1

  Rex was out of Sertraline, Citalopram and Diazepam so he shook from anger and cried from helplessness. The police were closing in, and his very temper was to blame. He feared that someone at work would soon denounce him as a crazy- his constant irritability raising suspicions. People were afraid of the crazies. They bit. And those bitten bit others. This is how the disease spread. And its inevitable signature was anger.

  The lack of booze intensified his trembling; alcohol would have helped him appear as serene as a sleeping baby, potentially fooling his persecutors. Frustration gnawed at him—his year-old stash was running low. He had tried to cut back, but what was the bloody point if they were coming for him anyway?

  Remaining calm proved difficult as he gazed down from his eleventh-floor penthouse to the street level where the swarm of crazies- savage human monsters- snarled and clawed at each other. He winced and shook even more, hating the dead because he couldn't stand looking at corpses—it gave him panic attacks and bouts of concealed fury. This was exactly the wrong phobia in the time of the plague. He turned away and paced his living room nervously, a room with a view of London's ruins.

  He lived at the St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel, a venerable relic of Victorian splendour in the heart of London. Its red-brick fa?ade, adorned with ornate ironwork, stood as a testament to an era of steam trains when the world seemed in better shape. The hotel formed part of the barrier overlooking Regent's Canal, giving his windows a bird's-eye view of the wasteland where the infected lived. His father had owned the hotel, but Rex had ceased making any money from it and lost contact with his father, who lived on the coast of Kent. Refugee families sent by the government occupied every room. Rex wished to flee London as quickly as possible, but there was nowhere to go except to attempt breaking through to less infected Scotland or Ireland at considerable peril.

  He returned to his lounge chair, his thoughts drifting to the dread of his job and the depths to which he had sunk in society. Once part of the elite, he was now reduced to shovelling dead corpses onto horse carts, sweating from repulsion. Sitting at his lounge table, Rex wore the same clothes from his night shift, their odour a mix of sweat and death. He raised his eyes to the windowpane, gazing longingly at the inaccessible countryside beyond the cityscape. His reverie was abruptly shattered by a loud banging on the door.

  'Rex Blackthorn, open the door!’

  They had come. Rex rose, slipping his illegal pistol from his trouser pocket to behind his back. They wouldn't take him alive.

  He opened the heavy security door to face two young soldiers. They paused, taken aback by his long brown locks framing a face reminiscent of Jesus in Renaissance portraits. A very handsome and commanding figure.

  Striving for composure, Rex asked, 'How can I help you, gentlemen?’

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  'Why the delay?’ The taller one, scruffy with greasy hair and shifty eyes, pushed past Rex. His sloppy uniform and open collar betrayed a lack of discipline. His smaller companion was equally discourteous, both wandering uninvited through the apartment.

  Rex tucked his gun under his loose shirt. The soldiers surveyed the rich interiors where Victorian charm met modern comfort: high ceilings, ornate mouldings, and plush sofas around a fireplace.

  Their eyes locked onto Rex, searching for any sign of anger—a symptom of infection. Perhaps they sought an excuse to quarantine him and loot his Venetian Gothic-worthy home. Despite his nerves, Rex maintained his calm facade, aware of their envy.

  ‘What a place you’ve got here!’ whistled the taller one, after having checked all the five rooms. ‘How the hell have you managed to live here alone, is a mystery,’ he said.

  Rex wanted to remark that it was his father’s hotel and he could do what he wanted, but he bit his tongue and lowered his head. He didn’t want to show anger and act suspiciously despite the fact that he was ready to rip their heads off.

  The soldier eyed him warily. ‘Pack your stuff and let’s go,’ the tall one said, but he did the opposite, he sprawled in Rex ’s favourite armchair, grabbing Rex ’s cigarettes from the small intricate antique table.

  ‘Am I arrested?’

  ‘Why, are you a crazy?’, asked the young soldiers rudely.

  ‘No, I’m not!’

  The tall soldier took a long and hard look at him. Then he shook his head. ‘You have to go back to work. We had a breach last night.’ The soldier glanced at a book on the table, ‘The Hours of Idleness’, by Lord Byron, and he winced with disgust. ‘The times of the idle elites is finished. The time of the workers has come!’

  Rex exhaled the tension at first but then he wondered if the thug would shoot him for reading poetry. By ‘time of the workers’ he was probably referring to the Red Army that swept Europe from Russia and was sitting in waiting on the other side of the English Channel.

  ‘I’ve just finished my night shift, I’m tired,’ Rex said, but he knew it was futile. The military was in charge now.

  The other soldier was raiding the kitchen cupboards, looking for food. He wouldn’t find much there, just a few old potatoes and a bag of flour. They were the standard rations for an adult male. Rex wondered how long it would take them to notice his bottle of gin that he had left on the floor next to the armchair in the lounge. He was afraid of them finding his secret pantry at the back of the kitchen, where he had hidden his stash at the beginning of the pandemic. He knew that once they saw one bottle of booze, they would rip the place apart. In times like these, alcohol and cigarettes were more valuable than money.

  He decided to act, he walked to the door, grabbed his hazmat suit from the peg and swung the door open. 'I'm ready!’ he shouted to the soldiers, albeit careful to keep a polite tone of voice, making them get out reluctantly.

  'I don't know how you managed to keep this place to yourself, mate, but don't worry, we'll be back soon, for a party,’ the tall soldier sneered in Rex 's face as he brushed past him too close for comfort.

  Inside, Rex was boiling. He knew his days in the apartment were numbered.