21 Days: A Lockdown Psychological Thriller by M K Farrar

Author:M K Farrar [Farrar, M K]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: lockdown, pandemic, thriller, psychological, Stalker, standalone, domestic noir, domestic thriller
Publisher: Warwick House Press
Published: 2022-07-13T16:00:00+00:00

Day Fifteen

I stared at the television screen, unable to shake the impending sense of doom that had settled over me since catching the news first thing this morning.

The Prime Minister was in intensive care.

The Foreign Secretary had stepped up to become deputy. There was a thing, I’d discovered, called the Designated Survivor. It was brought into play when a country lost its leader, together with anyone who would naturally step in to take that leader’s place, such as a deputy. It was normally thought that a Designated Survivor would only be used if something such as a terrorist attack happened, taking out most of the cabinet, but it seemed this virus was also bad enough for it to be needed.

Only it didn’t look as though that was what was happening in this case. Despite being in intensive care, our prime minister was still supposed to be the one in power, and the Foreign Secretary might be acting as a pillar head, but he didn’t have any actual power of his own. He couldn’t make decisions during a time when the world was in crisis, and we desperately needed someone who would be able to guide us through it. Our country was a rudderless ship heading through some extremely stormy waters, and I feared for its safety.

The idea of a Designated Survivor seemed like something out of a film—and a quick search on Google showed me that the television studios had already thought it was a good idea, since there was already a popular TV series about it. Just like all the films and series about killer viruses, our fiction had now turned into a reality.

With a sigh, I picked up the tube of hand cream that was now a permanent feature on my coffee table and squeezed a good dollop onto the backs of both hands. I flinched as I rubbed it in, the skin red and tight and chafed. I needed to stop washing my hands so much, but it had become something of a habit, as had picking at the dried skin whenever I was lost in thought. Anytime I walked past my sink, the urge to wash them became overwhelming. Though I’d had no direct contact with anyone else for two weeks, I couldn’t shake the mental image of the virus being on everything I touched. I’d read news reports about farmers urging people not to walk through their land because they were touching turnstiles and potentially spreading the virus around, and the image had stuck in my head. Just because I hadn’t seen anyone walking around here recently didn’t mean that they hadn’t been. Plus, I had whoever had been stealing my food to think about. What if they were infected? I didn’t know where the person was hiding out, but I was pretty sure they didn’t have any handwashing facilities. In my mind’s eye, I pictured hand and footprints of the virus left all over my door handles and cupboards and work surfaces. Every time

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