Burning Angels

63

The battered-looking Boeing 747 taxied into the cargo terminal at London’s Heathrow airport. It was remarkable only in that it lacked the usual row of porthole like windows running down the sides.

That was because air freight isn’t normally alive, so what need would it have for windows?

But today’s cargo was something of an exception. It was very much alive, and made up of a bunch of very angry and stressed-out animals.

They’d been cooped up bereft of any daylight for the whole of the nine-hour flight, and they were not happy. Enraged cries and whoops rang out all down the 747’s echoing hold. Small but powerful hands rattled cage doors. Big, intelligent primate eyes – brown pupils ringed with yellow – flickered this way and that, searching for a means to escape.

There was none.

Jim Seaflower, the chief quarantine officer at Heathrow Terminal 4, was making sure of that. He was issuing orders to get this shipment of primates moved across to the big, sprawling quarantine centre that was tucked away to one side of the rain-swept runway. The business of primate quarantine was taken very seriously these days, and for reasons that Seaflower understood well.

In 1989, a shipment of monkeys out of Africa had landed at Washington DC’s Dulles airport on a similar flight. Upon arrival, the cages of animals were trucked from the airport to a laboratory – a ‘monkey house’ as those in the trade called it – in Reston, one of the city’s upmarket suburbs.

Back then, quarantine laws were somewhat less stringent. The monkeys started dying in their droves. Laboratory workers fell sick. It turned out that the entire shipment was infected with Ebola.

In the end, the US military’s chemical and biological defence specialists had to move in and ‘nuke’ the entire place, euthanising every single animal. Hundreds and hundreds of diseased monkeys were put to death. The Reston monkey house was rendered into a dead zone. Nothing in there – not the smallest microorganism – was allowed to live. Then it was sealed off and abandoned pretty much for ever.

The only reason the virus hadn’t killed thousands – maybe millions – of people was because it wasn’t transmitted via aerial means. Had it been more flu-like, ‘Reston Ebola’, as it became known, would have ripped through the human population like a viral whirlwind.

As luck would have it, the Reston Ebola outbreak was contained. But in the aftershock, far tougher and more stringent quarantine laws were introduced – ones that Jim Seaflower had to ensure were observed at Heathrow airport today.

Personally, he felt that a six-week quarantine period was somewhat draconian, but the risks very likely justified the new laws. And either way, it gave him and his staff decent, reliable, well-paid employment, so who was he to complain?

As he observed the crates of animals being unloaded from the aircraft – each with the words ‘Katavi Reserve Primates Limited’ stamped across the side – he figured that this was an unusually healthy batch. Normally a few animals died in transit; the stress of the journey saw to that. But none of these little guys had succumbed.

They looked full of beans.

He’d expect nothing less of Katavi Reserve Primates. He’d

overseen dozens of KRP shipments, and he knew the company to be a class act.

He leaned down to look into one of the cages. It was always best to get a sense of a shipment’s general health, so you could better manage the quarantine process. If there were any sick primates, they’d need to be isolated, so the others didn’t fall ill. The silver-haired, black-faced vervet monkey inside retreated to a far corner. Primates don’t tend to enjoy close-up eye contact with humans. They view it as threatening behaviour.

This little guy was a fine specimen, though.

Seaflower turned to another cage. This time, as he peered inside, the occupant charged at the bars, pounding them angrily with his fists and baring his canines. Seaflower smiled. This little guy was certainly full of fight.

He was about to turn away when the animal sneezed, right into his face.

He paused, and gave it the visual once-over, but it seemed to be perfectly healthy otherwise. Probably just a reaction to the cold, damp, moisture-laden London air, he reasoned.

By the time the seven hundred primates had been transferred to their quarantine pens, Jim’s working day was done. If fact he’d stayed an extra two hours to oversee the last of the shipment.

He left the airport and drove home, stopping for a beer at his local. It was the usual crowd, as always enjoying a chat with their drinks and their snacks.

Totally unsuspecting.

Jim bought a round of drinks. He wiped the beer foam off his beard with the back of his hand, and shared some packets of crisps and salted peanuts with his mates.

From the pub he drove home to his family. He greeted his wife at the door with a beery hug, and was just in time to kiss his three young children goodnight.

In homes across the London area, Jim’s Heathrow staff were doing likewise.

The following day, their kids went to school. Their wives and girlfriends travelled here and there: shopping, working, visiting friends and relatives. Breathing. Everywhere and always – breathing.

Jim’s buddies from the pub went to their places of work, taking tubes, trains and buses to the four corners of this massive, bustling metropolis. Breathing. Everywhere and always – breathing.

All over London – a city of some eight and a half million souls – an evil was spreading.