Chapters (96)

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96

Ant nearly died. The whole family was there, round his bed in the Whittington Hospital, watching him as he took little tiny quick breaths, his whole body shaking and shivering. Sweat pouring off him. Occasionally he’d come round and look frightened and shout some nonsense. Mum had wanted to get a priest in. In the end, though, it hadn’t come to that. Ant had fought the sepsis for three days and then it passed, the fever broke, the drugs kicked in, killed the bacteria and settled him down. Mum hugged the doctor. Mick had never really known what bacteria were before. But he’d hung around the hospital long enough to learn all about it. He’d even looked it up on Wikipedia. He wanted to know all about it so that he didn’t get septicaemia, or any of the other illnesses bacteria could give you.

He found out that bacteria are tiny living organisms, and they’re everywhere. They live in your gut, and on your skin, and in the ground. Forty million of them in a single gram of soil. A thousand million of them in a litre of fresh water. They were so small you couldn’t see them, but they were in everything, and if you piled them all up in one place they’d weigh more than all the other plants and animals on the planet put together.

When it came to the ones in Ant’s blood, the doctors had settled their hash, though. Wiped them out. Napalmed them with antibiotics. Saved poor Ant. Well, there were no doctors now, no one to fix you if the bad bacteria got inside you. If you got the sepsis you were dead meat.

What if Mick had septicaemia now? What if there were tiny little creatures infecting him? His arm felt suddenly itchy and he manically scratched away at it, being careful not to scrape his bandage off. Was he hot? Feverish? Or was it just warm in here? His feet felt cold. He was shaking a bit.

Sod it. It couldn’t happen this quickly. He was all right. Just imagining his worst nightmares. It wasn’t bacteria that had got in him – it was fear.

How do you tell your stupid brain to shut up? It was just a scratch. Don’t be such a baby.

He took a long, slow breath. Tried to calm down. If he was still feeling jittery in a while he’d take the other three outside. Much better to be doing something rather than just sitting on his arse worrying about shit.

Chapter 40