Ben nodded at him through the Perspex. ‘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 round 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 Jennifer, ‘I’m taking my kids into the next carriage.’ 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 coach 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 carriage, 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 toilet cubicles and approached the next coach. 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 coach, the exchanges abruptly ceased.
The black woman with the long turquoise nails took advantage of the pause to make an announcement to everyone in the coach.
‘Listen up, everyone. That African virus is over here now!’ Her voice carried loud and clear down the length of the coach. ‘It’s here in Britain. It’s proper official now; the BBC has announced it an’ everything.’
She held her smartphone up for all to see. The carriage was perfectly silent.
‘And they said we all got to stay indoors.’ She turned to Jennifer. ‘Just like your hubby said on the phone. There’s, like, poison snowflakes in the air coming down an’ 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 carriage B still tied shut?’ shouted someone. Leon saw it was one of the three ‘drunk’ lads. Only they all looked stone-cold sober now.
Jennifer nodded. ‘It’s secure, but I think they might all be dead now anyway.’
A gasp rolled down to the end of the coach.
‘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 not got it too, has he . . . ?’
‘Is he infected? We don’t know yet,’ replied Jennifer. ‘He thinks he might have been touched by one of the others. It’s OK. We’ve contained him.’
The carriage filled with voices again. The sound of panic building up an unstoppable momentum. The black lady, the loudest voice in the carriage it seemed, raised her hands.
‘Everyone, shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!’
She had them all doing that. She had silence. She turned to Jennifer. ‘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.
Jennifer 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 carriage. 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 carriages and explain what’s going on to them.’
CHAPTER 19
The lights aboard the train flickered and dimmed at about half past nine. They finally winked out and left them in complete darkness at ten. Grace gave a small whimper of alarm when that happened.
‘It’s OK, honey,’ said Jennifer. ‘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-side of 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 aviation 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 Dad liked to call ‘British Tupperware sky’.
Several pale squares of light had winked on inside the coach, 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 Mum. He could just about see her face by the faint light of someone’s smartphone. 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 Mum. 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 Mum and he thought he could see her watching him.
‘You too, Leo. Get some sleep.’
‘OK, Mum.’ He closed his own eyes and huddled down against the arm rest.
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-grey, and he could faintly see a steep bank covered in nettles.
‘Mum?’ he said softly. Little more than a whisper.
‘Uh-huh?’ She was still wide awake.
‘You OK?’
‘I’m fine, love.’
‘You get any sleep?’
‘Uh-huh,’ she whispered a little too quickly.
No, she hasn’t. He imagined she’d kept a lonely, silent vigil. Wide awake, looking out for her kids. Meanwhile he’d been slumped across the table, his hoody bunched up over his arms, forming a crude pillow. He reached out a hand towards hers and squeezed it. ‘I love you, Mum.’
‘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 wag
gled it. ‘I’m sorry, darling . . . Mine’s all gone too.’
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?’
‘Toilet. Might try the tap 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, Mum. It’s not going to kill me.’
Mum made another face then finally nodded. ‘OK.’
‘I’ll go check in on Ben and James again.’
Last time, Mum 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 cubicle 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 turned to use its dull glow to get his bearings. The toilet was almost overflowing with a stew of urine, faeces 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 cubicle and breathed through his nose again, relieved to be out of that rancid space. He stepped across rubber-matted joining between the two carriages 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 grey 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 three or four 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. His eyes, they weren’t just haemorrhaging, 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 suspected he was someone used to 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 college 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 haemorrhagic fever . . . horrible, horrible thing. Vomiting blood, diarrhoea. I saw a dying child literally pass out her guts 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.’
The words hit Leon like a slap on the cheek. ‘What are we gonna do?’
‘I really don’t know. I . . . really don’t know.’ Leon could hear Ben’s breath whistling through his nose. ‘Well, for starters, when it’s light enough, we need to get off this train.’
‘That’s what Mum said we should do.’
‘Good girl. That’s what we’ll do, then.’
‘What about James?’
Ben shrugged. ‘If he’s OK and he wants to, he can come along with us. That all right with you?’
Leon nodded.
The old man was quiet for a bit, then finally he stirred. ‘So, your father . . . does he work in America?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Shares and markets an’ stuff. He works on Wall Street.’
‘And you, your mother and sister came over here for a holiday?’
‘No, we live here now. Mum and Dad split up, like, eight months ago.’
‘That’s not very long ago. How’s your mother been coping with all of that?’
‘She keeps real busy. That’s pretty much how she copes.’ Leon didn’t want to give him any more than that. Ben Mareham seemed a nice old guy, but they were all just strangers in a crisis and Mum was always telling him and Grace that if friends asked what the deal was they could just say it was ‘complicated’ and leave it at that. She was like that, tight-lipped.
Leon changed the subject. ‘Do you think anyone’s gonna come looking for us?’
‘I don’t know. The power’s down. It looks like the telephone system is down as well. It’s not looking very encouraging, is it?’
‘No.’ Leon shook his head. ‘I . . . I’m pretty scared, Mr Mareham.’
‘Me too. But that’s a perfectly sensible thing, to be scared. It means you’re keeping your wits about you.’
‘We’re not going to survive, are we?’
‘I have no idea what’s going to happen, Leon. Whether this is some horrific crisis that’s going to be cleared up in a month – like they always inevitably seem to be – or whether this is the viral outbreak that doomsayers have been warning us all about for God knows how long. But you, Leon, have more than yourself to think about. Your little sister? Your mother?’
‘Mum? She’s OK. She—’
&nbs
p; ‘I suspect your mother is brittle.’
Leon looked at him. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘She’s the brittle type—’
‘You don’t even know my mum. You just spoke a few words with her earlier.’
‘I’m not criticizing her! In fact, she reminds me of my daughter Margot. Strong. Very strong. You can throw the world at a person like that and they can take everything you hurl at them. They can take it.’ Mr Mareham looked away. ‘Until one day they . . . can’t.’
Leon understood that. He’d had that feeling about her for a while. Like that old kid’s game Buckeroo, where you piled up a spring-loaded plastic mule with a load of junk until that spring finally clicked and the mule buckeroo-ed. All her false cheeriness, all her bravado, all that positive spin on everything . . . part of him had been waiting for a monumental crash, a nervous breakdown.
Now this.
‘I’m just saying, Leon, that you need to help her. Just keep an eye on her.’
‘We’re staying together, right? You, me, Mum, Grace?’
‘Of course. We all want to get to Norwich. Like everyone else on the train.’
‘But we can keep together afterwards? Right?’
The old man sighed again. ‘Let’s get to Norwich first, lad.’
They sat in silence for a while.
‘Tomorrow morning,’ Leon started. ‘What about James?’ Leon wanted him to be OK. He seemed smart and proactive. He’d been the first one to react. He’d basically saved everyone on the rest of the train by acting decisively. They needed him.
‘We’ll have a look in on him and see how he is. You should go get some rest, Leon.’
‘You coming back to get some sleep too?’
‘I’m not going to get any sleep wherever I am. But you should try. When it’s light enough, I’ll come back and wake you.’
‘Then we’re definitely heading outside?’
‘We really can’t stay here . . . so, yes, that’s what I suggest. We can walk to Norwich.’
‘OK.’
CHAPTER 20
Leon opened heavy-lidded eyes and stared stupidly at the smudged window his head had been leaning against; the natural grease in his hair had produced a spiral pattern. Beyond the glass his eyes slowly focused on the steep rail-side bank carpeted with thick, dark-green nettles that swayed gently in the breeze.