The Morning After

The HarpIES: The Morning After. By T.S.Nicholl

Ian Fulton didn’t know how he got home. He couldn’t remember last night at all if he was being honest, but it must have been a good one as there was a cracking hangover brewing. Ian lay with his eyes closed, trying to will away the growing headache and kick-start his brain into activity again – his usual Sunday morning routine.

‘Jesus, what did I do last night?’ He thought to himself, trying to steer through his mire of a brain. ‘Mandy’ll know.’

Ian opened his eyes and looked over to see if his girlfriend Mandy was awake, or if her face said he needed to start apologising for something. But her side of the bed hadn’t been slept in.

“Shit!” He said aloud, now knowing he was in trouble. Mandy had only stayed ‘out’ a few times in their relationship, and all these had been when he’d got paralytic drunk and then ran off at the mouth.

Ian sat up, his head swimming. He rose unsteadily from the bed, and teetered across the room to the en-suite shower. Current prognosis said he was in trouble anyway, so the smart move would be to try and get into a semi-presentable state before anything else. He wouldn’t be doing himself any favours turning up at Mandy’s mums or her mates house when he could barely stand, let alone remember what he got up to last night.

Ian turned on the shower, and was about to step into the cubicle when he noticed he still had his shirt and jeans on from last night. Using the wall as a crutch against a sudden imbalance, Ian dumped the clothes on the ground and then stepped in under the stream of water. He’d hoped for cleansing warmth, but instead was met by a flaming bolt of pain which shot through the side of his head. Ian staggered backwards with the shock of it, almost cracking the glass sides of the shower as he rattled off them. He turned away from the flow, fumbling with the sliding panel as he struggled to get back out again. After some agonising seconds he was able to pull the door back, and Ian collapsed onto the cold tiled floor. A dark aura tried to close in around him, while he fought back the urge to throw up.

After a couple of minute’s shallow breathing and clammy sweats Ian had recovered enough to get up and look in the mirror. Just at his right temple was a large discoloured lump with a bleeding rectangular hole in the middle, about a centimetre in diameter. Ian lightly touched around the tender area, and promptly had to sit back down again as the room tried to take a one hundred and eighty degree tilt. For a moment something in his subconscious pricked up. A passing flash of a hospital, but the image went as fleetingly as it had come when he tried to think about it.

Ian’s concern over last night’s missing time was now mounting. Even when he drank himself into a stupor there would always be some recollection, though the playback could be a little spotted at times. At the moment though there was nothing. Last night was a clouded absence of memories, wrapped in a crippling headache whose bleeding centre he suspected may have originated from one of Mandy’s high-heeled shoes.

“Right, I met her in the pub – Didn’t I? Did we argue? What?” Ian muttered to himself as he redressed in the bedroom, tried to find his mobile phone, and recall a memory beyond yesterday afternoon. He hoped there’d be a message on the phone that would throw light on what he’d need to be sorry for later, but it wasn’t to be found.

Nursing his tender head Ian went downstairs and automatically turned on the TV in the lounge. Again he searched the room, but there was still no mobile so he went to the kitchen on the same task. This ended in another fruitless search, but he started work on his now probable hangover / concussion and took a couple of headache tablets from a drawer under the sink. He stared blankly out the kitchen window, and tried not to gag while washing down the chalky circles with a glass of tepid water.

Ian hadn’t focused on the view from the window, until movement at the bottom of the garden attracted his attention. He could only see the figure from the back, but already knew it was the neighbour who lived directly behind him. She was someone he’d noticed and nodded to a few times over the rickety dividing fence she’d probably just broken getting into his garden, but they’d never properly spoke. She seemed in her late twenties, though it was difficult to tell. She was a ferocious looking girl at the best of times, with a healthy covering of tattoos, piercings, and bright cropped hair whose colour changed with the day of the week. Ian hesitated in going out, and continued watching her though the window. Even negating the fact he didn’t feel in any condition to deal with random fence violence and minor property invasion, something held him back. The scene just didn’t sit well, and the longer he watched her erratic stumbling around his garden the more he was convinced the right decision had been made.

“What the fuck are you on this early?” Ian spoke to himself as he looked at the oversized kitchen clock on the wall, and then back out to the woman again. It was 10.15am, and he wondered if her condition was the result of last night’s binge or an early start this morning. In this neighbourhood either conclusion was probable, maybe both.

The woman began to turn towards him, but instead of the glazed over intoxicated stare he’d expected, her face looked twisted in anger and eyes were unusually dark. Even seeing that look for a second made Ian duck away from the window. He knew she’d seen him, but there was no way he was getting involved with a raging Sunday morning nutter if he could help it. Instead Ian stayed hidden, the seconds passing like hours while a mocking voice crept up through him for being such a coward in his own house. He sneaked a look, and thankfully the property line was clear. She’d gone, and that was good enough for him at the moment. He had more pressing concerns to deal with.

Ian walked back to the front room, trying to expel the woman’s face from his mind’s eye as he sat on the sofa to work out his next move. No mobile meant he was going to have to go out and track Mandy down, a thought he didn’t relish in his current state. He couldn’t shake the woman’s face from his mind either. There was something in her look which again flashed in his spotted memory. He tried to hone in on the thought, but the harder he tried grasping at it the quicker the connections kept slipping away.

For the first time since being downstairs, Ian turned his attention to the TV in front of him. Immediately he recognized the building on screen, having been there many times before. It was the main train station in Manchester – Piccadilly, only a short bus ride away. The scene was a live broadcast, and showed the closed station with police cordon tape fluttering in the wind some distance around it. The ticker-tape across the bottom of the TV screen read ‘Manchester Piccadilly closed – Possible viral infection.

“Mandy works in Piccadilly!” Ian shouted at the TV while he frantically tried to turn up the low volume. As he spoke something in his brain finally began to click back into place. He started to remember.

Ian was supposed to have met Mandy when she finished work. She had a job at her dad’s generic ‘Coffee Bean’ franchise on the concourse at the train station, but she’d fallen ill on her shift and went home instead of meeting him. It didn’t take Ian long to get back to their house, but Mandy had already gone to lie down. Looking at her he was immediately concerned. She had a grey, almost bloodless pallor to her skin, and was shivering but had a high temperature. Mandy’s chills quickly became a fever, and by the time a scared Ian phoned the emergency services the heat was perceptively radiating out from her skin. The ambulance arrived only a short time later, but already Mandy’s pain had reached the point where she couldn’t stand anything touching her, even the sheets she lay on. As the medics tried to move her onto a stretcher, she emitted one final blood chilling scream before thankfully falling unconscious. Ian knew unconsciousness wasn’t a good thing, but anything was better than her constant pain, as the medics could do nothing to relieve her suffering.

Mandy came around again towards the end of the journey to the hospital, and for a moment she seemed almost normal. But no sooner had she levelled off when convulsions set in, red speckled foam and spit bubbling from her mouth as she jerked and shook while Ian impotently looked on. The paramedic tried to hold her down, but she thrashed around wildly and only remained in the bed because of the straps put in place for the journey from the house. For a second it all stopped, and then Mandy opened her eyes. Ian gasped in horror at the red filled orbs staring back. It looked as though every blood vessel in her eyes had exploded.

Mandy began to struggle again, violently this time, with purpose. Then she stretched up and sunk her teeth into the medic’s arm as he knelt over her, biting away a large chunk of flesh. The ambulance man screamed in agony and staggered backwards as blood poured from the wound. Mandy now frantically pulled at the straps, trying to free herself while growling and snarling like a caged animal.

Somewhere in the background Ian heard the driver shouting, then a moment later the ambulance turned and braked abruptly. The medic was propelled down the vehicle and took Ian with him, both of them crashing into the door and partition that separated the cabin from the back of the ambulance. The rear doors opened, and staff from the hospital were already waiting for them. Ian untangled himself from the medic, still unable to take his eyes from Mandy. In a matter of hours she’d changed from his girlfriend to this animal thing. He barely noticed someone was talking to him.

“Sir, can you hear me? Are you injured?” Ian looked at the man as though he spoke a foreign language, the shock of what was happening around him setting in.

“No…No, not me – him.” Ian said absently, talking about the medic but still looking at Mandy as they tried to remove her from the ambulance.

“Sir…Sir!” Ian could feel himself being shaken, and barely able to think he tried to keep his attention on the doctor. “The woman you’re with, where’s she been for the last few hours?”

“The station, she was working in the train station – Piccadilly. What’s happening to her?!” Ian replied, notes of panic beginning to creep into his voice.

“She’s another from the station, get her into isolation now!” The doctor shouted at those battling to keep Mandy on the bed.

Ian found himself being pulled along by the arm. He was dragged through to the emergency room, in behind the trolley that was barely holding his rabid girlfriend as she struggled to free herself.

“What’s happening? Where are you taking her?” Ian pulled away from the doctor, demanding answers.

“Sir, we’ve another…”

The sentence was never finished. Even over the din of the emergency room, people could hear crashing and screams from behind the swinging double doors where Mandy had just been wheeled. As though in anticipation the room quietened, then the doors burst open and a nurse bundled out with the front of her uniform awash in red. She fell to the floor shaking in a seizure. People rushed forward to help her, but immediately stopped and began to back away again when they saw who followed her out the doors. Ian’s stomach turned as the figure lurched into view – it was a blood covered Mandy, somehow she had gotten free of the restraints.

People quickly moved out of the way of Mandy and the nurse, creating an empty space around them. Two flak-vested policemen who’d been talking to some of the hospital staff stepped into the void, and were now raising their semi-automatic weapons.

“Armed Police! Down on the ground!” One of the officers shouted, but this did nothing other than move Mandy’s attention from the nurse to the officer.

“Don’t move!” The officer shouted again, but Mandy paid no attention and slowly kept coming forward as though gauging their threat.

The officer looked as though he was about to speak again, but the nurse had silently raised herself from the floor, and now screaming ran at the officer who was closest to her. She attacked him in frenzy, biting at his face and neck, as jets of blood sprayed out as they both fell to the floor. Mandy took this as her cue, and launched herself at the other policeman who still stood. Then the guns went off, and pandemonium broke out in the crowd around them.

People began screaming and pushing each other, trying to get to away from the flash point. Those too slow or sick got pushed aside, or trampled underfoot as mob mentality took over. Ian couldn’t help but be swept along with them, and was barely able to keep his footing within the stampede of frightened people heading for the exit. Just before the door Ian managed to turn, and for a second he saw Mandy again. This time she was on the ground, a dark flow of red spreading out from her still body. A blood soaked officer stood with his gun still trained on her, and then they were both lost in the press of bodies that filled in behind him.

Ian now found himself outside the hospital, milling around the locked doors with the others who’d been in the emergency room. More medical staff and police arrived, but no one knew what was happening and Ian struggled to keep it together. He couldn’t handle this alone, and brought his mobile phone out to ring Mandy’s parents. Ian didn’t know what he was going to say to them, but he had to do something and rang the number. The line was engaged, but he tried again and again. The same busy tone beeped back at him every time he called, but at least he knew someone was home. Their house was less than a half mile from the hospital, and with panic ruling him Ian put the mobile back in his jacket and set off running in their direction.

It didn’t take Ian long to get to the housing estate where Mandy’s parents lived, and he was more than glad to see their car parked outside.

“Look at this guy!” Ian ran passed a break in the street. A small group of people were hanging out and drinking in the remains of the summer’s day.

“Fuck me, look at the blood on him to!” A different voice in the group rang out, but Ian’s focus was on getting to the house and he neither heard nor saw any of them.

Ian reached the front door and opened it without knocking, the door on its latch as it usually was when Mandy’s parents were in.

“Hello? Jeff, Ellen – its Ian!” He shouted entering the house.

Ian could hear the TV in the living room to his left, and opened the frosted glass panelled door to enter. Immediately he could see something was wrong, as the normally immaculate front room was a mess. Two of the seats around the dining table had been knocked over, and the takings from the coffee shop lay strewn on the table and floor. The telephone was beeping its disconnected tone, as the handset had been knocked from the cradle in the disturbance. Ian came further into the room, frantically looking around when a noise from the kitchen attracted his attention.

“Jeff? Ellen?”

Ian saw Jeff’s twitching feet first, prone on the floor. The rest of the body came into view as he moved across the open plan room toward the kitchen.

“Jeff?”

Jeff was lying face down on the lino. His positioning looked as though he’d been going for the back door, but Ellen must have attacked him from behind as she was now straddled on his back with a pool of thick dark blood expanding around them. Ian speaking had attracted her attention, and she sat looking at him over her shoulder with the same dark red eyes he’d seen on Mandy. Ellen’s face was dripping in blood, and she absently chewed a piece of flesh. With a guttural growl Mandy’s mum turned as she got up, and started moving towards Ian. Too frightened to do anything else he began to back away, trying to keep some distance and furniture between them. Ellen looked as though she was sizing him up, and each matched the other step for step. Then Ian bumped a side table, knocking over an ornament. This was the opening Ellen had been waiting for, the slight distraction triggering her attack and she ran at him.

Ian was close enough to the hallway to make a break for it, and he ran through the doorway slamming the door behind him. Ellen collided with the screen directly after, shattering the glass and covering them both in shards. Ian didn’t stop, and continued to back away while watching Ellen shred herself on the broken pane squirming through after him. He turned and ran out the open front door, and while checking behind him he collided with someone coming in. Ian’s momentum carried him onwards, and he finally fell onto the flat green canvas of a front garden.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Ian looked up at a glowering skinhead man, who unknown to him had been one of the drinking group he’d just passed.

From within the house Ian could hear an animal like screech, and suddenly Ellen appeared in the doorway sprinting toward them. Ian knew there was no avoiding her this time, but she ignored him altogether and leapt at the newcomer, both of them tumbling onto the grass close to Ian. The man began shouting to his friends, as he struggled to protect himself. Ellen tore at his face and body with her nails, while still trying to bite him. Another member of the group ran over, and there was a sickening crunch sound as a boot connected with Ellen’s face. The force of the blow threw her head back with a snap, and she fell unmoving onto the lawn.

“What the fuck did you do to her?!” The skinhead shouted at Ian as he dusted himself off, and winced at the cuts he touched on his face. Ian could see the man’s anger rising, as his companion’s sniggered and mimicked his cries for help. Not waiting for an answer, the thick-set aggressor walked the few steps over to Ian and connected a heavy punch on his jaw.

Ian didn’t hear any further comment, or see the hulking shadow bearing down and grabbing him by the jacket. When he’d fallen his head struck one of the pointed kerbing stones that marked the paved path down the garden. Ian now slipped limply from the jacket, and fell back onto the grass again. His attacker threw the coat after him in disgust, and then turned toward the house. The group started to walk away, but Ellen wasn’t finished. She came to, and attacked the person nearest him. Ian, barely conscious, staggered off into the dusk and somehow managed to make it back home on autopilot.

Ian sat on the sofa, the full sobering reality of the previous night hitting him like another physical blow. Even though the memories were now present, the shock made it feel as though the nightmare had still happened to someone else. The television broadcast was still reporting from Piccadilly, and focusing on the screen Ian registered they were showing CCTV footage from the station. Inset into the main picture, was a photo of a middle aged man. The voice of the male announcer continued.

“…authorities are still trying to locate Dr Maxwell Harper, a geneticist at the St. Mary’s genetics facility in Manchester. The BBC and a number of other stations have received what is being called a ‘manifesto’, concerning the release of a virus in the area. Some of this morning’s tabloids are already christening this the HarpIES virus. At present we are unable to give any details of the document, but the following statement was made by the Health Protection Agency earlier this morning.”

The screen flickered for a moment, and then a figure behind a podium displaying the HPA crest appeared, grim faced and tired looking. Behind him were a few recognisable members of parliament, including the Prime Minister, some military types in uniform and other serious looking men in suits. Clearing his throat, the man behind the podium started a nervous sounding speech.

“Since approximately 3pm yesterday, the Health Protection Agency and conjoining authorities have been tracking an escalating health issue within the UK. At this point we have confirmation from the St. Mary’s genetic research facility, that initial symptoms relate to a variant of the virus Intracellular Endocrine Syndrome, or IES. Samples of the mutated virus have been found in both air and surface content around the Piccadilly station area.

This is a highly contagious viral strain, and current results indicate it may have been engineered to be gender specific towards the female percentage of the population. Indicators specify that contact with the virus can have an incubation period of up to three hours before symptoms become apparent, though we have been advised a bite or fluid exchange with an IES host can result in an almost instant reaction.

Female members of the public displaying flu like symptoms which escalate within the hour, or anyone who believes they have been in direct contact with an IES host, please contact one of the below numbers immediately. Teams in the Health Protection Agency are waiting for your call. We have been directly liaising with the local health authorities and emergency services to coordinate…”

The sound of smashing glass from the back of the house brought an already strung out Ian immediately to his feet. He dithered for a moment, the headache and shock making him slow to react. He looked around, that sound was never a good one. He lifted a metal poker from the hearth, and crept as silently as he could to the hall that led into the kitchen. Ian opened the separating door a crack, chancing a look, but couldn’t see anything. He pushed the door a little further, and it met resistance. He pushed again, and this time the door pushed back violently, knocking him to the ground. Immediately Ian recognized his mistake, but it was too late as the door juddered back open again. Somehow he knew it would be the neighbour he’d saw earlier filling the doorway. He wasn’t wrong, and those dark red eyes engulfed him hungrily before she leapt upon him shrieking.

Instinctively Ian put his arms up to try and protect himself, but instead of the frenzied attack his neighbour let out a throttled scream and began to flail wildly. Ian had forgotten about the poker in his hand, and as the neighbour jumped she skewered herself through the neck. Blood gushed from the wound, and poured onto him as she manically thrashed around like a speared fish. Still holding the poker above him, Ian used all his strength to lever out from under her and edged away from the writhing danger. From the corner of his eye other movement caught his attention. Looking into the kitchen he saw another woman climbing in the broken window, attracted by the noise and blood. Ian closed the door, and stepped over his still thrashing neighbour to reach the cupboard under the stairs. Something in him clicked on, a consuming anger which overrode everything else. If this was how it was going to end, then he wasn’t leaving without a fight. Ian opened the small door, and lifted a ball hammer from the open toolbox that lay inside. With a deep breath he braced himself before re-opening the kitchen door.