Runaway World

Mercy Dash

     "New Philadelphia?" said Philip doubtfully. "No, we can't go there. Forget it."

     He, Andrew, Lungelo and Valentina were sitting around a table in the habitat's recreation room. All the others were in their rovers, in bed. Feeling miserable and wondering if they would be dead before the end of the week. David's condition was the worst, not surprising as he was the youngest, and Jasmine had barely left his side despite her own sickly condition. She gave every sign of thinking that the disease was her fault despite being told over and again that the dead cow hadn't been the source of the bacterium. She spent a lot of time talking to Joe over a private channel and Andrew hoped that the young man had some success in getting her to see sense.

     The second most serious case was Izindaba on account of the wound to her leg. Andrew could sympathise as his injured hand was also red and inflamed. The body's response to injury seemed to favour the disease, gave it an environment in which he could flourish and Andrew was only still functional because of the large dose of painkillers he was taking. He could only imagine what Lungelo's daughter was going through right now, but the fear and desperation on the father's face told him that it wasn't good.

     "I don't see that we have any choice," Andrew said. "We need antibiotics and they're the only place within a week's driving that may have some."

     "We're carrying a highly infectious, deadly disease," Philip pointed out. "If they catch it from us hundreds might die. Thousands. We cannot be responsible for that."

     "We'll warn them, of course," said Andrew. "We'll radio ahead, tell them our condition. Tell them to take precautions. We'll wait to be invited in."

     "What if there's no reply to our messages?" asked Valentina. "Suppose we wait outside for hours while our condition worsens. We decide the city must be empty after all, we go in looking for antibiotics and it turns out there are people in there after all."

     "If we have to go in uninvited we'll go in surface suits," Andrew told her. "The cold will kill any bacteria on the surface of the suits and we'll keep them on all the time we're in there." He looked around at the others and they nodded one by one.

     "We should leave warning messages in our rovers as well," said Valentina. "In case someone comes visiting while we're away. They've only got to breathe the air and they're infected. We need to warn them not to."

     "If we leave antiseptic grenades set to go off after we're all out of the rover, everything inside will be sterilised," said Andrew. "There'll be no chance of them being infected."

     "There's always a chance," said Valentina, however. "There only has to be one little nook or cranny the gas can't get to. We leave warning messages. We have to." Andrew nodded his agreement.

     "Any way to tell if this really is 14-b?" asked Philip. "Not some less deadly bug?"

     "Without a DNA sequencer? No," Andrew replied. "We just have to assume the worst, unless you want to to take the biggest gamble of your life. And not just your life on the line but Joe's too. In all the years we've known each other, you've never struck me as a gambling man."

     "I'm not, but New Philly is a gamble too. To us as well as to them." He rubbed his temple as if his head was hurting, which it probably was. He dismissed the discomfort with a visible effort. "We have no idea who's living there now or how they'll react to outsiders. The fact that they've made no attempt to contact us does not bode well, though. I think there's a very great danger that they'll take us prisoner and interrogate us for information about New London. How long will you hold out when you see your children being threatened with torture?"