New Town

Chapter 15

31 shouts. "No!"

Both 50 and I take hold of her arms to prevent her from following her partner over the edge. They must have established some closeness between them.

She sobs but does not resist when we half carry her to unit 1. I will offer what sympathy I can. I will listen to her grief, to her sadness, to her feelings of desertion; there is very little else that I can do. I cannot offer her hope when I myself don't feel any.

Our life, such as it is, goes on. Without the purpose of finding an alternative to Earth to live on, without the support of The World Order, we are lost.

30 is not the only one who decides to plunge to his death. Perhaps predictably 31 follows him within a couple of days. Less expected is the joint plunge of 48 and 49. They had seemed no more distraught than the rest of us.

We have lost six New Borns but we are still staring starvation in the face. The rations are very nearly gone and we do not know whether the supply ship will come again.

And then the sickness starts.

At first there were just one or two coughs to be heard in the canteen. I, and I guess others, thought that it was just a reaction to dust that the storm must have stirred up.

Sickness had been something that we thought we'd left on Earth. We have no qualified doctor, no hospital building, no medicine apart from a few antibiotic syringes for use after injuries.

We cannot dwell on this. There is nothing to worry about, just the odd cough.

And when I see the first New Born who is clearly starting to run a fever I tell myself again - it is nothing to worry about. It's just some sort of short lived virus that will burn itself out.

As more New Borns start coughing and more New Borns run fevers I can't fool myself any more. We are really in trouble and there is nowhere to turn to for help.

At least we have the water supply. I spend my time going from sick person to sick person giving small sips of water to cool them down and stop total dehydration taking over. Of the forty-four New Borns left, sixteen are now sick.

The illness is getting worse. After the coughs and the fever comes the vomiting. We are so crammed together that there is little chance of preventing it from spreading. There is not much hope that any of us will escape infection.

50 has been doing what he can but he has no medicine to try out. There is only one option and that is to turn one of the remaining home units into an isolation ward. We cover our mouths with cloth when we enter but it is too little too late. I cannot fail to notice when 50 himself starts coughing. I will not admit to the itching feeling that is starting to build in the back of my throat.

Of course one unit is not enough for long. The unit next to it becomes used. Everybody who is not severely sick is now living exclusively in the canteen. Our only hope lies in our own bodies being able to fight off the infection with their own antibodies, but when the first death from the sickness occurs it seems that there is not much chance of that.