XII - Make Your Fallout Room and Refuge Now
Another good place for a refuge is a cupboard under the stairs.
*
The Controller lifts his head and there's a three on his hand. He goes under again.
With casualties came corpses. In dealing with these, the authorities faced a gargantuan task. Newcastle alone suffered 45,000 killed within one minute of the Heddon blast - fallout and starvation meant that this figure ticked forever higher.
There was an argument that nothing should be done to dispose of the bodies - from a logistical point of view, it was sound - there was no fuel to burn the bodies, nor power bulldozers to dig mass graves. Digging by hand was seen to be a waste of manpower.
A month after the attack, though, it was resolved that something must be done about this mountain of dead if reconstruction was to take place in earnest. Apart from the sheer morale-sapping factor of the rotting eye-sockets and gurning teeth that guilted one from all directions, the situation was a hygiene disaster. These rotting bodies became hotbeds for anything from typhoid to cholera.
Please don't let me end up with them. Please don't. Please.
In some areas, bodies are simply scooped up by army bulldozer. In the outlying suburbs, many have taken the advice of the radio and left their relatives in bin-bags outside the front step. Horse-drawn carts are dispatched round these areas in order to make their collections. The drivers do not shout 'bring out your dead!', though the orders on the radio amount to much the same.
One attempt at sanitation was the 'Leazes Plan'. With almost all unscarred earth earmarked for future agriculture attempts, the Health Officer in charge of burials was told to use playing fields as impromtu graveyards. The most infamous execution of this plan occured at St. James' Park, former home of Newcastle United FC - working at night, volunteers dug with spades and bare hands until they hit bedrock. From the player's entrance, every half an hour for two days, dump trucks reversed in and unloaded. There is now no lime left in the North East Region.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh God I'm sorry I'm sorry Oh God.
Elizabeth II is found dead in her chamber - sleeping pills and red wine. She had never got over the loss of her husband.
Another attempt at clearance came using the 'grill' method, which minimised the amount of fuel needed to cremate mass casualties. The building chosen was high-rise Trinity Square Car Park in Gateshead, best known for its appearance in 1971's 'Get Carter'. For days, horse-drawn carts pile them four of five high on each floor before soldiers douse them in kerosene. A single vicar is driven up and down the car park on the back of a Land Rover, dispensing the last rites en masse.
It burns for nine days and nights.
When it is over, nothing stands but rebar - a skeleton stained black with ash.
The Royal Australian Navy destroyer Perth arrives in Portsmouth. Its captain informs the new King that her sister ship, Hobart, had been sent to the UK days after the attack; contact had been lost, however...
*
The Controller wakes up to the sun shining in through his window. He is home, between clean sheets. He runs his hands through his hair and smiles. In through the door, with a rich breakfast, comes his smiling wife. The tray on his lap as he sits up. Bacon and eggs and a nice cup of tea. Perfect. His wife is saying something - a joke perhaps.
She is speaking in Russian.
Oh god oh god o god.
The room is thrown into black-green light - there's nothing on the Controller's plate but maggots. He looks up at his wife. Bits of hair on bone, eyes burst - crying, crying, crying.
She is crying like a baby. Literally like a baby.
Wake the fuck up.
Bolt upright. The room is freezing, but the Controller is sweating like a pig. It's pitch black.
No, wait - there's an orange light on and off in the corner. A cigarette - illuminating two grey eyes and a week's stubble.
'Ah, Controller. Welcome back to the land of the living'
And a rifle.
'What...where...?'
'The Freeman. You were shot, I'm afraid - they took your arm.'
The Controller flaps his 'arms', trying to grab each other - his right slams into the bed where his left should be.
'You should be thanking me, Controller - they were ready to throw you in with the threes. Not on my watch, though - not after all you've done for your country'. The Officer spits his last words.
The Controller is trembling now, and it's not the cold - really shaking, shouting nonsense in his sweating bed.
'Cheer up, now.' - a long draw on his cigarette - 'we won.'
'Wuh...won?'
'The Great War! They got a radio message from some Lieutenant-Colonel in Vladivostok or the Urals or wherever we didn't turn to bones and dust - unconditional surrender.' Another long, long draw - 'we're all heroes.'
The Controller has tears in his eyes and he cannot move.
'Now, there' - the Officer takes a hankerchief out of his pocket and moves to wipe the Controller's face; straddles him - they are nose to nose, far too close - 'no need to be such a-' his whole face curls around the last word - 'baby.'
The Officer rolls off the bed - 'I must go, though, dear Controller. I wouldn't want to miss the dancing in the streets'
'Buhh...whaa'
'Goodbye, Controller.'
The door locks from the outside.