avoiding all these months, and yet here we were, riding toward it. Every fibre in my body told me to turn the bike around and head in the opposite direction.
I turned left and right, looking for a magic exit. The only thing I caught was the eye of one of our armed guards. He smiled at me and I knew every exit would be a mirage.
A kilometre later, we dismounted. We could see the wall now, rising from what used to be the M50 ring road. There were soldiers on top of it. Hundreds of them on this section alone. Ragged, makeshift soldiers, getting under each other’s feet. Headless chickens. Conscripts.
To judge by the whining, the zombovs were just behind the wall. And not just one or two of them. Whole herds.
Snipers stood on plastic boxes on top of the wall and took aim. Bull hunters. One of their guns misfired and the guy holding it screamed like a girl. “I’m blind, I’m blind,” he cried over and over again, but something in his voice didn’t ring true. An MP approached him, pulled his hands away from his eyes, spat in them; and after a second’s pause, threw him off the wall, cowside. He screamed louder than bombs as he fell, but the taste of fresh blood made the zombovs whine even louder, bringing out that piercing tone they use when they’re in attack mode.
My own bunch of misfits had a panicked look in their eye when they realised the trenches had been breached. Now all that stood between them and certain death was a 10 foot wall of concrete. Even Captain McGuire looked shocked and I’m sure I saw Sergeant Driscall shaking.
The guards corralled us into a circle, with a lot of pushing and shoving. One conscript dropped his rifle and an MP smashed the butt of it in to his mouth. I saw him spit two or three front teeth out and then I turned to hear the colonel address us one last time. McGuire just kept staring up at the wall.
He gave us some old bluff about duty, and heroism, and the need to fight to the last man. That’s easy to say when you’re the last man, because there are thousands of others in front of you.
“Fuck this shite,” said Latrine Breath. “I’ve got a warm bed waiting for me. No grub’s worth this! I’m checking out.”
He threw his shoulders back and walked quickly towards his bike. It was one of the bravest and one of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen.
A shot blotted out the zombov’s whining for a moment. The boy’s head exploded and the lifeless body sank to the ground. Two of the military police ran over and dragged the body away. Even by their own standards, the smiles they wore were wicked. Inhuman, almost. How much like gargoyles they seemed, these hunched grinning demons of the peace. I didn’t want to know what they were going to do to the body after they extracted the teeth. You heard rumours, of course. Mutilation, necrophilia, even cannibalism.
“Desertion, as you can see, is not an option. While those who fight will risk their life; those who fly will surely die,” the colonel said.
Carol tugged me by the sleeve and said we should get closer to the colonel. When he dismissed us and handed us over to some officer barely old enough to shave, Carol stood in front of him and shook his hand.
“An inspirational speech, colonel,” she said, grinning from ear to ear.
“Thank you, Private. Now, as I recall, you said you’d like to volunteer for the Ag. Squad. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to work for me, on a more personal basis? I’m assembling a small platoon for after the… for special duties. With your drive and determination, I’d really like to have you on my team.”
“No, thank you, colonel. The Ag Squad needs me more,” Carol said.
“It’s like a calling, sir,” I said. “We were born to farm!”
He looked at me and I thought I’d gone too far. Fortunately, two other colonels interrupted us and said they needed to speak to our colonel straight away. They were haggard, smelly and looked a bit like bums in khaki. If the officers looked like that, I thought, what state were the soldiers in?
The colonel instructed a young corporal with a mole painted on his beret to bring us to the tunnels. He showed the corporal our exit papers and told him that we were going into Ag Squad, and that we were to be out tonight, even if it meant waking up a mole to escort us.
He shook Carol’s hand, taking far longer than was necessary and staring deep into her eyes. After one final attempt to get her into the back of his van, he said goodbye and wished her good luck. I didn’t even get a good luck glance.
As we walked away, I looked back and saw him shaking his head at whatever the officers had told him. When the colonels returned to their prefab command post, he ran back toward the van and sped away. He was running too.
A couple of minutes later I heard someone shouting and telling us to wait. I turned around and saw that it was Captain McGuire.
“Hang on. I’m coming with you. It’s your lucky day.”
That wasn’t how I would have put it.
The heifer whines grew louder. Screeching, almost. I thought I heard human cries in the distance as well, to the east. Gunshots too. Quick panicked gunshots from conscripts who weren’t counting their ammunition anymore.
The blood drained from Captain McGuire’s face. He had seen plenty of action, no doubt, but he hadn’t seen Armageddon.
“Quickly,” he said. “We’re going into the tunnels right now.”
“But sir,” the corporal interrupted, “the checkpoint’s further on. You’ll need your papers stamped. You’ll need a tunnel soldier assigned to you. I can’t –”
“-- You can and you will, Corporal,” McGuire said, as he pulled out a gun and pressed it into the corporal’s stomach. “Use your key and open the nearest man hole.”
“But you’ll never make it, Captain. The sewer’s a maze,” the corporal said.
“That’s why you’re coming with us, Corporal Mole. You’re our Sewer Rat, our guide out of Hell.”
END OF BOOK ONE
Message from the Author
If you’d like to read more about the conscript, the girl and the virus, please email me to let me know ([email protected]). I’d appreciate some input on future books in the series.
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Other Writing
Other novels, travelogues and short stories can be found at my website: www.phillipdonnelly.net
The Conscript the Girl and the Virus Page 8
