O-Negative: Extinction (25 page)

“I have no idea Lila.  I didn’t even know we had any.  But we shouldn’t get our hopes up. This message could be entirely automated.  Let me try the web address.  She typed the address into the default web browser on her phone but whichever way she entered the address it came back with the message ‘IP address unknown.  Please contact your service provider’.  She gave up and lay back on the bed.

“Lila it’s not working.  I’m afraid we’re going to have to decide what to do ourselves.  I think we should try to get over to my parents’ house in the suburbs.  I have to find out if my mother is alive or not.  The only trouble is the house is 10 km out of town.  Can you drive Lila?”

“I’m afraid I can’t Mistress.  I came to the Kingdom when I was 18 and never got the chance to learn back home and obviously here it’s not possible….”

“Well neither do I but maybe it’s time we learnt?  Are you up for trying to make it over to my mother’s house?”

“Of course Mistress.  There’s no way I want to stay here on my own.”

“We should probably take some water or something with us in case we have to walk.  Can you get some from the kitchen while I put on some more suitable clothes?”

Lila looked a bit worried at venturing out into the flat on her own but she got up and went out while Javeira removed her long shimmering green dress.  Perfect for lounging around in with her husband at home but not very practical for driving or walking across town.  She called after Lila “And Lila please stop calling me Mistress.  Javeira will be fine.  We’re both in this together now for better or worse”.  She heard Lila call back “Yes Mist...err .Javeira”.

She put on a white long-sleeved top and a pair of jeans.  She also threw her oldest abaya over her arm.  Much as she would have liked to have left it in the flat she wasn’t sure what she was going to find out on the street and the last thing she wanted was to be arrested for not wearing the proper clothing.  Thinking of Lila she also pulled another abaya from her wardrobe to give to her.

Lila had put some bottles of water and a couple of packs of biscuits into a shopping bag and they wordlessly went back into the living room to pay their last respects.  She closed Rashid’s eyes reverently and gave him a last kiss on each cheek and then repeated the process with Rahmaniah, Salem and lastly Melita.  She noticed Lila lingered for an extra moment or two over the body of Salem but then that was it.  They then left the flat with tears in their eyes.  She told herself they would report the deaths to the authorities so that they might be given a proper burial but she didn’t feel at all confident about there being any authorities to report their deaths too.  It was with sorrowful hearts that she and Lila began the descent to the ground floor.

They didn’t come across any bodies in the emergency stairwell.  The stairs were rarely used given there were modern lifts all over the building.  But when they reached the lobby there were several bodies lying in various positions around the reception area.  The glass entrance doors remained closed but contained several ‘creature’ sized holes.  At the sight of these and the dead security guards it had taken her several minutes to convince Lila that they had to try and go outside.  In fact this was easier said than done.  With the power out they couldn’t get out of the main doors which were electronically operated.  They’d had to smash the emergency release on the small side door used by delivery men before they could exit the building.

When they got outside the normally busy street was eerily quiet.  Though there were several cars out on the road they weren’t moving.  Some had their doors open and bodies of people hanging out of them.  Others had locked their doors but to no avail, circular holes were visible in the sides of doors or on the windscreens.  There was no sign of any living person.

After further moments of indecision and an almost overwhelming desire to go back up to her flat she eventually strode across to one of the cars with the body of a Middle Eastern man hanging out of it.  With Lila’s help she pulled the body out and laid it on the floor in the middle of the road.  The man looked so peaceful in his suit and tie that she felt a stab of jealousy that he no longer needed to worry about anything - in this life at least. 

The car the man had been driving was a white Nissan jeep.  The keys were in the ignition and after they had both got in she started the engine.  The car immediate leapt forwards about three feet before stalling and coming to a rest. 

“I think you need to put it into neutral Mistress.”

“Yes thank you Lila I realise that….now.”

Pressing down with one foot on the larger of the two pedals, which she assumed was the brake, she slid the gear lever into neutral and tried the ignition again.  The car started and remained idling over this time without leaping forwards.  She repeated her previous manoeuvre with the pedal and slid the gear lever forwards into drive as she’d seen Salem do  the car began inching forwards slowly.  She switched her foot away from the brake and on to the accelerator.  Although there was an immediate jerk forward the car continued to move forward and began to pick up speed.  She immediately took her foot off the accelerator and back on to the brake bringing the car to a screeching halt.

“Not as easy as it looks Lila if I’m honest”.

She gently put her foot back on to the accelerator and the car moved off again.  She let the speedometer get up to 15 kph an hour before easing off the pedal slightly.  They were away.  She maintained this sedate pace for a while until she got used to the sensation of driving as opposed to being driven.  When she felt slightly more comfortable she increased the speed marginally.  Fortunately she knew the route to her parents’ house and so her main problem was having to weave in and around the stationary vehicles and the occasional body scattered across the road.  She thanked God it was a Friday which in the Kingdom was the main day off for people.  If this had been a working day the road would have been filled with far more cars and she probably wouldn’t have been able to drive down the road as she was doing.  As they reached the edge of the urban area and just prior to entering the on ramp to the duel carriage way leading to the suburb where her mother lived a Pakistani man dressed in blue overalls suddenly ran out of one of the office building’s they were passing.  Lila in the passenger seat screamed and she swerved almost rammed into a street light, clipping the kerb hard before pulling the car back on to the road.  For a moment she thought about stopping but instead pushed her foot down on the accelerator and sped away.  It wasn’t so much that she was afraid of the sight of another human than it was that she didn’t think she could take having to converse or assist someone else when it was all that she could do to keep herself and Lila from disintegrating into quivering wrecks.  Though the man made an attempt to run after them he soon vanished from the rear view mirror.  On the duel carriageway there was more evidence of vehicles being attacked by the metallic creatures.  There were several mini pile ups that she had to negotiate her way round and on one occasion could only get past by scraping the side of the car up against the left hand crash barrier. 

Now they were up on a more elevated roadway they had a better view of the city and there was evidence of other survivors.  They spotted a woman in full abaya and hijab leading a small child out of a side entrance of a shopping mall and further on two men using sticks to smash open the doors of a branch of the Alinma bank.  Why they were trying to get hold of paper money she wasn’t sure.  Money was going to be worthless at the moment, it would be food and water that people needed and perhaps access to power to allow them to cook or operate the electrical devices they’d all become so reliant on.

A couple of kilometres from the turn off for her parents’ house they saw two vehicles coming the other way.  Their paths were separated by the concrete barrier between the lanes and so she slowed down slightly.  The first car was being driven by a Saudi man wearing a dish dash and sunglasses the second by an Indian in a blue checked shirt.  The Saudi brought his vehicle to a stop and put his head out of the window to shout over to them.

“Salem alaik um.  Are you ok ladies?  Do you need any assistance?”

The words seemed to be stated in good faith but she didn’t feel like letting her guard down and so she didn’t stop completely as she let her window down.

“Peace be upon you sir.  Though we are much confused about what has happened we are heading to our relatives in the suburbs.  Blessings upon you for asking.  I wish you well”.

At that the Saudi man nodded his head and waved sympathetically.  “Blessings and fortune upon you ladies.  Please make sure you are inside come sun set.  I don’t think night-time will be a good time to be out on the road.  Allah Allah uh Akbar”.

He then drove onwards and she drove off in the other direction.  She raised her window again so that the air conditioning could continue to keep the interior of the car at an ambient temperature and thought about what the man had said.

“He’s right Lila I don’t think I’d like to be out at night in the City.  Whatever we find at my mother’s house we might well be better off there than in the flat.  Those of us who have survived are going to be shocked to start with but then despair will begin to set in and desperate people do desperate things.  We’re going to need to keep our wits about us in the coming days.”

“I agree Mist…err Javeira we’ve probably made the right decision,  I can see that a number of fires have started back in the City.”

She slowed the car and turned to look through the rear windscreen and saw several plumes of smoke rising from the cityscape that now lay back in the distance. 

“God its beginning to look like it’s been bombed or something.  I only hope whatever authority remains can keep some semblance of order.”

She turned back to the road and shortly afterwards pulled to the right on to the off ramp leading to the exclusive suburb built for the richest families in Jeddah.

As in the city itself there were several cars simply stopped in the centre of the main thoroughfare and bodies lying on the walkways.  But when they drove down the small high street the only signs of bodies were bloody drag marks.  It was then that she saw a group of people including several women gathered around a table outside a Starbucks.  Though most were wearing their hijabs one of the younger women had dispensed with hers.  She realised she recognised her from one of the parties held at her flat in the city.  On impulse she stopped the car.

“Lila I know that woman, I’m going to go and talk with her but I’m going to leave the car running.  Are you ok to stay in the car?”

“Of course Javeira.  Please be careful.”

“I will”.  She got out of the car and walked over to the group who had stopped to look at her with it has to said with some surprise.  After all it wasn’t often they saw a woman get out of the driving seat of a car without her abaya on.  She stopped about 20 paces from the group and called out.

“Salam alaikum.  Peace be upon you all.  Salamah it’s Javeira Al Bajubair do you remember me.”

The woman not wearing the hijab looked slightly startled to hear her name but then recognising Javeira made her way over to where she was standing.

“Javeira peace be upon you I’m glad to see you.  Are you ok?  Have you driven yourself from the city? What’s the situation like there?  Is that Mani in the car with you?”

“Oh Salamah it is good to see you too, though I wish it were in different circumstances.  No I’m afraid it isn’t Mani. It’s my maid Lila. Rahmaniah’s dead along with Salem and my husband Rashid.”

At these words and in the presence of someone she knew she found herself breaking into tears again. 

“I feel your pain Javeira.  My immediate family are also all dead.  Mama, Papa, Safia and Darius.  Those creatures even killed our cat Ranique.”  Salamah then also started crying and the two of them hugged each other in the middle of the hot dusty street.

“Come and sit with us Javeira we’re just deciding what we should do, you and your maid are welcome to join us.”

“Thank you so much for the offer Salamah it means a great deal to me and we may well do so later but first I need to go and check my mother’s house.  I know it’s unlikely but I am hoping against hope that she has also survived.”

“Ok I understand well you know where we are.  My house is just behind the shopping mall.  Number 1128.  My cousin Latif and I will be there later this evening.  I can’t see us moving from there at least not for the next few days unless something changes.  Did you see the police or the army in Jeddah? How are things there?”