Read Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 Online
Authors: Louise Welsh
Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2
Praise for
A Lovely Way to Burn
‘I was with Louise Welsh’s gutsy gripping heroine Stevie Flint every terrifying step of the way’ Kirsty Wark, author of
The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle
‘I read it in two sittings, pausing only to sleep and dream about it. Gripping, perfectly paced and beautifully written’ Erin Kelly, author of
The Poison Tree
‘A terrifying journey into the possible, this is dystopia for today. Feral, frightening and fascinating,
A Lovely Way to Burn
gripped and chilled me in equal measure’ Val McDermid
‘This intelligent thriller creates an alarmingly convincing picture of London on the brink of disintegration; it reminds us how fragile we are’ Andrew Taylor,
The Spectator
‘I’ve felt for a while that we are in the mood for an intelligent slice of London-based dystopia, and I think Louise Welsh has cracked it with
A Lovely Way to Burn
. . . it kept me up all night nervously turning the pages’ Cathy Rentzenbrink,
Bookseller
‘The London of the novel at once recalls sci-fi dystopia, Dante’s
Inferno
and accounts of the 1665 great plague . . . Welsh’s plot is ably handled . . . She has in Stevie . . . an engaging, stroppy heroine’
Sunday Times
‘A thrillingly dystopian mystery . . . It’s a fine setup, and Stevie is a strong character, a forthright blend of sales sass and reporter brass. Welsh is particularly good at describing the institutional and social disorder that accompanies the outbreak of the sweats’
Guardian
‘This is a novel rich in the kind of iridescent word painting that has long been Welsh’s speciality, and the vulnerable, often maladroit Stevie is a wonderful protagonist’
Independent
‘Welsh plays brilliantly on our worst fears, and the pace never lets up. Seriously scary’
The Times
‘Scary, shocking and touching by turns, this apocalyptic thriller will enthral. I haven’t been so buried in a book in a while’
Irish Independent
‘Suspenseful and intelligent dystopian fiction. Welsh writes snappily and with filmic precision . . . Her setting, vivid and initially familiar, grows increasingly alien as the crisis worsens’
Sunday Business Post
‘Welsh develops a fantastically written mystery which keeps you hanging on to every word . . . A must read, which will leave you dreaming – or having nightmares – of apocalyptic London for weeks’
Irish Examiner
‘The writer [Louise Welsh] reminds me of most is Ian McEwan: both specialise in secrets, rather chilly sexuality, sudden reversals of fortune, and uneasy intimations of doom . . .
A Lovely Way to Burn
is superb popular fiction – a box-set waiting to happen’
Independent on Sunday
‘Louise Welsh writes elegantly and has visualised London in extremis with immense and detailed clarity’
Literary Review
‘The relentlessly taut suspense of
A Lovely Way to Burn
still lingers on my psyche. Such an apocalyptic crisis does not seem improbable and here’s hoping freakishly foul weather and tube strikes are not an omen of things to come’
Stylist
‘A propulsive read, written in lean sentences and snappy cliffhanging chapters . . . Most impressive of all is the Scottish writer’s evocation of a London that, with a Dickensian swagger, emerges as a pulsating untameable beast in its own right’
Metro
‘You know you’re in for a seriously chilling read in this apocalyptic thriller when three very unlikely killers – an MP, a hedge fund manager and a vicar – go on a murderous rampage in the sweltering capital’
Marie Claire
‘A scary vision of London falling apart that’s addictively readable’
Saga
‘A tense, claustrophobic medical whodunit with an apocalyptic tone that cranks the stakes ever higher’
Herald
‘The descriptions of London and society unravelling into chaos are utterly compelling and scarily realistic . . . Great if you like tense thrillers’
Heat
‘A taut thriller so involving that I missed my bus stop!’
Woman & Home
‘A brilliantly imaginative thriller with a compelling heroine and well-paced plot that keeps the tension high’
Hello
Also by Louise Welsh
The Cutting Room
The Bullet Trick
Naming the Bones
Tamburlaine Must Die
The Girl on the Stairs
A Lovely Way to Burn
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by John Murray (Publishers)
An Hachette UK Company
© Louise Welsh 2015
The right of Louise Welsh to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-84854-655-4
John Murray (Publishers)
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
For my nephew Zack Welsh
Contents
. . . darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.
‘Dido’s Lament’ from
Dido and Aeneas
,
libretto, Nahum Tate
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter
Nothing. The radios dumb . . .
‘The Horses’, Edwin Muir
Prologue
The
Oleander
left Southampton on 24 May under the command of Captain Richard Greene for a fourteen-day Mediterranean cruise. The liner had a crew of 1,150 and a passenger list of 2,300 souls. Many of the crew would be engaged in the essential business of sailing the ship, rather than catering to passengers’ whims, but the cruise was advertised as luxurious and the
Oleander
’s brochures made a feature of the ratio of one crew member to every two passengers.
The first casualties appeared on day three, not far from Monte Carlo. Travel is well known for broadening the mind and upsetting the tummy, but many of the
Oleander
’s guests were elderly and so Captain Greene radioed ahead to let the harbourmaster know that there was a possibility of unplanned disembarkations.
The weather in the Mediterranean was bright and warm, the seas calm. Over the next two days more passengers and crew were confined to their cabins with vomiting, diarrhoea and worrying respiratory complaints. The sick people huddled in bed in their air-conditioned cabins, soaking their sheets with sweat and all the time shivering like it was winter in Alaska.
The first death was unexpected and was followed rapidly by another. Captain Greene radioed the news to the authorities and his boss at the shipping company. He was dismayed to receive the same command from both. The
Oleander
was to drop anchor immediately and await further instruction. He was equally dismayed to find that he was fighting the urge to throw up, and when the message came that the ship should
on no account,
repeat, no account, approach port
, he was hunched over the ship’s barrier vomiting into blue Mediterranean waters.
Perhaps it was the close confinement of the passengers and crew that allowed the virus to spread so swiftly. Or maybe it was the delay in getting extra medics to the ship, caused by onshore outbreaks of what was soon to be called the sweats. When a launch carrying medical personnel dressed in protective suits eventually arrived, there were fewer than fifty passengers still alive. Most of them were already showing signs of infection. Some determined souls had staged their own evacuation and lifeboats manned by the dead and dying drifted in the waters around the liner. Later some would wash up on pleasure beaches, but by then no one would care.