London Wild

by V. E. Shearman

  There were two soldiers at the check-in desk, each sitting in fairly comfortable chairs protected from the elements by a hastily erected tarpaulin. Also with the soldiers was a man in civilian clothing who went by the name Michael McCain. He had been there since before midnight and looked it. He seemed to be propping up one of the vertical supports for the same tarpaulin, and though he was under the tarpaulin’s protection he looked like he was soaked through. A few minutes in the tank with the air conditioner would dry him off, but until then he would just have to put up with it. By contrast, the civilians had no shelter as they waited in the queue to sign up, and as a result they all looked soaked. Charles felt quite happy that the queue only seemed to have five more people in it. It looked as if the rain had helped keep the number of applications low.

  The large rebuilt clock tower that housed Big Ben began to chime six o’clock as he reached the desk. Six had been the official kickoff time, but he hadn’t really wanted to leave at that time. A soldier would’ve ensured that everything was ready so they could leave at exactly the time they were supposed to, but again he had realized that since he was supposedly a civilian, the launch time of his assault could be more flexible. The instinct had been there and he had wanted to insist the convoy be ready to leave at the prescribed time, but he had forced himself to ignore it by not even being ready himself. It was all part of pretending to be just a talented civilian. Heaven knew that after being given command of so many soldiers, he had to play up the civilian angle more to avoid people guessing his true relationship with the military.

  The green near the check-in desk had gotten very muddy where people had been treading constantly since the night before. The grass had been worn virtually to nothing, leaving large areas for the rain to turn into mud. This had been partially remedied by the placement of duckboards around the busiest areas. In effect, there was a bridge across the mud that led from check-in desk to the road and to some of the shelters that had been erected about the green. There were others that led to the refreshment tent and the portable lavatories that had been erected to deal with so many people.

  Charles stopped by the check-in desk and watched what was happening for a minute. He observed the formalities that the civilians were expected to follow in order to be allowed to join up for this attack. He noticed how it was made very clear to them that they hadn’t joined up with the regular army. They had signed on only for this one battle, and they could leave at any time without the risk of criminal charges of desertion being leveled against them. They were also asked if they had any weapons of their own. If they did, they were directed to the truck in which they would be traveling. If they didn’t, they were ordered to report to the supply truck at the rear of the convoy.

  Michael might have been dressed as a civilian, but he was a Captain in the Elite Guard and had been posted to this place to keep an eye out for cats trying to join the convoy as human civilians. He looked very tired and bored by the whole thing, but he was really examining the face of every volunteer carefully, looking for any signs of the makeup that might be hiding the stripes of a cat. He watched the volunteer speak for any sign of outsized teeth. When the volunteer signed the official paper, Michael was examining the hands, in case the nails might actually be claws. And as the volunteer left the desk, he was examining their clothing and judging whether or not a tail might be hidden therein. Michael was making a point of checking every aspect of each volunteer, with the possible exception of the eyes. Charles hadn’t seen him check the eyes, but then he might just have missed it. Michael carried out these checks whilst trying to look totally disinterested in the whole affair.

  Charles didn’t want to distract him, but he did want to talk to him. He offered Michael his hand and said, ‘Good morning, soldier; I’m Charles. From the broadcasts this morning I take it that you’re Michael McCain, one of my so-called three friends.’

  Michael started with a yawn. ‘Good to see you, sir.’ He kept his eyes on the next volunteer at the desk as he spoke, apparently treating Charles with the disdain any Elite guardsman might have for the self-styled hero. But then his voice changed, and in a whisper too low for even the soldiers at the desk to hear, he added, ‘We had a meeting with Colonel Davis yesterday. He gave us our current duties and told us who you really were. It’s a pleasure to serve with you, sir. As with all of your crew, I was originally trained in a tank regiment before joining the Elite. I’ll be your navigator and communications officer for the battle.’

  Charles felt somehow relieved that he wasn’t going to have to argue his seniority with anyone. ‘It’s six o’clock.’ He pointed to the clock tower for emphasis. ‘Are there many more to sign on? We should probably be looking to leave as soon as we can now. We don’t want to give the cats any more time for preparation than we really have to.’

  ‘They keep coming in, sir. The real problem is that I don’t know how many are left to sign up. Most of them shelter under the tarpaulins until they feel the queue has dropped to a reasonable size, or on the odd occasion when the rains ease a bit. We had quite a rush two hours ago when the rains almost stopped. Now the queue gets to ten deep at the most before the others decide it’s too long and too wet to join it yet.’ As he spoke, the last one to sign on left the check-in desk and headed towards the truck to which he had been assigned. The queue shunted forward, and a moment later there was a rush of civilians from some of the tarpaulins, trying to be next in the queue. A few seemed to decide that the competition was too fierce on this occasion and headed back almost immediately. Several more decided to take shelter again after failing to win the race, but three more civilians did join the line.

  Charles looked at the crowds of civilians under the various tarpaulins. He then glanced towards the crowds enjoying the hospitality and the shelter of the refreshment tent and then again at the queues of people waiting to use the portable lavatories. In every case there was probably a mixture of those who had signed up already and those yet to do so, and he wasn’t able to tell one from the other. ‘We need a cut-off point. I don’t know; make an announcement. Tell them this desk will be closing down at twenty past six. Anyone not signed on by then will be left behind. Everyone coming with us needs to be at their assigned truck with their weapon no later than six thirty. Perhaps that’ll shake them up a bit. I’ll want to see you in the tank by six thirty too. I want to be underway no later than six thirty-five.’

  ‘I’ll see to it immediately,’ Michael replied. Around the green was a system of loud speakers positioned not just for today but also for any of the special events that were occasionally held on this green. Any of the tanks could have tapped into the system if they saw the need to get a message out quickly; likewise, any personal communication device could utilize the system. All that was needed was the access code.

  ‘With any luck, some might just go home and leave the job to the professionals. I wish Colonel Davis hadn’t insisted on us doing this. I might understand his reasoning, but I’m not sure it’s worth it. And to be honest, I’m really not sure he’s telling me the whole truth.’

  ‘Once we see some action I expect most of them will hit the road.’ Michael’s voice was still a whisper. ‘We’re making it clear that they can leave anytime they want without being penalized. I think as soon as they realize exactly what’s required of them, that’s exactly what will happen.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. I don’t think the Colonel really cares how many of them might be killed if it achieves his aim,’ Charles replied in a similar tone. Then in his usual voice he asked, ‘So, have there been any problems so far?’

  ‘Not really,’ Michael replied, taking the cue and also coming out of the whisper, ‘there have been no cats trying to sign on. We did have one who belonged to the fellowship of the church of the Goddess. We turned him away.’

  This surprised Charles more than a little; he had expected some cats to try and sign up with the volunteers so they could attack the convoy from within. They couldn’t have known that there w
ould be a soldier of the Elite Guard on duty on the green, so what had stopped them even trying? Perhaps they feared that a sniffer dog might be on duty here. That did make sense, even though no dog was visible anywhere on the field. Perhaps the cats had more insight into what was going on here than he’d like to think. ‘The church of the Goddess…it never even occurred to me that they might be a problem. What happened?’

  Michael looked over to one of the tarpaulins as if to indicate that the man was still on the green, sheltering from the rain under that particular cover. ‘He assured us that whatever his beliefs might be, he was still human and he disliked what the cats were doing as much as any other citizen. I told him we couldn’t take the chance.’

  ‘I think you made the right choice,’ Charles commented, looking where Michael had indicated.

  ‘Well, you have to understand that the main belief of these people that are willing to follow the cats’ Goddess is their hope that their Goddess will somehow alter their molecular structure in the same way that she supposedly did for the two Patriarchs. Basically they want to be cats. How can you trust someone who wants to be a cat in a battle against cats?’ He shrugged his shoulders and turned to face the next volunteer, continuing his appointed task in the same way he had throughout their conversation.

  ‘Too true,’ Charles agreed. ‘Mind you, after nearly a thousand years of this Goddess not changing anyone else, you’d think they’d get the message.’

  ‘I think they get round it by believing the most faithful get altered in the afterlife so they can be with their Goddess then, or something like that. I gotta admit I don’t know the details. I’ve not really looked into it. Most cults suffer from some form of cognitive dissonance, though. They always have some excuse that they can wrap their faith around so they can ignore any and all evidence to the contrary.’

  Charles was about to comment further when he saw one of the many broadcast units that were hovering around both him and the battle convoy like flies around a dump approaching. He decided he’d rather be elsewhere at that moment. He said, ‘Don’t forget to make that announcement; I want us to be underway by six thirty-five at the latest.’

  Michael was still talking: ‘We caught this one because he actually declared his religion to us. Others might…’ He then seemed to notice the approaching broadcast unit and nodded his understanding of why Charles wanted to be away so suddenly. ‘I’ll get right on the announcement.’

  ‘Good,’ Charles said and then turned to leave before the broadcast unit had reached him. As he started to walk away he could hear the over-excited reporter virtually yelling into the camera on the shoulder of his photographer, ‘You heard it, folks; the convoy is expected to be underway in less than thirty minutes. We’re going to see if we can get a quick interview with the head man himself about his plans for the day’s battle!’

  Charles hoped the reporter hadn’t heard anything else more important as he headed away from the check-in desk and in the general direction of the tanks. He tried to ignore the reporter and his comrade and began to feel a little like a parent trying to ignore a demanding brat as he threaded his way across the duckboards.

  Indeed, it wasn’t easy to ignore them. They were hovering close behind him, and often the reporter would step off the duckboard bridge to try and get in front of Charles so as to ask his questions. At other times, when the ground was just too muddy, he and the photographer kept as close as they could, the reporter constantly nagging, ‘Can I just…?’ Or, ‘may I just ask…?’ Or, ‘perhaps we could have a quick word?’ or any of a dozen or more similar requests.

  On one occasion the reporter managed to get in front of Charles and blocked his path as he asked, ‘If you could just answer one or two questions?’ Charles continued to ignore him, but on this occasion he had to step off the duckboard himself onto a very muddy part of the green to get round him. This was not a good way to make Charles happy.

  Charles looked at the lines of tanks before him. Once there he could shut the reporters out. They weren’t going to be allowed inside his tanks. His force needed to be on their toes for the whole journey, and he didn’t want reporters or photographers getting in the way of their efficiency. The press would be allowed to travel in the troop transports if they wanted, or they could travel in the transport that Charles had had supplied specially for them, or they could even travel in their own vehicles if they really wanted to, but they were not to be allowed inside the tanks.

  Although they would proceed to the outskirts of Sou’nd in single file, at which point they would form a battle line, the tanks were currently parked in a staggered double line.

  ‘Please, sir, could we just…?’ The reporter was beginning to get quite agitated. He would know of the standing order concerning reporters and their photographers being inside tanks, and Charles, who had given the order in the first place, wasn’t likely to make an exception for his own tank.

  Charles hated reporters. He hated the lies he had to tell them. He hated the lie he had become. And since he had become a name, there always seemed to be a reporter nearby somewhere, especially when he announced he was going somewhere. He was reminded for a moment of the reporter who had waited in ambush for him at the police station when he had handed his pets over. At least that reporter had seemed happy with that little bit of news and hadn’t insisted on trying to follow Charles on to the farm that day. If he had, things might’ve gotten quite awkward.

  Today though, there would be no getting away. Today they would hound him every step of the way to Sou’nd and beyond. There were more than fifteen different broadcast units hovering around the convoy today. All of them seemed to be going constantly and reporting the assault on Sou’nd from their own particular angle of political bias and perspective from where they happened to be on the field. Charles had probably been lucky that only one of the units had decided to try and pester him personally. He was sure if he spoke to this crew he’d probably end up having to suffer interviews with all of them.

  He glanced quickly around the field, trying to make out which unit belonged to whom. Triple N, the National News Network, was the most popular; supposedly they had more subscribers than all the other networks put together, claiming nearly sixty percent coverage of the country. Despite their name, they reported all the major events in the world and many of the more important happenings on Mars and, until recently, the Moon. Triple N had sent no fewer than four separate broadcast units to cover this event, and the one currently dogging him was one of them. The LNC, the London News Commission, by comparison, was very London-based. If it didn’t happen in London or the Southeast then it didn’t get a mention. LNC was usually picked up as a second network by those who lived in and around London, because as limited as it was, it did a very good job with what it did cover. LNC wasn’t available outside of London for fairly obvious reasons, but each area of the country had an equivalent network, and most of them were owned by the same cartel. The LNC was the only other company to send more than one unit, sending two. Then there was Network Four, a very cheaply run company that got their money more from the advertisements that they insisted should be broadcast at the beginning of every news story. Network Four was the cheapest network anyone could sign up for. They were universally voted the most irritating because of their advertisements, and they were the butt of many jokes. Nevertheless, they were the third most popular network in the country. Then there were a number of small networks, four that were blatantly pro-government and three that were just as blatant in their opposition. There were two networks that had traveled from France and a further one from America, both countries having good reasons for wanting to see how the cats were being handled in Britain as they each had colonies of cats of their own. There was a unit sent from Mars, where the article would be sent to each of the sixteen relay stations and translated into the diverse languages used there. There was even a unit from the University of London, a pair of students doing this as part of a course on journalism.

  Each uni
t consisted of two people. The reporter held a small microphone, whilst another was attached to the top of their clothing where it would pick up very little except for the reporter him or herself. The photographer carried a small camera that was attached to one of his or her shoulders and would follow his or her head movements so it would see, if at a slightly different angle, whatever he or she happened to be looking at. The name photographer was archaic, going back to when they took only still shots of the event in question, but it was still in common use for today’s newspaper journalists. The camera itself was little bigger than a matchbox and weighed next to nothing.

  While it was true that Charles didn’t like being hounded by the reporters or their photographers, he nevertheless wouldn’t want them to get hurt and would have preferred if the networks in question had sent robot cameras instead of the flesh and blood reporters that were milling about the green.

  A loud crack like the sound of a rifle being fired suddenly filled the air for miles around, echoing off of the distant buildings.

  At the sound of the rifle, everyone in the area went suddenly silent. Many simply seemed unsure what had happened, while many threw themselves to the ground and started moving to better cover.

  At the moment the shot rang out, the camera on the shoulder of the photographer standing right behind Charles suddenly exploded.

  Charles’ first instinct in this situation was to hit the ground himself and become as small a target as he possibly could. He then glanced around at the reporter and photographer to see that they had also sought refuge flat against the duckboards.

  ‘I think my shoulder is broken,’ the photographer hissed to his partner. Indeed, the camera had shattered and part of it had hit a glancing blow on the man’s cheek, where a small red gash was visible. It was possible that he might not have noticed the pain from his cheek because of his shoulder, but Charles’ first thought was that it might need a stitch or two.