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  It had been a really good evening. And after dinner Alex and Debbie would have gone to bed happy, if only they hadn’t put on BBC World News and heard that there were now several well-validated reports of shooting on China’s borders with no fewer than six of its neighbours, and that this or some other issue might be the reason for India’s mobilisation of its armed forces.

  What, thought Alex, would the captain and Jane make of that?

  thirteen

  Before he’d crawled back into bed last night, Stuart had picked up multiple reports that all indicated that China’s ailment, whatever it was, was no longer just China’s problem. To start with, there were more fairly detailed reports of sustained shooting near its borders with countries as far away from each other as Vietnam and Kazakhstan, and then some rather sketchier reports that some of that shooting had crossed the borders. In Vietnam, in particular, there seemed to be a response from that country which involved elements of its military. And whilst nobody seemed to be shooting on India’s side of its border with China, there was a report in a number of intercepts, first confirmed and then denied, that India had mobilised its armed forces – or was just about to. Like much of what Stuart was picking up, the credibility and clarity of these messages concerning India’s actions rather depended on their source. Those originating in Spain or Portugal were probably the most reliable, but not always. Those originating from anywhere in South America were the least reliable. And if anything came out of Venezuela, one could almost guarantee that it would be either risible or plain wrong. Like the intercept he’d seen late in the evening, hot off the military press in Caracas, which had claimed that it had now been established that the CIA had infected China with a new strain of Ebola. It had apparently been developed on the orders of President Trump, and it was destined to be released on the streets of Caracas within weeks if not days.

  That snippet of light relief didn’t do much for Stuart’s mood, and he went to bed feeling very concerned, not just about what he had seen throughout the day, but about what might greet him in the morning. He knew that whatever greeted him, it was unlikely to be good news, and it was just a matter of whether it would be simply more bad news or possibly some dramatically worse news. He hardly dared admit it to himself, but he rather thought it would be the latter. And sure enough, when morning came, the possibility of it being just more of the same bad stuff disappeared very quickly indeed. Even before he had reached his den for an early-morning start to his day.

  He’d left his sleeping quarters and had made a beeline for the nearby NAAFI shop to pick up a bacon sandwich to eat at his desk, and something was different. He wasn’t quite sure what it was to start with, but then it clicked. There were far fewer service guys about, and those who were still about were not strolling or chatting, as they would normally be at this breakfast time of the day, but they were distinctly ‘on their way somewhere’, and with expressions on their faces that didn’t invite even a brief morning greeting. Something must have happened overnight, and whether these people knew what it was or not, they had obviously been told that they had some work to do and no time to dawdle or chat. Stuart felt more concerned than ever. And alone. He might be working for the government, but he wasn’t a soldier or an airman, and that meant he wasn’t being let in on whatever was going on. He would have to see whether he could deduce anything himself. Just as soon as he’d got his breakfast back to his work-station and plugged himself into the latest crop of intercepts.

  He’d taken only one bite of his bacon butty, when he began to understand why Mount Pleasant this morning was very different from the Mount Pleasant he’d become used to. Why its air of relaxed boredom had, in the space of only a few hours, turned into one of determined absorption. It was in the first intercept he read, one to the Spanish ambassador in Buenos Aires, and it simply said that there were now tens of millions of dead in India, and millions more in South-East Asia, all the way down to Malaysia and Indonesia. It was an odd communiqué in that it didn’t accompany this information with any interpretation of the cause of all these deaths, or indeed with any other commentary at all. Maybe, thought Stuart, the sender just hadn’t been able to come to terms with the implications of the message, and as a result had refrained from adding anything at all to the grisly bare facts. Unlike the sender of the second message Stuart read, who stated categorically that the millions now believed to be dead across a whole swathe of Russia presaged the arrival of the killer flu in western Russia and then probably Europe.

  Bloody hell! Europe! Stuart felt his heart thumping again, and he entirely lost interest in his bacon delight. Instead, he brought to mind that thought he’d had two days before; the thought that he might be witness not to another damp squib, but to something that would provide a shock to the human world of the sort it had never known before. Well, this was it. And it was for real. And already, for millions of humans, it hadn’t been just a shock, but instead the end; their genuine apocalyptic experience. And for how many more, wondered Stuart, would the apocalypse arrive? And would he be amongst their number?! He might be on a rock in the Atlantic, but at the rate that flu was spreading, who could tell? It might be here any time.

  But then Stuart had another thought. How could any flu spread at that rate? He wasn’t a medic, but he had done a degree in botany, and that had given him at least a little understanding of infection mechanisms, and certainly enough to know that there was no way that a flu that had previously been confined to just one country could so quickly overcome so many other people in so many other countries. And with apparently barely any incubation period at all. It was ridiculous. But there again, it was real. Somehow, some sort of disease was spreading like wildfire across the whole of Asia and it was proving so deadly – so quickly – that it was difficult to see how it would stop before it had killed millions more on that giant land mass. And after Asia, there was then the rest of the world, which indisputably included the Falklands.

  He didn’t know what to do. His training had not included guidance on the appropriate response to a supercharged pandemic that was acting in such an unconventional and terrifying manner. So, he retreated to his comfort zone: he dug into the mountain of intercepts and he tried to find some nuggets of good news. Unfortunately, there were none. None whatsoever. Instead there were more references to urban fires and fire storms, and there were a few reports that suggested that the wave of deaths had now reached the UAE. Against this background of carnage and devastation, there were a few further reports touching on the economic meltdown caused by China’s withdrawal from the family of nations, which was now afflicting the whole of the world. And there was one message from Ecuador’s ambassador to Moscow stating that Quito was one of the cities being considered by Putin’s advisers as a suitable ‘temporary relocation destination’ for the great one himself. No doubt so that he could get a better perspective on events back in Mother Russia and thereby better devote himself to the welfare of any of its surviving citizens.

  Stuart actually chuckled at that one. But then he decided it was time to relocate himself. He would abandon his pointless monitoring work – although he might get around to making a pointless report later on – and he would go and seek out his mate, Gill. Gill, after all, was in the Royal Corps of Signals; she was a signaller. And with a role in military communications, no matter how small, she might just know what had been communicated to Mount Pleasant from the authorities back in Britain. And even if she didn’t, she might at least know what had been communicated to all those purposeful service personnel on the base; what they had been told to cause them to change their demeanour and their behaviour so very much. And if nothing else, Gill might make him feel not quite so alone. Or quite so afraid…

  fourteen

  Even before he had got out of bed, Alex had used the remote to turn on the television and tune in to BBC World News. He was more than a little eager to discover whether China was now at war with India and whether hostilities had been launched
against any of its other neighbours. Debbie was keen to discover this too. However, it seemed that they might have to wait. Because the members of the panel in the BBC studio were not discussing any sort of military action, but instead they were trying to reconcile the normal, accepted forms of disease transmission with what was now being observed; namely, the rapid spread of China’s mystery disease beyond its borders. The monster, it appeared, was now out of its cage. And that made any exchange of small fire – or indeed any exchange of the bigger stuff – pale into insignificance

  Inevitably, both Alex and Debbie were soon captured by the discussion of how the monster might advance, and they began to listen intently to what was being said. In this way they learnt that diseases are spread in one of five ways: through direct contact with an infected person, through being showered with droplets from an infected person when that person coughs or sneezes, through indirect contact such as touching a contaminated surface or ingesting contaminated food or water, through airborne transmission, or through a vector – such as a mosquito or a fly. They also learnt that none of these transmission routes could explain how a disease that had been contained within one country – and even a country the size of China – could find its way into so many other countries quite so quickly. Although, as one of the panellists was quick to point out, that was possibly a minor puzzle compared to establishing how the disease managed to be so lethal, and so swiftly. There appeared to be no incubation period at all. Which was not just a mystery but also an affront to every tenet of modern medicine. The world simply did not host a disease that could fell people without even a short period of notice. Although, maybe it now did…

  It was just as the panel’s deliberations were being interrupted for an update on the number of deaths in various countries – given in millions – that Jane’s voice came through the tannoy. It was now eight in the morning, and despite the arrival of Armageddon in Asia, time for her morning briefing. She started with her normal greeting.

  ‘Good morning, everybody. And as you will see if you look out of your cabin window, we have the prospect of a very good morning ahead of us. The captain has brought us to St Andrews Bay, and I can tell you now that the sea is very calm with only a slight swell on the shoreline, and if it remains that way, we’ll definitely be able to land you ashore as planned. And believe me, St Andrews Bay is not to be missed. I regard it as one of the absolute highlights of our trip.

  ‘We will start boarding the zodiacs at 9.15, with passengers from the port side first. And I’d just like to take this opportunity to remind you to check your boots again if you haven’t already done so. And please don’t forget your cameras. I assure you; you will be devastated if you do.’

  Here Jane paused, and Alex thought for a second that her message had ended, with no reference whatsoever to the calamity on the other side of the world. But then she continued.

  ‘I suppose I should just mention that some of you may have seen that there have been some… errh developments in Asia, and the captain will be organising another meeting in the lounge later today when he will have a full update on what’s going on there and what it might mean for us here on the Sea Sprite. I will let you know the timing of that when you’re back on the ship. Meanwhile, though, have a really good morning.’

  That was the end of her message, and its conclusion triggered an immediate exchange between Alex and his wife.

  ‘One is put in mind of the cricket scores followed by an announcement of an imminent nuclear attack,’ pronounced Alex.

  ‘Well, sort of,’ responded Debbie. ‘But what else could she say?’

  Alex mumbled something entirely indeterminate as a prelude to delivering some actual words. And then the words arrived.

  ‘Well, it’s just the whole idea of carrying on as though nothing has happened, when we all know something bloody massive has happened. And is still bloody happening…’

  ‘…which we can’t do anything about, and certainly not this morning. And if you ask me, it would be plain stupid not to go ashore. I mean, what’s the alternative: a morning of more of that telly, or maybe an endless, futile debate with a load of people who have as much idea of what’s going on and what to do about it as we do? No, I vote for the zodiacs. And anyway, I’ve spent so much bloomin’ time on my boots…’

  That was it. A decision had been made by one of the party – and accepted by the other – and it was now time to sort themselves out before a cup-of-coffee breakfast, followed by the demanding task of encasing themselves in their multiple layers of clothes. Soon after this, they were boarding a zodiac, and a few minutes later they were making a wet landing on the grey-gravel beach of St Andrews Bay. They would now find out whether, over the next three hours, they would be presented with enough of interest in this place to properly distract them from the massacre of millions in faraway lands.

  It started well. They had landed in the middle of a menagerie. No need to drive around in a safari vehicle here to catch sight of animals, and no tiresome waiting in a hide. No, here in St Andrews Bay, there were animals and birds all over the place, and so many of them that the task of keeping the recommended few metres away from them was a full-time job. Here, just a few feet away to the left, were a couple of young male elephant seals, practising their fighting skills. With their flabby chests raised from the ground and their mouths open in a fearsome red gape, they were actually more posturing than engaging in real battle, and they were certainly failing to impress their more sedentary colleagues arranged all around them. These particular overfilled tubes of blubber, as grey as the grey beach beneath them, were either asleep or just about awake, but clearly quite indifferent to the activities of their more energetic companions.

  Similarly indifferent were the pair of skuas curled up on the ground, and not in the least concerned by the presence of two looming humans, who were themselves more interested in what lay in their path: twenty or so king penguins, who gave the impression of strangers gathered at a convention waiting to be introduced to each other. Some looked into the distance, some looked to the sky, some looked as though they were in a trance, and some were now taking an interest in the new arrivals to the convention: a pair of outlandish visitors who were entirely the wrong colour and entirely the wrong height.

  As Alex and Debbie made their way along the beach, they encountered more and more of these penguins, many of whom appeared to take an interest in their presence. Not an intense interest, but just a nosy, inquisitive sort of interest, which might see them waddle towards them, but only far enough to become apparently confused, at which point they would either waddle away slowly or just stand and look. They were charming beyond description, and their company was infinitely preferable to that of the scores of fur seals that also occupied the beach. They were just as threatening and actually aggressive as those encountered back at Grytviken, and it wasn’t long before Alex and Debbie were charting their course along the huge grey beach of St Andrews Bay by reference to the disposition of these furry grey thugs. Fortunately, there were far fewer of these bruisers than there were of elephant seals. And whilst the elephant seals were potentially dangerous, in practice they were either just into that mock-fighting between themselves or, more commonly, they were just inert. Clearly, if one spent ninety per cent of one’s life dashing around under the sea, one sought to spend the other ten per cent doing as little as possible on land. Particularly if one hadn’t been charged with too much of that troublesome testosterone.

  St Andrews Bay is a two-mile-long ‘bite’ out of the north coast of South Georgia, backed by mountains and glaciers. Further along its gravel beach was the site of a king penguin colony, and it was towards this that Alex, Debbie and the rest of the ship’s company were making their way. It was quite a walk, and it involved crossing a somewhat lively melt stream about forty feet wide and with a bottom made up of seemingly mobile mini boulders. This was negotiated only partially successfully, in that Alex collected a bootful
of water as he made his crossing. However, it was well worth the discomfort because, after a few hundred yards, he and Debbie reached the top of a ridge and there before them was the biggest sentient biomass they had ever seen.

  It was the king penguin colony; 150,000 of these remarkable birds spread out to form an entire landscape, and constituting not only a wonderful natural spectacle but also a complete distraction from any lingering thoughts of that blasted life-threatening plague. It was truly spellbinding; rank after rank of white and steel-blue sentinels, all finished off with yellow-orange finery around and below their heads. And within these ranks, animated busbies, the remarkable portly king penguin chicks that were thought by early visitors to this land to be a completely different species. It was easy to see why, thought Alex. Their appearance bore no relation whatsoever to that of their parents, and in his opinion they had more in common with Jeremy Hillary Boob, PhD, one of the more bizarre characters in the ancient Yellow Submarine animated film, now long forgotten by most but still lodged in Alex’s overstuffed brain. With their brown furry coats and their pronounced penguin beaks, they even had the same slightly surreal and distinctly whacky look. Alex thought they were amazing.