by Chris James
Serena noticed an odd, distant clicking sound, rapid like a cricket chirruping to a mechanical time signature. The fence closest to the vehicle melted. The trapped men who still stood turned as one to move away, and then each of them collapsed and burned. The myriad colours of the clothes—denim, T-shirts, shirts, jackets—uniformly blackened. Occasionally, Serena saw a flash of orange flame among the hissing steam and smoke that poured off the bodies, but the only sounds that reached her ears were truncated shrieks and moans. A few outliers in the group leapt for the fences at either side, but barely pulled themselves up to the top before their clothes and hair erupted in flame.
When the men must have all been killed, Serena expected the machine to stop. But to her surprise it kept on clicking. The rain continued to drizzle, and steam wafted up from the pyre. Minutes passed. The burned bodies liquefied, congealed, merged, and the singular black mass in the centre shrank, the sharp edges of bones protruding. Black lumps around the peripheries—that a few minutes earlier had been men—also reduced down as time passed. The Caliphate warriors moved off, probably to loot, Serena conjectured.
Still staring in fascination, she backed away from the smashed window. Her calves, knees and thighs ached and broken glass crunched under her feet as she staggered back into the abandoned apartment she’d taken refuge in the previous evening. Her stomach ached but she couldn’t decide if the cause was hunger or dread. Her right hand stroked her thigh and felt again the long kitchen knife she had tied under her skirt with a strip of material torn from some linen she’d found in a cupboard.
She did not know where to go next; she did not understand why she had been spared at the hospital. Then, she had been sure; then, she had known—even felt—that God had protected her because he had further use for her on Earth, but since then, doubts had sprouted like autumn mushrooms in the darker parts of her soul.
Broken glass crunched under her feet once more as she returned to the window and looked down at the pyre. In fifteen minutes, two hundred men had been reduced to a boiling black slurry that might be carted away in the back of a pickup truck. Serena felt a wrenching inside her spirit, as though God now guided her head and eyesight, as if he said to her: “Child, your journey now, for me, will be filled with pain and suffering, but this is the role I have ascribed to you. You must witness—”
Serena’s communion with the Father snapped when she heard footsteps outside the apartment door. A glance through the window showed that most of the warriors had disappeared. Her mind cut through her sudden panic and ordered her to the bathroom, the location furthest from the front door. Glass crunched underfoot but the movement of her limbs helped her to focus. In the bathroom, with her back pressed against the wall between the shower and bath, she angled her head so that the large mirror on the opposite wall allowed her to see through the doorway, into the spacious hall. She fought to control her breathing as her chest heaved in and out. She had to decide what course to take. Did she want to die here, now?
The loud, deliberate footsteps advanced into the apartment at a leisurely pace. Serena’s hand felt again for the large kitchen knife that made sweat collect where it rested next to the skin of her thigh. She saw a small movement reflected in the mirror, and then with a sudden, deafening explosion and crash, the mirror shattered into a thousand pieces. The whole room shook, and Serena gasped in shock and pain. Dust billowed out from the impact. She looked down and saw fresh, discoloured liquid on her legs. She slid down the wall and coughed.
Footsteps crunched into the bathroom and Serena lifted her head to see a Caliphate warrior pointing a rifle at her. He made a series of urgent sounds. Serena thought he would kill her. She began to reach for the knife, but he stepped forward, lifted the rifle out of the way, and punched her on the side of her face. With more guttural utterances, the warrior grabbed Serena’s hair and, with great strength, dragged her from the bathroom.
Chapter 15
18.16 Thursday 23 February 2062
CORPORAL RORY MOORE let the water soak into his gums for a moment before gulping it down. He felt his body come back to life as the liquid chilled the back of his throat and made his headache return. He recalled his training and knew he had to fight the urge to gorge himself, so after enough gulps to satisfy his initial thirst, he paused, heaving in breath after breath and listening to the soft rush of the waterfall on the other side of the small lake.
“Bastards,” he hissed. “Fucking bloody bastards.” Speaking the words caused his lips to split again and sting. The urge to keep drinking until his stomach burst gnawed at him. He swore aloud again and then forced himself up from the edge of the lake to sit back against a hard, cold granite rock. He looked at the smears of dirt on his BHC sleeve and a part of him still marvelled at how it could remain intact after four days of crawling and hiding and witnessing a slaughter of civilians that he never imagined could happen.
With refreshment came the shaking. He tensed every muscle in his body to stop it, and a moment later the shaking morphed into shivering before finally abating. The cavity below his chest shrank back so that his stomach muscles seemed to clench around his spine. He reflected sardonically that he’d never been in such great shape. Partly healed cuts on his hands wept pus which, he considered, would have smelled worse if he’d had food in his body.
Rory knew that these were the least of his problems. He could not estimate the number of civilians killed by Caliphate ACAs. At first, he’d tried to note and remember the details of the raids: the number of ACAs, location, speed, distance, direction and estimate of potential casualties because, although he doubted the intel would be of any use if and when he returned to his unit, it helped him find some kind of order. But the random, indiscriminate nature of the attacks soon defeated him. He’d been shadowing some of the hundreds of civilians who had fled into the Sierra Nevada Mountains when the invasion began and their towns had been devastated. He assumed they would be the experts in keeping out of sight. Instead, he’d witnessed how the enemy’s relentless assaults slowly whittled their number.
As the cold from the rock seemed to seep into his bone marrow, the image of the boy in the cave came back to him. He’d died in agony, the only conscious survivor of a Spider attack some time previously. Morbid curiosity had driven Rory close to the cave entrance; the boy’s pathetic mewling had pulled him inside, into a shelter turned into an abattoir. He died with terrified, pleading eyes.
Rory slapped his hand on the wet stones at the edge of the lake and swore again. He could manage the guilt; he knew he had to if he were to last any length of time. Besides, the fact that he could remain almost invisible inside his BHC sleeve was merely an accident of circumstance. But the overwhelming sense of fatalism became increasingly difficult to control. It felt to him that the entire population of Europe had mere weeks before the endless swarms of these ACAs dispatched them by blast or flame.
He leaned back down to the lake’s edge and sucked more water into his empty stomach. He tried to return to his priorities. Greatest urgency was security of shelter; he needed to find a building or village with a deep cellar or other underground facility that could be barricaded or otherwise defended. Four days without food did not trouble him; he’d decided the weight loss would do him good and for the first ten days he needn’t worry. His only concern would be that any replicators were certain to be smashed or otherwise broken, and as it was February, he didn’t expect there to be a great deal of fresh produce.
From history lessons at school, he recalled stories of stored foods, preserved in metal containers that allegedly used to last for years, but the only types that had survived to the present day were fruit preserves and some tinned meats. Even the thought of such food made his stomach ache in painful yearning.
He pulled himself up onto all fours and then used the cold, damp granite rock to get to his feet. As usual, he waited a few seconds for the light nausea to pass before he dared to take a step forward. The gloaming increased as night came on and he wondered if
the growing shadows would play the same tricks on him as the previous evenings, by making small crevices in rock surfaces appear as secluded as caves. He took an unsteady step towards a shadow which he hoped would offer a passably dry cave for the night. The water had refreshed him, but the hunger stole his strength like a thief. Nevertheless, fortune favoured him on this evening as the first crevice he entered swallowed him whole. Inside, he found an angled bed of slate formed millennia ago which, when he covered himself in his BHC sleeve, offered a surprising level of comfort. As soon as he lay down, exhaustion swept over him. Cuts and bruises became tolerable if acceptance of the discomfort they caused allowed him to rest.
Chapter 16
18.28 Thursday 23 February 2062
TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY metres southeast of the cave in which Corporal Rory Moore slept, and approximately eighty metres lower among the rocks and forest, Private Philippa ‘Pip’ Clarke stared out at the sky as the first stars appeared, sharp and bright, and she wished herself away to whatever planets orbited those suns.
Crimble’s voice croaked out from behind her, in the darkness of the cave. “How’s it looking tonight?”
“Getting better every night, mate,” she replied.
Crimble groaned and said: “Tell me again how that’s possible.”
“Simple,” Pip began, noting the brief yellow streak of a falling star. “Assuming the enemy is advancing unopposed, then they are gaining tens of thousands of square miles of territory every day.”
“So?”
“So, unless they’ve got unlimited supplies of ACAs, those that they have got, have got to cover more and more territory.”
“Meaning your Operation Certain Death has lost some of its certainty, yeah?”
Pip smiled to herself and replied: “Yup, we could replace ‘Certain’ with ‘Highly Likely’. And with each day the bastard Caliphate moves further into Europe, the better our odds become.”
“Odds of what, pal? We’re behind the lines, in the middle of fucking nowhere.”
“There’s always a way out. Well, that’s what I ended up telling my last boyfriend, anyway.”
Pip heard a shuffle as Crimble shifted his position. He said: “Pal, we’ve got no guns, no tech, and our unit has been destroyed. We’re only still alive thanks to dumb luck. I seriously admire your positivity, but we are as essentially screwed as the civilians.”
“How’s the arm, mate?”
“That’s the other thing. It’s starting to whiff a bit, you know? Do you know what can happen to broken bones that don’t get treated with a GenoFluid pack within a few hours?”
“Not sure. How bad does it smell?”
“Not good.”
She recalled what she knew about wounds that became infected. She said: “We should get you to a hospital.”
“Yeah, piece of piss, that, especially in these circumstances,” Crimble muttered.
Pip retreated into the cave. She reached him, wished again they had at least kept a torch, remembered that would’ve meant keeping the tech attached to it, and thus they’d certainly be dead now, sighed, and said: “How much is it hurting, really?”
“I try not to think about it, to be honest.”
Her vision improved a fraction in the darkness, aided by the weak light outside reflecting off the wet surfaces in the cave. She could make out Crimble unwrapping his infected right arm. “Christ,” she said when the smell reached her.
“Yeah, I said it wasn’t good,” Crimble replied.
“We’ve got to get moving—”
“No, I’m knackered and this arm’s itching like a bitch with a dose of the clap. Let me sleep.”
“Sorry, mate. Not tonight.”
“What are you doing?” Crimble asked in response to Pip putting her arms around his shoulders.
“We’ve got to move. Now. Cover that stinking mess up, will you?”
“Jesus,” he said, pulling the material back over the bloated, gangrenous arm. Then he swore aloud again.
“It’s so painful?”
“Yeah, slightest touch. It’s bollocks, frankly speaking.”
“Shit,” Pip said, wondering how quickly it would worsen. She recalled reading somewhere that septicaemia could kill within days or even hours, depending on a number of variables.
Crimble said: “I’ve got an idea. Just let me rest, okay?”
“I have a better idea.”
“Oh yeah?”
“But it means you moving.”
“Then I’m against it.”
“The coast is less than thirty clicks southeast. If we could find some way to make contact—”
“Are you serious?” Crimble asked, incredulous. “I can hardly bloody walk, pal.”
“You remember the briefing, the day before all this shit kicked off? If the enemy really doesn’t have a navy, maybe we could contact a sub. For sure, Brass will be looking to get stragglers like us out.”
She heard Crimble sigh and lean back against the cold rock. “I can’t believe you think—”
“It’s your arm that’s buggered, mate, not your legs. Come on.”
“Just one little thing?”
“What?”
Crimble hissed: “We’re behind the fucking lines in hostile territory and could get blown to bits at literally any fucking second without any warning because we don’t have any fucking tech. Are you sure you’re still right in the head?”
“Look, you’re not well, mate, so I’ll make allowances for the outburst, this one time. But I’ve been noting the times of their attacks. They’re following a logical pacification pattern, not an emotional, random one.”
“So you think you know—”
“Not think. I do know, and we can predict, roughly, when their ACAs will make a pass.”
“Nah, that’s way too—”
“And what’s better is that as they gain more territory, their super AI is going to direct their forces to pacify the newly conquered areas, with less attention given to places a long way back from the front which have fewer people.” Pip could see only the outlines of Crimble’s features as he appeared to consider her words.
He said: “I still don’t think I’m in any shape to cover that kind of distance over this terrain.”
“Bollocks,” Pip fired back. “We’ll take it one step at a time, mate. As long as we can get our BHC sleeves on at the right times, we can make it. The sun’s not long gone down, so were good for at least four hours.”
“Yeah, but with nothing in our lenses and other tech, how the hell are we going to find a way?”
Pip tutted and said: “Er, we could navigate by the stars at night, if we can see them, and by the sun during the day.”
“You know how to do that?” Crimble asked, clearly impressed.
Pip paused for effect before answering in a tone thick with sarcasm: “No, I haven’t got a clue. That’s why I suggested it, dummy. Come on, I’ll give you a hand to pack your BHC sleeve and then we’re on the move.”
A part of Pip knew she behaved with an element of selfishness, but she had to move somewhere, anywhere. The stench from Crimble’s festering right arm matched the foulness of her mood. She’d lost Pratty, lost Rory, and now, if she didn’t do something, she’d also lose Crimble.
Chapter 17
00.05 Friday 24 February 2062
MAX RIZZI GLANCED from the screen to his best friend Lorenzo and back again, and urged him: “Stop it; I do not think we can destroy these bastardi so easily.” He saw the beads of sweat on Lorenzo’s olive-skinned forehead gather until a droplet ran down his friend’s straight nose to drip onto the screen that Lorenzo kept tapping in urgency.
Lorenzo wiped the salt water from the screen with his thumb as his light, effeminate voice complained: “I have to let it recalculate the shortest-form disrupt—”
“Do not do this. It will not work. And then their machines will know that we tried and where we are and one will fly here and kill us,” Max said, wiping sweat from his own forehead with
a forearm and wishing he could escape the confines of this claustrophobic basement.
Lorenzo looked up: “You are far too negative, my friend,” he said with a petulant flick of his head. “We are in the middle of a medium-sized city, south of the greatest of all cities in history. The tower block above us has already been hit more than once—”
“Because they can probably already detect what we are doing down here.”
“Their microwaves have burned through civilian comms.”
“Which must make us even more visible,” Max exclaimed. He wished his hands would stop trembling. The assuredness he’d experienced when he left his sister Serena had now deserted him. He felt certain Lorenzo’s actions would only bring calamity down upon them.
Lorenzo said: “I told you: we can thank my brother for that. He only showed me what he had hidden in our apartment just before he left. I did not know before then.”
“Do you know where he went?”
Lorenzo scoffed and replied: “The last thing he said to me was that he had been ordered to barracks in the north of Rome, but that was Sunday before the attack, and in the last five days, I have heard nothing. I believe he is dead. Probably killed days ago.”
“I think you are right. I believe the same about my sister, Serena. She must also be dead,” Max replied, the image of their mother’s apartment block being destroyed in front of their eyes still fresh in his memory.
“Over half of the people of Rome are dead, and its buildings destroyed. That is why we must stop them.”
“But, friend, do you not think the enemy is unreachable, even with military-standard comms? And which other super AI do you expect to sneak it in with?”
