Flu (6 page)

    The red stripe of dawn that had stained the sky as Jackson's journey began now blossomed into a rose- blushed skyline. The sun was almost fully in view, and Jackson wondered if it was going to be another glorious day. Weather wise, that was. Because nothing else was going to be glorious about today. Or any other day, for that matter.

    Jackson wasn't normally a man given to maudlin thoughts. Not in recent years, anyway. Retiring early, he had spent much of his days fussing over his daughter's kids, playing the doting Grandpa. The only people who called him Major anymore had been the old boys down at the Legion, sharing little more than smutty jokes from their days in service. Until this all kicked off, Jackson had been pretty happy. Killing time (and wasps) at his Donegal summer retreat from March to September. Kicking back and watching old movies in his Derry city terrace during the Winter. A suitable pub was never too far away, whether Paddy's Bar in Glenties or the Legion in the Waterside. There was always a beer tap or bottle of whisky on hand to pass the odd evening, with good company to go with it. And that was fine by Jackson. All he needed was something to distract him, something to bury the bad times, the dark old days of the primitive North, where he had played a most gruesome role…

    He had been standing in the back yard of his Derry terrace when the call came through on his cell. He had come back to pick his daughter and the kids up, hoping to take them to his Donegal retreat. He knew the call was from the military when he read 'number withheld' on the cell's incoming alert. And when the speaker at the other end of the line, a young man named Harris, had addressed him as 'Major Jackson', his fears were confirmed.

    They allowed him to return to Donegal on the premise that he called them when he got there. A secure number was provided, Jackson urged to call at a specific time to confirm his whereabouts. A helicopter would pick him up to take him to RAF Aldergrove. From there, they would travel across to London for a special briefing. Only, it didn't quite work out like that. With the flu hitting so furiously, and society quickly breaking down, Jackson found himself within a lock-down situation at Aldergrove. Weeks had passed without anyone telling him what was happening. Jackson watched as the television in his blacked-out quarters moved from constant news features on every channel to the po-faced debates, until eventually the Emergency Broadcast Channel was all that could be seen.

    When the virus finally reached them, people inside the compound falling ill, Jackson was neither surprised nor worried. In a way, he was glad
something
was happening. But where in the old films he enjoyed watching, it had been women and children first, the military had different ways. As a Major, he was siphoned off to a special restricted section of the compound. Along with other high-ranking officers, he wiled the hours away, playing chess and drinking shots of whisky. Food and drink (including copious amounts of booze) were provided, daily, by men in yellow suits. All they asked for in return was some guidance, some advice regarding strategy on how to deal with the crowds of sick people constantly baying for medicine outside the gates. But what could you do when there was no hope, when there was no medicine, and even your own yellow plastic suit and cumbersome supply of oxygen couldn't stop the virus from reaching you. As their own numbers depleted, all the yellow suits wanted was light hearted conversation and an occasional shoulder to wallow on. These were dark days, and old men, old war heroes (or whatever these young men thought Jackson and his drunken cronies were) became important just for having lived life, just for having survived days that seemed more tempestuous than hell itself.

    Eventually, against the advice of the other old officers, Jackson ventured topside to see what was going on. The base was in a mess, burnt up bodies of infected soldiers littering the ground like old, discarded bin bags. Most of the helicopters had been stolen, hijacked by deserters who bribed or threatened pilots to fly them to nowhere. Those still present and alive mostly wandered around in a drunken stupor. Fights broke out, unchecked, men pulling guns on each other over little more than lost games of cards. Others struggled with religious icons, crosses and bibles, to make sense of the new, torn world.

    Few of the soldiers seemed to be acting reasonably anymore. The few that did, gathering around Jackson as if he were some sort of new Messiah, seemed clueless as to what to do. They told him what little they knew, how that burning the bodies of those who fell ill was the best way to ensure they didn't
come back like the others.
Jackson hadn't known what they meant until he took a look over the wall. Until he found dead people, instead of sick people, crowding the gates, walking and sniffing, spitting and scratching like prehistoric witches. He found himself suddenly thinking about his daughter and grandchildren, now that he knew the full scale of the situation. He wondered if they would be among the faces at the gate, or other gates like this. But the alcohol was doing its job well. His heart was tired, worn out, numb. No emotion could be rinsed from it.

    Jackson remembered watching them, for hours, from the sentry box. The men came and asked him what they should do, what his orders were, but he just shook his head. "Do whatever seems right," he said, quietly. And they did. They shot the dead, threw grenades at the dead, doused the dead with flames. But they always came back. Thicker each day, the more attention the soldiers drew to the base with their uncouth violence. The dead were insurmountable, unstoppable. It seemed useless to oppose them in any way.

    Some days later, two men wearing the yellow suits came to where the officers stayed, tired and sallow looking. They had removed their masks, no longer believing in the ability of such to protect them. They told the officers who had not ventured from their hiding place, most of them still cowering in the dark recesses of the base like the scared old men they were, that the majority of people were dead, that society as they knew it was gone. The provisions in the base were all but exhausted (including the whisky). Jackson nodded to confirm what they were saying - he'd seen it all with his own eyes. A choice was given to the officers, the more reasonable ones who hadn't regressed to drunken despair. Operations were still live at the Mahon Road Army Camp in Portadown. One man was needed to replace their previous officer, who had seemingly fallen ill with the virus and was currently under quarantine. There was enough fuel to get two men down there via car, a driver and one of the gathered officers. The others would be airlifted across to London, although no one seemed to know what was going on there. The pros and cons of both situations were laid out to the officers, but Jackson had been the only one to volunteer for the job in Portadown. London wasn't appealing to him anymore. God knew what it was like, over there. But he knew all too well what it was like at the Mahon Road. It was his old base, when he was active, and a part of him wondered what it looked like years later. The mission in Portadown suddenly reminded him of his daughter again, his grandchildren. It reminded him of the importance of family, and the love a man should have for his children…

    He was still staring out of the car window when they finally pulled off the motorway, moving towards the Mahon Road. The Army camp was situated just outside of Portadown, one of the larger towns south of Lough Neagh. It was a place well known for its problems, torn apart by violence between Northern Ireland's two largest communities over the years of the so-called Troubles. Jackson recalled days gone by taking this same journey, as the car turned up the Mahon Road, towards the relative countryside calm of a post-apocalyptic hell. He could make out the gates of the heavily secured Army camp, seemingly unchanged since his day.

    Apart from being surrounded by dead bodies, ten deep.

    The doors opened, more yellow suits rushing out, these men also having abandoned oxygen, but seemingly more organised, and armed with automatic rifles. Over the car's engines, Jackson could hear the familiar ra- ta-ta of the gunfire as the men moved to clear the area. Several heads popped like corks in the hale of fire, the cold flesh and bone exploding, each body falling to the ground like sacks of spuds. The car suddenly squealed, Jackson's driver cutting through the thinned herd of dead, mercilessly. Several bodies hit the car as he drove, the collisions surprisingly light against the vehicle, as if the dead were literally filled with air. But Jackson felt scared. He felt tired and sad and scared, until the yellow suited soldiers moved back inside, and the gates were closed.

    He was hurried out of the car and through the main complex. One of the men moving him seemed immediately more aggressive than the others, his suit stained with blood, as if he had been wrestling with the poor bastards outside, then scalping them like some Apache from one of the old Westerns. Jackson recognised him, even from his swagger. His name was Dr Miles Gallagher, and by the looks of things, he was still a man not afraid to get his hands dirty. He welcomed Jackson warmly as they walked through the base. Jackson hadn't laid eyes on him for years, and that was a good thing.

    They moved through the more obvious parts of the base, travelling to an underground section that Jackson was all too familiar with. Eventually, he was out of his civvies and back in standard uniform, wearing an officer's shirt and trousers (both at least one size too big). He tightened the loop of his belt as he was led, gently, into a musty room littered with old files, beer bottles and cans of half-eaten food. The smell was atrocious, even compared to outside. A couple of men lay like dogs in the corner on worn, padded sleeping bags. Gallagher looked appalled when he saw them.

    "Get off the ground," the doctor said sternly, shocking the two privates out of their bags and onto their feet. "There's an officer on parade." They stood to attention as Jackson was introduced to them, hands raised in salute.

    "At ease," Jackson said, surveying them with little more than pity.

    Gallagher looked at him calmly. He was just as Jackson had remembered him. Cold, unemotional, polite. Weirdly unaffected. "I'll bring you to the colonel, sir," he said, quietly. "He's not very well, you understand…"

    "I was led to believe he had picked up the flu," Jackson said, a little nervously. "Is it… er… safe to visit him?"

    "We have him under quarantine, sir," Gallagher said, again quietly. "We can still communicate with him, without any risk. Of course, the quarantine is just a measure to make the men feel better, really," he said, smiling as if amused. "That's all it really is. In reality, there's no way to avoid the virus, at this stage of the game. It's all around us, all over us, all through us." His manner was quite clinical as he spoke, regardless of the seriousness of his words. But that was the nature of Dr Miles Gallagher, the paradox of the man. He had started out as a medic in the Army, soon spotted in the Gulf War for his more eccentric interest in the art of interrogation, in the ways of abusing a man, ever so acutely, without actually leaving any physical evidence of such. It was a radical use of medical training, but Dr Gallagher became an asset to the Army because of it. Eventually he was moved to Northern Ireland, to the project which Jackson had also been assigned to - a covert operation known, simply, as The Chamber. Gallagher had been one of the most vicious bastards Jackson had ever known, back in the day. After the embarrassment of internment, the British were pushing for results, while demanding discretion. He was asked to be brutal, yet subtle - all at once. Dr Gallagher was certainly brutal, but he was also one of the most polite men Jackson had ever known, despite his merciless way of 'doing business'. Jackson wondered if the good doctor had mellowed any through the years, as the focus on interrogation faded and less aggressive duties resumed. He certainly hadn't become any less formidable looking, Jackson could see, still retaining his tall, lean and frankly creepy looking exterior.

    They moved through to another corridor, equally as rundown and chaotic looking as the room they had just left. The Chamber was clearly only hanging onto operations by a very thin thread, the apathy of post-apocalyptic depression affecting the men and women here almost as much as it had affected those at Aldergrove. Jackson wondered if the colonel's failing health had been the final nail in the coffin for the survivors here, a stark realisation that even they could be infected, despite the base's notoriously stringent protocols and high security.

    Finally, they reached a sealed door, Gallagher removing a key from his pocket and inserting it into the keyhole. He unlocked the door and glided it open, slowly, as if worried about disturbing someone inside. Jackson was shown in first, Gallagher closing the door behind him and locking it equally as carefully as he had opened it. Looking around, Jackson remembered the room from days gone by. It was an observation room. It looked out onto the interrogation rooms, three in total. Glass covered each side wall, as well as the front wall of the room, allowing the occupants to observe any of the three interrogations. But it was to the front wall that Jackson's eyes were drawn, noticing the unmistakable form of a very sick man sitting, regally, at a table.

    "I'm sure you remember how to communicate to the room, sir," Gallagher said in a matter-of-fact way. Jackson walked to the microphone at the control panel. It hadn't changed a bit since he was last here. Still as minimalist looking as before, featuring the mic and huge red button. A small dial allowed the sound control to be adjusted. A nearby chair, also familiar from days gone by, beckoned Jackson. He sat down, facing the one-way window, knowing, from experience, that the colonel would only be seeing his own reflection when looking at the glass. Yet, his cold, hard stare seemed to be burrowing through Jackson's own eyes, as if he somehow could see beyond the mirror. As if, in the ongoing transfiguration from life to death, the colonel had achieved some sort of enhanced vision, a sixth sense that allowed him to see everything and everyone.