Pete had hung up with a dour chuckle. It was the joke the three of them shared. If the market finally atomised – a possibility they often contemplated – they agreed the world would turn savage. Brock, his long-time boss and trading partner, always swatted away their gloom.

“Violence lurks under this surface we’ve constructed,” Pete had opined to him.

“You’re such a fucking pessimist.” Brock replied, rolling his eyes, exasperated.

“Pessimism is a bond-trader’s most trusted friend,” Pete had countered, way back...when? Where was Brock now? he wondered.

He needed some of Brock’s levity.

The only twenty-four hour megamart he knew was in Battersea. As he passed St Katharine Docks, which he knew intimately from his many Thames journeys out to the English Channel, a convoy of four ambulances overtook him at pace, lights on. They seemed to be heading to the Chelsea-Westminster hospital. It did nothing to ease his anxiety.

He’d loaded up the Aston Martin with food that would keep: rice, flour, and tins of tomatoes and tuna, and cursed himself for not driving Sarah’s four-wheel-drive in to the office. He’d had Ned on the phone as he drove. He was stocking up too, then making for Woodend.

The Range Rover had rolled out of a side street and would have hit him square if he hadn’t accelerated. In the end it had just clipped his rear. It had been traveling at less than twenty kilometres an hour, he guessed, and had ricocheted past him with the screeching of metal, across the intersection and into the wrought iron fence of the terraces opposite. It hadn’t even tried to brake.

    Lights came on in the surrounding houses, but no one came outside.

    London, he thought and shook his head. As he approached the car, he heard a high-pitched wailing from inside and launched into a jog. A woman slumped against the wheel. He peered into the back and a baby in a car seat was howling and kicking, struggling to free herself from the seat’s over-shoulder restraints. A toddler was sitting alongside her in a booster seat, staring forward in wide-eyed shock.

    He pulled at the door, but it was locked. The woman was alive; he could see that she was panting heavily, and her hair was wet.

    “Hey,” he banged on the glass gently. “Are you okay?”

    She remained slumped over the wheel, but Pete heard the door unlock. He opened it and put a hand on her shoulder and shook it carefully. She sat back, breathing in short sharp breaths. Pete recoiled in horror. Her brow was wet with perspiration and she’d vomited blood. Runnels ran down her chin and stained her hurriedly buttoned blouse.

    “...burning,” she panted, and then lurched forward, gripping the steering wheel before collapsing against it.

    “Wait a minute.” Pete ran back to his car. He moved it off the road, stalling it twice in his haste, and grabbed a bottle of water, dialling 999 as he hurried back to her. He received a busy signal. He tried again and it went to a recorded message informing him that line was experiencing unusually high demand.

When he got back to the Range Rover the woman was sitting back, staring at the roof lining. The toddler had unbuckled her seatbelt and was trying to calm the infant, unsuccessfully. The baby kicked out, mewling and distraught, thrashing hopelessly.

    “Have a drink of water,” he said. The woman looked at him, her face pale and wet, her eyes scared. A smear of blood ran across her mouth and chin that she’d tried to wipe away. She took a sip. “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he offered and carefully helped her from the car. As they rounded its tailgate she doubled over wrenching, and Pete was forced to clutch her to stop her from toppling. The acrid smell of urine punctuated the early morning air.

    The bolt of pain had caused her to wet herself, he realised. He shuffled her on and hauled her into the passenger seat, then hurried back to the driver’s side and climbed in.

    The steering wheel was sticky with blood, and he involuntarily wiped a hand on his pants, but it still came away red. Thankfully, the collision had been at such a low speed it hadn’t activated the airbags. The four of them wouldn’t have fit in his staple-laden car.

    “What’s your name?” he asked as he reversed the Range Rover away from the fence and pointed it in the direction of the hospital he’d passed hours before. It didn’t seem damaged, but he watched the instrument panel for a telltale temperature light. He worried that the crash had punctured the radiator.

    “Emma,” she panted. “I’m burning.”

   “Okay,” he said, edging the car up to sixty, brisk but gentle enough to cause her no further distress. “What are your kid’s names?”

   “Gigi,” she replied, wincing against some internal pain. “And India.” Pete nodded. “Their dad?” he wondered tentatively. So many of their own acquaintances were divorcing – including Ned and Sally.

    “In Paris,” she managed, shaking her head. “At Gare du Nord...coming back. I called him-” She gasped and clutched her stomach. “I’m dying,” she wailed helplessly. There was fear in her eyes.

    “No you’re not,” he replied, seeking to reassure her, but there was much less conviction in his voice than he sought. “Just hold tight.”

    The traffic was unusually heavy on Kings Road, and when he glanced down Park Walk, the street that led to the front of the hospital, fire trucks and ambulances were gridlocked; the whole street a dark watercolour painted in strobes of red and blue.

    He drove straight on. There was a back door, between houses on Gertrude Street. He was a patron of the hospital, had been since the complications with Eloise’s birth in Portugal when Sarah had nearly died. The hospital’s CEO had shown him the rear entrance, an unobtrusive grey door that led down a long concrete corridor into the hospital’s centre. It was empty when he arrived, and he was able to drive right up to the rear loading bay.

    “Can you walk Emma?” he asked her. “I’ll carry the girls.” She nodded tentatively, and he extracted them from the car, hoisting the older one onto his shoulders so he could stabilise her mother. He clutched the infant to his shoulder, and they shuffled down the empty passage into the hospital, but inside the triage area gurneys were jostling side-by-side in a logjam. People were wailing. It was the aftermath of a bomb blast – only there were no external injuries, no burns, just distressed patients writhing and intermittently spasming in pain, some bleeding from their mouths. Fraught hospital staff stood by, soothing the casualties but unsure of what to do. The young mother looked at him, fearfully, and he shepherded her past the chaos towards the administrative wing. They arrived at the reception and a woman he recognised from the hospital’s fundraisers, Philippa something, was working phones at the front desk. She looked up, harried, surprised to see him there.

    “Mr Birch,” she uttered, a phone in the crook of her neck and lights flashing on all the handset’s channels. She ended the call and directed them to a private room, laying Emma down on a bed, stripping her after taking her temperature. She wasn’t wearing a bra and Pete turned his head away, appalled at himself that he’d made a mental note of her neat pale breasts.

    “Everyone’s reporting the same symptoms,” Philippa explained to him as she sponged the young mother, a vain attempt to cool her. “Fever, head- aches, and intense burning sensations that come in unendurable waves – but no actual temperature.” Pete listened, rocking the infant, making sure not to look directly at the young naked woman.

   “Expectorating blood,” Philippa said in a lowered voice, glancing over at their collapsed patient. “Violently.”

     “Is it contagious?” he asked.

    “We don’t think so – but we don’t know. Our PQR detectors haven’t picked up any pathogens. We’re getting similar reports from all over Britain and Europe. I’ll get a doctor, then I’ll have to go back to the desk.”

    She hurried off and returned with a young physician who looked simultaneously beset and composed. She was wearing a face mask.

   “I’m Yalda Zadeh,” she said, introducing herself, taking Emma’s wrist to check her pulse. “I’m one of registrars here.” Her brow creased and a vexed look came across her. She took Emma’s temperature with an infrared ear monitor, and shook her head, confounded, then installed a saline drip in her arm. She was quick and capable, asking questions as she worked. Finally, she addressed the hapless mother, having discovered her family name.

    “Mrs Huntington,” she said, her voice stern and resolute. “Your daughters can’t stay here.” She turned to Pete. “Mr Birch, neither can you. I need you to leave and quarantine somewhere. We don’t have the resources to keep you with the volume of patients descending on us. Please don’t interact with anyone. We don’t know if this phenomenon is transmittable. We’ll contact you.”

Emma Huntington – Pete could now give her a full name – bridled. “No! Don’t take them.”

    Dr Zadeh left no room for compromise. “They must leave, immediately. They shouldn’t be in contact with you at all.”

    Pete closed his eyes. “I’m already compromised.” He turned to Emma.

   The doctor had drawn a sheet across her chest. “Give me your phone. I’ll call your husband and meet him at your house. I’ll look after them.”

    The doctor acceded to this course of action with a sweep of her arm, corralling them towards the door without further input from the stricken woman. And she wasn’t fit to object had she wanted to – another wave of agony was sweeping across her, and her back arched off the bed. New blood, a violent crimson, ran from her mouth.

    “Go! Please.” the doctor implored, thrusting Emma’s phone at him as the wave passed. She turned to her patient. “What’s your address, Emma?” Her tone was perfunctory and compassionate. “And your husband’s name?”

    Moments later, Pete was traveling back down the empty corridor to a stranger’s blood-soaked car, with two girls he knew nothing of other than their names, address, and the fact that they hadn’t been able to kiss their ailing – dying? – mother goodbye.

    The family lived on Upper Cheyne Row, the street Emma Huntington had exited to collide with his car. Her husband’s name was Jeremy.

   Pete drove carefully, threading through the growing mass of emergency vehicles, cutting down Edith Crescent and along the Embankment to avoid the swelling mess on Kings Road. Morning had coloured the sky a dull grey.

   People had abandoned their jammed cars and carried or dragged stricken relatives, threading and limping between the vehicles towards the hospital. He cleared the cluster of cars and people, and arrived into their street from the south.

    He double-parked and entered an unfamiliar home and set the girls down, closing the door on the chaos behind them.

 

He flipped open his laptop and tethered it to his phone’s internet – in the confusion of the last two hours he’d thankfully had the presence of mind to take it with him – and penned an email to his investors, letting them know that he’d exited his positions and the funds had been banked. He didn’t even pretend that there wouldn’t be redemptions. He laid out instructions on how investors could arrange for the return of their funds, and explained that he wouldn’t be available to talk before midday, but they could let his office know of their intentions. He messaged his trading team and the settlements guys, and asked them to get online and prepare. He instructed them to work from home.

    He clicked to the BBC news, and hospitals everywhere were clogged. The footage cut to scenes around the world, and then the front of the Chelsea hospital. It was being encased in a huge white bubble. Emergency crews in HAZMAT suits, wearing rebreathers, were going in and out. Fuck, he thought. He looked at the little girls. Their mother was in there somewhere. Then he called Ned again.

    “I’m coming out of Sunbury,” his brother informed him, clearly on loud- speaker in the car. “Sally and Hank are with me. Car’s to the roof lining with food. Dropped six grand on staples. Sally thinks we’re paranoid lunatics.”

    “Hello Sally,” Pete said. “It’s overkill-”

   “-until it isn’t.” Sally’s voice came down the line, cutting him off. She was resigned and amused, and Pete could hear her affection for him. Much more than she’d had for Ned in the last few years. “You’re the ultimate prepper Pete,” she went on.

   “Humour me Sal,” he pleaded. “Did the hospital overflow there? Chelsea-Westminster looks like Elliot’s house at the end of ET. Bebe thinks it’s bad too.”

   “A busy night,” she said. There was frustration in her voice. “It’s managed. I should be close by Pete. In case I’m needed there again.” She sighed. “That Bebe is your Caribbean Rasputin. She’s bewitched you two.”

   “It’s a shitshow here, Sal. Bebe’s my canary in the cage. Maybe it’s missed you somehow. Help out at the Kyneton hospital. But you need to be clear of the city. Things could get bad there.”

   “Or not,” she objected. Pete could almost hear her shaking her head, the way she always did when she gently rebuked him for his idiosyncrasies.

    “Hank are you there buddy?”

   “Yes uncle Pete.” His voice came from the back seat. It still shocked him how deep it had become recently. And the photos Ned sent showed Hank a clear inch taller – and Ned was six-two.

    “Can you look after your mum for me? She doesn’t trust me.”

    “I trust you Pete,” Sally chuckled good-naturedly. There was amused fondness in her voice. “You’re just such a bear market guy. Where have you sent Sarah? The Rocky Mountains? In a hut with the Unabomber?”

    Despite everything that was happening, Pete chuckled.

    “Not so agricultural,” he said, not even mildly chastened by Sally’s derision. She’d been his proxy aunt, had tended to him the first time he was in Tokyo before finishing school. Before he’d met Sarah. “I’ve sent them to Brock’s, outside Sevenoaks.”

    “Hmm,” she chortled. “Do they have ammunition there?” She was taunt-

ing him.

   “He’s got shotguns.” Pete was half serious, half self-mocking. “And I remember the code to his gun safe.”

    “Of course you do,” Sally said, and Pete could almost hear her roll her eyes.

 

Emma’s husband arrived home just before midday. Pete had spent the intervening hours on the phone, supervising and feeding the girls, and watching the news. It was bad. Hospitals in the US were tending to people in parking lots, and Allard, the US President, was pondering the deployment of the National Guard, and possibly the army. Germany and Scandinavia were coping, but things got worse the further south and east the news ventured. Reports out of Asia and South America were patchy and dire.

    Pete heard keys jangle in the door and Jeremy, the man he’d spoken to three times in the previous hour, burst in. He’d had to walk from St Pancreas. He scooped India into his arms. Gigi, the infant, was asleep in her pram. Pete

stood at the back of the kitchen.

   “Jeremy, I shouldn’t get close to you,” he said by way of introduction. “We don’t know if this is infectious.” But the girl’s father didn’t care. He came into the kitchen and hugged Pete hard.

    “You’ll never know how much I appreciate what you’ve done,” he said, his emotions high. Pete hugged him back, feeling slightly awkward.

    “I hope Emma’s okay,” he said, cautiously, and Jeremy’s eyes welled with tears. Pete made a concerned tight-lipped smile. “Jeremy I’ve got to get home. I’ve got a lot to organize, and I need some sleep.” He gestured to a piece of paper on the kitchen bench. “My details and Phillipa’s number at the hospital.”

    “I have to fix you up for the damage to your car,” the hapless man said.

   “Later.” Pete was staunch. “Look after your girls. The car can wait. I hope Emma has a speedy recovery.”

    Ten minutes later he was back at his damaged vehicle. He managed to detach the rear bumper and fed it in between the seats. The staples he’d bought were gone, and Sarah and Eloise were at Brock’s house, with a fire burning, awaiting him. When he arrived home he was starving. For some reason he’d felt guilty about helping himself to the Huntington’s food. He toasted a bagel, added cheese, lettuce, tomato, and liberal squirts of French’s mustard, and walked over to the window while he chewed. His Aston Martin was parked outside, its rear bumper still in the car. He took a deep breath. A dour intuition told him it would be a long time before it got fixed.

    It was the start of the Nightfire.

    He called Jeremy two weeks later. His wife had died three days after she’d been admitted. So had forty-eight million other people around the world. Everyone whose blood was AB negative.

Pete never spoke to him again, but he knew one thing for sure. Three months after that call, Jeremy Huntington, and his little girls India and Gigi had joined Emma. So had Philippa, and so had Yalda, the young doctor who’d tended to them. He didn’t know which bloods group each of them had, or which of the Waves took them, or whether they made it to the water, but everyone was dead.

    Eight billion people.