Breaking News: An Autozombiography by N. J. Hallard Page B

disfigured face existing between cartoons taped from the TV; or by a waking daydream whilst alone and snot-nosed in a friend’s field one winter, of a blue-faced figure rising stiffly from a mound of snow in front of me; or by the hazy yet enduring memory of a trick played on me one summer by my brother and his friend, who donned duvet covers and waited for me behind the shed before walking out, their arms outstretched, moaning (they thought they were being ghosts, though). Throw in an episode or two of Dr. Who to taste and bake in an Englishman’s head for a few decades. The luxury of being scared of apparent bullshit really was a privilege that only a truly decadent lifestyle could allow.
    Sirens and blue lights from behind us. A couple of police motorcycles were roaring down the centre line, cleaving the traffic into two and forcing cars onto the outer edges of either lane. They slowed to our pace and squeezed us even further to the edge of our lane, one drawing up right next to Al’s window. In between them sped another two bikes swiftly followed by a dark green Jaguar, a black Range rover with tinted windows and two black cars I didn’t recognise, all in a line. Al rammed his spliff into his mouth and grinned at me, then executed a particularly cheeky move behind the alternating bikes at the back of the entourage and put his foot down, easily topping a hundred miles per hour in places. One of the riders looked over his shoulder at us, but did nothing. Al held the joint in his teeth at a jaunty angle.
    ‘ Fuck The Man.’
    ‘ Why are they going south?’ Lou asked.
    ‘ Ooh,’ I said, quietly. ‘That’s quite interesting.’
    ‘ What’s that?’ Al said, staring ahead intently.
    ‘ Do you remember that mad letter in the Argus ?’ I had read the reader’s letter about a year before in our local paper and it had tickled my interest.
    ‘ You know the Southwick Tunnel’s coming up? Okay, there’s this theory that under the same hill is a bunker, or meeting rooms or something. Al - you know how often that tunnel is shut, right? It’s ridiculous. This chap pointed out in his letter that, even though they always put it down to maintenance work, the light bulbs that were blown before they closed it are always still blown afterwards. How much maintenance can you do without getting round to changing a few light bulbs? If you check out the doors they look like steel blast doors, with covered hinges and that. Plus, chalk’s pretty easy to dig into, right?
    ‘ Well here’s the weird thing; and this isn’t rumour, its fact. That tunnel was closed on September 12th 2001, right; from midday when the London underground got bombed; on the eve of the war – shock and awe, remember that? When we went into Afghanistan… and these are just what I can remember. They guy had documented loads of oddly coincidental dates that the tunnel had been closed on.’
    ‘ I remember you reading it out. It is closed a lot.’ said Al. Lou was incredulous.
    ‘ I’m sure people have got better things to do today than play king of the castle,’ she said. ‘They’re probably going home, or sending cars to take people up to London. Aren’t all the MPs on holiday still?’
    ‘ Think about it, think about it. Okay, that hill is flank-on to any firestorm from a nuclear blast over London; it’s an hour – or half an hour driving at our current speed – from London itself, so land access is no problem; Shoreham airport’s just a spit away, as is the sea obviously; there’s a superstore at the west end of the tunnel for supplies; plus there’s more golf courses round here than there are fields. That’s the secret COBRA headquarters; I’ll put a fiver on it.’
    ‘ The what?’ Al quizzed, still focussed.
    ‘ COBRA; it’s the government and police and army chiefs and that when they all meet up for crisis talks in an emergency.’
    ‘ They might as well have called it “Cougar Force” or “The Power Squad”.’ Lou could be