Read Online Death is a Welcome Guest: Plague Times Trilogy 2 by Louise Welsh - Free Book Online Page B

so. She and Rhona would be fine, he reassured himself. London was an overcrowded airport terminal, jammed with travellers and the people who serviced them. The infection was bound to cut a swathe through the capital, but the Orkney Islands were at the butt end of the world and surrounded by sea. However hard the city was hit, the Orkneys would survive.
    But what about tourists? an unwelcome voice in his head whispered. What about the cruise ships and twice-daily ferries? The flights direct from Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow that connect with flights from London and beyond?
    ‘Where will you go when you get out?’ he asked Jeb, to shut the voice up.
    He expected the other man to tell him to mind his own business but Jeb said, ‘Fucked if I know. Guess I’ll cross that bridge when the time comes.’ He bared his teeth; half snarl, half grin. ‘If I haven’t burned it already. You?’
    ‘Up north, home.’
    Jeb looked at him, his expression curious. ‘Will they take you in?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Lucky you.’
    ‘Let’s hope so.’
    Jeb stopped and raised a hand in the air, silently telling Magnus to freeze. He cocked his head to one side. The pose reminded Magnus of the games of cowboys and Indians he and his cousins had played. Hugh had always been the tracker shaman, able to spot the enemy (for some reason the cowboys had always been the enemy) from miles away. Usually the memory would have raised a smile, but Magnus had heard the footsteps that had stopped Jeb in his tracks.
    ‘In here.’ Jeb pointed to a half-glass door marked Education . He unlocked the door and Magnus slipped in after him, closing it quietly. The room had been designed to allow tutors to be on their own with inmates, while also allowing screws to keep an eye on what was happening inside. Prisoners’ paintings covered one wall. Perhaps the art teacher encouraged self-portraits, or maybe the inmates used each other as models. Bullet heads and staring eyes sent out blank challenges from the wall, fronts that must not be breached for fear of what might lie behind them. The prison featured too, its high walls and vertical bars looming aggressively towards the viewer. It was how the place made you feel, like it was alive and biding its time before it crushed you.
    Jeb crouched beneath the pictures, his back against the wall, the Taser cradled in his hands. Magnus hunkered down beside him, under a large Dolly Mixture coloured painting of the Disney castle, complete with Mickey, Minnie and their weird chums. Some prisoner had painted it as a present for his small child, Magnus supposed. The thought depressed him and he wondered again what waited beyond the gates of the prison. Had the sickness taken hold on the outside, or had Pentonville been abandoned in some crude attempt at quarantine?
    Jeb’s breaths were keeping time with the approaching footsteps in the corridor beyond.
    Magnus whispered, ‘There might be safety in numbers.’
    ‘Not for me.’
    Fear had drained the blood from Jeb’s face and tightened his features. He looked like a medieval church effigy carved by a mason with one eye on the old gods.
    ‘What did you do?’ The words slipped out before Magnus could stop them.
    Jeb shook his head. ‘Not what you’re thinking.’
    ‘You don’t know what I’m thinking.’
    ‘Don’t I?’
    He was right. A series of tabloid headlines were riffling through Magnus’s mind, the kind of stuff that made you lay the newspaper face down. He started to get to his feet but Jeb sank a hand into his shoulder, keeping him there.
    ‘They’ll know you’re a VP from the colour of your tracksuit. We’re branded in here, remember? If they find us, our only chance is to attack first. Don’t wait to see if they’re going to play nice.’ Jeb’s voice was so low Magnus had to strain to hear it. ‘They won’t. If they smile, smile back, then hit them as hard as you can and run.’
    The footsteps were close now. Jeb flattened himself against the wall