The Onset of Battle

‘How long have we been here?’

Chris tugged Pete’s sleeve as he asked, brushing a bit of mud off his left ankle. Pete continued to calmly stare through the binoculars as they lay, curled up under the violated topiary about 130 yards from the right-hand edge of Kenwood House. About 25 feet away the head and neck of a swan lay in the middle of the gravel path that led up to the house.

‘Shh… keep your voice down,’ hissed Pete, staring intently at the woods opposite. ‘I think the second assault team have made it as far as the lake.’

‘You mean Georgia, Jonathan and Katherine?’ muttered Chris, needling.

Pete turned back to his partner.

‘I mean… the second assault team. Try to stay focused, it’s the only way to… to do well at this,’ he finished. They continued to lie on the ground and their voices were replaced by the noise of insects loud and near, but also distant, less recognisable sounds.

Chris looked back at his boots and felt down his left trouser leg to the buttoned utility pocket. With luck this still contained some water and a cereal bar left from a recent walk on Sussex’s considerably-less-dramatic-than-they-sound Fire Hills.

Pete shot him a look as Chris wrestled with the crinkly noise of the packaging.

‘Right. I think we’re safe to move out. Let’s try to rejoin the armoured division,’ – he gently unfolded an A4 inkjet-printed map – ‘they should be at the assembly stage, just south of Thousand Pound Pond—’

‘You mean beyond those trees?’

Pete’s look was tired, parental and corrective, but he just nodded.

Chris jumped up.

‘Great! Let’s do this, Mein Herr! This bugger all has been going on for hours.’

Seeing no one nearby, the stillness of the empty mansion only interrupted by muted tones of distant yelling, the men dashed forward in a series of diagonals, partial cover afforded by two damaged jeeps that had collided in front of the tea shop. The left side door of one was thrust up into the air at a broken angle; on it three words: ‘Группа нападения четыре’.

They pulled up a little breathless by the toilet block before the path that had once led to tourist parking.

‘We can’t go straight down from here, too dangerous. We need to tack east, where there are more trees,’ whispered Pete as they crouched by the entrance to Kenwood House’s tea rooms.

‘Au contraire, Peter. What we need,’ said Chris, fixing on a point over Pete’s shoulder, ‘is an ice cream…’

A refreshment stand was lying overturned just beyond some picnic tables. ‘Come on, we’re out of sight. What do you want? Tub or cone?’

The sky was suddenly punctured at a single, fixed point. The flare detonated overhead, showering a pretty pink light over the building. It was only 7pm and still a balmy, sunny July evening. The additional light fell like an eye drinking in all it could briefly see.

‘Amateur hour,’ thought Pete. ‘Wasting one of your three flares when we can all still see just fine.’ Voices came from the spot they’d just left, near the car park. Friend or foe, it wasn’t clear, but there wasn’t time to worry about this point as their attention refocused on the deep clickety noise of tank treads approaching from the direction of the herb garden.

‘Shit!’

They made a dash for the thicker part of forest that edged Kenwood’s once well-kept parkland, just as the first detonation took out the pale Georgian edifice’s right-most corner.

Some 12 to 15 seconds later the ringing in their ears had subsided enough to make out what had happened. Three tanks had pulled up around the house and a few remaining staff, mostly kitchen-based to judge by their outfits, were waving white tea towels attached to brooms and yelling in Russian.

‘Fucking hell. How much were the tickets for this again?’ Chris asked.

‘A hundred and fifty quid, not including your outfit hire, I might add,’ responded Pete, brushing off the soil that they’d ended up covered in.

‘I mean, it’s bloody good, isn’t it!’ Chris looked a lot more alive to the situation now. ‘Thanks mate. Ledge-End…’

‘Keep your head down,’ said Pete and together they scrambled down the bank towards the farthest pond.

As they ran, the blend of adrenalin, noxious shell odour, and the effects of largely unfamiliar exercise began to foster a new sense of adventure. Its flavour was exciting. Normal life in a country that only engaged in remote, invisible nation-building had left these neural pathways unfired and unexplored. Comfortable jobs. Discomfort’s ambit had been only social, familial or cultural. Was this grit? The ‘real thing’?

Chris thought about screaming for a second. He really wanted to see just how loud he could be. Hear a man explode!

As they ran, Pete tried to contain his rising panic with vague recollections about ticket websites, hilarious reviews, insane price points, the hottest thing in town. ‘Invasion – such a potent reconnector,’ Mark Lawson had said. Plus you don’t want to miss out on these things. It’s the only point in staying in the financial war zone the city has become. Still, that sentence was easier to say when all the key words had been metaphors. Not like now, thought Pete, as he noticed the bullet-bent sign: ‘Welcome to Hampstead Heath’.

‘Isn’t that Vicky Parks from MediaPlayers?’

‘Shh! Where?’

Chris pointed up the slope to the broken low wooden fencing that edged a line of bushes. A young woman with brown bobbed hair was staring and prodding fiercely at her phone.

‘Totally have a thing for her. Hot. In. Camo!’

‘That’s really not important right now,’ whispered Pete, who was lying flat to the soil and staring at some other point to the west through his eyepiece. Chris stood up and waved. ‘Vicks! Vicks!’

Pete pulled his ankles out from under him and Chris collapsed onto the grass.

‘What the fuck are you doing? We don’t know which side she’s on!’ he hissed.

Chris made gun shapes with his fingers.

‘Aw come on! I’d happily be on her side, whoever she’s shooting.’

‘That is not. How. This. Works!’ Pete whispered.

Vicky Parks turned to look towards them as another young woman emerged from under the bush, and together they seemed to confer for a second before unholstering their weapons.

‘Yeah, yeah! I get it – stay in character, avoid capture, kill the baddies. Just saying. I mean it gets your blood up, this, doesn’t it? Oh man, look, she’s with Sarah Hills – also hot, oh—’

Chris stopped speaking as Sarah turned to face back into the treeline behind them before letting out a horrible guttural howl at the top of her voice. She fell forward, an arrow in the back of her right leg, moaning.

Vicky wheeled round and shot twice into the thick bushes above them, but the archer had already run. Pete grabbed Chris’s arm. ‘I told you, we’ve gotta go.’

‘Where to, though?’ asked Chris.

‘Bowling club – it’s hard cover.’

They dodged between the trees. What had always felt to Pete like the wildest patch of land in London now seemed horribly orderly, open and visible. As they darted forwards in short, controlled bursts of motion, deeply stored memories of childhood play guided them forward. Box Hill. The Devil’s Punchbowl. Chaste banter with girls met on French campsites when the parents were getting drunk in the bar by the pool. Random access memories of when the unfamiliar had been easy to adopt and adapt to.

Virtual reality had failed on the launchpad just a Christmas before. A loss of sight was no way to see the future, just a new excuse to trip over coffee tables. Swatting CGI dragons in suburban homes had nothing on real-life promenade warfare. Once you’d done it (if you survived), it made total sense. Until you’d done it… it looked like madness.

The Siege of Gursk had been a fairly well-forgotten, slightly plodding WWII epic made in the mid-’60s, which presumably died a death when Oliver Reed and Lee Marvin turned it down (whether out of boredom or alcoholism). But as a plot line for a live theatrical battle experience it was super compelling. Star in big-production war film! No experience necessary! Plus, ticket sales had rocketed since the Russian annexation of Latvia. ‘His dark materiels’, as one waggish sub-editor had headlined it. It was the kind of publicity PR agencies kill for.

The sun had finally succumbed and a cold shadow had smothered the Heath. The trees seemed to become more dense with the light’s retreat. Pete looked over at Chris, who had gone a bit ‘method’ in the last hour.

If a producer had been present, perhaps in a nearby dug-out, or watching remotely via tree-cam, they’d have smiled. Always happens. The personal transition required seems impossible until it is suddenly, utterly, complete. You just have to decide you’re up for it. The distant muffled screams could be coming from high-definition speakers in the trees, or they could be the sound of real injuries. Evolution ensures you assume the worst. The uniforms help.

‘Right. What’s the plan? Take the bowling hut?’ whispered Chris in the failing light.

Pete pulled out and unfolded a small piece of paper. ‘No, we have to blow it up, it’s going to be a distraction while Assault Group Two liberates the tennis courts.’

‘Right. Let’s fucking do this…’ murmured Chris and the two men scrambled forward, full of renewed focus and adrenaline.

The producer was a cocky sort, but gave great interviews. It was an enthusing pitch. ‘You know what you need? To taste the literal. Get your face out of that screen, scuff those knees again. Life begins when visual metaphors end.’ What an insight that was. Remove the artistry and double-down on the intensity of the experience. So why not voting booths you could only reach by traversing a moat? Competitive parents’ evenings conducted on climbing walls. Reckless acts of theatre. Comfort was weakness. Real imagination meant being able to become a person who does actually terrible things, for delimited amounts of time.

The Siege of Gursk. Why not? The Rise of Man. The Great Unshackling. A newly global Britain. The Price is Death. The Heat is On. A Nation Votes 2: Vote Harder. A Spear For Your Thoughts. A Nation Fights. Love me, scare me. Kill to get a ticket.