Apocalypse Cow (35 page)

They lay there, curled up against one another on the cold roof, until the sun rose above the trees and voices called out for them from below.

They set off again after a breakfast of more sausages and spaghetti hoops – this time warm, thanks to the renewed power supply – piping hot tea and tinned fruit, topped off with a hot soapy scrub in the showers James had discovered at the far end of the corridor, in a small gym with ‘Management Only’ on the door.

As they piled into the helicopter, Lesley was imbued with an immense sense of well-being: she was fed, sexually sated, clean and on the last leg of a journey that would culminate in the pinnacle of her journalistic career. The sight of Brown with his hands firmly trussed and feet joined by loose bonds that forced him to shuffle along like a chain-gang prisoner bolstered her good humour.

Once the helicopter had taken off and she saw the full extent of the devastation that had hit the country, the warm glow faded fast.

Nobody said a word as the ravaged countryside slid beneath them. Smoke rose from pyres as far as they could see, carrying the stench of crisped flesh in through the vents. They passed many more that had quit belching smoke and sat low and blackened, like cancerous sores on the land. Even with so many bodies set to burn, it was apparent the clean-up still had a long way to go. Animals of all shapes and sizes roamed the countryside, sometimes moving with purpose towards a village or a lone home, other times fleeing from lines of
soldiers
armed with machine guns, grenades and flamethrowers.

The motorway wound out beneath them. Many of the on-ramps were choked with cars that had butted up against military roadblocks, while others had been cleared by bulldozers. One of the roadblocks had caved under the pressure, although the panicked drivers had managed to clog the ramp just as effectively by surging forward all at once. A few miles further on, four cars that had got through stood spattered with bullet holes, one of them displaying its burnt-out underbelly to the sky. As with the tramp who’d been gunned down, there was no way of telling whether the attack on the cars had been the action of soldiers losing their discipline or had been ordered to minimize the chances of the virus mutating.

They had been in the air for about thirty minutes and were well into northern England when Bernard broke the silence. ‘I need to refuel soon.’

‘Do you need special fuel?’ James asked.

‘Yes, jet fuel, but there’s no way we are going to be landing at an army base.’

‘It can’t run on anything else?’

Bernard said nothing, instead looking out of the side window. A few hundred metres ahead of them, a small clump of cows were running across a hillock to an unknown destination. He blew out his cheeks and turned to James.

‘It can run on diesel, but it will bugger up the engine after about ten hours. We’re only supposed to use it in an emergency.’

‘Unless you’re happy to put down randomly and take your chances, I would say this classes as an emergency, wouldn’t you?’

Bernard had another glance at the cows, which had changed direction abruptly and were now almost directly beneath the aircraft. The blood and sores on their flanks were clearly visible.

‘I suppose it does,’ he replied.

The first garage they passed, which was just two old-fashioned pumps by the side of a country road, looked a possibility until the pilot shook his head, pointing to the field next to it. Four horses ran in demented circles around mushy roadkill dressed in a green puffy jacket, fawn trousers and leather boots. Next up was a motorway service station, where there didn’t seem to be anything in the vicinity likely to maul, crush or shoot them. The pilot landed as close as he could, but what with the length of the rotor blades and the awning above the forecourt it was too far for the hose to stretch to the fuel cap.

‘We’ll need to fill up jerry cans and do it by hand,’ Bernard said. ‘It’s going to take a while.’

On either side of the motorway there were only flat fields, meaning they would have plenty of time to spot the approach of anything nefarious and fly off. All the same, Lesley felt horrendously exposed as they formed a human chain to fill up the tank. Only Brown didn’t take part, remaining tied up in the locked cabin. Dozens of containers later, Lesley’s arms were aching, but the fuel tank was full. Terry opened the cabin door for her to climb back in and cupped her buttocks.

‘I’m just giving you a hand up,’ he said innocently when she shot him a look.

As she hauled herself up, Brown lifted his legs to block the way. ‘I need to go to the toilet,’ he announced. ‘Quite urgently.’

‘Tough,’ replied James, who was about to climb into the front passenger seat. ‘You should have gone before we left. You’ll just have to hold it in.’

‘I could do that,’ Brown said. ‘Or I could just give in to the urge while we’re flying, in which case I would advise you to pick up some of those Magic Tree air fresheners from the shop.’

James looked across at Lesley. ‘Are you sure we can’t just shoot him?’

‘No,’ Lesley responded, ‘as enjoyable as it would be. We’d be as bad as him.’

‘How noble of you,’ Brown said, leaning forward and speaking softly to Lesley as if he were taking her into his confidence. ‘But don’t worry: you wouldn’t be as bad as me. I would torture you first.’

James rounded the helicopter, hoisted Brown onto his shoulder as if he were a sack of spuds and dumped him on the tarmac. ‘Tinkle away.’

‘Who wants to hold it for me?’ Brown asked, lifting up his bound hands.

James looked at Terry, Geldof and the pilot in turn, all of whom shook their heads vigorously. He then raised his eyebrow at Lesley.

‘Definitely not,’ she said.

‘Do me a favour, and untie him. Just the hands,’ James told Terry.

James kept the gun pointed steadily at Brown’s head, maintaining a respectful distance, as Terry struggled to undo the bonds.

When Brown’s hands were free, he rubbed his wrists.

‘I’m afraid I need to do a number two,’ he said, with an
insincere
apologetic smile. ‘All those beans, you know. I’d rather not just squat here like an animal.’

‘You are getting to be a real pain in the arse,’ James replied.

He waved his gun in the direction of the toilets, which lay on the far side of the pumps. Brown set off slowly, his speed still restricted by the leg bonds.

‘I may as well go for a wee too,’ Lesley said, although her real motivation was to get away from the fuel they had slopped onto the ground so she could have a ciggie. She had caught up with James, who was hanging back from Brown with the gun at the ready, when a hissing, spitting ginger kitten emerged from behind the green wheelie bins outside the restaurant. Its body was spotted with the festering sores of the infected. Judging by the redness of its chops and the way it was licking its nose, it had been feeding on something.

It streaked across the forecourt, heading straight for Brown, who turned back towards them and broke into a waddling run. James aimed the gun. Before he could fire, the kitten launched itself onto Brown’s lower back and dug its claws into his suit, using the material as purchase to climb. Brown grunted as it reached the top of his spine and began biting at the back of his neck. The cat’s jaws were too small to get a good purchase, so Brown was able to pull it off easily, although there was a ripping sound as the claws came free of the fabric.

He held the squirming cat out at arm’s length by the scruff of the neck. ‘Do you have any idea how much this suit cost, you filthy little animal? Mud and blood I can get out, but you’ve torn it.’

In response, the cat let out a huge sneeze, spraying snot all over Brown’s face.

Lesley let out a snort of laughter, only to put her hand over her mouth when Brown glared at her. ‘Think that’s funny, do you?’

The kitten hissed as Brown hurled it at Lesley. Before it had travelled more than a few feet its head disintegrated. The headless body spun in mid-air, spraying blood in a Catherine-wheel, before thumping lifeless to the ground. Lesley’s right ear rang with the report from the gun, which James was now casually holding by his side as if nothing had happened.

From over near the helicopter, there came an excited whoop, and Lesley glanced back to see Geldof jumping up and down, his thumb and forefinger raised in imitation of a gun.

‘Great shot, Dad,’ he said.

‘Clean yourself up, do your dump, and then let’s get the hell out of here before anything worse happens,’ James told Brown, whose face was now spattered with gore as well as snot.

Lesley smoked while James propped the toilet door open with his foot, pointing the gun in at Brown.

Geldof came scampering over and stood near his dad, staring at the gun with awe on his face.

‘Can you teach me to shoot like that?’ he asked.

James didn’t shift his gaze from the interior of the toilet. ‘Unfortunately, I think I might have to.’

The boy, seemingly oblivious to the underlying sadness in his father’s voice, grinned and skipped back off to the helicopter.

Ten minutes later, bowels evacuated and the worst of the gunk cleaned from his face, Brown was back in the helicopter, his hands tied in front of him again. Lesley looked closely at
the
back of his neck, where the cat had tried to bite him. There were a few small scratches and congealed beads of blood were strung here and there, where the teeth had broken skin.

‘So, where exactly are we going?’ the pilot asked as they rose into the air.

‘Drop us at the entrance to the Channel Tunnel,’ Terry said.

Middle England slipped away beneath them, the situation on the ground little different from further north. As they approached London, they saw the first of dozens of massive camps, each of them capable of swallowing up Strathclyde Park ten times over. They were much better protected than their northern counterparts, sporting ditches, electric fences and the concrete barriers used to prevent terrorists from driving car bombs into airports.

‘How come they’ve got all that stuff and our camps don’t?’ Terry asked.

‘London’s the most important city in Britain, mate,’ Bernard said.

Brown snorted. When Lesley glanced at him, he seemed to be dozing. By the look of his contorted face and the repeated grunting noises he continued to make, it was an uncomfortable sleep.

They left the camps behind and skirted around London to the east, scudding low over the patchwork of fields. A railway line cut through the countryside, and the pilot latched on to it. Before too long he pointed to a jumble of rail lines, overhead wires and carriages that converged into two round tunnels cut into a bank of grass. They drew closer, moving lazily along the perimeter of the wire fence that flanked the tracks and the tunnel entrances. Trains sat at almost all
the
platforms. There were no passengers waiting to board and no conductors to usher them on.

‘Looks like there’s no security,’ Bernard said. ‘They probably think nobody’s daft enough to try and walk through the tunnel.’

Brown lifted his head and opened his eyes.

‘Don’t be so stupid,’ he snarled, his cheek muscles twitching. ‘There’s no fucking security here because those French wankers have that tunnel sewn up as tight as a nun’s cunt on the other side. If you survive whatever rabid, slavering animals are lurking in there, the rabid, slavering French will blow your stupid sodding heads clean off. Just untie me and let me kill you all now. I’ll be doing you a favour.’

Lesley was taken aback, not so much by Brown’s suddenly aggressive demeanour – which was a big change from his previous composed yet threatening manner – but by the swearing. She had never heard him use a single expletive, not even when he was menacing her in the facility. Now he was cursing his head off. She wondered if he had the virus, then remembered how badly James had been bitten by the squirrels. He was fine. Plus it had only been a matter of weeks since the virus had been unleashed. There was no way it could mutate in such a short period. No, most likely he had just lost his composure. Brown was a man used to being in charge, yet he had been beaten, held captive and forced to suffer the indignity of having James watch him void his bowels, all in under twenty-four hours. That had to sting a little.

The helicopter swooped in across the security fences and headed for the platforms, which were criss-crossed by overhead cables and gantries. The pilot spotted a likely clearing at the end of the furthest platform. He was guiding the ’copter in
past
the cables, twitching the joystick and levering the pedals with a look of extreme concentration on his face, when Brown sat bolt upright.

He turned to Terry and grinned, his teeth still streaked pale red with his own blood.

‘I’m going to bite your throat out,’ he said conversationally.

He lunged for Terry’s neck, missing and getting a mouthful of North Face shoulder pad. Nonetheless, his jaw muscles bunched as he bit down, hard.

‘Get off, you bloody maniac!’ Terry shouted.

He put his palm on Brown’s chin and pushed his head back, forcing him to relinquish his tooth-hold. The security man began to thrash, the bonds restricting his movements so he looked like a beached fish trying to flap its way back into the ocean. All he succeeded in doing was sliding his bum further down the chair so his legs stuck up in the air. The image was so comical Lesley began to laugh. But her laugh turned into a scream as Brown’s jerking feet smacked Bernard on the back of the head, sending him flying forward. The helicopter veered to the right just as Brown’s elbow came down on the handle. The door flapped open and Brown slipped out.