Part One – Southend-on-Sea
Chapter One
Day 3Wednesday 14th September 2022
5:34pm
Southend Victoria Police Station
The dimming lights flickered in the open room, lit only by that and the setting autumn sun, giving the area a warm yellow glow that would last for a couple more hours, yet. A young man exited the stairwell and strode over to the centre desk, in his arms a lengthy black Crombie jacket, brown fur flecked across the ends of the sleeves, indicating the owner of the jacket spent time amongst cats. The man was of average height, and was looking around the circular room in dismay at the absence of the usual hustle and bustle of a busy workplace. His attention was drawn to an older police constable coughing into clasped hands as he headed off down one of the narrow walkways to the adjoining building. Deciding he was in no need of immediate assistance, the twenty-nine year-old stepped toward the uniformed man behind the desk, who in turn looked up at this new face.
"Bit empty today, isn't it?" the man enquired, looking out of the automatic glass doors at an ambulance parked outside the library down the road, evidently tending to someone in need of their assistance inside. Even as he watched another drove past and went screaming down the road, its siren blaring.
"Yeah," the desk sergeant started, his wiry brown hair a tangled mess, "we lost four Monday, six yesterday and another five today, as well as an extra two having to leave during work hours! All with this bug that's going about." He chuckled to himself, making his nametag (that read 'Sergeant Richards') bob up and down with his heaving chest. "Talk about understaffed! Even I'm not supposed to be on-duty today. Covering for Sergeant Hussein. What about you, sir? Headed home?"
The inspector turned his attention back fully to Richards, still mesmerised by the cacophony of various types of sirens being heard in the distance. "Not home just yet, sergeant. Meeting a friend at the pub, as we haven't had much of a chance to catch up lately, what with everything that's going on here, at the moment."
"Ha, very true, sir. You're now in charge of that Serious Crimes thingy, aren't you?"
The superior, yet decidedly younger, officer laughed. "Yes, I am. Detective Inspector Christopher Morgan." Chris extended his hand for a shake. "Transferred over from Leigh just yesterday."
The sergeant returned the shake, looking at the inspector through his curiously green eyes, smiling a small smile at Morgan. "Well, good to meet you, DI Morgan. No doubt I'll see you tomorrow, then?"
"No doubt, my good sergeant. No doubt." Chris finished signing himself out of the station, placing the cheap biro back on the desk all visitors to and workers of the station must pass through, looking up to smile and wink at this new acquaintance. "If I don't decide to pull a sickie myself."
"Have a good evening, sir."
"You too." Morgan turned on his heel, donning his Crombie jacket as he walked towards the doors, both opening automatically to allow him to leave, with Sergeant Richards smiling as he watched the back of Chris disappear around the corner before returning to updating the papers he had been working on before his welcome interruption, despite his growing annoyance at the incessant coughing of the constable down the corridor.
DI Morgan scurried around the pockets of his dark blue jeans, struggling to grasp his car keys as he walked across the police station's courtyard, finding the crisp autumn air welcoming upon his prematurely matured face.
"Bugger!" Chris exclaimed as he dropped the keys he finally managed to find. Just as he was rising, brown and red leaves billowing across the damp concrete surface of the car park, he noticed yet another ambulance tending to a couple of unconscious figures across the road, but with only one paramedic on the scene; the number of RTCs being reported in the last couple of days had nigh on crippled the National Health Service's emergency responses; although nothing had been declared as of yet to the public, it was clear something was severely wrong. All across the country incidents such as that taking place across the road to Morgan were becoming more and more commonplace, and even those on the news were struggling to hold themselves back in their addresses to the public. However, the British public was already making its own assumptions about the growing tension in the country, with social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter flooded with panicked status updates and irreverent conspiracy theories of diabolical magnitudes. The government had been considering shutting the websites down, in the hopes it would calm the populace. At any rate, it didn't affect Christopher, who participated in them as little as he could.
He pushed the key into its socket and climbed into the four-door saloon, carefully sliding himself onto the leather chair, pleased with the relative comfort of the vehicle. Better than that bloody Ford of Daniel's, he thought inwardly to himself, deciding that Southend Library was in dire need of some maintenance work as the engine growled to life, providing the car with a pleasant humming undertone as its systems came online. Chris tapped some of the buttons on the dash, prompting the activation of the on-board phone/MP4 player hybrid system – a recent addition to his own car – that had become commonplace in modern vehicular transport. His own Virgin-brand Phone-Music Hybrid Device (a PMH) was always viewed as a distraction by the young detective, but he had learnt to appreciate some of its more useful avenues, primarily that of communication. He opened the glove box to retrieve a pair of old leather driving gloves, stretching them around his fingers as the system came to life.
"TWO NEW MESSAGES." The machine read to him in a staunch male voice, one from Chris' father and one from Joshua.
"Play all." He stated firmly, hoping desperately the PMH would finally recognise his voice; even in this day and age, technology wasn't what it promised to be. "Piece of crap," he said, glaring at the red ERROR symbol displayed across the bright screen, manually tapping it to open the communiqués, that same computerised voice replaying the written messages to him.
"FIRST MESSAGE, RECEIVED TODAY, AT 2:34PM, FROM CONTACT; 'DAD': Hi, son. Can't make it tonight, as I don't feel too well. Glad you're managing to find some free time, finally. See you tomorrow, maybe? END OF MESSAGE ONE. SECOND MESSAGE, RECEIVED TODAY, AT 5:42PM, FROM CONTACT; 'WONG, JOSHUA'. Hey, we still on for the Cricketer's, right? I'm here already, and was just making sure you hadn't got this bug everyone else seems to. See you soon? END OF MESSAGE TWO."
Should be fine, Morgan thought, pressing the delete option on the touch screen. "Call…" he spoke slowly but loudly, trying once again to get the PMH to register his words, "Wong, Joshua." The acceptance tone sounded, indicating his victory over the infernal device, only to be replaced by the dialling tone as he waited for his old friend to pick up, himself refusing to start the engine until he had had his conversation. Chris sat back a little in the comfy leather chair.
Bloody answer phone. "Alright, I'll leave a message: leaving the station now, and will be there very shortly." He sighed at his futile attempts at trying to bend technology to his whims. "Just driving over now, mate."
There were far more marked police cars in their bays than usual, as to be expected, given this sudden-hitting illness so many were coming down with. At first, those ill would show symptoms via coughing fits that became less and less sporadic, with the individual coughing and spluttering more often than not. These flu-like effects continued with inflamed glands around the body and severe fevers, with those suffering complaining of extreme fluctuations in body temperature, and hormone levels disturbing to any physician. Furthering on from this, the patient's skin would become pale, somewhat mottled, with a grey hue to their aura, a view not dissimilar to that of plague-sufferers. The list of complaints would go on: painful bowel movements, extreme nausea, uncontrollable itching, fits, sensitivity to noise… some even had to be committed to specialist wards in hospitals, with curious growths developing across the hands, feet and other areas of the body less than polite to discuss in public. A few even behaved with rabid-like symptoms, resulting in some minor police action in hotspots across the land. Whatever this illness, plague, disease was, there seemed to be no slowing it, and Detective Inspector Morgan was not blind to this fact as he sat in his brand-new BMW (that had made a sizeable dent in his reasonably-stocked bank account), swearing at the slow-moving traffic, the stuck on blue emergency lights of an improvised emergency vehicle at the roundabout ahead, just within his eye line. Numbers flitted across the heads-up display of his car's windscreen, dictating various traffic laws to the bemused driver as he grew ever-closer to the car in front, distressing him with the estimated distance till collision in bold red letters in the bottom right corner of his vision. This case was no worse than one a colleague had told him about earlier in the day, who spoke of a whole area in Basildon being shut down, and a small riot ensuing in the vicinity, adding to the chaos.
As if people would have the common decency not to keep calm during a crisis. Chris silently mused to himself, flicking the radio on, the Southend Radio logo appearing on the PMH before the music began to play, clearly picked by his friend Daniel for his radio show. "Wonder how the old bastard's doing," he said aloud to no one in particular, his hands gripping tightly the black and brown leather wheel, caressing the comfortable indentations for his fingers. "Been too long since we've sat down an- BLOODY HELL!" The sudden exclamation met with the skidding of tyres as his car stopped abruptly, narrowly avoiding a collision with the vehicle that had swerved off in front, nearly knocking an old-aged pensioner over in the process. "Christ's sake!"
He was about to note the number plate down when the car reversed suddenly, climbing the verge on the opposite side, going straight over it, and pulled off down the opposite road in the other direction, Chris only getting half the digits down as he radioed a message back to the station, deciding this was not going to get in the way of his evening.