The Quarantined City Read online

  The Quarantined City

  JAMES EVERINGTON

  infinity plus

  Published by infinity plus

  www.infinityplus.co.uk

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  © James Everington 2015, 2016

  Cover image © ABCDK

  Cover design © Keith Brooke

  Parts of this novel were originally published individually by Spectral Press in 2015.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means, mechanical, electronic, or otherwise, without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

  The moral right of James Everington to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  Contents

  THE QUARANTINED CITY

  PART ONE: THE SMELL OF PAPRIKA

  PART TWO: INTO THE RAIN

  PART THREE: SPOT THE DIFFERENCE

  PART FOUR: A LACK OF DEMONS

  PART FIVE: THE PANDA PRINCIPLE

  PART SIX: THE QUARANTINE

  The Quarantined City

  PART ONE

  THE SMELL OF PAPRIKA

  Fellows tries to shut the door on the ghost behind him, but it sticks in the heat and refuses to close. Frustrated, he slams his body against it until the latch clicks, and he stands on the empty street as his breathing slows. The city is quiet; it is still early morning. He can’t hear anything from inside his house, but then the ghost never makes a sound, anyway. He wouldn’t even know if it was just the other side of his door. He imagines its crippled hand silently scratching at the wood.

  George, his large shabby black cat, saunters through the makeshift cat-flap, mewing, and as he bends to pet it he feels a moment’s irritation—weren’t animals supposed to be sensitive to the presence of the supernatural? But George has never once reacted to the presence of the broken, ghostly child; only Fellows has seen it. And the child, in turn, only has eyes for him—white eyes without pupil or iris fixed on him as it tries to get near. He has seen it in his house almost every day since the quarantine has been in place.

  But the ghost’s body is insubstantial and its deformities mean it moves too slowly to ever take him by surprise; it is disquieting but does he really need to be afraid? It seems a stupid thing to worry about as the sun rises above his city, and the heat starts to build. Maybe every house in the city has its ghosts. He has his routines, and no translucent kid is going to put him off them. First, coffee. He strokes George one last time and heads down the tree-lined street to turn right into a small square, where his favourite café is.

  The Carousel is at the far corner of the square; to one side of it the more cramped streets of the old town begin; on the other side a cobbled road leads down to the port. Fellows likes to sit outside The Carousel if the weather is clear enough, which during this hot summer it always is, listening to the cries of gulls and sometimes the alarms and sirens from the harbour. If it gets too hot he will sit inside the small, smoke-filled interior—The Carousel is known to be one of the few places still able to obtain filter cigarettes and expensive cigars since the quarantine, as well as real coffee and imported spirits and wine. But the smell of cigarettes always reminds Fellows of his youth when he had smoked; before Lana had persuaded him to give up. Just one of the many ways she had changed him, worked him into some shape more pleasing to herself and then, job all but done, moved on to a different project. He can no longer remember the precise trigger for her leaving, just the taste of Champagne on his tongue and the atmosphere of angry bitterness (and yes, maybe some guilt) she had left in her wake.

  He goes inside to order his coffee and pastry, and to collect his daily paper which Gregor keeps behind the counter for him; he absently notices that the black-haired waitress is not working. He likes the look of the waitress and thinks that, ten years ago, she maybe would have liked the look of him. The fact that he is beyond such opportunities now he obscurely blames on Lana too, for taking those ten years from him. As if they wouldn’t have passed anyway, and just as damned quick.

  Ten years ago he wouldn’t have been sat in a café like this reading the newspaper like anyone else; he would have been scribbling in his black bound notebook, trying to pull off the ‘sensitive writer’ look, bullshit as it was, and sometimes, in other cafés in other cities, customers or waitresses had fallen for his act. Lana for one, he thinks bitterly.

  Fellows pays Gregor and puts the change in the tips jar, noticing with amusement the gruff owner’s lack of reaction as he does so. The tip jar is nearly full and is neatly divided in two when you look at it—old silver and gold coins from before the quarantine up to about halfway, and then the thinner, duller looking coins that are the currency now. Fellows is always reminded of strata in the cliffs above the bay when he sees it. There are muttered complaints from the city’s population that the new coins won’t be worth anything when the quarantine is lifted, but such a distant issue is not one Fellows is going to worry about too much.

  He sits at his usual table outside, from which you can see the harbour and deep water beyond—see, in theory, the outside world, although most days nothing is visible but a misty haze. He unfolds his paper, blows on his coffee to cool it, and then flinches as he hears in the clear morning air the sound of motorcar brakes screeching from a distant street. He tells himself it is just the rarity of the sound that made him jump; private cars have all but disappeared from the streets since the petrol rationing. And all for the better, Fellows thinks, as the quiet and calm returns. He closes his eyes and allows the silence to seep into him and settle his nerves, much as he had after the ghost’s face had peered at him through the banisters in his hall this morning. But life in the quarantined city is slower, nowadays, and he can be confident there will be no further shocks to his system today.

  So, he thinks, turning to his paper, let’s see if there’s any news about Boursier.

  But he will not allow himself to turn to the back pages and see if there has been a reply to his classified ad; he steels himself for the disappointment by forcing himself to read from the front. The local newspaper is a smaller, slimmer thing since the quarantine, printed in black and white and on noticeably poorer quality paper. And of course there are no stories from the outside world, anymore. The ink comes off on Fellows’s hands as he reads—the two local political parties are at each other’s throats again, despite supposedly having formed a unity government for the duration of the quarantine. There are the usual stories about the effect the hot summer is having on food supplies, stories about the petty crimes of the protest movement, and the regular announcements of feel-good fêtes and other events to try to keep the people’s spirits up. On the letters page there’s a smattering of conspiracy theories that attract more and more people to their simple, black and white answers as the summer drags on and things still don’t change. There is no mention of ghosts or supernatural activity; it seems only Fellows has been seeing such things. But then, he reflects, maybe other people just aren’t reporting their ghosts and demons, just as he hasn’t. Easier, quieter, to just keep it from his mind.

  And then, at the back of the classifieds, he sees someone has finally placed an answer to his advert:

  To the cash buyer looking for works by Boursier—call The Echo Bookshop on 2795 if serious buyer.

  Fellows blinks in surprise at the reply—it had been over a week since he placed the wanted ad, and he had expected it would be members of the public who might have books by the reclusive Boursier for sale, not a bookshop. He’d assumed he knew every bookshop in the city—his house is stuffed with second hand books—but this one is new to him and he will have to phone for directions.

  This will be a goo
d day, he thinks.

  Trying to contain his feeling of excitement (after all, it may come to nothing) he goes back inside the café. The regulars are already smoking and he wafts it away from his face as he makes his way to the payphone at the back. He picks up the receiver and notices it is dusty; he tries to put a coin in the slot and realises: Gregor hasn’t changed the mechanism. The phone is still set up to take pre-quarantine coins.

  He goes to the counter and asks Gregor if he can change some of his cash for the old-style coins in the tip jar. The big man blinks at him slowly.

  “You want to take my tips?”

  “No, Gregor, I just want some money for the phone.”

  “Phone’s over there.” There is a wave of the man’s big, tattooed hand.

  “I know Gregor, but it only takes... Look, I’ll make it worth your while.” Fellows reaches for the jar, meaning to unscrew the lid with the slit in it and exchange at least three times the price of the phone call in new money for old. But Gregor bats his hand away.

  He doesn’t understand why the café owner won’t let him—maybe he thinks the quarantine will be lifted and the old money will have value again soon?—but Fellows decides not to argue. He meets Gregor’s gaze and smiles; the other man remains blank-faced. He puts another coin into the tip jar to show there are no hard feelings; it is his favourite café, and he supposes the black haired waitress will get some of the money. Then he heads back outside to his table, takes his time finishing his coffee and breakfast while he decides what to do. He doesn’t have a phone at his house.

  Georgia, he thinks, Georgia has a phone. After he has finished his second coffee he walks across the square, scattering pigeons and indignant gulls, and into the curved streets of the old town.

  ~

  The narrow streets of the old town always make Fellows feel slightly claustrophobic; the buildings seem to lean towards each other and their shadows at street level always touch. Many a tourist, in the days when tourists were still allowed, has been fooled by the words ‘old town’ on the city map, expecting maybe medieval churches or town halls, something historic with grandeur, rather than the somewhat seedy streets of bars, street painters, and poorly disguised brothels that in fact comprise the old town. There is history here, but it is a history of pogroms, of unresolved murders, of children crushed between the wheels and hooves of rich gentry’s coach and horses. It is not the kind of history that gets commemorated on plaques or in tourist guides.

  The streets nowadays don’t have sewage running down the sides nor the piles of rubbish home to families of cat-sized rats of yesteryear, but the feeling remains, as if the grime has never quite rubbed off, as if a faint memory of the stench still lingers. People sit on the steps of their apartment block or lean out the balconies of their flats calling across to each other, or just watching Fellows sullenly as he passes. There is still little employment for the inhabitants of the old town, at least of the kind that takes place in daylight and is known to the city’s tax officials.

  Fellows has no idea why Georgia chooses to live here.

  As he walks he hears the sound of the motorcar again, somewhere in another part of the city (the streets of the old town are too narrow for automobiles, having never been modernised) but it still stirs Fellows from his thoughts and seems too loud. Too fast. He mentally braces himself for the sound of a collision that never comes, for there is just the noise of the motor fading away into the morning silence.

  He arrives at Georgia’s building, a tall apartment block which faces the street with boarded-up windows and broken guttering. Inside the floor is worn stone and he calls down the clattering old lift to take him to her floor. Its iron doors close like a slow, toothless mouth behind him and it jerks him erratically up the six storeys. It always takes longer than he expects, and each time Fellows can’t help but wonder at the strangeness of his friendship with Georgia.

  She had been the first woman he had made a pass at after Lana had left him. It had been just hours after the quarantine had been declared; rather than attempt to preserve the city’s stocks of wine and liqueurs most of the inhabitants had made the seemingly spontaneous decision to go out and drink as much as they possibly could. There had been a decadent, uninhibited air, like it was the end of a millennium or start of a war. Fellows had been drunk on absinthe, despite the inflated prices it was already commanding. He had looked across the bar and when his eyes focused he noticed Georgia on the arm of another woman. He realises now that the angry, hostile part of him had wanted to be rejected, to have some excuse to vent all the bitter guilt the separation had left him with. Trying to chat up someone so obviously unavailable had just been his unconscious way of ensuring that rejection happened.

  He had been so drunk that the seedy, smoke-filled, wood-panelled bar had, as he had staggered towards her, seemed bright and mirrored in his doubling vision. His head had pounded despite its apparent lightness, and whatever words he had said to Georgia had seemed to come from someone else. He could never remember his attempted chat-up line afterwards and she had refused to tell him; all he could recall was her look of amused incredulity and her partner’s hostile disdain.

  “Oh piss off you stinking drunk,” the other woman had said, turning from him and trying to make Georgia do the same. The two of them had similar make up on, similar severe fringes and pale faces; when they faced each other it was like one person doubled. But for some reason Georgia was the only one of the pair he found attractive.

  “We can’t just leave him like this,” Georgia had said, shouting over the hubbub and assuming Fellows was too drunk to understand. She turned to him. “Where do you live?” she said to him slowly, like he was a lost child. “Can you get a taxi from here? You need to sleep this off. Are the taxis still running?” she added, speaking to her girlfriend, who just shrugged.

  He’d slurred something lecherous about Georgia coming with him, and she’d just laughed at him. “Even if I were that way inclined there’s nothing you could do to help me, state you’re in. How many have you had?” Her voice was almost admiring.

  “Let’s just leave,” her girlfriend said. “He’s just another drunken idiot who can’t stand to see two women together.” It was as if her sober scowl was the only way she had of distinguishing herself from Georgia’s wry smile.

  “I’d better help get the twat back home,” Georgia said, and downed her drink.

  “What?”

  Georgia had pulled away from the other woman’s arm, whose hands failed to hold her. Looking back, Fellows realises it was a big step, some shift in the balance of power in the relationship that broke it completely. He had never learnt the other woman’s name; Georgia had forbidden him to ask. She had told him not to feel guilty, that he was just the catalyst and something similar would have happened anyway, but he still does.

  He had got Georgia back to his house that night after all, but the only touching had been when she shoved him onto the sofa to sleep while she took his room; that and when she’d rushed to him the next morning when he’d cried out, convinced he’d seen the broken body of a child pull itself across the wooden floor towards him before it faded into nothingness...

  That had been the first time.

  “Hello, you twat,” Georgia says with a grin when she opens the door to him—she never lets him forget what a fool he had been that night.

  “Hi,” he says after she has shut the door behind him. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Yes, I’m just dandy, and how are you?” Georgia says.

  “Sorry, but I’m just... I finally got a lead on this Boursier guy.”

  “How do you know it’s a guy?” Georgia says, clearing a space on a flaccid sofa for him. “Just from a surname? You sexist twat. Or can only men write good stories in your world?”

  “Georgia, all the newspaper columns say he’s a man...”

  “But no one’s ever seen him, right? Or her. So it could be a her, and it could be all you sexist men are just assuming...”

&nb
sp; “Georgia, can I just please use your phone?”

  “Sure. But you have to have a glass of wine with me first.”

  He is about to protest but then he looks at his watch; it is later than he thinks, as if he has spent hours walking to Georgia’s flat rather than the thirty minutes it should have taken. He isn’t sure at all how it is already late morning. Had he been daydreaming? But sod it, he thinks, the most important point is that it isn’t too early to have a glass of wine, which he suddenly finds himself wanting.

  “So you’ve found out where in the city he is?” Georgia says. “Boursier? I’m just saying ‘he’ to avoid another argument with a sexist throwback, you understand.”

  “No,” he says smiling. Georgia’s turns of phrase constantly surprise him, like he is in a foreign country. “But I’ve found somewhere that says they have some of his stories for sale.”

  “I still don’t get—god this wine is piss isn’t it? Blame the quarantine... I still don’t get why you’re so interested in this guy?”

  “Or girl.”

  “Or woman.”

  “You’re right, it is piss.”

  “Oh fuck off.” Georgia giggles, settles her legs under herself on the other side of the sofa. Because of the way it sags they are both leaning towards each other; she peers at him from beneath an unruly fringe. Georgia’s flat is on the top floor and for a second neither speaks as they listen to the sound of a gull landing heavily on the roof, with its raucous, repetitive cries.

  “Because,” Fellows says, “it’s incredible, don’t you think it’s incredible that there’s this talented, reclusive writer who just happens to be in this city while it’s in lockdown, who writes stories like the ones I used to write according to what everyone says...”

  “I still want to read one of your stories,” Georgia says.