Notes Another partial chapter. I’ll have to go away and work out what sorts of things could be made from scavenged car parts.

For all the lack of cars on the move there are still quite a few parked up. They’re rather forlorn, as so many of them haven’t moved since the oil embargo hit. No doubt some owners are waiting for the day when they can drive them again, either through conversion to bio fuel or a miraculous return of the petroleum economy. But most of them just sit there because they couldn’t be sold.

Many have flat tyres from slow punctures and they’re all taking on a patina of dust and mildew. But I haven’t seen any smashed windows. With no market for the easily stealable car accessories there’s no incentive for car crime. No doubt a few will have been burnt out, I just haven’t happened on them yet.

When an owner finally tires of their old conveyance blocking the street and gathering dust they can send it to be recycled. It will probably end up at the Trafford Centre. The big shopping centre is now a recycling centre. The acres of car park are still filled with vehicles, but if you wander the rows you’ll notice that they’re only carcasses. Each one is being stripped of useful parts and workshops in old shop units are using them to produce all manner of useful artifacts.

Notes Another partial episode. Every one of the bits I’ve posted is going to be heavily rewritten, I know, but most of them wrapped up in their first draft.

The Flower Fairies started out as geurilla gardeners, but now they’re mainstream. Their ongoing mission is to turn car parks into meadows.

The Charles Street multi storey car park is wedged between a railway viaduct and student accommodation. It’s an odd location for a farm. Most days there’s a stall by the main entrance selling herbs and eggs and mushrooms. I pick up the basis of an omelette and ask how the farm works.

Compostable material is collected and brought to the farm. Here it is stored in the basement, where there are three sections of compost in various stages of mulching. The oldest is a rich deep brown mix ready to be taken out in the spring and used with next year’s crops. The middle batch was collected last year and has been left alone since the spring. It will get a thick layer of leaves when the trees start shedding and then be left for another year. The newest section holds this year’s ongoing collection of green waste.

Come spring the oldest compost will be shifted up to the roof, or into the mushroom trays on the ground floor, to be used as super soil. The emptied section will start collecting next year’s compost. There’s not a lot of space on the top floor, relative to a proper field, so the crops are high value- herbs and leafy vegetables.

The middle two floors are given over to the chickens. Internal fences keep them off the roof, but little chicken walkways let them come and go so they can scratch for food amongst the local greenery. Nesting boxes are set up on the exit ramps so that eggs can be easily collected. Every few weeks the chicken guano is shovelled out and added to the compost mix for extra nutrition.
The Flower Fairies don’t own the multi storey building. Nor are they leasing it. But the owners haven’t, for whatever reason, tried to wrest back control.

Other Fairy projects aren’t as complicated. They started out seed bombing derelict land then moved on to pulling up cracked tarmac and concrete to see what was underneath. Before long they were ripping up whole car parks and cultivating what was revealed. There’s the occasional abandoned vehicle to be found where they’re working, but they just plant around them.

There’s a warm body on top of me, it’s arms wrapped lazily around me, as I lie on my chest. I can feel the grass tickling my cheek, hear the gunfire and shouting from elsewhere in the forest. The body sighs, and I jump with fear.

My violent twitch before I roll over shoots Sally across the bed. But it doesn’t wake her. By the time I’ve realised my panic was over a dream she’s settled into her new position and has a contented smile. The sheets have flipped back to reveal her breasts. I stroke them for a while to see if that wakes her.

She refuses to stir, but maybe I augmented her dreams. I pull the covers up to her shoulders and kiss her forehead before getting out of bed.

The nightmares aren’t a regular thing thankfully. It’s hard to tell when my subconscious is going to spit out something horrific, but I’ve been having more recently. Thankfully Sally is a heavy sleeper. Eventually she’ll wake enough to realise she has the bed to herself, but for now she’s blissfully unaware.

It’s cold out from under the covers. I pull on a few layers then wrap myself in the spare duvet that’s on the armchair. This has happened often enough that I have a laptop within reaching distance.

I’m going through the disks of photos I posted back from Europe, finding the most interesting ones for possible publication. None of them is going to match up to my Paris photo for dramatic impact, but I’m finding some interesting stuff. I’m paring down the original photos, finding the ones I like the best, and putting them into a ‘Maybe’ folder. At the rate it’s filling up I’ll probably have ten times more images than I could fit in any sensibly sized book.

I open the next folder to be rifled through. Immediately I’m confronted by the image of a dead American soldier face up in a field of oil seed rape. There’s a small ragged hole in his forehead just below the rim of his helmet and a horrible red and pulpy mess all over the bright yellow flowers behind him that had been the contents of his skull. He looks annoyed about the whole situation.

It’s not hard to see where my nightmares are coming from.

The rest of the pictures in the album put the dead soldier into context. Driving along a stereotypically French road a Stryker team had been hit by heavier weapons than they thought the locals possessed. They had been making a charge toward the next town to raid and pillage, based upon reports that it was unprotected, unaware that they had been suckered into a trap. I had been in the town when the ambush occurred, under orders to stay put and not try to head toward the fighting. But they had led me out to what was left the next morning.

There are a lot of pictures of burnt out vehicles and dead soldiers. One in particular stands out. The last vehicle in the convoy, a Stryker armoured car, tipped slightly over and slewed across the road it is framed wonderfully by the receding trees. It’s not a beautiful picture, given the subject, but it is striking. It and the dead soldier in the field go into the maybe folder.

Theres another file amongst the photos. After photographing this particular battle I’d had enough time to take down the names of the dead, at least the ones whose identification was still readable. There were websites that celebrated every American death, glorying and gloating over them, and there were others that tried to pass the information along to relatives as quickly as possible. I always sent casualty lists to the latter. Whenever I had found a victim of the conflict, from whichever side, I had tried to get a name and pass it on, working on the assumption that it was better for people to know the bad news sooner rather than later. The soldier in the oil seed rape field had been Private Leon Erren, aged 22, of Kansas. I don’t know what family he had, or how much he believed in the insane mission he died for, just the location and date of his death.

What had brought young Leon Erren from the state of Dorothy and Toto to die in a surreally yellow field in a country too many of his countrymen couldn’t find on a map? What were the stories of each of the nearly one hundred men and women killed in that ambush? Who would mourn them? At the time I didn’t dwell on those thoughts, but now I have the freedom to contemplate them. I could total up the bodies I photographed and find out how many died in my little part of the war, how many tales could be told. Then I could extrapolate, or investigate, and find out how many died in total, to put my experience in context. One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. Several million deaths? Maybe in a few years they’ll have a word for it.

There’s movement in the bed. Sally has woken enough to reach across for me and discover a warm but empty spot. She props herself up on her elbows and looks my way. She knows where I’ll be, and if she didn’t I’m lit by the laptops monitor. “Another nightmare?”

“Yeah”

“And you’re looking at those pictures again aren’t you. That’s not going to help.”

“I know. But I’ve got to go through them.”

Do I scare her when I get lost in my war memories? It would seem not, because she slides out of bed and moves quickly to stand in front of me. I have just enough time to put aside the laptop before she’s forcing her way into my duvet. I wrap it back around her as she snuggles up to me. “Are you going to publish your pictures?” she asks my chest.

“I hope so. I can write about it all, but that mightn’t be enough. Some of my pictures have already been published, and not everyone’s paid me for them, so I could assert my ownership of them as well.”

“Is it all about money and glory?”

“No. A little bit is, I guess. But it’s also about trying to make sense of what happened.”

“If that’s ever possible.” She’s pulled the duvet over her head and is nuzzling my shoulder. I recognise this as horny Sally. She’s an odd girl, but I love her. “Come back to bed.” she tells my collar bone. “I’ll take your mind off the horrible pictures.”

“You already have.” I reach down between us, find the edge of her knickers and pull them aside. Her head pops out of the duvet, surprised but grinning.

“You naughty boy.” she says, working on my trousers and shifting her position, “On the chair?”

“Absolutely.” We kiss. Sweet dreams.

Several of the figures in my bank statement don’t make sense. I trace them across several pages to confirm that they are recurring regularly.

“What’s this fee about?” I ask my new financial adviser.

He runs a finger down the debits column and nods. “That would be tax.”

“I don’t remember setting up a direct debit to the tax man.”

“You won’t have. It’s just included in your banking fees.”

“How does that work?”

“Do you remember the bail outs? You left the country after those had begun?”

“Yes. So, the government owns the banks?”

“A controlling interest. They decided it would be easier to tax people from their bank accounts than by traditional methods. Especially with all the local currencies that have started up.”

I check the numbers again. “I’ve only just found out about this and I think it can go wrong in so many ways.”

“Tell me about it. It only affects people who keep their money in a bank. So there are a lot of over stuffed mattresses out there. However, most of the local currencies are still given to volatility, and hoarding is a great way to destabilise one. So it’s in your best interests to exchange your scripts and bank them after a while.”

“I guess it’s too hard setting up a foreign bank account at the moment to make that a worthwhile tax dodge.”

“As you are finding out as you jump through the hoops to make a currency transfer from abroad. How is that going, by the way?”

“It’ll happen a lot faster when I have a confirmed British account to pay into. What are they holding it up for now?”

“They want more details of your activities during the, ah, recent unpleasantness. They may yet demand biometric data. If they do, refuse. That system was compromised before it even went live.”

“I don’t think they ever got that information off me anyway. What’s this all in aid of? Are they scared I’ll turn out to be some sort of fifth columnist?”

“They are. Or a war criminal using a stolen identity. Or a common criminal escaping from the continent. You are none of these things, I hope. It would do great harm to my reputation to be caught working for the wrong type of person.”

“I’m one of the good guys, honest.” I fact, I was co-opted as an agent of the British government during the recent unpleasantness. Of course, communication was one way and I have no idea how I could get in touch with my handlers for whatever passes as a reference. So I’m stuck in this protracted legal battle to get my own money back.

“Do they just not want to give me back my money?” I have to ask, “It’s not a huge amount, but each account they can keep frozen is a bit more money for them.”

“That’s a commonly held belief. I doubt it is a conspiracy theory but a true conspiracy. Or as near as the bumblers in the Inland Revenue can get to a conspiracy anyway. I have dealt with a lot of frozen bank accounts in the last few years and they always pay out in the end. Do you think you can stay afloat until this is resolved?”

“I’ll find a way.”

In many ways my stock is quite high around town. I’m known to enough well connected people that I have a line of credit and promises of work. My landlady hasn’t demanded any rent yet, though she is wearing me out with payment in kind. And I still have cash in my money belt and a container full of stuff I can sell.

I can survive for a while without my bank account, but it would be nice to get it back. Amongst other things, I’m starting to get enquiries about my memoirs. Would I like to take all my posts from the war years and expand upon them for a healthy fee? Of course I would, but where would they send my advance?

How much would I put in a book about the secret war? Could I write about Sachs? The SAS men? What really happened in Apt? Or is it still too soon?

Secrets were still being revealed about the Second World War fifty or sixty years after it ended. I could hold on to mine for a while.

Reputations could be damaged because of what I could reveal. International relations could suffer. Britain is key in negotiations with the Divided States to bring America’s new civil war under control and reintroduce the country to the civilised world. Revelation of British Army involvement against American forces in Europe, despite protestations of neutrality, would likely bring the peace process to a halt.

On the other hand, someone’s going to make the revelations sooner or later. If I’m the second person to reveal covert British involvement in Europe then the value of my bombshell is greatly diminished. It’s quite a dilemma- my bank balance against peace in the former United States of America.

We thought we’d share a shower, to save water.

But we’re both so easily distracted.

Notes Not so happy with this bit. Sally’s progression from recluse to sex bunny will be a more gradual thing in the finished version.

“I want to ask you some awkward questions.” Sally announces.

“Oh.”

“About sex.”

“Oh.”

“You’re suddenly very eloquent.” she pushes the pot of nettle tea to me, indicating that I should pour.

“Ive spent a little too long in my own head today. It usually reduces me to grunts.”

“It turns you into a man? How wonderful.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. But you have a lovely smile so I’ll forgive you this time.”

“Okay. Now I’ve lost my train of thought.”

“Sex.”

“Oh yes. How many women did you sleep with in France?”

I actually have to think about that for a while. “Four.”

“And before France?”

“Eight. I think. I’d have to work my way through the names to be sure. What about you? How many men?”

“Eight. Well, eight and a half.”

“A half?”

“A hand job and then I dumped him when I realised he was a prick.” she fiddles with the tea cup, smiles that winning smile, “What I’m trying to ask is- have you ever had anything? Anything sexually transmitted.”

“Nope. They gave me a full check up, nether regions included, before letting me come back to Britain. Full flying colours. You know I have to ask you the same question now.”

“I guess it’s only fair. I thought I had something once, with this one guy. But it turned out I was having a mild allergic reaction to the spermicide on the condoms. I’ve had check ups every so often since, just because I’m paranoid. I’ve not needed treatment yet.”

“This conversation is managing to turn me on and turn me off at the same time. How does that happen?”

“You’re a man. My point is I want us to have lots more sex. But I only have so many condoms, and they’re expensive. So I’ve been thinking about other methods, where we don’t use them. Okay, now you look scared. Am I moving too fast? It’s just, I haven’t done this in so long. And I do tend to over think things. And I’m talking too much aren’t I?”

“I’m waiting for you to take a breath. It’s good that you’re thinking about it, because I haven’t been. What have you come up with?”

“Well, the Pill’s available again, but supplies are limited. I’m going to ask my doctor but I think I’ll be put on a waiting list. Until then we could try the rhythm method and only use condoms on the days when I’m fertile.”

“And how effective is the rhythm method?”

“Not as effective as I’d like, but it only has to work until I’m on the Pill or we buy a bigger batch of condoms.”

“And what if we get the timings wrong?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’m trying to behave as if there really is a future for us all. But I’m not that sure of it that I’d like to give it to a child.”

“We’ll have to be careful then. How do we use the rhythm method then?”

“Well, I am perfectly regular, so that makes the prediction easier. Based on my last period I’m currently not fertile.”

“There’s only really one way to test your calculations. And we won’t know if you’re right for weeks.”

“Okay.”

Notes Productivity has suffered in the last few days as I’ve been flu-struck. I’m certainly not going to hit the NaNoWriMo target of 50,000 words, but I’ll keep going until the end of the month then take what I’ve got and use it as notes for the full novel.

We smelt the bodies and the smoke long before we spotted the tanks. It came to us on the wind wafting down the valley. We checked our guns and cut away from the road toward higher ground.
We’d been following the ripped up road and other damage that a column of tanks leaves behind ever since seeing what they had done to a village nearly fifty miles away. They’d skirted the farmhouse near the bottom of the valley. The farmer had heard them go past and, later, the distinctive rocket roar and explosions of a missile attack. We didn’t have a plan for what we would do if we caught up with them, but it sounded like someone had done what we would have wanted to.

As we climbed up the hillside and headed up river the tree line came down to meet us. Up ahead the valley narrowed so that the floor was only the width of the road and river and trees came down to the edge of the tarmac. I lifted my hunting rifle and stared through the scope. A ridge line still obscured some of the valley floor and smoke haze broke up the shapes, but as I scanned left to right I could see the shape of a tank. It was as if the sharp geometric shapes resolved from the soft curving ones of the trees.

The wrecked tank blocked the road at the valley’s narrowest point, its gun drooping and hatches open. The top half of a body was sprawled out of the turret hatch. Another tank had tried going around the destroyed tank, only to slide down the bank into the river and become stranded.

As we climbed the ridge more and more incapacitated vehicles came into view. There were seven tanks, three armoured personnel carriers and a number of soft skinned vehicles. The soft skins had been torn apart with heavy gunfire whilst the tracked vehicles had all been hit by one or more missiles. Bodies fanned out across the valley away from the choke point, cut down as they ran.
We crouched, and eventually crawled, to keep from being too conspicuous atop the ridge. We used sights and binoculars to survey the carnage, looking out for movement. “What do you think?” I asked Jean Luc, leader of our little band.

“I think they met someone with far better weapons than we have. I did not know the army was operating in this area. Start checking in the trees to see if there is movement up there.
I did a sweep of the tree line from the pinch point along the valley towards us. It wasn’t until I swept back that I saw the soldier sat on a tree stump staring through binoculars. He was wearing a French uniform, so I was merely creeped out when he waved at me. I pointed him out to Jean Luc, who studied the apparition through his glassses. “We shall go and talk with him.” Jean Luc announced.

“All of us?”

“You and I, I think.”

“Me?”

“It will give you something to blog about, will it not?”

We slung our guns over our shoulders and climbed to the top of the ridge. This was when our trust would be most tested, when we presented a full target to any lurking snipers.

We weren’t shot when we stood up, which was nice, so we walked along the contours toward the figure at the tree line. “It would not be beyond the Americans to steal a uniform to lure us out.” Jean Luc opined.

“You say the most cheerful things.” I spoke a mish mash of English and French with the rest of the squad, but Jean Luc liked to practice his English with me.

“I am trying to be more like you. Considering all the possibiliies.”

“I think too much?”

“Peut etre. Francais, oui.”

As we neared the French soldier I decided to keep quiet completely rather than try to convince him of my Frenchness through speaking his mother tongue. Jean Luc raised a hand in greeting as we got closer. The soldier nodded and went back to opening the American rations he had requisitioned.

“Hello Captain.”

“Good afternoon. I take it you are local militia.”

“Not so local any more. We were following those murderers. I take it you were as well.”

The French captain nodded, “We had been tracking them by satellite and set up the ambush. We thought we would hang around and see who you were as well.” He eyed me for a while then, pointing with his knife, asked, “So. Who are you?”

“Robert Jones.”

“English?”

“Yes.”

The captain waved and there was movement back amongst the trees. “We have an English man! Robert Jones!”

Jean Luc and I exchanged a look. This was an interesting development. The captain went back to his meal and we waited.

After a couple of minutes another figure emerged from the tree line. He too was wearing the uniform of a French Army captain, though he looked a little out of place, a bit larger than some of the other soldiers, maybe a little tougher. He saluted the captain and looked from Jean Luc to me. “Robert Jones?” The accent was pure Midlands.

“Yes.”

“I have some information for you. Come with me.”

We headed into the trees, where the air was cooler and sat on a downed trunk. “Are you SAS?” I asked.

“Yes, I am. I do a very convincing French accent when I’m speaking the language.” he had dropped into French for the answer. I had hardly even noticed, I’d been in the country so long. He returned to English, with accent, to carry on, “I also have a photographic memory, so everything I need to tell you is in my head.”

“I wouldn’t have thought I was important enough to have messages sent to me.”

“You’d be surprised. There are a few dozen Brits at large in Europe that we have messages for as well as our main missions You’re important because a lot of people read what you post. You’ve become a trusted source on whats going on over here. One of the messages I have for you is that the British government supports you. Your site has been subject to dedicated denial of service attacks and other attempts to take it down. The government has, shall we say, taken you under their wing. You now have more bandwidth and upgraded security.”

“I’m not sure I want to be a propaganda tool for the British government.”

“That’s almost exactly what the briefing said you would say. I was told to let you know they’re not censoring or editing you and you keep all rights, if you stay alive long enough for that to matter. What you’re doing is quite useful. The message is- keep it up.”

“Oh. Right Somehow I don’t think they sent an SAS officer to France so they could tell me ‘Jolly good show, keep up the good work.’ You’re working with the French, obviously. I thought Britain was neutral.”

“Of course it is. That keeps the Americans from sending their troops through us to the continent. And it keeps a lot of them in Britain whilst their government decides whether to ship them back to the States or pull the same stunt with us.”

“Is that likely? They must be pretty stretched.”

“If you’re not with us you’re against us. Remember that? And the rest of the world is not with them. Most of their own population isn’t with them. This is the lunatics taking over the asylum in the worst way possible. So the British government is helping ship weapons to the Europeans and helping wipe out the Yanks in any way they can. All the satellite data this lot use came through me.”

“All of this, of course, is not for blog.”

“Absolutely. They told me you’re good at compartmentalising- their word- and said to mention Sachs.”

“They know more than I thought. Is there anything left down there to scavenge?” I nodded in the direction of the valley.

“Let’s go and have a look.”

I remember looking down at some point and noting that I was doing twent five miles an hour on my bike, on the flat. I only know what happened next because I kept asking until someone would tell me.

The driver pulled out of a side road right in front of me. He probably didn’t look, and he didn’t have anywhere to go. I remember the Rusholme traffic being bumper to bumper, the idiot was just using the cycle lane as a little extra space to nudge out.

I flew. Only ten feet or so, and I was brought to an abrupt halt by a parked car. The collision cracked ribs down my right side and I slid up the windscreen and ended up on the roof.

My helmet saved me from brain damage, but they had to cut open my chest to fix the damage. I was in hospital for six weeks. I read lots of books- and felt very sorry for myself for the first few weeks- until I came up with a plan. I was going to take some time to enjoy the life I’d nearly lost.

Two months after leaving hospital I was off around Europe on an interrail ticket. Three weeks later I was in the middle of a war

Notes This is very much notes which will be expanded on as I expand the story and work out the full timeline. Writing has slowed over the last of days. I’m looking at around 30,000 words, rather than the desired 50,000, by the end of the month.

Some people like to blame the Germans But they’re wrong.

It was going to go horribly wrong no matter what. The Germans just provided the flashpoint. When it became obvious that the United States President was ordering assassinations within the borders of supposed allies no-one reacted well. Germany still had a large number of American troops stationed within its borders and it immediately demanded their withdrawal.

Within hours of the demands being made a column of three humvees drove through a mostly muslim neighbourhood near one of the American bases and shot it up. There were no identifying marks spotted on the vehicles and the soldiers, likewise, were not wearing insignia of any sort. When German Police arrived at the base to investigate they were denied entry at gunpoint.

An impasse became a stand off as armed Police and then German Army units arrived. Diplomacy went nowhere- the Germans demanded access, the Americans demanded the right to investigate the incident themselves. Angry crowds joined the Police and Army and the German government changed their withdrawal demands- all American personnel had to leave the country immediately, leaving their equipment and vehicles behind.

On the night of the second day of the siege the firing started. No-one knows who pulled the trigger first, but the Americans had been preparing for it. Fully loaded tanks and armoured vehicles broke out of the base and shredded the Police, military and civilians who surrounded it. Within an hour the same had happened on bases all across the country.

The bombing of Paris the next day, and other attacks across the continent, allowed the American forces to form up and prepare to fight anyone who came at them. Beyond bloodshed there didn’t seem to be any coherent plan. Initially they struck south, then west before breaking up into smaller units and raiding in all directions. The tanks didn’t last long- helicopters and small anti tank units whittled them down as they were found. The smaller vehicles proved surprisingly hard to track, there are probably still some out there in hiding.

The American force lost people from even before the break out. Soldiers slipped into civvies and out the back of buildings, or failed to make it to roster points. Afterwards deserters sneaked out of camps in the night or dropped off the backs of columns. They didn’t all make it to safety. Any deserter tracked down by the American forces was killed as a matter of routine. Those who gave themselves up to locals stood a better chance of surviving, but there was still the chance that they’d be killed.

Still, even with the wastage, there were still squads of American soldiers wandering Europe for over four years. And the ones who lasted longest were the hardcore of fundamentalists, stranded far away from their disintegrated country and striking out at people they felt had contributed to its downfall.

Notes I know that some of these bits are going to contradict each other. I’m world building, and laying down the basis of the plot. I’ve also got an idea now of the format for the final version and this publishing order isn’t it. I’m writing stuff as I think of it and publisjhing it as fast as I can.

I’m going to need a bike trailer, if only to transport my stuff back from the storage. Luckily, Robinson knows where I can get one made.

I asked him about it as we set off from his house to go hunting. We make our way to the nearest section of old railway line. Lots of these old cuttings have been converted into paths. This one hasn’t been surfaced yet, but it’s been levelled and drainage sorted out.

“There’s a workshop in Fallowfield, in the market in the old supermarket. They’ll do everything from a simple fix to a full frame and rebuild. I’m sure they’d be able to build a trailer. Up here.”

We cut up the embankment and go through a hole in a tall chainlink fence, and then we’re in a ghost town. There are a number of cookie cutter estate houses in pinkish brick. From our right they devolve from finished buildings lacking windows and doors through walls without roofs to laid concrete foundations and collapsed trenches. The streets around the houses have been tarmacced as far as the trenches and point optimistically into a stand of trees. There is collapsed scaffolding and an abandoned, rusted and burnt out digger. “It’s the Marie Celeste of building sites.” I have to say.

“The company collapsed with the housing market. They couldn’t even sell the land and equipment to pay off their creditors. People sometimes squat in the more finished buildings, but they move on when they realise they can do better. There’s a big rabbit warren somewhere in the trees and when they get too frisky they come into the allotments. So I come out here and trim their numbers from time to time.”

We set up in one of the skeleton houses, its walls tumbled down in the direction of the woodland. Robinson takes the rifle out and checks it. He pops out the magazine and hands it to me to load. When he’s got the sight mounted he hands the gun to me, “Care to have a go? Get the sight set in.”

I stand against the wall, getting comfortable with the gun. The last time I fired a weapon still invades my dreams, but it’s easy to tell myself this is different. There’s a rabbit in the grass before the nearest tree. I point it out to Robinson and sight on it. He has binoculars that look like ruggedised opera glasses that he can watch the rabbit with.

Breathe in, bring up the pressure on the trigger and pull it as I breathe out. The rifle cracks and kicks very slightly. The rabbit hardly even leaves the sights. Its ears twitch at the noise, but it doesn’t move. “High and a little to the left.” Robinson tells me.

After a little adjustment I take aim again, chambering another round. This time the rabbit jumps and then falls over. There are another two near it. They seem startled by the sudden movement, but stay still long enough for me to get one. Even the one that gets away doesn’t go far, and I get it easily when Robinson points it out.

Within five minutes I’ve got six rabbits. I pop out the empty magazine and hand the rifle back to Robinson as I reload it. “Let’s go and collect them and see if we can get any squirrels.” he suggests. He’s been picking up the shell casings as I’ve fired and pocketing them for future reuse.

In amongst the trees we rest against a trunk and Robinson stands with the rifle at the ready as we listen for rustling in the branches. He flicks the gun up and fires. A small grey furred body drops out of the branches. Gun still raised, he scans the branches and fires another two times. Two more squirrels plummet from the foliage. There’s a lot of movement in the branches, squirrels moving so fast that Robinson can’t get a bead on them. He lets the rifle rest again. “Good enough for a morning’s work.” he announces.

Back at his house Robinson guts and skins the rabbits and squirrels with ease. He wraps one of each in waxed paper and bags them for me. “You’re a good shot. Get yourself a gun and you’ll not lack meat.”

“I might do that.” I don’t have a great history with guns, but there’s no point in going into that with him.

“You’ll impress your new landlady, anyway.” He has that special kind of grin and I wonder if there’s some gossip network he’s connected into.

On the way back to the house I hook a right onto another old railway cutting and head for Fallowfield. At the other end of the track is the old Sainsburys. It’s been taken over by a cooperative of local traders and craftspeople. The old car park is home to temporary stalls, a flea market of sorts, whilst the building itself houses more permanent structures. There’s a lot of recycled and repurposed stuff- it’s incredible what you can make from old car parts.

The bike shop is out in a corner, where the deli counter used to be. The preparation and storage room has been converted to a workshop and the shop itself is given over mostly to showing off the wares. There are a lot of the sit up and beg frames I’ve been seeing so many of, but also a couple of more ornate rides. The guy fettling the brakes on a recumbent looks familiar, even with all the metal in his face. He doesn’t know me, but he recognises my bike. “That looks like one of mine.” he says as I prop it against the counter.

“You built it for me about six years ago.”

“Go on! I’s looking good for six years old.”

“Yeah, well, it has been in storage for most of them.”

“Fair enough. What does it need doing to it?”

“I’m looking for a trailer for it.”

“Now that could be a challenge.” He comes around the counter to check out the bike. After a minute or so of checking the seat post and rear axle he smiles. “I think I have just the thing.” He pops back through the door and I can hear the clanking of frame against frame as he goes through his stash. When he returns he’s holding up the remains of a child’s pedal car. “I’ll put some cycle wheels on the back, cut off the steering wheel and the seat and the arms for the front wheels. Then a hitch on the back of the bike to attach it to and I’m sure I’ve got a plastic tub to bolt to it for carrying stuff.”

“How much?”

“We’ll see how much work there is. And it depends on what you’re paying with.”

“I seem to have a little bit of everything.”

“So long as you don’t want to barter dead things.” he points at the bag hooked over the handle bars. The waxed paper has leaked some blood and its pooling at the bottom. “I’m a vegetarian. I do take fruit and veg though. Or other barter.”

“I mostly have hard currency at the moment. And the other question is when can you make it for?”
“Next week. If you can leave a deposit.”

After a bit of haggling and the exchange of paper I have the promise of a bike trailer.

Notes More background on the narrator’s exploits before coming back to Manchester.

The Expat

During every election, everywhere, there are always people who say they will leave the country if their choice loses. They’re usually lying.

After the last US election there were some who followed through on the threat.

I’m in the house of James Vanderbrook in the south of France. It’s practically a fortress perched atop a cliff with views up and down the valley. Since the road up the hill washed away there’s only one way up there. Visitors park their cars in a natural garage under an overhang gouged by a river that has since swung across to the opposite side of the valley. Then they have to walk up a steep but well maintained path, stopping at every switch back to pretend to admire the view but really to catch their breath.

What you can see of the house is rustic French. Once upon a time, before the road up washed away, this was a farm house. There’s a huge upland meadow behind it, enclosed on the other three sides by ridgelines and the mountain they come down from. Goats graze the meadow. They look at us in that superior way they have as we settle down for coffee.

“I’m American. I always thought I was.” declares Vanderbrook, “But not this America.”

“They’re starting to call it the Divided States.” I offer.

“How can they not. They used all this rhetoric about ‘Real America’ and all their opposites not having American values, all through the campaign. And that was bad enough. But after they stole the election it became obvious that they actually had policies based upon it.”

He tops up my coffee. It’s the best I’ve had in a while. The French don’t like to admit it, but this strange pseudo war that’s being waged across Europe has seriously impacted the quality of the beans they’re using. Vanderbrook obviously has a stash of the highest quality somewhere on the compound.

“It’s obvious they stole the election, by the way. I know that anyone who went on a news programme and tried to explain was treated as a nut. So people stopped leaving themselves open to the abuse. But it was stolen.”

“You’re preaching to the converted. I spent most of that Wednesday drunk. And I’ve only ever spent a fortnight in the US ever.”

“You and the rest of the world. I didn’t even give them until the changeover. I started work on leaving the country before the end of November and I was out by the handover.”

“To here?”

“Not straight away. I lived out of a suitcase for a while. I employed a hundred people. They, and I, were paying taxes. I could have left the country and carried on paying them, but if I left the country but carried on paying them then I was still funding the regime. So I worked on getting as many of them as possible out of the country and working for me abroad. Sixty three of them came with me. There are some in Ireland, some here in France, a lot in India and a few in other places. Some of them are travelling. Nowadays you can have your offices almost anywhere. It’s not quite as productive and sometimes I miss the chatter, but it works fairly well.”

“So you don’t pay any taxes in the States?”

“Oh I’m sure I do, but I’ve gone out of my way to cut the amount of funding I give to their madness.”

I don’t know how well Vanderbrook lived in the States, but his life here is idyllic. He has a gorgeous wife and live in help. Crystal clear water is pumped up from the river using power from the windmill and solar panels and his rural hideaway is in contact with the rest of the world thanks to a line of sight radio connection to the telecoms centre at the bottom of the valley.

“What brings you to this rather beautiful piece of nowhere?” Vanderbrook enquires.

“I heard about the mad American on the hill and I just had to come and see what they were on about.”

“I hope I don’t disappoint.”

“Not so far. Are there many other ex pats that you know of around here?”

“Around here no. But I work with folks who’ve moved to India, Germany, Australia…. Enough of us have left that it’s taken a hunk out of the United States’ tax take. It’s…. I don’t know. I’m not proud of contributing to the bankrupting of my home country, but I’d be even less proud of what they’d do with my money if they got their hands on it.”

They killed him, of course.

It would have been hard to believe that elements of the largest and best equipped military in the world would go feral. But that’s what they did after the attempt to break out of Germany. They had to discard all of their high tech equipment- there are still abandoned tanks and humvees to be found all around Europe- but they kept enough personal weapons to out shoot any of the local police they most often tussled with.

The gang that came down Vanderbrook’s valley- by that point they’d degenerated from squads or whatever to simple yobs- had no doubt heard about his castle on the hill and decided to punish the traitor. There’s no comfort to be derived from it, but the castle was to be the location of this bunch’s last stand. But there were others.

Maybe if I’d never met Vanderbrook I wouldn’t have acted how I did in Apt.