The United Kingdom of Islam.

By ML Stewart

In the year 2020 a devastating terrorist attack takes place in the city of London. An attack, planned for many years, which acts as the catalyst for an elaborate plot by Islamic supremacists to overthrow the government and monarchy alike.

The Radical Islamic Party seizes control of England and immediately introduces Sharia law, with horrific consequences.

Meanwhile, in the North, an army of former hooligans refuse to surrender their values to the extremists, let alone their country. They fight tooth and nail for their beliefs, eventually leading to the North-South divide becoming a grim reality, the frontline.

As the extremists push further north, Emily Piper, a young woman who grew up knowing only the deprivation and oppression of the wasteland known as the Northern Territory, decides the time has come for change.

But as she plans to gather an army, strong enough to retake England, she doesn't realise the years of hunger have created an enemy much more terrifying than the extremists.

A novel of 147,000 words.
Approximately 420 printed pages.

THIS BOOK IS RATED PGP: Pretty Gory in Places.
It contains some graphic scenes of mutilation.
It will also make you laugh and cry.
The F-word makes an occasional appearance.

M.L. Stewart is the author of the Amazon and Apple #1 bestsellers - The Facebook Killer series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: ML Stewart
• Release date: Jan 25, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465904447

ML Stewart

M.L. Stewart was born in London, England in 1968.Since first self-publishing in 2011, his books have been enjoyed by some 100,000 readers.

Book preview

Chapter I.

I was only eleven months old when the war started. We were living in Chatham, Kent, when the first plane hit. Mother had taken a year off work to look after me. Apparently she had planned to employ a nanny so she could return to her job at the university. She was a lecturer of Religious Studies.

I have seen some old 2D images of her. They were called photographs. I still have one, which I keep in my breast pocket, close to my heart. She looked such a beautiful woman. I’ve inherited her height, hazel eyes and blonde hair but that’s about it. I don’t think any of my generation, the lost generation, could inherit such looks of innocence or happiness as those portrayed in the old photographs.

Father had been working in his office at the New London Times when the first plane struck. Mother saw it on television. It was the MI7 building, just around the corner from Father's office. I suppose I must have inherited some of her bravery as well. She left me with a neighbour and drove into London. The trains were already under RIP control so there was no other way to get there. She told Father she was the only one heading towards the capital; thousands of terrified people had started to flee already. They must have known what was happening.

The second plane hit Parliament, just as Big Ben was striking twelve. They say it was still chiming as it collapsed into the main hall. And so they continued: Buckingham Palace, Canary Wharf, Saint Paul’s, the British Museum, GCHQ and Downing Street. There were eight in total.

As Infidel air traffic controllers lay slumped over their desks, their throats slit from behind, eight gargantuan flying bombs destroyed everything British; including our freedom.

Father always blamed himself for what happened next. What if he'd taken a different route? Mother had suggested he drive south of the river, there were fewer targets there, but it was me he was coming home for. He thinks she recognised the man who did it, while they were caught in that traffic jam, she thought it was one of her students from the university but couldn’t be sure. It was hard to tell, him wearing the uniform and all. The first bullet merely grazed her shoulder, but the second one didn’t miss.

I think Father’s biggest regret was not being able to bury his wife. The madness was spreading too fast. It had been too well organised. He abandoned the car at a roadblock, two streets away from our house, his wife of fifteen years asleep against the dashboard.

The RIP men handed Father a leaflet as he ran down the street to get me, the same leaflet that would drop in its millions from the skies above London within the hour.

Declaration By The Radical Islamic Party

The city of London and its surrounds are now officially under Islamic Sharia law. If you and your family wish to remain within these zones, you are at liberty to do so, but strict compliance to the new law is required with immediate effect.

Any person wishing to leave the area must head north. Any person witnessed committing acts of resistance, theft or religiously motivated crimes will face death.

Mohammed Kazik

Holy Governor of the Islamic State of England.

*

No one ever explained to me what actually started the war. I don’t think anyone ever really knew, but the widely held belief was the lack of oil. I don’t ever remember seeing a petrol-powered car; all my generation have ever known is hydrogen.

They reckon it was back in 2018 when the supplies started to get low. I remember Father telling me about all of the wars in the Middle East, wars over oil and how it had been deemed worth dying for. But that was back then, before the earthquake, or the corequake as they called it.

Father was the only person I knew who actually remembered the facts, he was good like that, being a journalist and everything, but that was before the Black Hawks took him. I'd pestered him for days to finish telling me the story but he never did. He'd gotten round to the bit about how the ruptures had released so much oil into the sea around somewhere called Arabia that they started to lose their fortune. Father always said the Arabs, as he called them back then, were funding people like RIP, he said when the oil started to run out so did the money. That’s why he believes they made their move and started the war. They couldn’t afford to terrorise us any longer. It was a case of now or never.

We were two of the lucky ones, to get out alive that is. One of Father’s best friends was a Muslim; a normal, peaceful one, like the majority were back in those days. He called to see if we were all right. That was just before the phone networks were destroyed.

We spent almost a month in that man’s cellar. Father told me how he used to keep a milk-soaked rag in my mouth to stop me from crying. He said we were hiding like the Jews did from the Germans. I could never believe that, the Germans were almost part of us by then, they owned most of our biggest companies and banks. I’m sure Father had muddled up his facts about them.

That nice Muslim man had decided to remain in London. Father said he had too much to lose if he left, so he smuggled us out in the boot of his car and drove us to a port somewhere on the East Coast.

It was a fishing boat that took us north. There was no other way. By that time, any Infidel caught within the Islamic State would be killed for certain. Father offered the skipper a thousand pounds extra to take us to Scotland. He tried but they opened fire as soon as we came near. He warned Father that the nearby Northumbrian Zone was a wild and lawless area, so they agreed to head further south to Newcastle. Or what was left of it.

Chapter II.

The Northern Territory.

One of my earliest memories is when one of the boys from the camp showed me a book he had found in the ashes of Newcastle City Library. It was called an atlas. It had a picture of the country before the war, all divided up into little patches, each one a different colour and they all had their own names. There were a lot of shires if I remember correctly. He let me keep that atlas for one night, as long as I promised to give it back the next morning, it was the only book he had and he was sure it would be worth a few coins one day.

I spent the whole night looking at that map by candlelight. I imagined myself sailing down the rivers Tweed, Thames or Severn with my parents. My finger followed the snake called the A1 from Scotland all the way down to London. I remember Father mentioning this road and his story about some long forgotten Roman army marching upon it.

I'd never seen the walls that everyone spoke about; they weren’t on that map. Scotland looked as though you could walk right into it, just like before. That was probably the night I decided that one day I would go to Scotland but only as a free person. I would go and tell them they could tear down their walls, that the war was over.

That was a mythical map, a magical and ancient one and something that I would receive the first of many beatings over. I couldn’t give it back. Never. I tore those pages out, rolled them up and hid them in an old bottle before burying it in a hole under a burned out car, a car with a metal star sticking up from the front.

The next day was when I had my first fight with a boy, Terry Butcher, or Butch, as he liked to be called. It was his atlas. I must have been about four or five and he was seven. He had hair the colour of a rusty car and ears like its mirrors. He was a strange boy who always counted his steps when he walked.

I'd broken my promise to him and in return he broke my nose, but my fighting had only just begun, and a bust nose would turn out to be the least of my worries.

*

When I turned six, Father gave me Mother’s wedding ring. He said it was the only thing he'd managed to salvage from the car. It was far too big for any of my fingers, so he put it on a chain and hung it around my neck, where it stayed until my fingers grew fatter.

Some of the older ones said life was tough in the camp, but for us little ones we didn’t know any different. We'd never known about electricity or that by moving a piece of metal, fresh water would run out of a tube. We had candles and a stream. I didn’t see what the big deal was.

The camp wasn’t a real camp like on the map. That had a thing called a key with a small picture of a tent and the word campsite next to it. There must have been hundreds before the war. They all seemed to be in nice places, next to big patches of blue or rivers. Our camp was amongst the rubble of the old city, in a building they used to call a multi-storey car park. I never understood what that actually meant; all I knew is that it was our home. The bombs had only demolished the top five levels, so we had 0, which was underground, G and 1. The lifts didn’t go up and down anymore but they were good for keeping the water cold.

Every child between the ages of four and six had the duty to collect water, each morning, from the underground stream, which one of the bombs had exposed. On our fourth birthday we were given two old metal buckets, your name was painted on the side of each one and God forbid if you ever lost one or made a hole in it, you would get the beating of your life from fat Mr. Cooper, the man in charge of the lifts. Some of the older ones called him Mr. Bumble when he wasn't around. His face was always red and he had cheeks like potatoes.

And so, for two years you would be woken by Mr. Cooper before the sun came up and trudge the twenty-minute journey to the hole in the ground with your personal buckets, fill them up before hauling them back to camp where they were emptied into big plastic tanks stored in the lifts. When the final child had emptied his last bucket, the shiny metal doors were forced closed to keep the water cold. This was only to drink from. The head of each family had a bottle, which could only be filled twice a day. They had to sign Mr. Cooper’s form each time they came, after all there were almost two thousand of us crammed into that multi storey car thing.

I soon got wise though and realised if I got up before Mr. Cooper started to wake the other children, I could run down to the hole, fill my buckets and be back before most of them had realised what day it was. Then I could sleep for an extra hour before school started. God, how I yearned for my seventh birthday, when I could finally scratch my name off those buckets and hand them back to Mr. Cooper.

*

After the water run we had an hour for breakfast. The camp canteen was on level 1. It had an odd arrangement of seating, ranging from charred church pews and bus seats to piles of bricks supporting old planks of wood.

As kids, we never thought about where the food came from, none of us ever asked and no one ever explained. We just knew that for breakfast, you got a spoonful of cabbage, four slices of boiled carrot, a potato and some bread. On the seventh day we were treated to a cooked rat, if enough had been caught and sometimes, if their had been rain, a mouthful of boiled worms. When we were finished, we had to take our own plate to an old metal barrel, raised on three bricks, full of greasy water with a small fire burning underneath. We washed them and left them on an old table next to the barrel. Then we went to school.

Mrs Jefferson was the name of our teacher. It can’t have been an easy job teaching a class of one hundred and sixty children but I’m sure she did her best.

One day, a little boy asked her in class, Miss, why are you teaching us maths when my daddy says there’s nowt left to count?

Mrs Jefferson replied calmly, Young man, I am simply teaching you to count the days until we are free again.

History was my favourite lesson. I think we were all unanimous in that. We just assumed that the bombings had been part of normal life, that they did it all over the world. It was Mrs. Jefferson that informed us differently.

When the enemy struck that day at twelve noon, it wasn’t just London, she told us, it was all of England. They wanted to take the whole of the land as their own. They had cells throughout the North as well, but the Higgans fought to quell the uprising.

They came in their thousands to fight for their land, their armies marched with the banned Union Jack and St. George Cross flags. They battled on the streets, in the cities and the villages to save themselves, their families and neighbours.

The Higgans didn’t flee like the Londoners had; they stood and fought to the death. They spread out, from the East Coast to the West Coast, in an attempt to save their country. They were prepared, like the Scots, they knew it was coming; it had been coming for years.

It was a simple text message that saved many people of the North.

"The time has come. Drop your tools and take up arms."

They estimate around six thousand Higgans received that message before the networks were shut down. But It was enough.

The extremists couldn’t send cargo planes to the North to do what they had done in London. They didn’t have the insiders or the contacts. Instead they'd relied on something called sleeper cells.

Weak-minded people, Mrs. Jefferson called them, who believed in the virgins and the martyrdom.

What they hadn’t banked on though were the Higgans. This was their fight too and they sure as hell weren’t afraid to die for their cause.

Mrs. Jefferson said they believe more than two thousand Higgans died during the fighting. But one man they couldn't kill, the most notable of all, was Terence Butcher senior. The man who sent that text. The man who saved the North of England from invasion and the man whose son broke my nose over a map.

After that class, I approached Mrs. Jefferson and asked her about the Higgans. She told me, a long time before the war, they used to be known as hooligans, people who used to like fighting each other after something she called football.

She said when the threat began, at the start of the century, they were the first to realise that there was going to be a problem. They decided to stop fighting each other and join together for a common cause. That’s when the English Defence Alliance was born, but they were unorganised back then and people called them things like Nazis and troublemakers.

They held demonstrations in the cities, against what they called Islamification but they always ended up in fights with the young radicals and their supporters.

It was Terry Butcher senior, she said, who changed things. He had been in charge of the Alliance’s Division in the North East. He had vision, she told me, her eyes looked wet.

It was in 2016 that Mr. Butcher took charge of the entire Alliance. He knew the police hated them and that the politicians were fearful of them, so he held a secret meeting with all of his Division commanders. It was during this meeting they agreed to restructure. There were to be no more marches or demonstrations, they would stand as local councillors instead. But behind the new, political face of the English Defence Alliance lay something much more sinister. They were recruiting, their numbers swelling by hundreds each month, but worse than that, they were arming themselves. Preparing for war.

The terrorist attacks were ongoing, a car bomb here, a poison gas attack there, but the Alliance didn’t react, they merely issued a statement condemning the actions of the terrorists. Even when the government banned the sale or display of any British or English flag, the Alliance complied. All the while amassing their army and weapons.

And thank fuck they did, said Mrs. Jefferson, before quickly covering her mouth. I’m sorry Emily, I shouldn’t have said that.

*

Father spent seven years in the British Army before becoming a political journalist. He voiced his opinion many times throughout his writing career, about immigration and the change in society, usually falling on deaf ears or at the very least receiving a Letter to the Editor calling him a racist pig. That was probably one of the reasons he was asked to help form the Resistance Committee. Not for being a pig, but for his experience.

The committee were made up of three men and three women spanning six different religions. Catholic, Protestant, Church of England, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu.

I was seven and a half when the Resistance was formed; I'd handed my buckets back to Mr. Cooper and begun my last year of school. After much pleading, Father allowed me to sit in on their meetings, as long as I remained in the corner and didn’t make a noise. That was when, for the first time in my life, I found out the truth about what those bastards had actually done to us.

The extremists quickly realised they weren’t going to win the war in the Northern Territory so they built their barricades as quickly as possible to stop the Higgins advancing any further south. Their sleeper cells had already destroyed the army bases, taken out a lot of the power supplies and phone networks but they weren’t satisfied, so they sent the bombers.

Mrs. Jefferson told me they turned the land dark, like giant bats, hundreds of them, she said. They destroyed the remaining power plants, airports and roads. They dropped poison into the reservoirs, lakes and rivers. They even sprayed the farms with toxins and sometimes the cities too.

The bombing raids continued, on and off, for three years.

My mam says they're training flights for their new pilots, one of the boys at school said.

For three whole years the RIP Army destroyed every city, town and village in the North of England, every last bridge, road and footpath. By the time they were done, not a single church, hospital or school was left standing.

And during all that time no one lifted a finger to help us. The Americans said it was up to the Irish, Welsh and Scots to stop it, but they had already declared themselves republics and wanted nothing to do with our little piece of wasteland. After all they still had their water and electricity, their money, schools and hospitals.

The French were afraid to intervene again. Not only because of the RIP’s superior firepower, but the fact that they now had a population themselves comprising seventy two percent Muslim and were afraid the same thing might happen to them if their armed forces left the country.

We were refugees in our own land. Our burial pits were full and our spirits nearly broken.

Salvation came in the strange form of a convicted Croatian war criminal, General Ante Gotovino. He had served twenty-four years in somewhere called the Hague prison. Father tried to explain it all to me but I was just too young to understand. The General said he had only been defending his land and people, just like we were trying to do. He said that his country was in the same situation when the Serbian army attacked them. The enemy had all of the planes, ships and tanks. He had been following the news about the Northern Territory whilst still in prison. The general organised peace talks with the RIP. They gave him and his delegation special visas to allow them to enter the Islamic State.

One week later, the bombers stood idle and the guns fell silent.

*

Over the following months, as I sat quiet as a church mouse in my meetings, I learned how the border between them and us wasn’t actually solid, unlike those ones Scotland and Wales had built. Instead, it was made up of thousands of vehicles all lined up together, reinforced with huge pieces of steel and mounted with guns. There were lorries, tractors, tanks and buses as well as things I hadn’t heard of before, like combines and bulldozers. I made a note to ask Mrs. Jefferson about such things.

They stretched from one sea to the other, cutting the country in half like a gigantic guillotine, and they were creeping slowly towards us. The committee said the Higgans were down there trying to fight them but they couldn’t stop the advance. There were too many RIP members, too many soldiers. I was going to suggest they write to the general again, but then thought better of interrupting the adults.

It was eventually decided that Father would make the long journey south, to the border. He was to negotiate with the RIP, ask them to stop their advance and let us live in peace. He would mediate between the Higgans and the extremists to try and put an end to the bloodshed. Father was going to be our new general. Meanwhile, the remaining five members of the Resistance Committee would set to work recruiting anyone who knew about mechanical things or building. They were going to enlist volunteers and start fixing the broken hydrogen vehicles and build somewhere new for us all to live. They were going to make a new England.

I remember that morning well, as if it were yesterday. It was a morning of fresh hope. We were going to bury our differences once and for all. We had lost the war but not the will to live. Father was going to sort it all out. They would build a statue to him when he returned.

A battered old car drove up from the frontline to collect Father. Mr. Cooper gave him a bottle of water and one of the cooks prepared some lunch for the journey south. The camp buzzed with excitement for the peace mission that lay ahead of him.

I never saw him again. The Higgans reported that the Black Hawks took him. I heard some of the adults whispering that he was probably in one of their prisons, and a word, which I dared not ask Mrs. Jefferson about, the word torture.

I remember crying for days and days.

Chapter III.

Mohammed Kazik was born, raised and educated in Saudi Arabia. He was brought up in the Wahhabi Islamic faith, an austere fundamentalist version of Islam.

The son of a cleric and scholar, he worked hard and earned a good job with a firm of accountants specialising in the oil industry, but there were too many distractions, too many things were happening around the world. It didn’t take long for him to step over the line.

Kazik was different to the others. He remained under the radar until it was too late. He didn’t attend training camps nor did he take part in online discussions regarding Jihad. His version of Jihad, that is.

This wasn’t going to be just another battle against the crusaders. This was to be the first holy war of the 21st century, and it was all planned during games of golf. That’s right; Kazik, his financial backers and his co-conspirators designed and perfected the plans for the takeover of England on golf courses throughout Saudi Arabia and Oman, far from prying eyes and curious ears.

It was Kazik who first pointed out the gradual fall in oil revenue, as more and more people turned to hydrogen as an alternative, or those meddling western countries introduced further legislations designed to save the planet. When the oil was gone they would have nothing, his homeland would return to desert.

By the sixteenth hole he had convinced his backers to supply him with the £2 billion that was needed to take over an entire country.

And so, for the next eighteen months, as Kazik’s game improved, so did his chances of success. One day in the clubhouse, one of his security advisors joked that he would place the King’s crown on his head personally.

The use of Hawala banking was kept to a minimum, it was deemed too risky. It was an excellent way to move money about without actually touching it, but Kazik didn't trust the British bankers.

If someone fails in their attempt to blow up a building, it can be tried again, it can be tried one hundred times, but you only got one chance at invading a country, he had said.

Millions of pounds were smuggled to Kazik’s men on the ground, it came through diplomatic immunity channels, innocent looking tourists, on fishing boats and even in crates of bananas, rapidly making its way to the members of the network he had carefully been building since he first crossed the line. Ordinary decent citizens: Teachers, police, councillors, businessmen and most importantly of all, army recruitment officers.

The money was used to advance careers, employ someone’s nephew, pay for specialist training or to simply turn a blind eye to what was going on. Kazik never set foot on English soil while all of this was happening, but his War Cabinet regularly met on golf courses throughout the Isles.

Terrorists don’t play golf, Kazik had told them.

Kazik's foot soldiers spent their days trying to radicalise their colleagues and anyone else who would listen. Teachers and lecturers held secret, extra curricula lessons for their students. Around the country they defaced their own people’s mosques and businesses to stir up anger and support. But never once did they send an email or make a telephone call.

Kazik teed off his plans in 2012. It took almost eight years before he was ready to play the last round.

None of them were sure of the figures. They estimated 16,000 police officers including the Metropolitan Chief Constable, Sir Ahmed Marrafah, alongside senior officers in Yorkshire and the Midlands. The 2018 Revised Equality Act benefited them to the tune of almost half of the armed forces located in the South, approximately 48,000. There was little discussion regarding the airports, London Underground and rail workers, they were well above target three years earlier. As for students, the unemployed and undecided, only time would tell.

No one knew when it was going to begin. Not even in which month. All they had been told was "When Big Ben strikes twelve, we will strike thirteen." Everyone knew what he or she had to do, just not when to do it. The keeper of that secret was Kazik. He alone knew the cargo planes flight paths.

*

Mohammed Kazik allowed the citizens of his new state two days of celebrations before the hard work began. A census would eventually be required, but his priority was to eradicate every last sign of western excess and depravity.

That was when the new, self-appointed Holy Governor of the Islamic State of England addressed the nation for the first time. It was twelve noon as he stood in front of the ruined Houses of Parliament, smoke still rising from its carcass. The broadcast was on every television station and each BBC radio channel. Loud speakers were rigged anywhere and everywhere, minarets as far as the Northern barricades waited for his voice.

As Scotland, Wales and a United Ireland watched in silence, Mohammed Kazik took a deep breath.

People of the Islamic State of England...

A deafening cheer went up, horns sounded and gunfire filled the air from Cornwall to Leeds, Bristol to Norfolk,

...We praise Allah for his gift of this Holy Kingdom. Now, we have much work to do. To repair the damage, clean up the filth and cleanse this land, a land mistakenly given to those Infidels. Within one week from today, there must be no sign left of those dogs. No street signs, no statues, none of their whores' clothes...

The cheers grew louder with each demand.

...none of their churches!

More gunfire.

...none of their gravestones!

A V-formation of six bombers flew low over Kazik’s head.

"...but most importantly...none of them! Check every house! Search every inch of our land, and if you find one... kill it in the name of Allah! Slay them wherever ye find them, and drive them out of the places whence they drove you out, If they attack you then slay them. Such is the reward of disbelievers."

The Welsh Prime Minister and his Cabinet could hear the gunshots and chanting from beyond the walls as they sat in stunned silence. The next day they would forcefully extend the exclusion zone by two miles.

The Scottish Government immediately ordered the recall to shore of all fishing boats for immediate fitting of armaments.

The United Irish Armies, moved to Alert State Amber.

The people of the Northern Territory knew nothing of what had just happened.

Joey Khan, leader of the South London Fixer gang, just looked at his mates and smiled, rubbing his hands.

Patricia Faraj pulled her twin girls closer to her on the couch, looked nervously across at her husband and whispered, What the hell have we got ourselves into?

Chapter IV.

Even with Father gone, the Resistance Committee still allowed me to sit in the corner and listen to their meetings. No one ever replaced him. His chair remained empty.

I tracked the progress of the war and even began to take notes. Mrs. Jefferson had taught us the basics, but she said it would take too long for us to learn joined up writing.

Progress seemed slow. They had found four mechanics among our people but they hadn’t fixed any cars yet, they were still scavenging for parts. Some timber was on the way, from the coast apparently, it seemed a ship had sunk and its cargo was washing up on the beach. Beams, sturdy enough to start building the Grand Hall that they had planned. The idea was to float the timber up the river and then we could carry it the last mile to the camp.

The Protestant reported that they now had fifty-two volunteers, It was a start, he mumbled as the others looked at him with raised eyebrows.

The Sikh informed us the crops, apparently, had some sort of disease and there would have to be further rationing.

The Catholic accused Mr. Cooper of stealing water from the lifts.

The Muslim suggested they try harder to get at least one vehicle working so that someone could go and look for other camps, possibly even organise some sort of Northern Territory Council.

The Hindu said she had received word from the frontline. The Higgans were reporting growing casualties and, in the last week alone, the border had moved north by almost half a mile.

The Church of England seat remained empty and silent.

As I sat in that corner, I could hear mumblings, I assumed they were what Mrs. Jefferson had once talked about. Prayers. I didn’t understand many of the words.

Emily Piper, said the Muslim.

I didn’t move. I was the church mouse. Invisible.

Emily Piper, he said a little louder. Do you have anything to contribute?

And that’s how it began. They hadn’t ever been to the hole to fetch the water or been on the school trips with Mrs. Jefferson to see the rubble of what used to be a city. They had never gone exploring after school and found Geordie and his family living in that cellar with electricity from the sun, or the mountain of shiny reddish pipes behind that big fence, the ones the bombs had missed. They didn’t even know where the next camp was. They hadn’t seen the smoke rising in the evening like I had.

So for the next twelve years, I sat in my father’s chair and, as one of the old men taught me to say, we got our arses into gear.

Things were slow to begin with. We managed to run the water from the stream directly to the camp, which pissed off Mr. Cooper, no more buckets and no more forms to sign. Instead, they made him wash all the canteen dishes, just to keep him busy.

The mechanics managed to get the first car working, they called it a jeep, and it had tyres the size of a four-year-old. It was decided to keep it hidden until we were ready to go and find the other camps.

Geordie and his family moved out of their damp cellar. His father brought his electric-from-the-sun system with him and showed some of the men in the camp how it worked. Within two days they had found enough sun-panels, cable and bulbs in the ruined city for us to have lights instead of candles.

Work started on the Grand Hall. We decided to build it next to the multi storey thing in case we got bombed again in the future, level 0 was safe against the giant bats. The men worked quickly, and the sun-panels allowed them to carry on after dark. Within nine days the giant frame had been formed. As more timber washed ashore, the men put in the floors and the ribs on the roof. Mrs. Jefferson said it reminded her of a whale skeleton, I had no idea what she was talking about. The floors for living were low and cramped but we had to make sure everyone could fit in. The fourth floor would be the canteen and the new committee room. The men said they could even make some washrooms up there.

By the time I was nineteen years old we had achieved so much. I heard some of the old and ill say it reminded them of before the war. We had fixed more than one hundred vehicles, including four buses and a bulldozer. The mechanics had even rigged up engines to pump water into the allotments where the crops grew.

The Grand Hall was finished and with the sun-panels, which had been continuously collected, we had constant light and even heating for those harsh winters.

It was tempting to stay and just try and live life like the others. I had thought about it often, long and hard. But we all knew that the frontline was creeping towards us. It could be weeks, maybe months or years before they conquered the Northern Territory, but I for one wasn’t ready to die that soon.

I think what made my mind up was when Butch climbed onto the roof of the Grand Hall with that bag and a piece of wood. It caused a great commotion. Many of the older ones thought he'd found something they called moonshine.

We were eating in the canteen on the top floor and could hear banging and footsteps above our heads.

The bloody roof’s fine, what’s he doing up there? shouted one of the old men.

One by one, as we finished our meals and handed the plates to Mr. Cooper, we filed outside to see what Terry Butcher junior was up to on our roof.

The elderly gasped in disbelief. The young ones went back inside, bored. I just stood and stared in awe. It was the first time in my life I'd seen it and my, how beautiful it looked flapping in that cold Northern breeze. For the first time in more than thirty years the cross of Saint George was flying again. Like a star in the heavens.

*

We lost a lot of people that winter. Poor Mrs. Jefferson was the first to go. I tended to her for two days solid. Christ, it was the least I could do, she'd taught me everything I knew, and forgotten to teach me everything I didn't know.

The snow lay two feet thick on the roof, covering the sun panels, there had been no heating or lights during the worst of it. I counted one hundred and eight dead. Not just the elderly but some newborns as well. The pits were full and the ground was too frozen to dig, we had no other option but to start the fires.

I had always believed I was tough, brave like Mother, but as I watched those bodies being heaped onto the pyres and thought about those bastards in the South, with their electricity and gas and food and warm beds and hot water and baths, and those cowards in Scotland who wouldn’t even let us in, never mind help us. When I thought about my father, locked up somewhere, if he was even still alive, and my mother, and as I watched that poor woman handing her dead baby to her husband, as I listened to her cries turn into screams and watched her refuse to leave or even close her eyes. As I watched that dead baby’s father, tears streaming down his cheeks, throw his own flesh and blood into those flames. I made my vow, in silence.

My gaze followed the smoke up into the freezing night sky. As skin and fat melted into the embers, the flames grew higher, shedding light on the Grand Hall. I'd never heard such sounds as those; the howling of grief. I'd never smelt the stench of a baby burning.

As I watched the smoke rise and saw the flames licking at that flag on our roof, I changed. I changed forever. I heard Butch saying a prayer next to me. But I knew it was too late for prayers.

Chapter V.

I stood before the Resistance Committee full of bravado and at the same time fear. I'd been over the speech a hundred times in my head. As I practiced, lying alone at night, it had filled me with anger and pride. I had imagined the committee rising to their feet in ovation. Now was the time of truth.

Honourable committee members, it is with a heavy heart I bring you the following news. Last month’s freeze claimed new fewer than one hundred and twenty of our people. Including Mrs. Jefferson, our beloved teacher, Mr. Gold, the chief mechanic and Mr. Cochrane, one of our most productive farmers.

The members sighed and mumbled mournfully.

I have also received word from the frontline that the Higgans are losing their fight. In the past month the RIP have made headway of around twenty-five miles north. There are also reports that the Eastern Alliance leader, Terry Butcher senior, was killed on the frontline during the twelfth month.

I took a deep breath; my hands were shaking.

"How many more of us must die before we take action? This dream you all had of recreating your past will never become reality. We are starving. Our children are starving and the enemy are moving closer each day. They won’t give up like we have, they won’t just turn off their engines and wave a white flag as we did, no, unless we do something soon they will crush every last one of us against the walls of Scotland..."

What are you suggesting Miss Piper? interrupted the Muslim.

Let her finish, snapped the Catholic.

"I'm suggesting nothing. I'm telling, telling you what I propose to do, with or without the blessings of this committee," I said firmly.

They didn't look best pleased with that comment.

Yesterday, I continued, Terry Butcher junior headed south with fifteen men. It's his intention to take his rightful place as leader of the Eastern Division of the Alliance, commander of the Higgans. I myself will ask the strongest and fittest of our people to come with me to the West where we will find the other camps. They may have their own vehicles and possibly even weapons. From there we'll head to the Northumbrian Zone to recruit more fighters.

The Northumbrian Zone? You must be insane, lass. They say it’s barbaric up there, scoffed the Sikh.

Have you ever been?

Well...

Exactly! None of us have. For God’s sake we don’t know how many others are out there, there might be thousands maybe millions.

Just tell us straight, Emily, please don’t beat around the bush, what do you want to do? demanded the Protestant.

"It isn’t a case of want, Sir. I plan to take every willing man, woman and boy from the Northern Territory and build the greatest army this country has ever seen and then we'll march south. We aren’t fighting for oil this time, we're fighting for our fucking lives."

Who the hell taught you that word? hissed the Hindu.

It doesn’t matter, whispered the Muslim. It makes the point.

I'm going to call a meeting of all citizens tonight, outside of the Grand Hall. There must be enough farmers, mechanics and builders remain behind to carry on their work here. Any others who wish to come with me may do so.

The standing ovation never did materialise, a stunned silence filled its void.

London.

They say when Mohammed Kazik ordered the cleansing of the South it degenerated into anarchy. The millions who decided to stay and live under Sharia law hadn’t realised just how strict he intended those laws to be.

Kazik soon realised he had gone too far by ordering a one-week deadline for the removal of all signs of our ancestors and heritage from his ill-gotten Holy Land. Even the state television presenters questioned the madness that ensued.

It began on what they used to call High Streets, trading places were ransacked and set fire to, it was rumoured anyone found to be keeping the things instead of burning them were put to death. They were to be the first of many executions.

The High Streets led them to the churches and graveyards beyond, where their cleansing, wrecking sprees and arson continued.

The RIP army took charge of pulling down the statues and removing the street signs. Winston Churchill, Lord Nelson and Charles Dickens all went to the smelting plants along with Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Covent Garden, only to reappear several weeks later in the form of Islamic bullets.

The Regretters, as they came to be known, were routinely shot if they attempted to flee the cities as they burned. From as far south as Devon, to Leeds in the North, the skies turned black from the funeral pyres of Christianity.

Some years later we would learn of things so terrible that the elders never spoke of them again, the demolition of Stonehenge, the slaughter of the clergymen found cowering in the crypts beneath Westminster Abbey and the beheading of the Nuns of Saint Mary’s, when they refused to leave their sanctuary of three hundred years.

Kazik’s RIP