by Vance Huxley
“I still worry about the Armed Forces, Owen.” The slim grey haired woman in a light grey trouser suit smiled at the look on a younger man’s face. “Yes Gerard, I used his name. I think that is safe here or our entire operation is hopelessly compromised. I am Grace, and for my sins I have been given the task of dealing with the work camps, both the prisoners and the refugee versions.”
“True, Grace. Though as a nod to security we will use first names, and perhaps we can cut out titles? Otherwise the meetings will take twice as long.” Everyone smiled or nodded.
“In that case I am Vanna, dealing with civilian contractors such as the mart guards, and I run the special facilities dealing with the aged, the seriously ill and other similar groups.” The slim Asian woman looked over at the three men in uniform. “Will we be using military ranks?”
A spare balding man in an Army uniform chuckled. “Not really Vanna. The Armed Forces understand that we are the people liaising with the government during the State of Emergency, but we haven’t the rank for commanding them. We all wear the uniform of the branch we deal with, so just call me either Joshua or Army.”
“Victor, or Navy.”
The third uniformed man laughed. “Royal Air Force is a bit of a mouthful, so Faraz.”
Owen, the chairman, gestured towards a large black man. “Nate deals with information retrieval and dissemination, much easier now the last city is bottled up and the jamming is in place. He is responsible for the fake broadcasts replacing each city’s radio chatter as we took them offline.”
“Does that also mean propaganda?” The portly dark-haired man with the bushy beard waved a hand at the rest. “Henry, and I’m your farmer, both for the mechanised ones and those utilising Grace’s people.”
The black man smiled quietly. “Propaganda, censorship, TV, radio, news, music, weather reports, assessing the pictures from planes and reports from the Armed Forces, keeping in touch with our colleagues in other countries, and establishing an espionage network inside the cities. The last will take a while.” He looked towards a stout middle-aged red-headed woman. “You must be Ivy.”
The woman bowed her head briefly in acknowledgement. “Yes, responsible for preparation and distribution of supplies to both the captive and useful populations. Unfortunately my other task is mollycoddling the retail firms who financed us in return for running the marts as a total monopoly.”
“As Grace already said, my name is Gerard, and I will hopefully deal with your transport requirements.” The only person under forty smiled. “That includes bringing supplies from Europe if they are in danger of being overrun, and hopefully bringing food from further abroad eventually.”
“Keris is en route for the Falklands to organise that, so she can’t be with us. She will deal with any problems down there and liaise with the Argentinian cabal.” Owen smiled. “Our last member is genuinely still doing his job since he was the Foreign Secretary.” He gestured towards a portly man wearing an affable smile. “You all know Boris of course, if only from the TV?”
“I should give you my report now, just to get it over with, what?” Boris chuckled. “The initial strikes against governments and refineries went well. The response when local nutcases took up the cause, even without knowing what it was, rather took us all by surprise. Europe is more or less out of control. America will come right, because as planned most of the Army were abroad and the National Guard units have been encouraged to defend their home states. Once the general crackpots and armed militias have used up their ammunition the local cabals can start to take some control.” He smirked. “That novelist who used an airliner to try and take out a Joint Session and the U.S. President might want royalties though the slightly amended version worked better than his.
Joshua scowled. “The Middle East and India didn’t go to any plan, nobody planned on nuclear war. Worse, we lost men and a lot of heavy equipment and weaponry in Kuwait and in the Ukraine.”
Boris waved a hand. “Nobody had a chance of controlling the irregulars in either the Ukraine or Middle East, and the Pakistanis and Indians have been dying to throw nukes at each other and really get stuck in for decades. The consensus among cabals was to leave the populations of both regions to kill each other and then mop up survivors. South America went well, as did the Western Pacific rim except for China itself. The cabals there tried keeping the cities intact and evacuating them to preserve their manufacturing, and the results are mixed. The suborned Army commanders there and in Russia went rogue as instructed and have broken any central control. Some have occupied major air bases and other strategic facilities. Our compatriots will have time to re-position.”
Owen leant back, relaxed. “We agreed to let Africa descend into chaos and sort that out later as well. Did we have any real failures apart from Europe?”
“Only local ones, though China is still problematic. The cabal there only has tenuous control of the tactical nukes.” Boris shrugged. “Tactical means limited yield so there’ll be no global radiation effects, and one of the main objects of the exercise is to cut the world population by at least two-thirds. A few millions incinerated or poisoned by radiation instead of starved won’t affect the overall picture.”
“Cutting the population is really important here in the UK. There are, or were, seventy million hungry mouths, and after Blue Tongue Plus hit the sheep and the Ug109 wheat rust fungus devastated our harvests, we are importing just over sixty percent of our food.” Henry smiled, “Once the surplus population is dealt with we’ll be self-sufficient.”
“That is the whole idea so we must concentrate on Europe, and in our case on the UK, to achieve a viable balance. For the immediate future our task is to maintain the status quo since all the surplus populations are now contained or in Vanna’s facilities. We will concentrate on settling in the rest, those we need to run the country, and maintaining the enclosures.” Owen closed the file in front of him and turned off the screen. “Each of us must ensure we have full control of our aspect of the operation, and tighten that control where necessary. We will reconvene when the cities have settled into enclaves, and we have a better idea of just how many survived.”
* * *
In Orchard Close, one of those enclaves, Harold ‘Soldier Boy’ Miller looked over the fifteen people carrying an assortment of packs and shopping bags, all muffled up to one extent or another against the frosty, predawn December chill. “I’m sorry to sound paranoid, but has everybody got rid of anything remotely like a weapon?” He smiled. “Before we set off and you have to run back here with it?”
“Yes Harold and I turned off the stove.” The tall woman carrying a big empty backpack grinned. “I haven’t got a machine gun in my bra. Now can we go shopping, please?”
“Too true Liz. I haven’t had retail therapy for over six months.” A shadow passed across the face of Emmy, the big Jamaican woman, making her look momentarily much older than her twenty years. “That was with Davy.” She hunched deeper into her big jacket, remembering her dead partner. She wasn’t the only one who looked momentarily subdued at the reminder.
Too many residents of Orchard Close, their fortified enclave on the edges of the ruined city, had lost someone dear to them. They had been killed in the desperate flight from the rioting and looting in the city centre or defending the walls as the mobs roamed the ruins, lashing out at any survivors. Several glanced up at the raised road, the line of the ring road that ran past close by. The old bypass, now a ring of steel manned by the Army and penning everyone in here in with the chaos and destruction.
“But not just guns and machetes, Liz. Knives, baseball bats, or over-large nail scissors as well. We’ve all got used to carrying them, and the Army won’t be amused.” Harold waved the list of things they couldn’t take and couldn’t do on the road to the shops. A list provided by the Army, who would enforce it.
“Yes mummy. Can we go now?” Holly, another member of the girl club, as the unattached women called themselves, waved her backpac
k. “Or I’ll make you help me pick out my new undies.”
A smallish man at the back grinned. “We’ll have to anyway, since he’s insisting on us all staying in a group.”
The large woman next to him raised a hand. “If I catch you helping anyone else with undies, Conn, you’ll get a Berrying.”
He grinned at her. “Hard luck Lillian, Berry isn’t coming.”
Lillian cuffed him gently at the back of the head, what was now known as Berrying after the girl who started it. “No, but I am and I’ve been practicing.”
“Clear off you lot, so I can get back to bed. Seven o’clock is too early for me.” The tallest person present, a bald man muscled like a bodybuilder, didn’t have a pack but did carry a machete since he wouldn’t be coming shopping. He tried to bury his smile in a scowl.
“Your bed will be cold now Casper so you can stay up and watch out for anyone trying to steal the silver.” Harold turned to leave, and the car blocking the hole in the barricade across the road reversed out.
“Your bed is always cold. We’ll see if we can spot a boyfriend for you, Casper.” Emmy blew him a kiss.
“Not a blacksmith, or Liz will try and steal him. A lumberjack would be nice?” Casper watched them leave, laughing as a chorus of the Monty Python lumberjack song rose from the file of shoppers.
“I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK.”
He turned and made his way into the nearby house, but Casper wouldn’t be going back to bed. He had been left in charge of security for the remaining forty-three residents, including Harold’s five-year-old niece and two-year-old nephew. Before dawn Casper would check on each sentry along the un-mortared brick wall that connected the outer houses of the enclave.
* * *
The laughter and singing died away as the group approached the bottom of the access road up to the bypass. Until now, anyone stepping onto that access had been shot. Harold stopped at the warning sign, the one marking the beginning of the three hundred yard exclusion zone. A spotlight lit them up and Harold put up a hand to cut down the glare. “Hello up there. Army? Shopping party to go to the Mart. Can we come up?”
A bullhorn answered after a short delay. “Take out your identification pass and keep it in your left hand. Single file and everyone has both their hands in clear view. You will walk between two soldiers with detection equipment. Anyone carrying a weapon will be arrested and sent to a camp. Do you understand?”
“Yes, we understand.” Everyone understood because the TV and the leaflets had hammered it home. The clerks in the armoured bus that issued the passes and the coupons that had replaced money also recited the rules.
“Come ahead. Walk.” The big light moved to one side and two smaller lights came on, illuminating a gap in the sandbags and the waiting soldiers.
Harold walked at the front, relieved to see the usual sergeant, one who seemed at least a little bit sympathetic though all the soldiers were very tense. One soldier each side of the narrow gap waved a wand down him and stepped back. “ID, Soldier Boy.” The sergeant held out his hand.
“Harold Miller.”
“That’s not what your little army call you, not when there’s trouble.” The sergeant glanced at the pass. “This says ‘soldier boy’ as well.”
“Ex-soldier, sarge. I left to look after my sister.” Harold let the ghost of a smile show. “Now I’ve got to do her shopping.”
The sergeant didn’t smile, but there was a trace of humour in his voice. “No good deed goes unpunished.” The humour went again as he continued. “Stay on this carriageway. If you cross the central divide, you will be shot. That’s reserved for official vehicles now.” Sarge lifted his hand and pointed. “Your turnoff is five miles that way.”
Harold thought he’d ask, though the rules said no vehicles. “Any chance of using a pushbike another time, sarge?”
“Not even a wheelbarrow. It’ll get the fat off all that lot.” He looked past Harold. “Next.”
Harold walked forward without replying. A lack of food in the period between the breakdown of law and order and now, when shops were available again, had left most people lean rather than fat. Just over fifteen minutes later Emmy came through, the last of them. “Ready to go, Harold.”
“Five miles, everyone, so nice and steady. The Mart opens at 8:30 so we’ll be there in time.” Harold started walking. Behind him the chattering fell away as the group trudged through the gloom, unable to see much more than a few clumps of lights in the city. According to the TV the view the other side of the carriageway would consist of empty houses and deserted fields. The lack of any lights suggested that this time the TV might be telling the truth.
Along the central barrier between the traffic lanes stood a final reminder that there was no escape. The squaddies stood every couple of hundred yards, the other side of the central barrier, dim figures wearing night goggles and watching suspiciously with their rifles ready for use. Too many soldiers had been killed by the civilians and vice versa over the last months of chaos for there to be much trust left.
An hour later dawn struggled through the overcast. “I’ve been looking forward to some daylight, and now I wish I’d kept my eyes shut.” Matthew pointed out into the open countryside. “I don’t know which depresses me more, the bloody great strip of bulldozed buildings or all those fields that should have been ploughed or planted or have cows and sheep wandering about in them. I’d hoped the lack of lights was just because everyone was asleep.”
“Maybe they are?” Emmy looked the same way. “I suppose the fields can’t be ploughed because of the fuel shortage.”
“If anyone was living there, there’d be evidence of farming.” Matthew shook his head. “It doesn’t take fuel to stick a few cows in a field.”
“Maybe those roaming bands the TV rants on about have turned all the cows into steak?” Liz looked upwards. “Oh cripes, who put that word in my mouth? Fresh, barely singed steak dripping blood as my teeth sink into it. I swear, if there’s steak I don’t care if it costs me every coupon. I’ll eat grass until we shop again.”
“The TV pictures showed a depressing lack of fresh meat or fish in the marts.” Harold frowned. “We’re surrounded by sea, or the country is. There’s got to be fish.”
“My dad used to drag us out to sea in a little dingy sail whatsit with three of his mates. Then we had to watch them drown maggots for hours.” Susan frowned. “I always refused to help but they always caught lots of fish, big fat things. Though he kept trying to show me how to clean them. Yeuk.” She sighed. “I never complained about the home-made fish and chips afterwards.”
“If you can find fish, I’ll learn to do the yukky part if it means fish and chips.” Seth grinned and indicated his sling. “One handed. If we hear of a chip shop Harold can go and make them an offer they can’t refuse.”
“Good luck with that.” Lilian pointed the other way. “There aren’t many lights out there, in the city.” She sighed. “I’d hoped for more once daylight arrived.”
The group all turned to look out over the city to the west, at the dimly seen roofs and streets stretching away, silent and dark. Here and there strings of street lights or clumps of lighted windows broke the gloom. Far in the distance something large glowed as it burned unchecked.
“Harold didn’t want our place lit up in case we attracted any strays from the rioters so I disconnected the street lighting. Maybe others feel the same way.” Finn looked towards the city centre. “I’m surprised we can’t see the lights on a tower block. They should have lights in the stairwells, and on the top for aircraft.” The group walked in silence for a while, though several exchanged glances.
Eventually Liz sighed. “I’ll say it. Maybe because the whole city really is like this?” A sweep of her arm encompassed the scene as the growing light gave a clearer view over the nearest housing estate. A three hundred yard wide bulldozed strip separated the housing from the raised roadway, the Army exclusion zone. Beyond that the houses were dark and s
ilent, and from the frost on the roofs deserted. Many had broken windows, a good number missing or broken roof tiles, and in two large areas the houses were burned out shells.
“There are more clusters of lights coming on, here and there.” Susan tried to sound cheerful, but there weren’t many. The headlights of a convoy of vehicles a couple of miles away emphasised the total lack of traffic in most places. The conversation died away as the group walked, everyone busy with their own thoughts or murmuring quietly to a companion. Even the appearance of a few small groups of people among the houses inside the ring road didn’t bring much comment because there were very few.
* * *
Three quarters of an hour after dawn the group had their first real view of a new shopping mart. Their only shopping mart now. “Somehow that looks more brutal than the pictures on the TV.” Harold agreed with Liz. The huge windowless warehouse style building, surrounded by cleared land, had been enclosed by a high fence. The access road off the bypass ran past the front where razor wire topped an eight foot mesh fence. The watch towers at the corners and either side of the entrance gates each contained two men, men carrying shotguns.
“I hope they’ve remembered non-lethal?” Alfie might only be fifteen but a well-muscled fifteen and working hard to build more. He was determined to be strong enough to use the compound bow the residents had found in a burned out shop. Bows and crossbows, machetes, clubs and knives of any size were legal self-defence weapons for civilians, anywhere but on the bypass. Any sort of firearm or air weapon meant being shot at by the Army.