They drove it back, the bullets pounding on its body. Finally it collapsed to the street, dead. Doherty and Ryder advanced on the body cautiously, changing the magazines on their rifles. To their relief it was very dead.
“Score one for the good guys.” One of the armed civilians was loading his shotgun with more heavy slugs. He looked sadly at the street where a police officer and two civilians were down, in crumpled, lifeless heaps. “Cost us though.” Then he grinned at the police officers. “Still, its good to see true fighting Irishmen all on the same side at last.”
Cabinet Office, White House, Washington D.C.
“We must anticipate that there will be further attacks of this kind. In view of what that monster told us…” Secretary Warner was interrupted by a tangible shudder that ran around the room. Memories of the succubus’s presence at a meeting were all to fresh. “these attacks have been going on for a long time and we see no reason why they should stop now. In fact, with the destruction of the baldrick army in Iraq, they might well pick up in tempo. So, as a line of defense against such attacks, I propose the formation of a local defense force that will protect areas where there are large gatherings of people. Malls, sports meetings etc. The personnel will be drawn from all citizens between the ages of 18 and 50 who are not currently serving in the armed forces. Obviously, we’ll give priority to people whose industries are not needed for the war effort, they can serve one of their work days. We’ll arm them with the new. 458 rifles we’re putting into production. I propose the new force be called the Local Defense Volunteers.”
“Local Defense Volunteers.” Secretary Rice’s voice was thoughtful. “LDV. You know what they’ll be called don’t you? The Look, Duck and Vanish.”
“Look, Duck and Vanish?” Warner thought for a second. “I suppose so. How did you come up with that?”
“The British had a similar force back in World War Two. Originally they called it the Local Defense Volunteers but they changed it to ‘Home Guard’ because of the misinterpretation of the acronym.”
“How did you get Local Defense Volunteers anyway John?” President Bush’s voice was curious.
“I was looking at a picture of the Civil War and it made me think of the U.S. Volunteers. The new group is for Local Defense so I put the two together.”
“What’s wrong with U.S. Volunteers?” Bush was curious. “Sounds good to me. We can revive all the names of the Civil War units for the local forces. Add a sense of history to the undertaking. We can even call on some of those re-enactor people to start them off. They’ll have to use their own guns to start with of course.”
“I’d love to see the effect of a minie ball on a baldrick.” Rice’s voice was droll. “They might like the smell of black powder though. Lots of sulfur in it.”
“So, we’ll get the bill written and pushed through. U.S. Volunteers it is. So decided?” Bush looked around. There was a unanimous nodding of heads. “So be it. Next issue?”
“Aircraft production Sir. We’re getting the B-1 production line set up now. It’ll be starting work in around three months time, expect to see the first aircraft off the line this time next year. It’s good we kept the tooling. The first AT-45Cs are coming off the Boeing line now. They’re a minimum-change armed version of the T-45C, they’ll keep the line running until the single-seat D model is ready. F-111s and B-52s are re-entering the fleet from Davis Monthan now. A lot of older aircraft as well, we’ve got some like the F-4 being assigned to wings, more as placeholders than anything else. The rest we’re going to use for tests. To see what sort of aircraft can fly in Hell-like conditions.”
“Any F-102s?” Bush spoke with a mixture of nostalgia and enthusiasm.”
“Yes Sir, nine were preserved, we can make two flyable. Not enough for issue so we’ll be using them for experiments.”
“No you won’t.” Bush spoke firmly. “This is a Presidential directive. Get those two flyable F-102s down to Andrews and designate them the Presidential Fighter Flight. And get somebody to check me out on them, it’s a long time since I flew a ‘102.”
In the background, the Secret Service Presidential Bodyguard detail went white at the thought of a President flying a death-trap like the F-102. The President might think he was going to fly one and the aircraft might be sitting at Andrews with a pretty paint job but he would get in the cockpit over the Secret Service’s collective dead bodies. From the expressions around the Cabinet Room, they weren’t the only ones with that in mind.
‘PINDAR’, under the MoD Main Building, Whitehall, London.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown looked across the table at his new Deputy Prime Minister. God (he’s have to remember not to use that name again), that grinning idiot got on his nerves, he’d strangle him if he asked Brown to call him ‘Dave’ again. Well, it was the price of coalition politics he supposed, and there was not a great deal he could do about it. The PM did reflect on the fact that Deputy Prime Minister David Cameron did rather remind him of a poor clone of his late, unlamented predecessor. Who could have imagined that Tony Blair had been so devout? It had come as quite a shock, even to this son of the Manse.
Given his Scots Presbyterian upbringing, his father had been a Minister in the Church of Scotland, The Message had hit Brown hard. He felt angry and betrayed, but could not help wondering if this was some kind of supreme test by God, or maybe the creature claiming to be Him was in fact not the Supreme Being at all, but some kind of imposter. The latter had certainly been the opinion of the Moderator of the Church of Scotland when Brown had spoken to him.
In the first couple of days after The Message there had been a great deal of uncertainty in the United Kingdom. Those who were most religiously devout, around a tenth of the population, had died; some had just lain down and given up, others had committed suicide in a variety of imaginative ways. Some religious leaders had spoken to the Prime Minister, demanding that Britain surrender to the inevitable; those that were still alive were now residents of HMP Belmarsh, which was rather empty now that most Islamic fundamentalists were gone.
While a smaller proportion of the population of Britain had died, the deaths had been largely concentrated in a few areas. Parts of Leicester and Bradford had become ghost towns and at least a couple of the smaller Western Isles had been totally depopulated. Clearing up the bodies before they decayed and caused a disease outbreak had been quite an undertaking. The government had called in the army, who had assisted in clearing up the corpses and building the funeral pyres used to dispose of them. Facing economic and social chaos on a scale never before seen, Brown had declared a State of Emergency and had signed Queen’s Order Two, mobilizing the entirety of Britain’s Armed Forces. ‘Entirety’ included all reserve forces, service pensioners and all cadet force personnel over sixteen.
Britain was going to need everybody who could hold a rifle, or train others to do so. One largely unknown fact was that the Army Act and its counterparts covering the RAF and Royal Navy allowed for the reintroduction of conscription without any new act having to be put before Parliament. In his second speech to the British people Brown had announced the immediate reintroduction of National Service for everybody between 19 and 55. Finding enough equipment, uniforms, or personnel to train the millions of men and women who would now be inducted into the army, navy and air force was another matter, and would take some time.
The next step had been to examine existing Emergency Powers Bills that had been prepared for potential wars and see what was applicable to this particular situation. While all of the anti-terrorism related emergency plans were up to date those doing the research were rather alarmed to find that the last time the plans for General War (the closest scenario to this one) had been updated was 1992! This set of plans and Emergency Powers Bills had served as the basis for those that had just been rushed through Parliament along with a declaration of war on Hell, which along with Britain’s devolved parliament and assemblies, was now prorogued, the remaining members having dispersed to their constituencies.