THE QUEUE MASTERS


Armitage tapped his watch; it was an irritated gesture and a few intimidating, inches from Toth’s suddenly immobile, inflexible face. Toth wanted to respond but in the cramped confines of their white unwashed, unmarked van Toth decided against it. The armour-plated surround was, he felt, like a coffin and festered with top-notch surveillance equipment, set in sea of blinking red sores.
Best, Toth considered, letting pressurised air out of his lungs as a barely audible sigh, just get on with the job at hand.
For now. `
Shanks was outside relieving himself over some peripheral relics from some non-history period that had been rendered pointless and meaningless by the current state of play. Unseen by the other two, because he was in the ‘known’ blind spot for the vans on board CCTV, he was particularly keen on leaving his acrid, deep yellow mark on a bent piece of pitted and rusted ironwork that looked, in the early morning washed out sunlight, like one sideways triangle on top of another upwards triangle.
Whatever, Shanks found himself thinking, as the shape, and its resonance, became too problematical for him to think about.
Zipping himself back into place in his fatigues, Shanks did the coded knock on van door that would get him back inside. There was a pause before the door opened and Shanks found the barrel of an automatic weapon inches from his nose.
Shanks pushed it aside and was quick to establish his authority amongst the three of them: ‘Oh for God’s sake, Armitage. It’s me ya prick. Put it away before we get rumbled by the locals.’
Armitage grunted but followed the order and stomped away and sat in the driver’s seat.
Shanks opened a Stars and Stripes packet of cookies and sat down in front of the bank of screens that revealed the outside world in all its glory; also in its infrared, thermal imaging and microscopic detail. He shovelled two of the double chocolate cookies into his mouth at once. A sideways spewing volcano of crumbs and chocolate chips issued from his mouth. Some of it he brushed away, other bits he just left.
Halfway through the ultra king-sized family pack, he looked over at Toth, who was on the other side of the van, making a reasonable fist of studying the latest intelligence information on five flat screen monitors. There was not, from what Shanks could see, too much local or national unrest in the queues. There were ‘known’ flash points and they were, in their camouflaged cage, monitoring one such point.
But Intel was ropey at best and too often, although officially not admitted, ‘sexed up’, but rightly so, for important security reasons.
For King and Country.
Toth had mentioned to Shanks the cyclical nature involved in that kind of reasoning but Shanks had reminded him that ‘Careless talk often caused lives. And that often ‘loose lips sink ships’.
Toth’s ‘free thinking’ could, Shanks construed, sometimes, considering the world in which they all lived now, just be a little bit too free.
Shanks yawned and stretched. He peered lazily at the screens continuously recording a hopefully uneventful world.
Out of encroaching boredom and a dwinding supply of imported Uncle Sam double-choc cookies, Shanks decided on some team building. Armitage was here because it was either prison or the army. Armitage had, how did the medical NCO put it, varying degrees of psychological disorder. Which Shanks thought was just fine, seeing as these days you didn’t have to be mad to work in the His Majesty’s Armed Forces, but it helped.
Toth though, Toth was a different kettle of fish. He was on the ‘fast-track’ programme to officerdom (which Shanks did not hold against him……..much) and was a graduate too. He would probably end up in the Homeland Queue Intelligence Corps, behind a desk with a bimbo of a secretary.
Shanks was well aware of which one he would prefer to have next to him in a ‘fire fight’.
He rolled the empty packet up into a ball and threw it at Armitage, who on impact of the packet, stood up brandishing a pair of knuckle dusters and a black, slim, double edged boot knife.
‘Oi,’ Armitage shouted, ’what’s that for? That’s fooking dangerous that. I could have killed everybody in here just’, he stabbed the air at waist height with his knife, ‘Just like that.’
Toth suppressed a smirk and any mention of ‘idiot servants’ or Tommy Copper for that matter. One of his father’s troop of forgotten comedic heroes. There was not much call for comedy nowadays, very little was a laughing matter anymore. When though, Toth thought, sometimes it should be.
‘Just keeping you on your toes, Armitage, would not want you getting rusty now would I. Who knows, when the chips are down I might have to depend on you. You know what these queuers can be like and how quickly they can kick off.’
Armitage sat back down, keeping his knuckles in brass but relocating his boot knife. He liked the pleasant sound it made; steel into leather; a blade into skin.
On the second knock on the van door Armitage was on his feet, arming and aiming his fully automatic machine-gun as the third knock sounded.
Shanks got to his feet, he turned and addressed Armitage directly, ‘As much as this pains me to say, put it away. It’s the Limey.’ He pointed to a CCTV screen. ‘See.’
The disappointment on Armitage’s face seemed to fill what little space there was in the van and was like an overblown balloon, waiting to burst.
Toth let the Limey in.
‘Hi ya, boys. How’s tricks and things, my good buddies?’
The Limey stepped into the van. Armitage retreated back to his seat.
‘Bout time you showed up’, said Shanks. ‘We’re here because of you. So hand over the ID and then get out of my sight.’
The Limey, one of the new strain of helpful and patriotic citizens of UK plc, was dressed accordingly, double breasted Union Jack suit and tie, Union Jack bowler hat, tightly furled Union Jack umbrella and patent leather Union Jack shoes. They all talked with a mid Atlantic accent as a homage to the country that ‘bank rolled’ this one. Some were better at the twang than others and the worst, like this one, was guaranteed to grate. More than their white, middle-class aspirations were going to.
‘Hey, buddy, can those negative vibes, man. I’ll dish the info but not before I gets my check. That’s the deal we squared away with the ‘man’, remember.’
Shanks gritted his teeth.
Armitage checked his spare ammunition magazines.
Toth reached into his pocket for his army issue cheque-book.
‘Pay him,’ Shanks ordered.
Toth wrote out the sum of ten thousand dollars.
‘That better not be in bastard Euros,’ said the Limey, forgetting his acquired accent for a moment.
‘Do we look like arsehole Europeans to you?’ Shanks retorted.
‘Hey, buddy. Man, I’m just saying, ‘cause I heard some poo that went down a few weeks back where one of my people got ripped off by guys just like you. He’s in the hospital right now, you know, eating through a straw.’
‘Not the army then,’ Armitage observed.
‘Why’s that, man?’
‘Because he’d be dead and bits of him would be turning up a week from now in school playgrounds.’
‘He’s a crazy mofo,’ said Toth, handing the cheque to Shanks.
‘You are a bunch of sick, pecker-headed, purple veined dicks,’ said the Limey.
‘Photo first,’ ordered Shanks.
‘Oh right, sure, my main man.’
The Limey handed a glossy A4 print over to Shanks, who glanced at it and handed the cheque to the Limey.
‘Excellent my buddy boys.’
Toth opened the door and the Limey, whistling ‘I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy’, was gone.
All three men poured over the photograph.
‘Well that’s our man,’ said Shanks, whose stomach rumbled in agreement.‘ He checked his watch,’ A good sized selection of queues should be forming up now. And I need all your eyes on this. So Toth, forget the intel reports and Armitage stop playing with your tool it’s likely to go off. And let’s bring this bastard in.’
Four hours crawled by like eight.
The three queues were going well; they were ordered and moved at a pace set by national and local county council agreements. There were a dozen or so uniformed Queue Masters to over see the proceedings. The queue for water was the longest, followed by the one for bread and then the one for sex.
‘There,’ shouted Armitage, ‘Right there. ‘On my fooking screen.’
Shanks and Toth both moved to see if Armitage was right. Shanks looked at his watch and barked out: ‘Target confirmed at 15: 47 hours.’
Armitage went up to the driver’s seat for his machine-gun. ‘He’s mine,’ he said opening the van door.
‘Not quite,’ Toth rejoined.
Armitage stared at him and the surprise on his face grew out of all proportion when Toth slid Armitage’s own boot knife into Armitage’s throat. The splatter caught Shanks in the face, as Toth knew it would. And Shanks quickly lost his footing on the van floor, falling backwards, arms flaying like a schoolboy’s who’s just worked out that life can be ghastly prank.
Toth left him for a moment while he extracted the machine-gun from Armitage’s corpse.
A quick burst of silenced Shanks.
Toth looked at the screens and the funny stuff was just beginning to the queues. He admired how one man could cause so much havoc to such a highly run institution as a British Queuing System. BQS.
TTFN.
He discarded the weapon and exited the van.
As Toth got closer to the three queues he started to laugh, he could not really help himself. Firstly, and somehow, importantly, the couples in the sex queue were having sex. The urban terrorist had explained to them all, with a single poster depicting he basic sexual positions that couples could copulate anywhere. He had bombarded the water queue with water bombs and the bread queue with cakes.
For that French connection.
Pandemonium was everywhere.
But the Queue Masters, initially caught off guard, where regrouping and requesting back ups. Three had the terrorist pinned down and were busy with their cattle prods, one Queue Master favouring his groin.
Toth ploughed through them. He retrieved the terrorist.
‘Quick,’ Toth shouted, ‘this way.’
Toth lead him back to the van.
He was in the driver’s seat and turning the electric engine over when the first couple of Queue Masters got in front and smashed in the windscreen. Toth floored the ‘go’ pedal and the front wheels drove over them.
Toth laughed his head off and said in a deep, affected voice: ‘Just like that.’
The terrorist looked at the bodies of Shanks and Armitage.
‘You did this for me?’
Toth spoke over his shoulder. ‘There are many sacrifices to be made to help the cause.’
His fevered eyes went back to the road.
Toth pulled over once they were out of New London. Off road, under a canopy of old English oaks Toth brewed some tea. Whilst the terrorist drank Toth disposed of the bodies. Drinking his own cup of sweetened tea Toth was very conversational.
‘They wanted you dead, you know. Another ‘kill’ to caulk up for King and Country, another nail in the terrorist coffin.’
‘What made you change? You’re one of the establishment aren’t you? One of the benign forces of power that keep ‘order’ in this septic isle.’
‘Well that was how I used to be. But surely there’s only so much to take before enough’s enough. We all have to queue. And I’m sick of it. I queue for the telephone, I queue for bread and water, and I queue for daily newssheet. I have to queue for the services of a prostitute. I even have to queue for the chance of a train to take me to see my parents. When the damn things are running that is. But don’t get me going there.’
The terrorist laid his hand on Toth’s shoulder. ‘You’re right, of course,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t always like this, there were freedoms and we had them all. You need to join us and swell our small number. Most missions are suicide missions but I guess you know that?’
‘Yes, I do. And that’s the nature of this beast.’
‘Okay. You drive and I’ll direct.’
The electric engine hummed into life.
They drove for the rest of the day and the night that followed. As dawn broke they were in the business district of some homogenised suburb. The terrorist got Toth to pull up outside a long aircraft hanger sized warehouse. It dwarfed the van and both men.
Rebellion was a big operation.
They entered the warehouse and both men stepped inside.
It was empty except for a long snake of men leading from just inside the door way to all across the floor and disappearing in the distance.
‘Are you ready to join the fight?
‘Yes I am,’ Tooth replied. ‘It’s a far, far better thing I do now for freedom and liberty, with some justice for all and not to have to queue for it.’
And both men stepped forward and joined the queue.