India
A crowded bus station. A lady monkey with a baby clinging to its neck sidled past me, eyeing the banana I was eating. I barely noticed them. A moment later, claws dug into my back. A skeletal hand darted forward to grab my banana. The baby monkey was on my shoulder. I leapt up and shrugged vigorously but it climbed on to my head, so I twisted sharply this way and that to unseat the little nuisance. I felt a painful scratch on my neck. The furry bundle leapt off me and scampered away. I’d been bitten.
A few bored locals gathered around to see if the kerfuffle was worth getting overexcited about. A samosa seller helpfully dabbed my neck with a rag soaked in oil from his smoking cauldron. I thanked him diplomatically for this pointless gesture.
The crowd retreated. I touched the wound. There was fresh blood on my fingers. The fangs of a wild mammal had breached my skin. I knew what this meant. Saliva from the rabid monkey’s teeth had entered my system already. Toxic microbes were swimming through my veins, attacking my blood cells, spreading deadly infection, swarming towards my vital organs, which would collapse, one by one. First my kidneys, then my heart, finally my brain.
The fear of rabies was a vivid and perennial source of panic when I was growing up. It was rife across Europe and Asia, but Britain was a haven of safety. Every point of entry to the UK was blazoned with lurid posters warning incomers not to smuggle infected mammals across our undefiled borders.
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