by Moody, David
He unlocked the car door with the key and shrugged her off. ‘I’ve got to go. Got to get back to Siobhan and Rob.’
He slammed the door shut, shoved the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing. The engine didn’t turn over. Every light and indicator on the dashboard remained unlit. Clare banged on the window then opened the door.
‘Come back inside, Tom. Please.’
‘I can’t just leave them.’
‘Come in and wait with me. Maybe the power will come back on. Please, Tom...’
He kept trying, forcing the key around, pumping the pedals... anything. He popped open the bonnet and checked the battery connections, then checked the fuses, refusing to accept the futility of his actions. He remained in the car alone, not wanting to move. Several minutes later, knowing he had little option, he reluctantly followed Clare back into the house. She shut and locked the door behind him.
‘What are we going to do?’
He looked at her. ‘What the hell can we do? It’s like everything’s running down.’
✽✽✽
Tom crept upstairs to check on Penny again a while later. Clare was sleeping. The house was cold. Much of the earlier cloud cover had disappeared, and the intermittent light from a three-quarter moon occasionally provided him with a little welcome illumination.
He found Penny just where Clare had left her, half-dressed now but still on the floor, leaning over with her face pressed up against the wall. The moonlight played tricks, and several times Tom had to check himself because he thought the little girl’s expression had changed.
He crept nearer, stopping when he was less than a metre away, reluctant to get any closer. He leant forward and listened for her breathing. There it was – shallow, but definitely there and reassuringly steady. He took hold of her wrist to try and take her pulse. Her skin was cold, her body limp. He pulled another sheet off the bed and covered her before going back downstairs to Clare.
‘Any change?’ she asked, startling him.
‘Nothing,’ he replied, feeling for a seat in the dark.
‘What’s happening, Tom?’
He didn’t even bother trying to answer. How could he? And even if he knew, what difference would it make? What could he do about any of it? He got up and went into the kitchen. Clare continued talking, but he’d stopped listening. He sat at the table and screwed his eyes shut and covered his ears. He despised himself for being stuck in this damn house. He knew he should be anywhere but here but he was too scared to leave.
32
Tom woke with a start, sprawled across Clare’s settee with her lying on top of him. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep for the last few hours. He couldn’t remember her coming and lying with him but he was glad that she had. For a long time he did nothing more than lie perfectly still and listen to the soft and reassuringly normal sounds of her gentle breathing. He took comfort from the closeness and warmth of her body. As long as they stayed like this together, he didn’t have to face what was happening outside.
The first grey light of morning trickled into the room. Tom closed his eyes and went over the events of the previous day again and again, trying desperately to make some sense of the bizarre things he’d seen and the inexplicable behaviour of the people he’d known and loved. He’d heard nothing in the night, so he assumed Penny hadn’t moved. Regardless, he’d have to try and get home this morning, that much was clear. He plotted his route in his mind: home first, then he’d continue out through the village to Siobhan, maybe calling in on James and Stephanie and those poor kids if time and circumstance allowed. He felt an obligation to try and get to them. Maybe he should have been doing all of this last night instead of hiding away in the darkness here like a fucking coward?
He slid out from underneath Clare, doing all he could not to wake her, but desperate to relieve himself and also to check on the little girl upstairs. She’d be his barometer, he decided. Whatever state Penny was in this morning, Siobhan, Rob and all the others would probably be the same.
Tom used the downstairs bathroom and looked out of the window behind the toilet as he stood over the bowl. Everything looked reassuringly normal through the small rectangular pane of frosted glass: the fence and bushes at the end of Clare’s garden and the fields beyond, the occasional bird darting through the dull grey sky.
He flushed when he’d finished. The cistern was taking its time to refill. Low pressure, he decided as he washed his face and hands in a trickle of ice-cold water.
When he returned to the living room, Clare wasn’t there. He heard her footsteps in the room directly above and went up to find her, hoping there’d been a change in Penny’s condition. He knew the moment he entered the room that wasn’t the case. Penny was where he’d left her last night. She hadn’t moved a muscle.
‘Any better?’ he asked hopefully, although he already knew the answer.
‘Same,’ Clare quietly replied, gently stroking the side of her daughter’s expressionless face. ‘What are we going to do, Tom?’
He walked to the window, desperately trying to think of something constructive to say but failing miserably. As far as he could see, their position remained unchanged from last night. There was nothing they could do. He looked out over the back of the house and saw something which made his blood freeze.
Clare, still crouching on the floor with her daughter, immediately picked up on his sudden unease.
‘Tom?’
He simply looked at her, unable to speak, then turned and ran. She sprinted after him as he raced downstairs, following him through the living room and kitchen, then out into the garden. He scrambled over the fence at the back of her property, then kept running until he was in the middle of the field immediately behind the house, sending a small flock of sheep scattering in all directions. He stopped and looked up.
‘What is it?’ Clare shouted. Tom pointed upwards.
Thousands of metres above them – maybe miles overhead – the hull of a huge alien ship was slicing through the cloud cover like a submarine.
‘What the hell’s going on, Tom? They got rid of that ship, didn’t they? We saw them send it away. For fuck’s sake, we watched it fly into the sun on live TV.’
Tom continued to watch the massive machine power down towards the surface of the planet. And, as more of the behemoth was revealed, he began to realise that this wasn’t the same ship he’d seen previously. The alien vessel he’d seen arrive was long and narrow. This machine was more dart-shaped, almost like a flying wing.
‘They must have faked the footage,’ Clare said, craning her neck as the apparently endless metal monster continued to glide effortlessly above them.
‘It’s a different ship.’
‘What?’
‘This isn’t the ship that was here before.’
‘But they’re not due to be rescued for another year or so, are they? Wasn’t that what they said?’
There was another one of them. Tom rechecked, certain he’d just got confused. He looked around and saw there were definitely two ships now. No, wait, there were more. He ran over to the far side of the field and climbed up onto a low stone wall to get a better view. From there he could see another five alien ships in total. They were all different shapes and sizes. Some moved, others were stationary. Some were close to Thatcham, others miles away.
Feeling exposed, Tom jumped down and ran back to the house, following Clare who was already on her way inside.
33
Tom shut and locked the door behind him then leant against it, head spinning, numb with nerves and cold.
‘Why so many of them?’ Clare demanded, continuing with a torrent of obviously unanswerable questions. ‘Why are they here?’
He ignored her and barged past to get to the hallway. He reached for his mobile – an instinctive reaction – then cursed his own stupidity when the screen remained as dead as it had been yesterday.
‘Are they here to pick up the aliens or are they—?’
‘How the fuck
should I know?’ Tom screamed at her. He threw his phone across the room and it hit the wall and exploded, sending shards of plastic and electronic components scattering over the laminate flooring. He looked up at Clare who backed away from him but continued to ask questions.
‘But they must be here to take them home, mustn’t they? There’s no other reason, is there?’
‘Just one.’
Tom sat down at the bottom of the staircase and held his head in his hands, unable to bring himself to spell out his worst fears. He covered his ears, trying to block out everything else so he could find another explanation for what was happening, something he might have missed before. But he couldn’t. When he coupled the behaviour of the bulk of the indigenous population with what he and Clare had just witnessed outside, only one possible scenario remained: invasion.
He walked to the front door. The street outside was as quiet as it had been all of yesterday, deceptively peaceful. Nothing was moving out there, save for yet another huge ship which cruised silently across the grey cloud cover. It was smaller than the others he’d seen, but no less threatening.
Tom was numb. Terrified. And yet, bizarrely, he also felt sudden anger which stopped him being as scared as he knew he should be. It was more than just anger. He felt a genuine fury at the way the aliens had duped everyone, including himself. Sure, he’d not fallen in line to worship the visitors like just about everybody else had, but he was as guilty as the rest of them. Should he have made a stand... made more effort, asked more questions? Was there anything he could have done to prevent them taking a stranglehold on the human race then crapping on them from the greatest of heights like this? His mind wandered back to that night in Drayton, weeks ago now, when he’d first seen one of those extra-terrestrial fuckers in the flesh, and when one man had dared to stand up to them and question why they were here. And he thought about how everyone else had turned against the lone protester, and how he himself had done nothing to help. Things were immeasurably worse now. What chance did he have today?
Am I going to keep being bloody useless, he asked himself, or do I make a stand?
Tom knew he’d be pissing in the wind, and that this was no Independence Day moment. He wasn’t going to help the human race pull off some miraculous, last minute escape, nor were the aliens going to be caught out by an earthbound germ or disease or anything like that. Fuck, he’d barely made a noticeable impact on the people of Thatcham recently, so what hope did he have of making a difference on a grander scale? But there were people out there who needed him. More to the point, there were people out there he needed.
‘Where are you going?’ Clare asked, panicking as he went to leave. ‘Don’t go, Tom, please. I have to stay here with Penny. You can’t leave us now...’
‘Stay here and keep out of sight.’
‘You should stay here too. We should just wait until—’
‘Until what? I’ve done all the waiting I’m going to,’ he told her. ‘Stay here and I’ll come back for you later.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get Rob and Siobhan. I can’t leave them out there. They’re all I’ve got left.’
‘What’s the point? We can’t fight back against this. We can’t—’
‘Don’t, Clare. You’d do the same if you were in my position. Just keep the door locked and don’t let anyone in.’
‘There’s no one else to let in.’
Deliberately moving quickly so he couldn’t talk himself out of doing what he knew he had to, he left the house. ‘See you later,’ he said as he pulled the door shut behind him.
34
Tom ran to the car. He looked back and saw Clare watching from the window, then angrily gestured for her to get out of sight. The key fob was as useless as it had been yesterday, but he opened the door and tried the ignition in the vain hope that the engine might fire. There was no logical reason why it should, but he couldn’t leave without trying. Nothing. The total lack of power was as unsettling as the sight of the alien ships soaring through the air overhead. It felt artificial, unnatural, as if the laws of physics themselves had somehow been altered.
He froze as another huge machine slipped silently across the sky above him. Back in the summer, the relative silence of the alien ships had been awe-inspiring, even to an alien sceptic like him. Today, however, their lack of noise just added to the cloying terror he now felt. The bastards could creep up on him and take him out in a heartbeat, the same way they’d managed to deceive the entire human race.
He studied this particular ship in detail as it flew by him with an arrogant lack of speed. It was lighter in colour than the others he’d seen, with an awkward shape which looked anything but aerodynamic. Five angled spokes stretched down from a central hub to an outer wheel, making the ship look strangely like a connective piece from a kid’s construction set. It flew like a Frisbee which didn’t spin, and the incredible illumination from several equally-spaced engines underneath its hull made everything brighter and warmer for a few brief seconds. But that warmth faded quickly, leaving the world below a colder, more inhospitable place than before.
With no means of transport, Tom had two options: he could either give up and stay where he was or he could try to get back into Thatcham on foot. The choice was a simple one.
✽✽✽
Tom wasn’t concerned about the distance – he’d run much further than this before now – but nerves and doubt conspired to make every footstep more of an effort than he’d imagined possible. He tucked himself in close to the sides of buildings wherever he could, but there were several stretches of open road between here and home which left him dangerously exposed. At one point he stopped and ducked behind a tree as another ship cruised overhead. This one looked like an undersized version of the first ship he’d seen last summer. The increasing variation in their designs distracted him momentarily. How many of them were here now? And if each ship could carry hundreds, possibly even thousands of aliens, then how the hell did he stand any chance out here alone? He’d keep moving as long as he could, he decided. If any of these ships were ordered to touch down and allow their crews to disembark, he’d have to think again. His mind filled with movie-inspired visions: garrisons of alien soldiers, hand-to-hand combat, forming a resistance...
The ship swerved through the eddying clouds, changing course directly above him, appearing to double-back on itself, almost as if it had missed something first time. He looked around, and when he realised he was the only thing moving down at ground level, he pressed himself flat against the tree. Were they tracking him? Was this huge fucker of a ship following him, ready to take him out? His questions were quickly answered when the vessel accelerated away. He felt cool relief wash over him. I’m less important than I think I am, he realised. I’m one man alone. I’m nothing to them. Feeling slightly safer, he started to run again. Within a short distance, however, his temporary optimism had again been replaced by pessimism. What if I’m wrong? What if I’m the last man? Will they track me down in their thousands?
Tom reached a more built-up section of road. The ship was still in view, hovering ominously over Thatcham now. It had slowed to a virtual stop. He couldn’t help but still feel a sense of awe when he looked up at the incredible feat of engineering and technology hanging effortlessly in the sky, a triumphant culmination of unimaginable intellect and effort born on the other side of the universe. As he watched, a bright opening appeared in the craft’s otherwise featureless underbelly, and from it a fleet of five smaller, dart-shaped ships swooped down. They seemed to plummet for several seconds before a single pulse of energy appeared from the rear of each of them and they levelled-out and raced away, all disappearing in different directions. Other than the light, he could see no other features on any of them: no windows or cockpit, no pilot. He thought they looked like military drones, the kind he’d seen used in desert wars which had blurred together. He wished that was what they were. He’d have felt safer under observation from an Earthly intelligenc
e, no matter who it was or why they were following him.
Moving only his eyes, Tom traced the path of a couple of the smaller machines, transfixed. He was concentrating so intently on what was going on in the air that he failed completely to notice things happening much nearer to him at ground level. A figure rushed him from the right, virtually rugby tackling him. He tried to fight back, but the force of the attack took him by surprise. He was slammed into the side of a large white Transit van. He wrenched himself free and spun around, ready to fight back. He expected to find himself face-to-face with an alien, but it was a young Asian girl. Early twenties, long black hair, a good twelve inches shorter and several stone lighter than him, her face bore a curious mix of panic and concern.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he demanded.
‘Get into the van,’ she ordered, pushing past him and opening the back of the Transit. He did as she said and followed her in.
‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked as he climbed into the van and pulled the door shut.
‘My name’s Bhindi, Bhindi Shah,’ she replied.
‘You on your own?’
She nodded. ‘You’re the first person I’ve seen since yesterday who’s not...’
‘In a coma?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Likewise. I’ve got a friend who’s okay, though. I’m Tom.’
Bhindi crawled deeper into the van and crouched behind the driver’s seat, looking up through the windscreen and watching the sky. Tom glanced around in the low light and saw a sleeping bag, some clothes, and the remains of a little food.
‘How long do you think we’ve got, Tom? How long before...’
‘Before what?’
‘Before they do whatever they’re planning to do. Before they wipe us all out.’
‘No idea,’ he replied, pressing his face against another window and looking up. ‘How long have you been here, Bhindi?’
