Hatred
Page 1
Hatred
Collpase, Volume 1
M J Dees
Published by M J Dees, 2021.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
HATRED
First edition. June 20, 2021.
Copyright © 2021 M J Dees.
ISBN: 978-1393922605
Written by M J Dees.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Hatred (Collpase, #1)
Part One – Edinburgh
Chapter One – 23 years and 11 months before the collapse
Chapter Two - 23 years and 10 months before the collapse
Chapter Three – 23 years and 9 months before the collapse
Chapter Four – 23 years and 8 months before the collapse
Chapter Five – 23 years and 7 months before the collapse
Chapter Six – 23 years and 6 months before the collapse
Part Two – London
Chapter Seven - 23 years and 5 months before the collapse
Chapter Eight – 23 years and 1 month before the collapse
Chapter Nine – 22 years and 10 months before the collapse
Chapter Ten – 22 years and 9 months before the collapse
Chapter Eleven – 21 years before the collapse
Part Three - Manchester
Chapter Twelve – 19 years 8 months before the collapse
Chapter Thirteen – 19 years and 7 months before the collapse
Chapter Fourteen - 19 years 6 months before the collapse
Chapter Fifteen – 19 years and 4 months before the collapse
Chapter Sixteen – 19 years 3 months before the collapse
Chapter Seventeen – 19 years 2 months before the collapse
Chapter Eighteen – 18 years 9 months before the collapse
Chapter Nineteen – 18 years and 4 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty - 17 years 11 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-One – 17 years 2 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Two – 14 years 2 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Three – 13 years 10 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Four – 12 years 10 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Five - 11 years 10 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Seven – 11 years 10 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Eight – 10 years 9 months before the collapse
Chapter Twenty-Nine – 10 years 5 months before the collapse
Chapter Thirty – 10 years 2 months before the collapse
Chapter Thirty-One – 9 years 5 months before the collapse
Part Five – On the Road
Chapter Thirty-Two – 7 years 8 months before the collapse
Get a free and exclusive bonus epilogue to Hatred, only available here.
Endnotes
Not ready to leave Jim, Annabel and Olivia? | Collapse, Book Two in the Collapse Series | Pre-order your copy now
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY M J DEES | Living with Saci
Living with the Headless Mule
The Astonishing Anniversaries of James and David: Part One
When The Well Runs Dry
Fred & Leah
Albert & Marie
DEDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COPYRIGHT
Get an exclusive bonus chapter to this book for FREE!
Sign up for the no-spam newsletter and receive the bonus chapter for free
You can discover details at the end of Hatred
Part One – Edinburgh
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but It often rhymes,” – Mark Twain.
Chapter One – 23 years and 11 months before the collapse
“Sergeant Smith?”
Jim awoke and looked none too pleased at being disturbed.
“Sergeant Smith, we’ve landed,” said the automated voice.
He looked out the window. Through the darkness, he could see that it was still raining.
Jim disembarked. He shared an automated jeep with two military police officers all the way to the train station at Grateley, where he was just in time to get the 22:28, the last one of the day.
Civilians and soldiers packed the train, and everyone was talking about the mobilisation.
“It wasn’t as peaceful as they’d have you believe,” said one soldier. “There’s only so much robots and drones can do, I always knew they’d end up resorting to conscription.”
“I still think the real trouble lies ahead,” said another. “There’s no way the rioters in London will give up without a fight. They can make protests as illegal as they want, but it hasn’t stopped them yet, has it?”
“They are just copying the protesters in Wall Street,” said his friend.
“No. It’s all about race,” said another.
“It’s not about race,” said a third. “It’s everyone against the police.”
Jim found a table seat opposite two soldiers.
“Where are you off to?” one asked.
“Edinburgh,” said Jim. “But I’m planning to stay in London tonight to visit my sister.”
“There’ll be trouble in London tomorrow,” said the other soldier.
“You’d be better off travelling straight through,” said the first.
“Who knows if you’ll get a train tomorrow,” said the second.
Jim took their advice and sent a message to his sister, apologising and explaining the reason behind his change in plans.
When they alighted from the train at London Waterloo at five minutes to midnight, the soldiers pointed out the bullet holes in the station’s brickwork. Jim said goodbye to them and headed straight for the underground.
A man next to him on the tube shared his recent experiences of the turmoil that had troubled the capital. The unrest at home was one reason the war overseas had ended before the Government had achieved its objectives. It reminded Jim of the unrest in the US which had accompanied the end of the war in Vietnam that he had learned about in all those streaming documentaries that had obsessed him when he was little, and that his father had encouraged him to watch.
“I was at the station when it happened,” the man next to him said. “We heard this noise, like a machine gun, so we ducked under the arches and shots started coming from the other side too and people were piling in under the arch. It was a real scramble. They got three of them and took them and threw them in the river, someone said.”
Jim was glad when the train arrived at Kings Cross and he could take his leave of the old fellow.
He made his train with minutes to spare, and the only spare seat was next to another sergeant in uniform.
“Are you going to Edinburgh?” the sergeant asked him.
Jim nodded.
“What are you going to do when you get there?”
“I shall have to go home and wake my wife,” said Jim.
“No, I mean after that, what are you going to do?”
“Well, I expect I shall have to report to my company HQ.”
“I doubt they’ll expect to hear from you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Once a soldier is out of the grasp of their company or battery, they can go anywhere. As long as they don’t make demands for pay or plunder, they can consider themselves discharged because who wants to search for an individual in this chaos?”
Jim nodded.
“Which regiment are you with anyway?” the sergeant asked.
“51st MI Company.”
“Oh, intelligence, I see.”
The man was silent for the rest of the journey, which suited Jim. He watched the rain track across the window.
>
Jim wanted a discharge, but he wanted to do it properly and receive the proper papers. He didn’t want any complications later.
He arrived at Edinburgh Waverley at 8 am. Crowds of men in khaki gathered around the command post where rows of machines were refusing requests, being ranted at and refusing requests.
“What’s happening?” Jim asked one man who had broken from the crowd for some air.
“They just keep booking us return tickets to our units and denying us home leave,” the man said.
Jim decided it was a dead loss and turned to leave, but on the way out, he encountered a man in civilian clothes who must have also been part of the independence organisation because he was wearing a blue armband.
“There’s nothing doing over there,” said Jim to the man. “They’re just following procedures. Can you help me? I want to get my military papers in order for my discharge.”
“I can help you,” the man said. “Follow me to my office.”
He led Jim up the stairs and into a sparsely decorated office with a single desk on which sat a laptop. He scanned Jim’s NFC[1] tag, checked his ID app, charged his food app, and told him he was free to go.
Jim left. He could now go home and see his wife, Annabel.
He had not told her he was on his way and could enter the building with his fingerprint so she would not see him until he knocked on the door.
“Did you look after the philodendron plant?” he asked when she opened it.
“What do you think?” she said, throwing her arms around him.
“Thank you, darling.”
For a few weeks they lived the life they had enjoyed before conscription, only it felt better because he was now out of the Army and free to pursue the lectureship the university had offered before the troubles began.
“Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched,” Annabel warned. “Remember what happened before.”
Jim remembered only too well what had happened before. The university had offered a professorship, but the Army had refused to release him from military duty.
The troubles had annoyed Jim. They had impeded what he wanted to do with his life.
“You won’t believe what happened at the barber’s this morning,” said Jim.
Annabel’s silence suggested that not only did she not know, but she wasn’t about to guess.
“He started telling me how many guns he had bought from soldiers, reckons he can sell them for twice the price.”
Annabel shook her head in disappointment at the direction the country was heading.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Jim remembered. “Sam Patel invited me to an event tonight at the university. Do you want to come?”
“No. You go, you know how I hate those things.”
“I’ll wear my uniform. Spare my civvies.”
“Come on Jim, things aren’t that bad.”
“No? When was the last time you saw a banana? There’re blackouts every night.”
“Probably just as well, we can barely afford the electricity.”
“We could join a payment strike.”
“Don’t think I’m not tempted. But then, look what happened in Leeds and Bristol.”
“Yes, at least we’re not the ones having to house bomb victims. Those poor souls.”
“They built a camp for the homeless while you were away. I’ve heard rumours they’re rife with disease.”
“Not paying the water bill for two weeks is hardly a capital offence.”
“Yes, but you need to wait until the Shorters get in touch, otherwise it doesn’t work.”
“Why not?”
“They have to identify who owns the debt first.”
“What about the late payment fees?”
“They pay it through crowdfunding.”
“Does it work?”
“Well, the utilities are going bust and so are the banks and this time it looks like the Government won’t bail them out.”
“Really?”
“Yes, the Government is talking about re-nationalising the utilities.”
“But what about the banks?”
“We are all going to get a Government bank account, apparently. And it’s not just the banks, the companies with the worst zero hour contracts, environmental performance are being targeted too.”
“Is it working?”
“Well, the pension funds are divesting from equity funds containing these companies.”
*
Jim wore his uniform and as he entered the university, a student came running up to him asking if he was from the Independence Council.
“No, why?”
“They banned the event an hour ago,” explained the student. “They thought it was a counter independence gathering. The Army was preventing people from entering the building.”
Jim looked around; he couldn’t see evidence of any military.
“Twenty minutes ago they lifted the order after we phoned and told them they had made a mistake,” the student explained.
This made sense to Jim. Sam Patel had explained to him that the university chancellor had to step down after a dispute with the Independence Council about flying the independence flag on the university building. This was the Council’s way of making a point.
Jim took his place in the lecture theatre, enjoying the comfy seat while he waited for proceedings to begin.
Sam Patel gave a talk on the poetry of Danny O’Toole which seemed apt given the independence mood surrounding everything. There were only a handful of students and teachers there.
“Welcome back,” said Patel, as he greeted Jim after the lecture. “Don’t worry about numbers. Most watch online these days.”
“Good to see you,” said Jim. “How are things?”
“Tensions are very high, Jim. It feels like the entire country could erupt in civil war at any moment.”
“It already has, hasn’t it? It couldn’t get much worse, could it?”
“Depends who you speak to. These Shorters are causing chaos on the stock exchange. They’re blackmailing the pension funds. How’s Annabel?”
“Practicing the piano, she has exams coming.”
“And how are you?”
“I’m eager to get back to teaching.”
“Good, that’s what I like to hear. Jim, do you want to know what’s going on?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a meeting tonight in a pub near the river. Let’s go, we can catch the end.”
When they entered the pub, the first thing Jim saw was an enormous portrait of the King on one wall. The next thing he saw was that at least 200 people packed the pub.
A large middle-aged man got up on a stage which occupied a whole end of the room. When he called the room to order, everyone fell silent at once. Jim was amazed at how polite the gathering was.
“We are the small people, the poor, the bottom of the heap, the abandoned,” the man spoke with calm, deliberately formed sentences. “We don’t have an Oxbridge education like those who caused this so-called independence. Independence does not help us. It helps the rich, the politicians, the bankers, the arms manufacturers.”
He paused and looked at the enormous portrait of the King.
“They stole our data and turned us against each other, getting us to follow fake causes, made up marches, put-up protests. They say if you want to remould society, break it. Well, they broke our society and are trying to remould it how they want. We must stop them. The payment strikes are good, but they are not enough.”
Jim observed the room. The gathering was attentive and passive.
“This poor excuse for a government has betrayed us,” the man carried on. “They are just as hostile to us and have demonised us for decades. The media are owned by a few in-league with the rich and their puppets. They say we have freedom of speech, they say we have a free press but we are not free. They feed us lies, making us believe things that are not true. The rich will make up the majority in the planned Assembly. We will b
e in the minority there and have just as little influence there as we do in the media. There is no declaration of human rights that can help us, at least not for the time being. We must stop the creation of the Assembly, take the media into our own hands and only our hands. We must hold the power so we can get what they have denied us.”
The man paused and surveyed the room, satisfying himself that his message was being absorbed. The audience was nodding and applauding with conviction.
“We can only achieve this by force,” he continued. “Why shouldn’t we use force? The rich have spilt so much blood, why shouldn’t a little flow for our cause?”
Shouting now accompanied the nodding and clapping. A second man got onto the platform and delivered an almost identical speech to the first.
“Waste of time,” Jim commented to Sam Patel as they left.
“Do you not sympathise with them?”
“Not at all, he’s just bitter at being banned from social media. I hope the government can keep them in check without bloodshed. But if they cannot avoid violence, I hope they still follow through on the election of the Assembly.”
“You don’t think it’s worrying that the DMU[2] can turn off anyone’s account whenever they want?” Sam asked. “Independence has come at an unfortunate time, in the wake of the strikes and all the troubles.”
“It’s selective, don’t you think? They haven’t suspended Robert’s account.”
“He’s not a politician.”
“No, but his tweets incite abusive messages aimed towards those he doesn’t like and all this talk about ‘reclamation of British value’.” said Jim. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he starts his own party.”
“He’s a TV host, and he’d never form a government. Besides, he’s still young.”
“I hope not, but he is a very popular TV host, and he treats anyone with a different opinion like an enemy.”
“Most of the politicians do that now anyway, and did you know, there have been rumours of people going missing.”
“Really?” Jim was surprised and yet, at the same time, not surprised. He ground his favourite axe. “I still think the freedom and democracy these people are speaking of can only reach everyone if we abolish the monarchy. This country has never had a written constitution, and it should have one. I don’t see why parliament shouldn’t be accountable to an elected upper house rather than a monarch.”