General Clarke came onto the stage with another solider, who was carrying a notebook and pen. As General Clarke started talking, the solider wrote down the minutes. ‘Afternoon, I don’t want to keep you long tonight, there are only a couple of subjects on the agenda. If this is your first camp meeting, it’s really an opportunity for you to highlight any problems you might be having, so we can smooth out the running of the camp. First, we require volunteers to help with the running of the outdoor showers, they are getting dirty within a couple hours use, we need extra cleaning shifts running between the hours of eleven and twelve, and three and four. If you can help, please wait around at the end and speak to Mrs Sharp. I have received an anonymous complaint about roommates within the camp. This complaint wasn’t aimed at anyone in particular, just that some rooms are been filled by more than one family. This I’m afraid is unavoidable, Camp Blue is full to the rafters, and our daily intake is topping out at over three hundred. We have to use all available space, we are at present, actively searching for a new site, hopefully with news on that to come shortly. I want to keep the camp in the loop as much as possible with regards army issues, but please bare in mind, there are some things that are inappropriate to discuss outside of military ears. What I can say is we believe Torriero is planning an attack, we have a contact within his group, who is feeding us information back, we are one step ahead of him at all times. But we must remain vigilant, we are currently assessing his strength, numbers and armory.’
General Clarke opened the room to questions, the first coming from a concerned looking lady, with two children by her side. ‘I have virtually no shoes or pants for my son, Paul. I have been to the store room and searched, with help from the organisers, but there is a serious shortage of boys aged fifteen to sixteen.’
The solider next to General Clarke wrote down all the relevant information, as he responded. ‘I will pass this information on to General Harris, does anyone else have any shortage of clothes or shoes? We will organise a supply run targeting clothing shops.’ There were requests for more footwear for three year olds, clothes for age eight, ten and twenty female, and a larger range of waist sizes in male pants. It was noted there are twenty three children under the age of one in the camp, and very little baby milk left, with a new supply needed soon. A young father, holding a baby no more than a year old, was next to speak. ‘I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun, but the noise coming from the bar area on the first floor, is keeping my boy up. It’s hard enough getting him to sleep in the first place without his mum, and no bottles of warm milk. Last night it went on until one in the morning, it’s supposed to be the family area, seems an odd place to put it.’
‘Apologies Mr-
‘Raider.’
‘Sorry Mr. Raider, I will have a conversation with the officers in charge of the bar, and make sure the noise levels are reduced, with shut down at twelve.’
Further discussions included the wash room being left dirty, a complaint aimed at the whole camp, and a question about where to obtain towels, which were available from the store room. There was also a complaint about the temperature of the water in the outside shower block, which is a problem that won’t be solved anytime soon. As the meeting concluded, we were reminded to pick up tomorrow’s water from the supply table on the way out. I made my way down the stairs, past the security guard and onto my corridor. When I reached my room, the children were all ready for bed, washed and teeth brushed. They looked and smelled so clean, Bernard had been to the store room and found some new clothes for them, including pyjamas. They were all sat on Emma’s mattresses, so I lay next to them, and started to tell them a story. They all got under Emma’s covers, trying to get warm. They are forming a nice bond, which I’m really pleased about. Like a brother and sister relationship, comfortable with close contact, and expressive with each other. They were all tired after a busy day meeting new friends, and learning how the camp worked. I think they’ve become so accustomed to doing their own thing, a bit of structure feels too much like school, but they’ll get used to it. Bernard had proven enough on the gun range to be promoted straight into the training staff, a role he will start tomorrow. He told me to go and have a drink at the bar with the other recruits and soldiers, stating the relationships you build now with your comrades, are just as important on the battlefield as how good you are with your weapon. I said good night to the children, and left Bernard to finish the story. When I got inside the bar, it was split into two distinct groups, recruits and soldiers. I was acknowledged by both groups, and after reciprocating, I went and sat with the recruits. I looked around the group for any faces I recognised, Hassan wasn’t there but Adrian was, so I sat next to him, and his son Max. Adrian had also done pretty well on the gun range, but was worried about how his dodgy knees would hold up in the run tomorrow. He looked a pretty fit man, but an old injury can cause a problem for anyone’s fitness. He told me a little more about his back story, similarly to me he had lost his wife before all this happened, to cancer. They’d originated from Aberdeen, and had only recently left home after witnessing Torriero’s men tearing up some local towns. The table was covered in beer bottles, and with the recruits getting more and more drunk, the language was becoming a bit strong for Adrian, so he decided to take Max back to their room. The recruits certainly weren’t thinking very far ahead, everyone seemed pretty happy with their days work, not worried about what tomorrow was going to bring. I left them to it, and went over the speak to Little D, who was sat with Keane. He lifted his empty beer bottle and shook it as I arrived, pointing behind the bar. I walked around, where I found a large bucket, filled with cold water and bottles of beer, of which I took three. But by the time I got back to the table, Keane had stood up and gone, not before throwing a scornful look in my direction. Keane must be in his late twenties, with long wavy ginger hair, and as all the soldiers, he was a strong athletic looking man. Little D was a spitting image of his older brother, only with more hair and a few less scars. I put the bottles on the table, smiled at Little D, and sat down. ‘Don’t worry about Keane’ he said, ‘He’s a prick really. He tries not to be, but deep down he cannot help it. He’s an exceptional sniper, with one of the highest kill rates in the British Army, but he’s still a prick.’
‘He seems to have a problem with me, and is not shy about showing it.’
‘Yeah, but he’s like that with everyone, particularly non military. He’s wary of anyone joining our squad who is not from an army background, after the last one got himself killed, and nearly cost the company more lives.’
‘What happened?’
‘We could all see the lad wasn’t right, he had spent most of his childhood killing terrorists on his Playstation, we all knew what was going to happen. He was just too young, still a kid, seventeen I think. Anyway, Chris was convinced he was going to be OK, he tried to take him under his wing. But he didn’t listen to orders, thought he knew best, and got himself caught. Torriero tried to use him in a trap, but he warned us, and was executed for it.’
Torriero sounds like a ruthless bastard, like all the evil dictators wars are fought over. I asked Little D to tell me a little about the rest of the members of Blue and White Company, starting with Rhino, ‘He’s just about the strongest man I have ever met, both mentally and physically. He’s a machine, he never stops, never tires, he’s not fast but he’s gets the job done.’ Rhino sounds like your typical gentle giant, not a tall man, maybe five ten, but friendly. He sports a shaven head, and a large dark brown beard, his neck is like a tree trunk, in fact his arms and legs are too. I took a swig of my beer and continued, ‘What about Murphy?’ I haven’t even heard him speak.’
‘He’s a quiet lad, keeps himself to himself. Until he gets on the battlefield, where he’s an animal. His girlfriend was taken by Torriero’s men, and he just wants to kill as many of them as possible. He is the only soldier I know of, that actually volunteers for dangerous missions if it m
eans he can kill more men, no one does that. Nobody really likes killing, taking a life, or being shot at and injured. He doesn’t care about his own safety, which is a worry, and he has to be managed correctly. But he’s an excellent soldier if you can control him, he would take a bullet for any of his comrades. But then any of them would, I think Rhino’s received injuries from protecting just about everyone he’s ever served with.’
‘What about you and your brother?’
‘The armies in our family, my dad and two of my uncles all served for the Forty Second Infantry Brigade, so we were pre destined. I always wanted to progress through the ranks, but Chris (Sergeant Davis) only joined because he didn’t know what else to do. He wanted to do the opposite to what our dad said at first, he ended up dropping out of so many university courses, it was a bit of a family joke, how many subjects he started and didn’t finish, mum and dad were a bit embarrassed.’
‘But he’s done well for himself now?’
‘Yeah, he knuckled down in the end, worked hard and has shown an aptitude for leading, just like dad told him he would.’
‘What about you?’ I asked, taking a final mouth full of my beer.
‘What about me?’
‘What do you want out of the army?’
‘I don’t know anymore, things have changed. All I know is right now we need leaders, for what’s about to come. We have no real idea what to expect, particularly from the creatures. I need the opportunity to prove I’m capable, not just because of who my brother is, or my father.’
‘You just might get that chance’ I replied, putting my empty bottle on the table.
‘Maybe,’ he smiled, ‘Don’t be staying up too late’ he warned me, with a laugh. ‘Tomorrow’s another day.’
‘I’m off to bed now’ I replied, ‘See you around.’
As I left the bar, Sergeant Davis walked in, with Rhino, and made a beeline for me. ‘You did well today Nathan, how did it feel?’
‘Yeah it felt good, so my stats were OK?’
‘Not as good as your dad’s!’ Laughed Rhino, in his low gravely voice.
‘Oh Bernard,’ I said. ‘He’s not my dad, just a family friend. He could probably still out score most of you.’
‘Maybe’ replied Sergeant Davis, with a grin.
‘But we ain’t going to find out’ said Rhino, ‘Why would we? Nothing to gain, and a whole lot of credibility to lose.’ I left the lads to have a drink, and plan on having an early night after I’ve written up today’s notes, in preparation for whatever they throw at us tomorrow.
Chapter Two
26/11/2027 - Time 21:27
When the alarm went off for the soldier’s meeting, I put my uniform on, covered the children back up with their blankets and made my way. General Morris gave the same speech as yesterday morning, verbatim, before we were ushered through the side door, down the stairs and out into the cold. We walked around the back of the hotel, past a vehicle bay, containing numerous army vehicles, one recruit recognised as Panthers, Vectors and Vikings. When we got past the hotel, there was a large open area, which soon became obvious would be our home for the foreseeable future. There seemed less of us than yesterday, I couldn’t name who was missing, but I could see both Adrian and Hassan ahead of me, as Captain Jones came into view. I like what I’ve seen of Captain Jones, he doesn’t appear to be a prick, just for the sake of it. He has authority, but I have seen him having a laugh with some of the soldiers, and they certainly respect him. He’s about my height, with light brown hair and beard. He wears circular glasses, like the ones John Lennon made famous, and is constantly taking them off to clean. With him was Lieutenant Higginson, Second Lieutenant Jackson and Lance Corporal Farrell, all standing in a line waiting for us. I zipped up my combat jacket, as the cold winds rattled my bones, and sent dust ballooning into the air. There was a large piece of waste land, with an area marked on the ground using sandbags and sticks, all under the light of four generator powered lights, one in each corner. There were about twenty big black bags at one end, with a wooden post at the other. Captain Jones split us into two groups at first, as he inspected our uniforms and appearance. He started to walk along the depleted line we had formed in front of him, continuing until he reached Ben Hartley, a local builder, who looked uneasy as Captain Jones looked him up and down. ‘Where are your boots private?’
‘They were rubbing’ he stammered, looking more uneasy as Captain Jones moved his face closer.
‘Rubbing?’
‘Yes sir, I was going to change them-’
‘Get the fuck out of my sight, yesterday was for suiting, you’re wasting everybody’s time.’
The man turned around and slowly made his way back towards the hotel, as Captain Jones finished his inspection. ‘Good morning recruits, I trust you have had a good sleep in preparation for today’s excursions. We will start with the news that after yesterday’s gun range exercise, we have lost nine men, deemed not good enough. Now the real challenge starts, most of you will not complete the next three days, only a handful will make it through to be considered for selection. This is where it’s going to get tough, I want to split you into two, each group with a team leader. Driver, you will be leader of Team Red, Cox will be leader of Team Blue. I want to see how you both react to this extra responsibility, will you thrive or will you bottle it under pressure. Behind you are thirty tents, in bags, ready for assembly. Each team has twenty minutes to get ten tents up and ready, starting now.’
As everyone started running around, Captain Jones collared Cox and myself and warned us, ‘Your team is your responsibility, if your team fails, you fucking fail, move out.’
I have always been a camper, even spending nights camped out on my farm, by the lake. Feeling this task played to my strengths, I got to work giving each tent enough space to peg out. I gave each man in my team a bag, spaced them out evenly by eye and ordered them to, ‘Unfold your tent, lay it out and insert the poles.’ I ran up and down the line, helping anyone who was struggling, fortunately most recruits had some experience with erecting tents, some finishing theirs in little over five minutes. When they were done, I ordered them to help with the recruits who were less confident, instead of just waiting around with their arms folded. ‘Come on lads we’re a fucking team.’ With just less than five minutes remaining, we had just three tents needing pegging out, and their inners adding, including mine which I cracked on with. We finished with around two minutes to go, as did Team Blue. I’m not sure how Cox did in the other leader role, I didn’t get time to actually stop and watch him, but I was happy with how I performed. Captain Jones inspected our tents, and told us we’d be sleeping in them for the next two nights. We were then lined up in our groups, and ordered to ‘Get on your hands and give me ten press ups.’
Everyone jumped down and started the workout, the dust rising up into our faces as we started off at a good pace. The workout consisted of ten repetitions of traditional pushups, traditional sit-ups, wide pushups, reverse crunches, close-grip pushups and double-crunches. There was no time to get your breath back, no break in the workout, we had to push through the pain. When we had finished the first circuit, we were made to start again, immediately, completing five circuits before we could stop. By the third circuit, my legs and arms were burning, the pain was like knives slashing at my limbs, but I wouldn’t stop, I pushed and pushed until I had completed. The dust was blowing into our eyes, blinding us, making the task even harder, and the dirt was building up under my finger nails. Captain Jones walked along the line shouting abuse at us all, as we struggled through the pain barrier. ‘What are you fucking stopping for Harper? Are you going to give up? Do you want to ring the loser bell? You are a fucking embarrassment, you can leave right now if you want? I’ll help you over to the bell you fucking joke.’
Captain Jones seemed to take an interest in one of the bigger built fellas, person
al trainer D’Sean Stansfield, who was struggling as much as the rest of us. ‘Look at the fucking size of you Stansfield, you’re the biggest one here, and you cannot lift shit, all these muscles are for fucking show.’
Every recruit from both Team Red and Team Blue completed the workout, but for some, including Hassan, it was a real struggle. In all we repeated one hundred and fifty repetitions of both pushups and sit-ups, I’ve never been in so much pain. We were warned, if anyone failed to complete the task, the whole exercise was started again, from zero. Just to make things worse, a shower rolled overhead, the rain slowly soaking us, and sapping what little energy we had, soon I could no longer feel the cold anymore. When we had finished, they sat us down in rows, linking our arms, and gave us our only meal of the day, an energy bar. ‘Make sure you eat every crumb,’ barked Captain Jones. ‘You’re going to need every, fucking, gram of energy from it, before the days out you’re going to have burned over fifteen thousand calories.’ As we sat in the rain, shivering, arm in arm, trying to keep warm, five vehicles pulled up. ‘Everyone up’ shouted Captain Jones. ‘We’re going for a little drive.’ We were manhandled to our feet, and bundled into the back of the waiting vehicles. There was room for six people per car, including the driver. I thought we might get chance to have a little sleep, to regain some energy and warmth, but it wasn’t the case. If anyone dozed off, they were slapped and shouted at, songs were sung to keep us awake. We drove out of Camp Blue through the Delta Security Base, and headed down Woodside Road towards the beach. I looked at the faces of the men around me, shivering and tired, wondering what we were going to be forced to do. Soon we were bouncing over the sand dunes, following the beach to the left. Out of the window I could see wooden posts every fifty yards, knocked into the ground with a red marker around the top, that blurred as we drove past. The vehicles ahead came to a stop, we pulled up behind and climbed out to stretch our legs. We formed a group in front of Captain Jones, to listen to what he had to say. ‘This is to be your final task for today recruits’ he said aloud. ‘It’s simple, you have to run the entire length of Blackpool Beach, and back, within a time limit. You have three hours to complete the run, if you fail to finish in time, you’re done. Stay on the beach and follow the red markers until you reach the black one, then turn around and come back. Make it back in time, and you will go through to tomorrow. And this is a competition, Reds against Blues.’ I don’t think anyone was really ready for the start of the run, but we were given no time to prepare. As he walked away, Captain Jones shouted ‘Go’, and everyone set off. My first thought was to keep our team together, so in the early stages we slowed right down, and tried to motivate each other. When I was younger, I was really quite good at long distance running, making the school team at both primary and secondary level. But I fucking hated it, it pissed me off I was made to do it, and I felt pretty much the same now. The sand was wet with rain, that was still coming down, making the running slightly easier than it would have been. As we started lagging behind the blue team, their footprints became a path to follow. It was a real slog, all I could do was focus on different locations along the route, and when we turned at the half way point, pick them out again. We hadn’t even got a mile under our belts before the group began to split, and Cox and his team started to build a lead, and increase it with every stride. For the first seven to eight miles, I didn’t feel too bad, my legs were hurting, but I kept my breathing in check. But then the pain in my legs went, I lost all feeling in them, like I was running on clouds, and they could collapse under my weight at any moment. My feet started to rub, and hurt with every step. My heart was pounding in my chest, and I was starting to lose my balance as I ran. Sweat was pouring off me, stinging my eyes, and causing my uniform to stick to my body. I concentrated on my breathing, to pull me out the other side, which it did. The rain really didn’t help, we constantly had to wipe it out of our eyes, and it restricted our view distance down to a few metres. Three members of my team were really struggling, they were barely moving, and looking to stop at any opportunity. For a while I split from them, as I tried to shorten Cox’s lead, but in the end I decided to stay with my team, and help them through it. I got a bit of abuse from the rest of my team for my choice, but I stood by it. ‘I’m not doing a fucking forfeit because that fat bastard cannot run’ was one particularly uncharitable comment that sticks out in my memory. It was disheartening to see members of Team Blue, running past us in the opposite direction, having already past the half way point. I pushed my team on, not knowing what our time was, just concentrating on finishing. Hassan was really struggling, at around four miles to go, he hit the metaphorical brick wall and stopped, shortly after that he started vomiting, he was overheated and completely out of breath. He told us to go without him, that we should leave him, as he was letting his team down. It took him a couple of minutes to get his breath back, and recompose himself. I used that time to instill the confidence in him to finish, that he could do it. Adrian and I took his weight, one arm each, and lifted him off the ground. We jogged the final couple of miles as a team, helping each other, and supporting whoever needed it. We came over the line well past the three hour cut off, with a grinning Cox the first face to greet us. One of the vehicle’s back doors was open, with Lieutenant Higginson handing out bottles of water to all those that finished, we descended on him to rehydrate, and wait for confirmation of our fate. Captain Jones climbed out if his vehicle and approached the men, ‘Team Blue won then did they?’ He asked. ‘We did captain’ replied Cox, with an air of arrogance. ‘Well done, who was last to finish in your team Cox?’
Aftermath: The complete collection Page 30
