Chapter 8: A pocket full of posies

The next two days were difficult for Jamie and Laura. The situation in the country was deteriorating as more and more of the population developed symptoms of bird flu and they watched it all through the intrusive eyes of the hungry TV cameras. Closer to home it was clear that their grandparents were going down hill fast and their mum and dad were now taking it in turns to stay with the teens at least overnight. Laura continued to sleep with her rock of a big brother, but the strain of having to be brave for both of them was starting to tell on Jamie.

19:18, 28 July

Avril shuffled into the sitting room and basically collapsed onto the sofa, having just returned from her latest shift looking after her husband's parents. Jamie and Laura moved quickly to bracket her and hug her tightly. They relaxed their hug just as quickly when they heard their mother give a deep groan of pain.

"What is it mum, what's wrong?" Jamie asked.

He looked at his mother and could see the pain in her eyes, etched into the expression on her face.

"I'm afraid your grandmother passed away this afternoon, she..."

That was all that Avril managed to get out before she was wracked with deep sobbing and tears flooded her eyes. The two teens looked across their mother at each other. They had been fearing the worst for several days now, but preparing yourself for something like this never prevents the hammer blow you feel when it actually happens. They both let their own grief out and joined their mother in tears.

Jamie was the first to stand up, making his way into the kitchen to put on the kettle. When all else fails, a good cup of tea was always the answer and he made three mugs and brought them into the sitting room. His tears had dried up and as he looked at his mother he was worried by what he saw. As is sometimes the case, the human body can do wonderful things, endure amazing hardship without giving in. Avril had been so focussed, so single-minded on doing everything that she could for her husband's parents that everything else had been excluded. Her body had refused to give in to the symptoms of bird flu that she herself was subject to. Now, with her focus no longer needed and her body given the chance to relax, the flu was starting to hit her with a vengeance.

It was clear she was running a high-grade fever and that she was utterly exhausted. She couldn't even raise her hand to accept the cup if tea from Jamie and he put it back on the tray on the low coffee table. He raised his hand to his mother's forehead and felt the scalding heat radiating from her skin. Jamie knew right away what the problem was and he gulped at what it meant.

"What is it Jamie? What's wrong?" Laura asked, with concern.

"I'm afraid your brother has just been trying to confirm his suspicions that I've got bird flu too sweetheart," her mother managed to get out.

Laura's mouth gaped open in shock and her eyes grew big. Jamie was suddenly immensely proud of his little sister as he watched her suck it up and her face became set and determined.

"What do we have to do for you mum?" she asked.

"The best thing to do is probably to get me to bed dear. After that, try and get me to continue to take in as many fluids as possible. Dissolve some pain killers into water and try to feed me that. I'll need to be given bed baths and the sheets will need to be changed as I'm liable to sweat a lot and we can't let the sheets remain wet or that will make things worse."

It had been quite an effort for Avril to say so much and she now sagged back against the sofa. Jamie slipped one arm behind her knees and the other round her back and lifted her easily. Laura followed behind as her brother carried their mother to their parent's bedroom, depositing her on the big double bed.

"Leave the rest to me Jamie, you go and prepare some of your sports bottles with cold water and put them in the fridge. Do as mum said and try and dissolve some paracetamol in one of them," said Laura, ushering him from the room so she could take care of her mother and get her into the bed.

Before taking care of the water, Jamie lifted the phone in the sitting room and dialled his grandparent's number. It took a fair number of rings before it was answered and he heard his father's voice on the other end of the line.

"Hello?"

"Hi dad, it's Jamie. I thought I'd better let you know that it looks like mum has flu now as well. Laura is trying to look after her," he said.

There was a sigh on the line.

"I know son, you might as well know the worst of it. I've caught the damned thing too. I'm not as bad as your mother, yet, but I can feel my joints aching and I'm beginning to burn up. You're grandfather won't last much longer I think, so I'll probably be back home tomorrow and we can talk about what we can do. For now, look after my girlfriend for me son."

Jamie couldn't help break into a smile at his father's reference to his wife as his girlfriend, which was probably what his father had intended. They said their goodbyes and Jamie made his way to the kitchen and took several of his sports bottles out of the cupboard, filling them with water. He found some liquid paracetamol and measured three teaspoons full, pouring into the water bottle and shaking the bottle to mix the painkiller and the water together. He put both bottles into the fridge to cool.

When Jamie made his way back to the door of his parent's bedroom, he knocked and heard Laura tell him it was okay to come in. He found his sister sitting on the bed holding a cold facecloth to his mother's forehead. Somehow Laura had managed to undress her mother and get her into a nightgown before covering her over.

"Dad said we've to take good care of his girlfriend," Jamie told them both and was pleased to see that that brought a smile from Laura and his mum.

The Al Qaeda team was all gathered round the TV in the safe house. They had noticed the frequent changes in personnel on the Sky News channel and had assumed that this was because journalists were beginning to come down with the flu. Currently the channel were showing a talking heads feature on the 'crisis', with experts giving their studied opinions and sharing their knowledge in lay man's terms.

"Professor Smith, just how bad are things likely to get?" asked the Sky anchor.

"Well Gail, from everything we're seeing I'd say there is no way to avoid this reaching pandemic proportions and most probably a category five pandemic," the Professor replied.

"And what exactly does that mean in simple terms?" she asked him next.

"A category five pandemic could mean it's worse than Spanish flu pandemic that struck around 1918. That one is estimated to have been responsible for between 50 and a 100 million deaths worldwide.

"With the world's population now much larger, population centres much denser, it could be much worse than that. Today's globalisation means that the virus can spread around the globe easier and much quicker than would have been the case back then too.

"A particular characteristic of the Spanish flu outbreak was that it killed many more younger people than other flu epidemics. We normally expect younger people to be fitter and healthier and therefore much more able to fight this kind of thing off. This time it seems the virus is behaving much more like we would expect - it's the elderly and the infirm who seem to be succumbing to it."

"Do we have any idea how long it will last," asked the journalist.

"There's no telling Gail. The virus is capable of mutating and therefore people who haven't contracted it yet, might succumb to it in its mutated form at another time. The Spanish flu pandemic ran for over a year."

Shafiq and the members of her team were smiling broadly as they listened to the scale of what they had achieved against the West. The TV reports had made it clear that already things were beginning to break down, as people couldn't make it to their places of work. Public transport was grinding to a halt and basic services were patchy at best. Schools had all been closed and all large gatherings had been banned - no football matches, no concerts, cinemas closed down and restaurants were all shut.

21:47, 28 July

The Prime Minister was clearly tired and in a lot of pain as he fought to shake himself and chair yet another COBRA meeting.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said, his deep, powerful and Scottish accented voice, belying how weak and ill he looked, "I think it's time for a brief update from each of you round the table please before we move on to what our next steps are going to be. Alec, could we start with you please?"

The government's Chief Medical Officer looked even worse than the Prime Minster, but he too was a tough old bird and after a few deep and wet sounding coughs, he began his update.

"I'm afraid it's all bad news Prime Minister. Of those confirmed as having the flu there has been a hundred percent fatality rate. That's far higher than anything we've ever seen before. I've had people trying to identify infection rates and from the analysis so far it appears as if the virus is attacking the entire age range equally as bad. There is one possibility, a slight one, but there might be a group in the thirteen to sixteen age group who seem to be free of the virus. My people think there might be a correlation with a group who received their MMR vaccinations separately as opposed to the preferred method."

Everyone in the room knew what the CMO was referring to. A doctor had published a paper suggesting that the combined Measles/Mumps/Rubella (or MMR) vaccination was associated with health problems, most notably Autism, and that had sparked a panicked reaction amongst some parents.

Although the medical profession as a whole had tried to reassure the public that MMR was perfectly safe and indeed safer than having the vaccinations separately, a group of parents had opted to pay for private medical providers to vaccinate their children for each illness individually. The doctor who had published the paper had eventually been struck off and it was ironic that the action of that group of parents could now possibly be responsible for their children surviving this worldwide health crisis.

"Are you suggesting that the entire population is likely to be wiped out?" the Prime Minister asked.

"Current modelling is suggesting 99.9% fatalities Prime Minster," the CMO ended bleakly.

This was earth-shattering news, worse than any of them in the room had thought possible. They looked at each other, aware that all of them had perhaps only days to live.

"Okay, so be it. Let's make sure all the plans we discussed the other day are put into practice shall we? Home Secretary, I want the newspaper adverts run before the newspapers close down. The same for the public information broadcasts that have been recorded, I want them running as frequently as possible. Derek, set up a broadcast for me. I want to deliver some final messages to the British public before I'm unable to do so."

10:00am, 29 July

All of the main TV channels had been trailing the fact that the Prime Minister was going to broadcast live to the nation at exactly 10:00am. Throughout the UK everything stopped so people could listen to what their elected leader had to say. Jamie had surfed to the BBC web site and was burning the broadcast onto CD.

The screen showed a still picture of 10 Downing Street and then slowly faded to show a head and shoulders view of Gordon Brown. Even though the make-up artist had tried, the grey pallor of the Prime Minister's skin was still clearly evident and he coughed occasionally.

"Fellow Britons, I wanted to take one final opportunity of speaking to you all, to deal with the terrible situation we are all facing.

"Before I do that however, it is my sad duty to inform you that Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second passed away late last night and that her son has assumed the throne. Prince Charles, as he has been known, has decided that he will be crowned as King James the Third of England and Ireland and King James the Eighth of Scotland. Historians amongst you will recognise the significance of his choice and, as a Scotsman, I would like to thank him from the bottom of my heart for such a warm gesture at a time like this. I would like to ask you to join me in a minutes silence as a mark of respect for a Queen who has served our country with great distinction over a long number of years

As the minute passed, the Prime Minister coughed and winced, clearly in some pain. He began to talk again.

"Our country has been the subject of a cowardly and despicable attack, perpetrated by terrorists who shame the good name of Islam and the prophet Mohamed. On behalf of my government I can only apologise for failing to prevent that. It is an unpardonable dereliction of duty and I will carry the responsibility and guilt for that with me when I inevitably succumb to the flu symptoms that I'm already suffering.

"The government's Chief Medical officer, who sadly also passed away earlier this morning, has advised me that for those contracting bird flu, the fatality rate is 100%. If you have it, I'm afraid you are not going to recover.

"The virus has spread round the world and most of the planet's population will die. Al Qaeda's claim that they had ensured the safety of the Islamic nations has proven to be false and Muslims around the world are already beginning to die too.

"Some of you will survive however. The vast majority of the survivors will be teenagers. The medical profession has identified a group of people, those who did not receive the combined MMR vaccination as children, that the virus doesn't seem to be affecting. They can't explain why this might be, but it means that an estimated 60,000 out of our total population of over 60 million will come through this.

"The people of this proud nation have always shown themselves to be at their best in the face of adversity. In the trenches during the Great War, at Dunkirk and through the blitz, even during the more recent terrorist attacks on our country. The main reason I am speaking to you this morning is to appeal to that same spirit.

"60,000 of our youngsters are going to survive this attack and I'm asking that the rest of us to do all that we can to make sure they have the best chance of rebuilding our society, rebuilding our great country.

"We in the government have set in train plans that will give these youngsters every advantage we can. We are trying to make sure the utilities remain on as long as possible, even if there are no staff to run the power stations. We will try to keep the main infrastructure - our roads and motorways - clear so that they can move around. We have prepared mass graves throughout the country so that we can as far as possible remove the threat of secondary health issues from the bodies of the dead.

"The Chief Medical Officer was still doing everything he could to serve the public late into the night last night, despite his suffering. I'm asking you to make a final sacrifice for the young men and women that will be left standing. I'm asking no less from each of you than what the CMO gave. Please continue to do your job, to volunteer, to help see the plans we have set in train succeed. I know you will be in pain and suffering badly from the flu, but I'm asking you to ignore the pain and do your bit one last time.

"To the young people who will remain I say this. Be proud of your heritage. Remain true to the principles of this great nation and you won't go far wrong. Be brave..."