Biocide.com by Ann Massey

Author:Ann Massey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: terrorism, NSA, Western Australia, Ann Massey, The Biocide Conspiracy Trilogy
Publisher: HPEditions
Published: 2020-09-20T16:00:00+00:00

Nineteen

Henry gave the pile of reports on her desk a baleful look. “How am I supposed to keep up with my social life?” Henrietta Lowe sits beside me in the English office. Along with everyone else, I call her Henry. She calls me Beth, to my face, but behind my back, she refers to me as Goody-two-shoes. “No doubt yours are finished.” Her sarcasm grated.

I was sick of her jibes. “Unfortunately not ... an old flame called round last night and by the time he left, I was bushed.”

She brushed away a lock of shoulder-length dark hair. “Good looking,” she asked, sounding doubtful?

“A hunk ... in fact he’s a dead ringer for Brad Pitt, only taller and better looking.”

“What does he do?”

I tried not to smirk, but failed. “Actually he’s a Flight Lieutenant in the air force and a decorated fighter pilot.”

Something like grudging admiration tinged with envy crept into her eyes. “Where did you meet him?”

“He used to work on a neighbour’s station.”

“Oh! So he’s just a family friend.”

That did it. I took a deep breath. “Actually, he’s asked me to go away with him for the weekend.”

“Are you going?”

“What do you think?” Right then, the bell rang to announce the start of the school day. I picked up the boxed-set of All Quiet on the Western Front from under my desk and sashayed out the door.

* * *

I glanced around the classroom. Every student was silently reading. Lessons requiring no involvement on my part were infrequent and I intended to use the next forty minutes catching up on term reports. I took the first from the stack on my desk and opened it at the English page. Next, I entered the address of my online marks book into Google. Currently, my literature class was studying the paradigms in contemporary war fiction. I was enjoying exploring this topic with the girls. It provided me with an opportunity to espouse my anti-war views. Remembering how I’d boasted to Henry about dating a fighter pilot, I was suddenly ashamed.

I took a sip from the glass of water on my desk and opened the top drawer of my desk and took out an anthology of Walt Whitman’s poems. I leafed through and found the lines that described how I felt about Mo. I identified with the poem that explored the lifelong bond between wartime comrades:

Poor boy! I never knew you, yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you.

In another life, far removed from the one I now led, Mo and I had waged war against a villainous arms dealer who’d stop at nothing to achieve his ends. Though it was over a decade since we last met, I knew with absolute certainty that if I were ever in dire straits, my comrade-in-arms would be there for me, as I would for him. Not that anyone would have guessed from the snippy way I’d treated him last night.

I groaned. Why hadn’t I thrown

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