Hollowpox The Hunt for Morrigan Crow - Jessica Townsend Page 0,56

function to shut down, resulting in erratic, violent – and, I would like to emphasise, completely involuntary – behaviour.

‘As I’m sure many of you have realised by now,’ he continued gravely, ‘there is something else the attackers have in common. They are all Wunimals.’

‘What’s that got to do with Dr Bramble?’ someone called out from a seat near the back. ‘She’s an unnimologist. Wunimals aren’t unnimals. Don’t know how many times we have to say it.’

There was scattered applause and a few cheers from the audience for this. Morrigan turned in her seat and saw that the speaker was himself a Wunimal Minor – some sort of lizardwun, she thought, judging from the greenish tinge of his skin and his bulbous yellow eyes.

Dr Bramble stood up from her seat to address the growing upset. ‘Apologies for the implied slight, Mr Graves,’ she said, holding a hand to her chest. ‘You’re quite right of course, I’m no Wunimal expert. But there have been many illnesses that originated in unnimals before migrating to Wunimal populations, and it is possible that’s what happened here. I’ve seen similar symptoms in diseases such as Fainting Meerkat Syndrome, for example, and the Equine Racing Flu, even the Foxpox. We can’t disregard—’

‘This is nothing like Fainting Meerkat Syndrome,’ said a little voice from one of the middle rows. Morrigan wasn’t sure who’d spoken, until a small furry gentleman in a tiny bowler hat climbed up to stand on top of his neighbour’s head, muttering, ‘Pardon me, you don’t mind, do you – cheers, Barry.’ The meerkatwun cleared his throat to address Dr Bramble and the gathering. ‘My Aunt Lucille died of Fainting Meerkat Syndrome. It’s a horrible disease. Every time she fainted we didn’t know whether she’d wake up. Then one day … she didn’t. I miss her very much, and I won’t have you suggesting she was some kind of vicious unnimal, going around attacking folks willy-nilly!’

‘Hear, hear,’ said the lizardwun from the back, and there was more applause and cheering.

‘Dr Bramble isn’t suggesting anything of the sort,’ Jupiter called out over the noise. ‘Let me be clear: we don’t know anything, and therefore we can’t rule anything out. We’re determined to get to the bottom of this, and we will use every scrap of information we can find.

‘We don’t know how it’s passed on, but the illness is spreading,’ he continued without pausing, indicating the map. ‘Fast. These are the casualties of the virus so far, at least the ones we know about. The red dots indicate where the infected were when the virus peaked, before apparently exiting the body and leaving the Wunimal in a comatose state. This is what we’re calling the point of culmination. This culmination period seems to last several minutes for some Wunimals, and up to an hour for others. It’s marked by acts of violent, frantic, uncontrollable aggression, sometimes against others, sometimes against public property, and sometimes against themselves. This frenzied culmination – and subsequent coma – is what makes the illness dangerous not only to the Wunimals it infects, but to everyone else around them.’

‘Excuse me, Captain North,’ Miss Cheery called out, sticking her hand in the air. ‘You just used the word “casualties”. Are you saying there have been deaths?’

‘Not … deaths, no. “Casualties” may be the wrong word.’ Jupiter rubbed his left temple, looking weary. He hesitated for a moment, looking to where the High Council of Elders were seated, as if seeking their permission to reveal something. Morrigan saw Elder Quinn nod silently. ‘The infected Wunimals – the ones we know about – have been moved from the Royal Lightwing Wunimal Hospital to a locked ward of the teaching hospital here at Wunsoc, where they’re being cared for and monitored in isolation. The good news is, they appear to be free of the virus. The bad news is that they’ve been left – there’s no other word for it – hollow.’

The silence in the Gathering Place was as thick as soup. Jupiter’s words hung in the air, the weight of their impact threatening to drop on everyone’s heads.

‘When the disease – or the Hollowpox, we’re calling it, for want of a better name – when the Hollowpox leaves the body,’ he continued, ‘it seems to take almost everything with it. It wouldn’t necessarily be obvious to anyone who isn’t like me, who isn’t a Witness. But they’re not just comatose, they’re … sort of … empty. No sense of self, no brain activity. Completely unresponsive.