Fanatics: Zero Tolerance (13 page)

*****

They were the sheep. They were the ones who wanted comfort. They needed guidance; someone to tell them what they should do next. Even after the passage of days since the “normal” phase of their lives ended, they still refused to let go of the hope that all of this was a mere interruption in the usual course of things; presently someone in authority would get a grip on the situation and the status quo would be restored: their homes would be rebuilt, their employment resumed... they were, after all, in a civilised country. They could hardly fail to make a better job of things than those pathetic, disaster-prone nations in Africa and all those other places they kept hearing about on the news year after year.

Yet reality perversely continued to thwart their expectations; so the traditional course of action at such a moment seemed to be called for.

Along with the real believers, they made their way in steady streams towards church buildings, feeling only slightly discomfited by the silent, hostile faces many of them passed on the way in. Their mood was not one of repentance or abasement; rather, they were hoping for some sort of morale booster, a reminder that God was on their side and that they would come through eventually. (On the question of whether the reminder was for them or for God, their thinking was fairly vague.)

*****

Almost every seat was taken. A low hum of conversation faded into a reverent silence as a thin man with silver hair and a solemn expression stood up before the rows of people. He was not the preacher - that gentleman had progressed to Better Things on the morning of the disaster - but he was a Pillar Of The Church.

 
Just at that moment, someone outside began shouting in a hate-filled voice that seemed to be on the verge of turning into a scream. Heads turned towards the doors behind the congregation. It was difficult to make out what he was saying, but one word kept recurring:
“Lemmings!”

A steely-nerved woman in the choir caught their attention again by standing and striking up a well-known hymn; they stood up with her and joined in for the few verses they knew by heart.

When they were seated again, the man at the front cleared his throat nervously and tried to begin: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I -”

The rest of the crowd outside suddenly began yelling, and this time
no-one could conquer the impulse to turn and look apprehensively towards the porch.

A stone crashed through one of the few windowpanes not damaged by the disaster, and a young girl screamed as she was showered with glass; then bedlam broke out as the mob burst in through the doorway, armed with sticks, stones, broken bottles and whatever else they could get their hands on, and began smashing everything before them, heedless of whether it was wood, glass or flesh.

The silver-haired man went down under the feet of first the panic-stricken congregation, and then the mob, protesting that this was not one of the Lemming churches, this was Anglican; but of course even if they had been able to hear him, they would not have cared. Lemmings, Anglicans, Christian Democrats - they were all the same. It was because of them that Lewis McDonald, the one man who could have prevented all of this, was as good as dead.

Outside, the ringleader stayed just long enough to make sure the action was well underway,
then made himself scarce.

*****

“MARTYRS - people who believe in something so vociferously that the rest of us are forced to kill them off in order to get some peace and quiet again. The most obnoxious thing about them is often the company they keep; people who afterwards aren’t so much characterised by their celebration of their friend’s death for what he believed in, as their tendency to insist that YOU have to die for what he believed in.”

-
from “Instant Wisdom” by G.C. Campbell.

*****

Sadie Parker, who had been clubbed on the head and left for dead, was the last person to leave the church. She struggled to her feet, whimpering, wiping semi-congealed dollops of blood from her eyes with the cleanest part of her right sleeve; the other had been torn off. She staggered out into the nearest aisle and headed for the back door. Glass crunched under her feet as she walked.

She stopped when she reached the door and looked back at the
cross mounted on the wall over the pulpit, as if expecting God to appear in person and offer some sort of explanation for all the pains, inconveniences and indignities she had had to suffer.

He made no appearance and offered no explanation, presumably because He had done that before, and was not in the habit of doing
encores;
and besides, people were still not paying attention to what he said the first time around.

Sadie spat on the floor and left.

PART 4: Emergency Measures

How can anyone be described as “chipper” and “ready to resume his duties” or even just “alive and well” only a few days after being shot in the head?

Beats me; you’d think the person concerned would at least have a thumping headache.

One imagines a lot of people might be more than a bit surprised to hear news of this sort; it’s nearly as strange as hearing that someone has risen from the dead after being killed quite thoroughly by crucifixion, isn’t it? Sort of hard to be blasé about, eh? For others, though, especially those whose lives have lately been so profoundly disrupted, one more odd thing just slips past without attracting too much sceptical attention.

*****

Hair never grew back over the place on McDonald’s skull where the bullet entered. He wore the bald patch like a badge of courage, and his quirky refusal to have plastic surgeons do anything about it endeared him still further to followers amazed to see him alive at all.

In later years, when things became more difficult and people began to be disenchanted with his leadership, the stigma served as a very useful reminder to the public of the potential disaster his absence from public life could be. Were they restless, wanting a change? They should be ashamed of themselves! How could they forget what he had almost sacrificed for them?

*****

Spotting someone he thought he recognised standing in the doorway of the relief centre, Tony Bannister made his way towards him, elbowing his way past the handful of people hanging around the outer “gate” (actually, not so much a gate; more a break in the coils of razor wire surrounding the place). Relieved to see a familiar face, he paid no attention to the sign by the
gate which read: ATTENTION! ALL LOOTERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT!

A soldier, suspicious of his well-groomed appearance at a time when almost everyone else was dusty and bedraggled, stopped him. The soldier’s manner was not deferential; he did not simply stand in Tony’s way, or even just extend his rifle barrel across his path. The point of his gun poked into Tony’s ribs right over his heart. “Empty your pockets,” he ordered in a dangerously flat-toned voice.

“What?” said Tony. He put on an expression of innocent bewilderment.

The soldier simply waited.

Tony shrugged and smiled at him. He had great natural charm; it had gotten him out of many scrapes in the past when he had nothing to offer by way of an excuse other than a fake naivete. “I don’t understand,” he said. “What’s this for?"

His charm cut no ice this time; the soldier gestured to a subordinate, who stepped forward and began to
bodysearch Tony. A protest from the latter was cut off by another poke in the ribs from the rifle.

The second soldier took a very big wad of notes from one of Tony’s pockets. They both looked at him silently.

“Hey, it’s all mine! I mean, really! No messing! I can prove it -” He looked back at them, desperately trying to think of something convincing to say, and wondering what his chances would be if he tried to make a break for it through the bystanders.

“Take him away,” said the soldier, and suddenly he found himself being
frogmarched around to the back of the building.

“Wait here,” they told him, and unexpectedly stepped away from him, making him think that luck was going his way after all; presumably someone more senior (and more easily bluffed, he hoped) was being fetched to question him.

The bleakness of his situation only truly came home to him when he realised that the wall he was standing in front of had a lot of chips knocked out of the brickwork at about chest level, and there were a handful of darker patches around the same places.

Inside the relief centre, the workers, startled by the sound of a brief burst of automatic gunfire, lifted their heads; then they carried on as if nothing had happened. It was not the first time they had heard that sound, and it would probably not be the last.

*****

Children were disappointed to discover that even the worst calamity since World War II did not mean that school was cancelled. Anything that helped restore a feeling of normality was welcome, and anyway, comparison of school records with rolls of who actually turned up gave the authorities a very useful kick-start with what came to be called their “civilian inventory”.

*****

A census was as inevitable as recriminations. Before McDonald’s government could properly plan for the long term, it needed information; everything had to be inventoried, especially people. Everyone understood its importance.

A certain question on the form raised a few eyebrows, but provoked no particularly militant reaction; the people from whom one would have expected such a reaction, the Christian Democrats, had been firmly relegated to the third division of politics, and looked likely to stay there indefinitely. 

Besides, there were other questions just as odd as the one about the number of Bibles per household. It hardly seemed worth worrying about
… and anyway, Bibles were suddenly unpopular. Everything that smacked of lemming was unpopular. Religious stuff was what started the war, wasn’t it? It wasn’t surprising that people had zero tolerance for it these days.

*****

The most dreadful thing about any large-scale catastrophe is that children are not spared; and their suffering, which in one sense is less acute than that of their elders (it is immediate and does not look apprehensively to the future), is in another sense much worse: children are not as well equipped as adults with the ability to see things from the other person’s point of view, and are consequently far less likely to set personal differences aside and pull together in times of crisis. If a scapegoat is available, they leap on it with a savage’s yell of joy.

If their parents and peers approve, the yells are even louder.

Graham Torrey looked like a very convenient scapegoat. A lightly-built Protestant boy of fifteen who had to walk home from school through an area dominated by the presence of Catholics might as well have been holding a placard with the invitation in bold letters:
Lynch me
. The Police and the Army were overstretched by tens of miles; no-one would be around to protect him.

A knot of eight or nine boys from St. Colum’s High School saw him approach, then hesitate as he screwed up his courage, then walk briskly on with his gaze to the ground, allowing himself a sidelong glimpse at the hostile crowd every few steps. If he had not glanced at them, his chances of avoiding a confrontation would have been much better; but his looks caught their attention and focused it, challenging them to do something about the anomalous fact of a Lemming in their territory (that he was not actually a Lemming did not matter a jot - he was Not One Of Us, which made him a chicken in a fox’s den; he wore the uniform of the enemy, so he
was
the enemy).

Graham did not waste time turning to look when he heard the
slap of footfalls; he broke into a run, his schoolbag bouncing off his side and back. The boys behind him, realising that their hippo-in-a-minefield efforts at stealth were pointless, burst into an animal cheer of abuse and hate-slogans.

One of them must have been St. Colum’s top hundred-metre sprinter, for far sooner than Graham expected, somebody gained on him, snagging the
shoulder-strap of his bag. Without turning, Graham managed to shrug it off and push it downwards. He heard a satisfactory thud and a cry of pain; then there was another shout heard as the general howl abated momentarily, and the sound of someone skidding across concrete. The athlete must have tripped over the bag and then someone else had fallen over him.

*****

Philip Allen peeked out from behind his living-room curtains just in time to see a schoolboy tearing past, followed by what looked like a roaring mob.

He stepped back, tut-tutting, ashamed at his sense of relief about not being involved, but still with not the least intention of actually
doing
anything about what he had just seen. Then he caught himself; that was a despicable attitude. If he was in that boy’s shoes, apart from praying that they were running shoes, he would certainly have been praying for help.

Well; he was a little too old and unfit to have any hope of catching up in time to lend a the boy a hand - or to be more precise, a couple of sets of knuckles - but that didn’t mean he couldn’t help. He turned to his phone and rang 999.

“We apologise, but this service is temporarily unavailable,” said a woman’s recorded voice. “Please try again in a few minutes.”

*****

Graham, legs aching and lungs burning, turned the last corner; he had only a few more metres to run before the trap was sprung. The mob was very close now, and he could feel himself flagging; but he ignored the stitch in his side and the calf muscles howling their pain at him, spurred on by a sudden horrible suspicion that his friends had set him up - they would be nowhere to be seen, because there was no ambush planned, and the fenians would rip him apart...

Then, just a little prematurely (their battle fever getting the better of them) the warriors of Gilbert Memorial Community College broke onto the street to the left and right of the advancing St Colum’s boys, brandishing sticks, stones, and a handful of petrol bombs, and Graham Torrey’s principal concern became getting out of
their
way before the ammunition began to fly.

The Catholic boys pulled up sharply just as Graham finally ran out of puff, avoiding entrapment by the narrowest of margins thanks to the wilder ones on the other side who’d jumped the gun. But it took the Catholics a second or two to overcome the momentum of the trailing members of their pack, who were still arriving, and to snap out of the “hunt” mode their minds were in.

Graham turned just in time to see the foremost St Colum’s boy as he looked to left and right with a satisfyingly stricken expression,
(ah, ye coward, you’re not such a hard man now!),
struggling unsuccessfully to turn and get past those who were dunting him forward into enemy territory. Then the first petrol bomb landed, shattering against the angle of the boy’s shoulder. In an instant, he was engulfed in fire; his screams were blood-freezing, and stopped the battle in its tracks. He swatted futilely at the flames licking his arms and chest and face, and lurched blindly towards Graham, almost falling into him.

It was a defining moment in Graham Torrey’s life. The lectures of parents, ministers, social workers and Policemen had failed to sink in; but now, at last, he understood that the word
fight
meant something more than big talk and a few punches and bruises and boasting about a trickle of blood as if it was a major injury and trying to be one-up on the barely-known object of some barely-justified juvenile hatred.

Then a cheer went up, an ugly, hate-filled sound with nothing of mirth about it. After a moment, others joined in; and the battle resumed.

Graham Torrey’s screams of horror were drowned out completely.

*****

A few days later, Philip Allen said goodbye to the census officer who’d just paid him a visit, closed his front door, and went back into his living room to sit down.

He looked around, drinking in that feeling of being at home, of being comfortably surrounded by all the things it had taken him and his late wife a lifetime to gather up and arrange until they were just so. He was pretty certain this would be one of the last few times he would have leisure to do this, and the thought was melancholy. His wife’s touch was still to be found in every room in the house, even after twelve years; leaving it would, in a certain measure, feel like losing her over again.

But something inside told him the time had come to move on. The quiet, humdrum phase of his life had, with the advent of the war, and particularly of this census, come to a close; and though he was apprehensive about the dangers involved in what he was about to set in motion, he was as certain about the part he must now play as if it was already a thing of the past. He had been waiting for this for years, and now it had arrived!

The plans which for so long had been mere daydreams began unfolding in his mind like the petals of a flower, complete and flawless, hardly less real than the roses in the garden outside, having grown just as slowly towards fullness. He turned them over in his mind, examining them as one might a work of art, thanking God that he had finally discovered what it was that he had been waiting for all this time.

He had often wondered why his life seemed so dull (even though it was a pleasant kind of dullness) and sometimes felt guilty that he was making no perceptible mark on the lives of those around him. It seemed futile to ever speak of it to anyone; how could a doctor, of all people, particularly at a time like this, believe that his work was pointless? Surely if anyone was needed by people it was he. Yet despite (or perhaps because of) the chronic shortage of doctors following the war, Philip Allen still often struggled against a sense of being engaged in something ineffectual; the Human Race was an enormous machine badly in need of major repairs, and day by day he did no more than buff and paint a few rusty spots here and there. The curious, not to say bizarre, diminution in social standing of the medical profession these days only served to make how he felt even more emphatic. When people inexplicably preferred the remedies of quacks and charmers to sensible medical treatment, he became less and less able to resist picturing himself as someone trying to gather up grains of sand into a pile, one grain at a time, while a howling wind kept blowing them away. He daydreamed of silencing the gale, of being useful in a way that really made a difference - of building something that would
last.