World War Moo (38 page)

Still, he couldn't do nothing. There had to be some other way. Piers wouldn't answer the phone, but maybe he could reason with whomever was directing this assault. He'd observed enough conflicts to know that escalation took two parties, and as he thought back over what he'd done, he understood his posturing had only inflamed the situation. He'd acted like a tin-pot dictator, threatening to nuke the shit out of the world. Even worse, much of his aggressive stance had been driven by his hatred for Piers. He'd never been calm or logical when talking to the man, remembering only that he'd tried to steal Margot. Maybe, just maybe, if he showed he was prepared to step back from the brink they could find a peaceful solution.

“Let me talk to the commander,” he said.

“You just talked to her,” Lesley said.

“What's your rank?”

“Err, activist?” the other woman said.

“What's your military rank?”

“I don't have one.”

Tony looked at Glen in puzzlement. His military commander was staring at him intently, a frown on his face. “What do you mean? You're army, right?”

“Don't be daft. Do you think the army would attack you with a herd of cows? They would just have fired missiles from one of those warships they've got out there.”

Tony grabbed at the table for support. Of course it wasn't the bloody military. He'd been so caught up by the explosions and the dash to the control room that he hadn't paid much attention to the farcical method of the initial assault. “So who exactly is attacking us?”

“The resistance.”

“What resistance?”

“The people you sent your spin doctor up to talk to.”

“The leaflet people?”

“Yes. She told us what you were going to do. We decided to stop it.”

Amira. He'd completely forgotten he was going to call her back and tell her he only planned to use the missile as a deterrent. Determined to stop it, she'd told these people he was going to fire it. Which prompted them to storm the base. Which made him believe the UN was beginning its final solution and give the order to fire. He'd almost destroyed the world because of one forgotten phone call. As utterly idiotic as the situation was, it also meant it wasn't too late to stand down. He could cancel the fire order and get on the phone to Piers. This time, however, he would be calm and rational. He would be Spock personified. He plucked the microphone from Glen's hand.

“What are you doing?” Glen said.

“We have to call it off.”

“This mission is going ahead,” Glen said, his voice soft and full of menace.

Tony looked up and found himself staring down the barrel of a gun. “You can't be serious. They're right, this is insanity.”

“No, it's God's judgement on the unbelievers.”

Glen took several steps back and, with the aid of his side, pushed up his sleeve. On his forearm was a tattoo of a chalice, red blood spilling over the top. Tony gaped at it. “You're the leak.”

“Finally, he gets it,” Glen said.

Tony felt like a fool. It had been so obvious all along. Only one person had been pushing for this missile as the answer to their problems and that answer just happened to coincide with the goals of Blood of Christ. He'd assumed Glen was just excited about firing off his missile, and the fact Glen sought his approval before preparing the weapon had blinded him to the truth. And Glen's ethnic background had contributed to throwing off the scent: he just couldn't imagine somebody with Glen's skin tone associating with such a blatantly racist organization.

“How long have you been a member?”

“Long enough to see you were leading this country to oblivion. You're weak, Tony. Archangel isn't. He has a vision. We're going to cleanse this whole planet.”

“But you're black.”

“So? It isn't about color. It's about godlessness.”

“Don't be so stupid. Most of Archangel's guys spent half their time in the eighties stomping around in bovver boots and waving Union Jacks. Do you think they're going to stop once the Muslims and atheists are gone? He's using you.”

“No. We're all one under God. He told me that.”

Tony shook his head at Glen's blinkered view. There would be no convincing him. Still, he needed to keep him talking while he figured out some way to grab the gun. “Why didn't you just develop the missile quietly and fire it? You're in charge of the military.”

“People respect you. I used to respect you, until you proved to be so pathetic. And not everybody in the armed forces backed this. Somebody might've leaked it out if I'd done it under the radar, and that would've caused problems. Better to have it come from the top so nobody could question it. Now, enough chitchat. Put that microphone down, or I'll kill you.”

So much for keeping him talking
, Tony thought, and prepared to make a mad leap for the weapon.

*   *   *

As the two men talked, Lesley peeked around the corner and saw the gun pointed at Tony's head. She could see the coldness in the gunman's eyes, so similar to that in Brown's. She knew if Tony began to speak into the radio, he would pull the trigger and that would be that. The events that would follow flashed through her mind: people and animals turning on each other in heaving masses, cities and whole countries reduced to ruins as nations yet uninfected fired off whatever weapons they possessed to stop the relentless advance of the virus, society crumbling and the world population dwindling. She would walk through this global valley of death, somehow always surviving. When she saw herself standing alone on the wasteland with the cries of the creature she'd just crushed echoing in her ears, it didn't feel like a dream. It felt like a vision of the future.

No,
she thought.
Nobody else is going to die because of me.

She wasn't a big Trekkie, but the quote Fanny had inadvertently spoken was famous enough for her to know it. Fanny hadn't quite captured the entire sentence or its full meaning. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few …

“Or the one,” she said.

She raised her automatic weapon and charged into the room, feeling Fanny's fingers brush against her shoulder as she tried to hold her back. The gunman's head snapped around. His nostrils flared and his neck tensed into cords as his teeth snapped together. Tony initially reacted in a similar manner, but he then bizarrely raised both of his eyebrows and put his index fingers together. As Tony stepped back, the gunman leapt over the table, narrowly missing kicking the radio with his swinging boot, and charged toward her.

“Get on the radio,” she shouted at Tony, unsure if her words would get through to him.

The gunman was only a few feet away when she pulled the trigger. From that range she couldn't miss. A spray of bullets caught him in the stomach, rippling up in a diagonal line to his shoulder as the gun jumped in her hands. The impact of the bullets sent his trunk backward, although his legs kept pumping. As he fell, his gun hand came up and a single shot sounded. He crunched to the ground, dead. Lesley found herself gasping for breath. She felt wetness on her chest and looked down. Dark liquid was gurgling from a hole in the T-shirt above her left breast.

“Ah,” she said, and sank to her knees.

The room blurred and canted sideways as she fell to the floor. She was vaguely aware of Tony babbling into the microphone. A hand slid under her neck and lifted her head. Fanny's face swam into focus, her blue eyes filled with warmth and sadness. Below Lesley's neck there was nothing but numbness. As her mind went fuzzy, she tried to picture the wasteland, but saw only a rolling field of bright-green grass buzzing, scurrying and teeming with life. In the distance, the buildings of the city stood tall and intact, reflected sunlight winking at her from thousands of windows behind which lovers kissed and children played without a care in the world.

“Looks like I'm not a jinx after all,” she said, and stepped into the bright field with a smile on her face.

*   *   *

Tony watched the scarred woman cradle the journalist's body to her chest. Now that she was dead, the urge to kill faded as quickly as it had arisen. Lesley, a woman he once considered bloodthirsty, had died to save the people he would have killed. She was more Spock than he. Well, he still had time to put it right. He dug out the satphone and dialed.

“What are you doing?” the woman said.

He paused before answering, wondering if what he was about to do was a good idea. He still had the missile and so could return to the initial plan of using it as a deterrent. Now, thinking about it clearly, he knew that wouldn't work. Waving a viral missile at the world would be akin to a lunatic waggling his dick at the doctors: it would only further strengthen the misconception that Britain and its new leaders were as mad as a bag of snakes. They couldn't let such a threat stand. All the stops would be pulled out to find the submarine carrying the missile and destroy it. Eventually they would succeed. After that, it would be bye-bye Britain. This missile had been an awful idea from the start, and in his desperation he'd failed to see it. And now, thanks to Lesley and this woman, he knew for sure the virus could be resisted. When Lesley had burst into the room, her scent ramming up his nostrils and piercing his brain like a hot poker, he wanted nothing more than to sink his teeth into her jugular. He hadn't had the love of his family to hold him back this time, but he and Spock worked together to deny his itching fingers and aching teeth. And this woman, he could tell she was infected. Yet she'd held Lesley in her arms, getting that untainted blood all over her, and remained calm.

“Putting my faith in humanity,” he said. “And crossing my fingers really, really tightly.”

Piers answered after ten rings, his voice thick with sleep. “Tony. You're starting to make a habit of waking me up.”

“We used to be friends, didn't we?”

Piers didn't answer immediately. When he did, his voice was guarded. “Yes, we did.”

“Then pretend we're still friends and answer me honestly. Do you still love Margot?”

“God, not that again.”

“I'm not attacking you. Please, just answer me.”

Piers held his breath. Finally he let it out in a long hiss. “Yes.”

“Then for her sake, and for the sake of her daughter, listen to me very carefully. I believe we're better than this virus. I believe we can beat it. And I'm prepared to prove it to the world. I'm going to restore the Internet. I'm going to let everybody see us for what we really are. I'm going to let you judge us. No matter what you do, we won't resist. We won't fire off any nukes. We won't do anything. Blood of Christ doesn't represent this nation. I promise you I'll find the evil bastards and crush them. All I'm asking is that you do what you can to save Margot. Tell your bosses what I told you. Tell them that what they're doing is wrong. Tell them to give us a chance. They're going to kill people, Piers. You're going to kill people. You can stop this.”

Piers said nothing for a while, his breath hissing heavily down the line. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. “I'm just a messenger boy. They don't listen to me. They don't even listen to the prime minister. They take the piss out of him, you know that? Everyone calls him Pie, short for prime minister in exile. Britain's a spent force. The Americans, Chinese, and Russians are the ones calling the shots.”

“You can still try. Tell them what I said. Whatever happens, my conscience will be clear. How about yours?”

Tony hung up. When he turned around, he saw the woman had disappeared with Lesley's body. Near where she'd lain, Glen sprawled across the floor, staring sightlessly at the ceiling. Tony didn't know if his new approach would work. Perhaps he'd condemned them all to die. But when he returned to the bunker he could pull Vanessa and Margot close and know that he'd retained his humanity, even if just for a few more days. And wasn't that what he'd been trying to achieve all along?

 

34

Once the gunfire and explosions had ceased and Geldof saw the group gather on the dockside with no soldiers in view—a sight he was grateful for since the radio had stopped working a few minutes earlier—he helped Mick down the hill. He picked his way past the bodies strewn around the car park, trying not to look too closely, and joined the little band as they sat on the dockside in the growing light. He ran to his mum and gave her a bone-crushing hug. He realized she was covered in blood.

“‘Are you okay?”

“I'm fine, Geldof. I'm fine.”

“Did you stop it?”

“Lesley did.”

“Where is she?” Geldof said. “Off writing a story casting herself as the hero, I suppose. I smell another best seller.”

“Actually, she's dead.”

Fanny pointed to a body. Light brown hair cascaded out from beneath the jacket covering the face. Geldof sat down heavily. “Who else?”

“Peter and James.”

For the first time since Geldof had known him, Mick looked genuinely upset. When he saw Geldof looking at him, the Irishman turned away. There had been so much death that Geldof could barely assimilate it all. That would come later. For the moment, the grief was a blanket that wrapped them all in its dark folds, chilling instead of warming. Without any spoken agreement, they all sat on the edge of the dock and huddled together, seeking comfort in closeness, the warm pulse of blood and hiss of breath that spoke of life.

“This is a really shitty vibe,” Scott said.

He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket, tie-dyed in dark colors in a nod to the camouflage that had been required for their mission, and pulled out a five-skinner. He sparked up and passed it around the group. Geldof declined. The last thing he needed in his current state of mind was a burst of unfamiliar sensations brought on by a drug he'd never taken.