars, no noise except the burr of the engine and this low buzz which I later learned was from the flies on the beach.

The channel was blocked by another cruise ship. It looked untouched but it was jammed right in there – it was bloody huge and I could read its name:
The Beautiful Wonder
. Paulo manoeuvred the boat towards the end of the jetty wall and tied us off. He still looked terrified. Devi instructed us to put on our gear. I started sweating the second I pulled on the suit, which was like being wrapped in asbestos. He said he was going to head out and see if he could locate a police station or find any military personnel – oh
ja
, that’s the other thing, there were a couple of army trucks on the pedestrian boardwalk. Empty, but you could see that at some stage there was a military presence.

Maddie’s friend – intense guy, bad Celtic tattoos, I can’t remember his name – said he was going to go and check out his apartment, which was around the corner from the harbour. He hadn’t said a word the whole time we were on the boat. Maddie said she’d go with him.

Devi asked Bin and me to head along the beach and investigate what the fuck those giant tents staked out along it were all about. I was seriously worried about Bin and told him to stay with Paulo. He refused. I should have tried harder.

[Subject requests a five-minute break]

[Interview commences]

Did you go along the beach, Dr Zimri?

JZ
:
Ja
.

Please continue, Dr Zimri.

JZ
: Are you guys really buying all this stuff I’m saying?

Please continue, Dr Zimri.

Christ. Well. It was a nightmare right from the first second. For a start, I almost fell out of the boat when I climbed out of it. The tanks and helmet . . . Jesus, you’d have to be super-fit to carry all that weight even in perfect conditions, and we had to climb over a fence and scramble over the rocks to get to the bloody beach. It was unbearably hot walking along that beach, in that suit. I don’t know if the smell could cut through the breathing apparatus, or if I was just imagining it. Jissus, it was like . . . And Bin, I really felt for him. He’d doped himself up with Solu-Medrol and Imodium, but they wouldn’t stop the noro.

After a minute or so, I didn’t think about what I was doing. I just walked.

Then we reached the first tent. There were about six of them, I think. Placed all along the beach. I knew what they were straight away. I knew it was where they must have taken the bodies to store them from the flies. Why there I have no idea. Maybe everywhere else was full. It was clearly a mass operation of some kind. Maybe they were planning on chucking them into the sea. There was a huge pile of body bags just thrown on top of each other around the entrance. Someone had covered them in lime powder, and sand and other crap had blown in on top of them. Didn’t stop the flies though. They were so thick in places, you couldn’t see a hand in front of your face.

I knew I had to open one up, see what we were dealing with.

And did you?

JZ
:
Ja
.

Could you please describe the condition of the body?

JZ
:
Ja
. It was fucked. That’s a medical term, by the way.

In your opinion, what was the cause of death?

JZ
: I’m not a pathologist.

We would appreciate hearing your opinion.

JZ
: Christ. I don’t know. I didn’t want to touch it. What we were doing, getting so close, it was already dangerous. The suits wouldn’t protect against an airborne pathogen.

[Subject sighs]

Look, from what I could see, it looked like it might have been some kind of super-flu or Ebola-type infection. It was hard to even tell the gender of the body it was so bloated. There did appear to be some lesions and swelling of the glands, but that could have just been putrefaction at work.

In your opinion, how long had the bodies been dead?

[Subject remains silent]

Please answer the question, Dr Zimri.

JZ
: I asked Bin his opinion, but he just shook his head. Without another word, he walked off down the beach and I shouted at him to stop. He didn’t hear me, or didn’t want to hear me. We only had forty-five minutes of oxygen left or so. Like I say, the whole thing was incredibly short-sighted.

And then Bin started yelling and pointing at something. I ran up to him, which almost killed me. The helmet’s visor was steaming up, and the oxygen I was breathing tasted like diesel. And then I saw it too. A flash of red in the sand about five hundred metres away.

Bin said he thought it might be a lifeboat, but it was difficult to be sure with the flies and the spray and the fucking helmet. He set off, and I ran after him. We jogged past another of those tents, this one had earthmoving equipment around it and an overturned army jeep.

It was a lifeboat. One of the triangular inflatable ones. It had collapsed, which isn’t supposed to happen, so fuck knows what it had been through, and the sea was trying to tug it back in. Bin was there first. There was something tangled in the ropes attached to it.

A body.

Did you recognise the body?

JZ
:
Ja
.
It was Damien. The cruise director.

[Interview suspended]

>>Gardner, Madeleine/ Interview #3/ Page 2

all he would say, over and over again. ‘This is impossible. This is impossible.’

Why impossible?

MG
: The ship had lost communication for . . . God, what was it? Five days by then. You could see that what had happened must have taken longer than that. And a cataclysm hasn’t hit Miami in actuality, has it? I’m here . . . sitting here. Talking to you. We’re in Miami, right? Or close to it.

Please continue, Ms Gardner.

MG
: We headed away from the beach and towards the highway. The apartment blocks to our right were barricaded with rolls of razor wire. I couldn’t tell if that was to stop people getting out, or getting in. We passed the gate to the harbour. There were still boats there, yachts, but I saw something lying behind that gate . . . sprawled out, covered in flies. None of it felt real. None of it. Xavier led us to the end of the walkway, around a corner and towards a wide boulevard. Behind us, a few hundred metres away, where the main road met the highway, it looked like the army had set up some kind of barrier there. More wire, huge army trucks, I think there was even a tank. I don’t know. Sweat was running in my eyes, it was becoming difficult to see, and my shoulders were aching and shaking under the weight of the suit and the oxygen tanks. I did try to peer past it, hoping that maybe I could see towards the airport. Stupid, really, as I knew it was miles away.

We passed by a large strip mall. God, that freaked me out. A huge pet store, all kinds of graffiti smeared across the windows. A CVS pharmacy that looked like it had been turned into some kind of church. And the billboards . . . instead of adverts for McDonalds or whatever, they . . . um . . . One said nothing but ‘repent’ in huge red letters that looked like blood. Another showed a series of photographs of teenagers, the word ‘sinner’ slashed across each of their faces.

How were you feeling at this point?

MG
:
Numb, I suppose. Light-headed. Part of this was the equipment. My entire body was wet with sweat. I was running out of energy and I asked Xavier how much further it was. He told me it was just three more blocks. He kept moving, and I kept following. Part of the main road was flooded where a water pipe had burst and we had to detour around it. Um . . . God. There was so much to take in. And flies. Flies everywhere. I had to keep brushing them away from my visor. Whatever had killed the people, it hadn’t killed the flies.

Finally he turned down a residential street that looked reassuringly normal. Only . . . several of the houses’ windows were boarded up and notices were stuck onto every door or garage door that we passed. Most were ripped or weathered, but I found one sealed in plastic. Have you seen it?

[Subject is referring to the following document scanned in here for convenience:

What to do if you suspect your family is infected with the Ishi Virus.

Do NOT approach the authorities or attempt to leave the vicinity. Call the 0700 hotline.

WE WILL COME TO YOU.

Quarantine the infected in a room and seal and secure the entrance and exit. All items that the infected has touched must be incinerated.

Those attempting to flee the quarantine line will be prosecuted.

May Jesus and Lord our God have mercy on all our souls.

NOTE: There is no known strain of disease classified ‘the Ishi Virus’. ‘Ishi’ was the codename for Unit 787, the covert biological and chemical research undertaken by the Japanese in World War II]

Xavier eventually stopped outside a house three blocks down the street, a park of some kind behind it. Semi-detached. Not high-end or anything, but nice enough, apart from the fact that the windows were covered with newspaper. The door was locked, but he flipped up a pot outside the door and retrieved a key.

Then we went inside.

In your opinion, what was Mr Smith’s state of mind at this point?

MG
: You mean Xavier?

Yes.

MG
: It was difficult to see his face clearly through the visor, but I could tell he was trying to hide his emotions. But when I asked him if he’d put the newspaper over the windows, he snapped at me, said something like, ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid.’ The place was cramped and dark. We tried the light switch, but the electricity was out – no surprise there after everything we’d seen. The kitchen and lounge were on the ground floor, and it looked like the bailiffs had just been. The floor was covered in dust and filth, there was sod-all furniture, nothing but a desk and an empty bookshelf, and someone had spray-painted a peace sign on the fridge door. Xavier had told me he was a trust-fund kid. I wouldn’t have expected him to live in such a squalid place.

Did Mr Smith comment on the condition of the residence?

MG
: He said something like: ‘This can’t be,’ then he ran up the stairs. I don’t how he moved so fast in that suit.

Did you follow him?

MG
: Not right then. I snooped around for a few minutes, looked in the kitchen cupboards – they were all empty – and checked the desk drawers. That’s where I found the e-reader. I’m not sure why I pocketed it. Maybe because it seemed to be the only thing of value in the place and I thought Xavier might want it. Time was really running out by then and to be honest I was getting spooked. As if I was in a haunted house or something. I called out that we’d have to hurry as we’d need enough air to get us back to the tender boat, but he didn’t answer. I shouted again, and he still didn’t respond. I had no choice but to go after him.