Epiphany

    The war continued.  It was a strange war, not exactly an inter-national conflict, but at the same time not quite a civil war.  The Para-militia had a mixture of English born people who lived in Scotland and also people who had been born in Scotland and spent most of their lives living in England.  The lines had become so blurry, this was not about people with definite differences battling each other, the only true difference between the two factions was the individual preferences of its soldiers.
    In Colin’s opinion, your nationality was the country that you’ve spent the most time in, that was why Colin was Scottish, and right now, this Scottish person was driving back to his funeral home from a visit to the shops.  Colin liked shopping more now that it simply involved finding an abandoned shop, breaking in and taking what you wanted.  It was like looting except that there was no chance of being arrested because there were no police.
    It was the early evening of the 6th of January 2032, since the day the war had begun the British soldiers had been steadily pushing back the Para-militia.  Very recently, they had won a battle and taken control of the train station, which was now being used to take more people to the refugee camps, making the city even more vacant.
    Colin parked up outside his funeral parlour.  He took out the box full of food and went inside; there he entered the break room where everyone was just how he had left them.  Ian, Clark and Victoria were all sitting on the settee, watching the news together.
    “Food,” Colin said simply as he sat down with them, placing the box by their feet.  The group immediately began to tuck in as they continued watching.  On the television, they were reporting the story of the most recent skirmish.
    “The latest fighting in Edinburgh has resulted in the deaths of four more British soldiers.  A lot of criticism has been directed towards the Prime Minister recently because people are claiming that he did not accurately depict the loss of life that would occur if we took military action in Edinburgh.  The casualties are so unexpectedly high that the British forces in the city are spending most of their resources just trying to handle all their dead.  They tried to turn to private funeral companies but they cannot help since Edinburgh has been designated a conflict zone by international codes and company policies mean that they can’t profit from conflict zones.”
    “I can’t believe that we’re now classed as a ‘conflict zone’,” Vic said.
    “I still don’t really understand why this is happening,” Clark said.  “I mean, is this a civil war or a war of independence?”
    “I suppose that depends on who wins,” Ian said.
    “Did no one else see that?” Colin asked.
    “What?” Vic said.  “The deaths?  I know, it’s a tragedy but you must be used to seeing it by now.”
    “No,” Colin said.  “Was no one listening to that?  The British forces are having more casualties than they can handle right now and I bet the Para-militia are having a similar problem.”
    “What are you getting at, Colin?” Ian said.
    “I think we’re in a better situation than we realise,” Colin continued.  “The army were so desperate that they were trying to call on private funeral companies to lighten their load but the big corporations can’t touch them, they’re not allowed to do business in conflict zones.  But there’s nothing to say that we can’t.”
    “What do you mean?” Vic asked.
    “We’re classed as a small business,” Colin said, standing up to address them all.  “We don’t have a policy that dictates we can’t work in conflict zones.  We could offer our services to the British Army and the best part is we can charge whatever we want if they’re as desperate as it says on the news.”
    “That sounds horrible,” Vic said.
    “Yeah,” Ian said.  “What good is money to us?  We’re not paying for anything right for now.”
    “But when the war is over we’ll need it,” Colin said.  “And we have a chance to make a lot right now.”
    “Maybe we should just leave,” Ian suggested.  “The trains are running again, we could all just leave this place and go to England together.  I’m sure we could come back here when this whole mess if finished.”
    “We’ll leave this place eventually,” Colin said.  “I’m just saying that we could make some money before we go, then we can support ourselves, we won’t be like all those other refugees.”
    “I don’t know,” Vic said.  “This sounds really dodgy, can we get into trouble for this?”
    “Of course not,” Colin said.  “These people need a service that we can provide.”
    “Okay,” Vic said.  “I’m in.  We may as well give it a try.”
    “If you want to get the business going again, then I’ll help you Colin,” Ian said.
    Colin looked over at Clark expectantly.  “Clark?” he said.  “What about you?”
    She sighed and looked up at his.  “I’m sorry; I don’t think I can do this anymore.”
    “What do you mean?” Colin said.
    “I can’t live like this anymore,” she said.  “Scavenging around the ruins of a war zone, I’m sick of it.  I just want to go home.”
    “Alright,” Colin said.  “If that’s what you want, you can get on one of the trains and go back to England.”
    “I think I’d like that,” Clark said.
    “Okay,” Colin said.  “I’ll just drive over to the main British camp and offer them our services, simple as that.”
    “How do you know where it is?” Vic said.
    “Its location has been plastered enough all over the news,” Colin said.  “It’s near the first battlefield.  The after that I can go make the same offer to the Para-militia.”
    “What?” Vic said.  “You’re going to look for the Para-militia to negotiate a business deal, that’s insane.  I was fine with you contacting the British army but you can’t do the same with the Para-militia, they’ll kill you.”
    “I don’t think they will,” Colin said.  “What I have to say will benefit them.”
    “How will you even find them?” Vic asked.  “No one knows where their base is, not even the British.”
    “I think I have an idea,” Colin said.  “Dominic took me to this place where a lot of them were one time; I think I know where they’re hiding.”
    “You’ve known where they were all this time and you didn’t tell anybody?” Vic said.  “If you informed the British soldiers, this war could’ve been over long ago.”
    “If this deal is made it would be in our best interest if the war continues,” Colin said.  “That’ll mean more business.  Besides, Dominic is with the Para-militia, he could get hurt if I tell the Army where they might be.”
    “This feels really wrong,” Vic said.  “This is starting to sound as if we’d be profiting from war.  You’re like Oskar Schindler without the redemption”
    “Stop making fun of me,” Colin said.  “It’s a good idea and you know it.”
    “I’m sorry if I don’t seem excited that, because of a loophole, we get to have a monopoly on death,” Vic said.
    “Do you not want to do it anymore?” Colin said.
    “No, go on,” Vic said.  “I’ll still help.”
    “Okay,” Colin said.  “I’ll head off to the two camps now and see what happens.  Ian, can you come with me?”
    “Don’t you think you should take Natalie to the train station first?” Ian said.
    “What?” Clark said.  “No, you don’t have to.”
    “That’s a point actually,” Colin said.  “Do you want to leave now?”
    “Yes,” she said quietly.
    “C’mon then,” Colin said.  “We’ll take one of the vans; I’ll drop you off at the station.  From there, you can get one of the refugee trains and make your way home.”
    Colin and Clark proceeded to the garage, took one of the black body-collecting van and left.  On the way, Colin saw reminders of why Clark wanted to leave, walls covered in bullet holes, cars reduced to cinders, the odd puddle of blood.
    “Are you sure about this?” Colin said.
    “Positive,” she said.  “I want to leave.”
    “It’s still not too late to change your mind,” he said.  “I could just make a turn and we could go to the British camp together.”
    “It’s still not too late to change yours either,” she said.  “You can forget this idea and just go to a better place, a safer place.”
    “Do you think I’m a bad person for what I want to do?” he asked.
    “Did you know I was a fan of comics when I was younger?” she said.  “I even used to collect them; my old bedroom was full of them.  I realised that there were two types of superheroes, those that were born that way and those that were made that way somehow.  For example, Superman was born with his powers because he was an alien.  Spiderman was given his powers from that spider-bite.  However, there was one exception that was in neither of these two categories, he was my favourite.  Batman didn’t have any powers, but he still did the whole superhero thing.  He just did the best he could with what he was given.”
    “Thank you Clark,” Colin said, smiling.
    “I liked them so much, I even started to think that I might be a superhero,” Clark admitted.  “I spent ages searching for what my powers could be and eventually I convinced myself that I found them.  I thought I was a superhero because I could tell the difference between black and very very very dark blue.”
    Then, something hindered his driving forwards.  There was a roadblock with several British soldiers guarding it.
    “I think this is as far as I can go,” Colin said.
    “Okay,” Clark said as she got out of the van.  “Thanks Mr. Shaw, I hope you get whatever it is you want.”
    After saying that, she closed the door and proceeded past the British-controlled checkpoint to get to the train station.
    Colin began to turn around; he had two more stops to make tonight.  He had to drive right on in to the main bases of both factions involved in this war.  Colin admitted to himself that he was more than a little nervous; it was probably unlikely that he was going to be shot tonight but the chances of that happening were significantly greater than any other time in his life and that worried him.
    Colin travelled to the British main encampment first because he imagined them to be slightly friendlier towards him than the Para-militia, only slightly though.  On the way there, he thought about the last thing that Clark said to him, “I hope that you get what you want.”  It was probably the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.  
    Where the main British forces where entrenched was surround by barriers and armed guards.  Colin drove up to one of these checkpoints, the guards on duty treated him very suspiciously, and two of them held up rifles at him and slowly advanced on the van.  In the distance, Colin could just about make out some large tents of the main camp.
    One soldier approached the driver side door and opened it; Colin put up his hands and looked straight ahead.
    “Who are you?” the soldier asked, his rifle still pointing at Colin.
    “My name is Colin Shaw,” he said.  “I’m just a civilian.”
    “Then why are you here?” he said.
    “I’m looking for your commander,” Colin said.  “I have an offer for him.”
    “What kind of offer?” he said.
    “I’m a funeral director,” Colin said.  “I heard that you may need some help and I have the facilities to accommodate your needs.”
    “Get out of the van,” he said.
    Colin complied and slowly stepped out, his hands still up.  The guard gestured to the other soldier who began contacting someone on his radio.  The original soldier pushed Colin up against the van and frisked him.  When he was finished, the other guard nodded at him.
    “Put your arms down,” he ordered.  “I’ll escort you inside but the van stays here.”
    The soldier stopped pointing the rifle at him, which Colin was thankful for, and took him into the camp.  
    He led him through the narrow gaps between the tents and across a clearing.  All around them, soldiers were marching past and looking generally busy.  Colin was eventually taken to a medium sized tent and ‘encouraged’ inside.  The interior was comprised of just a few soldiers, who looked like officers, a couple of metal folding chairs and a desk.
    The soldier accompanying him saluted and said, “I’m sorry General, this is the man you wanted to see.”
    “Leave us,” General Wilson said to the officers he had previously been talking to.  “Sit down Mr. Shaw.”  Colin did so.  “My perimeter guards told me why you’re here but I want you to tell me yourself.”
    “I own a crematorium,” Colin said.  “I wish to offer you the use of it.”
    “For a price?” Wilson said.
    “Of course,” Colin said.  “I am a businessman after all.”
    “I really wish it hadn’t come to this,” Wilson said.  “We’re so poorly supported we’re having trouble just getting our deceased back over the border.”
    General Wilson began looking at the floor and pinched the bridge of his nose.  He looked very tired and Colin could tell how upset he was over the issue.
    “Wait,” Wilson said.  “We’ve tried to do business with the private funeral companies before, they said it was illegal.”
    “I run an independent funeral parlour,” Colin explained.  “We’re not subject to conflict zone laws.”
    “Lucky me,” Wilson said dryly.  “I suppose I don’t have much of a choice, we’ve got tents full of the extra bodies that we can’t handle, I have to accept.”
    “You’ve made a good decision,” Colin said as he stood up and shook the General’s hand.
    To the guard, General Wilson said, “Load up the van he came in with our dead.”
    During the time it took to move all the corpses into Colin’s van, he and the General negotiated over the price, eventually settling on more than twice what Colin would normally charge.
    When they had finished, Colin was escorted back to his van by the perimeter guards and he inspected its new contents.  He didn’t need to but at the same time, he couldn’t just drive away without having a peek at what he would be transporting.  The majority of the clients Colin got on a daily basis were a few older people who had died naturally and he wanted to see what the exact opposite looked like, just one time, out of a kind of morbid curiosity.  
    His van was filled with young men who had all died violent deaths, he could count dozens of bullet holes at a quick glance and some of them had been dead for a while.  The stench of death hit him like a wave as the noise of buzzing flies filled his ears.  Colin closed the doors, got back into his van and drove away, feeling quite content with how he handled the matter.
    His next stop was acting on a hunch in an attempt to find the Para-militia’s base.  A thought ran across his mind that said if he did manage to find the Para-militia and if he did manage to somehow convince them to do business with him, they would also probably expect to be able to load his van with all their current dead as the British Army had done.  If they did that and discovered that he was also trying to do business with the other side, they probably wouldn’t hesitate to kill him.
    Colin knew he couldn’t go right to the Para-militia base from the British camp so he made a quick detour back to the funeral home where he told Ian and Vic to begin cremating the current load as he took another van out to hopefully make the second collection of the night.  Colin didn’t mind this extension of his activities tonight; in fact, he quite enjoyed having to run around like this, having so much to do made him feel busy and useful, like he had a purpose.
    He arrived at the abandoned warehouse Dominic had taken him to that one eventful night; it was dark and very quiet.  Colin got out of the van slowly and looked around, there wasn’t a single Para-militia guard in sight, and he wasn’t sure whether that was a good or bad sign.  He walked across the road, constantly spinning round, checking the windows of all the tall buildings around him, everything looked okay.
    Colin approached the side door of that same warehouse he had fled from more than three months ago; he opened the door as carefully as he could and crept inside, gently closing it behind him.  He steeped as lightly as he could manage while sneaking deeper into the warehouse.  As he pressed his back up against the wall of the final corner, he could hear voices, the one speaking the most was female, and Colin recognised the origin of that voice as Aden.
    “How did the mission go?” she asked someone.
    “Successful,” a different voice said.  “We planted all the mines we received at various places across the entire city.  I’ve already issued their positions to all our squads so they don’t walk into them by mistake, only the English will be hurt by them.”
    “And what of the device?” Aden said.
    “I’ve finally completed it,” a third voice said.  “It took a while to scavenge all the components but it’s finally working as it should.”
    “How does it work?” Aden asked.
    “I’ve converted this basic scanner to detect the frequency of the radio waves that their pulse beacons emit; now we know where all their soldiers are at any given time.”
    “Excellent,” she said.  “Make as many as you can, they will be a great benefit to our ambushes.”
    Colin decided to take a quick peek around the corner before venturing out completely; he could see an old table placed just in front of the stage where a few Para-militia, including Aden, were stood around it.  Scattered all over the rest of the warehouse were countless other Para-militia soldiers, not as many as he had seen the first time he came here but definitely a significant number.
    Among the ranks of the Para-militia, Colin could see one face he recognised, it was Dominic.  He was sitting in a corner with some other troops around a fire, he was easy to spot, he was one of the few in this warehouse who didn’t have their faces covered.
    Colin couldn’t see another reason to put this off any longer, to relax he closed his eyes and went to the forest in his mind, he needed to seem calm and in control for them to take him seriously.  When he was ready, he stepped out from his hiding place.
    “I’ve got a new assignment for you,” Aden said, not noticing Colin’s presence yet.  “Most of our casualties are caused by those Cerberus tanks and our rockets are ineffective against them, they just shoot them out of the air before they can reach them.  It would give us a great advantage if we nullified their tanks, I want you to try and replicate the pulse beacons their soldiers use, then their tanks will be useless against us.”
    “Sounds like a good plan,” Colin announced from the shadows.  Every head in the building immediately shot towards the source of that comment.
    Colin slowly stepped towards them as every Para-militia rifle in the room was suddenly pointed in his direction; he held up his hands but kept walking forwards.  Aden held up her hand and said, “Hold your fire.”
    “However, it’s a shame how completely pointless everything you’re doing is,” Colin said.  “You cause so much death for nothing.  You may think you are important right now, but you’re not…we’re not.  Nothing here really matters when you look at the Grand scheme.”
Aden stared at him, barely believing what she was witnessing, he stopped moving and yet she still examined him until she realised
“I know you,” she said.
    “I know you better,” Colin said with a smug grin.
    “Colin?” Dominic said, standing up and coming between Colin and Aden.  “What are you doing here?  If you’re here for me, I’m not coming with you.”
    “I’m not here for you,” Colin said.
    “Oh,” Dominic said.
    “I’m here to talk to Aden,” Colin said.  “Please tell your men to lower their weapons, I’m not armed.”
    Aden motioned to a nearby soldier who promptly searched Colin, after he nodded back at Aden she said, “Okay, guns down.”
    Her soldiers obeyed and put their guns away but they still stared at Colin with suspicious contempt.  Colin lowered his hands, pushed past Dominic and approached closer to Aden.
    Aden took out her pistol and slammed it hard on the table in front of her.
    “Now what the hell do you want?” she said.
    “I just wanted to talk to you,” he said.
    “Why should I talk with you?” she said.  “You killed one of my men and Duncan’s very angry with you.”  She gestured to the large bald man who had tried to murder him on that same night three months ago.  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t let him tear you apart.”
    “Your men tried to kill me,” he said.  “I’m willing to forget that however because I want to do business with you.”
    “I’m not listening to anything you have to say,” Aden said.  “You know where we are, you could lead the English right to us.”  She picked up her gun and aimed it at Colin’s head.
    “If I wanted to do that, I could’ve done it months ago,” Colin spoke quickly now.  “I just want to make you an offer.”
    “Go on,” she said, not putting the gun down.
    “What are you doing with your dead?” he asked.
    “What business is that of yours?” she asked back.
    “I own a funeral parlour,” he said.  “With its own crematorium, I could be very useful to you.”
    “Is this true?” Aden asked Dominic.
    “Yeah, it is,” Dom said.  “Him and my sister run it together.”
    “There, you see?” Colin said.  “Now tell me what you are currently doing with your dead.”
    “Our wounded that die hear we keep in a store room in the back,” she said reluctantly as she gradually lowered her pistol.  “Those that fall on the battlefield are left behind.”
    “That doesn’t seem right, does it?” Colin said.  “You can’t keep bodies here; your army will be defeated by disease.  Also, don’t you think that your soldiers who die for their cause deserve better than to rot in the streets?”
    “Speak clearly,” she said.  “What are you offering exactly?”
    “To help,” he said.  “I have a van outside, why don’t you order your men to load it up with the corpses that you have here?  I’ll take them away, cremate them and you can focus on your war.  And I’ll also take care of whatever bodies you left out there.”
    “Why would you do this?” she said.
    “Well,” he said, smiling.  “I do expect to get paid for these services, but don’t worry; I’ll give you a family discount.”
    “Alright,” Aden said.
    Aden ordered her men to move the corpses from the back room into Colin’s van while they talked some more.
    “You’re not doing this for the English, are you?” Aden inquired.
    “Are you joking?” Colin said.  “I’m Scottish; the English would shoot me on sight.”
    “Okay then, if you take care of our fallen, then you will get your payment,” she said.
    “I’m glad we could come to an agreement,” Colin said.  He put out his hand to Aden, the same hand that had shook Edward Wilson’s hand earlier today, and she took it.  Her grip was more forceful than the General’s was and it made him wince.
    When the van had been fully loaded, Colin left without saying goodbye to Dominic.  He drove away feeling very pleased with himself, he didn’t look in the back this time, he didn’t really care.  Colin just drove back to the funeral home to get these bodies taken care of.
    This was how Colin Shaw developed a new routine; he would spend his days making regular trips to both camps to collect their dead.  The British Army paid a fixed amount every week into a bank account and Colin was expected to deal with as many bodies as necessary.  Whereas, the Para-militia paid him in cash for every body cremated, they had attained a small fortune from looting the deserted city quite regularly and definitely could afford it.
    Occasionally, Colin would be contacted from either or both camps and told to go clean up the result of a battle the night before.  This meant that, sometimes, Colin would be paid twice for doing the same job.  Over the course of the war, he made a lot of money from this.  Life had become good and it was all thanks to death.