Virus: A Love Story

By Sean Ford

Dean loves her madly from the moment he sees her. When the guy she is with starts pushing her around, Dean has to get involved. It’s quick and it’s violent. Later, languishing in a police cell, he wonders if he has ruined his life, and hardly dares hope he will ever see her again. But he does, and a dangerous love grows. Half a world away, something else is growing. A new pandemic. One that will make coronavirus look like a picnic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Dec 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398465817

Sean Ford

Sean Ford is an Australian journalist, writer, classical music composer and cellist. His interests include 19th century literature, most forms of music, economics, criminology, futurism and poodles. This is his first novel.

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About the Author

Sean Ford is an Australian journalist, writer, classical music composer and cellist. His interests include 19th century literature, most forms of music, economics, criminology, futurism and poodles. This is his first novel.

Dedication

For Julie Laughton, inspiration, muse, teacher and owner of rainbows.

Copyright Information ©

Sean Ford 2023

The right of Sean Ford to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398465800 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398465817 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thank you to the folk at Austin Macauley for believing in me and giving me a chance. Special thanks to Ruth Colmer for her friendly professionalism and prompt and comprehensive replies to my questions.

Thank you to Roxana Shirazi, a wonderful writer, a fascinating thinker and a brilliant friend.

And thank you to Karen Stever, the true queen of heavy metal. A great singer and songwriter, a fine author, a dear friend and someone who proves we really can do it all.

Thank you to Paula, whose encouragement and feedback were extremely helpful.

You Thought Covid-19 Was Bad…

Her

He loved her so much, he felt drunk all the time.

Not ordinary drunk. Not a country and western drunk, one of those ones where you look at the neighbour in a sinister fashion and drool on your shirt.

Since he met her, he always felt Champagne drunk.

And she was going to die.

He was too, but he didn’t really care about that, except in a sort of muted intellectual way.

But a world without her was unimaginable, not to mention pointless.

He wondered now if isolating themselves—what a joke word—from the infection in this old farm cabin surrounded by forest had been sensible. They had stocked up and tried to get away from all the coughing, spluttering, puking masses.

And she was dying anyway.

They were well stocked with food, drinks, clothing and such, plus what medical supplies they had been able to salvage after finally coming to accept the virus was the next version of the Black Plague. Only more deadly.

And the shotgun. He saw it there, leaning against the wall in the far corner.

He knew what the future held, and her coughs and snuffling reinforced it.

He was going to take the best possible care of her he could and then, after she had gone, he was going to drink himself into a near stupor and blow his brains out.

He didn’t feel terribly ill. Alone, if he had never known her, he wondered if he might have survived this one. Some had so far, he thought. They couldn’t be the only ones left. But the reinfection? And the one after that? And so on. Reinfection was the topic of the last news bulletin he heard before the stations shifted to a loop of golden greats from the 1990s and 2000s. The world was dying to a soundtrack of classic rock and hip-hop. A Gen X and Gen Y apocalypse.

The news item was chilling. Some of the few people who apparently had survived the virus—and there weren’t many of those—had caught another dose.

Still, who cared now? She wouldn’t be there, and she was his whole world.

So he was going to take the gun and see if he could find her again.

Part of him wanted to laugh at the cruelty of it. He had never been close to happy in his life until the two of them had fallen for each other just a month ago. He was far from convinced she had ever been happy before then either. She was the best thing he had ever seen, ever imagined. She turned his usual underlying, quiet anguish into an inner well of contentment, peace and joy. And she loved him just as much. And now she was dying.

He wished he could shoot God.

In the Sun, Paralysed

She was lying in a field, in the sun. Her body felt slow, felt heavy, asleep almost, but her mind was racing.

The sky was a beautiful blue, with an orange tinge, and the wispy clouds floated in patterns.

But she felt something was watching her, maybe stalking her, approaching in a sly, oblique way.

She was lying on grass, on her side. The field was purple and lush, surrounded by attractive and dense forest.

She felt that whatever was out there in the forest meant her harm.

And she was alone. She wasn’t used to being alone any more. She didn’t do alone any more.

Dean! Where was Dean?

She could almost picture him, almost hear his voice, almost feel his touch. But she could not quite grasp those things, could not bring them into focus. She realised something was terribly wrong with her. Something inside, in her head.

The only things she knew for sure were that there was a Dean, her Dean, lost from her somewhere, and a shadow behind the trees.

She tried to rise, but could not. She tried to move an arm. Even a finger. Nothing.

She heard a crashing in the forest. She wanted to run, but try as she might, she could not move a muscle.

She tried to speak, tried to yell. Nothing.

She heard sounds, awful animal sounds. Like a mad dog, set for killing. The picture faded. She was gone.

Desperation

His name was Dean, although it had become irrelevant as the world wound down and, particularly, as she wound down and stopped talking.

Her name was Jayne, Jayne Carter, and it blazed in his mind like holy scripture on stone tablets.

He had tried all the suggested cures for her. Even a few he had invented himself.

Every vitamin, all sorts of mixes of fruit and vegetable juice. Cough and cold medicines. Medicines he had as a kid, medicines he never even came close to understanding. Medicines no sane person could even spell.

Filled with terror, he had injected her with saline, he had broken medicinal cannabis capsules and poured the liquid down her throat. He had rubbed her body with balms and ice. He had rubbed Tabasco Sauce into her bare skin. He had blasted her with loud music, he had played Brahms and sung to her. He had made her bed warm as toast, he had covered her with cold towels. He had prayed so much, so hard. He had kissed her face, he had given her head for hours. Nothing.

Most often, he had knelt by the bed, rested his head on her stomach and told her stories. About her. About him. About his love for her.

He had read Dickens, Burroughs and a slightly rumpled Mills and Boon to her. He had held her hand and sucked her fingers. At times, he had simply begged her to respond, just to show him a sign. He had brushed her hair, he had bathed her face with his tears. She had given no sign of conscious thought for two days now.

He had smoked around her, because he knew she hated it. He had blown the smoke in her face. Nothing. He would have tried heroin or cocaine on her if he had any and he knew what to do with it.

He had mixed up all sorts of leaves and roots into water and given her them to drink, in tiny amounts so she would not choke. He had brushed her teeth every few hours, hoping the toothpaste smell or taste would wake her.

Once, he even pricked the soft ball of her thumb with a pin.

Still nothing, except her coughs and snuffles, her terribly laboured struggle to breathe.

Always, he thought of their short time together. The details. The big feelings. The feelings which had stunned him from the moment he first saw her in a supermarket, of all places. About their love, their dreams. He could recite every message she ever sent him from memory, word perfect. Everything she had ever said to him.

He thought back to when he first saw her. She stunned him straight away. Her beautiful face, her pale skin, her long and wavy hair.

He had to have her from that first glance.

He remembered how she was with a guy. An angry looking guy. The guy snarled at her. He called her a bitch. He told her to get back to the car and he would finish up in the store.

Dean seethed. He could not bear to hear this with any woman. And hearing it said to her! By this pig!

When the guy grabbed her arm and pushed her roughly towards the supermarket doors, Dean was on the move before he even knew what he was doing.

If it was a movie, he would have said something witty to the guy and kicked the supermarket equivalent of sand in his face while the woman watched adoringly and then left with him, hand in hand. As it was, he simply slammed his fist into the guy’s guts.

The guy went down like a sack of potatoes. He rolled around on the floor, red in the face and gasping for air.

Dean felt strong hands on his biceps. The security guard had appeared, it seemed, from nowhere.

You can guess the rest. Cops. Accusations. The indignant guy yelling, his breath remarkably restored.

I was just out shopping with my wife and this guy attacks me.

I never even saw him coming.

The woman, saying nothing, crying softly. Not making eye contact with anyone.

The guy taking her by the hand and leading her out of the store.

The cell. The cop who told him he was going to jail for this. You don’t just attack people, you meth-head, the cop said to Dean, who never even liked weed, let alone tried anything harder.

The Watcher

Thoughts stirred. Who was she? Where was she?

She was frightened. She didn’t know why. She felt cold. She heard sounds. She knew no more.

She lay there in that dream world. Unknowing. Unfeeling.

She was watched.

The eyes saw a slim woman, long blonde hair, tanned skin, a long white dress, bare feet.

It desired her so much. It desired to revel in her, in her sex and her agony and her death. It wanted to kiss her so gently, while it ripped her to shreds.

It sighed.

The time was not yet.

It could get no closer for now. Something was protecting her still, keeping her safe. Something it could not see, but which felt as hot and fierce as a forest fire in a high wind. The watcher knew it would burn if it got too close, too soon. But the force was fading.

It bent forwards and slashed an arrow-shaped mark on the forest floor, in a line with more, all pointing to the woman. This one was quite a way closer to her than the others.

The watcher shambled back into the forest. Ever hungrier.

The Cell

Dean waited in the stuffy, hot cell, alternating between worry about what was coming and fury about how the guy treated the woman.

There was no way he was going to keep his job if he had to spend time in jail. The small building company was already struggling to keep up with its orders and if a man went down he would have to be replaced quickly or it would lose orders and then its reputation. And then, in such a competitive industry, it would probably lose its existence.

Jim, the boss, liked Dean a lot. Or, at least, Dean thought he did. But Jim had to eat, and had a family and other workers to support. He wouldn’t be able to compromise for Dean.

Without a job, Dean would lose his house.

The bank would have less sympathy than any judge.

Underneath all that though—stupid as he believed himself to have been—he felt he had done the right thing.

If ever a guy deserved to be put on the floor, it was that one.

And the woman, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Even if he never saw her again, he knew she would haunt him forever.

Her flashing, penetrating eyes. Her delicate, perfect face. Her alabaster skin and her luxuriant blonde hair, hair a man could bury his face in and know paradise. The grace of her. The way she walked. The shape of her.

He did a quick inventory. He was in a cell and probably going to jail. He would lose his job and the house. He would find it hard to get another job with a criminal record. All that, and the main things on his mind were the woman, and the incessant desire of his mind and his body for her.

He didn’t even know her name.

Sri Lanka

This doesn’t taste right, Priyanka told his mother, eyeing the curry suspiciously.

His mother had thought the same, but she was not going to admit it.

It was the best meat in the whole market, you ungrateful boy, she told him.

That was true, but she did not feel a need to add it had been the only meat left in the market.

She had nearly finished hers. Her insides burned, and it was not from the spices.

I don’t think I’ll finish mine, he told her, not unkindly.

He knew times were hard since the coronavirus and the civil war and she was doing her best.

It was like Sri Lanka had reverted back hundreds of years, while India to the north had continued to modernise.

It was cruel, history.

He was 16 years old and hoped he had some sort of decent future.

What was the meat? he asked her.

A new cut of pork, from Myanmar, she told him, repeating what the market seller told her when she had asked the same question.

If that’s pork, then I’m a tortoise, he replied, cheekily. If that’s pork, then I’m a tortoise," he replied, cheekily.

She might have laughed, but she didn’t feel like laughing.

She was starting to sweat and struggle to breathe.

She felt dizzy. She gripped the edges of the table, but she could not hold herself up. She slid to her left and crashed to the floor.

Priyanka, for the short remainder of his life, could not forget the sight of her falling as if in slow motion, taking chair, table and flying curry leftovers with her.

He raced to her, or at least he tried to race.

He was feeling bad now too. Like his insides were on fire. Breathing was hard. His lungs full of water.

He leant down, saw she was still alive, breathing and grimacing. She coughed into his face. He had no idea what to do. He was 16. He decided to run to the neighbours.

Run, he could not. He limped to the neighbours, his body shaking and shivering and filled with fear for his mother.

The neighbour man, Hashan, opened the door, just as Priyanka coughed so suddenly he had no time to cover his face.

Hashan, disgusted, took the full blast in his face.

We need to telephone the doctor, Priyanka gasped, and collapsed in the doorway.

All Gone

Dr Fernando decided enough was enough.

This village was history.

Since the army had closed it off and the medical teams went in, all 500 or so residents had died or were dying. Quickly or slowly, the 200 or so left were all dying. Every single one of them.

All the testing had been done.

And still the stupid government wanted him and his colleagues to stay there and look for more ‘evidence’.

Evidence? The labs had been sent enough samples and they would find the evidence, and there was nothing useful the medicos could do for these people except sedate them as needed while they died. A couple of junior nurses could deal with that.

The medical staff were probably going to get it themselves, protective gear and all, if they stayed around much longer.

He nervously remembered he had had a slight cough for a while.

Only slight though. This thing was not slight. What he had was normal, just a minor illness, he told himself, as he strode confidently towards the lights of the army perimeter checkpoint. His daughter was getting married next week. He had to get home and make sure everything was prepared.

Dr Fernando had one big advantage the other medical staff did not.

He was an army doctor, a high-ranking one.

There was nobody on the perimeter with the rank to stop him, and he was healthy anyway. Basically healthy, a small voice in his mind noted. Probably.

Sri Lanka 2

Back in Kandy, Dr Fernando was not feeling so great.

He paid the taxi driver, coughed again, and walked up his driveway.

The driver thought nothing of the coughing.

The village was the biggest news story in Sri Lanka, despite all the other problems, but the doctor never told him he had come from there, so the taxi driver never thought anything of the coughing. Not until some time later.

It turned out to be a busy night running foreigners to the airport.

A sleepy American diplomat, two Japanese engineers, a rather drunk English tourist and Australian pilot with red hair.

All of them had had interesting times in Sri Lanka, but it was a sad place these days.

They were all happy to be leaving.

Their joint happiness seemed to accumulate in the air inside the cab during the night.

The taxi driver’s suddenly runny nose and faint dizziness did not detract from it.

None of them knew happiness was not the only thing in the air that night. Not then.

Osaka

Hiro saw the news alert from Sri Lanka the moment he switched on his phone at the airport. The virus had spread over there. Many ill in Kandy, some reports from Colombo. So good he had left that place behind. He had slept for most of the flight and woken up feeling queasy. No big thing. A hardened alcoholic, the moment his boring colleague had taken his taxi, Hiro headed straight to a busy bar near the airport. He drank and coughed and sneezed and drank for several hours before calling a taxi.

It went big in Japan very quickly. So ended modern Japan.

The country which had been expected in the 1980s to become the world’s leading economic power finished in a tide of sudden and not so sudden death. As in Sri Lanka, some carriers survived for weeks. Others died virtually immediately. The result was the same in the end.

The rest of the world was terrified. Isolated, little known Sri Lanka was one thing. But an ultra-modern country like Japan?

Borders closed. All but essential services closed. Thriving cities from London to Sydney went quiet.

It bought time. Not much, but some.

Australia

The red-haired pilot, Nelson, felt perfectly normal through the flight back to Perth. He felt perfectly normal driving home. He felt perfectly normal when he kissed his wife for the first time in weeks.

There was something about Nelson that slowed the virus. Slowed it. Didn’t stop it. When he woke in the morning feeling slightly ill, his wife never moved. Not when he spoke to her, not when he touched her shoulder gently, not when he lost control and started shaking her lifeless body and screaming.

Perth was a continent away from most of Australia’s other significant population centres, so it took time.

It took hold in Adelaide next. Then Melbourne and up the East Coast through New South Wales and Queensland, laying waste to Sydney and Brisbane.

The island state, Tasmania, looked like it might be okay. Learning from the coronavirus crisis a decade earlier, it shut its borders very early.

Unfortunately, that did not include stopping a fishing boat with an illegal cargo taken in protected waters visiting a small port in the early hours one morning to unload.

It unloaded fish, and something more.

Confident they were safe because of their moat, the Tasmanians were taking few other precautions.

The virus hit them like a nuke.

Cold, Hard Rain

It was raining on her now. Cold, cold rain, so cold her body ached.

She still could not move.

Could she endure?

She seemed to have no choice. The water flooded over her in sheets and buckets.

She tried so desperately, just to move a finger, but she had no control over her body.

Her brain strived and flexed, her muscles did nothing.

And still the rain came.

Little streams ran over the ground now, leaving a residue of dirt on her as they passed, her white dress and skin now streaked with brown.

Bugs, worms and beetles rose from their burrows and crawled over her.

She wanted to scream. She needed to scream. She could not.

Mercifully, her consciousness faded.

Dean! was her second last thought. Dean? Was her last.

New York

The Americans had more warning than the Japanese and the Australians.

By the time the diplomat’s plane landed, the army had a perimeter around the tarmac and medical teams were ready.

The pilot passed on the message.

We’re staying on the plane for now. Suspected killer virus. If anyone tries to run, there will be lethal force.

And, in a hesitant voice: Please don’t panic.

Everyone on the plane was ill by then, except the pilot and the co-pilot. They kept their doors closed.

The air still circulated.

When the army came in, the co-pilot was the only person left alive.

And then only briefly.

Disaster averted.

Until the next day when a Japanese cruising yacht appeared near San Francisco and drifted onto a beach. The beachgoers arrived before the army.

That was the beginning of the end for the USA.

Something Lurks

She was in a bar now.

Still cold. Dripping, muddy dress. There was no roof. It was still raining, but only on her. The rest of the crowd looked perfectly comfortable.

She was terribly drunk, lurching from her seat to the bar for another Brandy Alexander before she went back to continue talking with…She wasn’t sure, but there was somebody.

In a darker area near the jukebox, something lurked.

It watched her carefully, and slowly scratched its mark on the hardwood floor.

The barman hardly seemed to notice her. She waved a $50 note at him, which he finally noticed.

She told him what she wanted. It was a fairly quiet bar, but he leaned forward as if he was part-deaf when she spoke.

She paid and took her drink and went back to the booth.

She leant over to talk to her companion, whatever his name was.

And he was gone. It was all gone, fading back into the field in the rain, where she still could not move a muscle.

Eyes watched.

Europe

They put the drunk English tourist off the plane in Germany.

She was too far gone to care at that point.

Tied for first place on her list of unacceptable behaviour were throwing a drink over the couple behind her and taking off her shorts and draping them over her head, claiming it would help her sleep and she always did it on planes.

The police half pushed, half carried her through the busy airport.

They had no idea where she had come from, but they knew where she was going.

She was coughing and sneezing by then.

They put her in a cell to sleep it off.

She never woke.

Within two days, it was all across continental Europe.

Only her native UK was safe at that point, its execution delayed by the Channel.

Visitor

He was dozing on his bunk when the cop rapped on the door. Visitor.

He took Dean to a room, cuffed and still waking up, and sat him down behind a transparent window, like in a prison.

In the room on the other