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by Ed O'Loughlin, Ed O''Loughlin

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

Flora is a plucky teenage girl. Cobra is a double agent. Flint Driscoll is a reporter. Captain Smith is a military man. Moon is a bored drone pilot. Daddy Jesus is an inflictor of pain. They were never expected to meet, except for one farcical war . . .

Release date: March 31, 2011

Publisher: RiverRun

Print pages: 229

Sample

The contact was first picked up by the radar girls, shortly before dawn, when it was still too dark and foggy to see anything much from the wall. Alerted by the beeping in their earphones, they watched as the contact appeared on the fringe of the free-fire zone, a ghostly green blob on their ground radar, condensed from the shimmering haze of the trees.

It was mid-winter, and the night was beginning to fade into day. Yet the exact time at which the target was acquired is, curiously, not recorded. Afterwards, when technicians checked the logs for that watch, they found that key data streams were unaccountably missing. This caused quite a stir, in certain rarefied circles – the tactical computer is supposed to record everything, every contact, every fire order. The question was thus left forever unanswered: why was this contact allowed to get so far?

Deep in their bunker, the radar girls watched the blob move into the free-fire zone. It acquired confirmed mass there, tripping seismic sensors beneath the bulldozed ground, which in turn alerted the drone control room, just down the corridor from the radar girls. A small piston engine grumbled slowly up the sky, unseen, as the first armed drone moved into position overhead. A shepherd’s dog barked somewhere off to the south, a kilometre or so into the misty Embargoed Zone.

The first visual sighting of the target was made at or around 06.25. Notified of the threat by the tactical computer network, the sentries in watchtower Lilac Three glimpsed movement out in the free-fire zone. Through their night-goggles they were able to make a visual identification, which they duly fed back to the computer: barnyard animal, medium-sized, probably a donkey.

The animal advanced a few paces more – head up, sniffing the air – towards the tower Lilac Three, observed by its sentries through blast-proof glass windows. The donkey was grey, as is usual, and two straw panniers were slung across its back. The panniers jogged heavily whenever it moved.

A proximity alarm jangled in the tower. The two young soldiers looked into each other’s faces, then fumbled open their firing ports. They readied their weapons – the click of a rifle bolt, clack-clack of a machine gun’s cocking handle – and waited for the order to fire: the contact was already well inside the minimum distance at which the tactical computer is automandated to initiate lethal force against all suspect individuals or objects. Hunched over their weapons, the sentries shook their heads and flexed their shoulders, working to steady their breathing, leaning into their aim. Yet still the fire order did not come.

The donkey moved forward again until it was only twenty metres from the wall. It lowered its head, nosed the dirt, then raised its head again. A stubby butt of carrot protruded from its jaws. For the first time now it seemed to notice the wall, eight metres of concrete looming bleakly above it. Grass and weeds grew thick and long in a narrow strip along the wall’s foot which the bulldozers could not plough, watered by the dew which trickled down the concrete. Still chewing, the donkey considered this unexpected feast, then moved towards it: it was now so close that the sentries could hear its teeth crunch on the carrot.

The donkey swallowed its treat, eyes half-closed in pleasure, then stooped to sniff at the fresh weeds along the base of the wall, its tail swishing at the first flies of day. Curling its lips to bare its teeth, it stripped the leaves from a stem of bindweed, chewed and swallowed. It swished its tail again and snorted contentedly, then made a half-turn to the east, spread its front hooves, extended its neck and brayed in thanks and praise to the rising sun.

And then it exploded, vanishing in a splash of violet light and a gut-heaving shock wave.

Sand and gravel lashed the watchtower, pitting the blast panes and jetting through the firing ports, scouring the night goggles of the two stunned sentries.

Sirens went off in guardrooms and watchtowers all along the wall. Boots thundered on metal catwalks, fire-ports creaked open. Grenade-launchers boomed and trees fragmented. Unmanned machine gun turrets, controlled by the computer, swivelled peevishly on their servo-mounts, chattering like monkeys. A tank bumbled up onto a dirt ramp set back behind the wall, traversed its main gun and destroyed one of the few intact water tanks left in the northern Embargoed Zone. The sentries in Lilac Three picked themselves off the floor, trembling, temporarily blinded, ears ringing, unable to hear the ‘open fire’ alarm which now blared from their computer terminal. And off to the south, as if on cue, the first terrorist rocket of the day rose up from the ground. Most probably on cue.

The rocket’s exhaust fumes marked its trajectory, upwards and over, a white question mark in the pale morning sky. It soared over the long snaking wall and its canine-tooth watchtowers, over the rat-shack sprawl of the army base beyond the wall, over the straggling lines of the tank park. The rocket flew on, over the highway, the agricultural fields, the outskirts of the quiet little town whose peaceful citizens were still in their beds, and then its engine cut and its nose turned decisively downwards again, into the blare of the one-minute warning, gravity reeling it homeward, plunging ahead of its sound-wave. It fell onto a school’s football pitch, ten feet from the corner flag, and exploded there, showering clods of smoking earth as far as the penalty box.

Machine guns stammered the length of the wall, harrowing the scrub on the edge of the free-fire zone. Overhead, the loitering drone changed course towards the orchard from which the rocket had been launched. Fifteen kilometres to the east, six artillery pieces barked in succession, firing on the rocket’s radar trace, and seconds later the orchard vanished beneath a chorus-line of dancing light and earth and splinters. Fighter-bombers thundered in from the sea, rapid response teams piled into tanks and armoured personnel carriers, starting their engines, waiting for orders. And back where it had all started, in the base of watchtower Lilac Three, a small metal door creaked timidly open.

The door was made of six-inch-thick steel plate, painted gunmetal grey. It wavered on its hinges, and then a rifle barrel appeared around it, followed by a helmet.

From underneath the helmet, worried eyes considered the fruit trees, three hundred metres away across the track-churned dirt of the free-fire zone. Then they turned to look at the Rorschach blot of blood and crushed bone and offal which glistened on the otherwise unmarked surface of the wall. Beneath this viscous stain, mirroring it, was a crater full of gore and pulverized tissue, marking the spot where the donkey had dematerialized. It looked as if someone had folded the wall and the ground together, pressing the donkey between them like an insect in a book. Flies were buzzing loudly. There was a churning stench of blood and stomach contents, burnt meat and half-burnt chemicals.

The eyes’ owner made a retching sound. ‘I think I’m going to be sick,’ he told someone behind him. ‘This is horrible.’

He pushed his helmet back to wipe the sweat from his eyes, then winced as his chinstrap bit a rash of angry spots, relics of a shave two days before. Raising his rifle, the young soldier squinted at the tree-line through its optical sight.

‘Hey, David,’ he called. ‘Aren’t you going to cover me?’

A machine gun barrel emerged from the top of the tower. The barrel wavered back and forth a few times on its bipod then tipped towards the sky, crisscrossed now with the contrails of jet fighters.

‘I am covering you!’ said a voice from the firing port behind the barrel. ‘Now stop wasting time, Johnny! Get out there and inspect the scene of the atrocity!’

Still braced in the shelter of the doorway, Johnny glared up inside the tower. ‘Why don’t you go?’

‘Because I’m senior. I have to stay here at the post.’

‘But we’re both the same rank!’

David sighed. ‘I’m still senior to you. Besides, that Daddy Jesus guy put me in charge when he posted us here last night. Remember him, Johnny? Do you want me to call Daddy Jesus and get him to explain it to you again?’

Johnny thought of the leering monster which had materialized in their billet in the dead hours, reaching under their blankets with huge, lingering paws. He shuddered, took a step towards the mangled remains of the donkey, then ducked back inside as two huge explosions shook the ground to the south. The air force was engaging the Embargoed Zone from 20,000 feet.

‘I really don’t think I should be exposed out here alone like this, David,’ he complained. ‘I’m pretty sure I read something about that in the standing orders, or somewhere … There could be snipers, or something, in that tree-line.’

Steel brackets, set into the concrete, formed a ladder up the inner wall of the tower’s tubular stem. Leaning backwards, Johnny peered up through the hatch which gave access to the firing platform, twenty feet above. He could just make out David’s left buttock, braced against the wall above the hatch. A black leather prayer book protruded from its pocket. ‘Grow up, Johnny,’ said David. ‘Just do the job, okay?’

Johnny stepped clear of the door again, squinting at the scrubby tree-line through his sights. Moving sideways in a half-crouch he made his way quickly to the edge of the gore-pool, then lowered his weapon and studied it.

‘Poor little donkey,’ he muttered, and shook his head. A thought struck him, and he turned to the tower and shouted: ‘Hey, David. Did we do this?’

David’s face popped out through the firing port. It was round and freckled, with angry red eyebrows subverted by anxious blue eyes. ‘I don’t think so. I think the donkey just exploded.’

Johnny pushed his helmet back, slowly this time, so as not to trouble his spots again. ‘Really? … Wow … Whoever heard of an exploding donkey?’

‘Are you serious? … Everybody has, Johnny. This is something like the third bomb-donkey attack from the Embargoed Zone this month! Don’t you read the terror alerts?’

Johnny slung his rifle and stepped closer to the curdled soup of blood and organs. His stomach was steadier now. It occurred to him that he was standing with his boots on the ground, exposed to a hostile tree-line, on a genuine combat mission, inside the Embargoed Zone! He felt himself grow taller. With the toe of one boot, with elaborate unconcern, he nudged a gelatinous blob that might once have been a hoof.

‘Hey Johnny,’ David called again. ‘Can you see any sign of the mechanism?’

Johnny didn’t bother to look around. ‘What mechanism?’

‘You know, for detonating the bomb … I saw this documentary on Discovery about how they always try to find the bomb’s mechanism. That way they can work out who made it.’

Johnny chuckled. ‘David, I think we already know who made this bomb. I think we’re definitely looking at the work of terrorists here …’

He turned away from the wall and stared back towards the tree-line. ‘Wait a minute, though – there is a wire! Leading back into those trees!’

David stuck his head all the way out of the tower. ‘A wire? That doesn’t make sense … They’re supposed to use cell phones to set off bombs. That’s what it said on Discovery.’

Johnny shook his head pityingly. ‘This isn’t TV or the internet, Davy boy. This is for real. This is war.’

And as if to underline his point another salvo of shells slammed into the shattered orchard, making the earth tremble beneath Johnny’s feet. David’s head jerked back inside the watchtower. He said nothing for a few moments, and then his machine gun yammered into life.

Johnny hurled himself face-down as steel-clad slugs zipped over his head and thumped into the free-fire zone. He was still trying to squirm into the dirt when the firing stopped. Slowly, carefully, he lifted his head, to see a cloud of dust hanging in the air thirty metres beyond him, where David’s bullets had chewed up the soil.

‘You bastard!’ screamed Johnny. ‘What the hell were you shooting at?’

The smoking barrel disappeared from the firing port and was replaced by David’s face. ‘Uh … Sorry about that … It just occurred to me that all the other towers have been shooting off their weapons ever since that donkey blew up. If we don’t fire off some ammo ourselves, people will think we chickened out, just because we were the closest ones to the attack.’

Johnny rose to his feet and unslung his rifle. He put it to his shoulder, switched the selector to full automatic, aimed at the pool of gore in front of him, and emptied the magazine. Blood and dirt and gristle spouted into the air, until the bolt locked to the rear of an empty receiver.

There was a moment of ringing silence and then David spoke again.

‘You’re sick,’ he declared flatly.

Johnny changed his magazine, watching a large blob of fat and nodules slide down the wall.

‘Hey. You know what would be really funny?’ he said, brightening. ‘I should put my tag on this!’

‘No!’ yelped David, but Johnny was already rummaging in a webbing pouch. He took out a small can of spray paint.

‘Don’t do it!’ David protested, as Johnny stepped up to the wall and uncapped the aerosol. ‘Remember what happened when they caught you spraying C and TS onto the doors of those UN jeeps?’

‘They let me off with a warning. The old man thought it was funny.’

‘But defacing the wall is a really serious offence! They’ll send us both to the military prison!’

Johnny shrugged him off. ‘Don’t panic. I’m not going to put my name on it, just some kind of cool enigmatic emblem …’

He stood there for a few moments, frowning, his arms crossed high on his chest and the aerosol held to one cheek. ‘I’ve got it!’ he announced, and he began to spray. When he was finished he extracted a cell phone from his pocket and snapped a few images, including one of himself with his new creation, taken with the phone held at arm’s length.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Pretty good, eh?’

David had to lean right out of the firing port to see what Johnny had painted on the wall. ‘Nice one, Johnny!’ he jeered. ‘That’s the ace of clubs – but the ace of spades is the cool ace. Even I know that.’

Johnny whirled to face the tower, his ravaged chin jutting angrily upward. ‘This isn’t an ace of clubs, you oaf! It’s one of those Irish things – a shamrock. I saw it on that documentary the other night about prisons in Texas – all the really cool-looking prisoners had these things tattooed all over them, with lots of sick runes and stuff.’ He snorted in contempt. ‘And since when do you know what’s cool, seminary boy?’

But David had already withdrawn into the watchtower. ‘I’ll tell you what I do know, graffiti boy,’ came his muffled voice from within. ‘Captain Smith’s jeep is on its way over here. You’d better get back in here before he sees what you did to the wall!’

‘Oh shit! Is that Daddy Jesus guy with him?’

‘I can’t see – they’re still too far.’

Johnny sprinted back to the tower, slammed the door shut and bolted it behind him. Along the wall the gunfire was dying away. The jet pilots had shot their bolts and gone home again, but innumerable drones now haunted the sky. Shells were falling on the ruined apartment blocks still visible through the smoke to the south, inside the Embargoed Zone. Another terrorist rocket sighed up into the sky.



It was not the bombardment that woke Flora that morning – the shells were dropping well over a mile away, into someone else’s life – but the measured argument of rifle fire, single shots in the middle distance, dulled by the gusty wind and by streets of crumbling concrete. Turning onto her back, she stretched her arms out from under the blankets, seeing them almost brown against the bare white walls of her bedroom. The cold air pinched her skin.

The pattern of shots told her, as clear as writing, that army sniper teams had infiltrated in the night, seizing family homes to make nests on their rooftops, gouging loopholes in their walls. Down below, families were being held at gunpoint while soldiers stole or smashed their valuables and pissed on beds and floors. And where the snipers and their support teams came, the tanks and armoured infantry would shortly follow.

I should probably take in the washing, thought Flora.

She reached for the clothes which she had left folded on a stool beside her bed. Several squirms later, she emerged from the blankets wearing jeans and a blue cotton hoodie.

Passing down the apartment’s dark, ill-plastered corridor, she saw that Gabriel’s door stood open, and that her brother was gone. She hoped that he would not be drawn towards the shooting again, him and his giddy little friends.

He was not in the kitchen, either. Taking a plastic basket, Flora unlocked the back door and picked her way across the muddy yard to the clothes line. The apartment building glowered cracked and ugly above her, its concrete eaten by grime.

The washing shuddered in the wind, still wet, but she began slowly to gather it, ear cocked to the sounds from the streets. There was another sniper shot, off to the east, and resistance rifles began to answer, barking blindly from corner to corner like dogs in the night. Further east again, the bass thud of a heavy machine gun betrayed the arrival of the first tank of the day.

Flora hugged her hoodie tight about her, turned east and closed her eyes to concentrate. The wind hissed cold in her ears, stinging the back of her neck with fine grit. She pulled the hood over her long black hair and stood there motionless, eyes shut and head bowed, like a young pagan novice praying to the dawn.

Prayers answered, she opened her eyes again: the tank fire, she decided, was coming from beyond the low ridge which ran to the east of her neighbourhood, parallel with the coast. It was not, therefore, her neighbourhood’s turn to be raided today. She began pegging the washing back on the line.

Her father appeared in the black rectangle of the kitchen door, smiling uncertainly. His eyes flickered between Flora and the washing line as he tugged at his moustache. She pretended not to notice him, pegging up more washing. He cleared his throat.

‘Are those clothes still wet?’ he asked hopefully. Her back was turned to him, but she had to close her eyes before she could answer.

‘Yes.’

‘Ah,’ he said, pleased. He took a few steps into the yard and then stopped, frowning, as his slipper slid on the wet dirt. His grey trousers had once been part of a suit; their cuffs, frayed despite all Flora’s efforts at mending, dragged in the mud. He stood there puzzled, running a hand through his stiff grey hair, contemplating the ground beneath his feet, and then the wind, gusting through his cardigan, brought him back. He turned to Flora and smiled at her again.

‘If you had something wet for me I could put it in that dryer I’ve been working on, to give it a test run. I’ve just finished fixing it.’

Flora shook her head, still not looking at him. ‘There’s no electricity.’

‘No electricity?’ His lips moved, and then his brow smoothed out again. ‘Of course, of course,’ he said, and turned to the door again.

Flora found herself calling after him. ‘I can let you have something from this wash if you like … You can put it by, for when the power comes on again. They might give us some power later today, or maybe tomorrow.’

She took from the line one of her father’s shirts, tra. . .