The Conscript the Girl and the Virus Read online

  Part of me wanted to feel upset, but I knew he was right.

  “A bit like yesterday’s platoon, then,” the colonel said, with a small neat laugh. “Be that as it may, it’s off to war they go. Hi-ho, hi-ho.”

  “But damn it, colonel. They’re cow fodder,” the captain said, banging his fist on the desk. “You know that as well as I do.”

  “Can’t you give us more time to train them, colonel?” Sergeant Driscall said. “If we had even a week, we could do something with them. Not much, but something. Enough so they could survive a week in the trenches. They’re not soldiers, colonel. They’re body bags. Walking, talking, body bags.”

  I gulped. Trenches? Combat? Body bags? This was not the “behind-the-lines logistical support and miscellaneous light duties” my conscript papers promised.

  Perhaps the colonel had gulped too. There was a long silence, punctuated by the tapping of the colonel’s pen on the desk.

  “How can we give them a week’s training? We don’t have bullets to train them with, or food to feed them with. Trying to raise Ag Squad these days is like trying to raise the dead. Besides, we need them on the front line, and we need them there tonight. The situation is, not to put too fine a point on it, desperate.”

  Now it was the captain’s and the sergeant’s turn to pause. Eventually McGuire worked up the courage to ask how desperate.

  “The outer perimeter has been breached,” the colonel said. “Last night, near Howth, the herds overran the trenches. They’ve been working their way down the Pale. Village after village is disappearing, dropping off the map. Going dark with barely enough time for a bloody cry for help. Satellite towns circle death. I heard them fall, one by one, hour after hour. And when the sun rose, there was only silence.”

  I moved my head up slowly to catch the look on the colonel’s face. It was ashen white.

  “And the wall, it’s holding, right?” the sergeant asked.

  “For the moment. Do you think I would be sitting here if it weren’t?”

  “Where the hell are the regular army? Why didn’t they save the Pale? And why aren’t they manning the wall, in anyway? And where are the European Defence Forces?” the captain asked.

  “In Europe, I suppose. As for our own army, if you see them, please tell them to return my calls. Half the time I can’t even raise HQ, and when I do get through, all I get are instructions to hold the line and to deploy more conscripts,” the colonel said.

  “But where are the real soldiers?” the sergeant asked. “If the heifferfolk break into the city, they’ll be up shit creek too, won’t they?”

  “Will they?” said the colonel.

  He paused and a horrible silence filled the room. When he spoke again there was real fear in his voice.

  “There’s a lot of static on the comm channel. Between you, me and the wall, I think they’ve pulled out of Dublin entirely. Gone and holed up on a small island somewhere, most like. Anglesey, maybe, or the Isle of Man. Somewhere small and easy to defend. The wild geese have flown.”

  “You mean we’re on our own, colonel?”

  “Not entirely, captain. We’ve still got the conscripts.”

  “Shit!” said Sergeant Driscall.

  VII

  I didn’t stay to hear the end of the meeting. Instead I ran back to Carol, who was wielding the pickaxe like she had been born with a silver one in her mouth. A group of young men were leaning on their shovels and staring at her. Others caressed their guns and were lost in lustful fantasies. I didn’t like that at all. I didn’t want to share Carol, not even with their imaginations. I’m very jealous about my lustful fantasies.

  I waved furiously and managed to catch her attention. I shepherded her away from the drooling audience, hoping to cool their heated desires. She hadn’t even noticed them staring at her, which irritated me. It had been the same when she was practising with the gun. The whole world disappeared for her. All that was left was the weapon and the target. I told her that she had to be more aware of her environment, that there was 360 degrees of danger out there, that her monomania would get us killed one day. I was jealous as hell, and it must have made me sound angry.

  “Don’t get into a strop, Fluffy. It doesn’t suit you. Besides, I don’t have to keep looking around me. I’ve got you for that,” she said.

  She smiled and straightened my eyebrows with her fingertips. My rage fell away, smoothed out of existence as easily as a crease.

  When I explained what the colonel had told the captain and the sergeant, she was even more determined to get into a remote Ag Squad unit somewhere.

  “We’re sailing up Shit Creek, Fluffy,” she said.

  “And without a paddle, or a canoe for that matter. We can’t be around when the wall falls, Carol. Do you remember London?”

  It was a silly question. Everyone remembered London. The amateur footage was one of the last things to go viral before they pulled the plug on the internet. Nowadays they controlled information so tightly that no-one inside the city knew that the trenches had been overrun the night before, that the Pale ran red with blood. They would find out soon enough, through word of mouth, and then the panic would set in, but what good would that do? I’d rather face a herd of zombovs than a panicked mob. When London fell, it was hard to tell the two apart.

  The colonel came into the hall, flanked by Captain McGuire and Sergeant Driscall. He smiled a professional smile and beamed calm. Satan could have driven straight at this guy in a forklift and it wouldn’t have fazed him. He could be addressing every gargoyle from the worst slums of Hades and he’d still have a smile on his face. Mind you, this bunch of conscripts would have fitted in well down there on the banks of the Styx, with their crooked noses, missing teeth and stooped gait.

  The officers walked towards the stage of pallets and the sergeant called for silence. It wasn’t necessary. We all recognised a big cheese when we saw one and we all wanted to know what came next.

  “Men, women, comrades-in-arms, welcome one and all. You are now the newest members of the Dublin’s Civil Defence Association. On behalf of the city and its citizens, I applaud the sacrifice you are making. Captain McGuire and Sergeant Driscall have been singing your praises loudly. They have never seen such a fighting spirit before, they tell me. Owing to the calibre of today’s recruits, and in view of certain tactical necessities, we are giving you the opportunity to prove your metal in active duty.”

  “Active what-the-fuck?” shouted a snotty guttersnipe with a scar and the attitude to match. “I didn’t sign up for no active duty bollocks. We’re conscripts. All we have to do is logical support [sic] and shift stuff. I’m no soldier boy.”

  There was a murmur of dissent. A shaking of heads, a shifting of feet. Perhaps the jackals sensed that something was awry. The underclass have a keen sixth sense, a collective nose for bullshit.

  The colonel kept his face calm but the captain looked angry and the sergeant looked worried. All three of them fingered their weapons. I looked behind me and plotted a path to the nearest fire escape, in case the bullets started firing. But escape to what? It would buy us time, but not much. The city was about to fall, but until it did, we needed militia papers to get out of it.

  “Coward!” Carol shouted, loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “You calling me yellow, carrot top?” the thug said to Carol, sticking out his chest and flexing his muscles and his Motorhead tattoos.

  “If you’re afraid to fight, then what else can you be except a coward?” Carol said.

  “I’m not afraid of nothing nor no-one. I’ll put this shovel through your face to prove it, if you don’t watch your mouth, bitch.”

  He held his sharpened blade towards Carol and jutted it at her, like an accusatory finger. The sergeant blew his whistle and the captain hollered, but no-one paid any attention. The captain moved towards us, pushing everyone out of the way.

  Carol ran toward the thug, like an athlete preparing for a long jump leap, and before he knew what was
happening, she had taken the shovel from him, tripped him up and was holding it to his neck, just above his Adam’s apple.

  “Steady on there, girl. I was only messing,” the man said, but he was shaking.

  “Enough!” said Captain McGuire, who now stood beside Carol. “Let him go. That’s an order!”

  “Yes, sir!” Carol said, and turned to salute him.

  Everyone looked at each other with puzzled faces. Mindless violence was one thing, but saluting an officer was just plain weird. Some of the conscripts edged away from Carol, perhaps thinking that she was one of those post-traumatic stress disorder psychos.

  “This is just the kind of fighting spirit we need!” the colonel said, from the stage. “But let’s use it against the enemy. A divided house falls against itself.”

  “Yes, sir!” Carol said again, even louder this time.

  The colonel smiled. A lewd smile, or so it seemed to me. I saw him eating her up with his eyes, scheming up a way to take her into his private entourage. It was time I did something I had never done before in my life – volunteer.

  “Permission to speak, sir” I said to the colonel, and held my back so straight it hurt.

  “Granted, young man,” the colonel said.

  “Conscript Carol and I would like to volunteer for the Agricultural Squad. If there are dangers to be faced, then we want to face them head on. The city’s starving and Ag Squad needs us! Our agricultural experience could be invaluable, out there behind enemy