Read Online Fourth Horseman by Kate Thompson - Free Book Online Page A

there were scares and all the dogs in the street would be locked up for a while, but I never knew anyone who got it. My mother did, though. When she was young, in her village. There was a woman who died from it. No one knew how she got it because she never told anyone that she’d been bitten. She might have been afraid of the injections they give you, or she might have been too poor to pay for them. By the time anyone knew she was ill it was too late to save her. My mother says she can still hear her screams, when she was dying. It has haunted her all her life.’
    We were all silent for a while after that, imagining the horror of it. Dad came wandering by, a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other, taking the gentle stroll around the yards that constituted his daily exercise. He ought to have been sixteen stone, the way he carried on, but he was one of those people who just never put on weight. When he was out of earshot I lay down on my elbow in the warm grass. Sunlight filtering into the deep green shadows beneath the trees caught the wings of flying insects. Tiny particles of life.
    ‘I don’t understand why viruses exist,’ said Alex. ‘I mean, that rabies virus. It’s incredible when you think about it. The way it spreads itself. What it does to its victims.’
    ‘Its hosts,’ I said pedantically.
    ‘Whatever,’ he said. ‘But it spreads by making its host bite the next one. How does it make them do that? How did it learn to do that?’
    Neither of us could answer. He went on: ‘I mean, everything has a purpose, doesn’t it? Even bacteria can be useful, eating up dead things, making things decay so they don’t litter up the planet. But what use is a virus?’
    ‘I don’t think everything is useful,’ said Javed. ‘What use is a mosquito? Or a snake?’
    ‘Useful to who, anyway?’ I said. ‘You sound like you think there’s some grand design or something. Like God worked everything out to suit us.’
    ‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Alex. ‘I’m just amazed that something so tiny, something that can’t feel or think, can be so sophisticated. How did it figure out how to make people bite each other?’
    ‘It’s more than that, isn’t it?’ said Javed. ‘Any creature that gets rabies becomes terrified of water as well. The other name for it is hydrophobia.’
    ‘I know,’ said Alex. ‘It’s mind-boggling when you think about it. I just can’t figure out why something like that has come into existence. What’s the point of it?’
    ‘What’s the point of anything?’ said Javed. ‘What’s the point of those flies in the trees? What’s the point of us?’
    ‘Every kind of life is the same, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘It’s main aim is just to reproduce itself.’
    Alex seemed quietly shocked by that, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable myself with what I was saying. But I went on anyway, thinking aloud. ‘It’s the basis of everything, isn’t it? Even plants. They grow, they flower, they produce seeds and they die. They have developed fantastic ways of inviting insects to help them spread their seeds but it doesn’t mean they sat down and thought about how to do it. They just evolved like that. Survival of the fittest. It’s the same with everything. Insects, animals, people. Why should viruses be any different?’
    ‘Do you really believe that?’ Alex asked. ‘That our only reason for being on the planet is to reproduce ourselves and then die?’
    I shrugged. ‘Have you got any better ideas?’
    ‘There are loads of purposes,’ said Alex.
    ‘Like?’
    ‘Like helping other people, or like what Dad’s doing: helping other species. And then there’s … there’s …’
    ‘What?’ I said. ‘Cricket? Aikido?’
    I felt mean, as though I was engaging in a kind of mental bullying. But Javed was thinking about it and found the words he was looking for at last.
    ‘I suppose helping people isn’t really a purpose for being on the planet. Even if you believe