Karin Maatman

Chapter 1
One in a Gazillion

One in half a million: the odds of being infected, too insignificant to hit headlines despite the illness’s bizarre manifestation. Then a fresh case (pardon the perverse euphemism) in Stanton Drew stirred University of Tweet graduates. The village’s prehistoric stone circle was ground zero, that much was obvious, bloggers and vloggers agreed. An army of mobile-devise-schooled epidemiologists—tin foil hats covered by beanies, so as not to be dismissed as #TinFoilHats—roused sleepy Stanton Drew. Tripling the town’s 781-population, plugging cures from dandelion tea to hyena poo enemas to twerking across standing stones.

That’s how I first heard of It: a meme of a hyena popping dung bombs, on a wafting person underneath its tree. I laughed, shrugged it off. One in half a million equalled one in a gazillion of anyone I knew catching that bug, I reckoned. Symptoms were embarrassing, but no one died.

Not of It, anyway.

Possibly of humiliation, but not of ... It.

So when it happened at school, biology, of all places, despite all signs pointing to me, it had to be Dan on my right, or Charisse in front of me. Or the science lab, next door: H2S demo gone wrong again. Anyone or anything but me.

But Charisse dry heaved. Dan shrieked, adding ten octaves to his post-break-voice, “StupidWeirdosgotit!”

“Don’t move, Lily.” Unlike my classmates, Mrs Gherkin doesn’t call me Weirdo. “I believe... you’ve—” Retching sound.

“...caught—” More retching, door slamming.

I was alone.

Doomed.

Branded with The Stench.

*

Stench claims ‘fresh’ victim!

Seventeen-year-old A-level student, Lily Walker from Glowbridge, Kent, developing the distinctive piscine whiff during biology, caused a precipitous school run. ‘Smelled like rotten fish in a slurry pit,’ laughs classmate Dan, who sat nearest to The Stench’s latest victim. ‘Big blue flies and maggots crawling all over her’...

I gagged. Not because of how I smelled. Like other victims, to myself I smelled like Christmas—cinnamon, cloves, orange—rather than dead fish and chicken shit. I gagged because of that article. I should have known better than to click the headline that appeared on my screen. Or to check social media ...

its just the weirdo 👽

🤣

she cried

weirds a baby

stinky baby🤢

🤮

Social media’s a bitch at the best of times, ’specially when you're the class weirdo, but now... I switched off my phone and wriggled to stuff the thing in the pocket of my school uniform blazer.

“Lil, sorry, please, the draft...”

Dad didn’t finish his sentence. He needn’t. The blanket he’d covered me with on the backseat did nothing to stop the stench, and my squirming about simulated an air freshener releasing a puff of decomposing fish and eggs gone off. Even with all the windows open, and wearing two face masks (Dad not me), I heard the strain in his voice as he struggled to keep his lunch from exiting his stomach, antiperistalting upwards and out. While, of course, reassuring me it wasn’t that bad. Poor Dad.

“Holy shit! That from...?! Hey, man, close yer fucking windows or I’ll—”

I don’t know what ‘Hey Man’ would have done, because Dad floored it, turning a sharp, tug-and-toss right. He never jumps a light, and I’m sure he stuck to the Highway Code as always, more than ever since I started driving lessons, but I’d never heard our silver-grey Volkswagen’s wheels squeal like that.

“Are you okay, darling?”

That was a DadTed uncharacteristically ambiguous question. I wasn’t hurting, or shaken by Hey Man’s threats, or Dad’s driving. I was, however, secreting a stench so malodorous, no one would ever come within a mile of me ever again. Doomed. I was about to summarise those facts, when it hit me. He’d turned right. We were speeding DadTed style, hugging speed limits, in in the opposite direction of home.

“Dad, where—?”

“Not now, darling.” Dad turned left, into a street significantly quieter than the main road we’d been on. “It’s... It's complicated, I need to concentrate.”

The blanket rubbed against my skin, irritating, chafing, burning. The darkness became oppressive. The Christmassy smell, overwhelming. The hum of the motor swelled into a whine, grating my eardrums. My skin crawled, everywhere. I wanted to kick off my shoes, take off my socks, my blazer. Scratch myself. My brain and body turned into a mach-10 missile, seconds from detonation.

“Here, Sweety.”

I yelped at his voice, at his hand touching my clenched fists. Or possibly I shouted, I wasn’t sure, as my ears thrummed increasingly faster and more intense.

“Platy.”

I snatched my headphones and Platy away from Dad. Hugged him close. Squeezed his fat, soft flippers rhythmically. I know... I’m seventeen years old, too old according to popular opinion, for soft toys. But Platy helps me cope when disobliging sensory stimuli threaten to overload my autistic brain. My other dad, DadBarnaby, is good with needle and thread, and has saved Platy’s life, and by extension my sanity, with bi-annual surgery. Platy and I thank DB (that’s what I usually call my dads in my mind, DB and DT, for brevity, or just ‘Dad’) by agreeing to a ride in his racing-green Mini Convertible, with Night Flash Spoke 2-tone wheels and a black retractable roof.

I kicked off my shoes. They tumbled on the floor. I pulled my socks off with one hand, holding on to Platy with the other. I wriggled out of my blazer, one arm after the other so that I could hold on to Platy. Listening to Debussy’s Claire de Lune on repeat, massaging Platy’s flippers, my head began to clear and my skin un-crawled, and I started to hypothesise, one: ‘why DadTed’s daring driving style?’ and, two: ‘where we could possibly be going?’ I got as far as: we’re fleeing the country because—

Exhausted, I fell asleep. Dead to the world.

I don’t know how long I’d slept, but I woke up when a cold breeze lifted my blanket. I pulled it down. I was alone in the car, all five doors wide open. I paused Debussy and removed my headphones. Silence. Country sounds. Leaves rustling, brook babbling, birds twittering—that reminded me, I was not, definitely, not ever going to check my social media ever again—, crickets chirping, a coffee making machine grating.

DB’s portable expresso maker!

For just another moment, I stayed still, breathing in the coffee’s nutty aroma. Then I scrambled out of the car and sprinted across the tumbledown woodland parking into my dads’ arms. Both my Dads. They never blinked—well, possibly one tiny blink—or push me away. Given the putrid perfume I was fated to wear for the rest of my life, that was a mega achievement.

“Tea?”

“What’s that?” I ignored DB’s exhaled question.

DadTed shook his head. DadBarnaby laughed, “That, my dear Lily, is what is known as a double-decker bus-truck hidden underneath camouflage netting.”

“Dad...!?” I rolled my eyes at him for stating the blatantly obvious.

“Barnaby was reluctant to leave his car behind,” DT said, grinning at his husband of twenty years. “So he resorted to acquiring a rather larger mode of alternative transportation than anticipated, suitable for transporting both bipedales and quadrarollers.”

“You are not allowed to drive ... That,” I said, forgetting to laugh at Dad’s joke.

“I am, so.” DT showed me his, a, driving licence, all categories ticked. Confused, I turned it around.

“Who is Harry Taylor? And what's he doing with your face. And your hair is white, and that’s not your birth date.”

“Looks good, doesn’t it. One hundred percent, genuinely falsified. Ted’s got one too.”

I eyed DadBarnaby, sternly. He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

“You got one for me as well?” Fair’s fair, I was seventeen and the only hurdle to losing my L plates was the practical test. I held out my hand.

DB swallowed, a reminder that fish slurry aroma took some getting used to—even for the best dads in the world. “What do you think?” he said.

I thought, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, but my dads might, in this case, be unwilling to accept that as a valid argument. So, I said, diplomatically, “It would be nice; if you break the Road Traffic Act, 1988, we as a family should demonstrate a united front.”

“Don’t know what exactly you said just now, Lily dear, but...” DB pulled another driving licence from his pocket, “Take the car without our permission and you’re grounded for ten years, and...”

Emily Taylor, my face (different hair colour, different birth date), licenced to drive all categories, black on shiny new pink. I got thinking about DB’s trailing ‘and...’ My dads would not have devised such an elaborate, felonious escape if they didn’t honestly believe I was at risk. Our family, my freedom, my life; our freedoms, our lives. That put a big, fat damper on things.

“Who’re you?” I asked DadTed, subdued.

“Thomas,” he said, half question half statement, with a lobsided smile.

“Thomas?” I giggled. “Really?” Thomas had been my cat’s name. Originally, dads’ cat, I’d renamed her when I was two years old, apparently, after Thomas the Tank Engine. I’d even tried to teach her to choo-choo instead of meow, and followed her around the house waving clumps of cotton wool over her head (smoke from its chimney, obviously), chanting ‘fivvlin’fiveboxers’. God, I missed that cat. Her coat had been the same shade of ginger as DadTed’s hair.

“Choo-choo,” he chanted, grinning from ear to ear. “You were such a cute little toddler, Lily.”

“Yeh,” I shrugged. “Where are we going now? Or are we staying...” I scanned the green clearing that masked as a parking, “...here?” It looked like this overgrown lot hadn’t been visited by any sort of vehicle, or person, in years. “Thanks,” I said, as DadBarnaby-now-Harry (for simplicity and my sanity, he’d remain DB for now) handed me a steaming mug of tea. “You don’t have to stay this close to me, I’ve read the articles, I know what I smell like.” Collapsing in the tall grass, I swallowed away a lump in my throat. I’d never be able to get close to anyone again. I didn’t care particularly much about ‘anyone’, but I cared about my Dads. I loved them, and I loved their hugs, even if I couldn’t stand being pulled into uncomfortably close proximity and arm-squeezed by anyone else.

“Oh, Lily.” Both dads sat down beside me, one on each side, uttering my name synchronously and in tune. “First of all, no smell, however bad, could ever push us away from you,” said DadTed, whereupon he and DB slung an arm around my shoulders each. “To answer your first question, I’m going to drive my car into Barnaby’s incommensurate van, then we’ll fix us something to eat—Barn packed some beans and cheese—and then we’ll move on; we’ve got a fair way to go.”

Baked beans and grated cheese. I could eat that for breakfast, lunch and tea and snack on it in between, seven days a week, all year long. DadBarnaby lowered a ramp at the back of the bus—this was apparently a truck-trailer disguised as an ordinary old double decker—, and ‘some’ turned out to be a five-foot wall of jumbo crates crammed with tins, stacked against the wall to the cab. A three-door refrigerator chest in front of it, filled with cheese and bottled water. DadBarnaby had a way of getting things done, I knew, but this, and the bus and the licences, in what must have been less than an hour, was a feat, even for him.

With the Volkswagen parked inside behind the Mini, we ate in the back of the trailer, legs dangling over the edge. There was a moment of panic when a helicopter flew low overhead, and we scrambled deeper inside the truck. The thing blocked heatseeking equipment, apparently, and the windows were one-way displays, allowing us to look out while from the outside all you saw was an empty ragged old bus. My dads told me they’d tell me everything, the why and what next, when we’d arrived where we were going. That it was safer for the person they were going to, not to be implicated if we were caught. DadTed would sit with me in the Volkswagen for the first half of the journey; then he’d relief DB at the wheel. ‘They’, DT said, were looking for three people, not for an old banger of a bus driven by a pensioner.

I sniggered as DadBarnaby put on an oversized scratch-wool cardigan and a dusty old Einstein wig from a school play, and hoisted himself into the cab. He told me to shut it, or he’d sing all the way to wherever when it was his turn in the Volkswagen with me. I capitulated. Noone wants to hear DadBarnaby sing, most of all not when he gets carried away with Queen’s I Want to Break Free.

DT settled in the front passenger seat with a pillow and a blanket, declaring his intention to catch a nap. He must have been exhausted, because a nap caught him within minutes. Resolved to share my joke when he woke up, I settled on the backseat with Platy and my e-reader (location services disabled, offline mode, thanks for the advice, Dads, but I really want to know now, why all the cloak and dagger?). I wasn’t tired, and relied on John Wyndham’s Chrysalids to distract me from obsessively speculating where we were heading.

Chapter 2
Satin Sheets and Pillowcases

More helicopters soared overhead, at least ten during the first hour. Waking up DadTed, who’d shoot up straight, eyes on me, ears on the sky. Later, frequency of chopper blades reduced, DadBarnaby responded in much the same way. I’d never noticed this many helicopters, not before my life as a fugitive of the law. Then a long perforation of sirens closed in on us from behind, taking forever to reach us. I’ve never seen DadBarnaby so tense in my life. Clenched jaw and fists, holding his breath, breathing out a deep sigh only when sirens overtook us and faded. DadTed’s white hair and steady ten percent under the speed limit, on the country lanes we were sticking to, kept us well and truly under the police radar. My dads were both forty-five, and usually sharp and fashionably dressed—for forty-five-year-olds—, so the dowdy pensioner look was something I intended to tease them with for the foreseeable.

A big bus, old on the outside, a large fridge and heatseeking deflection on the inside, one-way projection windows. Fake driving licences, cardis and white wigs. I asked DadBarnaby, why he was the one with the iffy associates, something I’d sooner associate with DT.

“We’ve never really told you how we met, have we? Not exactly,” he said.

“At DadTed’s work,” I rehashed what I’d been told since I was old enough to be interested.

DB nodded, slowly, raised eyebrows telling me that was only part of the story.

“No way,” I breathed. Not my insurance broker dad. “He... No, he never...”

DB shrugged.

Much later, after hours of zilch aerial or terrestrial passers-over-or-by frights, and me reaching the final chapter of the Chrysalids, our bus stuttered to a halt, an ominous grinding sound emerging from its belly.

“Your other dad never knew how to work a gearstick,” muttered DadBarnaby under his breath. Checking the time on his brand-new burner, he added, “We should be there by now.”

The door of the cab opened and slammed shut.

Blinding lights surrounded our truck.

A scream, which might have given me a heart attack if I was seventy years older than I was, and prone to panic attacks. The former I wasn’t, the latter I was, but I reckoned I had years to get that under control before reached the former and I needed to start worrying about cardiac ailments.

“Oh, my giddy’aunt, you made it. I was so worried, how’s the little tyke?”

“She’ll be embosoming him half to death.” Dad chuckled. Then, as he noticed panic draining the blood from my face, “Don’t worry, Little Tyke, I’ll tell her not to crush you.”

“Ha! Convincing anyone of that won’t be difficult.” I scrunched up my nose and squeezed it shut. “Who is she anyway?” I’d never heard my dads talk about friends way up north or south west, where we would be right now, and I was never at my best meeting strangers I knew nothing about.

“Sorry, my darling,” Dad squeezed through the front seats to the back. “If there was anything I could do to undo what happened to you, I’d do it in a flash. If you could transfer it to me, I’d take it instantly. I’m sure we'll find a cure, but for now, I, we, love you. Unconditionally. And...” he nodded in the direction the voices came from, “we wouldn’t take you to anyone we didn’t one hundred percent trust. Christine is an exceptional woman, unconventional, measured by typical-human standards, but I’m convinced you’ll like her.”

There was a knock on the truck ramp, and Dad looked back over his shoulder.

“I dated her before I met your other dad.”

I gasped. “You dated a woman!?”

“Yes and no. Christine was Chris then; not long after we broke up, she came out as transgender. We stayed in touch at first—she sent you Platy when you were born—, but then she moved to Wales, and she was busy renovating this farm, and Ted and I were busy as well. I called her this morning—”

“On your burner?” I interrupted. “Sorry, go on.”

“...on my burner, I told her what happened, and she told me to get a move on, asap, or else.”

The lights outside dimmed, and Dad used the remote to pivot the ramp down.

I grabbed Platy and my headphones, and followed him out of the Volkswagen, out of the truck and into, what I believed would be the beginning of a new life.