Extinction

3: The Morning After

3 The Morning AfterThe soldiers removed their night-fighting helmets now that they had arrived safely back at their base - a defunct nuclear bunker, forgotten in post-cold war euphoria, hidden in wasteland and discovered by chance. Rachel McDowell, the most senior of the group, left the dormitory to report to the leader of the female community. The darkened musty corridors were cold, so cold she thought that her sweat-drenched hair would freeze to her scalp. McDowell was drawn and pale from the previous evening’s efforts, but warm with the thought that they had procured enough pre-fertilised eggs to supply their crude and makeshift cloning laboratory for many years to come.

Stopping in front of the shabby steel door, she sighed and took a deep breath. As she knocked the door creaked ajar and warm aromas of food and perfume exhausted through the gap.

‘Come in,’ a deep voice boomed.

McDowell entered the sumptuous office, only to see Jane Langton, her Commanding Officer, deep in conversation with Commune Leader Kefelnikov. The dry heat in the room scraped at McDowell’s face and made her skin feel taut and desiccated. She stood to attention and waited silently in front of the vast dining table where her superiors sat, still conversing. Without consideration for their subordinate, the two women talked at length, before Kefelnikov finally deigned to address McDowell in her harsh strain of European English.

‘Shut that f*****g door, it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a chauvinist,’ barked Kefelnikov.

McDowell knew Kefelnikov occasionally liked to use her acquired bar room slang, ironically just to be one of the ‘boys’, but it did not provoke even the slightest amount of respect within the soldiers in the commune. No one liked her, the infantile attempt to ingratiate herself with her subordinates through the use of basic language lasted only as long as she thought it prudent, before she reverted to her usual pretentious ways. Also, Kefelnikov seemed far too tolerant of the desperate situation in which they had found themselves, choosing not to go on the offensive when all the girls wanted to do was attack the egotistical and self-righteous enemy. After all, Kefelnikov was only the commune leader because it had been she who had inadvertently discovered the nuclear fallout shelter and now she sat on her fat arse in her warm office while others risked their lives.

Kefelnikov looked up as McDowell returned to the table after closing the ill-fitting door.

‘Well? Your report. Did you complete the task you were set?’ Kefelnikov asked.

‘Sir, mission completed Sir. No casualties and the target has been acquired. We have now delivered it safely to the laboratory. Sir,’ McDowell replied obediently.

That was the bizarre thing about Kefelnikov. She insisted on being called ‘Sir’. She said that ‘Miss’ did not convey the appropriate amount of respect for her position. Fat and blonde, she was disliked by the troops but this had never seemed to undermine her authority.

McDowell now focused on Commander Langton, a dark handsome woman. Langton had that inane, mediocre, wind-filled smile, the type you get when you are drunk as a skunk.

‘What the f**k was that all about?’ McDowell thought, as Commander Langton began to speak in her soft annoying tones.

‘So, no problems then. Great, yes, good. Well I bet you would like a nice hot bath and bed Corporal McDowell?’ Langton said voicing her own feelings rather than her subordinate’s.

‘A f*****g beer would be a start,’ McDowell thought immediately.

As she left, McDowell was convinced that the room, with its subtle lighting and sweet fragrance, looked and smelled more like a tart’s boudoir than a Commune Leader’s office. She did not know that for a fact but had read electronic books about tarts and prostitutes and the thought made her feel sick.

McDowell somehow found herself back at the door to her barracks after walking the squalid corridors for longer than she had intended. She felt the container nestling in her pocket and remembered the testicles that she had placed there during the attack. McDowell smiled - what fun they had had in getting them! But who the hell had the other pair?

‘Well,’ she thought, ‘I’d better take these to the lab now. They'll be no good in a few hours.’