“You’re not going to call the UN are you?” Fanny said. “We’re not done here yet.”
“I just saw Tony Campbell go into that building. You know what they say about cutting off the head of the snake.”
“I’m coming with you.”
They entered the building, weapons at the ready, and crept up a narrow flight of stairs leading to a doorway. Lesley stuck her head around to look in to an open area filled with computer terminals. At the far end, Tony and another man were bent over a monitor atop a table cluttered with other equipment, including a radio. As she tried to figure out what they were doing, a boom rattled the windows. Tony ducked beneath the table. The other man didn’t flinch. For a moment Lesley’s spirits soared, taking the weight of all the lives that would be lost with them. The explosion must have been Scholzy taking out the sub. As the top half of Tony’s head appeared above the table, the other man walked over to the window and cupped his hands against the pane.
“It’s okay,” he said. “The sub’s still intact.”
Lesley ducked back in as he turned, feeling sick to her stomach. A few seconds later, she heard the man speak again. “How long until you’re in a position to fire?”
“Ten minutes,” somebody replied through the radio speakers.
“They missed it,” she whispered into Fanny’s ear. “We have to kill them.”
“It won’t make any difference. They’ve clearly already given the order to fire. You need to convince Tony to call it off.”
“And how am I going to do that? Last time we talked he threatened to kill me.”
“You’re the wordsmith. So smith some words and persuade him.”
“I can’t,” Lesley said, close to hyperventilating. “I don’t know what to say.”
Fanny grabbed her shoulders and leaned in so their eyes were inches apart. “I never told you this, but I always admired you. You’re a strong woman, Lesley. You can do it. You have to do it.”
“I’m not a strong woman. I’m a walking disaster area.”
“That’s not true. When it came to the crunch, you shot Brown, didn’t you? You saved my son’s life. Now you can save a lot more lives.”
In lieu of a brown paper bag, Lesley cupped her hands over her mouth and took several deep breaths. It didn’t do much to calm her, but it would have to do.
“Tony!” she shouted.
“Who’s that?”
“It’s Lesley McBrien,” she said, sure he would fly round the corner and attack them.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I just want to talk.”
“Right. That’s why all those bombs were going off.”
“What did you expect? What you’re going to do is wrong.”
“I thought you’d decided killing us wasn’t such a good idea after all. Seems I was wrong. You’re just like every other journalist. Anything for a good story, right?”
“I don’t know what you mean. This isn’t about a story. It’s about what’s right.”
“Right for who? You’re going to kill everybody I care about. This is the only way to stop that happening. You’re making me do this.”
“Nobody’s making you do anything. If you fire that missile, it’ll be your decision, nobody else’s.”
“And the alternative is what? I just stand back and let the bombs drop? This is war. We didn’t start it. But we’re going to finish it.”
“By infecting the whole world?”
“We’ll have peace when everybody has the virus.”
“That’s your solution? I’m sure it’s very peaceful in the grave. Shame the dead are too busy decomposing to enjoy the lovely silence. Don’t you get it? This is the virus talking. You’re angry, so you’re not thinking clearly. Billions of people are going to die if you do this.”
“Not my family. That’s all that matters. Nothing you can say will change my mind, so you may as well send your soldier friends up to finish the job.”
Lesley slumped against the wall and clutched her hair.
“I don’t know what to say,” she told Fanny.
“Don’t give up,” Fanny said. “We’ve still got a few minutes.”
Lesley stared at her mutely. She’d spoken to Tony for less than a minute but already knew she didn’t have the words to talk him down, mainly because she didn’t blame him. She blamed herself. In a few minutes the missile would slide out of its tube and she would have killed half the world. She shook her head and looked at the floor. Fanny nudged her out of the way and edged toward the door.
“Unless your family is more than seven billion people, you can’t do it,” Fanny shouted. “Don’t you get it? The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
“What did you say?” Tony said, his voice hoarse.
“I said the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Do you think you’re the only one with a wife and child? Are you really going to kill millions of families just to save your own?”
The only sound from the control room was heavy breathing and the soft tick of a wall clock. As the silence stretched on, Lesley halted her slide down the wall. She grabbed Fanny’s forearm.
“I didn’t know you were a Star Trek fan,” she whispered, not wanting to interrupt whatever thoughts were running through Tony’s mind.
Fanny shot her a puzzled look. “I’m not.”
“Never mind. I think you might have gotten through to him.”
* * *
Tony stood by the radio, stunned into stillness by the words of Spock coming out of the unknown woman’s mouth. Always he’d conjured up the Vulcan, but only in relation to the small things, as a way of quelling his anger. He’d never applied Spock’s logic to the big picture. Every decision he made had been driven by the sickening rage conjured up at the thought of those he loved being killed. He hadn’t allowed Spock to come because he didn’t want to see the truth. Now he breathed deeply and, for the first time, properly asked himself what Spock would do. It wasn’t a question that needed any thought, since Fanny had already given him the answer. He saw Spock in the reactor core, his face bearing the scars of radiation poisoning as he slid down the glass pane and said farewell to Kirk after making the ultimate sacrifice. From a purely logical point of view, it was a question of numbers. Billions versus two, or millions if you counted all of the others in Britain. Spock wouldn’t do this, he knew. But it went far beyond logic, as Spock’s human side would know only too well.
Yes, Tony had been furious when he told Glen to fire the missile and so didn’t think further about the consequences. But he’d paved the way for that split-second decision in all of his thoughts over the previous weeks. All along he’d been doing what he vilified the international community for doing: dehumanizing the people he would kill, trying to dismiss them as statistics. This was the kind of decision world leaders took every time they went to war. They gave commands, people died, and geopolitical influence changed as if it were just a big game of Risk. He’d never seen himself as one of those people. He took up politics as an ideal, not a career. He’d been a leftie, a backer of an ideology that protected the masses from the excesses of the few. Many others started out the same way. In order to rise to the top they gradually compromised and chipped away at their ideals until, like a statue carved by a sculptor too heavy on the hammer, all that remained was a shrivelled lump of rock. He’d vowed this would never happen to him. All those years he’d kept quiet as the party moved to the right, telling himself he was staying in the system so he could eventually change it. Yet he’d never actually done or said anything, supposedly waiting for the right moment as he rose and rose. He’d compromised himself through inaction and silence. And now here he was, as bad as those leaders who would destroy his country without thought for the loss of life.
For the first time, he allowed himself to see the gravity of his actions. There were millions of Vanessas out there, each tucked up in their own bed, each with a father and mother who would do anything to protect them. He realized
that he hadn’t really tried to picture them, how they would scream and bleed and plead for their mummies and daddies when the infected came for them. He would never see the bodies, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be there. He let the memory of the journey back from the hotel engulf him, this time transplanting the endless vista of broken and battered corpses onto the streets of Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Moscow, New York, New Delhi, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, and the other cities he’d visited and thus could visualize. That is what he would be unleashing upon the world. Each one of those deaths would be a tragedy, overwhelming when stacked up in their millions. When it had occurred to him that firing the missile would make him the same as Archangel, he talked himself out of his comparison by considering motivation. But his motivation wouldn’t matter to the dead. Wrong was wrong. If he did this, he would never be able to look Margot or Vanessa in the eye again, knowing he’d bought their lives with the deaths of so many others.
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 fo
und 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.
World War Moo: An Apocalypse Cow Novel Page 29
