CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

FULLWOOD ARMY BASE, 06:30 hours approx, November 7th.

Outside the building, wet spray hit my face. On the airstrip, a Chinook HC2 transport helicopter. A Flight-Sergeant stood at the back-end, beasting the ground crew as they backed a short-wheelbase Landrover aboard. The heavy rotors at each end were whirling, whipping up the water on the tarmac. It was already ankle-deep.

Stupid thought number one:

Fuck me, they weren't kidding.

 

 

DR BENJAMIN STILES. Ben to his friends. Assuming he had any left. When they think you're a mentalist, the friendships tend to dry up.

From the photo, I'd've put his age around fifty.

He was, according to Tidyman, thirty-six.

Stiles' area was marine biology. Five years ago, he'd been in a diving accident. Tidyman skimmed the details, but in a nutshell the poor bastard was physically fucked and in constant pain. And naturally, he could forget about diving again.

His career had fallen apart. The drinking hadn't helped. Probably to deaden the pain. Alcohol's good at that. But there was more. Obviously.

He'd started spouting doomsday predictions. Oceans rising, floods, the end of the world.

Not that unusual. Not enough to end a career.

That'd come when he'd started predicting the rising of the dead.

Tidyman skipped the details there too. Not relevant. What it boiled down to:

The powers that be wanted to pick whatever brains Stiles had left.

Location: A village called Barley. North-east Lancashire.

 

 

WE RAN ACROSS the strip. They were trying to shore the sandbags by the main gates but already the water was gushing through the gaps and they gave way as I reached the chopper. Akinbode and Mleczko went sprawling in the surge of brown water that rushed across the compound towards the strip like a breaker from a dirty sea.

"Move it! Move it!"

Back five minutes and it was like I'd never been away. Akinbode pulled Mleczko to his feet and they scrambled aboard. The water washed shin-deep. Shouts and screams.

I jogged up to the Flight-Sergeant. He turned around and we eyed each other up. Any transport 'copter - Sneaky Beaky or otherwise - has a loadmaster. The pilots decided where we flew, but just as I was in charge when we hit the ground, the Loadie was God when it came to deciding what went on or off the chopper. "McTarn."

"Lomax."

"Anything I can do to help, Loadie?"

He shook his head. "Just get your arse in there before you drown."

I didn't need telling twice with it pissing down like that. Cannock was at the controls. The co-pilot, a thin droopy-moustached type called Hendry who looked as if his cat'd just been run over, stood in the cockpit doorway, staring out. "That everyone?"

I looked out of the main doors. The rain was rods and bolts, the sky black. Two last runners coming in: Nixon and Tidyman. "Couple more."

"Tell 'em to get a shift on, or we'll be flying underwater."

"Move your fucking arse, Nixon!"

I wasn't beasting an officer. I'm not that stupid.

Chas put on a burst of speed and jumped for it - pretty limber for a man near fifty. "Nice to have you back, Jock."

"Sergeant Jock to you, grotbag."

An old joke, but still a good one.

"That's the lot!" Lomax shouted. The loading ramp at the back closed up and he dropped into a seat.

"Everybody sit down and buckle up!" That was the co-pilot. "If we're going, it's fucking well now."

"Room for one more, I hope." Tidyman climbed in.

The co-pilot went red. "Sir."

Tidyman pulled the door shut. "Whenever you're ready."

I looked Tidyman over as I strapped myself into my seat. The Chinook lifted, rocking in the wind. Tidyman seemed at ease. In his comfort zone now.

My old CO, Lieutenant Alderson - he'd seemed decent enough as officers went. But the orders he'd given me...

I hoped Tidyman didn't give me orders like that.

Because I couldn't obey those orders again. I could not. Fuck.

Why put me in charge, you stupid bastards? Why? I'm not fit for it. Not anymore.

I look out of the porthole. The waters were flooding the compound now. The men ran back and forth. Like ants.

Had they been told they'd be evacuated too? Must have been, to stay at their posts like that. Or maybe it was duty. I used to believe in that.

"Everybody hang on," Cannock shouted. "Winds up here are a nightmare."

Nightmares in the water, nightmares in the sky, and the ground all washing away...

 

 

SO WHO THE fuck am I?

Robert James McTarn. Born and bred: Easterhouse, Glasgow. Age thirty-six. Only child of:

Rose Frances McTarn. Wife, mother, drudge, part-time cleaner and full-time punching bag for:

Douglas Robert McTarn.

My father. Six-foot-three, equal parts lard, muscle and bone. Very little brain. A dozen tattoos, one professionally executed - the Red Hand of Ulster, on his chest - the rest homemade: RANGERS FC, NO SURRENDER. He kept vowing to get a full-scale depiction of the Battle of the Boyne emblazoned across his back but never, to my knowledge, fulfilled it. Too busy pissing the weekly wages from his builder's job up the wall. He worked like a bastard, I'll give him that.

He battered my Ma, and he battered me. No plea for sympathy here. Just a simple statement of fact. That stopped at seventeen; I blocked one of his punches and dealt a few back. Not many. Not enough. He was down on the floor spitting blood and teeth and still it wasn't enough.

And my Mam, pounding my back with her fists, scratching my face, screaming at me to 'get away from her man'.

I went out the door and kept on walking. I didn't stop till I'd reached the recruiting office. Too young to drink, too young to vote - Christ, I wasn't even old enough to put my name on a direct fucking debit. But old enough to sign my life away.

I armed myself up, built muscles and combat skills. None of it kept out the real pain. My father might be a bastard (and was), but he was the only one I had. My mother might've tried to scratch my eyes out, but she was still my Mam. If you don't like it, go take a long hard look at your family, and then come back and start preaching.

I came back home exactly once, for Mam's funeral. We'd exchanged a few awkward letters in the decade since I left. Never talked about it. Never would now.

As the chopper flew north-east, I hoped she was too long-dead and rotted away, to ever come back for me.

 

 

THE WINDS PICKED up as we flew. The pilot kept us above the cloud cover wherever he could, for why I don't know. Not as if we had any enemy aircraft to worry about, not unless the nightmares could fly Harrier jumpjets.

I wasn't even going to think about that.

We tooled up in mid-flight.

Tidyman, Cannock, Hendry and Lomax all carried pistols - Sig-Sauer P226s, with the extended twenty-round clips.

Most of us 'other ranks' carried Army-standard SA80A2 rifles. I picked one up and it felt like coming home. Some put their faith in Jesus, and that's well and good, but he can't deliver 610 rounds per minute on request. We had a reinforced section, which in our case meant three snipers. There was Akinbode, who I'd met already; the other two were called Andrews and Levene. All three carried Parker-Hale L96 rifles. High-quality, bolt action. Lovely bit of kit. Andrews was thirtyish with short dark-brown hair and a goatee; Levene was a few years older with dark, grey-flecked hair and a droopy walrus moustache, and seemed permanently half-asleep. Neither said much, but snipers can be a funny bunch.

We were also issued with two Minimi M249 light machine guns - box magazine or belt-fed - as support weapons - along with a GPMG (general purpose machine gun), and a blooper (Mk19 grenade launcher.) All that and two Landrovers to mount them on.

They'd also issued us with combat knives, although quite frankly if the nightmares were that close in we really were fucked.

Still, in for a penny...

 

 

FOR ALL I know, my dad's still alive. Only the good die young.

He was at the funeral. I was pretty sure I'd given him the cauliflower ear. Maybe the skewed nose too. Although Dad was never shy of battle scars.

We didn't speak or approach each other. A truce. Neutral territory. He stayed with his cronies and I stayed on my side of the church, in my lonely pew. I waited till they were all gone from the Crematorium, him and his pals from the boozer and the football terraces. Someone brayed a laugh as they went, I'm pretty sure it was him.

I never saw him again. If I had, I might have killed him. Mam was the only thing that might have stopped me.

I'd barely made it to the funeral in time. The flowers were from the corner shop down the road. I left them in the Garden of Rest and the rest of my leave and what money I had in London drinking, whoring and punching out any bastard who could stand in for my father for long enough.

In between leaving home and coming back, of course, I'd seen action. It saved me from thinking. When I wasn't doing that, there were always boozing sessions with the lads and trips to the red light district. That last one stopped when I met Jeannie.

More or less.

There'd be nights before a mission. The kind I mightn't come back from. All the boozed-up camaraderie can't help with that, but a woman can. And Jeannie might not be in reach on nights like that.

I wasn't the only one. I never told her. She never asked. She was an army wife. She understood these things.

She did.

That wasn't what broke us up, anyway.

That came later.

Maybe it'd been building up for a while. All the things I'd done for Queen and Country, never asking, never questioning. Maybe it was only a matter of time. The invasion just brought it to a head.

The Army had been my new family. The invasion was where that ended.

 

 

LIGHTNING FLASHED THROUGH the portholes. The thundercrack followed seconds later.

I glimpsed the ground through rain and clouds. Streets turned into rivers. People huddled on rooftops. Waiting for help. Maybe they heard the Chinook over the storm, thought it was coming for them. Poor bastards if they did.

Only glimpsed them; no time to interpret. To see if anyone was looking up. Screaming for help or deliverance. Held up children like we were a friendly eagle come to snatch them away. Screamed in terror because they'd seen eyes glowing down in the water or their owners crawling out.

Imagination's a curse for a soldier. Never thought I'd had one. Probably got it around the same time as a conscience, and a mind of my own.

The woman screaming at us. Bastards, murderers - I could tell the meaning without knowing a word of her tongue...

Blood on my hands, blood on my face, blood I could never wash clean...

"You OK, mate?"

Chas, sat next to me, leather face furrowed. "Fine, Corp."

"You look stressed." The look in his eyes said: Talk to me.

I lowered my voice. "Don't know if I can do this, Chas. The fuck were they thinking?"

"That you were a fucking good section commander. That's what. You've done this before."

"That was before -" Before the desert road. Before all that.

"Yeah, I know, mate. But you did it once, you can do it again. It's not like then. Not now. You've gotta do it. For the lads."

"I know. I know."

"I've got your back, Robbie. You need help, you got me. Alright?"

I nodded, bumped his shoulder. "Thanks, Chas."

"No probs."

We managed to stay above the storms. To stop myself thinking about how much I fucking hated flying, I started matching names to faces. Well, you want to know what to call the soldier you're commanding, don't you?

Chas, Alf, Mleczko, Akinbode, Parfitt, Hassan, Andrews, Levene - I knew them already. That left two. There was one with greying hair, but who couldn't have turned thirty yet - that was Joyce. And the other one, a skinny girl with short blonde hair who barely looked old enough to join up - that was Parkes, the 'Sparky' (radio op in plain English.) Chas, the Corporal, was section leader, with Joyce, carrying a Lance-Corporal's stripe, as 2IC. I ran the names through my head as we flew.

When Cannock finally took us down, closer to the surface, almost all we could see was open water. Sea. It looked close enough to touch.

The water was mostly empty, stewed-tea brown, churning sluggishly as it poured further inland. Further ahead, as the ground rose, the roofs of houses were visible. Telegraph poles. Treetops. Street lamps. Debris clotted in thick swirling clusters on the surface. I looked out towards the horizon. Rain spattered against the porthole. The sea looked calm.

"Any idea how much further, sir?" I felt like a kid asking are we there yet?, but couldn't help it.

Tidyman shrugged. "Weather's been slowing us down, but I think the worst of it's behind us. At a guess, we're about halfway."

Only half?

Tidyman seemed to read my thoughts. "Don't worry too much, Sergeant. Making better time now. Should be there within the hour."

"Thank God."

Tidyman smiled, but it looked fixed. Sweat glittered on his forehead. Well, we were all wound tightly at the minute. I felt like the last man who should be in charge when we hit the ground. I wasn't sure if I still had the skills, or if I'd want them back. What would being a soldier again do to me?

All the same, I'd seen men look like that before. It was never a good sign.

 

 

FURTHER NORTH, THE ground rose higher, and land broke the surface. Just hilltops at first. Little islands, some with a few bedraggled sheep grazing. I wondered what they made of it. My knowledge of sheep psychology was a little vague.

Hendry had taken over; he flew in low and at low speed.

A larger hilltop. A farmhouse near the water's edge. A man, a woman, a couple of kids ran out. Waved up at us.

I felt like flinging open the door and screaming, we're not here for you, we never were. But didn't.

Same old shite. The powers that be give the orders, move the chess pieces. Poor bastards on the ground suffer and die.

This trip brought all the memories back. But it's like the end of a marriage. All sorts of things aren't the same. First kiss, the first time you said I love you - they're all tainted by it being over now. The pain of that.

The same here. The camaraderie, being among men who understood what it was to be a soldier. I'd missed that. But I couldn't love it as I used to.

Whatever. Truth was, I was a fucking Sergeant again. Like it or lump it. And lumping it wasn't an option. I was responsible for my men.

Hills, rising clear of the water. The Chinook wove between them.

"There it is," Hendry called out.

A road came up out of the water. There was low ground on either side of it, flooded and overflowing it. The top storey of a large white house stuck up above it to the right, and ahead of that a tall chimney and the upper story of what I guessed to be a converted mill. On the left were only the tops of trees.

"Barley Road," said Tidyman. "The village should be dead ahead."

And it was, perched on the edge of the floodland, where the road branched off into a Y-junction. The one on the left led higher up the neighbouring fell; the one on the right led through a short row of houses before curving off into the distance.

"That's Barley, there," Tidyman said. "Stiles' last known location."

One street. A pub. Fields. Meadows. Farm buildings further out, as the ground rose, sloping steadily up towards a big, wide hill like the fin of the biggest fucking shark in the known universe. For a second, it looked like a huge wave coming in at us.

I got a good long look at it, as the Chinook wheeled about.

"Pendle Hill," said Tidyman.

Cannock took us over the village, found a flattish field on the lower slopes, began to descend. The grass flattened out from the downdraft.

"Sarge?" Chas Nixon waved me over to his porthole.

I looked. A dozen stick figures were clambering over the drystone walls and into the field. They didn't have the staggery, drunken walk of the nightmares in the video. That was a plus. On the other hand, they were all holding shotguns and rifles.

"This could get interesting," I murmured at last.

"You're not wrong, Jock," Chas murmured back.

"Sergeant to you," I murmured back, "grotbag."