Apocalypse Cow (40 page)

Brown, as it turned out, was the canary in the cage. Details of what happened in the weeks after they fled were sketchy: Britain had supplanted Somalia as the place no journalist wanted to go to; and the embattled authorities had ensured that even when the power came back on, mobile communications and the internet were not restored. All they knew was the disease had spread through the population like wildfire.

The camps turned into slaughterhouses as the infection spread and people turned on each other. There were reports of soldiers pouring bullets into hordes of murderous refugees until they were ripped to shreds. Those who emerged alive were infected and set off to rape, maim and kill their way around the country. Soon enough, the British authorities jumped ship. The mainland was ring-fenced by warships and aircraft instructed to blow anyone who tried to leave to smithereens.

And try to leave they did. First they came in small boats, which were picked off by helicopters. Next came a ferry, stowed to the gunwales with infected passengers. A NATO warship put three shells through its bows. After that came planes, four in a
week
. The first craft, a small private jet, struck out across the English Channel and was shot down before it reached France. Next was a Boeing 747, obliterated over the Atlantic. The last two, both commercial airliners, were destroyed before they even left the runway at Heathrow. No more planes left after that: NATO carpet-bombed every airfield in Britain.

Even then, the onslaught continued: the infected tried their luck in paragliders and canoes, they swam and tried to walk through the Chunnel (which had now been concreted over and fitted with remote-controlled flame-throwers and automatic weapons). It seemed it would only be a matter of time before one of the infected got out. There were growing calls to fire-bomb, or even nuke, Britain. While the British government-in-exile used its veto in the United Nations Security Council to stop this option, people agreed drastic action was inevitable, particularly since teams of scientists working around the clock had come no closer to producing either cure or vaccine.

And then, out of the blue, a group calling itself BRIT (Britons for the Rights of the InfecTed) contacted CNN. The group had one very simple demand: don’t kill us. The infected were organizing themselves, restoring order, getting infrastructure up and running, the group said, and only wanted to be left to live in peace.

That had been two days ago. Now, Geldof was forcing himself to undergo the strenuous activity of sitting up because a live debate was about to take place between former Labour politician Tony Campbell, now the leader of BRIT and self-proclaimed Prime Minister of the infected nation, and Lesley, who had become the world’s leading authority on the virus, despite the fact she knew absolutely zero about virology.

‘Are you coming to watch this?’ he called through to the kitchen.

Mary didn’t respond and he didn’t push the point; she tried whenever possible to avoid anything that would remind her of what had happened to her boys.

Geldof perked up when Tony Campbell came on screen. There had been a lot of debate about how he would look: would he be a twitching bag of rage with drool-slicked lips or a sorry, half-decayed excuse for a human being? At first glance, he appeared to be neither. Tony was an average-looking man of West Indian descent, with a high forehead, close-cropped hair and a moustache he plucked at as he was introduced. Upon closer inspection, the signs of the virus were visible. His face was covered in dark blotches, like pools of deep water in the coastal shallows. There were sores, covered with make-up but visible to those who knew what they were looking for. The whites of his eyes were no longer white – they were a strange mustard colour – and he was holding a handkerchief, which he used to catch a huge sneeze.

The camera cut to Lesley. The last time Geldof had seen her and Terry had been six weeks ago, just before he moved to Croatia. They had shacked up in a little apartment in the centre of Paris. Terry had stuck to his vow to become vegetarian and had given up his Old Spice habit. From the smug aura Lesley had developed, it was clear the new life was agreeing with her. She was introduced as the heroic journalist who had led a band of unfortunates out of Britain – a growing myth that didn’t bother Geldof – and author of the non-fiction book
Apocalypse Cow: Escape from the Cursed Isle
, available in the shops soon, priced at €19.99.

‘I’m going to come to you first, Tony,’ the presenter, a
middle-aged
British woman with dyed black hair, said as the shot cut to a split-screen view. ‘Let’s be absolutely clear. You are infected?’

‘Yes, Naomi, I am. And as you can see, I am perfectly rational.’ He spread his hands. ‘I want to get straight to the point. We are all aware of the debate about what should be done with the infected, as we have been dubbed. I think it is scandalous that governments are countenancing doomsday solutions. We are still people. People with a horrendous illness, but people nonetheless, who need your help, not your hatred.’

‘Surely you must accept it’s very difficult for us to empathize with you?’ Naomi asked. ‘You do appear to want to rape and eat the rest of humanity.’

‘I’m going to have to correct you. The virus wants to do that, not us. You can’t blame the sufferer for his illness. We are victims and want this out of our systems. You don’t know how it feels to look at someone and have this irresistible urge to tear into their flesh, bury your teeth in their neck, drink their blood, to …’

Tony tailed off and lowered his hands, which had twisted into claws while he spoke. He took several deep breaths. ‘I repeat, we are people. I go home to my wife and three-year-old daughter each evening, both of whom are infected. I tuck my girl into bed, read her a story and then pray I won’t wake up in the middle of the night with bombs falling.’

He fell silent.

‘So what do you want?’ Naomi asked.

‘The right to live peacefully, here in Britain, until a cure is found. And I want to stress Britain is now peaceful. Everyone is infected, so there is no more unpleasantness. We accept there must be quarantine for the moment. All we ask is that you don’t write us off.’

‘Let me bring you in here, Lesley,’ the presenter said. ‘Do you buy this argument?’

Lesley looked directly into the lens with the practised ease of someone who spends a lot of time on camera. ‘It’s clear Tony was a politician in his earlier life. He presents a compelling argument. But he’s glossing over the full horror of this virus. He said there is peace because everyone is infected. What he should have said is: “infected or dead”. I wonder how many people Tony himself killed? He certainly alluded to it earlier. Let’s look at the reality: CNN hasn’t been able to send its own camera crew over there, because we all know what would happen as soon as they set foot in Britain. Are we to believe this problem can be contained by ignoring it, as Tony suggests?’

‘We’re doing our best to contain our new …’ Tony paused, searching for the right word, then licked his lips, ‘… appetites.’

Lesley raised a controlled eyebrow. ‘Contain your appetites? Can I point out that boats full of sex-crazed infected constantly attempt to cross the English Channel and Irish Sea? That NATO jets have had to shoot down airliners, once again full of infected, heading for the US? What were they planning on doing? Having a beach holiday in Florida? Or disembowelling anybody who crossed their path? It’s a miracle the disease has remained contained. If we can’t develop a cure soon, I don’t see any other option than fire-bombing Britain and taking out all of these zombies.’

‘Do NOT use the Z-word!’ Tony yelled into the camera.

He pinched the bridge of his nose hard, calmed his breathing again and spoke in measured tones. ‘We find it just as offensive as “mong”, or “cripple”. We are sick, that’s all. Look, I admit there is a rogue element, which we are trying to control. Lesley, do you understand the full import of what you are
suggesting
? You’re talking about genocide, wiping out millions of men, women and children. That’s worse than the Holocaust, Nagasaki and Hiroshima put together.’

‘I know it’s a horrific thing to suggest, and I take no pleasure in it. But how many would die if the virus got out? Hundreds of millions, maybe billions. And then everyone would have the virus.’

‘Would everyone having the virus be such a bad thing? If we all had it, there would be no need for violence.’

Lesley shook her head. ‘Your solution is to infect everyone? That’s insane. We still have no idea if this virus is going to kill people. It could wipe out the whole world.’

‘I’m still alive, aren’t I?’

‘Yes, and despite the make-up you are wearing, you are clearly very ill.’

Tony fiddled about off-camera and held a picture up to the screen. It showed a smiling little girl, her skin the colour of coffee, hair a mass of loose curls. ‘This is my daughter. I want you to look at her very closely. She is infected. This is who you are talking about killing.’

‘He does have a point,’ Naomi interjected. ‘We would be slaughtering innocents.’

Lesley looked unsure of herself. She looked off-camera, tugged at her earlobe, then nodded. When she returned face-on, her features were set. ‘Tony, I want to ask you something, and I want you to answer honestly. If we were holding this discussion physically in the same room, what would you do?’

He lowered the picture and looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think getting into hypothetical situations is—’

Lesley cut across him. ‘If Naomi and I were sitting in your living room talking with you and your family, what would you
do
? What would your cute little daughter do? Imagine Naomi and I are sitting beside you. You can smell our skin, our uninfected flesh, so clean and untainted.’

Tony bowed his head, his chest rising and falling rapidly.

Lesley’s voice was soft and seductive as she continued. ‘We’re just inches away, you can feel the warmth of our bodies, see the pulse beating in our necks, pushing the hot blood through—’

‘I’d fuck your brains out, you smart-arse bitch,’ Tony screamed, lifting his head. His eyes were bulging, his mouth twisted. ‘I’d rip out your entrails and chew out your eyeballs and sink my fingers into your brain and … and …’

He paused, closing his eyes and taking a deep, shuddering breath. Naomi had leaned back in her chair, her chin drooping unprofessionally. Lesley remained expressionless.

‘Shit, shit, shit,’ Tony said, banging his fist against the side of his head. ‘I thought I could do this.’

Suddenly he leaned right into the camera. The sores were more obvious close up, little mini volcanoes bubbling up pus. His facial muscles writhed and his yellow eyes were unblinking. ‘Sod it, now you know.’

He grinned. Geldof realized it was the first time in the entire debate he had opened his mouth wide. Up to this point he had spoken through compressed lips. His teeth were pointy, almost as though they had been sharpened.

‘If you’re going to bomb us, you’d better do it fast,’ Tony said in a sing-song voice. ‘Because we’re coming. And, Lesley: I’m coming for you, personally.’

The camera went dead, leaving a blank rectangle in the left corner of the screen. Naomi’s chin was still in thrall to gravity.

‘We have to bomb them,’ Lesley, whose calm demeanour had also vanished, said in a shaky voice. ‘Right now.’

Geldof turned off the television and stared at his chubby reflection in the blank screen. He started when he saw a figure standing behind him. It was Mary, who must have silently emerged from the kitchen to watch the show.

‘Pretty shocking, eh? A politician who actually says what’s on his mind,’ he said.

It was a weak joke, but he couldn’t bear the way Mary’s face was folding in on itself as the horror of what they had experienced returned. She attempted to smile, probably more for his benefit than anything else, but her facial muscles refused to cooperate beyond a slight lift of her upper lip.

‘You don’t think they’ll get out, do you?’ she asked.

He got to his feet and walked over to the patio. The sea stretched before him, sunlight glittering off small waves kicked up by a couple of fishing boats chugging back to port. Off in the hazy blue distance, a cruise liner appeared as little more than a speck. Geldof thought of the many boats that had set out to leave the cursed isle that had once been Britain. He suppressed a shiver and forced himself to smile.

‘No,’ he told Mary. ‘Of course not.’

Mary smiled back wanly and returned to the kitchen.

He turned suddenly, and padded across the cool tiled floor in his bare feet to sit in front of the laptop. He opened a Google search page and, after a quick glance in the direction of the kitchen, typed in, ‘Remote uninhabited islands’. He tapped the side of the keyboard, then edited his search to, ‘Remote islands impregnable to zombie attack, also populated exclusively by horny women’.

The search engine trawled up only thirty-eight results, none of them adverts offering a rental opportunity on such an island.

He sighed and turned his attention back to the endless
expanse
of water. It would only take one small boat – a catamaran, a canoe, whatever – to slip through the patrols and pitch up on the shores of France, Belgium, Holland or maybe even Croatia, if the tides were right and the naval blockade around other countries too firm. What would happen next did not bear thinking about.

Wherever they landed, and Geldof knew it was only a matter of time before they did, one thing was certain: he was going to need a plan.