World War Moo (21 page)

“Hello, Mr. Campbell. How do you like my apartment?”

Tony clamped his hand over the mouthpiece. “It's him. Get a trace on it!”

“We can't even trace a kid's drawing right now, never mind a satphone,” Frank said. “Most of our tech got trashed when everybody went bonkers.”

“Shit. Look, he knows we're here. That means somebody must be watching us. Get some men out and find them.”

As soldiers ran from the room, Tony got back on the line. “How did you get this number?”

“Same place I got the information that you were coming after us. I just thought I'd say hello before I set off the explosives we've seeded through the building. So, hello. I'm pressing the button now.”

Tony's bowels loosened. He couldn't even open his mouth to get out a warning. It would be too late anyway. They would never get down twenty-three floors before the bombs went off. As he waited for the boom that would herald his end, all he could think about was that there would be nobody left to protect Margot and Vanessa.

In lieu of a gigantic explosion, a tinny chuckle came from the phone. “Did I scare you? I just wanted you to know I could have killed you. But you're not my enemy, Mr. Campbell. I want to give you a chance to come over.”

Tony, simultaneously weak with relief and throbbing with the desire to reach down the phone and pull out Archangel's larynx, took a few seconds to compose himself before replying. “Come over to what?”

“Our crusade. You can't deny this world has got out of control. Single mothers spitting out mewling brats, who will grow up to spit out more mewling brats ad infinitum. Muslims with five wives and thirty children, all of them determined to destroy Christianity. Godless, directionless hordes of atheists turning to tai chi and meditation to fill the gaping holes in their tawdry little souls. All of them destroying this beautiful world God gave us to watch over. Humanity is a plague, Mr. Campbell. It's time for a cull.”

Even though his words were pure madness, Archangel's voice remained utterly reasonable, as though he were laying out the merits of building a new bypass.

“I'm asking you to stop this,” Tony said. “If you keep trying to get the virus out, you'll get us all killed. Give us a chance.”

“No, Mr. Campbell. You're going to get us killed by doing nothing. Do you think you can appease these people with your press releases and statements? If we die, God's purifying weapon dies with us. I cannot allow that.”

“Killing isn't God's work.”

“Have you read the Old Testament? God was partial to unleashing plagues upon those who displeased him. We have displeased him greatly this time. He created a world of balance and harmony. We have disturbed that harmony. Think of all the wars we have fought, Mr. Campbell, of all the new diseases that nature produces, of all the famines and natural disasters. God has been trying to keep us in line for many years, trying to pare back our numbers. We kept pushing back with science and medicine and diplomacy, ignoring his message. Now he is taking drastic action, using the weapon of science against us. I am the instrument that will spread this, his greatest plague, and save our world.”

“But you're talking about turning the whole world into murderers. They'll tear each other apart. Billions will die.”

Glen frowned, and Tony realized that he wasn't sounding like a man who'd given the order to do exactly what Blood of Christ aimed to achieve. He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “I'm just trying to talk him down,” he told Glen.

“Is it wrong?” Archangel said. “Consider the Last Supper. Jesus said, ‘Anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life.' There is a precedent.”

Tony decided to toss diplomacy out the window. “That was a metaphor, you bloody nutbag, not an invitation to cannibalism. Even if you're insane enough to take it literally, which you clearly are, he was asking his disciples to eat him. He wasn't inviting everybody to gnaw each other's faces.”

“It was a message for the faithful,” Archangel said, unperturbed by Tony's insult. “Make no mistake. We will cleanse the world, with you or without you. When we are finished, only a handful of true believers will stand to carry on God's work. It seems you won't be one of them. Good-bye, Mr. Campbell.”

The line went dead, leaving Tony gaping at the phone.

“What'd he say?” Frank asked.

“To paraphrase: blah blah blah, I'm completely off my fucking trolley, blah blah blah,” Tony said, shaking his head in wonder. “Keep looking for the mole and find out where Archangel's gone to. I'm going back to the office.”

When Tony got downstairs, he waved away the driver. It had been months since he took public transport, and he felt the need to be amongst the people. Archangel's insanity had got him thinking. As far as he could tell, Moran had been a normal pastor before the virus. His mind must have cracked when he killed, and Tony wanted to gauge how widespread this mental instability was. He could only imagine what it must have been like to emerge from the viral daze with blood on your hands, for he'd never taken a life.

The self-inflicted blows to his head had kept him out for a day; when he finally came to, Margot and Vanessa were both infected—from the vaporized snot Margot said started exploding from his nose shortly after she emerged from the toilet. The first thing he did was hold them close, wetting their heads with his tears, and ask them to forgive him. Margot told him there was nothing to forgive, as he'd fought the virus, while Vanessa brushed it off as though he'd come home grumpy from the office. They holed up, living on chocolates and nuts raided from the minibars of other rooms, until the awful sound track of screams and gunfire receded. While the bloodshed was still going on, Tony had stayed far from the window, terrified that if he saw the carnage he would be seized with an urge to join in. When they finally emerged to trek home, the streets were empty save for twisted, ruined bodies thick with buzzing flies. He'd spent most of the days on the road with one hand supporting Vanessa's behind, the other over her eyes, wishing there was somebody to carry him and close his eyes. No, he hadn't killed—he'd never seen another uninfected person since—but that awful journey and the memory of what he'd almost done to his wife and child had been enough to push him close to the edge.

He walked to South Ealing tube station. It was still early, but when he boarded the train there were a few dozen early-morning commuters. He couldn't see any overt signs of mental torment. He didn't even know how many people had taken a life. The animals took care of a big chunk to start with, over ten million fled the country, and the army shot dead many more—most of the dead he saw seemed to have died from bullet wounds. Despite what zombie films would have people believe, he suspected it was damn hard to bite somebody to death. Then there were the famously bad British teeth. Overbites and teeth sprouting off in different directions would surely have hampered efforts to rip out a jugular. Plus you had to consider the speed with which the virus took over its host; many attacks would have been curtailed as victim and victimizer joined forces to look for fresh prey. Plenty of blunt force would have been applied, he supposed, which could account for a lot of deaths, and the mob factor definitely made it worse. Still, since he hadn't killed anyone it stood to reason there were many more in the same position. It was difficult to know, as nobody talked about that period: it was as though a collective amnesia had descended over the nation.

As the train filled up, he noticed something else. In his carriage at least four women were pregnant, and, up in the far corner, a couple was indulging in heavy petting. Everybody stared at them. Their soft moans and the vibration of the tube prompted movement down below. He crossed his legs. A slim young woman with red hair and full lips caught his eye and gave him a saucy smile. He smiled back and held up his ring finger. She pouted and turned her attention elsewhere.

He was struck then by the strange dichotomy of the virus: how people were so ashamed of their anger but embraced the sexual aspect. The animals had mindlessly humped whatever came within range, but they were prone to a spot of random humping anyway. And they never actually raped anybody: they couldn't exactly take off clothes with hooves or paws and wouldn't have known where to put it. As far as he could tell the urge to do violence had overwhelmed the sexual element in humans. Perhaps it was a matter of expediency: it was quicker to bite somebody and pass on the virus than struggle with clothing. Now there were no uninfected around to fully unleash the beast, the virus seemed to have turned Britain into a nation of full-time slappers, instead of only shaking off their straitlaced attitudes when under the influence of drugs and booze.
The Sun
, the only newspaper still publishing, predictably loved it and ran stories with headlines like, “Brits Go BONKers!”

Perhaps people were happier to give in because sex was fundamentally a consensual act, and both parties usually enjoyed it—unless the man had a hair trigger or thought foreplay consisted of shouting, “Brace yourself!” Violence, on the other hand, was rarely consensual. Perhaps it was a choice: when handed two opposing urges, one more benign than the other, the easiest course was to take the more pleasurable. Rapists still raped of course, and Tony came down hard on any offenders, but rape was an act of violence. It was about power and control, not about sex.

If only they could create a selective cure for the virus, one that lost violent impulses and kept the sexual ones. That way the country would be transformed from a dystopia to a utopia overnight, and they wouldn't have any problem getting the population back up quickly.

As he looked along the carriage, plastered with Keep Calm and Carry On ads, he understood most people were trying to have a normal life. Tony had spent far too long cloistered away in his offices and in the car and was beginning to wonder if he hadn't overestimated the severity of the situation. Extreme cases aside, the virus seemed to have translated into more arguments, a lot more sex, and an inability to queue. They'd become Italian. Of course, all of this only applied when the uninfected weren't around. The acid test would come if they ever got the chance to reintegrate with the world. For that to happen, they needed to learn to control themselves come the crunch. He was beginning to wonder if he should make an effort to engage with the people handing out the leaflets.

He looked again at his fellow passengers: his people, his responsibility. He focused on one woman, her hand supporting her protruding stomach, and imagined the baby growing within. If the attack took place, that unborn child and many like it, the epitome of innocence, would never have a chance to grow up. He wouldn't let that happen.

First, though, he had other matters to deal with. His erection was refusing to deflate by itself, and he caught himself checking out the redhead. He got off the train early, taking off his jacket and draping it over his arm so it hid his groin, with the intention of paying Margot a conjugal visit. There would be no point trying to work with such an insistent stiffy.

 

18

It took Lesley and Jack just half an hour to reach the outskirts of Aberdeen. Emboldened by the success of their disguise, they followed the main road, although they encountered no other people to further test the worth of the layer of dung. Lesley was perspiring from the effort of keeping up with Jack and the shit had begun to dry out and crack, save for the areas on her face, armpits, and small of her back, where sweat kept leaking out. They stopped at a roundabout beside a Royal Mail depot and looked down the dual carriageway leading into town. Crumpled cars ringed the side of the road, piled up like kids' toys.

“What d'you think?” Lesley said. “Should we risk going in?”

“I'm not sure. With the smell, they might mistake us for livestock. I understand they're partial to a bit of bestiality in this part of the world.”

“If you make any sheep shagger jokes, you'll definitely be killed.”

“We need to take the chance. It's our best chance of finding some kind of link with the outside world.”

“It's also our best chance of being torn up into fleshy confetti.”

“We're as good as dead anyway if we do nothing. Let's give it a go. If anybody seems even a tiny bit aggressive, we get the hell out of there.”

Lesley trusted neither her legs nor the squeaky old bike to shake off any pursuit but followed when Jack headed down the road. They passed an old church in which the gravestones were half hidden by long grass, squat metal-roofed industrial units, and rows of silent houses, many of them with front doors ajar and windows broken. Lesley felt that eyes were watching them from within those homes where washing hung on the line or smoke trickled out of chimneys. Nobody came out to challenge them.

They passed several public phones, which neither of them had any money or credit cards to operate—although they did stop to pick one up and found no dial tone, which did not bode well. Still, there were plenty of shopping malls and Internet caf
é
s in the town center. With luck one of them would be operating. She knew from
Twitter
and
Facebook
that some people in Britain were still getting online somehow. Not that they would go into the shops when people were there. They'd agreed they would keep moving and stay in the middle of the road, out of nostril range, until they identified a likely target. They would return in the dead of night to break in. With luck they would be able to pinch some food and cigarettes as well. Specifically, she was thinking about the Trinity Center. If memory served her correctly the streets around there were wide enough to give them breathing space, and it would let them figure out if it was open or not. She was hopeful it would be. People said cockroaches were most likely to survive an apocalypse. She'd always put her money on consumerism.