Army of Me: First chapter

Hello there.

The reason for the lack of updates recently is that I dun been writing a book. I'll put the first four chapters up for your consumption. This is my first real foray into fiction, and as I'm very much a nonfiction writer I know this is probably going to be a bit...well, shit. They're all very much first drafts, so any criticism or suggestions is entirely welcome.



Two days ago

Alex Atkinson had spent the last year watching the tiny kernel of hate that he felt for his job blossom and grow into an all-pervading sense of moral sickness and utter despair. That being the case, it was probably of very little consolation to him that his job was about to get him killed.

To the casual observer of course, there was no hint that they were looking at the features of a doomed man. Quite the opposite, Alex was a tall and strapping fellow in his mid-30s, and one might have thought that the worst care in the world that one could detect on that seemingly open, honest face of his was his receding blonde hairline and thinning scalp. His dark blue eyes were, as is the case in London, watching everything and seeing nothing. No eye contact was made with anyone in the tube carriage. It was full of people who would look at anything except the face of the person near them, although unless they’d brought a newspaper then there would be very little of value to look at, and even then…

Alex was hot and uncomfortable as he stood in the crowded carriage, and it was only the knowledge that he was 3 stops away from home that helped him suppress an irritated sigh as a plump, elderly man forced his way onto the tube at Brent Cross. The TV screens in the carriage continued its usual babble; breathless airheads discussing the minutiae of whichever recycled soap opera plot was currently occupying the hearts and minds of the chav classes. There were human interest stories, which usually consisted of a Z-list celeb (who’d probably begged and pleaded to get the job, hoping to add to their no doubt hopelessly under funded CT Savings Scheme) giving a hushed and reverent narrative over footage of Humanitarian teams picking over the irradiated rubble of Tokyo or Osaka. The shooting of the occasional disfigured survivor always raised a smile from even a jaded audience of tube passengers, so these were on a heavy rotation on the TV screens. And, of course, the ever present and always-shrill public service reminders about Noct Immigrants provided everything a man could want, as long as all he wanted was hysterical hyperbole and fear.

The latest anti-Noct reminder had only started showing a couple of days ago, and so there was more interest than was usual from the passengers. It started out with a shot of a woman’s face, an attractive redhead and probably not even out of her teens. She began talking about how all she wanted was a job. Her voice was joined by another, speaking in a foreign language. Alex could tell that most people on the carriage were unaware that it was Albanian, and that it was echoing the girl’s words. However, the sneers that appeared on the majority of faces at the sound of this second voice indicated firstly that everyone was aware that it was a Noct voice, and secondly that the reaction was the sort of thing that Pavlov would have been deeply impressed with.

The second voice was added to by another, then another and so on. After 20 seconds, one had to struggle to pick out the girl’s voice against a growing roar of different voices and different languages; Alex thought he heard Kiswahili dialects and Urdu mixed up in there, and wondered idly whether or not his own language skills (picked up from 9 years of stilted conversations with sad-eyed Noct Immigrants in pidgin-English and hand gestures) might be enough to get him this sort of work. God knows, there were few enough speakers of Noct languages left in the UK, so there were bound to be at least some jobs going, right? He made a mental note to look into it; if he carried on doing the kind of work he’d been doing over the last 8 or 9 months then he was headed for a nervous breakdown and who knows how many weeks or months out of work and with no financial support. To say nothing of the fact that his job would have gone to someone else if he was absent for more than a week.

The cacophony of voices from the screen increased in pitch and urgency until they were almost unbearable, then just as suddenly died away to leave the girl’s voice loud and clear; “All I want is to work. It’s my right. My birthright. Please, help me find a job.” The girl smiled a comforting, sincere smile whilst looking directly at the camera. Her smiling face filled the screen as an altogether sterner northern male voice added “A job is the birthright of every British citizen. Every job given to a Noct Immigrant robs someone of that right. It could be your wife. Your son. Your sister. Your father. You. Help us to help Britain to stay strong.” By now the smiling face had faded from the screen to be replaced by a telephone number for reporting illegal Nocts that most people knew by heart anyway.

Alex, lost in a daydream where he’d resigned from his current job in the Immigration Law section of Frost, Hutton and Peacock solicitors and was now a well paid and anonymous Noct voiceover in Government announcements barely even registered the end of the announcement and the beginning of the 6 o clock news. He had time to catch the newsreader’s grave tones greet the viewer with news of yet another bombing by Noct terrorists (it had been Paris today) before the tube pulled in to his stop. He pushed his way through the throng of dull-eyed humanity toward the exit, stepped on to the platform, and walked briskly from the station.

As he made his way home from the offices of the law firm where he had worked for just over 9 years, he was lost in a maelstrom of his own thoughts. None of these thoughts were what you might call cheery; he thought about his tattered marriage. He thought about the work colleagues whom he once called friends. He thought about the Anti-Noct rally that was taking place outside Westminster tomorrow that would doubtless see people with whom he could once share a drink and a laugh burning his effigy along with dummies of all the other “Noct lovers” working with or for the UK Vault company. He even thought about just how arrogant that last thought must make him. But mostly he thought about the crushing sense of helplessness and powerlessness that seemed to have consumed his life. It’s a shame that Alex was so intent on his self-indulgent navel-gazing, because if he hadn’t have been, he might have thought a little bit more about the gentleman who had been following him since before he had even caught the tube home.

It was a 15 minute walk from the station to his Flat in North London, but with a shortcut through what had colloquially and mockingly become know as “the Paki maze”, he would be home in 5. His work in Immigration meant that he didn’t have the fear of dark skin and accents that most people in London affected these days. The mockery in the name came from the size of this area of London; less than a few streets large, the maze was a shambolic collection of homes that housed those few people of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi descent who had been able to either convince Immigration officials that they and their parents were British born, or who had been able to bribe them to overlook that they weren’t. It was neglected, overgrown, and occasionally firebombed by thugs agitating for either the British Conservatives or National Labour parties. It made very little difference to the occupants as to who it was. Suffice to say that they had become steadily ghettoised over the previous years, to the extent that they didn’t even notice Alex as he walked through the estate. Noticing people meant that they might notice you, and no-one in the ghetto wanted to be noticed by a white man. You never knew if they might notice your existence and notice that they wanted to make it more difficult.

Alex strode through the quiet streets. There were no children playing; doubtless their parents had dragged them in on seeing his approach. Or maybe they’d all learned his routine, and knew to stay off the street at about 6pm. For all Alex knew, maybe their parents told stories about the white Boogeyman, who patrolled the streets looking for naughty children whom he’d send off to their NCT Homeland where they would be poor(er) and hungry(er) for the rest of their short lives. For whatever reason, there was (as always) no one else on the streets as he walked.

It was to his great surprise, then, that he became aware of another set of footsteps behind him as he walked. This was something completely out of the ordinary; had someone else decided to use his shortcut, emboldened against the deeply held fear of the ghetto’s inhabitants by his presence? After all, 2 white people would surely be safe together against any Asiatic horde (that, at least, was the kind of mindset prevalent these days). The quickening pace of the footsteps trying to catch up to him before he turned the penultimate corner in the ghetto confirmed this in Alex’s mind; whomever it was didn’t want to be out of sight of a countryman in a place like this. A bitter smile formed on his face, but was wiped away quickly as he turned to see which fine example of English Xenophobia was his companion on this daily journey home; an easy one for him, but no doubt clouded with danger in the mind of the average bigot.

He was unsurprised to see that the man approaching him was a picture of uncertainty and nebulous fear. The man stopped momentarily when Alex turned to glance at him, and began to blush slightly beneath his rather waxy looking face. Alex offered him a brief smile, and then turned to continue his journey home. Presumably the smile had comforted and calmed the man a little, as his pace slowed and he merely kept pace with Alex. He indulged himself in another bitter smile; this was what passed for compassion these days. A calming smile to a stranger in fear of a non-existent threat manufactured to keep people distracted and frightened. He shook his head and quietly chuckled at the ludicrousness of it all. The man behind him had picked up his pace once again. Alex guessed that he’d lost his nerve near the end of the estate, and was now making a panicked run for freedom.

“By the end of the evening,” Alex thought “that stupid frightened soul will be telling all of his friends of his close escape from the Paki Maze. Fucker will probably dine out on that story for weeks…”

It was only the sudden and literally breathtaking impact in his lower left back that indicated to Alex that maybe he had guessed wrong about the man losing nerve. He dropped his briefcase in shock, and tried to turn to face the man. His back suddenly radiated an explosive pain as he half turned and saw the man, eyes wild and waxy face flushed and sweating with terror, twist the knife that he’d just thumped into Alex’s back.

Alex reached out and tried to shove the man away from him. The knife was twisted further still and Alex offered a brief and wordless pained contortion of his features as it did so. He dropped to his knees, and the knife was yanked free. With its withdrawal, Alex began to get his breath back. He fell forward and, on all fours, began panting and crying in pain. He again tried to look at his assailant, hoping to plead with him. By now the man’s face had hardened from the panic he had seen earlier, into the wild cast of a man resolved to see an unpleasant task through. The man’s earlier fear had matured into a terrified determination.

Despite the pain it caused him, Alex threw up his hands to try and protect his face as the man closed in and began slashing at Alex’s face. The only effect that had was to irritate the man, and what might have been a quick and relatively easy death for Alex became a minutes-long ordeal of blood, punctured organs, and pain. By the time the man cried out in a mixture of anger and triumph, he had mutilated Alex’s hands to cracked stumps. His face was an eyeless gaping mess of crimson. As he drew his last breath, as the knife hammered through his ribcage and into his heart in what had become a frenzied orgy of stabbing, his lungs were already filling with blood.

As Alex was hacked to death by a stranger on a warm spring evening under a beautiful blue sky, a few frightened people watched uncertainly from behind their drawn curtains. They shrunk back as the killer gave his triumphant bellow. A lifetime of not being seen stood those watching in good stead, for the eyes of the killer didn’t notice any of the figures peeking through windows at the red tableau that he had created. The killer removed a mobile phone from his jacket and, hands shaking, dialled a number. Less than 2 minutes later, a small blue car had arrived. It drove slowly and deliberately to the man who had remained standing by Alex’s body. An observer who’d had the luxury of observing earlier might have noticed his fidgeting refusal to meet the eyes (or approximation thereof) of person nearest to him, and perhaps commented on how it was remarkably similar to Alex’s when on the tube. The car drew to a close and the passenger door was opened. The driver called out to the man, who jumped slightly as if he hadn’t even noticed its arrival. He paused and looked down at Alex’s body, as if the knowledge that he was imminently leaving the scene gave him the courage to do so. He paused like that for a few more moments until his wordless reverie was interrupted by another shout from the driver. At that, the man climbed in, and the car drove off.

It was over an hour before one of the people living in the ghetto called the police. For his troubles, he was immediately arrested as the prime suspect.