When virtual strangers are forced to cohabitate in close quarters for a prolonged period, one of two things can happen. They either begin to resent each other, succumbing to cabinfever, or a powerful sense of camaraderie arises between them. And whilst our group had more than a small measure of the first, where the Englishmen, Monika and I were concerned, the latter was much more palpable.
We spent a good deal of our time in the common room area, watching the news on the television as we sat on a too-soft sofa and armchairs. The room was decorated in the same salmon and cream colours as the reception. It looked like the living room of somebody’s grandmother with all the bric-a-brac and those obscene orchids distributed evenly over every surface.
In the first days, calmly composed, softly spoken officials preached to us from the screen, telling us that unlike in the United States, the situation was well under control in Europe, that labs around the world were doing their best to sequence the virus’ DNA and that the best we could do to help was to prevent the spread of the infection by staying safely at home.
As far as the infected were concerned, the official advice in those first days was to isolate them in a separate room until military personnel would collect them and take them to one of the Contamination Control centres, to keep them securely away from the general population until a cure was found.
These mellow officials were soon replaced by different ones, whose eyes burned brightly and whose faces were gaunt and who told us in intent, determined voices that ‘the situation was serious but that if we all did our part, itwouldbe managed without unnecessary loss of life’. The new official advice regarding the infected was to keep them immobilised with ropes or chains in a spare room and to provide them with food consisting of plain, natural, unprocessed ingredients. Not only were the Contamination Control centres full by then, some had been overrun by cannibals after their guards had lost control.
A few days later yet, the resolutely booming and blazing officials were gone too. The new ones were grey with fatigue,their skin taut and lined like cracked wall paint, and their eyes sunken, dark and sombre, resembling skull eyeholes more than the eyes of a live person.
“The situation is beyond dire,” they told us. “The very fate of humanity hangs in the balance. Extreme measures must be taken to prevent global societal breakdown.”
There had been too many casualties among people trying to keep their infected relatives chained and locked away. All the Contamination Control centres in the country had collapsed. The effort to preserve infected lives was deemed unsustainable. It became legal for anybody to kill an infected person in self-defence.
“That escalated fast,” Dave commented sardonically from his seat by my side, his upturned lips fixed in a permanent smile, but his brown eyes grave.
“But ... but these people didn’t do anything wrong! They just got sick! Anyone can get sick!” Amit protested from his armchair, nearly knocking his bowl of peanuts over.
I held a pink cushion with frilly white fringes in my lap, and I hugged it tighter.
“They’re killing us too, babe,” Josh pointed out from his place on the softly carpeted ground, his long limbs sprawled in front of him. “It’s self-defence.”
“Excessive self-defence,” Petr countered without looking away from his mobile phone screen.
Amit munched on his peanuts furiously, the crunch audible over the television sound.
“True, but excessive self-defence is defined as using more force than the aggressor. So, if they are trying to kill us, it is well within the scope of self-defence to kill them,” I said, and Petr finally pulled his eyes away from his phone to shoot a dark look in my direction.
“They’re not aware of trying to kill us. That’s the difference. And that’s what makes this wrong.”
“Perhaps,” I acceded with poorly concealed indifference, “but I doubt anyone cares about wrong when face to face with one of them.”
Once the phone lines ceased to be overloaded, Petr spoke to his family daily. I always granted him privacy, leaving him alone in our room. I would linger downstairs until his reappearance, and he would look relieved, anxious and desolate all at once.
One day, however, he did not reappear. I waited for close to two hours, then went upstairs and knocked on the door gently, my extremities already numb with dread.
Petr opened the door, white-faced, the rims of his eyes red from crying. It was almost dark in the room, the apple tree lamp on the bedside table being the only source of light. The stalks and blooms of exotic flowers on the dark tapestry reminded me vaguely of bones and internal organs.
“Dad’s infected,” Petr told me as soon as I shut the door behind me. “He is fevered and aggressive. He is refusing to be tied up for whenever he turns. He rejects the idea of being locked in a separate room, and Mum has no way of forcing him to comply.”
By ‘whenever he turns’, he meant when the virus would reach full amplification in the infected person’s system. It was then that the person would cease completely to behave like a human being,turninginto a bestial, bloodthirsty ghoul seeminglydevoid of thoughts, memories, and emotions, such as we had seen on television countless times.
“No! Oh no!” I covered my face with my hands, feeling tears prickle in the corners of my eyes. “Oh, Petr ...”
“I-I told Mum ... that she must report him. To save herself. But she wouldn’t hear of it. So, I called Pavel ...”
Pavel was Petr’s older brother.
“I called him to talk to him about it and ... and he ... he sounded ... oh god!” Petr groaned, sitting abruptly down on the bed, face buried in his hands.
I wrapped my arms around him, cradling his head against my chest, at a loss for words. I could smell the dread on him as a sharp, acidic tang of sweat.
“He ... wasn’t himself ... got angry immediately ... him too,” Petr finished, forcing each word out through his gritted teeth.
“I am so sorry.”
We stayed in that embrace for what felt like hours, softly crying in each other’s arms.
