The Conscript the Girl and the Virus

lines.”

  “Request granted,” the colonel said. “I’ll get the papers ready on the way to the front.”

  A lot of heads turned to face me. With their dropped mouths and raised eyebrows, they marked me down as another delusional, just like Carol. A fool with a fool for a partner, skipping off hand-in-hand to the wasteland. Looney Bin Conscripts. The city wasn’t up to much, but at least it was safe. We had to get out before they realised otherwise.

  VIII

  Some of the more naïve conscripts expected armoured troop carriers to be waiting outside the gates of the industrial estate. Others imagined we would have to make do with requisitioned cars and buses to ferry us to the front. However, fuel was so scarce these days that the only one who got to use motorised transport was the colonel. The rest of us had the bikes we arrived in. Even the captain and the sergeant had to cycle.

  The colonel drove a small white van with the insignia of the Civil Defence Association sloppily painted across the sides – a phoenix rising from the ashes. It looked more like a plucked chicken roasting over a spit.

  There were four other passengers. They stood around the van, with folded arms and faces only a short-sighted mother could love. With studied menace, they glared at us and chewed gum. They bore more than a passing resemblance to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, except they were all dog ugly, squat and spotty. Each one dressed head-to-toe in shiny leather and adorned each hip with a holstered handgun. They brandished long shining swords and had scabbarded daggers strapped to their thighs. The luminous yellow MP initials on their sleeve confirmed who they were.

  The only thing you needed to know about the Militia Police was that you didn’t want to be anywhere near them. They had a licence to kill and they liked to use it. They just enjoyed killing people. Plain and simple. They were rumoured to enjoy a bit of torture too, if time permitted.

  “Why are they here?” Carol asked me, after directing a look that could curdle milk in the MP’s direction.

  “To scare us to the front line, I suppose. And for God’s sake, Carol, exercise a bit of face control, will you? Don’t even make eye contact. I’ve seen them pluck people’s eyes out for less.”

  She snarled at the ground instead and turned her back to them.

  “Why the hell did the government create those monsters in the first place?” Carol muttered.

  “Because the Civil Defence Association is fracturing. It’s only the fear of these goons that stops it falling apart altogether. It’s the MP’s or anarchy,” I said.

  “Did you read that in the Emergency Herald, Fluffy? The only thing that rag is good for is wiping your arse.”

  She was right, of course. The Emergency Herald, the one and only surviving newspaper, is just a mouthpiece for whichever CDA faction holds power, and lately that changed with the seasons. While once critical of MP excesses, it now sang their praises daily. Maybe the Militia Police were top dogs now. It was yet another reason to get out of the city.

  Carol clutched her rifle so tight that her hands turned white. Her breathing was heavy and she was beginning to twitch.

  “We should have dissolved the MP’s when we had the chance,” Carol said, much too loudly, even though she seemed to be talking to herself.

  “It’s an age-old story, Carol. Don’t hire wolves to protect you from wolves. But the world is what it is and we’ve got to live in it. So, if you want to spend another hour on this blighted planet, then you’d better forget how much you hate them. Think happy thoughts, Carol, cause if they see the hate in your eyes they’ll put a dagger through them.”

  “You don’t know what they did,” she said.

  “No, I don’t, and I don’t want to know. Not now.”

  One of them started to walk towards Carol.

  “Happy thoughts, Carol. Think of your dog, Fluffy. Think of him running in a meadow, or peeing on a lamppost, or anything at all.”

  She did so and smiled, but still the MP was walking towards us, with a puzzled expression on his face. I panned for an emergency exit but came up blank.

  A shot rang out and saved us.

  One of the MP’s had climbed on top of the white van and fired his pistol to get our attention. The guard who had his eye on Carol doubled back so he could join the other MP’s. They took their motorbikes out of the back of the van, revved them up and circled round the conscripts, forcing us into a tighter and tighter pack. A second shot and another roar of engines. Horns blared and swords were raised. I felt nostalgic for Sergeant Driscall’s whistle.

  With the third shot the bikes cut their engines in unison and pointed their swords towards the MP on the roof of the van.

  “We’re here to bring you to the front. All of you. You’re alive now and you’ll be alive when you get there, unless you break formation. I’ve never lost a man. Killed hundreds, but never lost one. You’ll ride in pairs and keep one to two metres between you and the slob in front of you. Anyone who veers off into a side street will be shot dead as a deserter. Anyone who develops a mysterious case of cramp and can’t ride no more will be shot dead as a deserter. Anyone who gets a puncture and can’t ride no more will be shot dead as a deserter. I could go on but you get the message. You fuck with the MP’s and we’ll shoot you dead. Then we’ll yank out your canines and keep them as a souvenir. Use your jawbone to buy a shot of whiskey.”

  He fingered his necklace and I realised that even the scarier rumours were true. These guys were paid per carcass. Every deserter they took down earned them an alcohol credit. I didn’t want to get close enough to count how many teeth this guy had hanging around his neck, but it was definitely more than a hundred.

  They had made their point. Made it too well, to judge by the smell of faecal accidents coming from some of the conscripts’ bottoms. In a stunned silence, we taped our weapons inside our open backpacks. They stuck out from behind us and pointed at the sky. Carol put a towel around my pickaxe and told me not to stick it in my ear.

  She was herself again, but she had let her hair down and was hiding her face behind it. She put her hood up too. This girl had something to hide.

  What I tried to hide was the state of my calf muscles. I’d been a couch potato for months and I wasn’t sure I could cycle all the way to the front. It was only three kilometres though, and as the alternative was a bullet to the brain, I figured I would manage it somehow.

  I wished I had a better bike. Mine had been stolen so many times that I resolved to steal something no-one would ever steal again. I found my heap in an abandoned stairwell. Unlocked, uncared for and unbelievably naff. The brand name was in Chinese characters but they had translated the model into English. I was going to sandpaper it off, but I suspected having The Fairy branded all over the bike’s frame would act as a kind of anti-theft device. The rust, the bald tyres, and the rip in the saddle probably kept it safe too. Carol rode a Pivot, a sleek black carbon mountain bike. The thing must have been worth its weight in spliffs.

  I had the bike nobody wanted, but I was standing beside the girl everybody wanted. The colonel popped up out of nowhere and asked her if she’d like to ride with him in his van, but she said she wanted to stay near her partner. The colonel looked me up and down and shrugged.

  The van’s engine started and our convey set off. It was six and the sun was beginning its slow descent into nothingness. So were we all.

  The bikes’ dynamos whirred, the birds tweeted, and except for the fact that the world was about to end, it was a beautiful night. At the front of the convoy, the van chugged alone in a low gear, its headlights clearing a path through the darkening gloom.

  I kept looking behind me, to the city and its twinkling lights. There were far fewer than before, of course, but it had never looked so beautiful, this city of mine. I hummed “Dirty Ole Town” as a requiem.

  “Eyes forward, fucker!” said one of the police ogres on the motorbike. “You try to break your leg in some spoofed-up crash and I’ll personally break your neck. Gorrit?”

/>   I’d got it alright. I had also got all kinds of aches and pains in my leg muscles. We cycled uphill, against the wind, and I knew that since I couldn’t go back, I had to go forward. All other avenues were closed, except my imagination. I caressed the memories of my warm bedsit and placed Carol in there with me, with a locked door between us and the whole stupid world outside. I had her laugh at all my jokes, and lust after my bodily particles.

  “What are you wagging your tail about, Fluffy?” she asked me.

  “This world of the mind,” I said to her.

  IX

  This really wasn’t the time for day dreaming, so I took in my surroundings. I looked over the head of the bike rider into the abandoned and burnt out housing estate of Finglas. In the gloom, I saw an occasional torch light. Scavengers, perhaps. But why hunt at night? I wondered who in their right mind would ferret their way through such a desolate hole. Perhaps they weren’t in their right mind.

  Finglas was the last estate, and as we passed its old village centre, we all looked up at the deserted army watchtowers.

  “Where have all the soldiers gone?” someone said, from further back in the convoy.

  I caught of whiff of something unpleasant in the wind. Some form of decay. The wind carried ugly sounds too. A ghostly mooing chilled my blood and we all looked at one another. Heiferwhines. This was the sound we’d been