The Conscript the Girl and the Virus

death; And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short."

  Carol gave the axe to me and I tried to copy her earlier acrobatics. The pickaxe was a lot heavier than I imagined, but not wishing to appear too weedy, I threw my whole body into it swung it above my head. I smiled at my own strength but then the pickaxe flew out of my hand, rose into the sky, turned on itself a couple of times and came crashing to earth again. It banged on a manhole cover and nearly hit a guy standing beside it. The clang of the axe died and a great deal of steaming invective rose to take its place, all directed at me.

  “You sure you wanna to be buddied up with this clown?” the gorilla I nearly hit said to Carol.

  She didn’t reply. Instead she just recovered our pickaxe and told me never to pick it up in her presence again.

  “Friendly fire is one thing, but I don’t want to end my days with a friendly pickaxe sticking out of my head.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said sheepishly.

  “That’s OK, Fluffy,” she said. “Serves me right for letting a pooch take charge of a dangerous object.”

  “Carol, let me try again. I’ll have to play a part in protecting us, out there in Cowland. I don’t want to be a spare wheel,” I said.

  “You do have a part, Fluffy,” she said. “A very important part”

  “What?”

  “You’re in charge of cowardice. Your first priority is to keep your nose to the ground and bark when you sense danger. Secondly, make sure we always have a way out. Where ever we are, I want you to think about how we can get the flock out of there, in a hurry, if the proverbial shit hits the fan,” she told me.

  “I’m your man,” I said. “Avoiding danger and running away from it are major talents of mine!” I told her proudly.

  V

  The sergeant blew his whistle and ordered us back inside. We sloped into the factory. Sweaty, out-of-breath and carrying our weapons on our shoulders. I held the axe in front of me, with both hands, frightened that it would develop a life of its own.

  Even Carol perspired a little, but she wiped her forehead and regained her composure instantly. She wasn’t even breathing heavily. And I should know – I kept one covert eye on her chest at all times.

  The rest of us was heaving wrecks. Latrine Breath’s Guns’N’Roses t-shirt was drenched through. “Appetite for Destruction,” the faded letters read. He clearly had no appetite for a bath. Snot ran down his nose, which he wiped on his arm, which he wiped on his jeans. No-one minded. Endorphins gave the conscripts a healthy high and added a camaraderie to the mob. Besides, people had long since lost their squeamishness about public displays of phlegm. Except me, of course.

  The captain looked at the clock and saw that there was only an hour and a half of basic training remaining.

  “Troops, time is not on our side, so we’re going to finish with hand-to-hand combat training. Sometimes you won’t have time to load your rifle, or your axe might get stuck inside a zombov’s skull, so you’re gonna have to learn how to fight without weapons. Learn how to fight dirty, up close and personal.”

  A smile spread across the factory floor. I tried to smile with them but it was more of a grimace, but then I remembered my partner was Carol, and that physical violence would at least involve a modicum of physical contact. You gotta take what you can get.

  “What you need to remember, troops, is to keep as far away from the teeth as possible. Once they pierce the skin, you’re infected, and you’ll turn into one more mooing maniac we gotta put a bullet in. I’ve lost many of my own men to a bite, and I’ve put a bullet into every single one of them. And they were grateful, I tell you. So, don’t punch ‘em in the face -- kick ‘em in the balls. Let me hear you say it -- kick ‘em in the balls!”

  “Kick ‘em in the balls!” the conscript choir chanted.

  “And never, and I mean never, turn your back on one of them,” the captain ordered us.

  “They must make running away rather difficult,” I thought to myself.

  The captain worked himself into a rage, with flailing arms and spittle, looking slightly rabid himself.

  Too horse to continue, McGuire told us to role play teeth avoidance combat. I had to come at Carol and try to go for her neck. The motivation was there but my technique was sadly lacking. Every time I got anywhere near her, she threw me off my feet and pinned me to the ground, with her boots only centimetres from my gonads. Poised to deliver the unkindest kick of all. It was funny at first, I suppose, but humiliation never stays funny. I couldn’t wait for it to be over, and I was saved by McGuire himself.

  “You got martial arts training, Private?” he asked her.

  “Taekwondo, first dan, sir,” she said.

  “Impressive,” he said, stroking his chin.

  “Thank you, sir,” Carol said, with that same look of eager determination she always wore with authority figures.

  In my mind’s eye, I picked up an axe and fixed the captain’s hand to his chin forever. The violence of the image disturbed me.

  McGuire asked her to speak with him in private for a moment, but then a scream back at the firing range forced the sergeant to leave us. Someone’s gun had gone off in their face and they weren’t too happy about it.

  I didn’t like the way the gorilla I’d nearly poleaxed in the training yard car park was looking at Carol, and I also didn’t like the way he was looking at me. He wasn’t quite at the banging his chest stage, but it wouldn’t be long. I suggested to Carol that we leave the factory floor and try to find the guy in charge of Stores, in the hope of getting a better gun. That sounded better than telling her I was afraid of the big boy with all the tattoos.

  All we succeeded in finding were a few training camp guards, slacking off in the canteen.

  “Do you know where the quartermaster is?” Carol asked them.

  “I don’t even know what a quartermaster is,” one of them replied, and the others went into a fit of giggles.

  Carol charmed a spliff out of them and we looked for a place to smoke it. She insisted on going further and further back into the warren of offices at the end of the factory. Her paranoia about secrecy surprised me. Grass was legal now, encouraged almost. Had been for over a year. In the last days of the welfare state, they even had ration cards for it. It was a lot easier to produce than alcohol and it kept everyone nice and mellow. Protesting against government corruption seems like such hard work after a few tokes. And of course, your marijuana allowance was the first thing you lost if they caught you at an unauthorised demonstration.

  Eventually she found somewhere she felt safe in, an abandoned office, far from sight. Cracked blinds covered yellowed windows and the air was heavy with fungal spores and cat pee. Nobody bothered to clean up anymore.

  I suggested we go somewhere else. The atmosphere stank. It wasn’t just the urine and the mould, it was the sense of desertion. No-one had been here for years. Dusty ghosts of entropy had broken the room’s spirit. It’s best to avoid places like this. They let the melancholy in. Everything was caked in that grimy dust that stuck to your fingers and burnt away at your will to survive. Quicklime grime, I called it.

  At a practical level I felt uncomfortable here too. The windows were barred on the outside and there was only one door in and no other way out. Carol brushed my objections aside, and said there wasn’t time to find anywhere else. She got a faraway look in her eyes and lit up.

  “Why are you always so nice to the captain?” I asked Carol, with some Jamaican courage in my lungs.

  “Because he holds the power of life and death over us.”

  “God is dead. He died to create Captain McGuire,” I said.

  “McGuire decides where we’re posted. I’m not going to Hell just so I can be rude to a jackass. Why bite the hand that feeds you, Fluffy? Every good hound knows that.”

  I considered this for a while and then passed the joint back to her.

  “Shouldn’t you be back there now, then, doing some judo tricks and high kicks
?” I asked her.

  “Impress them too much and Captain Pugwash might send me on some suicidal special mission. Or choose me for his personal guard. He’s far more interested in the shape of my legs than how high they can kick.”

  “So, what is the plan?” I asked her.

  She inhaled deeply and made me wait for her answer.

  “Lay low, wait until he’s swamped, and at just the right moment, get his attention and volunteer for the Ag. Squad.”

  “The Ag squad! Are you mad? It’s cow city out there in the countryside. I mean, that’s where the feckers come from. Agricultural Squad must be up to their armpits in carnivorous cows! And it’s all mucky, and—”

  “Don’t wanna get your paws dirty, eh Fluffy? Well suck it up cause that’s where we’re going,” she said.

  “But why are we bedding down with muck savages?” I asked.

  “Because they have all the food, because the gangs are afraid to go beyond the pale, because something in my water tells me this city is about to implode, and when it does, I’d rather not be here,” she said.

  “But apart from food, safety and security, what has the bog got to offer?” I said, with mock theatricality.

  She laughed and the countryside held no horrors. The city, on the other hand, most definitely did. Carol was right about that. Something was rotten in the state of Dublin.

  VI

  We snuck back into the training hall and Carol did some more deadly pirouetting with her pickaxe. The hash meant I