World War Moo: An Apocalypse Cow Novel

by Michael Logan

  “No,” Scholzy said. “If anybody outside of Britain gets a whiff of this, the entire island will be burnt to a crisp instantly, us included.”

  “And if we say nothing, the entire world is fucked,” Lesley said. “You have people you care about, I assume?” Scholzy nodded. “All dead. Or turned.”

  Fanny had a faraway look in her eye and, unbelievably, a slight smile on her lips. “You know,” she said, “I’ve always wanted to stop Trident.”

  “What are you suggesting?” Lesley said.

  “Faslane isn’t too far from here.”

  “And?”

  “We attack the base.”

  “Have you lost your bloody marbles?” Scholzy said. “It’ll be crawling with soldiers. You’ll all die. Badly.”

  “They won’t be expecting an attack from land. And we have you. Look, do you think all of this is a coincidence, that you came here, and Lesley came here, and this woman came here to tell us, probably the only people who could do anything about it?”

  Scholzy snorted. “You think this is fate?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. What I do know is that it’s the only real option on the table that won’t see mass slaughter here or in the rest of the world.”

  “No way,” Scholzy said. “It’s suicide.”

  “Don’t you want to fight for a cause just once?” Geldof said.

  “We always fight for a cause. Not necessarily a just one, mind you. And we’re used to being paid for it.”

  “I’ll give you another million,” Geldof said. “If we succeed, you’ll all be rich men. If we do nothing, there won’t be a world for you to go back to anyway.”

  “You’re not in a position to be promising more money,” Scholzy said.

  “I’m in,” James said. When Scholzy stared at him, he just shrugged. “He’s right. I don’t want to live like this for the rest of my life. I want to go home.”

  “I’m in, too,” said Mick, giving Fanny a lingering look. “I’ve always wanted to see if the Brits are as good in a barney as they claim.”

  Peter said something unintelligible behind his mask.

  Scholzy’s fingers drummed on the table as he looked around the set faces. “So you all want to be heroes, heh? Fine. Let’s just try to make sure we’re not dead heroes.”

  Lesley looked around the table, scarcely able to believe what she was hearing. This was a risk she wasn’t prepared to take: not because she was afraid of dying, but because she knew they would fail. And when they failed, those missiles would shower infected blood over the continent. She couldn’t let that happen. She pushed off the table, intending to go straight to the hangar and send an e-mail.

  “Where are you going?” Scholzy said.

  “To do what’s right and tell the UN.”

  James barred her way. “No, you’re not. This is the only shot we’ve got at surviving. You don’t get to make this decision for the rest of us.”

  “And you don’t get to gamble with the lives of all those people out there just so we can survive,” Lesley said.

  When she tried to push past, James wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her off her feet. Her legs kicked fruitlessly as he addressed Fanny, “Where can we lock her up?”

  “There’s no need for that,” Fanny said. “Lesley, I promise you that if we fail we’ll tell the UN and let them do what they have to. At least give us a chance to keep the bloodshed to a minimum.”

  “And who’s going to tell them if it doesn’t work? We’ll all be dead.”

  “We’ll hold one person back with the satphone to make the call.”

  Lesley stopped kicking. “Do you give your word?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Then let’s do it quickly.”

  Fanny nodded and James dropped Lesley. She sat back down at the table.

  “Now,” Scholzy said, “we get to the difficult bit. Does anybody have any ideas on how we’re going to actually get into a heavily defended military base, never mind find a way to destroy these missiles?”

  “Isn’t that your speciality?” Geldof said.

  “Hey, I’m trying to be collaborative here.” Nobody piped up with any suggestions. “How about we all go away for a few hours and come back with ideas to brainstorm?”

  There was a murmur of assent. As they got up, Fanny looked along the length of the table. “Has anybody seen Rory?”

  “Not since this morning,” Tom said. “He said he was going for a walk.”

  “Well, we don’t have time to worry about him right now,” Fanny said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up soon enough. Now let’s see if we can come up with a plan.”

  28

  As everybody drifted away in groups of twos and threes, Ruan and Geldof gravitated together. This was the point where it would have been permissible for Geldof to suggest they have wild, life-affirming sex to laugh in the face of Death, who, judging from the plethora of ways to die he was strewing in their path, seemed grimly intent on reaping them. After all, from the exhausted and drawn look on Mick’s face and the corresponding look of satisfaction on his mum’s this morning, others were clearly thumbing their noses at old Mort. He’d thought he would feel angry if his mum gave in to Mick, but when he saw how relaxed she looked he couldn’t hold it against her. His dad had been dead for seven months now, and in such difficult circumstances all that mattered was that she found some fleeting happiness. While the thought to suggest similar activity did cross Geldof’s mind, it was in a vague, theoretical way—more as a nod to the books and movies he’d devoured in Croatia that detailed such situations. He did find Ruan attractive, but as he had no chance it was a waste of mental and emotional resources to entertain the notion. He’d been there and bought the T-shirt, cap, and souvenir snow globe on that one with his crush on Mary.

  He sensed no particular attraction from Ruan’s side, although he could count the number of girls who’d fancied him on a fingerless hand and so had no idea what signals they gave off on such occasions. He’d often thought that life would be much easier if women’s nipples swelled in the same proportions as penises when their dander was up. Even he wouldn’t be able to miss the signal of long nipple fingers pointing him out as the object of desire. Anyway, when he held Ruan’s hand it hadn’t been an advance on his part. She’d looked so small and lost as she related her story that it felt like a natural response, the kind of gesture a friend or brother would make. And that, he realized with a start, was how he felt toward her. Before puberty smacked him upside the head with its big hormone stick, he had female friends. After, his scrambled brain only allowed him to speak to girls in mortified mumbles. With Ruan, the initial awkward bumping of heads over her name aside, he’d been relating to her as he would with any boy he liked. A female friend. Of all the crazy events that had swamped his life, this one surprised him most.

  “So, you’ve got a million dollars lying around in pocket change,” Ruan said.

  “Absolutely. I wipe my bum with tenners.”

  “Only tenners? That’s not very extravagant.”

  “They’re brown, so it seems to fit best.”

  “Nasty!”

  They laughed harder than the joke warranted. Geldof’s amusement came from the sense of liberation at being able to say whatever he wanted without feeling he would scupper his chances of a snog. He could be himself. Which was why, halfway through a particularly large chortle, he sat down heavily and addressed the elephant that was rampaging around the room, knocking over furniture, trumpeting, and generally making itself very hard to ignore.

  “I’m scared,” he said. “I’m pretty certain I’m shortly going to die a horribly painful death.”

  “Hey, we’re going to be heroes,” Ruan said. “How many people get the chance to save the world?”

  “Don’t heroes usually have some kind of fighting skill? You’ve got your gun and sword, Mum’s got her bow, Scott’s got his big stick, and the mercenaries have got enough hardware strapped onto those bikes to cause a mass extinction
event. Even Andy has his eggs, although I still think that’s plain weird. What am I going to do when we go in? Let them eat me and hope they’re fatally allergic to gingers? Squirt my contact lens solution at them? Challenge them to a Sudoku death match, loser blows his brains out?”

  “You could stay here,” Ruan said. “Nobody would think any less of you.”

  “I can’t do that while the people I care about go off to fight.”

  “Then we’ll figure out something for you to do. First, though, we’d better come up with some kind of plan.”

  “A plan. Let me draw on my extensive knowledge of storming army bases and knock something up.”

  “Come on, you’re a boy. Didn’t you play shooting games?”

  “I prefer puzzles.”

  “There you are. You must have developed some strategic thinking.”

  “I suppose. It would be easier if we had schematics of the base.”

  “And where are we going to get those?”

  “Maybe they have a gift shop. Plastic mushroom cloud replicas, Trident-branded mugs, pens in the shape of nukes, and detailed plans of the base, £4.99 a pop. We could nip down and buy one.” Geldof got up and chucked a stone in frustration. It sailed through the sky and pinged off the satellite dish. He stared at it and slapped his forehead. “Of course. How stupid am I?”

  “What?”

  “We don’t have schematics, but we’ve got the next best thing. Google Earth.”

  * * *

  An hour later they’d collected armfuls of aerial views of the base, from a bird’s-eye image showing all approach roads to sections at maximum resolution. They didn’t have any kind of plan, since they didn’t know which building was which or how a submarine base operated. Still, it was something. The mercenaries would surely be able to make sense of the images and figure out how to approach it; they must have chalked up more assaults than a psychopathic skinhead at a gay pride march. Geldof and Ruan went outside with their bounty and headed back toward where a few people had already gathered. As they approached, Geldof looked out across the water.

  “What’s that?” he said, pointing.

  Ruan shielded her eyes and peered. “Looks like boats. Coming this way. It’s the Noels.”

  “Eh?”

  “The people from Arrochar. They all look like Noel Edmonds.”

  “Maybe it’s the start of a new infection. The people they bite turn into Noel Edmonds, too. Can you imagine the horror?”

  “This isn’t something to joke about,” Ruan said, chewing at her lower lip. “Last time we met, a mob of them tried to kill me.”

  “We’d better find my mum.”

  Fanny was sitting cross-legged with Scott, Eva, and Tom in the living room of one of the houses and passing round some of the sweet-smelling weed as a creative aid when Geldof and Ruan burst in. As the others giggled, Scott was laying out a plan that involved weaving a giant net in the shape of a vagina and lowering it into position over the missile tube from a hot air balloon.

  “How much have you had to smoke?” Geldof said.

  “He’s right, it’s ridiculous,” Eva said. “The balloon would never carry the weight. We’d need a helicopter.”

  Fanny put her hand on Geldof’s arm as the others laughed. “Just some light relief. We really are trying to come up with a plan.”

  “We’ve got something else to worry about,” Ruan said. “Boats are coming from Arrochar.”

  The laughter cut off and everyone ran outside. The two boats were close enough for Geldof to count a total of six bearded men. As far as he could tell across the distance and through all that blond facial hair, they looked decidedly cross.

  “They’ve never bothered us before,” Fanny said. “You guys had better make yourselves scarce while I find out what they want.”

  Before Geldof could move, one of the Noels stood up and pointed a long, shiny object toward them. What felt like a host of tiny insects whizzed past his ear, accompanied by a distant bang and smoke rising from the boat. Scott wailed and Geldof looked to his left to see Eva crumple to the ground. Even though he’d been shot at before, his body still hadn’t developed the combat reflexes that would have sent him diving for cover. Standing there like a spare tit, he presented an easy target for the Noel in the other boat who was raising a shotgun in his direction. Fanny hauled him to the ground as shotgun pellets whizzed through the space where he’d been standing.

  “Get into the hangar and stay there,” she shouted, before getting to her feet and zigzagging away.

  Scott was dragging Eva away from the water, while Ruan was sprinting back toward the houses, no doubt to procure her weapons. Geldof didn’t intend to cower in the background but had no idea how to make himself useful as anything other than a moving target that would draw fire while the others fought. As he prevaricated, another Noel stood up and let off his shotgun. Pellets dappled the grass in front of Geldof’s face. He got to his feet and ran toward the quad bikes. The mercenaries had appeared out of the bushes and were strapping on weapons. Mick was wearing a manic grin as Geldof arrived beside him and crouched down behind a bike.

  “Now this is more like it,” Mick said, plucking a grenade from his bag.

  He pulled the pin, waited a terrifying few seconds, and lobbed it at the Noel Armada. It exploded in the first boat. In the brief and surprisingly small flash of light before smoke wreathed the boat, Geldof caught a glimpse of a body falling backward. The occupants of the other vessel jumped into the water.

  “Amateurs,” James said. “What’re they thinking, attacking in broad daylight in those crappy little boats?”

  “Let’s teach them a lesson,” Mick said.

  “You need to still be alive to learn a lesson.”

  “Fine. Let’s just kill them.”

  The mercenaries opened fire. Splashes kicked up across the water in an arcing line until the bullets found the men wading through the shallows. Geldof turned away. That was when he saw what was charging in from the main entrance. He clutched Mick’s arm.

  “We’ve got a bigger problem,” he shouted.

  A swarm of Noel Edmonds look-a-likes was rampaging in, waving an assortment of weapons that ranged from iron pokers to cricket bats to garden forks. At the vanguard, two men sat atop hulking Highland cows. The wind ruffled their beards around bared teeth. The cows looked even more ferocious, their wide nostrils flaring and shaggy ginger hair rippling as they thundered toward Geldof and the mercenaries. Mick turned, just in time to be caught by a shotgun blast from one of the cow riders. He flew back and his head smacked against one of the metal boxes attached to the quad bike behind him. The other mercenaries spun and unleashed their weapons on the advancing mob. The two men riding the animals fell; the beasts kept on coming even as bullet holes ripped into their muscled flanks.

  Geldof felt as though somebody had yanked his brain out through his ear, dipped it in a vat of potent hallucinogens, and then unceremoniously stuffed it back in. His body responded to the chaotic scene just as vehemently, every quavering muscle demanding that he run like hell. He ignored his cowardly body and bent over Mick, who lay unconscious with blood gurgling up from his shredded trouser leg. He picked up the fallen gun, waved it in the vague direction of the horde and pulled the trigger. The weapon leapt in his hand; his bullets fizzed over the heads of the attackers and into the trees. While he was shredding the foliage, James appeared next to him with a long tube on his shoulder. A rocket whooshed through the air and hit one of the cows smack on the forehead. Its head disintegrated into a cloud of red mist that doused the surrounding attackers, and its huge body came sliding forward on its knees. The Noels behind hurdled the steaming corpse and kept coming. As Geldof brought the weapon down, an arrow whistled through the air and took the other cow in the eye. It let out a long moo and staggered sideways, crushing another three of the attackers who were running alongside it. Still the rest came on.

  Three individuals peeled off from the mob. At their head ran Rory, his cheeks p
urple with rage. The little shit, wracked with jealousy, must have gone across the water and told his friends there were uninfected people in the camp. They were heading straight for Ruan, who stood calmly with her sword drawn. Fanny had gained the vantage point of a rock by the water’s edge and was busy pumping arrows into the main body of the crowd, while Scott was crouched over Eva at the far end of the camp. Lesley was now beside the mercenaries, raising a handgun she must have grabbed from their weapons stash. The rest of the commune was sprinting toward the diminishing mob armed with sticks, stones, and knives. Nobody was paying any attention to those closing in on Ruan.

  Geldof closed his eyes, trying to block out the madness for long enough to bring some clarity to his fuzzy mind.

  You can do this, he thought. You have to do this.

  As calm as he was ever going to be, which in truth was not very calm at all, he brought the gun around. The angle meant that if he opened fire he would most likely hit Ruan, particularly given his wayward aim. He ran closer, hoping to get a better shot. One of the men pulled ahead and reached Ruan, who sidestepped nimbly. Geldof had known her sword must be sharp, as she spent enough time running its edge along the rocks, but he didn’t fully appreciate just how deadly it was until it flashed forward and sliced through the front of the attacker’s neck. He took another few steps before he toppled. Rory was next in line and Geldof expected to see Ruan deal with him in a similar manner. Instead, she paused before pulling the point up and clobbering the boy on the temple with the solid-looking hilt. He dropped to the ground.

  The delay gave the final assailant time to step inside Ruan’s guard and punch her full in the face. She fell and landed heavily on her back. The Noel stood over her, his legs tensed to pounce. Before he could leap, a small white object flew through the air and smacked him in the right eye. He took a step backward, wiping at the sticky fluid running down his cheek. From the corner of his eye Geldof saw Andy, who’d appeared from nowhere, snap his arm forward. Another egg cartwheeled toward the Noel and cracked in his other eye.

  Geldof took the opportunity to let fly. He kept the barrel low this time, hoping to compensate for the rise, but his aim was off to the right. The bullets missed the Noel and shattered the last bolts holding the old iron guttering to the houses. An entire section creaked forward and swung down like a club. For a moment it looked like the long splinter of iron sticking out of the top would spike the man through the skull, but he stepped back at the last minute, and it impaled his foot to the ground. Geldof pulled the trigger again, yet somehow managed to miss the stationary target. Eyes now egg-free, the Noel started tugging at the guttering. Geldof moved closer to finish the job. Once he was six feet away, a distance from which even he couldn’t miss, he jerked the trigger. The gun clicked.