Ben ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. “Yes, that’s a possibility.” He looked at James and Leon. “Did that man with the tattoo touch either of you?”
Leon shook his head.
Ben looked at James. “You?”
“No…I… No, I don’t think so.”
“Think? Or know?”
James scratched at his beard, then adjusted his glasses unnecessarily. His eyes darted from Ben to Leon. “I… Well, he threw a punch at me. I mean…it was only a glancing blow. Hit the arm of my glasses rather than me.”
Leon felt his arm being tugged. It was his mom, pulling him back from the young man. “You need to step away!” she said sharply. “Right now!”
James looked incredulously at her. “What the—?”
“You can’t come into the next car with us.” She softened her voice. “I’m sorry.”
He snorted humorlessly, shot a glance over his shoulder down the empty car. “I’m not staying in there!”
“Actually, she’s right,” said Ben. “Just to be on the safe side, James.” He nodded at the young man’s glasses. “I’d remove those as well.”
James instinctively reached up with his hand to remove them, but Ben intercepted.
He grasped his arm. “Don’t touch them… Just shake them off.”
James nodded. He took a few steps back into the car and shook his head like a wet Labrador shaking its coat. His spectacles flew off and landed softly on one of the seats. He turned back to face them, blinking. “There, is that better?”
No one said it was.
“Now what?”
“Just stay where you are,” replied Ben.
“I’m not staying here!” James looked at Leon for support. “Mate?” He stepped forward and reached out a hand to him.
Leon recoiled.
James stared at them all. “So? What? I-I’m, like, quarantined?”
“We’ll go into the next car,” said Leon’s mom. “You stay here…just for a bit. And we’ll see.”
“We’ll see? What does that mean?”
“She’s right,” said Ben. “Whatever happened in the other car…it happened quickly. Just wait and see…for a bit.”
A bead of sweat rolled down the side of James’s face and into the bristles of his beard. “How long? Five minutes? Ten?”
“Just for a bit,” said Ben. He gestured at James to back up a step or two. “Just sit tight, catch your breath. I’ll take this lady and her children through to the next car. Then I’ll come right back, OK?”
James looked hurt. “Come on! For God’s sake! I saved us! It was my idea to block the door!”
“I know. And we’d all now be like those poor sods back there if you hadn’t,” replied Ben. “We’re grateful. It was quick thinking.” He smiled. “Just sit tight. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“We’re not abandoning you,” said Leon’s mom. “It’s just a—”
“Yeah, yeah… I get it,” interrupted James. “Just a precaution. Fine. OK.” He glanced once again down the length of the car. It was entirely still and quiet down there, the door still held closed by Ben’s office tie. James wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, then slumped down on to the nearest seat, letting his head roll back on the headrest. He closed his eyes and stretched his long legs out into the aisle. He looked like an ad for first class.
“That’s it, James. Make yourself comfortable.” Ben smiled.
The rest of them stepped back into the compartment until the door’s sensor decided it was clear and it quickly rolled shut, thumping against the rubber stopper. James stirred and opened his eyes, then settled again as he realized the door was going to do that anyway.
“We should probably tie off this door as well?” said Leon’s mom very quietly. She looked at the old man.
He nodded.
She looked at Leon. “Leon? Have you got a belt or something?”
He shrugged. “No.”
“I have,” said Ben. He reached around his belly and pulled off a long leather belt. He quickly glanced through the scuffed and scratched door and saw that James was watching them warily.
“I know what you’re doing,” they heard him say. “Go on, then, if you’re going to do it.”
Ben nodded at him through the window. “This is just going to be for an hour or so, all right? Just to be on the—”
“On the safe side, I know.”
He looped his belt through the handle of the door, then around the horizontal bar of a luggage rack. “I’m going to have nothing left to wear by the time we’re done.”
Leon peered through the window at James.
James nodded back at him and smiled. “I’m all right, mate,” he said. “I’ll see you in a while.”
The old man cinched the belt tight and tugged it for certainty. “That’s good.”
“Right,” said Leon’s mom, “I’m taking my kids into the next car.” She pushed Grace and Leon ahead of her and turned to go. Ben remained where he was. “You coming?”
“I’m just going to keep an eye on the lad for a bit.”
“You should come,” she replied. “You’ll need to explain to the people in the next car what’s been going on.”
“I’m sure they know already.”
She nodded.
Grace was tugging her hand. “Come on, Mom!”
Leon shot one last glance back through the window at James. He was sitting down now. At the last table in the car, he picked up a discarded copy of the Metro and made an effort to start flicking through it casually.
“Do you think he’s got it?”
Ben shrugged. “God help us all, lad, if it’s that easy to catch it.”
Leon turned and followed his mother and sister as they stepped past the bathrooms and approached the next car. The door swish-thumped open, and it was suddenly noisy with voices, everyone talking over the top of each other, no one getting heard. As they stepped into the car, the exchanges abruptly ceased.
The woman with the long turquoise nails took advantage of the pause to make an announcement to everyone in the car.
“Listen up, everyone. That African virus is over here now!” Her voice carried loud and clear down the length of the car. “It’s here in Britain. It’s proper official now; the BBC has announced it an’ everything.” She held her phone up for all to see.
The car was perfectly silent.
“And they said we’ve all got to stay indoors.” She turned to Leon’s mom. “Just like your hubby said on the phone. There’s, like, poison snowflakes in the air coming down, and if they touch you, then you get it.”
“And if somebody who’s got it touches you, you get it!” added somebody else.
“’S’right,” said the lady.
“Is that door to car B still tied shut?” shouted someone. Leon saw it was one of the three drunk lads. Only they all looked stone-cold sober now.
Leon’s mom nodded. “It’s secure, but I think they might all be dead now anyway.”
A gasp rolled down to the end of the car.
“Oh my God! Dead already?” uttered someone.
“Where’s the old man who was with you?” asked the woman with the nails.
“He’s watching James,” said Leon. “The guy who tied the door shut,” he explained.
The lady’s eyes widened. “He’s not got it too, has he?”
“Is he infected? We don’t know yet,” replied Leon’s mom. “He thinks he might have been touched by one of the others. It’s OK. We’ve contained him.”
The car filled with voices again, the sound of panic building up an unstoppable momentum. The lady with the turquoise nails, the loudest voice in the car it seemed, raised her hands.
“Everyone, shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!”
She had them all at that. She had silence.
/>
She turned to Leon’s mom. “So what do we do now, love?”
Leon looked at his mother. They’re all turning to her? For a moment, he expected his mother to recoil from that kind of pressure, to throw the question back at the lady…to let her, or anyone else who wanted to, assume the role as crisis leader.
Leon’s mom cleared her throat. “We have to sit tight. We have to close any windows that are open, and we have to wait.”
“Until when?”
She looked out of the nearest window at the perfectly black night. “Until the morning, when we can see where we’re going. When we can see if those flakes are coming down.”
She nodded down the car. She could see more people moving around, craning necks curiously to see what was going on.
“Meanwhile…I guess some of us better head down into the other cars and explain what’s going on to them.”
Chapter 19
The lights aboard the train flickered and dimmed at about half past eleven. They finally winked out and left them in complete darkness at midnight. Grace gave a small whimper of alarm when that happened.
“It’s OK, honey,” said Leon’s mom. “I guess the train’s batteries finally ran out.”
Someone overheard her in the dark. “It’s worse than that—that’s the power grid failing. The electricity’s gone.”
Leon looked out of the window at the darkness. A few moments ago, there’d been a faint glow up in the sky, the bottom of a low cloud stained a sickly amber—light pollution from a town somewhere nearby.
But that was gone now. He looked up, hoping to glimpse the reassuring blink of distant airplane lights. He saw nothing. It was just an ominous pitch-black now. Not even the glow of moonlight or the faint twinkling of stars; it was overcast, a thick blanket of what his dad liked to call “British Tupperware sky.”
Several pale squares of light had winked on inside the car, casting dancing shadows across the ceiling—just enough ambient light for his dark-adjusted eyes to pick out silhouettes. Leon was tempted to turn his own phone on for Grace’s benefit, so that they’d have their own light, but he decided to preserve what little charge he had left. “Mom, I’m frightened,” Grace whispered.
“Me too, hon.”
“I wish Dad was here.”
Leon turned to look at his mom. He could just about see her face by the faint light of someone’s phone. He expected an icy response to that.
Instead she nodded. “Me too.”
“Do you think he’s OK?” asked Grace.
“You know what he’s like, a real boy scout. Always prepared. I’m sure he’s OK,” she replied. “Try to get some sleep, Grace.”
“OK.”
Leon watched his sister’s small outline huddle up against his mom. In half a dozen hours, she’d gone from Miss Queen Bee to frightened child. No longer Miss Playground Princess or Miss Congresswoman to Be or Little Miss Big Mouth. Just a kid, scared and missing her dad. Five minutes later, he could hear the soft purr of her snoring. He looked at his mom and thought he could see her watching him.
“You too, Leo. Get some sleep.”
“OK, Mom.” He closed his own eyes and huddled down against the armrest.
• • •
Leon woke a while later and checked the time on his glow-in-the-dark watch. Quarter past four. Outside, the night had been replaced with a dim blue gray, and he could faintly see a steep bank covered in nettles.
“Mom?” he said softly. Little more than a whisper.
“Uh-huh?” She was still awake.
“You OK?”
“I’m fine, love.”
“You get any sleep?”
“Uh-huh,” she whispered a little too quickly.
No, she hasn’t. He figured she’d kept a lonely, silent vigil. Wide awake, looking out for her kids. Meanwhile he’d been slumped across the table, his hoodie bunched up over his arms, forming a crude pillow. He reached out a hand toward hers and squeezed it. “I love you, Mom.”
“You should get some sleep too, Leo.”
“I can’t… My head’s pounding.”
“Did you bring some aspirin?”
“In my backpack.”
“Well, take a couple.”
“Can’t. I’ve got nothing to drink.”
She looked around. Across the aisle, the black lady was sitting hunched over a table. She was awake too. She’d heard them talking. She raised her own water bottle and waggled it. “I’m sorry, darling. Mine’s all gone.”
His mother made a face. “I think everyone’s out.”
Leon dug into his backpack and took out a couple of pills.
“You going to try dry swallowing them?”
He shook his head, shuffled out of his seat, and stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Bathroom. Might try the sink in there.”
“You can’t drink that water, Leo.”
It was probably going to taste horrible and was quite probably laced with stomach-churning germs. “Just a sip, Mom. It’s not going to kill me.”
His mom made another face, then finally nodded. “OK.”
“I’ll go check in on Ben and James again.”
Last time, Leon’s mom had done it. Just before midnight, she’d looked in on them and spoken briefly to Ben. Ben said James appeared to be sleeping.
“Just be—”
Leon nodded. “I know—be careful.”
“And don’t go waking up Ben if he’s sleeping. He’s just an old—”
“OK, OK,” he sighed.
He pushed past the half-open, now unpowered and useless door into the compartment beyond. The toilet was to his immediate right. He pushed the door open and was instantly struck by the appalling stench.
No power…no flush.
The toilet had been used quite a few times by the smell of it. He pulled his phone out and used its dull glow to get his bearings. The toilet was almost overflowing with a stew of urine, feces, and balled-up toilet paper. He swiped his phone back off again, popped two aspirin into his mouth, ducked down to the tap, and pressed the foot pump. There was no whine of a motor, but the trickle of water still in the pipe dribbled out and on to his tongue.
Enough. He gulped it down.
He quickly stepped back out of the bathroom and breathed through his nose again, relieved to be out of that rancid space. He stepped across rubber-matted joining between the two cars and into the area beyond.
By the dim light of predawn, he could just about make out the outline of the old man.
“Ben?” He whispered softly. “You awake?”
“Wide awake.”
Leon swiped his phone on again and saw the old man sitting on the floor, his suit jacket rolled up as an improvised cushion. Leon slid down the compartment wall until he was squatting beside him. “You OK?”
“You better turn your phone off,” said Ben. “Save your battery.”
Leon nodded and switched it off, leaving them in a faint pool of gray light.
“How’s James?”
“Last time I checked he looked like he was sleeping.”
“You think he’s OK?”
“I really don’t know. Those others?” Leon heard the old man’s voice hitch. “Good God…those poor sods. They were affected so damned quickly, weren’t they?”
Leon nodded. Those people in coach B had gone quiet within ten minutes. Maybe even less. Leon found it hard to judge how long they’d been bracing themselves against that door hoping that Ben’s tie would hold.
It could easily have been just a few seconds.
“That poor man’s eyes… You saw, didn’t you, lad? The man who was reaching through the gap?”
“Bleeding. Yeah.”
“I got a good look at his face, Leon. I really wish to God I hadn’t. H
is eyes—they weren’t just hemorrhaging. They looked like…” He stopped himself.
“What?”
“Leon?”
“Yes, Ben?”
The old man let out a wheezy laugh. “Normally I insist the boys call me Mr. Mareham. I’m a headmaster, by the way.”
“Oh, right.” Leon had figured he was someone used to being in a position of authority. For some reason, he’d imagined him as a judge or something. A headmaster? Now he felt vaguely guilty for casually using his first name.
“How old are you, Leon? I’m guessing fifteen?”
“Nearly seventeen. I go to a sixth-form school in Hammersmith.” Leon shrugged. “I know. I get that all the time. I look way younger than I am. Which sucks.”
“Look, I’m no expert. Anyway, I used to teach physics before running a school. But before that, long ago, I actually used to be in the army.”
“Did you, like, fight in Iraq or something?”
“Iraq?” Ben laughed dryly again. “I suppose that must be ancient history for you. No. Long before then, back in the seventies, my boy. We were in Rhodesia. It’s called Zimbabwe now.”
“Uh, OK.”
“We were called in to a village to provide medical assistance. They had a hemorrhagic fever…horrible, horrible thing. Vomiting blood, diarrhea. I saw a dying child literally spill her guts out on one of the cots. It was very infectious. Contact, Leon, contact with any secreted liquids, and you were in trouble. And it was fast. Very fast. In the morning, you might have a headache. The next day, a fever. Forty-eight hours later, you were dead.”
“You think this is the same thing?”
“Oh good God, no. This…whatever this is, is far worse. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Then, we were dealing with a fever that was called Marburg. Quite honestly, the most evil thing Mother Nature, or God, if you’re of that persuasion, could have come up with. But this?” He shook his head. “This is something else altogether. This is—from what little I know of microbiology—well, frankly impossible.”
Leon could hear the fear in his voice. “We’re in big trouble, aren’t we?”
He sighed. “That’s why I asked your age, lad. You’re old enough to know it. Yes, I rather suspect we are.”