The Plague of Blood

Ch 5 - The Disease

Chapter Five

The Disease

The disease began with an excruciating headache and a high fever. The victim's face became mask-like and strange and the whites of their eyes turned red. They would vomit and defecate blood; their noses would begin to bleed and wouldn't stop. Small, starlike hemorrhages, 'petechiae', would burst on their skin. At the end of the disease blood would flow from every orifice until they died of shock.

Some of them survived. Out of every ten who fell ill, one or two would never progress past the fever, vomiting and diarrhea. For them it was like a particularly bad case of the flu - they were weak and dehydrated when the fever broke, but had no permanent damage.

There were seventy-eight people at St. Augustine's in the third week of summer holiday, and fourteen by the end of the fifth.

**

The infirmary smelled of blood and death. Some of the bodies had been dragged out to the groundskeeper's cottage but the stench remained behind in the cots stained with excrement and dark vomit.

Marcus, the oldest student, was kneeling by Mrs. Callaghan's cot. She was the last adult alive in the school, and she was not improving. There were tears in Marcus's eyes as he leaned over her.

"But what do we do?" he begged her. "Please, I don't know what to do!" His voice, a mix of soft, cultured private school Queen's-English and lilting West African, was raw with desperation. He had been quick to recover from the illness and had taken charge as the teachers fell ill. Some of the younger students stood behind him, wide-eyed and frightened.

Mrs. Callaghan was already deep in delirium and as Marcus pleaded with her she muttered and moaned to herself, thrashing her head back and forth. The flesh of her face was sunken grotesquely from dehydration and burst blood vessels had destroyed the part of her brain that controlled facial muscles, leaving her with a strange, mask-like expression. Her nose had been bleeding steadily for hours, soaking the front of her dress.

Suddenly she seemed to wake from her stupor. She turned and grabbed feebly at Marcus's sleeve as if she had some important piece of knowledge to impart. Droplets of blood stood at the edges of her eyelids, and the whites of her eyes were red with hemorrhages. Her gaze was jerking back and forth, but she trained it on Marcus as she held his sleeve.

He leaned close, gripping the side of the cot. Petra, standing behind him, saw that the thin mattress under the teacher sagged with blood.

Mrs. Callaghan opened her mouth and vomited toward the floor. The vomit was a deep, viscous red with black specks like coffee grounds. Marcus let go and fell back with a shout, scrambling away from the cot. He got unsteadily to his feet, wiping specks of vomit from his face. Mrs. Callaghan lay back, moaning weakly. Strings of dark vomit streaked her chin and pillow.

Marcus put his head on his knees and began to sob. For the past three days he had slept only for stretches of fifteen minutes, falling asleep where he sat in the infirmary to be woken with the news of a new death.

From the other side of the room came a thin, tremulous cry. Poppy, a fifth year, had been deep in the fever for three days. It was too early to tell if she would survive.

One of the younger students put a tentative hand on Marcus's shoulder. "Poppy's crying," she said, worried.

Marcus wiped his face and sat up. "Try to give her some water," he told her. His voice was thick from crying. He schooled his face back into a steady, determined expression, and he could see that the younger students were visibly reassured by his show of strength. He stood up and made his rounds of the cots. Mrs. Callaghan had fallen into a stupor and her nose had stopped bleeding. She'd be dead soon. Only Poppy and Wilson, a boy from Marcus's class, were still sick.

He sent a few of the younger students around him to fill more buckets with water from the stream in the field next to the school. They scattered, relieved to have direction.

Marcus leaned against the wall and slid down until he was sitting against it. He rested his forehead on his knees. There was so much that had to be done, and no one to tell him how; he depth of the responsibility swept over him, making it impossible to breath. He wanted nothing more than for someone more knowledgable than he to take all decisions out of his hands and tell him what to do. His eyes suddenly filled with tears, and he pressed the heels of his hands to them for a moment, willing himself to stop crying. He felt unhinged, as if he could break apart at any moment.

But there were things to be done. He remembered something his father had told him once, about being in a crisis situation: you must always be the calmest one in the room.

Taking a deep shuddering breath, he stood up and tucked in his filthy shirt, scrubbed his eyes, straightened his shoulders. There would be lots of time for crying later, when all this was over.