World War Moo (26 page)

“You mean we've evolved?”

“No. People always confuse evolution with civilization. The structure of our brains hasn't changed in thousands of years, but the way society developed forced us to cooperate, to learn to control these primal desires that still lurk inside us. This virus brings these desires to the fore again. But it doesn't have to be that way. When I felt those bestial urges, I chose to be human. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. Now, I mean to help people make that choice, too. That's what we're doing here. Even if I didn't have the virus, I would stay. It's the right thing to do.”

She hasn't changed so much
, Geldof thought.
Still fighting for a cause
.

“This is why I was so shitty to you,” he said. “I never hated you. I just hated that you were so strong and I was so weak. I was never as committed or as driven as you and I took all kinds of crap from bullies at school because I wasn't strong enough. I should've tried to be more like you.”

Fanny took his shoulders. “I wasn't strong. I was arrogant. I was a self-righteous, hectoring stereotype. Deep down, I even knew the hemp was causing your rash. And I still made you wear it, because I thought it was the ethical choice, that suffering would build character. I thought I was opening up your horizons, when I was really narrowing your beliefs to match my own. I should've let you find your own way.”

Looking at the aching regret in his mum's eyes, Geldof knew what he must do. It was funny that after all those years of her forcing her beliefs down his throat, it took the opposite approach to convince him. He was acutely aware of how immature he'd been. Everything he'd done was a reaction to outside pressures rather than a result of looking within.

“I'm staying,” he said.

“No,” she said. “You can't.”

“I want to help. I want us to be a family again.”

“And I want that, too. But I can't let you stay. It's too dangerous.”

“Just thirty seconds ago you said you should have let me find my own way. Well, I've found my way. All I did in Croatia was watch television. And your dad was pressuring me to get into the business. He wants me to take over.”

Fanny looked horrified, and for a moment he thought she was about to launch into a diatribe about fair trade, ethical treatment of workers, and the evils of international corporations. Instead, that old stubborn look, distorted by the scars but still recognizable, crossed her face. “It doesn't matter. You can't stay here. I forbid it.”

His grandfather's words about idealizing the dead came back to him, as did the tight knot of anger in his stomach he'd nursed, like a stillborn evil child poisoning his blood, for most of his teenage years. “You forbid me? You're just the same as you ever were.”

He got up to storm off, with no clear idea to where he would storm off.

“I'm sorry,” Fanny said softly. “You're right, I shouldn't be forbidding you from doing anything. But try to understand: you're my son, all that's left of my family, and I love you. If you don't leave, you could die. I couldn't face that.”

Geldof stopped as the pain in her voice disarmed his anger. He was behaving like a petulant teenager again. Well, this time he wouldn't let it happen. They would talk about this like adults. He would make her understand. “And you're my mum. I can't face losing you again. If I go, that's what would happen.”

“We could Skype.”

“I don't want to be your Skype buddy. Listen, you always wanted me to fight for something. Here I am, ready to fight. By your side. And don't forget that I'm the one paying those men. If I tell them to go without me, they'll go. So you don't really have any choice.”

Fanny looked at him for a long time. Finally, a small smile turned up the corner of her scarred mouth. “You've grown up so much. I still want you to go, even though it would break my heart. But if you really want to stay, I won't stand in your way.”

That was easy
, he thought.

He hugged her again. This time she showed no signs of wanting to rip his head off. They had a whole new relationship to build from the ashes of their old one, and, although he knew there would be problems ahead, he felt the swell of optimism that only the hope of a new future could bring—which, he supposed, was a bit ironic considering he'd committed to living in a country in which he occupied the same position as plankton in the food chain.

They sat close together for a while, looking across the water to the hills shrouded in mist. “I wish Dad was here,” Geldof said.

“He would've loved it, the dope at least. He probably wouldn't have been too happy about us eating all the squirrels.”

“Hold on. You're eating meat?”

Fanny shrugged. “Somehow being a vegan just didn't have the same appeal any longer. Plus there's no tofu in the shops.”

In Geldof's opinion, judging from the fleeting look of loathing that had crossed her face when she talked about the pigs, there was an element of revenge in his mum's new diet. He kept his opinion to himself, just happy that she wouldn't try to stop him from eating whatever dead animals were on the go. Nor did he confess to having given up the vegan lifestyle at the first opportunity. It would have seemed disloyal. He would just eat whatever they laid in front of him that evening.

Now that the important matters were out of the way, he turned his mind to something that he'd been itching to ask. “Who's that girl? The one that told me to give you some space.”

“Now we get to the real reason you want to stay. She's only been here a week. She's immune.”

“What's she like?”

“Tough as nails. Do you want me to put in a good word for you?”

Geldof blushed. “No. She's way out of my league.”

Not to mention that her first impression was my admitting I'm a wanker
, he thought.

“Don't be so sure,” Fanny said. “From where I'm sitting, you look pretty handsome.”

*   *   *

They talked for another hour, Fanny explaining about the camp, how they resisted the violent tug of the virus through meditation, visualization, dope smoking, and sexual release. She also promised to induct Geldof with daily lessons in combat yoga and hunting. Once they were done talking, they walked back to Scholzy to tell him about Geldof's decision to remain. Geldof intended to send his grandfather an e-mail informing him that he would have to find somebody suitably evil to run the company in his stead and instructing him to pay the rest of the mercenaries' fee. When he approached, the mercenaries were in deep discussion. They broke off as Geldof approached. Scholzy's cheeks were pinched and his lips set into a grim slash.

“I'm staying,” Geldof said.

“You're not the only one,” Scholzy said. “Fucking Sergei's got himself fired. He helped himself to the rest of his vodka flask on the way back and thought it would be funny to land his helicopter on a truck.”

“You must have a backup plan, right?”

“Wrong. It was hard enough coming up with this one.”

“So how are you going to get out?”

“That's a very good question,” Scholzy said. He nodded at Fanny, who was standing nearby. “Can these people be trusted?”

“Yes,” Geldof said without hesitation.

“What about the animals?” Scholzy asked, addressing Fanny. “Are we going to be attacked every five minutes?”

“Unlikely,” Fanny said. “We've eaten everything in a radius of about a mile. We have to go farther out to hunt every day.”

“Then we'll stay here for a few days while we figure out what the hell we're going to do.”

*   *   *

After the sun set, the commune gathered to eat in the living room of one of the houses. Fanny served up a delicious-smelling casserole of potatoes, carrots, and wildcat. Geldof was banned from touching it. Salivating, he tried to protest that cooking the animal would surely have killed the virus, but nobody would listen. He reluctantly accepted they had a point. He felt a woozy sense of unreality as he sat, chewing on a meat-free version of the dish, and watched Fanny wolf down the flesh she'd once so vehemently rejected.

The mercenaries didn't join them. They'd set up their own separate camp on a rocky outcrop, chewing on their rations beneath a canvas sheet and warming their hands over a fire set in the middle of their ring of tents. The bikes were parked in a protective semicircle around them, and the lake guarded their backs, but looking at them through the window he could sense their watchfulness. He didn't blame them. Just about everything that could go wrong had, and then some, and they didn't know his mum as he did. If she said everything was fine, then it was.

Fanny, clearly with his inquiry about Ruan in mind, had sat him down next to the girl. It took him five minutes to speak to her. It wasn't that he was trying to formulate an opening gambit to impress her, for he'd meant it when he said she was out of his league and figured that there was no point trying. She didn't give the impression of wanting to talk, keeping her body angled away from him. Still, he found it a struggle not to keep looking at her and decided that not attempting to strike up a conversation would seem creepy. He waited until she shifted slightly in his direction and stuck out his hand. “I'm Geldof.”

She gave what seemed like a tired sigh, before taking his hand. “Ruan.”

The physical contact left him flustered, which had a lot to do with the idiotic pronouncement he made next. “So we both have daft names then.”

“What's daft about my name?” she said, her eyes narrowing.

Wincing, Geldof tried to retrieve the situation. “Sorry, I didn't mean … I just meant to say we have unusual names.”

“Ruan is the name of the village in Ireland my father came from. It's a perfectly reasonable name. I do agree that your name is bloody stupid, though.”

Still a hit with the ladies
, Geldof thought, but kept plugging away. “You can blame my mum for that one.”

“Why'd she call you Geldof?”

“Big thing for Bob Geldof.”

“Mine had a thing for Noel Edmonds.”

“At least she didn't call you Noel.”

“Well, names apart, your mum is an amazing woman.”

“Yes, she is. I'm surprised, to be honest. She never used to be like this.”

Ruan half-smiled. “I figured that. I saw her on television once, at that rally against Trident.”

“God, the naked incident. That wasn't at all out of character.”

“What do you mean?”

“She used to walk around the house in the buff and try to get me to do the same. Among other things, she believed getting air to your bits helped ward off infections.”

“That must have been awful,” Ruan said, turning her body toward him.

In the past, he'd refused to talk about Fanny, sometimes even telling people he was an orphan—something he bitterly regretted in the months he believed this had come to pass. However, Ruan was clearly interested in her and he saw it as a way to strike up some kind of rapport. “Oh, that's just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg.”

They talked all through dinner and remained at the table after the others had adjourned to the pier to pass joints around a roaring fire. Ruan's closed demeanor faded as she chortled at Fanny's many and varied embarrassing former peccadillos. At one point, he tried to steer the conversation around to Ruan by asking about her parents. She looked down at the table, not responding and blinking her eyes rapidly. He took the hint and went back to the subject of his mum.

Finally, Ruan began to yawn and Geldof's mouth ran away with him again. “Do you want to go to bed?”

Ruan's eyebrow shot up.

“I didn't mean with me,” he said, hoping the dim light would hide the traitorous blood that rushed to his cheeks—an uncontrollable process he hoped would disappear as he got older. “I just meant I don't mind stopping if you're tired.”

It was hard to read her expression, but he had a feeling that surprise flickered across her face as she responded, “That's okay. I'm enjoying myself.”

“Then let me tell you about the time a lion almost ate us when she chained us to its cage at Glasgow Zoo,” Geldof said, suppressing a smile.

“You've got to be joking,” Ruan said.

As they talked on, Geldof glanced out toward the pier and felt a rush of love at the sight of Fanny holding court, the heads of her followers bobbing along to her words. Only one person wasn't paying attention: a young boy who sat outside the circle. It was too dark to make out his expression, but he appeared to be staring at Ruan and Geldof. From the way he was gripping his legs, it seemed something was bothering him.

He's jealous
, Geldof thought happily.

He'd never had another boy envy his prowess with the ladies before. It was something he could get used to.

 

21

The Pillared Room at Ten Downing Street certainly lived up to its grand name. A glittering chandelier dangled from the ceiling, a decorative fireplace spoke of hushed late-night discussions before the hypnotic crackle of flames, ornate gold-legged chairs and sofas with plush upholstery dotted the shining floor, and the gold pillars after which the room was named stretched upward in the corners. So many great leaders had cloistered themselves away in here, making decisions that would affect the lives of millions. Tony knew he wouldn't go down in history as one of those men and women. Considering he would soon threaten to spunk off a missile filled with infected blood, he was more likely to fall into the Hitler, Khan, and Ming the Merciless camp after all. He may as well have kept the moustache.

After his trip through London and a spectacular hour spent with Margot while Vanessa was dumped in front of the television, he again asked himself how far he would be prepared to go to protect those he loved and those he led. God knows he didn't want to fire the missile, but what if it really was the only option? He dropped his head and drew in a deep breath. His nostrils filled with the scent of Margot, still clinging to his skin after their snatched lovemaking. He nodded softly. Nobody could ever be sure in a hypothetical situation, but he believed he could do it. He'd told Archangel it was wrong, but he was pretty sure he could justify it to himself. Archangel wanted the virus out there to kill people. If Tony fired the missile it would be to save lives. It wasn't as if it hadn't been done before. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were let loose in the name of ending the war early and thus preserving life. He shifted in his chair, trying not to dwell on the counterargument that the equation would be skewed the wrong way this time: more people would die than would be saved. It all came back to a more important equation: how many strangers' deaths was the life of a loved one worth? He thought of Amira quoting Stalin and got his answer. The death of his wife and daughter would be a tragedy; everybody else, no matter how many, was just a statistic.