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"You've reached John Watson's mobile. Not here right now, but I'll get back to you, so leave a message. Thanks."
"John? Hey, it's me, Harry. I don't know if you've been watching the things they're saying on the telly, but things are looking pretty fucked up out there. Just, uh, phone me, yeah? We haven't talked in a while."
Harriet ended the call with her mouth drawn into a firm line. It had been a little more than two weeks since things had gotten rough. The news and websites were all saying some pretty horrible (and if she admitted it to herself, terrifying) things, but then the (bullshit, placating) government officials all said that everything was fine. Just a media sensation. Nothing to get overly worried about. So long as you exercised proper cautions, you would be fine.
But if that were true, then why were so many people so scared?
People were sick. It all happened so quickly that no one had time to react. Two weeks ago she'd been down at the pub having a pint with nothing but her own burdens to account for.
Today, she had gone down to the same place. The door was boarded up, but the windows had been smashed in. When she'd looked in, bottles gleamed in a broken cacophony on the floor. The fumes from so many spilled drinks made her head swim. It had been raided.
Who in their right mind would do something like break into a pub? Weren't there enough problems, as it was? Reports of burglaries and trespassing had been erupting all over London. And the police hadn't been doing a damn thing. But everyone was going 'round the bend. No one was going to fuss over a break-in when their families were sick. No one was going to stop petty theft when there were people dying on the streets.
The beginnings of anarchy.
She did not feel completely amoral as she took a half-full bottle of whiskey from behind the counter.
By the third week, the government stopped saying they had everything under control. They told people, instead, to stay inside and to wear masks; to not go near anyone they thought might have the disease.
Harriet poured a generous amount of amber liquid into a glass and punched in the numbers on her mobile.
"You've reached John Watson's mobile. Not here right now, but I'll get back to you, so leave a message. Thanks."
"John, look, it's Harry again. I don't know what the bleeding hell you did to your mobile, but you had better fucking get it sorted and call me. The telly's not saying much of anything, anymore, and if things had gotten any better, they would say, wouldn't they?" She didn't even bother to hide the tremor in her voice, or to disguise the clinking of ice in her glass as she tipped it back, even though she knew John would recognize the sound and berate her. Hell, at this point, she'd take it. "Just stop being a prick and ring me."
Ending the call, she promptly began dialling again. This time to Clara.
"Hello?" said her voice. No, she wasn't that desperate.
She hung up with an angry jab, and tossed the device at the table, where it clacked satisfyingly.
For a while, Harry stared at her phone. Then she came to a decision.
"Fuck this."
She grabbed the mobile and her flat keys, then fled down the flights of stairs to the street. If he wasn't going to call her, then she was going to bloody well find him.
In the taxi, she tried three more times. On the third "You've reached John Watson's mobile—" she stopped trying. The cabbie (face covered with a white mask, which was against some sort of code, wasn't it?) kept giving her nervous looks in the mirror.
"Can I help you with something, mister?" she snapped.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. "A bit anxious, eh?" he replied.
Harry curled her lip. "Watch the road and mind your own damn business."
"Sorry ma'am. Just, you know, with so many people losing it, you've got to be watching everyone."
"You're driving a cab. Can't exactly be picky, can you?"
"I've got a job to do, but my safety comes first. Got a family to get back to tonight."
Harry looked out the window to the stream of cars. So many of them on the streets, trying to get somewhere, to someone. "Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to do now, so just get there."
He gave her another quick once-over before nodding and keeping his silence. Harry sat back and stared at her phone, praying for it to sound. Outside, more and more people had taken to abandoning their cars and walking. At this rate, all of traffic would become immobile, and that was if it hadn't already. She glanced at the clock on her phone; ten minutes since they had moved. Looks like she would be hoofing it, too. She threw a handful of bills at the driver. They were possibly enough to cover her fare, but possibly less. She was out of the cab before he could say anything to stop her.
People were moving and shoving past each other in a madness-induced urgency. The noise was nearly as suffocating as the plethora of bodies swarming by one another.
A child was screaming. The moving bodies were too densely packed for Harry to see, but the little girl sounded no more than a few feet ahead. She wanted to shout back, to get the parents to shut her up, because wasn't there enough chaos without the screeching? But then there were more yells and hysteria, and the child was right in front of her, as well as the parent.
The infected parent.
She'd never seen someone with the virus so close up before. The woman's skin was flushed and damp and her eyes had a hollow, glazed look about them. Her body was feinting side to side, knocking into the bodies, including Harry and her daughter. The people around them were backing away in recognition of her condition. Tripping and clawing their way away, with outraged cries of panic and fear.
The woman was still holding onto her daughter.
Before it happened, Harry didn't know what to expect, but she knew immediately that the girl was in danger. Still, her body would not respond to this knowledge. Bravery was usurped by the overwhelming desire to save herself. Even when the girl's dark eyes (like Johnny's but wet with tears) met hers in a plea for help, she could not will her body to act.
Why was the child looking to her? Why couldn't someone else save her?
Why couldn't Harry?
The mother of the girl made a choking groan and stilled; her grip was a vice on the screaming minor, making her skin white with pressure. Then she reared back, whipping her brown locks and dragging her daughter with her, and then fell forward. The high-pitched wail pierced Harry's ears before the image could even register.
The mother's teeth sank into her daughter's upper arm.
Red blood swelled around her teeth and across her face, and the daughter just screamed and screamed and screamed.
And Harry did not move. She watched.
She couldn't even feel nauseous past the numbness that encompassed her. Around her, some of the others had fled while some, like her, remained frozen. A man was pushing through with a drawn expression on his face. He was holding a gun.
It was only when he rose it to fire was Harry able to stumble back.
The gun cracked and a rain of blood splashed onto the pavement. People cried out. The daughter, though not shot, fell to the ground beside the woman.
"Mummy?" she rasped. She tried to move her bleeding arm, but she either had lost the mobility or was in too much shock to do so. She heaved pitifully. "Mummy? Mummy, please. I'm sorry. I won't cry anymore. I didn't mean to make you mad. Get up. Get up."
Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god—
Everyone was staring at the man, who had raised his gun again.
The girl did not look at him, but at Harry. (God, no, don't look there.)
"Help me," she begged.
The man fired.
This time, people ran away. The man didn't even look repentant as he tucked his firearm back into his trousers and strode off, leaving the two slumped victims staining the street red. The little girl was still looking to Harry with her soft blue eyes: like glass, (like Johnny).
Harry staggered off towards anywhere. Her mouth tasted like the sick that refused to surface. She didn't know where she was going; she just needed to go. If she didn't keep moving or didn't keep not thinking then something cold and desperate was going to shatter inside her. It was going to break her. She walked until her feet ached, and then she ran.
She ran to the collapsed front door of 221B.
There was blood all across the threshold and front walkway when she first stepped inside. The room was swimming, and the something inside her came a little closer to breaking.
"John?" she cried out. "Johnny!"
No answer.
God, why was all this happening? It couldn't be real; it just couldn't. She braced her hand against the jamb and tried to remember how to breathe.
Someone was shaking her shoulder. "Miss? Hey, look, are you okay?" He had a tired but steady voice, though it sounded miles away. "I'm with the police—jesus, what happened in here?" He was looking at the blood leading up the steps. (Was it John's?)
The something inside her fractured and split, and she was sick all over the worn wood floor.
The man behind her stepped back with a disgusted grunt. She didn't care. "John," she moaned. Her shaky fingers grasped at the strands of hair sticking to her face.
"John! Sherlock!" he shouted from the door. His voice sounded so much louder than her own, but if anyone was there to hear, they didn't respond. There was no one there. Harry heaved. "I...I don't think they're here. They must have moved on," he said.
Yes. Moved on. He meant they fled, and she wanted to believe that, she really did. But there was blood covering the floor of their flat. She looked to the man; he looked so old: streaks of grey in his hair and deep grooves in his face.
"Why are you here?" she demanded.
He flipped open his pocketbook to show her his badge and card. "DI Lestrade. I worked with the people that lived here. Thought that if anyone would know what was going on—" His mouth snapped shut.
"And now they're not here," Harry quipped. Laughter and bile sought to bubble up her throat. She swallowed back both. "Guess this is how he felt when I was never there for him."
Lestrade's face scrunched in confusion. "Look, maybe you had best go home. It's not safe out right now. Why don't you go wait it out somewhere a little less open, hm?"
"Oh fuck you," Harry bit. "Like boxing myself in would make anything better." The little girl with soft blue eyes (like John) now cold like glass. She would still be dead tomorrow. The world will be just as fucked in the morning as it was tonight.
But she brushed past him, nonetheless, and headed home. The streets were no less swarmed with bodies, but she didn't notice them. It was like everything had glazed over, and nothing seemed real. She walked right past her landlady who was yelling at her for something and trudged up to her own flat. The door closed behind her and she slumped down on it.
For a long while, Harry sobbed into her arms like she couldn't remember doing since she was a child. When she was completely drained of both tears and emotion, she wandered into the kitchen. She forwent the glass and grabbed the bottle of whiskey she had lifted earlier, and then she drank until all the horrible things were swimming rather than clawing. But not enough to make them disappear.
There would never be enough for that.
She fished in her pocket and produced her mobile. Someone was screaming at her through the door, but it was so much easier to ignore them when she couldn't even see straight. She dialled John's number. It didn't even ring, but went directly to voicemail.
"You've reached John Watson's mobile. Not here right now, but I'll get back to you, so leave a message. Thanks."
"I think you're dead," she stated. "And I sort've hate you fer it, but not really because I want—wouldn't want you here, anyways. Fuck, I thought you'd be there, Johnny. But I shoulda known because I think I saw a sign, but you're the solider and I thought maybe..."
The person on the other side of the door was slamming into it. Too loud to ignore.
"Bugger off," she hollered. The noise didn't stop. "Christ, I don't want to be alone now. I can't handle this shit. There's nothing right anymore."
More shrieks and pounding. Whatever was on the other side didn't even sound human. It probably wasn't.
"I'mma join you, Johnny. I don't want to end up like one've them. I'd rather die." She swallowed and stood. "Jus' wish the last time we'd talked hadn't been the last time."
Harry's hand was deceptively steady as she hung up and set the phone down, as was it when she tied a length of cable she'd been using for her telly into a knot (taught to her by Johnny when he was a scout and why did she still remember it?). Her hand only shook slightly when she locked the bathroom door and stood on the edge of the tub (unsteady balance almost making her slip) in order to fasten the cable tight around the shower rod and her neck. She breathed and fell.
The rod bore the weight. Her toes scratched at the bottom of the tub. The pulsing in her ears could have been her heart or at the door.
The alcohol was sweet enough to make it feel like falling asleep.