Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan

was slowly returning to normal. As the adrenalin rush of his freak-out faded, a deep unease settled over him.
    ‘Who are you people?’ Terry asked.
    The smile fell from the bespectacled man’s face with far more ease than it had been plastered up there.
    ‘You can call me Mr Brown. Think of me as someone with your best interests at heart. I need to ask you a few questions about what happened yesterday.’
    ‘Yesterday? You mean I’ve been out for a whole day?’
    ‘We sedated you.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Oh, we had all these spare drugs approaching their sell-by date,’ Brown explained. ‘We thought we’d better use them.’
    ‘Really?’ Terry asked, his befuddled mind trying to make sense of the surreal situation.
    ‘No, not really. It was for your own good. You seemed rather agitated when we found you.’
    Terry had a brief recollection of lying on the catwalk, surrounded by white rubber boots. Below, white-clad figures with tanks on their backs were firing out whooshing jets of flame from long nozzles. There was a smell of burning flesh. Somebody was gibbering obscenities in a high-pitched voice rather like his own.
    ‘What about the others?’ Terry asked.
    The man in the suit rearranged his features – he was probably aiming for sympathy but achieved constipation – before saying, ‘I’m afraid all of your colleagues passed away in the stampede.’
    He patted Terry’s shoulder, bare above the robe, and drew his fingertips lightly across the skin, exhaling softly as he did so. Another wave of nausea gripped Terry and he leaned over the bed to retch dryly. When his stomach had once again realized it was empty, Terry flopped back onto the pillow.
    ‘There wasn’t a stampede,’ he said hoarsely. ‘Those cows just went for us. Biting, stamping, ripping. They meant to kill us.’
    The three men exchanged significant looks.
    ‘So you remember,’ Brown said.
    Terry found the strength to sit up. These men did not seem the slightest bit surprised by his bizarre assertion, as they should have been. Terry was even doubting the memory himself. Something was very wrong here.
    ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘You’re not a doctor. Why am I not in hospital? Are you police?’
    Brown leaned in so his nose almost brushed Terry’s.
    ‘You could say I’m a kind of policeman,’ he disclosed amiably, pushing Terry back to the bed with a surprising strength. His sidekicks grabbed Terry’s arms while he picked off a piece of fluff from Terry’s chest. ‘I’m the kind of policeman it doesn’t pay to shout at. Why don’t you lie there like a good boy and tell me what you saw.’
    He held the fluff at Terry’s eye level and blew it towards him. The certainty he was in some kind of deep trouble gripped Terry. He related the whole story in a monotone, flinching from time to time as gruesome flashes popped up into his mind.
    When he was finished, Brown, who had been sitting on the side of the bed, casually dangling one leg, raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m afraid you were unlucky enough to have been at the epicentre of a new wave of terrorist attacks in Britain.’
    ‘The cows are terrorists?’
    All three men laughed. Brown seemed particularly tickled, dabbing at his eyes with the handkerchief.
    ‘I wish I’d thought of that one,’ he said mysteriously. ‘No, Mr Borders. The cows were not staging an insurgency. They were merely the tools of terrorists opposed to our way of life. We’re talking viral warfare.’
    Brown stood up suddenly and gave a nod. Baby-face and Scar-face released Terry’s arms. His first instinct was to leap up and make a mad dash to safety, but even the thought of running made him feel dizzy. Murderous cows, terror attacks, viral warfare. It was like the plot from a B-movie, and far too much for Terry to take in. He was again beginning to feel the insistent pull of the drug-induced sleep from which he had emerged, its offer of refuge from the insanity.
    ‘When can I go home?’ he asked,