Flare (24 page)

“You want me to write your biography?”  I said incredulously.

He nodded.  “Is there a problem with that?”

“Uh, no, no that’s fine”.  I hoped I was more successful than I felt at keeping the sarcasm from my voice.

“Good, well that’s settled then.  Guard!”

A soldier hurried in and saluted.  “Sir?”

“Take Mr King to the accommodation block and find him a suitable room and some fresh clothes.  Once that’s done, I need a security detail on him, for his protection”.

He glanced at me as he said the last, making his meaning clear.  He might have accepted my service but he was a long way from trusting me.  I couldn’t blame him, I thought as I followed the soldier out of the room, because I had every intention of running away at the very first opportunity.

Chapter
37

My new room was a small cubicle in the unmarried officer’s barracks, my guard informed me as he led me to a nondescript brown door in a corridor full of them, and although it was tiny, just enough room for the bed, wardrobe, shower cubicle and toilet, it seemed a palace after the cramped confines of the tent.

“The shower works”, he said, pointing to it, “we’ve rigged up the old gas boilers and we’ve still got gas left in the tanks, but for how long we’re not sure so get ‘em while you can.  I’m going to find you some clothes, I’ll be back in a few minutes”.

He closed the door and for the first time in days I was alone, a once familiar feeling that now seemed strange.  I also realised, now that I was in an enclosed space, how badly I stank.  Stale sweat, grime and other less savoury substances covered my body and I decided to test the shower, part of me wondering if it was a crude joke on the part of the guard.

The water flowed, however, starting off cold but quickly heating, filling the small room with a cloud of steam.

Stripping off and throwing my clothes in the corner, I stepped into the stream of near-scalding water and sighed with relief as it battered my weary muscles.

I was still in there when the soldier returned, sticking his head into the shower cubicle regardless of my nakedness.

“Clothes are on the bed”, he said, “I’ll be outside the door when you’re ready”.

I nodded, hands cupped to cover myself.  He withdrew and I heard the door close, and once I was sure it was safe I turned the shower off and grabbed a towel hanging nearby.

It was rough but clean, and once I was dry I ventured into the main room to see a pair of olive green combat trousers and a white t-shirt, both clean and pressed, as well as two pairs of sports socks and a pair of thicker green ones.

The underwear he’d found, however, was several sizes too big but I put it on anyway, feeling the cotton bagging up against my legs as I pulled the combats on.

Now that my body was clean I began to notice other things.  My mouth, for example, tasted like someone had crept in and taken a shit in it overnight, while my face was covered with several days’ worth of stubble.

I rubbed condensation off the small shaving mirror in the bathroom and stared in shock at the scrawny figure looking back at me.

I’d lost maybe ten pounds, my cheekbones sharper than I’d ever seen them, framing the hollow pits beneath my eyes.  My beard, which I couldn’t truly call stubble anymore, was growing in black but heavily peppered with white, while my freshly washed hair waved like a dandelion without grease and dirt to hold it down.

I grinned into the mirror, showing yellow teeth and gums that were beginning to bleed, as they always did whenever I failed to clean my teeth regularly.

In all, I was a mess.  I looked like a parody of the man I’d been only a week ago, a caricature of the trendy Hoveite journalist who wrote such cutting articles about the darker side of mankind.

Inspection over, I opened the main door to see my guard lounging against the wall.  He quickly straightened when he saw me.

“Need anything sir?”

“Yeah, a razor, a toothbrush and some hair wax”.

He shrugged.  “I’m sure I can scratch something up, sir, but it might take me a while”.

“I don’t suppose it’s urgent.  Do you know where I’m supposed to be working?”

He nodded.  “There’s an operations room back in the admin building, I’ll show you”.

I paused as the door closed, looking for a key, but the soldier shook his head.

“Won’t need to lock it, sir.  Nothing worth stealing anyway”.

I nodded and followed him as he led me back to the admin building, the sun pleasant now that I wasn’t breaking my back under its glare.  As we reached the reception
area, he turned the opposite direction from the conference room where I’d met the secretary and led me along another corridor to a large steel door which stood slightly ajar, the electronic keypad next to it now useless and replaced by two hulking soldiers with pistols holstered at their waists.

They nodded at my guard and stared at me, then stepped aside and let us pass.

The door opened into a large room, which by the shape and size of it I guessed once housed some kind of command and control centre.

There were still banks of monitors to one side, but anything electronic had been removed and now all the desks were littered with paper while uniformed staff sorted through stacks of reports, shipment details and whatever else they had to deal with.

It took me a moment to realise that all the staff in here bar two or three were women, the other men clearly holding positions of authority as they walked up and down checking work and signing off on orders.

A small number of women stood at ease just inside the door, but before I could wonder at their purpose one of them was handed a sheaf of papers and she took off out of the door at a jog, relaying them to wherever they needed to go.

The whole room smacked of military efficiency, and I was acutely aware that I stuck out like a sore thumb.

As I stood there
uncertainly, a man with three golden pips emblazoned on his chest tab strode over and smiled, sticking his hand out.

“Malcolm King, I presume. I’m Captain Barnes, I run the command centre.  The Secretary said you’d be coming, your desk is this way”.

He led me to a small area by the far wall already stacked high with papers, a pad, pencil and half a dozen pens set neatly in the middle.

“Hope you can do without typing”, he said with a smile, “believe it or not we’ve still got some old typewriters in storage but we’ve yet to find any ribbons for them”.

“This will do fine”, I said, finding the buzzing chatter of the room strange after two days of working in silence. 

“Good”.  Barnes pointed to a nearby desk where several soldiers were lined up with mugs in hand.  “Tea and coffee over there, help yourself whenever you want it.  There’s a toilet over in the corner, but if you need a number two then you need to use the chemical loo outside.  Lunch is served in the canteen from twelve until two, I’ll make sure someone shows you the way.  Anything you’re not sure of, come and find me”.

He smiled and walked away, immediately surrounded by staff who needed his signature or advice, leaving me to sit at my desk, the empty pad waiting for me to fill it with words that would explain to those outside why they had to work from dawn until dusk in horrific conditions while I sat in a pleasant room with everything I needed to keep me comfortable within arm’s reach.

Chapter
38

By the time I was summoned for lunch several hours later my pad was still empty.  The luxury of just sitting in a comfortable room and doing nothing was too tempting, and I whiled away the hours by thinking up ways to escape.  Part of me was thinking how nice it would be to stay here, if Melody were also with us, but the larger part of me balked at being part of any organisation that treated some so badly while pampering those towards the top.

Lunch was a cheerful affair, served in a utilitarian but airy canteen with large windows that looked out over the field of tents, people chatting to each other and laughing while they ate.

I sat alone, unwilling to try and force my way into any of the already established groups, and for their part the soldiers were happy to leave me to it.

The food was excellent, grilled chicken and fresh greens with a cheese sauce that was rich enough it made my stomach hurt, a far cry from the basic stodge they’d given us in the mess tent.  I ate every guilty mouthful, each bite a reminder of the difference, and wondered how I was ever going to write something that would keep those out there happy with their lot.  The whole situation very much put me in mind of concentration camps despite the logic of necessity that drove the Secretary, and I again resolved to break free as soon as I could.

A chair scraped back next to me and I looked up at the unexpected interruption to see Emily, dressed again in combat fatigues but still frowning as she sat next to me with a full tray of food.

My heart leapt when I saw her, but her eyes bored into mine with an intensity that choked off the words of greeting before I could utter them.

“So you sold out”, she said flatly, the words making my stomach churn.

I looked around to make sure that no one was close enough to hear and shook my head.

“No, of course not!  But what good could I do out there, building fences and
being watched every second?  This was the only way I could see of getting us out of here”.

I could see that she wanted to believe me, and I desperately needed her to.

“This isn’t much better”, I hurried on before she could speak, “but at least we’ve got a little freedom now.  That’s why I asked for you”.

She raised an eyebrow at that.  “Oh really?  The guard they sent was quite clear that I was some kind of prize when he showed me to your room”.

I shook my head.  “No, it was nothing like that, I promise. I may have fibbed to the Secretary and implied we were a couple, but only because he’d be suspicious if I asked for you to be reassigned for any other reason”.

She sighed and shrugged, then began shovelling food into her mouth.

“Whatever”, she said around a mouthful, “so long as you promise me we’re getting out of here”.

“Of course we are, I just need to figure out how, is all”.
 

“Well anything has to be better than serving food in the mess tent”, she said, stabbing angrily at her chicken.  “This place is a fucking joke”.

I pushed my plate away, no longer hungry.

“I thought, well, I thought you might be pleased being back with the army”.  I regretted it the instant I said it as her eyes flashed and she waved her fork under my nose.

“Happy?  This isn’t
my
army, it’s a group of misogynistic thugs working for a pencil pusher with delusions of grandeur”.

I looked around hurriedly to see if anyone had heard the outburst.

“Keep your voice down”, I muttered, “unless you want them to send you back to the mashed potato.  And what do you mean, misogynistic?”

She glowered at me but lowered her voice.  “Have you not seen what’s going on here?  Have you seen a single woman armed?”

I looked around again, this time studying the soldiers in the canteen.  All the men had pistols holstered at their belts or rifles slung on their backs, but now that she mentioned it I couldn’t see a single female soldier with anything more threatening than a pencil.

“No, but surely some of the patrols have women in them?  They can’t be so flush with soldiers that they can afford not to”.

She shook her head.  “I volunteered for the patrols, thinking that maybe I could find a way to get us out of here, but I was told that women were too valuable to risk on the front line”.

“Too valuable?”  I had a sneaking suspicion I knew what they meant, and her next words confirmed it.

“We’re baby machines.  If we’re going to rebuild the population then they need us safe, where they can keep an eye on us.  It’s like living in the dark ages”.

“And they told you this?”

“Well not in so many words, but it was pretty clear what they meant”.

“But there are women on the work gangs”.

“Gangs which are always under guard and never leave the perimeter.  I suspect that any sign of danger would have them all locked away somewhere safe.  It’s a teenage boy’s fantasy come true.  Lots of guns, some fort building and a supply of captive women”.

As I looked again at what was happening I realised she was right, making me even more determined to escape, and never bring Melody within a hundred miles of this place if I could help it.

“What about everyone else here?”  I asked, “shouldn’t we warn them?”