Louise Welsh - Death is a Welcome Guest

He and Jeb squatted on their haunches and pawed through mouldering sandwiches, melted puddings and glistening sushi. They burst open packets of crisps and stale muffins that seemed impervious to decay. It was the kind of food Magnus hated, the sort of crap he resorted to eating on badly planned tours, where he arrived in towns too late for dinner and left too early for lunch. It was the best meal he had ever eaten.

When they were finished they packed a couple of paper bags they found behind the counter with more snacks and bottled water and crossed the road to a hotel. The doors were open and they walked silently through the carpeted lobby, their senses under assault from a surfeit of textures and colours after the grey of the prison and the black of the subway tunnel.

It was a five-star place, old-fashioned and gaudy with wealth. They passed the reception desk, unchallenged. Everything was neatly arranged, as if the staff and guests had simply left, taking their luggage with them. The carpet was decorated with floral medallions, the chairs figured with gold paisley patterns, the satin curtains embossed with thick, crisscrossing lines. Patterns vied with patterns, colours with colours; everything caught, reflected and refracted, over and over again in bronzed mirrors. Magnus said, ‘You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.’

‘I can think of worse fates,’ Jeb said and Magnus wondered how it would be to lie on a soft mattress and feel clean sheets against your skin.

The hotel corridors were a challenge to match the Underground tunnel. The lights were still on, the rows of closed doors a series of possibilities. Neither of them knew how to activate the hotel’s electronic key cards and so they took turns at kicking and shouldering locks until they gave way. There were a couple of false attempts, rooms wrapped in darkness with bodies humped beneath their covers, but then they found two adjoining bedrooms. They made no plans for later, but their eyes met briefly for a moment before they each went into their room and closed the door behind them.

Magnus woke suddenly, aware that there was someone else in the room. Jeb was a shadow at the window. He had opened the curtains a few inches and was staring out at a view of the building’s flat-roofed kitchens. He turned and looked at Magnus.

‘I walked up to the sixteenth floor. You can see a good way across the city from up there.’ His voice was calm, as if he were just back from buying a round at the bar and picking up a conversation they had already started. ‘A lot of it’s on fire.’

Magnus swung his feet out of the bed. He had intended to wash before going to sleep, but the lure of the hotel bed had proved too much for him and he had slipped between its sheets filthy and fully dressed, only pausing to take his trainers off.

‘How close are the fires?’ Magnus stretched. His head hurt. His back hurt. His shoulders, legs and arms hurt.

‘Hard to say.’ Jeb paused and Magnus got the impression that he was seeing the view from the top floor again and assessing the distance between them and the fires. ‘Not so close you can’t take some time to sort yourself out, but close enough for us to need to think about moving on.’

Magnus was unsure of how he felt about the ‘us’. He got to his feet, rubbing his eyes. Jeb, he noticed, was freshly shaved, showered and changed. Magnus said, ‘So there’s still water.’

‘Hot water.’ Jeb nodded towards a chair where a neatly folded bundle of clothes waited. ‘I got you these.’

It felt like a rival on the comedy circuit had just offered to swap the top slot for inferior billing. Some instinct within Magnus twitched, reminding him that kindness was a thing to be mistrusted, but he said, ‘Thanks.’

He had been too weary, too fearful, to look at the television earlier. Now he lifted the remote and pointed it at the blank screen.

Flashing images appeared from a hospital ward somewhere in India. They were quickly replaced by similar scenes from somewhere in Europe and then Africa. The TV’s volume was down and subtitles stabbed across the bottom of its screen.

V596 IS NO RESPECTER OF AGE OR SOCIAL CLASS

The picture shifted to stock film of an anonymous scientist delicately inserting a pipette into a test tube.

SCIENTISTS ACROSS THE WORLD ARE TAKING PART IN AN UNPRECEDENTED COLLABORATION

‘It’s showing the same stuff, over and over,’ Jeb said in a low voice. ‘I let it run on for an hour this morning. I reckon someone put it on repeat before they left the studio.’ Before they died , the soft voice in Magnus’s head whispered. He kept his eyes on the screen, where anxious men and women ushered their children towards hastily commandeered primary schools and community centres. It had been a sunny afternoon, but the children were dressed in coats and jackets, as if wrapping them up tight would help protect them from infection.

QUARANTINE CENTRES HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED IN TOWNS AND CITIES ACROSS EUROPE

The camera focused on unhappy-looking soldiers manning a barricade. Magnus thought some of them looked sick, but perhaps worry and lack of sleep had sapped the colour from their skin.

CURFEWS HAVE BEEN ESTABLISHED. NO-GO ZONES PUT IN PLACE TO AVOID LOOTING AND DAMAGE TO PROPERTY

Magnus said, ‘We should check out the Internet.’

‘It’s down.’ Jeb shrugged his shoulders. ‘In the hotel anyway. I tried the computers behind the reception desk and a few laptops. Could be the server.’

‘Could be.’ Magnus nodded, though he knew that neither of them was convinced.

The scrolling banner at the bottom of the screen announced:

Military law established… Looters and rumour-mongers to face the highest penalties… Schools cancelled… Curfews in place during hours of darkness… Dog owners urged to keep pets indoors… Cabinet reconvened… Prime Minister set to make an announcement later today…

And on the main screen the various images of hospital wards around the world were repeating.

V596 IS NO RESPECTER OF AGE OR SOCIAL CLASS. SCIENTISTS ACROSS THE WORLD ARE TAKING PART IN AN UNPRECEDENTED COLLABORATION

Magnus switched channels, but they were either lost in static, guarded by test cards or running the same footage he had just watched.

‘It’s been like that all morning,’ Jeb said.

Magnus wanted to make a joke about how he would have predicted endless repeats of Frasier or Friends , but he could not trust himself to speak. He lifted the pile of clothes Jeb had brought him and took them into the bathroom, not bothering to ask where they had come from.

Magnus showered with the bathroom door ajar. The water was tepid, but he could feel it restoring him to life. Prison had given him an awareness of walls and corners, he realised, a reluctance to be contained. Perhaps if he survived he would become one of those feral men who lived alone in the outdoors. There had been one of them on Wyre. Their mothers had told them to keep away from him, but one long holiday afternoon Magnus and Hugh had taken the ferry over and ridden their bikes up to the battered caravan where he lived. The man was outside, dressed only in baggy khaki shorts that looked like they had seen good service in the Great War. He looked wild, right enough, a Ben Gunn scarecrow with lunatic grey hair and a beard to match. He had been feeding something to his dogs, but paused to give the boys a gummy smile and then raised a hand and beckoned to them. Magnus had taken a step forward. Hugh grabbed his arm and without saying anything to each other, they had jumped on their bikes and pedalled off, as if the de’il himself was after them.

Hugh had been stupid to kill himself. It was a stupid waste, a stupid, senseless waste. Death would have come around eventually and in the meantime he could have lived.