In Strange Worlds

  In Strange Worlds

  Brenda Cheers

  BIRDCALL PUBLISHING AUSTRALIA

  www.brendacheersbooks.com

  Copyright © 2014 Brenda Cheers

  All rights reserved.

  First Edition

  Author image Sargaison / Brisbane Headshots

  Cover image © Tamara Dragovic / iStockphoto.com

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9924287-0-9

  I dedicate this book to my mother.

  She has always encouraged me to write

  and is my number one fan.

  Also by Brenda Cheers:

  In Times of Trouble

  In Conversations with Strangers

  In a House in Yemen

  In a Time Where They Belong (Strange Worlds #2)

  The Secrets of Julia Hawke

  Cato’s Prophecy (Strange Worlds #3)

  PROLOGUE

  During this journey north, it has become my habit to find high places where I have clear views of the world below. I look for any signs of life — human life — but am constantly disappointed.

  From the journal of Meg Atkins, May 2013.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Meg’s consciousness returned slowly. First she became aware of her throat — dry and sore — and full bladder. Her limbs were heavy, as though she had been lying in the same position for too long. She could not hear anything — not a sound.

  As she moved sideways to turn over, a searing pain hit her lower abdomen. Her eyes opened wide and she began panting, trying to breathe through the agony. Eventually the pain subsided to a dull ache.

  The hospital ward was unfamiliar — not the one she had been in when she'd first arrived. This one seemed more functional — less decorative. She scanned the room for any sign of baby equipment, but there wasn't any. Raising the bedclothes, she lifted her hospital gown and looked down at the dressing that was stuck firmly in a horizontal line across the top of her pubic bone. Clearly, she'd had a caesarean section.

  The situation with her bladder was becoming urgent. She manoeuvred to reach for the call button and pressed it long and hard. She heard it buzzing in a nearby nurses' station. Strangely, that was the only sound she could hear.

  There was a drip stand by her bed. It held two bags which were sucked so dry they were compressed by vacuum. She looked further and found a full urine bag attached to the left side of the bed. She cursed the nursing staff and pressed the buzzer again. Where in the hell was everybody?

  "Hello? Hello? Anybody there?" Her voice echoed through the corridors.

  "Help! Help!" No response.

  There was a telephone on the stand next to her bed. She had to move her body slightly to reach it, and the pain caused the room to darken and spin. She waited for this to pass before lifting the receiver and pressing zero for an outside line. If she called the hospital reception, she could tell them that something was wrong in her ward and she needed help. She dialled the number for directory information, and was surprised to find there was no answer.

  She pressed the buzzer five times in quick succession. She called out louder. No response.

  A piece of paper on the bedside table contained information about the hospital. It was printed on official stationery and had the telephone numbers at the bottom. Her shaking hand dialled the number. As the phone rang, she thought about what she was going to say. There was no answer.

  "Think. Think." She lay back on the pillow and considered her situation.

  How long had she been here? What exactly had happened?

  She was scheduled for a caesarean section on the Monday —the specialist considering a natural birth unsafe after the two previous caesareans —but her waters had broken on the Thursday before that, and she had moved quickly through the stages of labour. By the time the ambulance delivered her to the hospital, the contractions were coming so fast that the decision was made to allow the birth to proceed naturally.

  She remembered the resident doctor being calm and controlling to begin with, issuing commands to the nurses in a low, level voice. This changed within a short time and she remembered the perspiration dripping from his forehead, the pitch of his voice rising, the blood on his hands —

  Someone had grabbed her left hand and inserted a needle. She had tried to talk, to ask what was happening, but the world went black.

  She reached for the telephone again and dialled her mother's number. No answer. She wished she had her watch. There was light behind the curtains and it seemed bright, like early morning. She rang the number of a co-worker but it diverted to voicemail after several rings.

  There was only one thing to do. Get out of the bed and see what was going on. How was she going to do that?

  The drip bags were connected to a line in the back of her hand. Wincing, she removed the tape that held it in place, and then slowly extracted the needle.

  She reached under the bedclothes and felt for the catheter line. Holding it firmly she gave it a tug, but it wouldn't move. How was it being held in? She tried again. It held stubbornly. She untied the bag from the side railing of the bed, and held it to her chest.

  She knew from past caesareans that swinging her legs out of the bed was going to be painful. She did it as slowly as possible and felt for the floor with her toes, a task made difficult by her short legs. She stood, wobbling for a few seconds.

  The door was only a few metres away, but by the time she got to it, she felt like she’d completed a marathon. The door frame provided support as she looked out.

  An orderly was lying on the floor of the corridor, sideways. She couldn't see his face, so she moved tiny step by tiny step until she could lean on the wall on the other side of the hallway. From there she could see him fully. The staring eyes, strange skin colour, and bloody mucous that was dried around his mouth, told her he was well and truly dead.

  "Oh my God. Oh my God."

  She had never seen a corpse before, and the sight of this one made the scene before her spin. She slid along the wall, scared that if she let go she would faint.

  She got to the nurses' station and peered over the counter top. There were two nurses, one male and one female, both with heads collapsed onto keyboards. Staring eyes and bloody lips told Meg all she needed to know. Bile rose in her throat and she spat into a kidney dish.

  She knew now why everything was so quiet in the hospital. She began breathing in and out quickly, panic rising. Her only thoughts were to find her baby and get out of there.

  First she had to get rid of the catheter. She shuffled to a spare computer terminal and opened a browser. Her search words were, "removing catheter". She read the results grimly, wondering how she could perform the Foley catheter removal procedure by herself. A mirror, a syringe, a steady hand. Despite trembling and sweating, she soon had it removed. Emptying her bladder was another problem, but she already knew the drill — run some water and be patient.

  The relief was enormous, and the release of the pressure also helped lessen the pain at the site of her operation. She was left with an ache which she found debilitating, however, so located some analgesics and swallowed two.

  The nursery was at the end of a corridor that had many wards running its length. As she passed each ward, she looked in, hoping to see signs of life. The patients were lying motionless in their beds, while the staff were either lying sprawled on the floor, or in chairs, slumped sideways.

  The nursery was silent. She rested her forehead on the glass and stared at the figures, motionless, which were firmly wrapped in their cocoons of blankets. Was one of them her child? Each bassinet had a name in large letters at the base. She searched quickly, but none said 'Atkins'. She didn't know if this was good or bad. Perhaps the baby had survived the birth and was still alive in the neo-natal intensive ca
re.

  Her chart. That would tell her. She shuffled back to her room, trying to avoid seeing any more bodies. The chart was hooked to the end of the bed. She saw "Meg Atkins" and a patient number across the top. It took some time to understand the medical terms, but eventually the meaning became clear. As she read the details, hot tears fell onto the much-used pages. Stillborn. That was that then. She had to get out of there.

  Hospital gowns are not designed to be worn outside, and certainly not in Melbourne during May, but there had been no sign of her clothes, and she was desperate to leave the hospital. Whatever disease was spreading in there was something she did not want to catch.

  A cab to her house was the best plan. She could pay the driver with money from her emergency tin in the pantry.

  The front doors of the hospital led to a car-park where nothing moved. She saw a SUV with the door ajar, and shuffled toward it. The driver was slumped over the wheel and as she opened the car door, his arm fell sideways. She looked over toward the road, expecting to see traffic, but nothing moved. She closed her eyes and listened. She heard a dog barking and a bird call. No traffic, no planes, no sounds of human life.

  Luckily the driver of the SUV had slumped to his right, making it easy for her to pull him onto the ground. She stepped over his body to access the driver's seat, and was relieved to find the automatic transmission controls — a clutch would have been too difficult. It took some time to swing her legs in and reposition the seat. The clock said 6.45 a.m. Melbourne should have been waking up. She turned on the radio and searched around the stations, bracing for the voices of morning disc jockeys. The only sound she heard was static.

  The SUV was full-featured, and she was able to set the GPS to take her home. In the streets she found cars that had come to complete stops, but seemingly without violence. In most cases she could see the drivers, slumped over the steering-wheels or leaning against the doors, all with the tell-tale bloody stains around their mouths. There were bodies on the footpaths, but not many. It seemed that whatever happened to everyone occurred in the late night or early morning when traffic was light and pedestrians were few.

  Her house stood bathed in sunlight, its solid presence a comfort. She left the SUV on the street and walked up the driveway, puffing with exertion. The spare key was under the ficus pot, and she retrieved it with shaking hands. Suddenly she had to sit, and half fell onto the bench-seat on the front veranda.

  The wood was not comfortable, but she was glad to rest for a few minutes and think.

  Clearly it wasn't just the hospital that had suffered this — what? Virus? Something had happened to the people of Melbourne. Without radio stations it was hard to find out what. The internet would tell her within seconds. She took a deep breath and got to her feet.

  The key turned easily in the lock. She moved into the dim hallway, taking her cashmere coat from the rack as she did so. She slid her arms into the sleeves and was immediately cocooned in warmth.

  From the kitchen she noticed that the deck was bathed in sunshine, so she undocked her tablet and walked through the French doors. Here she could sit in a comfortable seat and find out what the hell was going on.

  None of the many news sites she visited had been updated since around one o'clock in the morning. She began by accessing the Australian sites but quickly became frustrated with this. The world news pages were no different. The enormity of what this meant began to overwhelm her and the slight tremor of her hands worsened to shaking. Afraid this would cause her to drop the tablet, she placed it on the table.

  Her parents lived away from the city, in a small Gippsland town. Dialling the number again, she hoped her mother would pick up this time. Prayed that she would. No answer.

  What about her ex-husband then? She tried Richards’s mobile first, then his work number, quickly followed by the home number. She braced herself for a conversation with Lucy, but there was no answer.

  The dawning horror of what this probably meant made Meg cry out loud. "No! No!" She rose unsteadily and wrapped the coat more tightly around herself.

  The car she had taken from the hospital was more comfortable than her own was, so she climbed back into the driver's seat. The journey to Richard's house normally took around forty-five minutes, but with the streets empty, it only took twenty. As she pulled into the street where she used to live, she noted the lack of activity on what would normally be a busy morning. This was a suburb created for the wealthy, and usually there would be SUV's, mostly black and with tinted windows, driving up and down its length. Nothing moved.

  The front door was locked. She moved around to the back and tried all the doors and windows. Eventually she threw a rock through a glass door at the back, and unlatched it from the inside. An alarm began wailing. She went to the controls and entered a code, but Richard had obviously changed it since she had lived there.

  She passed the master bedroom, not bothering to look inside. She was focused on the two doors further down the hallway.

  The first of these doors had "Emily" in pink, wooden letters spread across the white surface. She leaned her head against the door and took a deep breath, turning the handle as she did so.

  The room was bathed in yellow, which glowed from the walls ("Saffron" was the paint colour, she recalled) and the curtains that were white with a yellow check. Golden hair was spread across the pillow. Emily was facing the wall and Meg lowered herself down until she was lying on top of the bedclothes, spooned into Emily's back.

  "Hello, fairy princess." Meg paused as though waiting for a response. She stroked Emily's hair.

  "I suppose you want me to sing you the lullaby — you know — the one we made up that night when you couldn't sleep. Do you want me to sing it?" She paused again and cleared her throat.

  "Sleep, sleep,

  I need my sleep.

  My eyelids are heavy,

  I need to count sheep.

  Sleep, sleep,

  I need my sleep.

  Come to me Teddy,

  Let's breathe nice and deep.

  Sleep, sleep...."

  Meg stopped singing and wiped her eyes. "We didn't get to say goodbye. We always said proper goodbyes, remember? Once you were angry with me and tried to get away without giving me a kiss and cuddle, but you couldn't do that. You came running out before I drove off, just to say bye-bye properly." Meg smiled at the memory.

  "This time we couldn't say a proper goodbye, but it's nobody's fault. It just happened that way. I hope you're not upset at that. I hope you understand..." Meg noticed a knot in Emily's hair and untangled it.

  "I've come to say goodbye now — a bit late but I think it still counts. Hopefully you'll know — know that I've come to say a proper goodbye." Her breath was coming in shudders.

  "You've always been my special fairy princess. We had such fun times together, remember? I used to take you to kindy and then not want to leave? We'd go early so I could play lots of puzzles with you and read books. You'd lean back against me and listen. You always wanted me to read each book twice." She took a deep breath and looked up at the ceiling.

  "It's like that now. I want to pick up one of your books and read to you — just read and read and never stop. I don't want to leave you. It's too hard. There's a big empty spot just here." She pointed to a place under her heart. "It's empty without you. I want to be with you. I'm lonely and scared. So scared."

  Meg lay silently for a long time. Eventually she rose with an exhalation of breath and kissed the top of Emily's head. She scanned the room until she found what she was looking for. It was the floppy bunny with the soft ears. She held it to her chest and walked to the door. As she looked back, she had an impulse that made her move back to the bed and straighten the bedclothes until they were without creases. Then she left.

  The second door was decorated with a skull and crossbones. This brought a half-smile to Meg's lips, but it quickly disappeared. She turned the handle but the door would not budge. She considered forcing the door, but knew she d
id not have the strength. Knowing Nicholas, he'd have a chair propped up under the door handle, just in case someone got through the locks.

  She held her palm flat against the door for a moment and pictured how he would look. The bed-clothes would be twisted around his ankles, and his pyjamas, which always seemed to be too short in the legs, would be barely covering him. She wiped her eyes and moved back down the hallway.

  Richard and Lucy were in a new king-sized bed. Richard was spooning into Lucy's back, and they looked peaceful. Meg, oddly, felt an emotion that was close to fondness rise in her. They did make a nice-looking couple.

  She left through the front door, closing it firmly behind her. Should she make the two-hour drive to her parent's house? No, she had to go home and lie down. She had to find more pain killers. Above all else, she had to find answers.

  Webcams were what eventually provided the answers for Meg. She found a site that provided links to live cameras in nearly thirty countries. She clicked on the "Times Square, New York" link. Although it was eight o'clock at night there, streetlights made it possible to see bodies lying in the street. Smoke drifted across the camera lens in clouds. She moved to Germany — Hamburg. Not a live person to be seen, only fires and motionless peak-hour traffic that blocked all freeways. It was clearly more chaotic in the northern hemisphere where everyone had died during the daytime. If you were a survivor there, it would be far worse than it was for Meg.

  She was in her office, using the desktop computer and dual monitors that worked more efficiently than the tablet. Oddly, her office chair was comfortable and it had the added advantage of wheels that rolled well on the timber flooring. With minimal effort she could move between rooms, using her arms on the walls to propel herself.

  The webcams were addictive. She visited Africa, North America, South America, Europe and Asia. She could see fires burning in almost every northern hemisphere location and wondered about them. She found a camera in New Zealand that showed Auckland's skyline. No large fires there. What she didn't find on any webcam site was evidence of human life. On impulse she searched for and found a webcam in the Antarctic settlement of Mawson Station. It seemed to be just a static shot taken at midday on the day before.