Earthfall

by Mark Walden

  Sam nodded as he poured himself a glass of juice.

  ‘I’m going over to Aunty Carol’s for a couple of hours this morning and I want that room done by the time I get back. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, boss,’ Sam said with a cheeky grin.

  ‘Too right I’m your boss,’ she replied with a smile, picking up her handbag and checking her watch, ‘and don’t you forget it, young man.’

  She kissed him on the top of the head as she headed out of the kitchen and towards the front door. Sam finished his juice before reluctantly heading back upstairs. He could hear the frantic clattering of the keys on his sister’s laptop as she updated all her friends on the ongoing soap opera of her love life. As he walked across the landing towards his room and the Herculean task that awaited him within, he noticed that the door to the study was ajar. He heard his father’s voice and he stopped for a moment, listening to the hushed but urgent-sounding telephone conversation.

  ‘I know that, James,’ his dad said, ‘but it’s just too soon. If they’re already intra-lunar, then we’ve got what . . . hours? Minutes maybe? I knew we should have rolled the latest batch out sooner. We had enough data, the kids are fine, but now it’s too damn late.’

  Sam frowned as he heard his father talking. There was a note of panic in his voice that he had never heard before.

  ‘I don’t know, James,’ his father continued, ‘I really don’t. You saw what happened at Inshore; you’ve seen what they’re capable of. If this is what it looks like, then this is going to be something on a totally different scale. I have a horrible feeling that it’s going to be much, much worse.’

  Sam had no idea what his father was talking about, but it had to be something to do with work. His dad never talked much about what he did. It involved the military and computers, but that was as much as Sam knew. A few times Sam had caught glimpses of the stuff that his father was working on but it had just been meaningless screens full of schematics and equations that gave no real clues.

  ‘At this point I don’t think that there’s anything we can do,’ his father said, ‘except wait and see what happens. There are plans in place – let’s just hope that we don’t have to use them. I suppose we’ll all know soon enough. Yeah, you too. I’ll speak to you later, James, hopefully. Thanks.’

  Sam heard the phone bleep and crept away from the study door, heading for his bedroom. He couldn’t help but be curious, even slightly worried about the conversation he’d just overheard, but he knew that his dad might be angry if he realised that he’d been eavesdropping. He was halfway across the landing when his dad walked out of his study, frowning.

  ‘Have you seen your mum, Sam?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah, she just left. She was going to Aunty Carol’s. She said she’d be back in a couple of hours,’ he replied.

  His dad sighed and rubbed his temples. ‘OK, I’ll ring her on her mobile. Listen, I don’t want you or Jess going anywhere today, OK?’

  ‘But I’m supposed to be going over to Ben’s later, Dad,’ Sam moaned.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to cancel. Something’s come up.’

  ‘Is everything OK, Dad?’ Sam asked. He’d never seen his father look so worried before. It was worse than that, Sam thought to himself, he almost looked scared.

  ‘Yeah, it’s fine. Just a bit of a crisis at work,’ he said.

  ‘OK, I’d better get on with tidying my room, then,’ Sam said, nodding towards his bedroom door.

  ‘Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,’ his dad replied, sounding distracted as he pulled out his phone and tapped at the screen.

  As Sam walked into his bedroom he heard his dad speaking to his mum.

  ‘Hi, honey! Listen, I need you to come home right now . . . Yeah, I know, but this is really important. I have to go in to the office. Something’s come up. I know . . . I know, but this is urgent. Yeah, look I realise it’s not fair and, yes, I’m sure Carol is going to be cross with me, but I need you to come home and look after the kids.’

  The rest of the conversation between his parents was inaudible, but there was no hiding the fact that something weird was happening. Whatever was going on, it couldn’t be any worse than having to tidy this lot up, Sam thought to himself. He dug through the mess on his desk, hunting for the remote control for the television in the corner of his room. He turned it on and switched to one of the music channels, so he would at least have something to listen to while he tidied up. He began to pick up his dirty clothes from the floor and dump them into the laundry basket, humming along with the music. A few minutes later, he heard the front door opening and closing and his mum calling for his dad. Over the music from the television, he could just make out the muffled sounds of their conversation downstairs. Then the telephone started ringing in his dad’s study. Sam heard him hurrying up the stairs to answer the call. Then he heard the front door slam and the sound of a car starting. Sam looked out of the window and saw his dad pulling away from the drive at speed. Suddenly the music stopped as downstairs his mother switched channels on the satellite receiver and the pop video was abruptly replaced by a newsreader sitting behind a desk with a slightly bewildered expression on her face. The bottom half of the screen was taken up by a caption that read Breaking News – Unidentified Object Over London.

  ‘. . . still unclear as to the exact nature of this unidentified object, but reports are coming in from all over the world of similar objects appearing above major population centres, and tracking stations say that these mysterious devices do, in fact, appear to be extraterrestrial in origin. We’re going live now to Martin Staples outside Buckingham Palace.’

  The picture changed to a reporter standing in front of the Buckingham Fountain, surrounded by people who were all staring and pointing at something above them.

  ‘Extraordinary, chaotic scenes here as police continue to clear the immediate area beneath the object . . . hovering several hundred metres above St James’s Park.’

  The camera panned slowly upwards and Sam’s mouth dropped open.

  ‘Oh my God,’ he whispered.

  The object, too big to fit on the screen all at once, was a giant black disc several kilometres in diameter, its curved underside covered in an array of hundreds of enormous segmented parabolic dishes. The edges of the dishes glowed with a pulsing green light, which seemed to ripple outwards in waves from the centre of the disc.

  ‘Eyewitnesses report that the object simply dropped out of a clear blue sky and, with no other obvious explanation, there is only one question everybody here is asking. Could this really be our first contact with an extraterrestrial civilisation?’

  The view changed to another shot from a camera further away, which showed the true scale of the vast disc now casting a shadow over central London. Its upper surface was covered in towering blocky structures surrounding a single, needle-like central spire, which reached high into the sky. The dark surfaces of the towers were covered in pinpricks of the same green light that illuminated the dishes on the underside. There was only one word that Sam could think of that could possibly be used to describe it . . . alien.

  ‘Twitter just exploded!’ Jess said breathlessly as she dashed into Sam’s room. ‘Everyone’s going on about something really weird happening in London.’

  Sam didn’t reply – he just pointed at the TV.

  ‘As you can see,’ the reporter continued, ‘at its widest point, it stretches from Hyde Park to Waterloo station, a distance of, I would say, at least three kilometres. There has been no sign of activity anywhere on the disc and, as yet, no official word on the government’s response to this developing situation.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’ Jess asked, her eyes wide with surprise.

  ‘There’s nothing on Earth like it,’ Sam replied. ‘I think that’s the point.’

  ‘We’ve just been informed that the prime minister is currently meeting the COBRA emergency response committee at an undisclosed location,’ the newsreader continued. The newsroom, visible through t
he glass behind her, was frantic with activity. ‘We’re also hearing that similar discs are appearing in the skies all over the United Kingdom and the rest of the world. It is unclear, as yet, if these . . .’

  Suddenly, the image of the disc on the screen flared with light as the central spire on the top of the vessel lit up with an intense white light and a single beam of energy streaked upwards into the sky. Moments later the dishes on the object’s underside lit up, the dim green glow replaced with an intense, bright green light. Sam winced as his skull was filled with a pulsing, high-frequency whine. He shook his head as the volume of the sound increased and he started to feel a strange pressure building inside his head. He clapped his hands over his ears, but it made no difference. He gasped in pain as the screech got louder and louder. Then, just as it felt like his head would burst under the pressure, the sound stopped as abruptly as it had started.

  Sam removed his hands from his ears warily and watched on the television as the lights around the dishes on the bottom of the disc faded back to their previous dim level. Suddenly, Sam noticed something odd about what he was seeing on the screen. The newsreader had fallen silent and was now simply staring at the camera with a glassy-eyed vacant expression. Behind her the previously bustling newsroom had fallen silent, and the men and women who had been dashing frantically around just a few moments earlier now stood immobile, like statues.

  ‘Did you hear that?’ Sam said, turning to Jess. His sister didn’t reply. She was staring at a point on the wall, no sign of any emotion on her face, just the same trance-like expression as the silent woman on the television.

  ‘Jess!’ Sam snapped. ‘What’s wrong?’ He grabbed her shoulder and shook her gently but she did not respond, an occasional slow blink the only sign that she was even awake. He waved his hand in front of her eyes, but her focus never shifted. Sam ran out of his room and down the stairs, two at a time.

  ‘Mum! There’s something wrong with Jess!’ he shouted as he ran into the kitchen. His mum was on the sofa at the far end of the room, staring at the television, and as Sam approached he felt the first fluttering twinge of panic in his stomach. She wasn’t, he realised, watching the television at all; she was staring at it, her face frozen and emotionless too. Sam knelt down in front of his mum, put a hand on each of her shoulders and shook her gently. His mother’s head rocked backwards and forwards, but there was still no flicker of awareness in her eyes.

  Sam stood up, fear replacing panic. He took the phone out of its cradle on the countertop and quickly punched in his father’s mobile number, but the call wouldn’t connect. He didn’t even get his dad’s voicemail. He hung up and dialled Aunt Carol’s number as he’d always been told to do if there was an emergency when his mum or dad weren’t around. The phone rang a dozen times before he heard his aunt’s voice on the other end.

  ‘This is Carol Burton. I’m afraid I’m not available at the moment, but if you’d like to leave your name and number I’ll . . .’

  Sam hung up without leaving a message. There was something seriously wrong and he needed help now. He took a deep breath and dialled 999. He stood listening as the phone rang and rang at the other end. He waited, watching as the second hand on the kitchen clock swept around the dial once, then twice. There was no answer.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sam whispered to himself.

  Suddenly, there was another burst of the skull-splitting, pulsing screech and Sam dropped the phone, wincing in pain. This time the painful howling was quickly replaced by a lower frequency, a throbbing hum. Sam bent down to pick up the phone before looking over at his mother. He gave an involuntary gasp of shock as she stood up and turned towards him.

  ‘Mum, are you OK?’ he asked. She did not reply, her face still frozen in a neutral, emotionless expression. Moments later she started walking straight towards him.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘Why won’t you answer me?’

  She walked past Sam and out of the kitchen, oblivious to his presence. He followed her into the hall and saw Jess walking down the stairs, her eyes empty and distant. His mother opened the front door and walked silently out on to the drive. Sam grabbed Jess’s arm as she passed, but she kept walking, slowly dragging him towards the door. He tried to hold on to her, to stop her somehow from leaving the house, but she pulled relentlessly away from him.

  ‘What are you doing? Where are you going?’ Sam yelled as he finally let her go, and she silently followed their mother through the front door. He chased after them, watching with a growing sense of horror as they walked down the drive and towards the road. This had to have something to do with the low, throbbing sound that seemed to fill the air around him. But if that was true, why had it not affected him in the same way?

  Sam ran ahead of his mother, before turning to face her, his arms stretched wide, trying to block her path. Rather than slow her pace she simply walked round him, as if he were an obstacle to avoid. Sam kept moving, trying to block her path again, but it was a futile effort. Whichever way he moved, his mother just changed direction. Jess walked past and Sam quickly realised that trying to stop both of them would be impossible. He followed them, fear and confusion gnawing at his gut.

  ‘What the hell?’ Sam whispered to himself as he stepped out on to the pavement. Dozens of people were walking down the street, all with the same vacant expression and all heading in the same direction. Sam watched as his mother and sister joined the procession, merging silently with the flow. He followed them, not knowing what else to do. They were being driven somewhere and wherever that was he had to go with them to try to keep them safe and find out what was going on. As he continued down the street, Sam began to realise something else, something deeply disturbing. There were now crowds of people filling the road ahead of them as more people walked out of driveways and side streets, but he still hadn’t seen a single person who seemed to be aware of what was happening.

  ‘Can anyone hear me!’ Sam yelled at the top of his voice, almost screaming. There was no response, just the sound of a huge crowd walking in perfect silence. There was something deeply unsettling about seeing such a mass of people and yet not hearing a single murmur of conversation. There was no laughter, no shouting, nothing. As the crowd got larger, Sam struggled to keep both his mother and his sister in sight. They made no effort to stay together and began to drift apart as more men, women and children joined the tide. He realised that before long he was going to have to choose who to stay with, who to follow. Instinctively, he wanted to follow his mother, but she was an adult; she would be more able to look after herself. Jess on the other hand was only a couple of years older than him. He couldn’t stand the thought of her suddenly snapping out of this sinister trance somewhere unfamiliar, frightened and alone. He pushed through the crowd towards her, taking her limp, unresponsive hand in his as their mother slowly disappeared from view. Sam had never imagined that it would be possible to be surrounded by this many people and yet still feel so hopelessly alone.

  For the next hour, Sam walked along beside his sister as the ever-growing torrent of people flowed towards their destination. The people surrounding him and Jess were of all ages, shapes and sizes. Some were wearing work uniforms, some were in their nightclothes, a few of them were even naked. Babies or children who were too young to walk were being carried by adults who Sam assumed were their parents but might, for all he knew, just have been the people who were physically closest to them at the time. What was most unnerving was the fact that, just like the adults, none of those children made any sound. Not a single baby was crying.

  After a while it began to rain and Sam trudged along, still holding on to Jess’s hand tightly, feeling cold, wet and miserable. He had been walking for several hours and he was starting to feel thirsty and tired. If any of the people around him felt the same way, they weren’t showing any signs of it. He couldn’t afford to stop, though. He knew that there was no way he’d ever find Jess again in the crowd, even if he only rested for a few minutes. H
e trudged on wondering how much longer he could keep going. There was still the low-pitched throbbing that had now just become background noise, but there was also a higher-pitched buzzing that seemed to be getting louder all the time.

  Suddenly, three objects flew out from an adjoining street and shot down the road towards them, flying just a few metres above the heads of the crowd. Sam had never seen anything like them; they looked like some kind of flying mechanical jellyfish, with bunches of long dark tentacles writhing below their floating silver bodies. He felt an irritating tingling sensation in his skull and without warning the entranced mass of people all stopped their relentless march in perfect unison. The silver creatures hovered in the air about thirty metres from Sam and Jess. Sam let go of his sister’s hand and stood perfectly still, staring into the distance, hoping that he looked just like the blank-faced people surrounding him. Somehow the same primal instinct that was making the hairs stand up on the back of his neck told him that he did not want to attract their attention. After a few seconds, sections of the crowd began to break away from the main group and head off in different directions. He waited as the crowd dispersed in front of them, barely daring to breathe as the silver creatures floated towards him. A few seconds later Jess turned smartly to her left and he followed suit, walking along behind her as she joined a group that headed down a side street nearby. Sam resisted the urge to look back over his shoulder as they walked away, fearing that the slightest sign of independent thought might be enough to alert the creatures that he was not under the same spell as everyone else.

  They walked for a couple of minutes before arriving at the entrance to a large storage depot. Sam followed behind Jess as she walked inside. Rows and rows of people were lying on their backs, next to each other on the concrete floor of the barn-like structure. They all had their eyes wide open, staring vacantly at the ceiling. Jess and Sam followed along to the end of one of the rows and Sam took his place next to her as she lay down on the cold, hard floor. Sam glanced around as he lay down. There were none of the silver machines in the room as far as he could tell, but he could still feel the tingling in his head, which he assumed meant that they must be somewhere nearby. He lay there in silence; the only sound he could hear was the gentle breathing of the hundreds of people lying around him. A few minutes later the odd itching inside his skull faded away and he lifted his head from the ground, slowly looking around. The floor was filled with people, all lying motionless, their arms and legs straight, their eyes shut. He sat up and gently shook Jess by the shoulder but, as he had feared, she did not respond. Just like everyone else in the room it was as if she had been switched off.