Grace wandered slowly across the chaotic quayside, almost serenely, like some slack-jawed tourist marvelling at a theme-park recreation of Armageddon, untouched, unaffected by it all and amazed at the spectacle around her.
She finally came to a halt and found herself looking up at the daunting structure of the vast Chinese aircraft carrier, a glowing leviathan of endlessly stacked decks and floodlights that shone down unrelenting on the Southampton quayside like some visiting extraterrestrial mother ship.
Dimly, she could hear voices, gunshots and screaming. Dimly, she sensed movement all around her. Dimly, she felt the thud of a stray bullet tear through her thigh. Nothing to concern her. The wound would coagulate, a thick resinous layer would coat and fix the fractured femur within hours; the skin would reknit. She had no idea whether the shot had been aimed at her specifically or meant for no one in particular.
It didn’t really matter anyway.
Behind her, she knew the thin white line of soldiers was being overwhelmed by the thick tidal wave of carriers. Their guns were useless weapons, as ineffective as trying to swat at a cloud of mosquitos with a baseball bat.
Nearby, a group of tested-and-passed evacuees were being hustled towards the loading ramp by a mixed group of Australian and Chinese soldiers.
The last, lucky few.
They hurried towards her, then either side of her, as if she weren’t even there, scrambling desperately to board the ramp to safety.
She could see that the carrier was beginning to move excruciatingly slowly, not exactly a quick getaway vehicle. She could hear klaxons wailing, warning amber lights flashing and spinning either side of the ramp. It was beginning to slide and bump along the concrete, nudging boxes and crates into the water as it inched along.
She was ushered on to the ramp with the others and felt the harsh skittering vibration of the grinding metal walkway beneath her feet. She could feel the transmitted deeper vibration of the ship’s engines back-pedalling furiously away from the shore, turning the water around the vast grey hull into a boiling white froth.
This was not how it was supposed to go. But then she wasn’t in charge. No one was really in charge. She was one of many, part of an enormous community, a family even – everyone wanting the same end-goal, but with differing opinions on how they should get there.
She’d wanted the face-to-face encounter to be a calm and measured one: Grace speaking on behalf of the virus to some person in charge who would represent what was left of mankind.
A meeting of civilizations.
A peaceful discussion of intentions, of what the future held. She’d been hoping to present herself to someone In. Charge. Of. Things. To calmly reassure him, or her, that, yes, she was infected, but that, no, she wasn’t about to explode into a million little bugs.
She wanted to talk. That was all.
She’d had a plan, not even a plan . . . just a hope that she could reassure those people left alive on this planet that they had absolutely nothing to fear. That, yes, change can be scary, change can look scary. But ultimately, if one doesn’t change, one slowly dies. That there really was nothing to worry about . . .
Despite the ‘messy’ appearance of transition from one form of life to another, it was nothing to be afraid of. In fact, it was something truly wonderful.
Life . . . was changing.
Life . . . was being reinvented.
Life . . . was being Reborn.
TO BE CONTINUED . . .