I crept along the bare corridor, peeling each foot from the floor and replacing it in a wave of soundless motion. The fluorescent strip lights buzzed overhead, giving occasional bursts of life like dying flies trapped inside a window pane. I wish I didn’t have to be here. The knowledge that I could just leave and no one would ever know I’d been here was hovering on the fringe of my consciousness. Like a vulture it circled, waiting for the death of my courage that would make me turn back. But turning back was unimaginable. Returning empty-handed would be marginally worse than not returning at all.
I edged onwards towards the door, trying to imagine I was strolling through Regents Park as I had done only twelve months ago, as the spring blossoms had made their first joyful appearance. I had been oblivious and blissful back then like everyone else, though I had thought I had problems. Just the usual everyday problems, that helpfully distracted us all from the futility of human existence. They were all in the past now. The only goal was the future, if there was going to be one. And for me, the future was you. The authorities may not have deemed you worth saving, but I was determined to do so. The sound of your tortured breaths had followed me as I slipped through the deserted streets. I had meant what I’d said. I’ll be back soon. I’d cut through the overgrown gardens of once-proud London terraces, hiding from anything that moved, until finally I’d got to this place I used to know so well.
I reached the door at the end of the corridor. It was heavy and metal and official in a way which had never bothered me previously, but now seemed designed specifically to intimidate. I glanced behind me but the corridor was empty. Before the pandemic, I had breezed along in this very space, cheerfully dodging between trundling groups of patients and fellow doctors. The eerie groaning of derelict generators was chilling. But I was sure there couldn’t be anyone beyond that door. At least not anyone still breathing.
I raised my pass to the scanner. Beep. The red bar turned green and the doors ground open, on runners clogged with rubble and dust. ‘Critical Ward’, the sign welcomed me. I stepped through, wincing at the deafening scrape as the doors closed behind me. I paused, breath held, waiting to be accosted and interrogated as to why I was here and where I was going. Nothing. I started breathed again. Still nothing. I ignored the ward of beds to my left, with their indistinct white lumps. I turned right, followed the sign to the pharmacy, and the treasures it held.
The shelves were stripped bare. The room had been all but destroyed. Broken glass and smashed pieces of chairs, benches and computing equipment littered the floor. It was not in the least surprising to me how quickly law, order and human decency had disintegrated as the crisis deepened. Civilisation was a house of cards. No matter how you dressed us up, or got us trading with each other, or even transported us into space, there was still no escaping biology. Our pointless cultures and beliefs had crumbled under the indiscriminate force of nature. Until all that remained was our animal instinct to survive.
I crunched my way through the debris, to the same spot my own survival instinct had led me six long months ago. I placed a relatively undamaged stool carefully amid the rubble of the floor and stepped up onto it. I reached up to the ceiling and pushed a polystyrene tile up to reveal the cavity above. Feeling along the edge of the hole, I found the notch cut into the corner. I stretched further into the void, heart thrashing, adrenaline surging, until I grasped the glorious solidity of an intact glass bottle. The bottle I had hidden while people who needed it were dying all around me. A precious suspension of viral antibodies harvested from early survivors. Survivors like me. Though people like me and you had been last in the queue to receive its lifesaving benefits.
I stuffed it deep in the inside pocket of my puffer jacket and climbed down off the stool. I retraced my steps through the ruined hospital, heading to the goods entrance at the back, and considered the perilous return journey. The abandoned Tube tunnels were usually worth a try. Especially if I kept to the deeper ones where, if I know anything about human behaviour, the troops would be reluctant to tackle all the extra stairs. I was going to get this antidote to you. And you were going to get better, that was all there was to it. And then we could leave the deadly city and head out into the countryside where wild food and fresh water would be available. Tree cover sounded good too. Thick forests. After all, there are many ways of getting lost, we just had to find ours. Taking a last glance around to check I wasn’t being followed, I slid aside the cover on the service shaft above the Northern Line, and descended into the vanishing light.
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