Tranter sat opposite Toubec on the InterRail Express to the military garrison of Stone Hill. A Ministry of Defence shuttle, the comforts were few, and Toubec’s acrimonious nature did little to ease the journey. They hadn’t shared a word during the entire transit, and her head had been set in a tattered pamphlet engagingly titled Data Technology. The pages hung loosely from a single staple, and had been printed on the flimsy brown paper favoured by the new printing-press companies of Oxford. He presumed her haughtiness and withdrawal was for the return to field commission, a duty that was compulsory for government blue-collars, incontestable, and usually reserved for undergraduates.
He looked up to the balcony, the first floor being reserved for officials, and noted the refreshment trolley pausing between each seat. Coffee! He thought, wondering how they had managed to import coffee beans during the precarious, if not hostile, relationship with the Americas. He watched a steward fill a small white cup before a moustachioed general sipped at it and smacked his lips appreciatively. Tranter remembered tasting coffee once, along with a cigar and Georgian vodka. A black market offering to his brother during his stag party in a Dead Zone brothel. It tasted like shit, he recalled, and presumed its high regard amongst high society was a result of keeping up appearances.
He glanced to one of the small screens that lined the upper levels, squinting to read the text of the news channel.
[Ministry of Custody to employ 7,000
Sources have confirmed that nearly seven thousand jobs are to be secured in the south after the Military announced an increased need for the controversial RMC, otherwise known as the Rhinox.
The RMC, the nuclear-powered aircraft that has been decommissioned on several occasions due to mis-use leading to war crimes worldwide, will now become the British Military’s preferred mode of air transportation.
German Home Secretary, Heinrich Krügg, lambasted the British Ministry of Custody for employing a craft that has “been a symbol of atrocity on an international scale since its inception.]
‘I said, "Can you pass that, please?"’ Sally repeated, and he looked down to the seat beside him. She had evidently finished Data Technology and was looking expectantly at an old, dog-eared pamphlet titled Medical Review beside him. It was obviously an old copy, being printed on grey re-pulped newspaper stock.
He passed it to her, riled by her lack of thanks as she sat back and folded the cover over. He looked back up to the screen, though the story had changed.
‘You know?’ He said, turning his attention to the dusty countryside whipping passed beyond the glass, ‘It would make this a whole lot easier...’
‘Don’t tell me how to act, Mr. Tranter! I was quite happy in Analysis. I worked my back off getting away from field work, so don’t expect me to be happy about being thrown back into the lion’s den... Demoted to the lion’s den, I should say.’
‘Well, that’s as maybe, but being a bitch isn’t going to make it any easier. You’ve got to do it whether you want to or not, and Stranghan can’t see you’re pissed, so pouting’s not going to help.’ He snorted derisively. ‘Even if he could see, do you think he gives a damn how hard you worked to get out of field work? We all worked hard to get out of field work.’
She held him in her gaze for a while. His words were irrefutable but she was adamant. ‘I’ve sacrificed my entire life for my work...’ Her words lingered as though she wanted to express more, how she had towed her partner along beside her, always promising him a normal life but never being able to give it him. He had started and finished a Degree and Masters in Law and still she hadn’t found a way to give him what he wanted, namely marriage, children, and the life that goes with it. When I’m settled in work, she would tell him, when they can’t get rid of me. Yet part of her knew she couldn’t expect such privileged treatment. No-one could. Everyone was expendable.
She looked back down to the pamphlet, feeling his gaze burn into her as he waited for her to continue. She wasn’t going to tell him anything so personal.
After a moment he considered that she was a lost cause. He would have to work with the uptight sow, using his own words, whether he liked it or not. He looked at the page of Medical Review facing him; it advertised jobs at the Berlin Institute of Biopharmacy, though Toubec’s fingers were covering most of the print. Over the last six years research and development institutes had opened across Belgium and Germany, leading many to conspire that a European nation had already been determined by those coffee swilling echelons, the following years election nothing more than a pretence, and that the continent was being divided into sectors. What had been planned for Britain was anyone's guess. Sector for teenage pregnancies, he considered.
He leant down and opened the case at his feet, retrieving the dossier he had received the previous evening. He had skim-read most of it late that night, but now he resigned himself to delve into the information relating to why he and his merry colleague were now on their way to Stone Hill.
He lost himself in the report chronicling the evolution of S18K4, how this new virus had broken away from a host-specific bacterium and had leapt the barrier to an epizootic strain, able to affect more than one species. He looked at the images of the initial virus, spherical and covered with spiralled barbs. This terrifying new strain was smaller; it’s cell-wall thicker. The initial virus affected canine hosts only, sent them into a deranged and insatiable rage. In humans it produced the onset of necrotic cells, gangrenous extremities, internal haemorrhaging and disseminated intravascular coagulation - the untreatable ‘crimson purge’ that caused orifices to seep with blood until death. This new bacterium, he read with growing alarm, was projected to infect most, if not all, species. It was a panzootic virus that could spread not only between carnivorous species, but between any species of mammal!
‘It’s a god-damned biological blunderbuss!’ he said under his breath, awed to the point of exasperation.
‘Sorry?’ Toubec said, looking up from the pamphlet.
‘... Blunderbuss. It’s an old type...’
‘I know what a blunderbuss is. I didn’t hear what you said is all.’
‘This...’ He stuttered, hardly able to believe anyone would be insane enough to synthesize something with such lethal potential. ‘This is accurate?’
‘As far as we can tell. Looks like whoever did this wanted to finish off what S18K4 started. It has a longer gestation period for a start, and unlike S18K4 it doesn’t die when exposed to UV light.’
‘And this isn’t natural mutation?’ It was a stupid question and he knew it. She shot him a resigned look before returning to the journal. After a moment she said, ‘It’s more a combination of Carnivora and a Rhabdovirus, most likely Rabies, than anything S18K4 would have evolved into naturally. Carnivora attacks the bloodstream; and so does this, but it gets into the nervous system also. There’s nothing out there that looks like your ‘blunderbuss’.
‘Jesus...’ He said, staring out the window.
They arrived in a station beneath the garrison, and were greeted by lieutenant colonel Noriah, a formidable slab of muscle with more body art than a Maori tattoo parlour. He waited on the platform, broad and rigid, and received them with a crushing handshake.
‘Afternoon,’ was all he said before leading them both to an elevator shaft that screeched wildly as they ascended to the complex above.
‘Colonel Matloff is expecting you in his office.’ He said, his eyes hidden in shade beneath his peaked cap and Neanderthaloid brow.
‘Is this going to be an easy process?’ Toubec asked coldly. The military garrisons that had sprung up alongside the borders across the land were notoriously self-contained. They saw themselves as being the sole protectors of the country and therefore placed themselves on a higher echelon than government. They didn’t take too kindly to being used, or being advised how to operate, by the MoD.
Noriah rounded on her slowly. ‘You’re here at the behest of the MoD. It’s our job to entertain you, so you can go home and write your reports and t
ell the public that everything is well-groomed, trim, and in tip-top condition.’ His words were thick with sarcasm, and Toubec visibly stiffened with anger.
‘We’re also here to save lives, if that matters at all?’ Tranter said, looking up from his paperwork with a smile.
Noriah scowled and pulled the door open, leading them into a concrete corridor that reeked of mildew. They followed him up a long stairway that opened out on to a receiving room and more regal furnishings; a Persian-blue carpet topped with plush rugs, potted palms, two leather club chairs and a squat yew coffee table.
The Lieutenant Colonel rapped once on Matloff’s door. There was a moment’s pause and then there came a casual license to enter.
The Colonel was a sallow-looking man in his late fifties. Lean and white-haired, he rose from his fine, green leather chair and offered them both a languid hand.
‘Please sit,’ he gestured. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel.’
Noriah saluted smartly, before turning and closing the door behind him.
‘Now,’ Colonel Matloff said, offering them a case of cigarettes. ‘We’ve received a wire that there’s some terrible business occurring over the border. Some new pathogen? Is that right?’
‘That’s what we’re here to find out, sir,’ Tranter said, refusing the cigarette. ‘I have a report here for you, and can’t impress upon you enough the urgency of this matter. This new strain of S18K4 is outstandingly virulent. It makes Carnivora look like a mere headache.’
Colonel Matloff took the report and laid it on the table beside him. ‘I’ll take a look at it,’ he said, picking up the hand piece of the telephone on his desk. ‘Frondel? Yes, come and show our visitors to the mess hall. They must be hungry after their journey.’
‘Sir,’ Toubec said, leaning forward, ‘we don’t have time to sit around eating. We need to organise an investigation into what’s happening on the coast.’
Colonel Matloff returned the handset with a smile. ‘Nonsense. There’s nothing that would be better done on an empty stomach, dear.’
Toubec scowled, and was ready to respond vehemently as the door opened and the Colonel stood, gesturing for them to follow suit and exit the office. ‘Private Frondel will escort you to the mess hall. We’ll reconvene in an hour, after I’ve read through this report.’
Bemused and hustled from the room, Tranter and Toubec followed private Frondel into the humid afternoon light.
Chapter Seventeen.
South-easterly wind.
Eleven knots.