A Trip to Section 23

He looked around the dingy train. The seats worn and ripped, the carpet threadbare, the train apparently unable to to travel any great distance without jerking. He let his eyes be drawn out of the window at the grey countryside around him. It was drizzling with rain. Drizzling with rain was what this part of the world was famous for. The only other passenger in the train snored fitfully to herself, unaware that her stockings had fallen down to her ankles and her varicose veins were now available for the world to see.

Johnson curled his lip, and once again cursed his luck. It wasn’t entirely his fault that he was here. It was entirely her fault. If she’s checked her messages, she would have known that the Brigadier was coming home early. You’d have thought she would have know when her own husband was coming home. It was not the best way to be found by your commanding officer, in flagrante delicto with his other half. It was completely against regulation, of course. He wasn’t court-marshalled. That would have been the end to two careers. Instead he was transferred. He was transferred to a unit that was only talked about in jest, and used to threaten over-eager recruits with. He was being sent to Section 23, the place where the lunatics go when the army can’t do anything else with them. It was the place the army shipped all the old equipment they didn’t want, all the recruits they didn’t want. It was where they were sending him.

Their remit was “investigation of unknown threats to home defence”. It was one of those crack-pot sections that had been invented at the turn of last century, and was covered by some Royal decree that was damn-near impossible to have withdrawn. So the section keeps going, being funded with the bare minimum of money and army cast-offs. It was to this base he was being sent. The train juddered to a halt, and Major Johnson grabbed his duffel bag from the over-head compartment, and made his way to the platform. He wasn’t surprised to find that there was no-one there to meet him. He was only a little more unsurprised to find that the station appeared to be closed, and that the train left almost as soon as he had stepped off it. He looked around at the empty, boareded-up station, and shouldered his bag. His transfer papers contained a map to the base, so taking his barings, he headed off.

Nearly 4 hours later, Johnson found himself jogging down a dirt track. The map had been spectacularly vuague about the roads around here, and the sign-posts had all been vandalised, or were plain missing. He had jogged down several of these roads, and the constant drizzle had made him wet through. He was angry, irritated, and annoyed. He began plotting his revenge which he would take out on whatever poor private that crossed his path. The path ended in a fence, behind which a large black and white cow mood hopefully at him. The Major climbed over the style and continued his jog through the field, followed by the meandering cow. He reached the far hedge, and over it, in the valley below, he saw a run-down military base. Surrounding the usual grey buildings, there were a myriad of metal huts, and sheds. The parade ground was full of vehicles in various states of disrepair. The Major stood, stunned. How did any base get itself into that kind of state. He knew they were short of money but that was no excuse for such sloppiness. It didn’t take long for the Major to make it to the base gate, which wasn’t guarded. He reached out to push the gate open, and there was a flash of light, and then darkness.

The Major woke up in a military cot at the end of a barracks. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, and almost immediately regretted it. He lay back down again, and closed his eyes, trying to will the dyzziness to pass.
“Ahh, Major, your awake”.
The Major tentitavely opened one eye. “What.. happened?”
“The defensive fence.” The man standing over him had thick-rimmed glasses, and wore a white coat over his combats.
“Wha…?”
“Don’t worry about it Major. You just rest”
The Major nodded, and passed out.

~Black Xanthus