Xion Island Carrier: Chapter 12

Nash stared through the one-way glass at James McAlister as the roast beef sandwich he’d wolfed down for lunch refused to settle behind his ribs.

The man sat unnaturally still in Interview Room 3, his hands clasped between his knees, tethering him to sanity. Nothing moved, not even his eyes, and he gave off signals of succumbing to clinical shock. Nash needed to speak to him now. Too much time had already been lost to get to the bottom of this. But, despite James being cleared for the interview by the medical team, Nash wasn’t comfortable about it. He imagined how he’d be just an hour after losing Kelvin, and his body ached to hold him.

James didn’t seem nervous, enraged, or guilty and showed none of the usual body language tells that Nash could sniff out in a heartbeat. He wasn’t trying to put on the act of the grieving father, sobbing uncontrollably, and overplaying his hand, as the guilty often did. And he didn’t act out, going for a deranged plea of insanity.

He stared at the desk, robbed of his world. James hadn’t spoken since he was brought in, and Nash didn’t blame him.

Less than two hours earlier, he’d watched his wife die, and before that, his children. Nash knew the signs of trauma. He’d watched mothers hold the hands of their drowned children, and fathers collapse at the news of a fatal hit-and-run—but he never got used to it. He’d delivered too many messages of the worst news imaginable, in the rain, and under sunshine skies that made it obscene. But this kind of grief unfolded over hours—a slow, different breed of horror. And it might not even be over. Nash’s nose didn’t like it. He could smell the sickness of something wrong, spreading in the air.

‘Any word from the toxicology sweep?’ he asked without turning away from the mirror.

Molly Brown had her arms folded. She shook her head. ‘Not yet. They’ve ruled out the obvious—food, carbon monoxide, narcotics. They’re testing for rare pathogens, but the lab’s behind.’

‘I need speed. Not excuses. Get onto them.’

‘We also need evidence, boss. James is the only person still standing in a family of corpses. It doesn’t look good.’

‘He’s clean.’

Molly swung her hair over her shoulder in frustration. ‘Based on evidence, or the fact that you’ve gone soft? How can you be so sure?’

Nash didn’t answer her questions. He nodded at the interview room. ‘Get him a cup of tea.’

A knock at the observation room door made him move. ‘You’re not going to believe this.’ It was Norton, her face pale under the harsh lights. Nash sighed. What now? She wasn’t the type to scare easily.

‘You need to get back to the hospital,’ she said. ‘It’s all kicking off.’

‘What is it?’

‘More sick people.’

‘Hellfire. Norton, you’re with me. You can fill me in on the way.’ Nash left without even getting his jacket.   

When they got to the hospital, they followed a cordon around the back of the building and were ushered into a previously unused unit. The corridor was chaos, a war zone without a frontline—just incoming casualties and too few hands to catch them.

Two ambulances had pulled in, their wails in the air as paramedics wheeled gurneys into the lobby. The new isolation ward was already at capacity. Nurses shouted instructions, and a junior doctor dropped a clipboard trying to squeeze through a gap too small to accommodate his panic. The paramedics looked one beat away from screaming.

Bob Fendt met them with minimal greeting or formality. ‘Hi. This way. Three families,’ he said, leading them through the swarm. ‘Eight patients total, all with the same symptoms as the McAlisters.’

Nash showed no emotion, but his tone said enough. ‘What do we know?’

‘They started coming in before we’d turned around from the McAlisters. A couple from Rawlinson Street, a family from Ormsgill, and two kids from Parkside. All presenting with sickness and diarrhoea.’

‘And you’re sure it’s the same thing?’

Fendt nodded. ‘Fever. Vomiting. Rapid internal decline. Two are already on ventilators, and a woman in her thirties collapsed on arrival. Her youngest, four years old, was convulsing. I don’t expect him to last the hour.’ The sorrow in his eyes belied the harshness of his words.

Norton, who had the initial intel and had come with Nash, introduced herself and shook hands with Dr Fendt. ‘How do you want us to contain this? And do we have any links?’

The sound of a crash interrupted her—somebody dropped a tray near the nurses’ station, and Nash wheeled around expecting danger.

He saw a nurse arguing with a man in a hi-vis jacket. A woman sobbed into her coat, and two police officers kept people moving, but the corridor was a bottleneck of people wanting information about their loved ones. There were too many bodies and no space. The air felt thick with emotion and barely controlled aggression as relatives of the patients battled for attention.

Keeley said, ‘They’ve converted this surgical suite into a holding area. Public Health’s been alerted, and the words “viral outbreak” are thrown around.’

Nash’s stomach twisted, and he wondered if Norton was coming up with anything from James McAlister’s interview. He’d left her with it. They needed answers, and they needed them fast. ‘Is the press on it?’

‘Not yet. But give it an hour. It’s broken on the socials.’

A voice cut through the noise. ‘They aren’t stabilising. We need to get them intubated. Now.’

Another doctor sprinted past with a crash cart. Nash saw the patient when the door opened. It was a young girl with her eyes rolled back into her head and her limbs stiffening as she seized. He watched as her feet jerked.

‘Dear God,’ he murmured.

Keeley swallowed. ‘The staff are saying it’s worse than COVID.’

Nobody was free to talk, and as much as they had their job to do, Nash and Norton were getting in the way. There was no point hanging around. Nash gestured to Bob Fendt that they’d come back later, but the consultant was too busy to see. In an ocean of panic, his was the only stationary body as he observed, assessed, gave direction, and acted, his movements calm and productive.

Before they got to the station, Nash’s phone was already vibrating with new notifications.

Brown came over holding a fresh report—another outbreak in Blackpool.

Three people had been found dead in a house on the south end—a mother and two sons. The scene presented evidence of identical symptoms. There was no sign of forced entry, and all three bodies were found in the early stages of decomposition. The time of death was estimated at least 36 hours before the Barrow outbreak, and none of the neighbours had seen anything suspicious.

Another call came in from GMP.

In Partington, a small town outside Manchester, four more people had been taken ill. A mother and three children. The youngest—a boy of seven—died in the ambulance.

Nash stared at the incident board. Photos of the McAlisters had been joined by new files and names he didn’t recognise yet. Dates. Symptoms. Locations. There were random dots on a map with no discernible pattern. The latest names weren’t just victims—they were people, and they were warnings.

James McAlister’s interview had been shelved midway through, and Renshaw had driven him home.

The suspect was exhausted. He hadn’t slept, but they still had to persuade him to go home. He deserved answers, but they had none to offer.   

Nash felt the tension rising like pressure in a water pipe. The team were engaged in their duties, and he barked new orders at them. There was no time for a formal briefing, and any action plan came on the hoof.  

Brown came in and handed him a mug. ‘Strong tea. I’m liaising with Blackpool and Manchester, but let me know if you need anything.’

‘Thanks.’ He didn’t hide the tremor in his hands as he asked, ‘How was James McAlister?’

‘Quiet,’ Brown said. ‘He has no answers. He was completely shut down until the new cases came in. He wants to know what’s going on.’

‘He’s lost everything.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t explain why he hasn’t asked who the new cases are—or where. I had to drag the information out of him to find out if he knew anybody in the affected areas.’

Nash could only imagine and hoped she’d been sensitive. ‘And?’

‘At first, he was just sitting. Like he was waiting for something. And then, when I questioned him about the new outbreaks, he acted strangely. I think he might get in his car and head for Blackpool. I warned him against it.’

Nash turned to examine the incident board. ‘You suspect him of something?’

‘I’m not sure.’

That evening, the hospital declared full quarantine protocol. All visitors were turned away. Patients who could be moved were transferred to other hospitals. Staff were masked and gloved up. The Lady of the North was in lockdown.

Rumours spread, muttered in pubs, screamed into Twitter and gossiped about during the school run. Something silent and fast had hit town. The town knew that a patient had died before making it out of the ambulance. A crowdfunding page had been set up for James McAlister. He’d told Phil Renshaw that he wouldn’t accept charity and wanted nothing to do with it.

Intel kept pouring in. Another patient collapsed mid-sentence, cradling their sick toddler. Every GP’s voicemail was flooded with panicked calls.

By 9:00 p.m., Barrow’s supermarket shelves were half-empty. Again. Panic-buying tins of beans was back in vogue.

At 10:00, Nash took a call from a pathologist at the hospital. ‘We’ve discovered something odd in the bloodwork.’

‘Spit it out, man,’ Nash snapped.

 The voice on the phone—Callum—bristled. ‘The samples include an alien cluster of markers that don’t belong to any known pathogen.’

‘All of them?’

‘As far as we can tell,’ Callum said.

‘Is it engineered, something selective?’

‘We’re working on it, but it’s too early to tell.’

So Nash sat at his desk with the case files open and names stacking up. He’d called Kelvin at six to say he’d be late home. At eleven, Kel appeared with a tap at his door and dinner in Tupperware. He joked that at least they could have a midnight picnic together. And while they ate, a shape called Emergency emerged from the blank spaces between the paper stacks, the map pins and the printed names.

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