Invasion

by Chris James

  “How ironic,” Blackwood muttered, “a Health Secretary absent for health reasons.”

  Home Secretary Hicks spoke again, his nasal accent starting to grate on Webb’s nerves: “It hardly matters. I agree with the PM: let’s give people something to do, something to focus on.” Pudgy hands reached for the carafe of water in front of him. He filled the glass next to it and said: “In any case, we still won the First World War.”

  On the screen, Terry frowned and announced: “PM, three of the five Spanish transports have just touched down at Brize Norton.”

  “The other two?” Napier asked without confidence.

  “Contact was lost shortly after take-off. It’s unlikely they’re still in the air.”

  “Thank you, Terry.”

  Hicks looked at Napier and asked: “Our people or Spanish VIPs?”

  Webb thought he heard his boss’s voice crack a little when she replied: “No, Spanish. Wives and children of Spanish government members, among others. Sir Terry, any news of the evacuations from the other countries under attack?”

  Terry shook his head.

  “Thank you. Very well, let’s end there for today.”

  Webb stood up at once, as it pressured the others to do so, thereby helping to end the meeting as expeditiously as possible.

  Most of the attendees also rose, but Hicks remained seated and said: “Excuse me, PM, but can’t we find some time to review tidal defences?”

  Webb flashed the man a stern look, but the Home Secretary offered a disinterested sneer in response.

  Napier replied: “Not today, Aiden, there really is too much—”

  “With respect, PM,” Hicks broke in, “more than a hundred people drowned last night around the coast of England, more than three—”

  “Yes, and the Minister for Coastal Defence briefed me earlier this morning, so there’s no need for your concern, Aiden,” Napier insisted. She turned and left the COBRA meeting room, and Webb followed her, making a mental note to recommence digging into some suspect business deals in which Hicks had been involved when on the back benches, just in case the boss needed some ammunition with which to replace him in the near future.

  Chapter 13

  20.59 Wednesday 22 February 2062

  MARIA PHILLIPS GRITTED her teeth and looked down at the pack of cards as she shuffled them, over and over; cut, shuffle, over and over.

  “Come on, dear,” she heard her mother say.

  Maria said: “First jack deals,” and started flipping a card over in front of each player around the table: her mother Jane, her oldest brother Martin, and their father Anthony. The seventh card was a jack, landing at her father’s bony hands. “Your deal, dad,” she said, scooping up the cards and handing the pack to him.

  “Right-ho,” her father answered, giving the pack another shuffle and dealing.

  Maria saw the look on Martin’s face opposite her. He raised an eyebrow in inquiry; she gently shook her head. She glanced down and drew the scoring grid on the paper in front of her: the first four columns for each player’s bid, the second four for their scores. “Okay. Forecast whist, hearts are trumps. My first call and lead.”

  Maria’s father finished dealing and set the remaining cards to one side. As the four players picked up their hands, Maria heard Martin give a cough and her heart began beating harder in her chest. To delay the inevitable, she announced: “I think I can win three of these,” and wrote the digit down in the ‘forecast’ column on the pad.

  Without being asked, her mother said: “Put me down for one please, dear.”

  Keeping her eyes on the pad and pen in front of her, she asked: “Martin?”

  Her brother cleared his throat and said: “Listen, guys. Me and my little sis have got something to tell you.”

  “Not yet,” Maria cautioned.

  “It’s okay, Maz,” Martin answered.

  Maria flashed Martin a reproachful look. They’d agreed earlier that they would wait a few hands before giving their parents the news. At the same time, Maria knew her brother and understood how he hated waiting where difficult or problematic situations were concerned; he preferred to get things out of the way.

  She saw that both parents had stopped looking at their cards and now stared at Martin. Her father’s brow creased and he said: “Yeah? What is it?”

  Martin drew in a breath and said: “Maria and I have decided to join up.”

  “What?” their father exclaimed.

  “The army is going to need—”

  “You must be out of your minds,” their father broke in. “What on earth do you think you’re going to be able to do? Apart from get yourselves killed?”

  “Dad,” Martin began, “the government put out an appeal this afternoon. Napier explained—”

  “Her? You shouldn’t listen to that lot. They’re shysters, cheats, career politicos who absolutely do not give a single sh—”

  “Anthony, let the boy speak,” their mother urged.

  “Dad,” Martin said, “you were okay with this last week. You accepted it then. What’s changed?”

  “They’ve let the war start and we’re losing, that’s what’s changed,” he spat. “Last week, it was preventable. It could’ve been stopped. It should’ve been stopped. Now, people are dying, lots of them. And it’s Napier’s and Coll’s fault. Whatever they bleat on about in public, they could’ve made China stop those crazies. The fact that they haven’t implicates them.”

  Maria saw anger flash across her brother’s face. He said: “Dad, don’t you think it’s about time we let go of that partisan bullshit? I say we’ve got to go beyond what we’ve been used to, you know?”

  Anthony said: “You start down that road if you want to, but don’t expect my support. You don’t know where this is all going to lead—”

  “We’re facing the destruction of Europe,” Martin said, shaking his head in defiance, but Maria noticed a tremor in his jaw.

  Their father’s voice rose in anger: “I’ll tell you where it’s going to lead, shall I?” A tense silence descended before her father spat out two words: “Cannon fodder.”

  Their mother put her cards on the table and said: “Darling, I don’t think it’s right to draw historical paral—”

  Anthony stopped her with a raised hand. “Yes, yes it is right. And it is even more relevant today.” Maria and Martin shifted under his piercing gaze as his head turned back and forth. He told them: “There’s a book I’ve got upstairs, I read it again at the weekend. It was written nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, in the 1920s.”

  “Oh, bang up to date then,” Martin muttered, and Maria wondered how much time her brother would give their father.

  “Yeah. A load of interviews with young couples, people not much older than you, young lad. And you know what? They decided not to have kids. And you know why?”

  No one spoke.

  “Because they knew there’d be another war, and they weren’t prepared to have kids that the military would use as cannon fodder. Think about that. They decided not to have children so as not to see what they’d love and nurture blown to bits for nothing. And they were right, too.”

  “That’s hardly a valid comparison, Dad,” Martin said, his voice thick with sarcasm.

  “Yes, it is. You spoilt brats don’t realise how lucky you’ve been, how lucky we’ve all been, in truth.”

  Maria said: “I think we’re a bit old to be called sp—”

  But her father spoke over her: “The same goes for my generation, and several generations before that…” he voice trailed off. Maria saw melancholy glisten in her father’s eyes. He lamented: “We took peace for granted. They took peace for granted.”

  Martin said: “Dad, I get how you feel, I do, but we’ve got to adjust to the new reality. We just can’t do nothing.”

  Maria’s mother added: “I’ve told you before, darling: we do not write our children’s scripts. Their lives are their own, not ours. All we can do is nurture them and help them where possib
le.”

  Anthony sat back in his chair and sighed. To Maria, he appeared to have aged five years in the last five minutes. He picked up his cards and stared at them. Maria did the same, noting her mother and brother also picking theirs up. Her father’s voice sounded lower when he spoke, still staring at his cards: “We should enjoy it, then. In a few weeks we’ll all likely be dead.”

  “No, we won’t,” their mother replied.

  “How many tricks do you want, Martin?” Anthony asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll have three.”

  Maria noted the number down and said: “You can’t call zero, dad.”

  “Two,” he replied.

  Martin said: “Dad, it’s the machines that will do the fighting, not people. I’m reading the news—I’ve got three feeds running in my lens right now—and all over the place NATO pulls the troops back when our own ACAs are done for.”

  Maria laid the strongest card in the pack, the ace of hearts, and said nothing. Her mother tutted and laid the three. Her brother shook his head and laid the seven.

  Her father said: “Nice one, love,” and laid the eight.

  Maria collected the first trick and then laid the queen of hearts, which elicited scoffs from around the table.

  “The point is,” their father said, “that NATO can only pull back so far before some kind of stand has to be made. What’s happening to all the civilians left behind then, eh?”

  Martin’s thick eyebrows came together and he said: “Well, er, those who can’t escape—”

  “Right,” her father broke in. “The invasion’s started. There’s this great big wave of shit heading up from the Med towards us…”

  Maria stopped listening as her father ranted on, glancing instead at her mother. Jane’s shoulders slumped in their familiar way when she sat at the dining table, listening to Anthony. Maria saw the grey roots of her mother’s hair and how the skin on her neck had gathered in narrow folds. Maria understood and admired her mother’s strength; strength that only a woman and a mother could marshal. Men could always be angry, even violent; they never seemed to have to think about the consequences of their actions. Like an avalanche or rockfall, men clattered their way through life, upsetting and destroying order and bringing chaos, only for the women who could muster the energy to care for them to clean up their mess—

  The door to the dining room crashed open to reveal her older brother, Mark. His tall, slender frame heaved in breath after shallow breath. A stench invaded the room, like a cesspit.

  With a nonchalance that Maria knew masked a deep resentment, the oldest sibling Martin laid his cards on the table, turned in his chair, and said to the middle child: “Hello, brother. It smells like the piss and shit sacks in your total immersion suit need emptying. Do you still have sufficient muscle mass to manage that?”

  “Fuck you, brother,” came the sneering response.

  Martin began to get up, but Maria’s father grabbed Martin’s arm. Anthony hissed: “No, I won’t have that. Not in the family.” Anthony left his seat and limped over to Mark, and Maria wondered how much her father’s bad knee must have been paining him. He spoke to Mark: “That was the last time you speak to anyone in the family like that, fella.”

  “He started it.”

  “I don’t care who started it. You’re still kids, all three of you,” their father shouted. He pointed a finger at Mark: “You, in your twenties and still playing stupid kids’ games, while those two think they’re going to join up and do god-knows-what in the army, when they look like they’re only just out of nappies.”

  Maria cringed when she heard her father reveal what she and Martin had decided to do, and she saw Mark’s jaw fall open. Mark looked from their father to Martin and then to Maria. “Seriously?” He said. “You’re going to join up? Really?”

  Martin stood up, his slim body partially turning out of the seat to face Mark. He said with menace: “Do not mock us, brother, for doing something in this reality which you only pretend to do in your fake realities.”

  Mark took a step back and Maria saw everyone glance nervously at each other. Mark’s shoulders slumped and in a calmer voice he said: “Mock you? Why would I do that?”

  “Watch it, lad,” their father cautioned, limping back a step.

  Mark glanced from his father to his siblings at the table. He said in a neutral tone: “In there,” he said, thumbing back to the room from which he’d emerged, “I can die a hundred times a day, but I’m still all right. Out here, you can only die once, and then you’re dead forever. So, who do you think I reckon has the right idea about all of this Caliphate bullshit?”

  Anger burned inside Maria. Before anyone else could speak, she stood up and her chair fell backwards, making a loud scraping noise as it hit wooden slats on the patio window behind her. She hissed: “How dare you come in here and spoil our game of Forecast Whist?”

  Mark put his hands out in mock offence and said: “Hey, little sis—”

  “Don’t patronise me, Mark.”

  Mark shook his head, saying: “I only came out here for a clean up and something to eat. You people really are totally—”

  “Tell us, Mark,” Maria asked with as much venom in her voice as she could muster, “what will you do when the Caliphate come knocking on our door? When the power is cut and you and your juvenile friends are forced out of those immature games that no stupid little boy over the age of nine should be allowed to play? What then, Mark, when one of those crawling Caliphate bombs comes to wrap itself around you before blowing you into a million little pieces?”

  Mark’s chest heaved as he breathed. He sneered and said: “Because it is not only about stupid games, little sister. There are networks in there, networks very alive to the threat all of you out here face. And you better believe me—and I mean all of you—when I tell you that what we’re doing will lead to changes here, in the real world.”

  “Care to explain?” Maria asked in open cynicism.

  Mark shrugged and answered: “I can’t. It’s secret.”

  Maria decided she’d had enough. She said: “Bullshit. Go back to your games, little boy.”

  Chapter 14

  07.42 Thursday 23 February 2062

  TRAINEE NURSE SERENA RIZZI had lost any concept of the ‘worst day of her life’. Back then—then—the normal times so brutally terminated twelve days ago with the first attack on Rome, the ‘worst day of her life’ would constitute losing a patient unnecessarily, perhaps a GenoFluid pack malfunction or a cloned organ replacement gone unexpectedly wrong. But such losses used to be very rare. She would discuss these cases with her fellow nurses and the doctors, and there was always an element of novelty in each one, as if the act of dying itself had become a noteworthy event that affected only centenarians struggling with too many repeatedly cloned organs and those who suffered the most outrageous bad luck.

  However, in the last few days Serena had witnessed more death than she thought she would in her entire career. And on this chill Thursday morning, as she peeked with terrified curiosity over the sill of the smashed window, she realised she was about to witness more death. Twenty metres below her in what used to be a school athletics area, she guesstimated two hundred men had been herded into sports courts surrounded by chain-link fencing three metres high. The dull grey cloud meant that she could barely see the faces of individuals, but they seemed to be men of all ages: gangly youths, defiant men in their thirties and forties, and older ones bent over with age. They stood still and silent in immobile groups with only occasional glances among each other.

  Around the perimeter stood Caliphate warriors armed with long-barrelled guns. Flowing head-coverings came down over baggy tunics with legs covered in a type of desert-camouflage material. Masks covered their eyes, noses and mouths. Thirty or more of them stood immobile outside the chain-link perimeter. Spats of cold rain began hitting the ground, the men, the warriors, and Serena’s window sill.

  From outside her field of view came the sound of whining, a coar
se grating of metal on concrete that must have been made by some kind of vehicle. Despite her fear, she pushed her head forward and craned it to the right to see a large, tracked vehicle—certainly not anything recognisably Western—trundle along the street. It appeared to be driverless, with a bulbous front giving way to a rear of high, straight lines that looked as though it could be carrying some kind of cargo. Parked vehicles at the roadside disappeared under its tracks with sounds of grinding metal and the tinkling of broken glass. For an instant, Serena wondered why the super AI that controlled the private vehicles did not intervene, before remembering it could not and never would again. The Caliphate vehicle turned to the right, its tracks churning the kerb stones as its five-metre length moved closer to the chain-link fencing that held the local men.

  The cold, damp air thickened with a sense of foreboding. The vehicle stopped adjacent to one side of the chain-link fencing. In the middle of the rear section, two white, featureless panels slid open to reveal a convex, opaque shape that appeared to be made of glass, like a huge camera lens. The captors moved away from the vehicle, all the time pointing their guns at the men trapped on the sports court. Abruptly, a spark of panic must have flared. A young, athletic man shrieked, threw himself at the fence and climbed. At once, a Caliphate warrior aimed his rifle and fired. The athletic man’s left arm flew away from his body, taking a chunk of torso with it. Both body and limb fell to the ground, landing with wet slaps that Serena heard over the rain.

  She gasped, momentarily forgetting the extreme danger she herself was in. She looked down on the scene with growing despair as the violence caused panic to spread. First, the captive men moved en masse away from where the victim fell. Then, the guard who had fired shouted something in a language Serena did not understand, and his compatriots laughed with sufficient vigour that she could be certain from her vantage point that they were indeed laughing.

  She felt tears well in her eyes as all of the guards opened fire. Panic swept through the enclosure as the trapped men ran this way and that, not knowing how they could avoid the random slaughter. Most of them lay flat. After around twenty shots, one particular Caliphate warrior shouted something and the others stopped firing. The Caliphate warriors moved further back from all sides of the chain-link fence.