The Lazarus Strain

SIXTEEN

Steven parted company with the car as it rolled over the parapet and spilled him out of the window gap he’d been so desperately trying to escape through. So many things flashed across his mind as he went into a tumbling free fall, not least thoughts of his daughter. I’m so sorry, Jenny, was the only cogent one he could muster before he felt tree branches whip his face and pummel his body as he crashed down through them until one almighty blow to his midriff halted his fall, knocking the wind out of him and making him regurgitate the contents of his stomach. He was dimly aware of stomach acid burning his throat before feeling himself slide slowly off the branch, despite his best efforts to grab on to something. He fell again through the black void until an explosion of light inside his head consigned him to oblivion.

When he awoke, Steven found that he could not stop his teeth chattering and the one limb that he did seem to have any feeling in — his right arm — was almost numb with cold. He tried to think logically but the pain inside his head kept distracting him from doing anything other than shiver and struggle for breath. Although his ability to feel pain was telling him that he was still alive, the fact that he couldn’t feel his legs and that a nuclear explosion seemed to have gone off inside his skull was stopping any celebration of this discovery. He tried moving his shoulders and found that he could, but he could only feel the right side of his body and then only above the waist. He felt about him with his right hand, trying to investigate his situation and discovered that most of his body was immersed in a shallow, slow moving river. The flow was sluggish because its surface was turning to ice. He was lying on his left side with his face resting on a slime covered boulder.

Despite the pain and apparent hopelessness of his situation, Steven knew that he hadn’t yet reached the final stages of hypothermia where he could expect the pain to lessen and the prospect of a long comfortable sleep to beckon with open arms as his metabolism slowed to a halt. Furthermore, the discovery that he was lying in an icy river suggested to him that his failure to detect any feeling in his lower limbs might be due to cold rather than spinal injury, which had been his first terrifying thought. He had to get out of the river.

He reached out behind his head with his right hand but immediately had to stop when he felt an agonising pain in his chest. He explored the area gingerly and discovered that he had at least two broken ribs and possibly a third. The last thing he needed right now was for a broken rib to puncture his lungs. He rolled his upper body as far as he could to the left and reached out again with his right arm, this time in the other direction. He found a sharp ridge in a boulder and hooked his fingers over it to start dragging himself towards the bank.

The dead weight of his numb, lower body meant that he could only manage a few inches at a time but at least he was moving. In the end, it took him more than ten minutes to get completely out of the water and start work on his unfeeling limbs, left arm first. By the time he had regained feeling in his arms and legs it seemed as if every muscle in his body had gone into involuntary spasm with the cold. He was shivering so much that he had difficulty breathing as he tried to check himself out for any injury that had been masked through numbness.

Amazingly, the damage he’d suffered seemed confined to the broken ribs which must have happened when the tree somewhere up on the side of the gorge had broken his fall. Apart from that he had multiple cuts and bruises, including a lump above his left temple — which could of course, be signalling a skull fracture, he cautioned himself — but nothing else seemed to be broken. His situation was however, desperate; and right now, cold was the thing that was going to kill him.

Although he had been in very good physical condition, the fact that he had been wet through and outdoors in freezing temperatures for some hours was something he could not possibly sustain for much longer. However bad he felt and however great the danger of puncturing his lungs with broken ribs he simply had to start moving and keep moving until he found help or it found him.

He was attempting to stand up for the third time when the moon came out from behind the clouds and lit up the gorge with pale light. The sight did little to gladden his heart as the rock walls on both sides seemed almost vertical and, high above him, he could see the damaged parapet where the MG had come over. Along to his right he could see the wreckage of his car strewn across the river. He reckoned that his best chance — maybe his only one — might be someone seeing the damage to the bridge parapet and reporting it but it was on a minor road and he had no idea of the time or how long he’d been unconscious. It might well be the middle of the night.

His phone! His mobile phone! The thought prompted a frantic search through his pockets with wet hands that resisted entrance and exit to every one of them but then he remembered that it would have been in the hands-free holder in the car. Subsidiary thoughts about the chances of it still working being slim and the unlikelihood of there being a signal at the foot of this gorge were pushed to the back of his mind as he clung instead to the possibility that it had been flung free of the car and had landed in a patch of soft moss somewhere near his feet. A quick look removed this possibility from the equation.

Steven made his way along the narrow, stony river bank to the wreckage and started searching. Glancing up at the sky, he could see that the moonlight was not going to last much longer — a thick bank of cloud was approaching. Doing his best to protect his ribs with one arm folded across his chest, he peered into what was left of the cabin and saw that the phone mounting was still above water — but was empty. ‘Shit,’ he murmured as he felt around the submerged floor pan without finding anything. His search was constantly impeded by the bag of logs he’d bought at the filling station floating around in front of him. He yanked them out of the car angrily and threw them on to the bank before continuing but it seemed clear: the phone was not in the car.

Another quick glance up at the sky told him that he couldn’t have more than three or four minutes of moonlight left. Sheer frustration left him trying to curse everything at the top of his voice although the contractions in his throat and the violent shivering in his body made even that impossible in any satisfactory way.

He was into his third chorus of, ‘Bastard… bastard… bastard,’ accompanied by thumping his fist on the grassy bank when a glint caught his eye. There was something metallic lying on the bank about ten yards away… He crawled along the bank towards it and recognised his phone. He snatched it up and then realised that it was only the front of the phone. The back, comprising the battery, was missing.

Steven slumped down on the ground, feeling the will to live seriously weaken in him. His shivering was subsiding; the pain was fading and he was starting to feel comfortable. For the moment he would get some sleep and someone would come along in the morning…

‘Get up!’ warned the voice inside his head. ‘Get your arse into gear, Dunbar! Move it!’ It was the voice of a drill sergeant from all those years ago. The voice that had driven him on through the hell of an SAS selection course in the mountains of North Wales. ‘Giving up is not an option! You go to sleep now and you’ll never wake up again. Your choice!’

Steven got to his knees and found himself facing the bag of logs he’d flung on to the bank. The irony made him dissolve into maniacal laughter for a few moments. ‘Nice one, God,’ he spluttered but through the anger and pain and frustration and the desire to lie down and sleep his way out of it all, the image of a fire had been kindled. He started crawling up and down the bank as fast as he could in order to keep moving and he concentrated on the idea of a fire. He needed a fire… he wanted a fire… he had a bag of wet logs… the matches he’d bought would be useless too… but he hadn’t bought matches! There had been a box of disposable lighters beside the till in the service station. He’d bought one of these instead!

Once again he searched through his pockets and found the lighter. He flicked the wheel with his thumb and sparks flew into the air. He tried twice more and was rewarded with a flickering flame that seemed suddenly to symbolise for him all hope on Earth.

Steven resumed crawling up and down the bank as he felt his legs go numb again. Keep moving… keep moving… must keep moving. Disjointed thoughts vied with the pain in his knees from crawling over stones. What can I burn?… no paper… the firelighters were at the bottom of the river: he’d seen them lying there… the logs were soaking wet… it would take a furnace to light them, not a bloody cigarette lighter… a furnace… a furnace… if the car’s petrol tank hadn’t ruptured… he had the makings of a furnace!

Steven dragged himself back to the car and unscrewed the filler cap, feeling almost nauseous with relief when petrol vapour reached his nostrils: the tank was intact. It seemed sweeter than any perfume but he needed a way to ignite it and preferably not with his face over the tank at the time.

Using what he recognised might be the last remaining ounce of strength he had left in his body, he ripped the front of his shirt and tore a strip away to dangle it in the tank. Please God it would reach! He pulled the material back out and smelt the end. It was soaked in petrol.

He suspected that he was only going to have one chance at this. He was counting on the tank not exploding because the cap was off and the contents were not confined… but on the other hand it just might. He trailed the shirt material from the cap opening along the body work and prepared to flick the lighter under it. He would do this and then dive immediately for the bank.

Steven flicked the lighter wheel and dived for the bank, doing his best to protect his injured chest by landing on his arm and side. Nothing happened. He looked back and saw the rag dangling there. At that moment, the clouds reached the moon and blackness swallowed everything up. He wanted to scream out his frustration but he steeled himself to feel his way back to the wreckage and find the end of the rag. Once again he flicked the lighter wheel and this time there was a yellow flash as he leapt back to the bank. This was followed by a second, more powerful, eruption of flame from the car as the main tank erupted.

Steven crawled away from the wall of heat that engulfed him, feeling a mixture of euphoria and pain. When the flames had died back a bit he returned and started throwing the wet logs into the cabin space in order to keep the fire going. He had a fire; he had heat. He just might survive. He was careful not to get too close, knowing of the agonising pain that comes with heating up numb limbs too quickly but after ten minutes or so he started to feel comfortable. He felt even better after another ten minutes when, through the darkness up to his left, he saw a number of flashing lights. They were an encouraging shade of blue.

By mid afternoon on the following day, Steven decided to sign himself out of hospital. X-rays had shown that there was no skull fracture and his ‘field’ diagnosis of three broken ribs had proved correct. His cuts and bruises had been cleaned and his chest strapped up. The police had visited and taken details: they had already matched them with the theft of a JCB gritter from a roads department depot about three miles from where the incident occurred. ‘You wouldn’t believe how much these things are worth,’ the Constable had told him.

‘No kidding,’ Steven had replied. He was in the middle of an argument about signing himself out when Leila arrived.

‘My God, I’ve been worried sick about you,’ she said, wrapping her arms around him but immediately becoming aware of the wince he gave. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ she said.

‘My ribs are just a bit sore,’ he smiled. ‘It’s lovely to see you.’

‘I only found out when I called the police to say that you had disappeared,’ said Leila. ‘I tried phoning your cell phone every half hour but all I got was your answering service and then the hotel told me they hadn’t heard from you…’

‘Apparently I got in the way of some guy trying to steal a JCB,’ said Steven. ‘It turned out to be a night to remember.’

‘But shouldn’t you be in bed?’ protested Leila when she saw that Steven was preparing to leave.

‘Yes, he should,’ interrupted the nursing sister who’d been watching the proceedings. ‘But you just can’t tell some people.’

‘I really am very grateful to you and your staff, Sister,’ said Steven. ‘But I’m fine and I’ve got things to do.’

‘Just tell me and I’ll inform whoever it is you have to contact,’ said Leila.

‘No, really,’ insisted Steven. ‘I’m as well making myself busy as lie around here. I have to ring my sister-in-law before she reads all about this in the papers or worse still, Jenny hears about it from some other source.’

‘Jenny?’ asked Leila.

‘My daughter,’ replied Steven, suddenly realising to his embarrassment that he hadn’t mentioned Jenny before. ‘She lives with my sister-in-law and her husband in Scotland.’

‘I see,’ said Leila. ‘Well, you can make phone calls from here. What else do you have to do?’

‘Get myself a car… a new phone… talk to Sci-Med… so many things.’

‘As you say, Sister,’ said Leila, turning to the nurse. ‘You just can’t tell some people.’

Later, as Leila drove Steven back to his hotel, he told her the full story of what had happened.

‘It’s a miracle you’re still alive.’

‘I think the credit goes to the tree that broke my fall,’ said Steven.

‘Whatever. You’ll never be that lucky again.’ After a short pause she added, ‘You didn’t tell me you had a daughter.’

Steven had been waiting for this: he had seen the brief look of surprise on Leila’s face at the hospital. ‘I suppose I hadn’t got round to it,’ he said. He told her about Lisa’s death from a brain tumour and how Sue and Richard had taken Jenny in after her mother’s death.

‘It strikes me there’s such a lot we don’t know about each other,’ said Leila. ‘Maybe it’s just as well.’

‘Why?’ asked Steven.

‘I’ve decided to return to the States.’

‘Oh.’

‘As I said before, the chance of working with Tim Devon was what brought me here. Without him to provide the intellectual stimulation I need, I’m just marking time at the institute. They’re all very nice of course… but I feel the need to get back to the university in Washington.’

‘I suppose I can understand that,’ said Steven. ‘When will you go?’

‘At the end of the month,’ said Leila.

‘But we can still see each other until you go?’

‘Of course,’ smiled Leila. ‘I just thought I’d better tell you…’

‘Thanks,’ said Steven.

Although he returned to London two days later, Steven still managed to see Leila on a number of occasions over the next few weeks, still hoping that he might persuade her to change her mind but it became obvious that she was determined to go so in the end he accepted the situation. He spent the Easter weekend with his daughter up in Scotland instead of asking Leila to spend it with him even though it was the last before she was due to leave. He did however, drive her to the airport, albeit with a great feeling of sadness.

‘Can I call you in the States?’ he asked.

Leila shook her head. ‘Please Steven, don’t make things more difficult for me,’ she said, wiping away a tear from her cheek. ‘Give me time to settle back into my life. When that happens, I’ll call you.’

‘Promise?’

Leila put a finger on his lips. ‘I promise.’

‘There’s nothing I can say to make you stay?’

Leila smiled and placed the palms of her hands gently on Steven’s chest. ‘Please, Steven, let’s not prolong this. It’s agony for both of us.’

Steven conceded. He kissed her gently on the forehead and then on the lips before turning to go.

Steven joined John Macmillan for a meeting of the Earlybird committee at the Home Office, thinking as he entered the room, that the mood of the meeting appeared to be more upbeat than his own.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said the Home Office minister chairing the meeting, ‘I don’t think it’s too optimistic to say that we are winning the race. Auroragen and Dubois report that the vaccine is well ahead of schedule and the security services have uncovered no evidence at all that al-Qaeda have been able to culture large amounts of virus.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

‘And so say all of us,’ said Nigel Lees.

‘So, what do you think happened?’ asked John Macmillan. He was looking at the people from MI5, MI6 and DIS.

‘We are of the opinion that simple logistics defeated them in the end. It was just too big an undertaking for what apparently was too small a team,’ said the MI6 man.

‘We would agree with that,’ said the woman from MI5. ‘Constant vigilance stopped them getting what they needed to grow up sufficient quantities of the virus.’

‘And what about DIS, Colonel, what do they think?’ asked Macmillan.

‘Much the same,’ replied Rose. ‘We failed to identify even one successful attempt to get their hands on the fertile eggs they needed to culture the virus but…’

‘But what, Colonel?’

‘Well, you’d think that that was something they would have planned for in advance, wouldn’t you?’

You would indeed, thought Steven but he didn’t say it out loud.

‘Maybe they thought it would be much easier to do than it turned out to be,’ suggested Lees. ‘But whatever the reason, I think we owe a debt of gratitude to the police and our security services for thwarting their efforts.’

Always a crowd pleaser, thought Steven as ripples of agreement went round the room.

‘We’re not out of the woods yet,’ said Macmillan. ‘Just because we haven’t found evidence of virus production does not automatically mean that such a facility doesn’t exist.’

‘Of course not,’ agreed Lees. ‘And I think we are all agreed that we must maintain the highest standards of vigilance until Dr Martin’s vaccine is ready and has been deployed on both sides of the Atlantic to protect our people.’

‘Of course, we have to remember that it may not work at all,’ said Macmillan, much to Lees’ annoyance who saw this as an attempt to rain on his victory parade. ‘It’s a completely untested vaccine.’

‘Personally, I think we should be much more positive about things,’ said Lees. ‘Dr Martin did an absolutely magnificent job in doing what she did at such short notice. We are all in her debt and I for one, have every confidence in her work. I’m sure her vaccine will work.’

‘You hope it will work,’ corrected Macmillan. ‘Just like we all do.’