“Get dressed,” he ordered me simply.
“Fine.”
Disregarding the bra, I put the bathrobe on just as the announcement started repeating again in English. If I could deal with being driven out of my room in the middle of the night, then Petr could deal with my breasts being ‘indecent’ as he called them anytime I didn’t tether and conceal them properly. In any case, for once, I doubted he would as much as notice my little act of rebellion.
The salmon and cream lobby of our small bed and breakfast was brightly lit despite the advanced hour and bursting at the seams with clamouring people. I didn’t care for crowds and had to wilfully suppress an urge to turn around and go back upstairs. Being taller than most, Petr fought his way through the mob with some success, and I gratefully followed closely behind him on the temporary leeway he created. His hand was clasped firmly on mine and slick with sweat.
We stopped by the television mounted on the wall in the reception area, the rabble of distressed guests pulsating around us. Petr was watching the chaotic melee with his mouth agape in shock. Judging by the onslaught of agitated voices alone, the alarm was not just an elaborate joke. Nor did it seem like an exaggerated precaution to a standard situation well under control. It was real, whatever it was.
The lone receptionist was the same young Polish girl we had seen earlier that day. She was tall with legs that were disproportionately long to her slender torso. She had mousy hair and wide-set, bulging eyes that made her seem permanently surprised. I doubted that she was even twenty yet. At that moment, she appeared on the verge of tears as she was trying and failing to convince guests to stop yelling questions at her all at once. I felt a pang of pity for her.
Meanwhile, Petr still looked completely at a loss as to what our next steps should be. There were no other staff apart from the receptionist, and from her harried replies in a tone that suggested she was close to hysteria, she knew next to nothing about what was going on. Which she kept telling people who persisted in trying to bully answers out of her.
“Hi, do you know what all this is about?” I approached a group of four young Englishmen we had seen at breakfast.
One of them turned around to me. He had tawny hair and a round, friendly face with markedly upturned lips that made the young man look like he was smiling constantly.
“Have you not seen the news today at all?” he asked in disbelief but without a trace of impatience.
Despite the urgency of the situation, I could not help but dwell for a few seconds on how perfectly pristine his accent was, its cadence vaguely reminiscent of the gentle bubbling of a fresh stream against polished stone.
“No,” I replied, suddenly very conscious of the way English words seemed to grate against my vocal cords. “We tend to stay away from news when we’re on holiday ...”
“Got ya, well, apparently this new gnarly disease is going around. Perhaps just watch for yourselves for a few seconds, you’ll get the idea.” He indicated the television screen above the heads of his companions.
Petr and I heeded his suggestion. The sound of the broadcast could not be heard over all the noise, but there was little need for it as the clips on the screen alone told us more than we wanted to know.
First, we saw a brief recording of a man bound to a hospital bed, struggling viciously against his restraints. He would have had the visage of an emperor, given his severe eyebrows and Roman nose, were it not for the utterly demented expression on his face.
“It must be a virus. There are theories that link it to the reassortment of rabies with something ... new,” said another member of the English group.
He was a shorter man with a wider midriff and a pasty face half concealed behind thick-lensed glasses with narrow metal rims.
“The incubation period is about a week now, but that’s the new strain. It was longer for the old strain. People spread it before realising they were ill. So far, only transmission through bodily fluids and saliva has been confirmed. But the long incubation period has allowed it to travel basically all over the world by now. It’s very, very bad,” he said in a tone that made me think he almost wanted to rub his hands together in excitement.
Next, footage was played of a middle-aged, curly-haired woman who was nearly as wide as she was tall, turning on the spot in the middle of a road with a look of outraged confusion on her face. Her mouth was agape, her features contorted into a feral grimace, and her eyes were bloodshot and slightly bulging. She didn’t blink nearly as often as a person normally would. Several people loitered around her in a wide circle, all with their mobile phones brandished in their hands, recording her. Without showing any signs that she was about to do so, she rushed forward with the speed of an arrow. She lunged at a young man in sportswear, toppling him to the ground.He struggled to get from underneath her until her horrifying intention became clear. Then he grabbed her head and attempted to keep it away, but he failed, and her teeth sank into his shoulder. Blood soaked his white top, and his face scrunched up in pain.
“Jesus Christ,” Petr groaned. “Oh fuck! What is this?”
“Terrifying, isn’t it?” the first Englishman agreed lightly, despite the worried crease between his brows. “It would appear that it attacks the nervous system and alters the mind. It makes the infected highly disoriented. Their cognitive abilities are severely impacted, and they can no longer talk or process much of the world around them. And most importantly, as you have seen, they getveryaggressive. They attack other people, animals, anything that moves or makes any sound in their vicinity. Interestingly enough, they don’t attack each other?—”
“Ah, that’s one of the most fascinating things about it,” the young man with the glasses interrupted, sounding as if he were having the most riveting night of his life. “One theory says that the infection causes an odour that is almost imperceptible, but the infected recognise it. The virus wants to propagate further, you see, so its own smell is off-putting to it and by transference to them. So that instead of attacking each other ... they seek healthy people.”
The next clip we saw was aerial footage of Times Square. A helmeted squadron of soldiers in its centre seemed nothing but an insignificant blob of army green in an onrushing sea of dark, blood-covered figures. Like a juicy caterpillar in a red fire ant nest. The caption at the bottom of the screen read ‘New York City overrun’.
I let out a strangled gasp.
“Are they shooting them? Just like that?” Petr asked, aghast.
“Not here, not yet anyways, but in the US they are. Only in the overrun areas where containment isn’t possible, mostly largecities. But it’s not the best idea. Any noise draws them like a magnet.” This time, the tall, gangly black man with a cinnamon-tinged afro spoke, and I realised that I had been wrong in assuming they were all British because he talked with a distinctly American twang. “You shoot one, and ten others appear. This footage is from this morning. New York City has fallen since then. It’s just gone. Lost to them.”
The TV showed a few bombs dropped at the infected, but the impact seemed minimal as more and more bodies poured out of buildings and towards the soldiers. The caption at the bottom of the screen now read: ‘US Army almost out of explosives’.
I stood frozen to the spot, unable to find anything to say. Petr moaned and backed against the wall for support, rubbing his face with his hands. Then he proceeded to grasp his own hair tightly, as if to pull it out. He opened and closed his mouth several times like a fish, his face blank.
My reaction to the shock was quite different. I felt an unhinged urge to laugh. I would have liked to attribute it to hysteria alone were it not for the fact that horror was not all that I felt. I could not deny the small measure of excitement that was stirring up inside me, shaking its wings like a moth before flight. Something monumental and historical was taking place, and we were to be a part of it. Our lives would change completely and irrevocably, never to be the same. The grief for all the lives lost glowed inside me like a flame, but the moth flew around it, not caring the least that it burned.
After a moment, I became aware again of the many voices ringing in my ears and of the somewhat demented milling of the angry mob in the reception hall.
