Road Undermined by Badgers, and Other Short Stories Read online

  Part of the roof had collapsed under the high winds, allowing shafts of sunlight to cut through the dusty atmosphere and spotlight a crumpled bundle on the floor a few yards ahead. There was something horribly familiar about it. The alarming oddness of the situation was disorientating and Major Hardy hesitated.

  Then he saw the blood pooling about the patchwork dress Maddy had somehow managed to repair after rescuing him from the oily pit. Her coat was some distance away, discarded in her desperation to escape. The sight was so dreadful even his soldier’s instincts refused to accept it immediately.

  Maddy had been shot with an automatic weapon and the life was rapidly seeping from her. The Major made a futile attempt to staunch the blood from multiple wounds with one hand while he tried to get a signal on his mobile with the other.

  Maddy smiled. ‘Hi soldier...’ Then gave a small sigh and ceased to breathe.

  Major Hardy allowed a small, pained gasp to escape. For the first time the soldier in him was too overcome to react.

  When he did it was too late.

  Half a dozen automatic weapons were pointing at his head.

  His first reaction was rage and grief, followed by the impulse to go down fighting. After losing the only other person he had been prepared to commit a lifetime to there seemed nothing left.

  The leader of the armed men pulled off his balaclava to reveal disconcertingly avuncular features, the sort more likely to be seen behind the pub or chemist’s counter. ‘Don’t move, Sir. We don’t want to have to shoot you as well.’ His tone suggested that he would have already done that if the intruder hadn’t been wearing the uniform of a senior army officer.

  ‘Who the hell are you!’ the Major almost shrieked in anger.

  ‘Special Reconnaissance Regiment. Now just keep calm and put the guns down.’

  The Major’s training kicked in. This was not the time to react.

  Assess the situation first.

  He laid his pistol and the automatic rifle on the ground. ‘What the devil are you doing here?’

  ‘Probably the same as you, Sir. Keeping tabs on eco terrorists.’

  Maddy an eco terrorist! They had shot his lover because they believed she was a dangerous radical. It was beyond belief.

  ‘Why did you shoot this woman?’ He managed not to choke on the words.

  ‘It was an accident.’

  No doubt an accident that would be hushed up so nobody was held to account for her death. Poor Maddy had come to talk peace with other committed green protesters, only to end up being shot by another soldier.

  The Major’s stunned silence was taken as comprehension of the situation.

  ‘I know who this woman is,’ he eventually managed to tell them. ‘I was following her. I thought she was liaising with a group threatening my base. The body needs to be returned to her family.’

  ‘We’ll supply a cover story.’

  Guaranteed to be one that blamed her murder on a climate activist.

  ‘I signed the Official Secrets Act,’ the Major managed to remind them. ‘They’ll be no trouble from me.’

  ‘Good man.’

  The operations leader had to be a colonel at least. Any act of defiance would only limit the Major’s next move - when he managed to work out what it was going to be. He was too numb with grief to think straight at that moment and dependant on instinct to see him out of the situation. It would only be a matter of time before they discovered the relationship between him and the woman they had just shot. He would need his own cover story. It was necessary to bite the bullet and tell them that he had encouraged the liaison to keep track of the group which had set up camp next to the base he commanded.

  The funeral was simple and only Christian because Maddy’s family insisted on it. Major Hardy’s uniform was uncomfortably out of place amongst her family and eco-aware friends. The ceremony was punctuated by glances of recrimination in his direction, and once outside the church Maddy’s older sister blamed him for her death. He could muster no sensible response and had to be rescued by the vicar who realised that the soldier felt Maddy’s loss as keenly as anyone else there. While the rest of the party left for the crematorium, Rev Wilson took him into the vestry where the cool quietness enabled him to at last think clearly.

  Major Hardy sat motionless while she gathered up hymn books and tidied the church in readiness for the next service. By the time she returned he had decided on a plan of action Rev Wilson could tell she was better off not knowing about.

  The firm set of his jaw could didn’t disguise his inner turmoil.

  ‘People can behave thoughtlessly in stressful situations. They sometimes lose the capacity to consider the feelings of others,’ she tried to console.

  The soldier sensed that his young woman of the cloth had wisdom beyond her years. Although obliged to pay lip service to the Church because of his rank, he was not a believer. Being involved in too many horrendous events had convinced him that humans were not creations of some benign, all-seeing God. To soldiers, confidence in comrades was their gospel and he knew she could be trusted in a way he dare not confide to the army chaplain.

  ‘Tell me that this is all an illusion created by your God to baffle us?’

  ‘It could be an illusion to test us.’

  ‘I’ve the feeling that’s one test I’m going to fail.’

  Rev Wilson knew better than to judge him. ‘You do realise that anything you tell me will be kept in confidence?’

  ‘I know, but some things are too dangerous to share.’ Major Hardy had said enough and rose. ‘I appreciate your concern.’

  The vicar took a card from a pocket in her cassock. ‘In that case, keep this and bear in mind that I will be here to offer any help or counsel the Good Lord allows.’

  He accepted the card and, with a brief nod of gratitude, left.

  The next few months were filled with a numbed self-hatred for what he was doing, and at the loss of Maddy. His men took the lack of communication to be their commanding officer’s way of dealing with grief: a few were even persuaded that he had encouraged the relationship to keep track of the green protesters’ activities. Only the empathic and understanding lieutenant, the perfect counterbalance to his senior officer’s hard persona, had some inkling of what was going on. He knew better than to mention it. He also avoided noticing Major Hardy’s occasional absences and surreptitious searches of confidential army files. Somebody was secretly liaising with him, though over what the lieutenant could only guess, and preferred not to know, being well aware that the major’s relationship with Maddy had been genuine and the disinformation to cover up her death a fabrication.

  The database of the very unit who had killed the love of the Major’s life was where he found the location of the group she had set out to reason with. At least he could now confront them, if only to find out if they were the dangerous activists the SRR were going to so much trouble to contain.

  His first guess about them being based in some squat was right, and after he knocked their battered, basement door he wasn’t prepared to be invited in so readily or for them to be aware of who he was, despite being out of uniform.

  The trauma of Maddy’s death was obvious to them and they already knew that Major Hardy’s romance with the activist had not been a ploy to get access to her group. He was a man in limbo, still wondering what he would be capable of when the opportunity presented itself.

  The rooms the group occupied were filled with life’s basics and the tools of protest; banners, balaclavas, climbing equipment, and several laptops. Their leader was a skinny, lank-haired man in his early 40s. There was just enough sophistication in Rodney’s accent and waistcoat to suggest he had once been gainfully employed, possibly in the Stock Exchange or similar capitalistic occupation. The rest of his team seemed equally benign, despite their reputation. It was a cruel irony that if Maddy had managed to track them down she probably would have been able to reason Rodney and his group away from extreme action and it was her deat
h that had hardened their commitment.

  Before then, their targeting of oil refineries had been limited to breaching perimeters to paint slogans on storage tanks. Now the situation was different. The government intended to allow a foreign-owned refinery to expand and secretly process crude oil being shipped in from regions blacklisted worldwide. This would effectively undermine green legislation imposed by the previous administration, not to mention ruin an area of natural outstanding beauty. As soon as they had found out, Rodney’s group decided to take direct action, which would give the SRR genuine reason to be concerned. Major Hardy had also been apprised of the government’s plans and could easily surmise what the eco-warriors intended to do.

  He warned them against it, but didn’t have Maddy’s persuasive powers. Rodney’s group were too committed to back out. They knew they were under surveillance, yet determined to go ahead with action even the experienced soldier would have thought twice about. By the amount of mountaineering gear being made ready, it involved extreme heights. There was also a collection of large fireworks, but no firearms or explosives anywhere to be seen. It was apparent they did not intend to harm anyone, so the Major knew he could walk away without the fear of anyone following to try and silence him.

  Major Hardy took his leave, not expecting to see Rodney and his group again. The Colonel and his team would be watching their every move. These eco-warriors wouldn’t stand a chance.

  While the soldier in Major Hardy insisted that it was necessary for the country to guarantee its oil supplies, his growing green awareness saw the absurdity of such a short-term fix at the expense of long-term future.

  Then he realised that he was thinking like Maddy, and not only because he desperately missed her. However futile it was to try and change human nature, she would have fought on, endeavouring to secure the planet’s future by peaceful means. That was one reason why he still loved her. But however much he now reasoned like her, there was one thing he could not accept. The eco-warriors were right. Direct action was the only way, though not by scaling an oil refinery’s tall chimneys and hanging banners from them. Destroying them would be far more effective. Even if it had crossed the minds of Rodney’s group, they would have had no idea how to go about it... but the Major did.

  The soldier’s stride stopped abruptly at the idea as he became aware of his surroundings.

  The normality of the tree-lined high street with bustling shoppers and fragrance of lime blossom should have poured cold water on the thought. Then the sight of an airliner cutting across the sky, glinting like a shard of crystal in the troposphere, resolved the idea.

  What was he thinking? Maddy would not have forgiven him for even considering it. But where had been the point in her death if he was not allowed to avenge it in some meaningful way? It would soften the blow of her loss to know that her life had counted for something.

  The SRR team were aware of the eco-warriors’ plans and also Major Hardy’s visit to Rodney and his group, which meant he was now under suspicion as well, though probably not yet surveillance.

  But before he could be questioned, a text from Rodney told him things had been set in motion.

  By the time the Major arrived at the oil refinery the surrounding area had been evacuated and sealed off, so he remained outside the perimeter. Even if he could have done anything, it was too late.

  He watched through binoculars as the bodies of Rodney’s group were brought out, one by one. Whatever they had been planning, like Maddy, they hadn’t stood a chance. The tragedy was, all air traffic had been diverted so there would have been no one to see the banners or fireworks they intended to set off from the tallest chimney.

  There had been little point in killing the eco-warriors who were at the worst delusional, and at the best prepared to make the supreme sacrifice for their commitment.

  Major Hardy drove to the highest point overlooking the oil refinery. His mother would never see that sweet, loving infant in him again as he removed the anti-aircraft gun from the back of his Land Rover, loaded it, and aimed for a storage tank on the far side of the plant. Unlike the SRR team, the major did not intend to kill anyone and it would give them, and himself, chance to escape before the whole refinery exploded in flame.

  The conflagration made worldwide news. Naturally it was blamed on terrorists. Borders were closed and every suspect under surveillance brought in for questioning. All emergency services were put on alert and airports given armed security.

  Nobody stopped the army Major in uniform and with genuine accreditation from boarding a flight to the other side of the world... whence he disappeared.

  Over the following years there were multiple attacks on polluting power stations, oil refineries and fracking wells. They were so efficiently carried out nobody was injured or died in the catastrophes. Warnings were posted on every major social networking site, giving just enough time to evacuate before the explosives were remotely detonated.

  No evidence remained after the conflagrations and experts were unable to work out how they had been planted. Whoever committed these acts was no ordinary terrorist. It was a phantom who could pass through security nets, plant sophisticated, undetectable devices, and disappear into thin air.

  Then the attacks abruptly stopped. But this green avenger had done enough to persuade climate change deniers to admit that human pollution was destroying the planet instead of blaming politicians and God. Confirmed Nimbys began to accept the hydro, solar, and wind power installations they had previously protested about so vociferously, and the last intransigent statesman to claim that global warming was a myth at last fell silent.

  After Major Hardy’s disappearance, it gradually occurred to his lieutenant that he had been responsible for the worldwide catastrophes. His partner frequently found it quite annoying. The senior officer had been a martinet after all, and now responsible for mass destruction.

  One morning Rev Wilson received a small parcel.

  It contained a biscuit tin filled with human ashes, two letters and a cheque to cover a donation to the church and cost of a simple funeral. One letter was from a solicitor, and the other in Major Hardy’s handwriting. The latter was quite shaky, but legible.

  They both requested that his ashes to be scattered with those of his beloved Maddy.