The television signal kicks in and we see a graphic of a red circle against a light blue background, and then the show begins. The miracle.
The broadcast is by a group who call themselves the Apostolic Church of the Rediscovered Dawn and they’re — wouldn’t you know it — American. Their leader is the creepy guy from the mural. An ancient, wizened old vampire who’s survived the plague despite being — he claims — AB Positive. He provides a demonstration, mixing his blood with O-Neg taken from two acolytes who sport the dead-eyed grins of happy cultists, then holding it up to the camera as it clumps.
The crowd in the studio Ooh and Aah, gasp and clap, then they start singing some bollocking awful gospel shit. The crowd here, though, aren’t quite so sold. I get the impression they’re just basking in the glow of the television, reminding themselves of moving pictures and cathode ray tubes. The programme is irrelevant, but watching it evokes families gathered around the national fireplace watching Big Brother or Doctor Who. Happier, simpler times.
When the song has finished, the Abbot gives a little sermon. About children. It takes a few minutes for the penny to drop, and then I remember what the snatcher had said back in the school, about saving the children’s immortal souls.
“Dear God,” I whisper, my peanuts momentarily forgotten. “They’re shipping them to America.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“AMERICA? YOU HAVE to be shitting me.”
“No, honest, man. They got planes flying out of Heathrow and everything.”
“But why?”
“New beginning. That’s what the churchies say. We’re rescuing the kids so they can go out to America and find the Promised Land or something. They’ve got it easy over there, you know.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, still got electricity and supermarkets and all that stuff. So I heard.”
“And the nukes?”
“Wiped out the political elite. Left a power vacuum that these Neo-Clergy have filled. And they’ve got everything just fucking sorted, man. Peace, love, charity, all that jazz.”
Tariq looked at me over the top of our prisoner’s head and rolled his eyes.
“Listen, pal, I don’t know where you’re getting your information but I know for a fact that America’s political elite is alive and kicking.”
“Yeah, ’course you do.”
“Saw the president himself two years back, on a live… oh. Oh, holy shit!”
“What?” asked Dad.
“What his aide said about children. Do you remember Tariq?”
“I was bit busy being shot, old chap.”
“He said, now let me get this right… ‘spied her rounding up the children’. It was the first thing I heard when I came round in Blythe’s office.”
“Well, that’s our boss, isn’t it?” said our captive. “Spider. The big man.”
“Spider? I thought he was talking about Jane. Spied her. Fuck, I’m an idiot.”
“What are you thinking, Lee?”
“Don’t you get it? That wasn’t the bloody president. That was this Abbot guy pretending to be the president. He had Blythe running round at his beck and call, trying to take control of the UK so he could use the army to round up all the children and ship them out to the States.”
“And he must have already had a guy on the ground starting the job,” says Tariq. “This Spider bloke.”
“Who’s assumed control this end now that we’ve taken the army out of the equation. The president’s aide told Blythe there was a bigger picture.”
“This isn’t a new mess at all, then,” said Dad. “It’s the same old mess.”
“But with less impaling this time around. I hope.”
“Yeah,” said our captive cheerily. “The big man prefers crucifixion.”
I clipped his ear.
“Um… I didn’t follow half of that,” said the guy who’d assumed control of the Rangers. “Can you start at the beginning?”
“Later,” snapped Dad. “First of all, this little sod’s going to give us chapter and verse on his boss’s operation. Aren’t you?”
“You betcha.”
“Smart lad.”
AN HOUR LATER we were gathered in front of a classroom whiteboard as Dad talked us through a map of London that he’d put together during the interrogation.
“These guys are well armed, very organised and disciplined,” he told us. “They’ve got a whole bunch of ex-special forces types running their operation, and they maintain a clear and functional command structure. The good news for us is that they mainly concern themselves with keeping order in London. The snatchers who operate outside the M25 are basically contractors. They’re scavengers and lowlifes who work in teams to assemble kids in a number of compounds like this one, spread around the country. Then they’re collected regularly by convoys, each of which is run by one overseer from central command who keeps them in line.
“They don’t have complete control of London. South of the river their control is pretty much absolute. There are communities there who are actually giving their kids to these bastards willingly. It’s an area of hard core zealots and converts. Pretty much entirely hostile territory.
“North of the river the picture’s less clear. It seems the population there is mostly controlled by fear and intimidation, although the battle for hearts and minds is ongoing. There’s one major pocket of resistance around Hammersmith where — Lee, you’ll like this — a gang of kids who escaped from a transport have set up a liberation army.”
I smiled. “Nice.”
“But according to our man here, there’s a major crackdown planned for next week. They’ve tried to lure them out into traps or get someone on the inside, but it’s never worked. They’re going to go in hard and wipe them out.”
“Not so nice,” murmured Tariq.
“What about their command?” asked one of the Rangers.
“This is where it gets tricky. They’ve set up home in the Palace of Westminster and turned it into a fortress. Concrete barricades, electric fences, gun towers, searchlights. They’ve even got a minefield. And this is where their boss lives. Spider.”
“What do we know about him?” I asked.
“He holds court from the Speaker’s Chair in the House of Commons, but apart from that, nothing. No one except the very top echelon get to see him. But he’s got a reputation for being utterly ruthless.”
“There’s a surprise,” I said.
“And he keeps his men happy with a brothel he’s set up in — get this — the main chamber of the House of Lords.”
“Brothel?”
“Rape camp, really, I guess. A whole bunch of young girls who are at the men’s disposal 24/7. He’s got huge stockpiles of food and booze too. If you work for him, you eat and drink your fill and fuck any time you feel like it.”
“Shit, where do I sign up?” laughed one of the Rangers until his mates gave him death stares. He muttered: “Only joking, geez.”
“Twat,” said one of his colleagues.
Silence fell as we considered the size of the task before us.
“So,” said Tariq eventually. “We invade London, fight our way past a city full of brainwashed religious cultists, take on a private army, storm a massively fortified castle that’s defended by highly motivated special forces, and kill this Spider fucker. Then we take a plane, fly to America, rescue all the kids and take down a church that effectively rules a continent.”
“That’s about the size of it,” said Dad.
Tariq sniffed dismissively. “That’s the problem with life these days. So few real challenges.”