The Colonel looked around the room, expecting a challenge.
Gallagher, the trace of a smile across his long, pale face, followed the Colonel’s gaze, finding only nervous eyes looking back.
“We’ve got seven golden tickets, gentlemen, and a people carrier cleared to go to RAF Aldergrove. There’s talk of a chopper lined up to take you to London. We can’t confirm or deny that, but God knows it’s better than hanging around here, waiting for the fence to give way.”
Still no one spoke.
“This hat,” said the Colonel, reaching for the military cap on the table beside him, “holds a piece of folded paper for every man in this room, including myself and the good doctor.” He looked over at Gallagher, who nodded in agreement. “The rules are simple, gentlemen. We draw from the hat. If you get an ‘X’, you stay. If the paper has a tick, you go.” The Colonel looked again to Gallagher. “So let’s begin.”
The next few minutes were tense, each man passing along a regimented line to dip their hands in the hat and lift a piece of paper. The Colonel nodded as they passed.
As each man opened their paper, revealing mostly ‘X’ shapes in red pen, Gallagher could see hopelessness spread across their faces. It seemed like they knew they were in attendance of each other’s funerals, standing over these old, knackered computer monitors like gravestones, hands hanging by their sides.
One man pulled a lucky strike, raising his fist in the air and blurting out, “Oh, thank Christ!” But he soon quietened down when the others glared at him with resentment and envy.
The next winner knew not to be so jubilant.
“Final draw,” the Colonel announced quietly as the last hand dipped into his cap. He watched the young soldier as he opened the paper, his face saying it all. The Colonel smiled weakly. “Those with the appropriate papers should gather one small bag and assemble by the mess hall in the main campus at 21.30 tomorrow evening,” he said. “In the rather unlikely event that someone wishes to give up a golden ticket, you can find me in my quarters. I will be only too happy to arrange a swap. As you were, gentlemen.”
The soldiers filed out of the room, conversation muted and uncomfortable as they left. Gallagher stared down at his own piece of paper and the little red cross in its centre. He carefully folded it then dropped it into a nearby paper bin, before he too made for the door.
The Colonel stopped him.
“Doctor Gallagher,” he said in a low voice. “A word, if you please.”
Gallagher followed the Colonel to a quiet corner of the room.
The Colonel looked to make sure none of the others were in earshot.
“Take this,” he said and then slid something into the doctor’s lab coat. “We’re both getting out of here.” Gallagher said nothing.
The Colonel walked towards the door before turning, then nodding.
Gallagher nodded back.
He reached in his pocket finding a piece of paper with a green tick marked on one side.
Gallagher smiled.
He was just about to leave when he spotted a man sitting at the back of the room. It was Charlie Saville. He was one of the engineers. Not someone used to the horrors of the frontline by any stretch of the imagination.
Charlie was a big man, fond of his food, always one for having a laugh in the mess hall with some of the other lads. He was popular with just about everyone, always a smile on his face or a joke to tell. Yet now, Charlie looked broken. He sat in his small chair like an overgrown schoolchild, face in his hands.
Gallagher approached.
“Come now, Charles,” he said. “You’re in the army. No room for tears among soldiers.” He placed a hand on the big man’s shoulder.
Charlie looked up at him. His eyes were like plugholes, deep set in his generously-sized face. “Sorry,” he said.
“Quite alright,” Gallagher said.
He lifted his hand from the other man’s shoulder, pulling up a chair beside him.
“You see, the human condition doesn’t prepare us for this sort of thing,” Gallagher continued, smiling. “Sudden death we’re much better with. Something we can’t plan or prepare for. When a man first joins the army, that’s what he fears the most. The bullet or the mine. An attack from insurgents.
“Those are fears that we learn to control, to submerge within ourselves, only to arise mere moments from the end. If we’re unlucky. But this,” and here Gallagher lifted the ticket that sat beside Charlie, holding it in the air between them, “this is something alien to men like us. And altogether more brutal.”
Charlie sat in his chair, sniffing back tears.
He reached into his shirt pocket, produced his wallet. He unclipped the button, sliding a photograph out, offered it to Gallagher.
Gallagher looked down at it, expecting to hear about the man’s wife, his family. But the picture looked more like something Charlie had cut out of a magazine. It was a young girl. She was pretty, maybe someone famous.
“I carry this around with me,” Charlie began. “Sometimes, when the other lads are telling me about a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan, and they’re all miserable and drunk and showing me pictures of their wives and babies, I show them this. And they laugh.” Charlie’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know why they laugh?”
Gallagher didn’t.
“They laugh because they know I could never get a girl like that. Because I’m a born loser. Big Charlie, the guy you go to when you want a drink or a game of cards or to hack into some new porn site on the computer. That’s all I mean to them. That’s all I’ve meant to anyone.” He threw the picture down, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair.
Gallagher sat for a moment, staring at Charlie intently.
He didn’t feel pity for the man. Gallagher didn’t do pity. He was a man for whom feelings and emotions and needs were useless, mere distractions from work.
He lived by routine—a routine that involved eating at a certain time, drinking at another. Using the toilet, having sex—these were necessary evils. They had a time and place to meet the basic needs of his body, to serve the human shell he found himself inhabiting. But deep down, Gallagher resented all of these things.
He didn’t like his own humanity, but he liked to study that of others. He liked to explore what made people tick and what made them not tick. And he enjoyed studying Charlie.
Gallagher reached into his pocket and produced the piece of paper the Colonel gave him. Carefully, he took Charlie’s huge palm, placed his golden ticket into it, and then closed Charlie’s fingers over.
He smiled as Charlie looked up, confusion in his face. “Perhaps you were born a loser,” Gallagher said in a low voice. “But you won’t die one.”
CHAPTER TWO
31st July
The Colonel sat up from his bed, looking towards the picture on the wall.
It was the picture of a sunrise. Painted by his grandfather, a veteran from the Great War. This was a talented man, a creative man, who had left his family to be gunned down in the damp, muddy trenches of France.
The Colonel suddenly felt a sneeze come on, the blast spreading across the glass front of the picture. He was just about to wipe it away with his handkerchief when he noticed something that made him pause: there was a little blood amongst the droplets. Not much, just a few speckles.
He washed his face in the sink. He stared at the mirror, his eyes wide open as if frozen.
There was a tickle in his throat, a cough, wheezier than expected.
The Colonel laughed to himself, thinking back on how his mother used to call him a hypochondriac and how he hadn’t understood what that meant, thinking it had something to do with the lies he would tell her to bunk off school. The Colonel, now a man in his sixties, wondered why the hell that thought had come to him now. But they said your life flashed before your eyes before death, didn’t they?
The soap slipped out of his hands and into the sink.
The tap continued to flow, the soap’s lather happily blowing m
ore bubbles as the water got hotter and the steam rose up to create a thin veneer over his reflection in the mirror.
A tear surprised him, running down his cheek. He thought it was sweat, at first. But when he wiped the steam from the mirror, the Colonel found his eyes were glassy.
A lump gathered in his throat, and he wanted to cough it up, expel it like some sort of demon.
***
Later, the Colonel was fully dressed, washed and shaved, sitting on the edge of his perfectly made bed.
He had worked through his denial swiftly, as men like him ought to, men who had tasted the very worst of what life had to offer, who had lived dangerously, who had killed.
He unfolded the little piece of paper with the green tick. He had made it himself and made sure it ended up in his own palm. He had fixed the raffle and felt no shame about that. This was no time for altruism; this was the time for survival. He reckoned that anyone else in the room would have done the same, were they in charge.
He held a picture of his family in his hand. It showed his wife, his daughter, her husband and their children. He wondered if he would ever get to see them again. He wondered if they were at home in Birmingham or exiled somewhere else.
There were reports that the flu had now spread to Europe. They were unconfirmed, of course, but wasn’t everything now? Nothing was certain anymore. Just rumours—and rumours of rumours. Who could be sure that the aircraft he’d been informed of was even going to leave RAF Aldergrove? Maybe it had already left. There was a knock at his door.
“Who is it?” His voice came out higher and more strained than he planned.
“Gallagher.”
“Good. Come in.”
The door opened, revealing the project’s longstanding doctor. The Colonel nodded simply and gestured that the other man take the only seat in the room while he remained sitting on the edge of the bed.
“I came as quick as I could.”
The Colonel laughed. “Really no need. We both know how this thing pans out. It’s not like there’s a cure, is there? An antibiotic you can give me to make it pass?”
“No, there’s not.”
The Colonel studied the doctor’s face, finding no emotional investment.
“I’ve contacted RAF Aldergrove,” he said. “I’ve advised them that I’m not going tonight, that I’ve been infected by the virus and am to be quarantined at once.”
“Of course.” Gallagher’s voice remained calm, matter-of fact. It was like they were talking about incomplete paperwork or some new procedure to be implemented.
The Colonel sighed. “Good, that’s settled, then.” Gallagher nodded, smiled.
Jesus, give me something, the Colonel mused. “What’s it like outside?” he asked.
“We’ve strengthened the perimeter,” Gallagher said. “But they’re surrounding us in fairly heavy numbers. Some of the men are not dealing with the threat so well. There’ve been a number of suicides.”
The Colonel shook his head. “Well things are perhaps even worse at Aldergrove, Gallagher. I think they’ve lost any structure they had. I’ve asked them to send a replacement down to relieve me of my command and, rather surprisingly, they’ve found someone willing to make the trip, despite the obvious hazards. He’s to arrive within the next twenty-four hours.”
Gallagher nodded. “I’ll have an interview room set up for your quarantine, sir,” he said. He went to say something else about the quarantine arrangements, then hesitated. “May I ask who the replacement is for the project?”
“Major Connor Jackson. I believe you used to work together, back in the heyday of the Chamber?” Gallagher brightened. “Yes indeed.”
“Well, no doubt you would have a lot to catch up on, if you weren’t leaving for Aldergrove.”
“I’m staying, sir.”
The Colonel was taken aback. “Staying? Why the hell would you do a thing like that?”
“You say yourself that Aldergove has regressed, sir,” Gallagher explained. “But I’d made my mind up to stay before any of this news. You see, I may not be the most conventional of soldiers. You and I both know that. But I’m still a soldier, and a good soldier never leaves their post until the job is done.”
The Colonel’s face reddened. He dipped his eyes to the cap in his hands, looking at the crest. He would never have thought that a man like Gallagher could ever better him when it came to moral fibre. For a moment he was silent, perhaps a little more of his life flashing before him, his conscience having a last ditch attempt at weighing up the good against the bad.
“I know how things will turn out for me, Gallagher,” he said. “And I want you to allow me to regress as nature sees fit.”
“I understand, sir.”
“No doubt you do,” the Colonel said. “I’m not a stupid man,” he continued. “I know what this will mean for me.” He pointed a finger to the picture above his bed. “Got my grey matter from him up there, I’m told.” He smiled, eyes moistening.
“I know what some people in here think of me. I’ve heard them talk of me in, shall we say, less-than-savoury terms, but I won’t have anyone think of me as a coward. I’m going to see this damn virus through, for worse as well as better. So, you use me as you see fit, doctor,” the Colonel said, “especially if you can find out more about what makes those dead bastards tick.”
Gallagher didn’t as much as blink. The Colonel found himself wondering if the doctor had ever blinked in his whole damn life. Did he need to blink, or was he, as many would surmise, merely a machine? Some kind of android or robot.
His voice remained characteristically steady and measured when he spoke. “Quite, sir.”
The Colonel placed both hands on his knees, his sweaty palms immediately darkening the fabric.
“So this Connor Jackson,” he said finally to Gallagher. “The officer to replace me. Tell me more about him.”
CHAPTER THREE
5th August
“Willis here. Go ahead, base.”
Pzzzt. Landing area’s been breached. We’re trying to clean it up, but you’ll have to hold back until we clear you some space. Pzzt.
The pilot was returning from his daily round. Surveillance of their immediate locality, checking for signs of life. But as time went on and more people fell to the virus, the dead began to heavily outnumber the living. He’d thought the strong, high fences would be enough to hold them back. But he’d thought wrong. The hundred or so bodies at the fences soon became two hundred.
Then a thousand.
As he continued his approach and got a bird’s eye view of what the camp was dealing with, Willis had the urge to turn back.
And go where?
Pzzt. Base to Wessex. Willis, did you copy that last message? Pzzt.
Willis swallowed hard.
He looked to Davis, his co-pilot, sitting beside him. The man seemed every bit as nervous as Willis felt.
“W-we copy, base. Keep us posted.”
Willis hung a left, initiating a circle of the camp. Despite his fears, he dipped lower to get a better look at what they were up against.
This close, it looked less like a mass of bodies. He could tell one apart from another. There were men and woman of all ages. Children. All wearing different clothes; all sporting different hairstyles.
These were people, Willis was reminded. They once had lives and families. Folks who loved them, folks who cared, who sent them birthday cards once a year and thought about them coming over at Christmas.
Willis tried not to think of his own family as he looked at the dead: his two boys, now grown up and married, his estranged wife. It was difficult not to wonder what fate had befallen them, whether they were quarantined in their own homes, or like the poor bastards down there.
Life was fast becoming a battle that looked impossible to win.
The dead seemed to be evolving, becoming more conscious. While united in their desire to break down the fencing and get to the base, it was tempting to think they were also in competition
with each other. See who could make it through first, who could make the first kill, the most kills.
The pilot’s eye was drawn to the fence. One section was beginning to give, near the landing area.
Willis spotted some soldiers moving towards the breached fence. Unlike the dead, these men looked exactly alike, wearing the same yellow plastic suits.
A few others hung back from the main offensive. From what he could make out, Willis reckoned they were carrying long strips of metal and welding equipment to reinforce the fence.
The main group moved en masse towards the breached fence, setting up position about fifteen metres from it. They aimed their rifles in unison and held their position.
Willis held tight above the action, noticing how some of the dead below had clocked him and were now looking up.
The whole scene reminded him of some of his later days in the army, providing support to the police and army during riots in Belfast. People then hadn’t acted a lot differently from the dead he watched now. They mutilated their own territory with abandonment, burning cars and attacking the military Land Rovers that flanked them.
The fence gave way.
The first line of soldiers opened fire as the dead began to claw through the gaps, the hail of gunfire doing little to dissuade the heavy numbers pouring through.
From his vantage position in the sky, Willis was beginning to think that the dead might have compromised the base beyond rescue.
He looked to his co-pilot.
The younger man stared back, and Willis could almost read his face: Let’s go, it said. Let’s just leave. And Willis was certainly tempted.
But then another idea struck him.
Pulling back on the stick, Willis returned to the other side of the fence to face the back of the attacking crowd of dead. He then pushed forward on the stick, bringing the Wessex down towards the ground.
Fever (Flu) Page 18
