“No, stay there, take a break, you deserve it. But tell me, have you seen any children around? Any at all, anywhere?”

“Children? There have been a few that have come looking for help for their parents, but after I’ve attended to the adults, no, I haven’t seen any children. Why?”

In the back of Mandy’s mind, an idea had taken root. It was barely a seedling, hardly formed at all, but it was there, trying to get out and see the light of day.

“Carrie, have you treated any children? With the virus, I mean. Have you seen any children who have the virus?”

“Of course,” Carrie said, but she looked uncertain. “I mean, I must have done. I’ve spent most of the day handing out painkillers and applying cold, wet towels. Some of those patients must have been children.”

“Must they?” The idea was taking shape. Mandy dared not speak it out loud, but neither could she ignore it. “Think, Carrie, think hard. Are you absolutely sure that you’ve seen to sick kids today?”

Carrie did think. She was obviously racking her brain. Her expression told Mandy all she needed to know. “Well now you ask, and now I think of it, I don’t actually remember any specific children. But there must be some. Statistically speaking, there must be some, right?”

“We have to find them, Carrie. We have to find the kids!”

Mandy crossed the open space and began opening cabin doors on the next section of corridor. She dispensed with pleasantries; there wasn’t the time to lose. Instead, she peeked inside each room and left as soon as it was clear there were no children present.

“Hang on!” Carrie called after her. “I’ll help you!”

• • •

Getting Captain Jake Noah out of the base proved challenging, but easier than Ewan had feared. The submariner had been prepared to carry him up the lift shaft over his shoulder, but Lucya pointed out that with the generator running and electricity available, the lift itself could be pressed into service. Of course, there was the small matter of it missing a floor, having been blown out during the previous expedition. A quick look through one of the labs provided a solution to that problem. Ewan located some wooden shelves that he placed over the hole. They didn’t cover it completely, but they were enough to be able to wheel Jake’s trolley in and out. Miraculously, the lift worked without any need of a key. Ewan suggested that when the emergency generator was running it must have overridden the security system.

The drug Lucya had administered brought Jake back to consciousness for a short while. When he realised what was happening, he insisted that they bring back more Gemini 5001 machines before they took him back to the ship, but Lucya wasn’t having any of it. They arrived at the main entrance to the base just as Jake lost consciousness again.

“What do you think, Ewan? Do we try and get the trolley across the ash?”

“No.” He replied without hesitation. “The wheels are too small. They’re not made for anything other than indoor floors. And besides, we don’t know how it will react with the ash. We have to carry him.”

That was easier said than done. The two of them lifted the captain from the low base of the trolley. He was a dead weight, difficult to handle, and surprisingly heavy. The slippery wetsuit didn’t make the task any easier; they had barely made it a few metres from the door when he began to slip perilously from their grip. They had to stop every few steps in order to reassert their hold on him.

The previous trips to and from the base had disturbed the ash, with footprints merging together to form a kind of channel where the dangerous powder was compressed and shallow. They quickly discovered that they made quicker progress by walking in this ready-made pathway, even if it was being slowly refilled by drifting ash.

It was when they reached the rocky descent to the raft that Lucya started to lose the feeling in her legs. At first she thought it was just fatigue. Carrying Jake had made her muscles begin to ache, and the loss of sensation in her lower limbs was a logical extension of that. It soon became apparent that this was more than just tiredness.

“Ewan, you’re going to have to get Jake down to the raft yourself, then come back for me,” she said quietly.

He wasn’t sure he had heard her right. The wind was getting up again and she had spoken in barely more than a whisper, muted further by her gas mask. “It will be easier for two of us to carry him down there,” he said.

“I can’t…I can’t move any more.”

“We’ll take a break. Give it a few minutes, you’ll feel better.”

“No, I won’t. It’s the virus, Ewan. My legs have gone. It’s started.”

Ewan felt his flesh turn cold. He liked Lucya. He didn’t want to see her suffer. And he liked Jake even more, and really wanted to get him back to the ship as quickly as possible. But even more than that, he had been struck by the realisation that he was, himself, inevitably going to be struck down by the virus, and probably sooner rather than later. “What about the medication? The antiviral? Is there any left?”

“A few drops, maybe.”

“Okay. I’ll get Jake down to the raft. You inject yourself with the medication. A few drops has to be better than nothing, right?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he began the arduous process of getting the captain over the rocks and down to the raft. The only way he could manage it without risk of causing Jake any more injury was to throw him over his shoulder and then clamber down, feet first, face scraping against the concrete boulders. It was a physical trial, but the navy’s strict fitness requirements and exercise regime meant that he was up to the challenge. His biggest problem was avoiding any slips or slides on loose rubble. The neoprene sleeves on his feet provided another benefit in addition to their ash-protection duties: grip.

So engrossed was he in the job of getting Jake safely down the concrete cliff that it wasn’t until he reached the very bottom he realised they had a problem. The raft was gone.

• • •

They found the children halfway down the next section of deck eight. It was Mandy who opened the door of the stateroom. She found a huge suite, one of the largest on the whole deck. Four luxurious bedrooms richly decorated with hand-crafted wood panelling, a Jacuzzi-equipped bathroom complete with a walk-in shower big enough to host a tea party, and a vast salon with a wide balcony that looked out over the ash-strewn ruins of the Faslane base. The nurse didn’t have time to be impressed by the expensive suite though. She was too busy being impressed by the organised ranks of children.

Her initial estimate of thirty or so kids was not far off the mark. In fact there were thirty-six. Thirty-seven if you included Simone, who had taken charge. Technically Simone counted as a child, but at sixteen years of age she was older than any of the others by a margin of at least three years.

Simone had, somehow, sourced food and drink for the youngsters. She had also arranged a whole host of entertainment to keep them occupied and take their minds off whatever was happening to their parents. The bigger children were each looking after groups of the smaller ones, and Simone supervised them all.

“Hello,” Simone said, noticing Mandy for the first time. “Are you looking for a child?”

“Yes. Not mine,” Mandy added quickly. “My name’s Mandy, I’m a nurse. I’ve been looking for all the children.”

“I’m Simone. I think all the children are here. All the children whose parents are…you know…sick.”

“You’ve organised all of this yourself, Simone?”

“Uh huh. I didn’t mean to. I was looking after my sister—she’s the little one over there, with the curly red hair. Then her friend’s mom got ill, so we said she could stay with us. Then more friends’ parents got sick, so they came too. I guess things got a bit out of hand after that. More and more kept coming. Are you here to take them all away?”