Scott Andrews - Children's Crusade

My double life ran like clockwork after you helped me sort out Spider. I found a new front man, someone else within the organisation. You never met him. He became the new Spider. It became a title rather than a person, which served me well. It made it clear to the new guy that he was disposable, and it allowed me to continue to use the, shall we say brand awareness that Spider had created amongst our clients and competitors.

I considered coming down to school and finishing you off, you know.

Really. You were a loose end. I hate loose ends. But in the end I figured it was riskier to break cover than leave you to rot.

Did you enjoy being Matron? What am I saying, of course you did — the world's ended and you're still doing it!

I had a fifteen year plan. Worked it out while I was undercover in Sarajevo, back in the day. I won't bore you with the details, but it worked, was working, would have worked.

Three years to go when the fucking Cull hit. Three years and then I'd have packed my bags and vanished off the face of the Earth. Nice little mansion in South America, I reckoned. Get fat, raise a few kids.

Best laid plans, eh.

They knew a lot earlier than they let on. About the blood type thing. Since I'd been in the army, my medical details were on record. I was contacted when the press were still talking about bird flu. Recalled to Hereford.

There was this soldier, Major General Kennett.

Really? What was your impression of him?

Ha! Yeah, I agree actually. Decent bloke. Capable. Prissy, though. Couldn't make the hard decisions.

He briefed us. Not completely, obviously, but he told us we were immune and that it would get bad enough that there might be a breakdown of public order. We were going to be the last line of defence when the police and regular army were no longer able to cope.

Operation Antibody it was called.

I know. Laughable.

They knew, though, the Government. Makes me wonder how long they'd known by then. What they knew about where it came from.

I've searched this place and Number 10 top to bottom more than once. Nothing. No clue at all. I thought there may be some evidence at the MI5 or MI6 buildings, but all the interesting parts are still sealed up. I don't reckon we'll ever know how it started or where it came from.

Who cares now anyway?

Once I was drafted again, my main concern was the organization. I kept in touch with my new Spider by phone, trying to maintain control. I got regular reports as things fell apart but eventually I lost touch with them all.

My network was gone, my resources were gone and I began to suspect that the money I had accumulated would soon be worse less than nothing. All that effort, for what?

So we were broken into teams and dispatched across the country to key installations — nuclear power plants, arms depots, local governments that kind of thing.

I was part of the London team. We were all Regiment or ex-Regiment; the best, you know? Our job was to protect the Government.

At first it was pretty easy. The regular security teams were bloody good. We just shadowed them, learning the ropes. Then when one of them went down, one of us would step into the breach.

They'd done the same in Government, you know. Formed an inner cabinet. The handful of O Neg MPs, some immune peers and a few other top dogs. They were running things long before the rest of the real cabinet fell ill. It was like the ones who knew they were going to survive just started ignoring the ones who were doomed, as if they were already dead.

Some of my colleagues thought it was callous, but of course it was the sensible, expedient thing to do.

The armed forces were recalled from abroad and the O Negs were weeded out. That's when the word spread, you know. Someone in the army worked it out and told the press.

Anyway they formed these units of immune men and women. Army, police, fire and medical. All the emergency services. Even the BBC were sorted out, a core team of broadcasters who could keep a skeleton news service on air until there was no-one left to watch it. But there weren't enough of us to go around, so they had to be concentrated in one place. One safe haven where there would be enough immune people to stick it out until it was all over and retain order and civilisation amongst themselves.

It was a good plan. It's what I would have done. They made one crucial mistake, though. They chose the wrong place to make a stand. #

They chose London.

Why do — sorry, did — all politicians have such a love affair with London? I never understood it. Obviously what they should have done is taken off for somewhere remote, rural. I actually said this to the PM once.

Sorry? Oh yes, he was immune. I know, what are the odds! Things would have gone very differently if he hadn't been. There'd have been an almighty power struggle. But because he was top dog, and he knew he was going to survive, he was able to lay down the law pretty much unchallenged. He was a subtle fucker, too. Lots of backroom deals went down before the rest of Parliament worked out what was going on.

So, yeah, I told him he should move everyone out to Macynnleth or some other alternative energy centre or something. And it's not as if he didn't think along those lines, 'cause the plans for Operation Motherland were drawn up at around this time, so they knew the advantage of being away from the urban centres, they knew the risk of secondary diseases and riots and all that stuff.

But he was determined that they had to stay put, right here in the Palace of Westminster, barricading themselves in like it was Fort Apache.

"The people need to see that we haven't deserted our posts," is what he told me.

And of course once the news got out about the virus and what it was really doing, the riots began.

I thought I'd seen desperation before, during the siege, but this was a whole other order of magnitude. The savagery of it was…

We set up concrete barricades along Whitehall, blew Westminster Bridge, put up gun emplacements in the cathedral. Put a ring of steel all around Parliament Square and kept them out. Hundreds of thousands of them. It would never have worked in peace time. We'd have been overrun. Tear gas and water cannons, even rubber bullets wouldn't have kept them out.

We had live ammunition, though. And grenades and tanks.

There came a day when it was obvious that we were going to be stormed, that Parliament was going to fall. I was with the PM when he made the call to shut down the BBC. He insisted he had to close them down before we opened fire on the crowds. Didn't want news of the massacre to spread. I thought that was stupid — the more people knew, I reckoned, the better. Spread a little fear, show them we mean business. But he wouldn't have it.

I think he was ashamed of the order he was about to give.

I was given the job of leading the team that flew to White City. There was a tent city outside Television Centre, as if people wanted to be close to some symbol of order and safety. The good old BBC, they'll look after us. You know, I think there was more faith in them than in Government at that point.

They let us in because they thought we'd been sent to protect them. When we ordered them to go off air they refused.

So that's where the massacre began. I must say it was a very odd feeling, kind of surreal, shooting Jeremy Paxman in the head. We took some fire too. God knows where they got guns from, but they put up a good fight. Kate Adie may have been in her sixties, but she shot two of my men. And fucking Andy Hamilton stayed on air on Radio Four the whole time, but we'd cut the lines to the transmitter, so no-one heard his final broadcast. I let him live, actually. He always made me laugh