Noah's Ark: Contagion (26 page)

“Can you see the vein? Do you know what to do?” Ewan asked, looking on concerned.

“Of course. Didn’t you get basic medical training in the navy?”

Ewan nodded. He didn’t want to admit that he had long since forgotten everything he had been taught on the subject.

Keeping the wetsuit pulled back with one hand, Lucya removed the plastic cap of the syringe’s needle with her teeth. She tapped the exposed skin of Jake’s arm with a free finger, then placed the needle against the light blue vein and pushed. It pierced the skin easily. With a deep breath she pressed in the plunger, sending the milky liquid into his bloodstream.

“There, you’re going to be fine Jake, I promise. This is going to sort you out.”

Twenty-Five

M
ANDY
C
HALMERS
SAT
alone in the darkness. She had returned to cabin 845. It was now devoid of patients. Those who had been brought there previously had been taken to other rooms. 845 had become the nerve centre, the base of operations for the constantly evolving medical team. Hours before, the place had been alive with activity. The five new nurses were in and out, tending to new cases, registering details, installing the sick in whatever rooms they could find.

Now though, the room was silent, deserted.

Three of the five new nurses had themselves gone down with the virus, paralysed and in pain, unable to help anyone, least of all themselves. The other two had found a quiet corner of their own in which to collapse and take a break. What else could they do? There was no medication, no means of assisting the dying. Their last hope had been the promised antiviral, the magical cure that the curious doctor from the submarine had been working on. And now even that ray of hope had died. The medication not only didn’t work, it appeared to be even more deadly than the virus itself.

Mandy wasn’t just hiding out because of exhaustion, although she was certainly tired beyond all measure. Nor was she just hiding away from the noise of the sick and the dying as their doleful cries echoed around the entire deck. Mandy was hiding because of her overwhelming sense of guilt. It was she who had sent the nurse to find Janice and Vardy, to hurry them up, and to suggest Kiera as the ideal test patient. She’d not spent a lot of time with Kiera, but it was enough to know that she liked her. They had chatted a while, sharing stories that only fellow nurses could truly appreciate. After their initially shaky start, the two women had established a firm bond and were looking forward to spending more time together, getting to know each other properly once the virus was beaten. Now Kiera was dead. Killed by the very thing that was supposed to cure her.

As if that wasn’t enough, she had gone and administered the second dose of medication to the nice young man who had been brought in only hours before. He was in the very earliest stages of the illness; only his legs were paralysed. There was no denying that Janice and Vardy had asked her to find a suitable candidate to test the drug on, someone who wasn’t as far gone as Kiera, but it was Mandy who had made the choice. To her, that meant she had as good as killed the man. Soon, she was going to have to go and tell his son that he was dead. The young lad who had come to find her, bright-eyed, fear written across his face. The very thought of it caused Mandy to sob. How many more children were going to lose parents? Would anyone survive, or was this the end? They had survived the asteroid, but it looked like fate had caught up with them, that they were doomed to end their days in the coming hours.

She dried her eyes on the backs of her hands and got to her feet. Wallowing in self-pity wasn’t going to get her far. She needed to find the son, to make sure he was being looked after. There were other children who had alerted her and the other nurses to their parents’ conditions too. Everyone had been so busy running around trying to help the sick that nobody had spared a thought for the kids.

Mandy suddenly became very afraid. Where were these kids? Had they eaten? Slept? Was
anyone
making sure they were okay? With a knot of fear in her belly, she rushed out of the door and started down the main deck eight passage. She knew who was in all of the rooms immediately surrounding 845, and none of them had children in. She sped down past ten cabins, twenty cabins, and then began to open doors.

“Hello, sorry to disturb you. Have you seen the children?” she asked. The room was occupied by an elderly couple, both in bed, both looking like they didn’t have much longer.

“Who…what children?”

“Any children. Have you seen any children?”

“I…no, I don’t think…no. When will…someone…come? Help…us?”

“I’m sorry,” Mandy said. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Backing out of the room, she closed the door. She could hear the old lady still talking, pleading for someone to help. Nobody could, of course, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier to leave them.

Mandy tried the next room, and the next, working her way along the deck. Some of the bigger state rooms looked more like hospital wards, with rows of the sick and dying lined up on the floors. Every room she tried was occupied, none of them by anyone healthy.

Eventually she reached a wide open area, one of the main staircases on the ship. It was a large space with viewing windows looking out to sea. Easy chairs, comfy sofas, and low tables were scattered around. One of the new nurses, Carrie, was spread out on one of the red leather sofas.

“Oh, Mandy, hey. Sorry, I…I just had to get away for a few minutes,” she said, a look of guilt replacing that of fatigue.

“That’s fine, Carrie, honestly. We all feel the same.”

“It’s no excuse though. I should be doing something.” She started to get up, but Mandy waved her hand.

“No, stay there, take a break, you deserve it. But tell me, have you seen any children around? Any at all, anywhere?”

“Children? There have been a few that have come looking for help for their parents, but after I’ve attended to the adults, no, I haven’t seen any children. Why?”

In the back of Mandy’s mind, an idea had taken root. It was barely a seedling, hardly formed at all, but it was there, trying to get out and see the light of day.

“Carrie, have you treated any children? With the virus, I mean. Have you seen any children who have the virus?”

“Of course,” Carrie said, but she looked uncertain. “I mean, I must have done. I’ve spent most of the day handing out painkillers and applying cold, wet towels. Some of those patients must have been children.”

“Must they?” The idea was taking shape. Mandy dared not speak it out loud, but neither could she ignore it. “Think, Carrie, think hard. Are you absolutely sure that you’ve seen to sick kids today?”

Carrie did think. She was obviously racking her brain. Her expression told Mandy all she needed to know. “Well now you ask, and now I think of it, I don’t actually remember any specific children. But there must be some. Statistically speaking, there must be some, right?”

“We have to find them, Carrie. We have to find the kids!”

Mandy crossed the open space and began opening cabin doors on the next section of corridor. She dispensed with pleasantries; there wasn’t the time to lose. Instead, she peeked inside each room and left as soon as it was clear there were no children present.

“Hang on!” Carrie called after her. “I’ll help you!”

• • •

Getting Captain Jake Noah out of the base proved challenging, but easier than Ewan had feared. The submariner had been prepared to carry him up the lift shaft over his shoulder, but Lucya pointed out that with the generator running and electricity available, the lift itself could be pressed into service. Of course, there was the small matter of it missing a floor, having been blown out during the previous expedition. A quick look through one of the labs provided a solution to that problem. Ewan located some wooden shelves that he placed over the hole. They didn’t cover it completely, but they were enough to be able to wheel Jake’s trolley in and out. Miraculously, the lift worked without any need of a key. Ewan suggested that when the emergency generator was running it must have overridden the security system.

The drug Lucya had administered brought Jake back to consciousness for a short while. When he realised what was happening, he insisted that they bring back more Gemini 5001 machines before they took him back to the ship, but Lucya wasn’t having any of it. They arrived at the main entrance to the base just as Jake lost consciousness again.

“What do you think, Ewan? Do we try and get the trolley across the ash?”

“No.” He replied without hesitation. “The wheels are too small. They’re not made for anything other than indoor floors. And besides, we don’t know how it will react with the ash. We have to carry him.”

That was easier said than done. The two of them lifted the captain from the low base of the trolley. He was a dead weight, difficult to handle, and surprisingly heavy. The slippery wetsuit didn’t make the task any easier; they had barely made it a few metres from the door when he began to slip perilously from their grip. They had to stop every few steps in order to reassert their hold on him.

The previous trips to and from the base had disturbed the ash, with footprints merging together to form a kind of channel where the dangerous powder was compressed and shallow. They quickly discovered that they made quicker progress by walking in this ready-made pathway, even if it was being slowly refilled by drifting ash.

It was when they reached the rocky descent to the raft that Lucya started to lose the feeling in her legs. At first she thought it was just fatigue. Carrying Jake had made her muscles begin to ache, and the loss of sensation in her lower limbs was a logical extension of that. It soon became apparent that this was more than just tiredness.

“Ewan, you’re going to have to get Jake down to the raft yourself, then come back for me,” she said quietly.

He wasn’t sure he had heard her right. The wind was getting up again and she had spoken in barely more than a whisper, muted further by her gas mask. “It will be easier for two of us to carry him down there,” he said.

“I can’t…I can’t move any more.”

“We’ll take a break. Give it a few minutes, you’ll feel better.”

“No, I won’t. It’s the virus, Ewan. My legs have gone. It’s started.”

Ewan felt his flesh turn cold. He liked Lucya. He didn’t want to see her suffer. And he liked Jake even more, and really wanted to get him back to the ship as quickly as possible. But even more than that, he had been struck by the realisation that he was, himself, inevitably going to be struck down by the virus, and probably sooner rather than later. “What about the medication? The antiviral? Is there any left?”

“A few drops, maybe.”

“Okay. I’ll get Jake down to the raft. You inject yourself with the medication. A few drops has to be better than nothing, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he began the arduous process of getting the captain over the rocks and down to the raft. The only way he could manage it without risk of causing Jake any more injury was to throw him over his shoulder and then clamber down, feet first, face scraping against the concrete boulders. It was a physical trial, but the navy’s strict fitness requirements and exercise regime meant that he was up to the challenge. His biggest problem was avoiding any slips or slides on loose rubble. The neoprene sleeves on his feet provided another benefit in addition to their ash-protection duties: grip.

So engrossed was he in the job of getting Jake safely down the concrete cliff that it wasn’t until he reached the very bottom he realised they had a problem. The raft was gone.

• • •

They found the children halfway down the next section of deck eight. It was Mandy who opened the door of the stateroom. She found a huge suite, one of the largest on the whole deck. Four luxurious bedrooms richly decorated with hand-crafted wood panelling, a Jacuzzi-equipped bathroom complete with a walk-in shower big enough to host a tea party, and a vast salon with a wide balcony that looked out over the ash-strewn ruins of the Faslane base. The nurse didn’t have time to be impressed by the expensive suite though. She was too busy being impressed by the organised ranks of children.

Her initial estimate of thirty or so kids was not far off the mark. In fact there were thirty-six. Thirty-seven if you included Simone, who had taken charge. Technically Simone counted as a child, but at sixteen years of age she was older than any of the others by a margin of at least three years.

Simone had, somehow, sourced food and drink for the youngsters. She had also arranged a whole host of entertainment to keep them occupied and take their minds off whatever was happening to their parents. The bigger children were each looking after groups of the smaller ones, and Simone supervised them all.

“Hello,” Simone said, noticing Mandy for the first time. “Are you looking for a child?”

“Yes. Not mine,” Mandy added quickly. “My name’s Mandy, I’m a nurse. I’ve been looking for all the children.”

“I’m Simone. I think all the children are here. All the children whose parents are…you know…sick.”

“You’ve organised all of this yourself, Simone?”

“Uh huh. I didn’t mean to. I was looking after my sister—she’s the little one over there, with the curly red hair. Then her friend’s mom got ill, so we said she could stay with us. Then more friends’ parents got sick, so they came too. I guess things got a bit out of hand after that. More and more kept coming. Are you here to take them all away?”

“What? No! This is amazing, Simone. How did you find this cabin? It’s huge!”

“Nathan’s parents had it. He’s the little guy over there, playing with my sister. They’re sick, stuck in one of those horrible cabins up the other end. So we came down here, to stay away from the sick people. I think it’s worked.”

“You mean, because none of them got sick yet?”

“Yeah.”

“None of these kids have the virus? You’re sure about that?”

Simone answered without hesitation. “Yeah, I’m sure. If any of them showed any signs, I would have taken them straight down to medical to get them checked out. I wouldn’t risk keeping a sick child here and infecting the others.”