Prologue 

The Rest of Your Days

‘Name?’ 

‘Winters, sir. Malcolm Winters.’ 

‘Watch your step off the bus there, Mr. Winters.’ 

‘Thank you, I will.’

‘My name is Officer Cambridge. I’ll be your greeter today. Apologies if you can’t hear me through the mask. It does tend to muffle.’ 

‘I can hear ya.’ 

‘Did you have a pleasant journey?’ 

‘Wasn’t too bad. About three hours too long, though.’ 

‘Yeah, they built this place out in the sticks for a reason. Double-yew… Double-yew… Ah, Winters. Yep, you’re on the list. Let me just tick your name off here. Oh. Says here you’ve got a record. Anything we need to worry about?’ 

‘I did three months in jail twenty-odd years ago.’ 

‘Hmm, I see. What did you do?’ 

‘Broke a kid’s jaw at college.’ 

‘Would you say you’re still violent?’ 

‘No. Mostly not.’ 

‘Alright. I’ll write no risk. Now, where do you hail from?’ 

‘Masterson.’ 

‘Masterson. I’ve heard of it. Is that here, in New Hampshire?’ 

‘Yes, sir, it is.’ 

‘Well, then you’re in the right place. Welcome to the New Hampshire Distanced Living Center, Mr. Winters.’ 

‘It’s a lot bigger than I thought it’d be. Figured you’d be putting us away in chicken coops.’ 

‘Yeah, it’s sizable. A thousand homes, a library, a hospital, a schooling hall, a function hall, a chapel, a farm, and a fishing lake. The result of six months of intensive construction from some of the finest firms the state has to offer. Mad rush to get it finished, given the circumstances.’ 

‘How tall is that perimeter wall?’ 

‘Twenty meters. Tall enough to keep everybody inside, that’s for sure. Electric wire around the top, too. Now, if you’ve got this far, I imagine you’re pretty set in your decision.’

‘I am.’ 

‘But I have to read you this notice from the United States Crisis Authority, all the same.’

‘Go right ahead.’ 

‘Dear Avoidant, once you pass through the gates behind me, you will never be permitted to come back out. You will live out the rest of your days inside the New Hampshire DLC, and you will be buried in the allotted cemetery on the far east side. Contact with the outside world is strictly prohibited. Do you understand?’

‘I understand.’ 

‘And you’ve already surrendered your cell phone? And there are no electronic communication devices in your luggage?’ 

‘Correct. They combed through my bags before they let me on the bus.’ 

‘Alright then, Mr. Winters. Now, that one was from the government. This one is from me. This really is your one and only chance to remain in the general population. To have the freedom to get on a plane. To go to the beach. To spend Christmas with your loved ones. To my right, there is a tent. Inside the tent, there is a registered nurse. Should you wish, she will administer a dose of the Lavitika vaccination. It’s completely painless. You may then board a shuttle bus, and it will return you to your home – to your family and friends, and you will not need to enter the DLC. Now, please consider this very carefully. Do you wish to receive the vaccination?’ 

‘Over my dead body, sir.’ 

‘Alright. Then please pass through those gates, Mr. Winters. You’ll find a desk just on the other side. The officers there will assign you a chalet. Have a pleasant future, Mr. Winters.’ 

‘Thank you.’ 

‘Next!’

One

An Ordinary Sunday in Masterson

The day the world started to end, it was hot outside. When the sun came up over Masterson that fateful Sunday, nobody could have foreseen the carnage that was about to unfold. Before lunchtime, half the citizens of that sleepy New Hampshire town would be dead.

It was a little after nine, and it was already getting warm out. Dick Carnaby on The Weather Roundup said it would hit a hundred degrees by midday. But nothing seemed out of place in Masterson. It looked like a typical Sunday morning. Sprinklers showered down on luscious green lawns. Songbirds fluttered from one tree to the next. The paperboy peddled through the streets, tossing the Sunday Gazette onto porches. And perhaps most traditionally of all, Milo Winters and his dad were out on the driveway, washing the car – a chore they tackled together every weekend.

Milo’s mom had insisted that they both wear their thick-brimmed hats. The ones they used to take fishing, back before Milo became a brooding teenager. But while Milo could give fishing the cold shoulder, he couldn’t say no to washing the car with his dad – it was the only condition of his weekly allowance, which he’d been saving up for the latest Goblin Avenger game.

Besides, it wasn’t a particularly hard chore. He just had to stand on the driveway and hold the bucket up every time his dad came over to re-dunk his sponge. Bucket holder, as his dad called it, had been Milo’s job every Sunday morning since he was too young to remember. He was thirteen that hot, awful day, so he was well-practiced by then.

Milo was scrawny and pale and had an untidy mop of mousy-blonde hair. He wore an oversized white t-shirt, with black lounge pants.

In contrast to his son, Dallas Winters was tall and well-built – the result of many an evening spent with the lifting bench in the garage. His hair was dark, and he wore it in a crew cut. He had an all-year-round tan even though he spent most of his time in the office, and he wore ugly, tinted glasses that went brown in the sun. 

‘Binko, play The Berries,’ Dallas said as he dunked his sponge into Milo’s bucket. 

The smart speaker he’d set down on the lawn started to play. The Berries were a little-known and even-littler-appreciated barbershop band from the sixties. Dallas had become obsessed with them after hearing them on Throwback Hour on Radio Six. Now he played them on loop: while driving round town in the Mamba, while mowing the backyard, while working out, even while washing the car on a Sunday morning. 

Milo watched his dad run the sponge over the car’s hood. The suds turned crusty white the second they touched the Mamba’s skin, and vapor drifted softly upwards into the hot morning air. 

That car was his most treasured possession. It was a classic red sportster (Volcanic Red, if Dallas was to correct you) from the late seventies. He’d gotten it five years back when it came up for auction at Riley’s Motor House, down on Benvale Street. 

He knew he shouldn’t have bought it, but when his dad died, it triggered something in him, and he felt like life was too short not to treat yourself once in a while. So he went down to the bank and withdrew half his retirement pot (even though he was still a good thirty years off retiring). 

‘I’ll have three long decades to build it back up,’ he told his wife, but she wasn’t the biggest fan of that reasoning. 

That was all ancient history now, though. Milo’s mom had gotten over it, in the end. She even admitted it was a nice car. She might mention the whole debacle, though, once in a while if Dallas ever questioned some lavish online purchase of hers. Remember the time you spent half your retirement fund on that fucking car? He’d bite his tongue pretty quickly.

The Berries suddenly cut off, and a news reporter began broadcasting, ‘More casualties are being brought into emergency rooms across the states, with as yet undiagnosed symptoms. The strained services are urging you to…’

‘Binko, play The Berries!’ Dallas demanded. 

The blue LED wheel on the front of the smart speaker started to spin, and then his favorite barbershop quartet rang out across the garden again.

‘Smart speaker, my ass.’

A breeze tickled down the street, and Milo heard something flap around in the gutter. He set the bucket down and went to take a closer look.

It was a mask, from the virus, caught in the storm drain. All beat-up and sun-faded. It’d been a long time since he’d seen one. Two years, probably. The Winters used to have a different color for each family member for when they went out to the mall. They hung on nails, by the front door. 

His little sister Sally was born just before the lockdown and was too young to wear one, but their mom would pull her blanket up over her nose in the buggy. 

Milo was glad to be rid of masks. They made his face hot and sticky, and the elastic cut into his ears. If he ever had to wear one for more than a couple of hours, he’d be guaranteed a fresh zit or two on his chin or just above his lip. 

Everyone over the age of twelve got their Lavitika vaccinations down at the school. Milo and his classmates couldn’t use the gymnasium for months because there was a queue snaking through it all day. Sheriff Callow had to set up camp on-site because protestors kept trying to burn it down. Before they were sent away, of course. 

The virus went away after that. The vaccine had done its job. No more masks. No more video call quizzes with Grandma and Grandpa every Thursday evening. No more staying out of the spare room where the consoles were set up because his dad’s makeshift office had taken over. 

Things had gone back to normal. It was easy to go about your day without remembering the virus – unless you drove down Hughes Drive, of course. There’s a big memorial plinth there, next to the library, with all the names chipped into the marble. Or unless a battered old face mask blew into your life. 

‘Milo, where’s my bucket holder?’ Dallas called over his shoulder. He was standing there, clueless, with a bone-dry sponge. 

I daydream for a few seconds, and the whole operation falls apart, Milo thought. 

He picked up the bucket again and took it over to his dad so he could sink his sponge in. 

The fire alarm started going off inside the house. The boys on the driveway weren’t too concerned. It had become a typical sound on a Sunday morning. Mrs. Winters would often load up the griddle with bacon and then get distracted by Sally. 

Milo watched as his mom threw open the window and wafted out the smoke with an oven mitt. He could hear the sound of the bacon sizzling in the pan. 

‘Smells good, hon,’ Dallas shouted across the lawn. He turned to Milo and whispered, ‘Smells like that time we let Uncle Malc put gasoline on the barbecue.’ 

Milo smiled. 

His dad worked the sponge into the ridge, along the bottom of the windshield. When he peered back into the bucket, he saw there was nothing left but some black swill at the bottom, so he dropped the sponge inside.

‘Right, time to hose her down.’ 

Dallas went to the back of the driveway and started to unreel the hose. When he reached the Mamba, he suddenly stopped to clutch at his stomach. The nozzle clattered onto the concrete and came off. Water spewed out from the open hose end.

‘Are you ok?’ Milo set the bucket down and stepped towards him. 

His dad was hunched over, holding his belly with one hand and his knee with the other, breathing deeply. 

‘Shall I get mom?’ 

His dad didn’t reply. He just sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.

‘I’ll get mom.’ 

‘No, no. Don’t worry your mother!’ he shouted. ‘It’s just gas, I think. It was hurting last night. It’ll pass in a sec.’ He straightened up, took a few more slow, controlled breaths, and then forced a smile. ‘All good!’ 

‘You sure?’ 

‘Yeah, yeah. Come on. Let’s get this finished up. Breakfast will be ready soon.’ 

His dad fixed the nozzle back onto the hose and rinsed away whatever suds hadn’t burnt off in the sun. 

‘Go and get the rags, kiddo!’ 

Milo fetched the box of rags from the garage. Every time his mom wore a hole in a kitchen towel, it would end up deposited in the rag box. Every Sunday Milo and his dad would use them to buff the car dry to prevent any nasty streak marks. 

The air was suddenly filled with the ringing of a bike bell and the screeching of brakes. 

Mrs. Sampson and her children came to a halt on the road, next to them. The three of them were straddling a bike each and touched their feet down to steady themselves. 

The Sampson family lived a few doors down. They used to barbecue together all the time, before Uncle Malc offended them.

Mrs. Sampson rode at the front. She was a petite woman, with a blond bob. The basket fixed to her handlebar cradled two over-stuffed grocery bags that were starting to tear in the corners. 

Behind her rode her daughter, Becca. She was a pale girl, with a dyed black fringe, purple lipstick, heavy eyeliner, and a choker clasped around her neck. She wore black from head to toe – from the leather jacket down to the fishnet stockings that fed into her boots. She was a year older than Milo. 

Milo blushed uneasily as she fixed her deadly gaze on him, with her arms folded firmly across her chest. 

Given a choice, Becca would be at home, in her room, with the blinds closed, and Courting Armageddon blaring out of her Binko. But her father had been puking his guts up all morning, and the stench had crept into every room in the house. For once she was happy to be out, in the open air. 

Brody rode at the back of the Sampson convoy. He was nine. Fairly heavyset. Pale like his sister, with short brown hair, and watchful green eyes. He was very quiet. But very clever, mechanically speaking. He was always building some contraption or another. ‘He has a touch of the autism,’ Mrs. Sampson announced to everyone during one barbecue. 

There was a special assembly about autism at Milo’s school one morning, on behalf of Brody, not long after the doctors diagnosed him. His name wasn’t mentioned, but all the kids knew who it regarded. They all turned their heads and sniggered at him as he stared blankly at the stage. 

‘You two will have to stop by and do mine next,’ laughed Mrs. Sampson as she rested on her bike at the roadside, with both children parked behind her. 

If Milo had a dollar every time someone had said that to them over the years, he’d have his own Mamba by now. It seemed the mandatory thing to say when seeing somebody washing a car. 

‘Put Dan to work! It’s a nice enough morning,’ Dallas said, with a smile. 

‘Oh, he ain’t feeling too well,’ Mrs. Sampson said. ‘We just went to the shop to get him some meds, didn’t we?’ 

Brody didn’t react. Becca nodded lightly – her hateful scowl still fixed on Milo. 

‘Poor Dan,’ Dallas said. ‘What’s up with him? Have you called Doctor Singh?’ 

‘Can’t get through to the doc. Dan’s been in bed two days now. Puking a lot. Started with bad stomach cramps.’ 

Milo looked at his dad. 

‘Probably a bug going round,’ Dallas told her. ‘Tell him I send him my best.’ 

‘Will do!’

Milo’s dad shifted his gaze to Brody, who was staring back at him, expressionless. 

‘How’s it going, Brody?’ he asked. 

Brody didn’t say anything.

‘Oh, he’s just fine,’ Mrs. Sampson said. 

‘Built anything cool lately?’ 

Again, Brody didn’t reply. He just stared. Becca smirked. 

‘Another slingshot,’ his mom said, disapprovingly. 

‘Ah. I still haven’t fixed my fence from the last one,’ Dallas half-laughed. 

At one of the barbecues the families used to enjoy together, Brody had pulled his latest contraption from his backpack. It was a wooden box, about the size of a shoebox, with a hole in one end, a lever on the top, and a small trigger on the bottom. He then plucked a small rock out of the flowerbed. He fed it into the hole, pulled back the lever, aimed it at the fence, and then pulled the trigger. It blasted a hole through the wooden slats, a foot wide. 

‘Yee-haw! This mute little dipshit is good for something after all!’ Uncle Malc had shouted, so excited he spilled beer all down himself. The Sampsons went home, both embarrassed and insulted, and they hadn’t arranged another meet-up since. 

‘Anyway,’ Mrs. Sampson said, as she stood by the roadside, ‘we better get these meds back home.’ 

She cycled away, and her children followed. 

A short while after, a pale boy came along the street, dragging his feet. He had long, black, oily hair that had been slicked back with a comb. His eyes were milky blue, with wild black pupils. A bright pink scar ran from his left nostril, down through his upper lip. He wore a battered black leather jacket – even on the hottest of days. Under it, a white t-shirt was tucked into his jeans.

His name was Richard Lachance. But at school he insisted that everybody call him Rex. And at school you did what Rex said.

Milo froze as he locked eyes with him and watched him slowly breeze by, the way a gazelle watches a passing lion. 

Every school has that one sadistic prick who thrives on terrorizing others. In Masterson High, Rex was that prick. 

Last year Milo had suffered his first serious run-in with Rex. He’d been shoved in the corridor before, sure, but Rex and his two buddies did that to everyone. One gray Thursday morning, though, things ramped up a gear. 

‘Breakfast is on the table!’ Milo’s mom called through the window. 

Dallas finished buffing the hood and then threw his rag onto the driveway. Milo moved his gaze away from Rex, who was further along the street now, and threw down his rag, too. They looked the car over and then headed inside. 

Two 

Life Rafts on a Great Black Lake

Sally sat in her high chair at the table. She had mousy-blonde hair, like her brother, and a few small freckles dotted her cheeks. 

A bowl of small, cut-up cubes of bacon and hash brown sat on the tray in front of her. The bowl had suckers underneath to stop her throwing it across the room. She swung her chubby legs happily as she stuffed the breakfast cubes into her mouth. 

Dallas set the smart speaker down on the kitchen counter and then went to sit next to Sally. 

‘Wash your hands first, both of you!’ Milo’s mom said.

Jill Winters was a short woman, with curly blonde hair. She had a stubby little nose. Her summery dress was oversized and loose, and it danced as she circled the table, filling a round of glasses with OJ from the carton. 

Milo rolled his eyes and then lathered up his hands with soap at the sink. His dad did the same. They toweled them dry and then came over to the table. Milo drew up his usual chair. His dad kissed Sally on the forehead and then drew up his.

The plates each had three rashers of well-done bacon, hash browns, two pancakes, and a small mound of scrambled eggs. They started to eat.

‘I saw him go by,’ Jill said. 

‘Who?’ Dallas asked as he tucked in. 

‘That Rex. The demon boy that burnt our son.’ 

‘He went by?’ Dallas lifted his eyebrows. ‘I would’ve kicked his ass.’ 

‘Yes, well, his uncle did that. Very publicly.’ 

‘Good,’ Dallas grunted. He folded a pancake in half and bit into it. 

As Milo sat, running his fork through his eggs but not bringing any to his lips, he thought back to his confrontation with Rex the year before.

It was third period, and Milo found himself sitting in Mrs. Gleeson’s algebra class while she etched equations onto the whiteboard. He’d drunk a liter of Turtle Cola at lunch, and his bladder was starting to sting. 

‘Toilet break, Mrs. Gleeson?’

‘Make it quick, Mr. Winters,’ she said; her eyes not leaving the board.

Milo burst into the first floor toilets. He was already peeing onto the urinal cakes when he realized he wasn’t alone in the room. 

A silvery canopy of smoke hung just below the bar lights overhead. He turned to see one of the stall doors come open, and out came Rex and his two friends, Dean and Brandon. Whenever you saw Rex, you could safely bet that Dean and Brandon weren’t too far away. 

Dean was tall. He had a shaved head, large ears, and a lazy eye. All the kids at Masterson High called him ‘the inbred’, just never to his face. 

Brandon was the stockiest of the three. He had two chins, and his shirt didn’t quite cover his stomach. His hair was always plastered in gel, forming a crown of twisted, little spikes. 

They’d been passing around a Gunslinger cigarette. Now it sat perched between Rex’s lips. The three of them quickly surrounded Milo, circling him like chuckling hyenas. 

‘Winters, that is one tiny dick,’ Rex said, as he clasped a hand on Milo’s shoulder and peered over it, at the pink appendage. 

Milo stopped peeing immediately. The last of the urine gurgled out of the trough. He quickly tucked it back into his pants, tugged up the zipper, and made to leave. But he couldn’t leave. Rex’s two friends had already formed a wall, and they towered above him, mean-faced and ugly. 

‘Where you going, Winters? To rat on us for smoking?’ asked Dean.

‘Nuh-no, just need to get back to class,’ Milo said. 

The three boys laughed. 

‘Little nerd, ain’t he, boys?’ Brandon said. 

‘I think we need to make him man up a bit,’ Rex suggested. 

‘I think that’s a great idea,’ Dean agreed. 

Milo tried to leave a second time, but they blocked his way again.

‘Look, I’m not gonna say anything to anyone,’ he said. ‘Honest. Just let me go.’ 

‘Unbutton his shirt, boys,’ Rex said. 

Dean and Brandon looked at each other, a little puzzled, but they did as they were told. They always did. They grabbed an arm each to steady Milo and then ripped his shirt open, exposing his bare, pasty chest. 

‘What are you doing?’ Milo asked as he struggled. But he couldn’t pull his arms free. The boys were too big and too strong. 

Rex took the last scrag-end of cigarette between his finger and thumb and brought its amber tip into Milo’s flesh. It hissed as it bore through the skin, and a nasty, white plume of vapor shot up into the air. 

Milo screamed, and tears poured down his cheeks. The boys let him fall to his knees. 

‘Don’t think we manned him up any,’ Rex said, with a grin. 

He flicked the ashy butt into Milo’s hair, and then the three of them left. The door clunked shut behind them, and then the room was filled only with the sound of gentle whimpering. 

Milo didn’t say a word to anyone after he left the bathroom, with his shirt hanging open, and blood trickling from the hole in his chest. He didn’t even collect his bag or his books from Mrs. Gleeson’s room. He walked straight out of the school gates, sobbing and sniffling. 

When he got home, he was hoping to slip upstairs to his room without being seen. But instead, he found his mom kneeling in the hallway in front of Sally, zipping up her little coat. 

Jill looked up from the zipper to see him standing in the doorway, with his shirt sides drooping down, and his bloody chest on show. 

Five minutes later, she was shouting Who did it? for the twentieth time. He was perched on the edge of the sofa now, trembling, with a bag of ice clutched to his chest. His mom paced the room, phone in her hand. 

‘It… it… it doesn’t matter,’ he stammered. 

‘Where the fuck is the receptionist?’ Chirpy waiting music piped out of the phone, on loudspeaker. ‘You better tell me who did this. I’m going to find out.’ 

Milo shook his head. ‘It doesn’t go away. It just gets worse. If you call him out on it, if he gets in trouble, it’ll just get worse for me. Don’t you understand?’ 

‘Nobody gets away with this, My. You’ll never see him again, I promise. I’m gonna get him expelled. Just tell me his name.’ 

Milo sighed. ‘Lachance.’ 

‘Lachance? Is he related to Vinny Lachance? With those awful ads on the TV?’ 

Milo shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I heard he lives with his uncle.’ 

‘Hello? Mrs. Winters?’ the receptionist’s voice came over the line. 

‘Yes, I’m here.’ 

‘Oh, good. We’re glad you called. Milo has skipped a class. He told Mrs. Gleeson he was going to the toilet; then, he was seen marching right out of school.’ 

‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ 

‘Mom!’ 

*

An hour later, Milo sat in the small waiting room outside Principal Langley’s office, with his fingers laced together, and his head hanging low over his lap. He could hear his mom shouting at the principal through the frosted glass door opposite. 

Beside him Rex sat, sprawled back, with his head resting against the paneled wall behind his chair. 

‘You’re so fucking dead, Winters,’ Rex said, quietly enough so that the secretary sitting in the corner of the room couldn’t hear. 

Milo said nothing. He was too busy picturing the horrors he’d face daily from that day forward, at the hands of Rex and his two buddies. Cigarette burns were nothing, compared to what was in store for him. He was certain of that. 

‘Can I go take a piss?’ Rex asked the secretary. ‘I’m bursting.’ 

‘Language!’ she snapped. ‘And no. The principal will be ready for you soon. Once he’s spoken with your uncle.’ 

‘My uncle?’ Rex sat forward. ‘He’s coming in?’ 

Heavy footsteps thundered down the corridor outside. They grew louder and closer until, eventually, the door flung open, and a man in a pink suit charged through it. 

He was about fifty. He was caked in fake tan and wore a bad wig that had slipped while he was running from the car. 

Milo did recognize him from TV. He didn’t know who his mom was talking about earlier. He only knew him by the name ‘The RV King’. His ads would pop up on StreamTube while he and his dad watched old clips from Junkyard Rescue. 

He’d spring out of the doorways of the RVs on his lot, shouting out ridiculously low prices, and would always sign off with, For royal deals on recreational vehicles, come and see the RV King! 

Rex seemed to shrink in his seat the second he saw his uncle. 

‘What the fuck have you done now?’ the man asked. 

Rex said nothing. He just stared at the floor, wide-eyed. 

The principal’s secretary stood up. ‘Mr. Lachance?’ she asked. 

The man hadn’t seen her sitting there, tucked away in the corner. 

‘Oh, hello, dear. Sorry. I was running late. I got a call at work and raced over here.’ He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass and straightened his wig. ‘Am I too late to see the principal?’ 

‘No, not at all. Just knock on the door,’ the secretary said. ‘He’s expecting you.’ 

The man tapped his knuckles on the frosted glass. 

Jill stopped shouting momentarily. The principal called through the door, ‘Come in!’ 

The man in the pink suit stepped inside and closed the door behind him. There were some low, muffled voices. And then some loud, excitable voices. And then the door swung open again so fast that its handle punched a hole into the wooden paneling that lined the wall. 

‘Cigarette burns?’ the man shouted, as he came at Rex. ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ 

Rex quickly got to his feet. His eyes were full of fear. His mouth hung ajar. 

Milo never thought he’d see Rex look that way. He always assumed Rex was the kind of guy that wasn’t scared of anybody. Yet here he was, shaking like a shitting dog. The most surprising thing to Milo, though, was that he didn’t enjoy seeing Rex like this. 

‘Mr. Lachance!’ the principal hollered behind him. ‘Please! Let’s deal with this correctly! Step back into my office. Please!’ 

But Mr. Lachance couldn’t hear him. He was focused only on his nephew, who he lumbered towards, heavy-footed; eyes mad and locked on target. 

Rex stepped backwards. His uncle came at him, still. He stepped backwards further and crossed the small waiting room until his back pressed up against the door. But the door hadn’t fully caught on its latch, and Rex stumbled backwards, out into the hallway. He fell onto his ass and looked up in terror as his uncle continued to advance towards him. 

The end-of-period bell rang. Within seconds, the door to Mrs. Sanderson’s room came open, and her geography class filed into the corridor; all talking and laughing as they hoisted their bags up over their shoulders. But they soon fell silent when they came across the sight of Rex cowering on the floor while his uncle stepped towards him. 

‘Your father died before he could beat the sick out of you,’ he said, as he unbuckled his belt and slipped it out of the loops in his suit trousers, ‘but by God, am I gonna do it for him.’ 

He wrapped the soft end of the belt around his hand and grasped it tight. The golden buckle dangled free, and it glimmered under the corridor’s bright lights. 

Rex started to crawl backwards. ‘Please,’ he whimpered, breathlessly, almost too softly to be heard. 

Another classful of students joined the traffic jam in the corridor. Mr. McGuerry’s class wandered along shortly after that. Soon, there were over a hundred confused, young faces watching the scene unfold. 

‘Mr. Lachance!’ the principal pleaded. ‘Please, Mr. Lachance! Step back into my office!’ 

But Mr. Lachance ignored him, still. His nephew had been dumped on him eight years ago, after his brother had run a pickup truck into a tree after too many whiskeys down at Club Hellfire. Every other week since, he’d been called into the principal’s office about one thing or another. 

Each year the severity grew worse. It started off with simple bullying. Then it was selling cigarettes. Punching holes in the library wall. Flushing someone’s head down the toilet. Taking pictures up girls’ skirts. Bringing a knife into school. Poisoning the school gerbil with antifreeze. And now, burning another student’s flesh with a cigarette. 

If this didn’t end right now, Rex would be the next high school shooter. Mr. Lachance was sure of it. He’d had dreams about it, in fact. He saw Rex stalking the hallways, opening every door and emptying a clip into each room. That’s why he’d moved all the guns out of the house and hid them somewhere he knew Rex wouldn’t find them.

Mr. Lachance brought the belt up over his shoulder and stared down at his nephew for a few moments. He could feel the crowd around him. He could hear the whispering. But this needed to happen – audience or no audience. 

Rex was drenched in sweat, and his skin was somehow paler than usual. He was as white as writing paper. 

‘Please,’ he whimpered again. 

But his voice didn’t carry over the chattering and chuckling of the crowd that had formed around them. He raised his hands in mercy as he sat shaking on the floor. 

The belt tore through the air. A hissing, black blur. The sharp corner of the buckle tore across Rex’s palm. The boy screamed and snapped his hand back in. He held it tightly with his other hand, examined it, and then looked back up at his uncle, with tears streaming down his face. 

That’ll be it, Rex thought. One nasty stroke, in front of my classmates, to embarrass me. Now the old fuck will lay off, feed his belt back into his trousers, and head off back to his lot. 

Rex was surprised to see the belt raise up again, over his uncle’s shoulder, ready for another stroke. 

He looked around at the faces that circled him. He hoped to see some terror or some sympathy, or some allies coming forward in protest. But instead, he saw smiles and laughter. And smartphones held at arm’s length, snapping photos as he trembled on the floor. 

The belt came down fast and hard. This time, it hit his shoulder. It felt like a bullet had nipped across the bone. But before Rex could shout out in pain, the belt had cycled back over his uncle’s shoulder and had come crashing down again. This time into his thigh. 

Up went the belt again. It came down like a quick, black viper, into the boy’s tummy. And then up. And then down. It became one frantic, unstoppable helicopter blade of leather and metal, eating into flesh and bone each time it came around. 

Rex flailed and screamed on the floor, with his arms folded across his chest. The buckle nipped at him with each rotation, leaving him riddled in bright pink marks, oozing blood. 

The final blow tore through Rex’s top lip. It came apart like tissue paper. Like the cleft lip of the boy he used to taunt. Blood showered down onto his shirt. 

And then it came – a long gush of yellow fluid from his crotch. It bled through his trouser leg and pooled out onto the terrazzo.

The corridor erupted into a thundering chorus of laughter. More smartphones slipped out of pockets and bags and started flashing. 

Mr. Lachance looked down at his nephew, disgusted. He unwrapped the belt from his hand, which had turned white, and he took it with him as he trundled down the corridor. The crowd parted to let him through. 

Rex didn’t make any attempt to stand up. He just lay on his back, trembling and crying, in a puddle of his own urine, covered in stinging, red marks, while blood poured from his shredded lip. 

Then Tasha Levinski, the pretty leader of the school’s bitchy little gaggle of stick-thin cheerleaders, stepped forward. She pulled her phone out, put it right up into Rex’s sobbing face, and started live-streaming on Facejam, with a big, shit-eating grin.

*

‘Did he say anything to you when he went by?’ Jill asked. 

Milo snapped out of the memory and looked up at his mom. She was staring back at him over the breakfast table on that hot Sunday morning. He forked some egg into his mouth, at last. 

‘No. Just passed by.’ 

‘He’ll be outside the Sampsons’ again, no doubt.’ 

‘Why’s that?’ Dallas asked. 

‘Well, I didn’t know anything about it, but Violet, down at the grocery store, told me. He’s obsessed with the girl.’ 

Dallas looked up from his plate. ‘Becca?’ 

‘Yeah. Obsessed. She wants nothing to do with him, but he doesn’t get the hint. They’ve had phone calls in the middle of the night. Letters posted through the door. Stands out there for hours. Dan goes out to scare him off, but he just comes back again. They’ve had Sheriff Callow talk to him a bunch of times.’ 

‘Boy’s got a screw loose,’ Dallas said. ‘Well, I mean, clearly. Who burns another boy with a cigarette? What the uncle did to him, he had it coming. And if I ever need an RV, I’ll be getting it from the King, I’ll tell you that much.’ 

‘Can we stop talking about him?’ Milo asked. 

Feeling a little guilty, Jill quickly tried to change the conversation. 

‘I saw Jo go by on the bikes,’ she said. ‘I was thinking – we haven’t taken ours out in a while. Seems like a nice day for it.’ 

‘Sure. I’ll dig them out of the garage.’ Dallas slurped egg off his fork. 

‘We can go and see if that ice cream truck still parks up by Donerson Park,’ Jill said. 

‘Park!’ Sally screamed happily. She always got a lemonade popsicle and had to fight off the wasps. 

Dallas set his cutlery down. His stomach gurgled. He necked his orange juice and then went to the sink to fill the glass with water. He swallowed that down, too. 

‘You alright, hon?’ Jill asked. 

‘Yeah, just thirsty. It’s hotter than I thought out.’ 

He turned and saw Milo staring at him, with a face full of concern. 

‘I’m fine, really!’ his dad reassured him. Then, as if suddenly remembering, he patted his back pocket. ‘Hon, seen my wallet?’ 

‘Jacket, maybe?’ 

He went down the hall and rummaged through the pockets of his jacket, which hung on the pegs by the door. When he came back, he was clutching a five-dollar note. 

‘Here you go, kiddo,’ he said, as he handed it to Milo. ‘The weekly wage.’ 

Milo took it and slipped it into his pocket. But his look of concern didn’t go away. He observed his dad closely as he sat back at the table. 

‘What was it you were saving up for again, My?’ his mom asked. 

‘Goblin Avenger 4. Everyone at school already got it.’ 

‘Didn’t we get you that for Christmas?’ Dallas asked. 

‘That was Goblin Avenger 3.5.’

‘Three point five?’ his mom asked. 

‘Yeah, it’s like three, but with some bonus stuff.’ 

‘More goblins,’ Dallas said, with a smile. 

‘Gollin!’ Sally added. 

‘Well, you’ll appreciate it all the more by earning it,’ his mom said.

Dallas sank back into his seat, holding his stomach. 

‘Still feeling rough?’ Jill asked him. ‘Maybe we should call Doctor Singh.’ 

Her husband looked at her and forced a smile. ‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine. Please, just eat.’ 

‘Maybe you’ve got what Mr. Sampson has got,’ Milo said. ‘Didn’t Binko say people were getting sick?’ 

Dallas’ face was wet, as though he’d just climbed out of the pool. Beads of sweat speckled his cheeks and forehead. His stomach gurgled again. 

He opened his mouth as if he were about to speak. Only no words came out. 

‘Hon?’ Jill asked, leaning forward. 

Her husband’s eyes widened suddenly, and his face contorted in agony, as if a dagger had plunged deep into his back. His pupils began to dart between the loved ones surrounding him at the table. Then a jet of thick, black blood shot through his lips and hit his daughter in the face. It pooled into the tray of her high chair. 

Dallas’ fingers clutched the table like crooked talons. He took a long, desperate breath, puked up more dark, congealed blood onto the breakfast table, and then slumped back unconscious in his chair. 

Sally broke into a howling scream that pierced the room. She was black with blood. All Milo could see were the whites of her eyes and the pinks of her tonsils. 

Jill’s chair clattered to the floor. She was standing over her husband in a heartbeat, clasping his cheeks and listening for breath from his mouth. Blood drooled in long strings from his lips, down onto his shirt. 

‘Dallas?’ she screamed. ‘Dallas? Oh, god. Talk to me. Talk to me, baby. Dallas? Dallas?’ 

Milo looked down at his plate. Flakes of bacon floated in the blood like life rafts on a great black lake. 

‘Call an ambulance!’ his mom shouted. 

Milo could hardly hear her. He couldn’t take his eyes off that plate. 

‘Call a fucking ambulance!’ 

Three 

The Unwanted Guest 

Becca let her bike clatter onto the grass in the backyard, then she followed her mother and brother up the steps to the side-door, which led through into their kitchen. 

Jo put the grocery bags from her bike’s basket on the counter and called, ‘Dan, we’re home!’ 

No reply from upstairs. 

The smell of vomit still hung heavy in every room. 

Becca ran up the stairs. When she reached the landing, something metallic clanged underfoot, and she almost fell backwards. She grabbed hold of the bannister to steady herself, and once she’d straightened up, she looked down to see what she’d tripped on. 

It was a model of a van, made from pieces of scrap metal. Bolts stuck out of the sides crudely, and there were untidy gaps between some of the panels. 

‘Brody, don’t leave your projects at the top of the stairs!’ she shouted. ‘I nearly broke my neck.’ 

She went into her room and slammed the door behind her. 

Thick purple curtains blocked out the sunlight, but it was still uncomfortably warm in the room. A salt lamp in the corner painted everything inside in a dim, pink glow. 

The walls were lined with posters of her favorite band, Courting Armageddon. She’d seen them live five times and had tickets to their concert in October, too. Her mom and dad had gotten them for her birthday last month. 

Becca took her leather jacket off and hung it on the back of her door. Then she unhooked the choker around her neck and put it back in place on the hooks above her dressing table. She sat on the stool at the table and pulled her boots off. They were leather too, and her feet had been baking inside them. Her toes, painted in chipping, black polish, poked out through holes in her fishnets. 

She caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her black fringe was messy from the bike ride, so she quickly tugged it back into place.

At the back of her dressing table, beneath a dragon ornament, sat a stack of letters from Rex. They were all tucked back inside their original envelopes. There were over thirty now. At his most prolific point, she received three in one week. Sheriff Callow told her to throw them away, but she’d kept them anyway. 

‘What triggered it all?’ the sheriff had asked while he sat in their lounge, sipping coffee. 

Rex’s obsession with Becca started the day the RV King came to Masterson High. 

*

Becca sat at the back of Mrs. Sanderson’s geography class. The old, tall, slim teacher, with the bob of silver hair, had just concluded a lesson on Mount Vesuvius. Up on the electronic board was a drawing of Pompeii covered in lava, the rooftops all ablaze. 

The end-of-period bell rang, and all the students scooped their books and pens into their bags. They crowded by the door and started to filter slowly out into the corridor. 

As Becca hoisted her bag up onto her shoulder, she heard some commotion outside. 

‘It’s Rex,’ someone whispered.

‘Is that…? Is that the RV King? Off TV?’ someone else asked, excitedly. 

Becca pushed her way through and joined the crowd that had lined the corridor and had circled around Rex, who lay trembling on the floor, with his uncle towering above him. 

‘What’s going on?’ someone next to her whispered. 

Then the belt started swinging. And while the kids all around her laughed and cheered, Becca stayed deadly quiet. She winced with each blow. And she stared glumly down at Rex as he writhed on the ground in agony.

The RV King stomped off, having split open his nephew’s lip. 

Then Becca watched as Tasha Levinski stepped out from her gang of pretty little cheerleaders, giggling. She dug her manicured nails into her bag and pulled out her phone. It was the latest model, of course, the Phoenix 15, which her plastic surgeon daddy had bought her, no doubt. Becca still had a Phoenix 10, and she was sure the company had started to make it run slower on purpose, to force an upgrade.

With a few taps of her nails on the screen, Facejam opened up, and Tasha crouched down and pointed the camera into Rex’s sobbing face, sniggering as she did it. 

He looked up at her from the floor with pained, teary eyes – blood oozing from his mouth – and he said nothing. Nobody said anything as the boy’s suffering started casting live to all of Tasha’s sixty-five thousand followers. The live view count quickly climbed, and comments started shooting up the screen. Ha, ha! What a mess! Who’s that freak? 

‘That’s enough!’ Becca said as she stepped forward. 

Tasha had once stuck a note on Brody’s back that said ‘Retard’. Everyone had laughed at him all day long. When Becca found out who’d done it, she marched right up to her in the changing rooms and slapped her sideways. Her daddy had threatened to take Dan and Jo to the cleaners, but thankfully, it went away after the principal brought up the ‘hate crime’ against Brody. 

‘What’s it to you, Sampson?’ Tasha asked as she craned her neck to look up at her. 

‘It’s sick!’ Becca said. 

‘This your boyfriend now? I can see that! Mr. Freak and Mrs. Freak.’ 

Becca slapped the phone out of her hand. It bounced off down the corridor. 

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Tasha asked. She stood up. A couple of her cheerleader friends stepped out of the crowd. 

Milo quickly slid in front of Becca to shield her, but the cheerleaders didn’t look the least bit threatened by him. Then, to his relief, Principal Langley rushed over. ‘To your next lessons!’ he shouted. ‘Lessons! Now!’ 

Tasha picked up her phone and walked off into the dispersing crowd. 

‘You okay?’ Milo asked Becca. 

She nodded. ‘I’m fine.’ 

‘My!’ Jill called through the bustling corridor. ‘We’re going home!’ 

Milo walked over to join her, and they disappeared into the mass of people, leaving Becca standing with Principal Langley. They both stared down at Rex. 

Rex murmured on the floor. A big bubble of blood blew out from his mouth and popped. His eyes fixed on Becca. 

‘Let’s get him up,’ the principal said. 

He and Becca both crouched down, scooped their arms under Rex’s, and lifted him to his feet. Rex locked eyes with her as she helped walk him into the reception room beside the principal’s office. They sat him down in the waiting room chairs. 

‘Don’t just sit there!’ the principal barked at the receptionist. ‘Get the first aid kit. And call the janitor to clean up that mess.’ 

Becca looked down at Rex, and Rex glared up at her, with an admiration he had never felt before. 

‘Back to class, Sampson!’ the principal said. And she went. 

*

At first Rex only approached her at school. She’d tell him, ‘I’m not interested. I was just being nice.’ But he persisted. So, eventually, she had to tell Principal Langley. And as soon as he threatened to get Rex’s uncle on the phone, the harassment at school stopped. 

Then he started messaging her on every app under the sun. She blocked him on all of them, one by one. Then he bullied her cell number out of one of her friends. So she blocked his number. Then he got the Sampsons’ landline number from the phone book and took to calling the house at all hours, day or night. 

‘You’ve got to stop calling!’ Jo screamed down the phone at 3 a.m. one morning. ‘She doesn’t want you!’

After that he started sending the letters. And when those were ignored, he began following her home or simply standing outside on the path for hours on end. Dan went out multiple times to shove him and threaten him, but he’d always come back. 

In the end, Jo and Dan went in to see Principal Langley themselves. But the principal told them, ‘If it’s happening off school grounds, it’s out of my jurisdiction. You’ll have to call the Sheriff.’ 

 So that’s what they did. But the RV King was Sheriff Callow’s main donor. So he’d simply drive the boy home and tell him not to do it again. 

*

Becca sat at her dressing table, staring absently at the stack of letters. Suddenly, the pipes in the wall groaned hard, which made her jump. She got up, opened the door, and went out into the landing. 

The bathroom door was ajar, and steam was sifting softly out. She went and looked inside. She saw her mom kneeling beside the tub. Water was thundering out of the hot tap.

‘Just running your dad a bath,’ she said. ‘Might perk him up a bit.’ 

‘How is he now?’ 

‘Go and ask him yourself. He’ll appreciate that.’ 

Becca walked along the landing. As she passed Brody’s bedroom, she paused and glanced inside. The door was wide open, and he sat cross-legged on the floor, bolting together two metallic components with a spanner. 

His bedroom walls were lined with Junkyard Rescue posters – his current TV obsession. A couple of the posters were even signed. They’d gone and met the presenter Milton at a convention in the city. Milton had once been an engineer at NASA. Now, once a week on TV, he’d build some cool weapon out of scrap parts in a junkyard and would show them off in some incredibly destructive demonstration. 

Dan Sampson was a mechanic. So when he noticed Brody was taking an interest in engineering, he started to build things with his son. They even constructed a little lean-to in the back yard that they called ‘the workshop’. Dan filled it with old parts he would bring home from work, along with spare tools from whenever he’d replace ones in the garage. 

Dan loved being out there with Brody. He’d always found it challenging to connect with him, on account of the autism. He’d tried dozens of bonding activities over the years. Board games. Video games. Soccer. Baseball. Mini golf. Fishing. Camping. Hiking. But Brody hadn’t taken to any of them. So it felt great to have finally found something they could do together – something they could share. 

But Brody had soon learnt enough to work solo. So while they’d still go and work in tandem in the workshop once or twice a week, Brody spent most of his time dismantling old appliances and car parts and creating new innovations, all by himself. 

The shelves in his bedroom were heavily laden with all the contraptions he had built. Sling shots, crossbows, miniature trebuchets, and more. Much more. 

Becca looked warily at the array of weapons he’d been amassing. She preferred when his obsession had been dinosaurs. 

His room had once been bustling with Jurassic goodies. Every inch of wall space was either papered with dinosaur posters or held shelving filled with velociraptor models, T-Rex toys, little clay dino eggs, or papier-mâché brachiosaurs. His bed sheets used to have fern leaves on, with glowing, yellow eyes peering through the gaps in between. Little, motorized pterodactyls had dangled from his ceiling on threads. 

But now he just sat around, quietly building these little contraptions. 

Dan coughed, down the landing. Becca carried on walking and pushed open the door to her parents’ room. It was dark inside, but a beam of bright light bled through a crack in the curtains and painted some detail on the shape under the bed covers. 

‘Dad, you awake?’ she asked. 

He coughed. ‘W-where am I?’ 

‘You’re at home, dad.’ 

‘My stomach.’ He groaned and clutched at his belly. It gurgled loudly. 

‘Mom!’ Becca called down the landing. ‘I think we should call an ambulance. He doesn’t seem–.’ 

‘Nonsense! He just needs a nice bath,’ Jo called back. ‘It’ll freshen him right up.’ 

‘I can taste blood,’ Dan said. 

Becca frowned. ‘Do you want some water?’ 

Dan stirred. ‘Who’s that?’ 

‘It’s Becca.’ 

‘Becca?’ Dan asked. 

‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s me.’ 

‘Who’s Becca?’ 

She gave a little gasp. 

Jo shouted as she came down the landing, ‘Right, it’s nearly ready! Let’s get him down there.’ 

She came in, swung Dan’s legs out of bed, and lowered them to the floor. Then she sat him up, wrapped his arm over her shoulder, and hoisted him up. He was wearing nothing but his boxers. 

‘Well, don’t just stand there!’ Jo snapped. ‘Help me. He’s heavy, you know.’ 

Becca rushed to her dad’s other side, took his arm, and wrapped it around her shoulders. Together the two Sampson women walked him out of the room, along the landing, and into the bathroom. He stepped weakly and murmured groggily as they went. 

Jo left Dan leaning on Becca as she turned the taps off. She poured some Relaxo Salts into the water and stirred it with her bony little arm. Then, without warning, she turned and pulled her husband’s boxers down. Becca looked away sharply. 

‘Let’s get him in,’ Jo said. 

Slowly and with great difficulty, they maneuvered him into the tub. He slid down into the warm water, eyes closed. 

‘Right,’ Jo said. ‘We’ll leave him to soak. I’ll get started on lunch.’ 

Becca followed her out. Jo went down the stairs. Before Becca could step back inside her room to crash onto her bed and listen to Courting Armageddon, she heard splashing coming from the bathroom. 

Quickly, she rushed back down the landing. 

She tapped on the door. ‘Dad?’ 

No answer. She tapped again. Nothing. Silence now. She pushed the door open and stepped inside. 

The water was so red, it was like there was no water in it – like it was all blood. It was pouring out onto the floor and splashing up onto the blinds and the toilet, and the sink. She could just see his nostrils poking up out of the scarlet soup.

She ran over and pulled his head up. His eyes were closed. She shook him, and she screamed, ‘Wake up! Dad, wake up! Wake up!’ But he wouldn’t.

Jo tumbled into the bathroom. She saw Becca fighting to keep Dan’s head afloat, so she plunged her arm deep into the tub and pulled the plug out. But the water wouldn’t drain away. The plughole was all clogged up with fleshy, pink matter. Jo tried plucking it away with her fingers, but there was too much of it. 

‘Pull him out!’ she said finally, desperately. 

She grabbed him under his arms, and Becca grabbed at his legs, and they hoisted as hard as they could. But he was too heavy. 

‘Dad,’ Brody said. He stood in the doorway, with his hands by his sides. 

‘Brody! Help us!’ Becca panted. ‘Help us!’ 

He stepped over, grabbed at his father’s waist, and pulled. Dan slammed down onto the floor so hard it was like a gunshot had echoed all around the room. 

If he wasn’t dead already, Becca thought, we just killed him. 

Jo rolled him over and put her ear to his mouth. 

‘He’s breathing,’ she said. ‘Call an ambulance!’ 

Four

Old Pennies

Milo kept watch out of the kitchen window for the ambulance. 

In the end, after several failed attempts to get through to the nine-one-one switchboard, he’d reached a very young dispatcher. He had to give his address at least six times and was finally told, ‘Someone will be with you shortly.’ 

That was forty-five minutes ago. 

‘Anything yet?’ his mom asked. She was kneeling beside Sally’s high chair, with a bowl of warm water from the sink between her knees. She was cleaning the blood off her daughter’s face with a cloth. She wrung it out after every wipe. The bowl water was black and had ugly, fleshy scrags floating in it. 

Every minute or so, she’d crawl over to check her husband was still breathing. They’d laid him onto the floor and put him in the recovery position. He was still unconscious, and the breaths were wheezy and unsteady, but he was breathing. 

Jill had a good mind to drag him out to the car and drive him to the ER herself. But he was very heavy – at least three times her own weight – and she didn’t want to trigger some sort of convulsion while lugging him around like a piece of furniture. 

A white van crawled to a stop at the bottom of the drive. It had the outline of a fish etched onto the side, with the words ‘New Hampshire Cod Company’ printed below it. 

Milo frowned. 

‘Mom, did you order some fish?’ 

‘Fish?’ 

The van’s doors flung open, and two podgy men stepped out onto the concrete. Their white overalls were covered in dark brown stains. They pulled open the doors at the back of the van and took out some plastic aprons, which they slipped over their heads and tied at the back. Next, they took out a folded, steel stretcher, expanded it, and wheeled it up the driveway on its castors. 

Milo went and opened the door.

‘Hello?’ 

‘We’re here to collect…’ one of the men started, before quickly checking his clipboard, ‘… Dallas Winters.’ 

‘What’s with the fish van?’ 

‘Is he here or not, son? We have a lot of collections today.’ 

‘Come through.’ 

The stretcher clattered onto the kitchen tiles. It made the glasses rattle inside the cupboards.

The men gazed in horror at the breakfast table. The thick, black blood filled the plates and the spaces in between them, and it dribbled off the table’s edges. 

The room stank of old pennies. 

Sally waved at one of the men from her high chair. He gave a half-smile and waved back. 

‘Oh, thank god. Thank god,’ Jill said as she dropped the bloody cloth into the bowl of meaty, black soup. ‘He-he’s still breathing. We put him on the floor. We thought that was best.’ 

Her eyes were red and raw, like they’d been pepper-sprayed. 

The two men stood still and stared down at Dallas blankly. 

‘Aren’t you… gonna check his vitals?’ she asked, after waiting for them to spring into action. ‘Give him oxygen? Give him anything? Aren’t you going to do anything?’ 

The men quickly exchanged a glance. 

‘Uh, we’re just here to bring him in, ma’am,’ one said. 

‘The doctors and nurses will take good care of him,’ added the other.

Jill shook her head. ‘What the fuck is going on in this country?’ she muttered under her breath.

The men wheeled the stretcher beside Dallas, lowered it, hoisted him on, and then raised it again. His arm drooped over the side like a limp trouser leg hanging out of a laundry basket. They fastened straps across his legs and chest.

As one of the men stepped back, something crunched under his boot. He reached down and picked up a rattle. He handed it to Sally, who giggled and shook it fiercely. 

‘We’re gonna take your daddy to the hospital now, sweetheart,’ he told her. 

Sally reached out her chubby fingers towards Dallas as they wheeled him out of the room, and she cried, ‘Dadda.’ 

Jill picked her up from the high chair, held her to her chest, took the Mamba’s keys off the side, and jerked her head for Milo to follow. They all stepped out onto the driveway and watched as the fish men lifted Dallas into the back of the van. 

‘You’re taking him in that?’ she asked as she read the logo. 

‘Ambulances are all occupied,’ one of the men said. ‘Our whole fleet has been roped in. Same for Deliver-It and The Parcel People.’ 

In every direction, they could hear a choir of sirens wailing in the distance. 

‘We’re dropping them at the loading bay around back. They’re asking that family members stay at home.’ 

‘Stay at home?’ Jill asked. 

‘We’ve seen the ER, ma’am. It’s carnage. Honestly, your kids are better off here at home. The hospital will keep you posted with any updates. Just stay by the landline. The mobile networks are all jammed.’ 

The two men climbed back into the van. It took off down the street. The mask shot up out of the drain and floated around in the air like an autumn leaf. 

‘Get in the car,’ Jill said, as she unlocked the Mamba. 

‘Didn’t you hear what that guy said?’ 

‘Get in the car.’ 

‘He said to stay here. He said they want families to stay at home.’

‘Get in the car.’ 

‘Mom, he said ER is carnage.’

‘Get in the fucking car, Milo! Do as your mother says for once in your life!’ 

‘But–.’ 

‘I don’t care what a goddamn fish seller says. Something is happening, and we all need to stay together. We aren’t letting them stick your father in a hallway somewhere to forget about him. We’re gonna go to the hospital and scream in the faces of every doctor and every nurse until somebody helps him.’ 

‘Why don’t I stay here with Sally? It’s not gonna be nice for her there, is it?’ 

Jill rolled her eyes. ‘What did I just say?’ 

‘You can go. I can stay here with her.’ 

‘Everyone’s getting sick. What if you get sick? What if Sally gets sick? Cell phones aren’t working, Milo. How are you gonna get hold of me?’

Milo didn’t have any answers. 

‘You’re coming with me to the hospital. That’s the end of it. Now get in the damn car.’ 

Five

Peters 

It was still known as ‘the farmhouse’ even though the farm hadn’t operated in thirty years. The animal pens sat empty, and the field was just a dustbowl, especially on a hot day like today. 

Lieutenant Peters had bought the old place with his wife twenty-five years ago. They had a good couple of decades there. Until she got the diagnosis, of course. It was a short illness. She went quickly, which was better than most people got. 

She was buried over on the east side of the land, in a patch of shade under the pines. A little wooden cross marked the spot. The Lieutenant would wander over there every day just to talk. Tell her about work. Not that there was much to tell anymore. Captain Malsetti had started to wind down his duties on account of his retirement coming up next year. 

A high-pitched whistle erupted from the farmhouse. It rang out across the empty pens and the old barn. 

‘Alright, alright, I’m coming,’ Peters said, as he flushed the toilet and limped into the kitchen.

The Lieutenant was stocky and sun-reddened. He was in his late fifties and had thinning gray hair. His belly hung over his black boxer shorts, and a moth-eaten old night robe dangled from his shoulders, caked in crumbs and food stains.

He took the kettle off the stove. A scolding-hot column of steam piped from its spout, screaming like a banshee as it went. He filled his mug with bubbling water and spooned in some coffee. 

The farmhouse kitchen was narrow and untidy. A stack of dirty dishes sat in the sink. Used cups and bowls lined the worktops; most of them with soiled cutlery sticking out. He’d taken to eating packet noodles straight out of the pot. 

Lucy would have never let it get that way. She used to clean up after him morning and night. But Peters never was the house-proud of the pair. 

He pulled open the fridge and took out the milk carton. There was a little cream on the spout. He gave it a sniff and screwed up his face. It smelled like rotten fruit, but he didn’t much fancy running to the store on a Sunday, so he added a dollop to his mug and mixed it in. White lumps floated to the top. 

It was a little after ten, and he’d not long climbed out of bed. He was always off-duty on Sundays. For Peters Sundays were days of sitting in his boxers, eating cereal, and watching reruns of old detective shows. The likes of Miami Murders and Hopkirk Investigates. 

The shutters in the lounge were closed, and the room was dark as he stepped inside, sipping from his mug. 

Something stirred on the couch as he entered the room. Bessie was an old, gray terrier. She slept there most nights when Peters retired upstairs to bed. Her aging joints couldn’t handle the steepness of the staircase anymore. 

She raised her head to look at her master as he came in, but quickly lowered it again. She rested her snout on her paw.

‘Where’s that goddamn remote?’ 

He rummaged around through the newspapers that lined the arms of the sofa and dug out the small, black control. The television set that sat in the corner of the room burst into color. 

The TV resumed the channel he’d been dozing off to the night before – Motoring Men. Only it wasn’t a motor show that came onscreen. It wasn’t Banger Brothers. It wasn’t Junkyard Rescue. It wasn’t Gears and Guns. It wasn’t any of the programming Peters had grown to love from Motoring Men. It was the Channel One news. 

Peters flicked the channel over to The Great Outdoors. But again – no Wilderness Willy. No Camping Cookouts. No Duck Hunting double bill. It was the Channel One news again. 

He flicked again. And again. The Channel One news was on every channel. It had taken over everything. 

Harrowing clips of ER rooms up and down the country. Patients drenched in blood. Queues miles long. Angry mobs congregating outside hospitals. Smashed glass. Fire hoses blasting people into the road. Riot police shunting crowds back with their interlocking shields. 

The scrolling, red banner across the bottom of the screen read ‘EMERGENCY ROOMS OVERWHELMED AS MYSTERY ILLNESS SWEEPS STATES.’ 

 ‘Well, girl. Looks like the whole world’s going to hell.’ 

Bessie looked up at him with sad eyes and let out a long breath that sounded like a sigh. 

‘I’m glad your mom ain’t here to see this.’ 

Lucy was a nervous wreck at the best of times. She used to lose sleep over saying ‘you too’ to waiters after they told her ‘enjoy your meal’. If she saw those news reports, she’d be rocking back and forth in the corner of the room. Peters was sure of it. 

Beside the sofa stood a tall, narrow, metal table. An old wired phone sat on top. After a few minutes of sipping coffee and watching the TV, the phone started to ring. The Lieutenant took it from its cradle. 

‘Peters.’ 

‘It’s me.’ 

‘Oh, hi, Cap. Thought I might be hearing from you.’

‘You got the news on?’ 

‘Yes, sir,’ Peters said. ‘World’s going to shit.’

‘How are you feeling? Any stomach cramps? Wooziness?’

Peters sat and thought about it for a moment. There was a dull pain in his temples, but that was likely from the couple of bottles he’d emptied the night before. 

‘No more than usual,’ he said. ‘What about you, Cap?’ 

‘It’s too hectic here,’ the Captain said. ‘I don’t have time to die.’ 

Peters smiled. ‘What’s going on? Any indication of what’s happening from further up the line?’ 

‘We’ve heard nothing from anyone. Plenty of rumors flying around in the office, though.’

‘What rumors?’ 

‘Russian nerve agents. Microchips in the water. Phone masts emitting deadly signals. Usual bollocks. As to what’s actually happening, we don’t know. What I do know is that I’ve got half my officers off, and every hospital in the county has a riot in its ER. So the handful of doctors and nurses that were able to make it into work today are spending their time under siege instead of saving lives.’ 

‘I’ll get dressed, and I’ll head to City Hospital, Cap.’ 

‘I got a ton of guys there already.’

‘Then where do you need me?’

‘You ever been to Masterson?’ 

‘Masterson? Yeah, a few times. There’s a junkyard there, where I get parts for my Rattler.’ 

‘Sheriff Callow is in charge there. Was in charge, I should say.’ 

‘I know Andy. Jesus, he get sick?’ 

‘I got a call this morning. Wife woke up, and he was dead in bed next to her. Choked on his own blood.’ 

‘Jesus.’ 

‘As it stands, the town is entirely without police presence. So it’s gonna get ugly. I’ve got three cadets from the academy ready to send over there. But they need a senior officer to take charge.’

‘I can do that, Cap.’ 

‘Good man. I’ll tell them to meet you outside Riley’s Motor House. It’s a block over from the hospital, so you can get things straight before you go bursting in there.’

After they were done ironing out the details, Peters sat the phone back in its cradle and sat in silence for a few moments. Then he looked down at Bessie. 

‘I don’t think I’ll be seeing you for a while, girl. If I leave a big heap of food out, are you capable of rationing?’ 

She looked at him blankly.

From the author:

Dear reader, if you’ve made it this far, I hope you liked the first part of my novel. In case you do, I’ve popped the links for the rest of it below. It’s available on ebook, paperback and Kindle Unlimited. Thank you.

Jon.