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It killed more people in six months than the Black Death did in a century.’
Someone used to live up here. A Cornish Quasimodo perhaps.
Pandemics were good for business, he supposed.
Flu made the front page, but the oil crisis wasn’t far behind. America threatens action in the Gulf, read a headline. Of course, he thought, they would have to. Self-interest would be too strong. All of America’s own reserves could not compensate for the loss of all that oil. It didn’t matter that eight out of every ten barrels of oil shipped down the Gulf was destined for Asia; the impact on world oil prices would be devastating for everyone. He found himself flicking to the financial pages. Oil was up in price by fifty-six per cent. He could imagine Cassie computing this, reading the
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‘Oh my God,’ he said, and his hand shot to his mouth. ‘You told me you wouldn’t tell anyone.’
‘I told you I would only tell folk I trust,’ Martha corrected him. She threw out her arms. ‘These are they.’
Plantagenet
Louboutins
What could this mean? The church bells hadn’t been rung in two decades.
And then there was a cry. Someone had been spotted on the high rampart. A man with a cloth mask tied around his face. A murmur infected the crowd. ‘It’s Alvin,’ shouted Polly.
This time yesterday Janie Coverdale was fit and healthy. This morning she’s dead.’
‘It will only take one person,’ he said, ‘just one person with the flu to make it here. And half of us could be dead by the end of the week.’
‘Did you see the news, Joe? They say this virus is the same as the Spanish flu of 1918. It’s identical.
‘One of the things we know about the Spanish flu was the way it took fit, young people and left the elderly unaffected.’
Bats in the belfry, Joe thought. It seemed fitting.
No matter that the whale had saved him, had carried him ahead on a bow wave, had dropped him safely on the sand; what
No one in the village had gas for cooking or heating; there was no gas main in St Piran,
‘We shouldn’t be coming and going,’ Mallory Books said. ‘We should all stay in the village until the epidemic is over.’
And within a half an hour, the crisis in St Piran had become a party.
squeeze-box.
‘We have a saying in Senegal,’ Aminata said. ‘It is never good to be alone. But if you really have to be alone, then be alone with a friend.’
Seasonal flu kills only one person in a thousand, so that isn’t really worth worrying about, is it? But it still means that seven thousand people in Britain die of flu every year; thirty-six thousand people in the USA; half a million or so worldwide.
There aren’t many infectious diseases that kill half a million people a year, but flu does.
If you want to catch ebola you have to come into contact with body fluids, but if you want to catch flu you only need to breathe the same air.’
moai.
‘People will stay at home, but only for so long.
When the water stops flowing, they will flee the cities.
Arrabiata sauce?
‘There are some things we can always rely on, Joe. The sun will always rise tomorrow. We are all mortal. And there will always be laws to obey.’
And human self-interest, Joe thought. We can always rely on that too.
‘Do you remember the whale?’ he said. ‘Had you ever seen such a creature? Could you imagine the complexity, the vastness of organisation, the systems all in synchrony that keep an animal like that afloat?
How many trillion cells are there in a whale – every one a tiny engine, manufacturing proteins, reproducing, burning energy?
‘And yet … for a short while on Piran Sands, all those biological systems were good for nothing. That’s scenario four.
‘The world is a whale on a beach?’
apposite
‘Toodle-oo, Janie,’ he whispered.
He waved his soil-stained fingers. ‘Toodle-oo.’
He looked as cold and loveless as an accountant.
cognitive dissonance.
The sun must rise, he realised, but only if you’re there to see it.
‘We’re right out of the black stuff.’ ‘Oil?’ Kenny asked. ‘Not oil, you eejit. Guinness.’
klotok
If a man knows he can kill with impunity … he will.
Barter has become the currency of exchange, Joe thought. ‘Gift economics’.
avuncular
Joe found himself standing next to Polly, feeling the soft electricity that surrounded her.
bonhomie?
dogfish
conger eel.
John Dory.
