The Corona Girl Pt. 01

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Anyone depicted or inferred as having sex is eighteen or older.

A romance in two parts. Part 1 of 2. The hardest part was keeping pace with reality!

The English summer of 2020 became the warmest since records began. Sun scorched through day after day of cloudless skies in May, June and July, beating even the idyllic heat of '76. Back then, as in 2003, people bitched about the melting tarmac, traffic jams, sleepless night and browned lawns. Pub gardens filled with thirsty, sunburned office workers and rusting barbecues competed to smoke out suburban neighborhoods. They might pretend hardship, but everyone found an excuse to coast and have a glorious time. Except this year turned out far from normal.

2020 began with news of atypical pneumonia in a city far away. A place that meant little to anyone. Bat soup, they explained. The reason people got sick. No need to worry, said the mayor of Wuhan—just a dirty wet market. Move along, nothing to see here. But there was. Eleven-million people watched a city close around them, before the world's largest pilgrimage at Lunar New Year. By the end of January, fifty-seven-million people fretted inside Hubei—The Chinese People's Armed Police Force welded their doors closed as a reminder.

All too late. Every fucking time, always too late. Seventeen years along, a world order that learned nothing from SARS played politics and lost time that would cost humanity dear. The Chinese Communist Party, who lied their way to power, murdering forty-five million of their own people in the great leap forward, who shot, or squashed with tanks, their own protesting students only thirty-one years ago. The same old men with their dyed hair and sad suits that bought influence from Washington to Wagga Wagga told the United Nations they had its back and bought a muppet to front the WHO. A desperate CCP, bribing the planet to believe its bullshit. And the tragedy is, it did.

By the third week of March, a global pandemic blew through a hundred fifty thousand. Five and a half thousand dead. Covid-19 wanted to prove something.

The President of the United States of America, campaigning for re-election, declared the virus a hoax. Like a CCP echo, he assured 328 million people everything was under control and 'we're on top of it'. He promised a vaccine 'within months', denied any responsibility and advocated prayer. Two subjects dominated the US media in March—the numbers falling over, and the democratic primaries. By the end, no-one cared who'd face off against the GOP in November because congressmen of both stripes fell sick and died.

A month later, the orange man was in a box—one more old-person corpse, a boomer removed. His wife didn't stick around for him to drop in the hole. She boarded a private plane to Chile the next day. His vice-president, sworn in on TV, sweated, coughed, and expired inside a week. Two Democratic geriatrics went the same way within days of each other. The worlds' largest power fell to its knees. And the people trembled.

As thirty cities in the US with over a half-million locked down, the Corp of Engineers dug trenches across freeways from California to Connecticut. With airports shuttered and food running out, masks, the focus of so much attention a month before, became irrelevant. For Americans shut inside the horror of a broken medical system, it turned into a question of when, not if.

The British Prime Minister, emboldened after his election landslide, who still walked around without a mask and shook hands with asymptomatic carriers in March, buried his fiancée and unborn child the first week of May, and together with his surviving cabinet retired to the underground bunker from which the country expected government during a national crisis. No-one ever learned they died before June because of The Media. The Media, reporting important events and commenting upon public opinion for centuries, since the black death, instead reduced to commenting on food riots and marauding gangs murdering people in their homes for baked beans, toilet paper and pasta. They blinked out, one by one, as a cloud passes over a star. None of them reported on the ninety-year-old queen that disappeared from public view in April. How do you even have media when people are starving, dropping in the street and the ad revenues stop? Want to tweet or eat? The Zuckerberg empire, out of cash and without functioning banks, evaporated.

The flu kills more; they said in January. When summer comes, it will blow away like so many dandelion seeds—he loves me, he loves me not. The symptoms are mild—more dangerous to cross the street. Except now, in September, the empty roads couldn't kill anyone. If you had the virus and recovered—it struck again. If you didn't, but still needed care, they took your bed anyway. Without food to deliver or people to buy, trucks sat parked up everywhere, post-modern monsters willing human life to evaporate. Fifty million died in June alone, a billion in July, and by August no-one gave a shit.

In Shoreditch, London, a man of medium height, with blue eyes and in rather more need of a shave than his patchy beard, clattered up the shutter of a small cafe. These days more desperate community center than coffee shop, the place grew to include a wall of notices, a corner table with tools and a small rack of free warm clothes, which ebbed and flowed with the park sleepers still avoiding human contact. Tom never explained why this place still existed when all logic suggested it close—and no-one asked. Ten years ago, he opened, and this was what he did.

The cafe did not have customers so much as clients. Every day, fewer people showed up as the tail of CE took them. As the last public services closed in July, that's what they blamed—the Coronavirus Extinction. The only functioning service—the tumbrel-men who drove around collecting bodies for the massive lime pits on Hampstead Heath in return for almost anything—sex mainly. Money and jewelry, watches and electronics have no value after an extinction, being the artificial constructs of an extinct society. Everyone will die, so why not fuck yourself to death?

Tom's cafe, once a thriving hipster haunt, no longer chalked a menu on its blackboard. People brought food, stolen from others or supermarkets, and Tom cooked it. Noodles, rice, vegetable soup and anything that might fit in a gas fryer. He closed at sundown because no-one came after dark and gas-lighting made the place look desperate, like a drug den. Prices became comically irrelevant, so he cooked what turned up and charged what he thought, or gave it away. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered, except to keep going. Life without electricity became a matter of adapting, but when the water stopped, a city with continuous occupation since AD 43 would die. Already, the streets teemed with rats, fighting with each other and becoming more fearless each day their old foe died out.

Earlier, he'd baked flat bread with flour from a sack they gave him yesterday as a trade for sweetcorn soup and fried chicken, only just expired. A young city guy in an expensive suit tore off chunks at the tool table, chewing as he wound packing wire round the ends of a bracelet, trying it for size around his neck.

"My wife's," he explained, "the only thing I have left. When I go, I want to be wearing it. Hope it's ugly enough that the tumbs don't nick it."

"They're only interested in one thing, now," Tom said. The guy dropped the pliers back in the tray and gazed at the wall.

"So this is what it's come to—Jesus Christ, I hope I'm gone soon. Doesn't it worry you?"

"I'll go when my time comes," said Tom. In his mind, his wife of ten years, her still-beautiful icy body buried in her beloved Richmond Park, near the spot where they met.

Outside, they hear a frantic squeal of tires and the roar of a performance car being driven at ludicrous speed through deserted streets—a low yellow object flashes past the cafe and without slowing, spins, shrieking, under full power into something hard along the street. Seconds later there's a woof as the gas tank ruptures.

"That's how I want to go," the guy says, "not rotting away in bed, but like that." He walks away as Tom surveys the carnage. The car is ablaze with several others, but someone is down and screaming for help. For a moment he turns on his heels—the guy was right with his 'what's the point'. But when his humanity kicks in, Tom runs.

The girl is in shock and bleeding from a leg wound. Tom rolls her over and recognizes the face. She came in a week back, borrowed a screwdriver and returned it the next morning, staying for congee and paying with a gold ring which he refused. Why, if a god exists, does he allow this? An innocent maimed.

In the cafe, she shakes as he cuts up the leg of the jeans and winces as alcohol hits the raw flesh. It's a jagged, shallow cut, but her ankle is swelling.

"It almost hit me," she said, reliving the horror, "then the car exploded, and I felt the sting."

"Okay, you're clean now but you need to rest," he said, standing.

"I can't—my dad's dying."

"Where do you live?"

"Swanfield."

"I'm in Camlet street. Round the corner. Can you wait? Need to clean up here."

"Don't worry about me, it's only a matter of time for each of us," she said, "I only want to have him go without pain. It's not CV—he's a diabetic with cancer, as if that makes any difference."

Hands on hips, Tom took in the girl, her leg on a chair, preparing to die yet comforting another. Was it this that kept him going? Running this ridiculous place for what purpose? Patching up stuff on the way out; sweeping and dusting life's room before turning off the lights.

Tom scratched the back of his neck and realized he had been staring. "Right," he said, "must get on."

As he tidied, washed and wiped, he called over the counter.

"I'm Tom, you?"

"Yasamin, Yasamin Rostami."

"That would make you Irani?"

"Half. Mother was Han Chinese—lost her in July."

"You came in before, didn't you?"

"Needed to liberate some drugs for dad. Your congee tasted wonderful, by the way."

Tom liked the euphemism and made a note to adopt it.

Yasamin limped to the corner of Redchurch Street with an arm round his shoulder but asked to rest. Tom carried her the last two-hundred meters. Three minutes or three hours, she didn't know. Looking up at this man with compassion in his heart—dying, just as she was. By the time she slid through his grasp and touched the pavement, she had all but decided.

Tom tried hard but, she'd felt so right in his arms—the walk over way too soon. Yet what was the point? Yasamin would be what, twenty-one? In normal times, she'd be at University.

Yasamin keyed the door and yelled inside, "Dad, I'm home."

"He's a bit deaf," she added, twisting to Tom. "Doesn't see too well either. Look, I can manage from here."

"Okay," he sighed, turning to go. "Bye, Yasamin—you know where I am."

Yasamin grabs his arm, tottering, and he catches her. "This is stupid. I'm hiding here, waiting to die, same as you," she says, her head flopping forward. "For nothing, in the end. It's too fucking sad. I don't care anymore, Tom. If you want me... for anything..."

Yasamin's eyes tear up and Tom hears her try not to sob. Everyone cried now. Most days he did. Crying squandered its currency after CE. Now you decided things a different way. As she'd said, it didn't matter. But he was lonely, and lost. Yasamin was pretty and young. They both had had one last shot. But he'd have to move fast.

"Bye then," she sighs.

"No!" he yells, taking her hand, "Sorry, Yasamin, so much to explain. A lot to talk about and I don't even know where to begin, but we must."

Yasamin looks puzzled. "You're not making a lot of sense, I was talking about..."

"I know, but it's bigger than that. Much more important. Time." Tom knew he gabbled.

"I have little enough of that left," she says.

They hear her name. "Okay, dad," she shouts.

"Can you come round tonight? Clifton House, 12B."

Yasamin looks down. "How stupid," he says, "I'll be here at seven."

"You sure?"

Tom pulled her into his arms and kissed her cheek. "I've never been more sure of anything, Yasamin."

Tom opened the bottle of wine he traded for fried rice last week and poured an enormous glass to gather his thoughts. Time for straight talking—for facts, and to avoid his habit of being vague. But first she must understand the risks.

Once the battered old box sat before him, the idea appeared half-baked. Yasamin might assume he planned to drug her. Tom glanced at his wrist—six-fifty. Time to go.

Yasamin wore a simple dark floral print shift, its colors contrasting her skin, which shone as if polished, back-lit from a dim gas light. She was out of shock now, smiling, and Tom thought her stunning. "Come in, he's asleep."

Swinging the rucksack off his shoulder, he ducked in behind her. Yasamin lit another lamp in the cramped living room and sat opposite him. She took one glance at him and giggled. Tom wore the same stained T-shirt and had worn a fresh hole in the knee of his jeans. He looked at himself—Jesus, he hadn't even washed.

"Christ, sorry Yasamin. But I brought wine." He popped out the loose cork and looked around. They settled for tea cups.

"Is the leg okay?"

"I changed the dressing and rested it with ice." This a doctor's visit, or what?

Yasamin studied him as he set the blue-painted aluminum box in front of her and squinted at its stenciled print 'USEUCOM WF2345D MIL 456-95'. Tom templed his hands as in incantation, and Yasamin frowned.

"Are you surprised the cafe is still open, Yasamin?"

"A bit, yeah. Like they shut everything else."

"And I'm not sick?"

"That, too."

"My mother was part-Irish, part Jewish, a bit Polish and born in Japan—it's a lengthy story. Father an American, born in Latvia, his father from Mexico."

"You're even more hand-knitted than me," she laughed.

"And you're not sick either, Yasamin."

"What are you saying? Weird mixes are immune, or what?"

"I wish. Perhaps it's bought us time, and it's our duty to use it. How many English people do you meet now?"

Yasamin thought for a moment. "I see what you mean."

"Because of our genes," he said, "I think we fight the virus better in the early stages. It's just a theory because for most, it doesn't matter."

"Your wife?" she asked.

"English, a hundred percent. But I'm coming to that."

"And this box?"

"That, too—so many damn questions!"

Yasamin perched on the edge of the faded cushion, studying his struggling face. The care lines attempting to hide behind the patchy, unshaven beard. An asymmetry of the nose. An accident, or a fight? The way he wet his lips, searching for the words and the neck scratch when he didn't find them. Yet the kind of face, a kind, affable face she trusted. When and if he asked, her answer was ready.

Tom pointed at the box, "I may not get the virus, Yasamin."

"Like ever? Why?" She asked with a tilt of the head.

"When I was fourteen, three of us boys used to watch the big transports take off and land at Brize Norton airfield. We'd cycle from the village and stand at the perimeter fence. Country kids—you know. Aircraft mad, I was—recognized all the 'planes by sight. One day in the summer vacation, a jeep rolled past, stopped, and this Military Policemen came over. We almost shit ourselves. He asked if we wanted to go on the base. A dream come true for us and we climbed in his jeep like a shot. The security detail saluted us through and we got taken to a gigantic hangar where they had a huge model of the base. A doctor took a mouth swab, for security, he said, and we got to go inside a real VC10 re-fueler. On the way out, he gave us each a box. We wrote our names in the window, and they kept them in the guardhouse. If we returned every day for a week, and took a tablet from the box, he promised he'd show us a different aircraft. Each visit he took us to a tiny room which filled with a mist—disinfectant, he told us. Afterwards, he took a mouth swab, and a jeep took us back to our bikes. We were his buddies and sworn to silence. He told us if we came back on the last day of August, he'd arrange for us to go up in a 'plane, but we must show together. Well, of course, we did. I remember every moment, flying for the first time. That last time, before we rode home, Toby Rawles asked the guard if we could keep the boxes. He shrugged, checked his box was empty and waved us away. Both Toby and Nigel's boxes were empty, but mine wasn't. Open it, Yasamin."

'Thomas Lopez' she read from the card in its slot. The lid stuck, so she held the box on the table to lever it off with her fingernails. A creased and yellowed paper lay on top of unmarked double foil packing. Yasamin lifted and counted them, then unfolded the frail yellowed photocopied paper.

'United States Armed Forces UCC'

"What's that?" she asked.

"Unified Combatant Command, a joint force of air and army. USEUCOM on the box shows it's the UK wing." he explained.

'Experimental broad spectrum anti-viral. Preliminary release for MIL laboratory testing. NOT CLEARED FOR HUMAN USE. 100mg x 21.'

"You took these?" she asked, astounded. Tom nodded. "The bastards—you might have died. You were just a kid."

"A sick one, too. Caught everything going around. Missed a lot of school because of it."

"Tell me, you haven't had a cold since, have you?" she asked.

"Or the flu, or, it seems, Covid-19," he said, "not even a sniffle."

Yasamin sat absorbing what he was suggesting. "You want me to take this twenty-year-old expired experimental military drug that's not cleared for human use and I bet never was."

"Look at the back of the foil—see those tiny numbers?"

"My god. 1995. You must be mad. What happened to Toby and the other one?"

"Nigel died in a motorbike accident three years later. I don't know where Toby is or even whether he's still alive. The cold war politics ended with Gorbachev in 1991, but the military never trusted the new lot. Law says they couldn't test this shit in the US, so they tested it on us. There was a rumor about other places and a reporter once came to the village, but we said nothing."

Yasamin stared at the foil pack and shook her head. Die taking these, or die later without them?

"Hang on. Twenty-one? Where's the other seven?"

Tom's head dropped, and Yasamin noticed his shoulders shake. She reached out a hand, and he squeezed hard.

"I loved her so much, Yasamin. She was everything to me." He took a deep breath and Yasamin saw the man's raw emotion. "Went to care for her mother but when she came back, it was too late—the CV had her central nervous system."

Yasamin had no symptoms, and he wanted her to live. Why didn't he say so?

"You want me to start them tonight?"

"We found each other, Yasamin. There's just time for us. I hope you can be my wife. I want to take you away from here, before the rats bring the plague or the water runs out. London's finished. There's a place out in the country, you'd love it there. I'd never do it alone, I'm too old, but with you, it'd be easy. Have the box, take them or not, I won't ask."

"You're offering me life when I have only death. Love when I have nothing. I don't care how old you are, can't you see? It's you, the man that cared yesterday and cares even more tonight. I can't ever replace your wife, but I can make you happy. Now stand up and kiss me before I scream.

They hung onto each other in the after-first-kiss rapture. "Made a mess of that," he said.