The Peeling: Book 1 (Jeremy's Choice) (2 page)

Keith
began to wail inhumanely and the phone line went dead.  Jeremy didn’t know
if it was the caller or the studio that had cut the conversation short. 
Probably the studio; they had a duty not to cause the public any more distress
then they were already in.

Sarah
smiled awkwardly into the main camera.  “We seem to have lost Keith there,
but I’m sure we’re all united in our prayers that his condition gets better.”

“Absolutely,”
Tom added.  “I think we should just move on and take the next call, Sarah.”

“That
would be Angela Thomas on line-4.”

“We’re
all going to die.  God is punishing us for letting the queers and
the-” 

The
line went dead.  This time Jeremy was positive it had been the studio’s
doing.  There was nothing like a crisis to bring out the hate-filled
vipers from their pits.  England liked to act like all the whackos lived
abroad, in less civilised countries, but working in a news studio made it quite
clear that there were as many nutjobs here as there were anywhere else.  Maybe
even more.

Jeremy
checked his watch.  There was only forty minutes left till he could leave,
but it still seemed like an eternity.  At home, his wife was sick, too –
like so many other people – and it felt like a betrayal not to be with her,
looking after her.  He’d betrayed her for most of their twenty-years of
marriage, with various other women and his hidden gambling habit, but failing
her now was enough to make his guilt muscle finally take notice.  He was a
hypocrite, that much was true, but he knew there were times when a man needed
to step up and be selfless for the woman he loved; this was one of them. 
The entire nation lived in hope that The Peeling would soon be dominated by a
cure, that man would triumph over nature once again as it had always
done.  But Jeremy knew better.  He knew that the virus wasn’t just
bird-flu on steroids.  This was the end. 

Even
if the virus was destroyed, the amount of death it was due to cause would be
monumental.  Millions, maybe even billions if it hit the third world.
 Society would never be the same again.  Perhaps that meant Jeremy could
have one last chance to be a decent man again, to be a good husband – even if
it was only for the handful of days his wife had left.  She could get
better, sure, but something in his gut told him not to hold onto that
hope. 

He had
to get home.

The next
call came from line-2.  A cantankerous old man, named Bob.  “It’s
them bloody Koreans, I’m tellin’ ya.  I’d blame the Arabs, too, if I
could, but they don’t have the smarts for this.  North Korea has been
closed off to the rest of the word for decades.  We don’t know what
they’ve been up to, do we?  But I tell you one thing for nought: they’ve
obviously been plotting the downfall of the western world this whole
time.  Kim Jong Il arranged for it to happen before he died and, surprise
surprise, a virus the likes of which the world has never seen has come out of a
country no one knows anything about.  Prime Minister Lloyd-Collins knew
about it; tried to do something about it, too, before he died.”

Sarah
butted in while she had chance.  “Now, Bob, it’s already been established
that North Korea has been affected like everyone else.  Early reports that
they were the instigators of this pandemic turned out to be false.  Prime
Minister Lloyd-Collins’s directive to bomb their country was just the paranoid
actions of a dying man.  General Harvey Whitehead was right to do what he
did by holding emergency cabinet hustings.”

“All
so he could get in power,” Bob asserted.

“Come
on,” said Sarah.  “Do you really believe that?  General Whitehead was
only made Acting Prime Minister temporarily because his military background is
exactly the skillset needed to help manage the nation through this
crisis.  His decision to ignore Lloyd Collins – God rest his soul –
probably averted nuclear war.”

“And
also let the bloody Koreans get away scot-free, to boot.  You bloody watch
what happens now.  This time next year we’ll all be slaves to a bunch of
slitty-eyed-“

The
line went dead. 

Jeremy
had heard enough of this.  Holding a public phone-in was just morbid and
macabre.  There would be no hope gained from talking with people at home,
for they were the most hopeless and lost of all.  The men and woman of the
United Kingdom were floundering helplessly in the dark, rotting away slowly in
both body and mind.  Their sad stories would do nothing but spread more suffering,
infecting people’s thoughts in the same way the disease infected their flesh.

The
whole thing was pointless.

Jeremy
had just made the decision to abandon his post when a ruckus erupted in the
corner of the studio.  A handful of people had begun to scuffle with one
another while others backed away fearfully.  Angry voices filled the air
and bounced off the narrow walls, interrupting the on-going news report.

“We
seem to be having a few problems here in the studio,” Sarah told the
audience.  “I think we should cut to a commercial break briefly, but don’t
go anywhere, guys.  We’ll be right back.”

Sarah
and Tom stood up from their desk and headed away from the violence, whilst
Jeremy shot past them and headed for the centre of the squabbling crowd. 
As he got nearer, he realised that it was not a fight that had broken out but
an attack on a single individual.  A pair of men and one woman were
kicking hatefully at a downed body.

“Everybody,
back away NOW!”  Jeremy hollered at the group with great force in his
voice.  While he may not have been a physically imposing man, he had a
voice that commanded attention.  The group of people immediately stopped
what they were doing and stared at him.  Their victim remained huddled and
whimpering on the floor.  Jeremy saw that it was just a girl – blonde and
pretty, perhaps as young as twenty.

“She
has it!” cried a woman in a power suit and neck scarf.  Her face was dripping
with anger.  “The bitch has it and tried to hide it.”

Jeremy
looked down at the girl shaking on the floor and saw no signs of the disease on
her.  He looked up at the power-suited woman and raised his eyebrow. 
“What?”

“It’s
true,” said a tall Black man next to her.  “She’s been sneezing none-stop
for the last hour.”

Jeremy
raised an eyebrow.  “Sneezing?  A young girl sneezes and you all
think you have the right to attack her?  A big strong man like you?”

“She
deserves it.  We could all be infected because of her.  I have a
family.”

“Then
you should be with them, instead of hanging around here and acting like a
thug.  Now help her up off the floor.”

The
man shook his head.  “Fuck no.  You pick her up.  I’m not
touching her.”

Jeremy
took a step forwards and stared the man hard in the face.  “You just did
touch her, with your fists, as I recall.  Help her up now.  I won’t
ask you again.”

The
taller, larger man just laughed at Jeremy, then shoved out with both
arms.  Jeremy acted quickly, grabbing one of the man’s thick, bony wrists
and pulling him off balance.  Then he kicked out and took the man’s legs
clean from under him, sending him down to the floor with a
thump
. 
Jeremy was just about to follow the man down and deliver a knockout punch when
Sarah called out to him.

“Jeremy,
don’t!  I’ll help the girl up and we’ll take her somewhere to lie down.”

Jeremy
looked up at the young news anchor and was confused.  “Sarah, you have the
news to be getting on with.”

“We’re
on a break.  Tom can handle things for ten minutes.”  She glared at the
nearby crowd and shook her head.  “You people should be ashamed of
yourselves.”

Sarah
went over to the fallen girl and knelt one side of her.  Jeremy knelt the
other.  Together they gathered the woozy young woman to her feet and
walked her away from the baying crowd.  There were a whole host of angry
mutterings that followed after them, but no one had the guts to act out after
what had happened to their ring leader. 

Jeremy
and Sarah took the girl out into the corridor.  “We can take her to my
dressing room,” Sarah said.

Jeremy
nodded.  It was a kind offer and that was why he had always liked
Sarah.  She was as friendly as anybody else, despite being a national sex
symbol.  Her ego had every right to be much larger than it was.

They
half-carried, half-dragged the girl into the dressing room and set her down on
a plush sofa that filled one side of the space.  She was weak and upset,
but seemed to be coherent.

“Are
you okay?” Jeremy asked her.

Her
eyes had filled with tears, but she nodded.  “I don’t think they would
have stopped.”

“Goddamn
animals,” Sarah said.  “They should be arrested.”

The
girl waved her hand.  “It’s okay.  I’m just going to go home and
forget about it.  Can I just rest here for a while first?”

“Of
course you can, sweetheart.  Take as long as you need.”

“Is it
true what they said,” Jeremy asked the girl.  “Do you have The Peeling?”

“I…don’t
know.  I have the sniffles, but I’ve been sneezing for a few days now and
nothing else has happened.”

“You
just have a cold,” said Sarah.  “If you’ve been sneezing that long and
haven’t come down with other symptoms then you’re fine.”

Jeremy
nodded and let out sigh.  Despite millions of people being sick, it was
still a relief to know that this one young girl was going to be okay – for now.

The
girl laughed pitifully.  “I think people forget that The ppeeling didn’t
make all of the other, regular illnesses go away.  Not every sneeze means
you have the plague.”

“Exactly,”
Sarah said.  “Now you just relax here until you feel better.  There’s
water in the fridge and some cookies.  Help yourself.”

“Thank
you, Miss Lane.  You’re really kind – kinder than I would have expected
you to be.”

“Yeah,”
Jeremy agreed.  “A big celebrity like you, mixing with the common people
like us.”

Sarah
bopped him on the arm playfully.  “Don’t be silly.  I’m C-List at
best.  Anyway, I have a feeling that the world will have little need for
celebrities soon.”

The
girl frowned.  “You shouldn’t think the worst.  The world will get through
this, one way or another.  Not everyone is getting sick.”

“Perhaps
you’re right,” Sarah said, but didn’t seem to believe it.  In fact she seemed
close to tears.  She took Jeremy by the arm and led him back out into the
corridor.  It seemed like she wanted to tell him something.

“Is
everything alright?” Jeremy asked her, noticing the tears that were brimming at
her eyelids.

“No,
it’s not alright.  Things are definitely not alright, Jeremy.  You
don’t know the half of it.”

“What
do you mean?”

Sarah
leant back against the wall of the corridor and for a moment it looked like she
might collapse completely.  “I have the producers in my ear nonstop,
telling me facts, figures, things to say – and what
not
to say. 
We’re not telling the public anything close to the truth.”

“They
know the truth.  It’s right there in front of their faces.”

Sarah
shook her head.  “They’re all locked up inside while police and military
patrol the roads.  All they see is what’s out their windows.”

Jeremy
wasn’t following.  “So what
is
the truth?”

“That
there’s thirty-million dead, not four.  The worldwide estimates are over
half a billion.  The USA and most of Europe are decimated.”

Jeremy’s
stomach swelled up against his ribcage.  Vomit rose in his throat. 
“You’re telling me that half of the UK is infected already, in less than a
week?”

“The
NHS has estimated that the virus affects one-in-two people.  Everyone has
a fifty-fifty chance.  They’ve also put the chance of death at 100%. 
Anyone who catches the disease will die.  No exceptions.”

“But
you haven’t been telling people that.  You’ve been reporting the
infections, but you haven’t said that all people are dying.  You’ve even
implied that there’s a good chance of recovery for some people.”

“I
don’t make the decisions about what to report, Jeremy.  The peeling
doesn’t just kill people instantly.  They suffer for days first.  The
death toll has only just begun as the first people to catch it have had it for
almost a week now and are only now starting to drop.  We didn’t know at
first that the virus would kill in all cases, but with the data coming through
today, it’s clear that no one is surviving.  The Government are trying to
make the decision on whether to go public with the information or not.”

“The
Government?  What right do they have to dictate to the news outlets?”

“They
can control information in a national crisis.  They always have.”

Jeremy
stood wearily in the corridor, shocked and sickened.  He had known The Peeling
was a plague beyond anything ever seen, but he hadn’t thought it powerful
enough to wipe out half of the world – 50/50.  There would be no
containing it, no cure – just unimaginable death and suffering that would
linger in the consciousness of man for centuries.  He looked at Sarah and
could not imagine the burden she was forced to carry – to have such information,
but unable to share it.