Ravage: An Apocalyptic Horror Novel(118)

There was silence for a while and Nick stared of into the distance. The sun was beginning to rise above the horizon like a ball on a string. It was his last morning on Earth and he was feeling pretty damn good. The very notion was absurd, but it was true.

“You think they’ll be okay out there?” he asked Lily. He was thinking about Eve and the others. Their chance of finding safety seemed pretty slim, but at least there was a chance. He could still hope for them. “You think they’ll keep on surviving?”

Lily hooted.

“Yeah.” Nick nodded and smile. “That’s what I think, too.”

With a smile on his face, Nick lay back and watched the sun rise. A few minutes later, he rose with it.





The End





Path of Infection





SEA SICK



Daniel Houser staggered into Southampton General hospital and found his way to reception. A weary-looking nurse peered back at him from behind an ancient CRT monitor. Her spectacles were lopsided, which may have been because her ears were not level.

“Can I help you?” she asked, quite obviously forcing a smile.

Houser cleared the fiery gravel from the back of his throat and nodded. “Something’s wrong with me. I think I have the flu or something…but worse.”

The nurse gave him a curious look, as if silently pitying him for assuming he could possibly make a correct diagnosis of himself. “Okay,” she said. “Fill out this form and I will have someone come see you shortly.”

Houser took the form and selected a seat in the waiting area. He was glad to see that the form was only a single page long, but even the thought of filling that out felt like too much. He was so…weak.

What on earth did I catch?

He plucked the stubby pencil from the top of the clipboard and began filling out the questionnaire. His hand was frustratingly unsteady.

NAME: Daniel Houser

DOB: 05/12/198

RACE: White British

Houser filled out the rest of his details, including his parent’s address where he could be reached, and then got down to a box marked: SYMPTOMS. With blunt pencil marks, he wrote: headache, blocked nose, sneezing, itchy eyes, aching joints, stomach pain, throbbing ears, dizziness…

Before Houser had chance to write down more of his symptoms, a slender woman in a doctor’s coat entered the waiting room. He struggled to his feet to catch up to her before she left. She turned and smiled when she spotted him approaching. The name on her badge read: Clark.

“Hello, sir. Can I help you?”

“I…I need to see someone.”

The doctor looked past Houser, at the chairs behind him. No one else seemed to be waiting for the moment, so she nodded. “Okay. Is that your information?”

Houser handed over the clipboard.

“Come this way.” Dr Clark led Houser into a nearby examination room. She pointed to a treatment table in the centre. It was lined with recycled paper from a roller at one end. “Hop on up,” she said. “Let’s take a look at you.”

Houser failed to get himself up the few inches onto the table and it took him a second attempt to climb up onto its surface.

So weak.

The doctor headed over to a cluttered desk in the corner of the room and examined the clipboard he had given to her. After a few moments of checking his information, she turned to face him and tutted. “We are feeling quite under the weather, aren’t we?”

Houser nodded. “I’ve never felt this bad in my life. I feel rough as hell.”

“Well, my name is Dr Clark. Let me see what I can do for you.” She pulled the stethoscope from around her neck and placed the receiver against his chest by going up under his t-shirt. “Hmm,” she said. “Your heart rate is a little fast. Have you taken any drugs or alcohol in the last twenty-four hours?”

“I…smoked a bit of weed to take the edge of my headache.”

She nodded. The admission of guilt was obviously uninteresting in her line of work. “That could explain it,” she said. “When did you start feeling ill?”

“Couple days ago. Some of the guys I work with started feeling bad, too. We assumed it was a bug going round. You get sick a lot living on a boat.”

The doctor raised an eyebrow at him. “You live on a boat?”

Houser nodded. “I’m a merchant sailor. We just docked in Southampton after a salvage operation in the Med.”

“You…you weren’t involved with that cruise liner, were you?”

Houser nodded. “Yeah, we were one of the boats involved in the rescue attempts. There was no one to be saved, though. We spent a day running nets and picking up debris, but eventually we were ordered back to the mainland. It was all a bit strange, if you ask me.”

Dr Clark was shaking her head and pursing her lips. “It’s terrible what happened there. More than a thousand dead, I heard.”

Houser nodded. “Nobody has any idea what happened. They’re saying it could have been a terrorist attack. A suicide bomber in the engine compartment or something.”

“I don’t understand this world sometimes,” said the doctor. Then she seemed to refocus on what she was doing. “So, you say you and your colleagues started feeling ill back on the boat, in the Mediterranean Sea? Were you docked anywhere prior to that?”