by Moody, David
‘Look,’ Clare said, pointing ahead. There were more of them filling adjacent fields. It looked like they were being grown here ready for harvest: some kind of bizarre crop. ‘Penny must be here somewhere. And Siobhan and your brother too. Once that ship’s gone we can go down there.’
‘It controls them, I think,’ Tom said. ‘I saw it earlier.’
Tom sat up and fully unzipped his jacket, struggling with the inclement heat and the effort of the climb. He was transfixed by what he could see happening in the field up ahead now. The people were forming themselves into perfectly straight lines, their keenly paced, rhythmic movements strangely soothing and distracting to watch from this distance. They appeared to instinctively know the limits of their immediate surroundings, no matter how unexpected those surroundings were. The field was odd-shaped, and yet exactly the right number of people peeled off at a time to form each row. He doubted whether they still had any degree of control over themselves. Their movements were being orchestrated from the ship above.
As the field continued to fill, Tom was just about able to make out the faces of some of the people. Even now he caught himself still looking for the familiar, praying he’d catch a glimpse of Siobhan or Rob, wondering if, somehow, he really did have a chance of saving them. Despite their uniform movements and emotionless demeanour, the physical appearance of the people in the field still gave some clue as to who they used to be. Most were fully dressed. A few were naked. None of them reacted to the conditions or to any aspect of their surroundings in the slightest. Neither the wind nor the torrential rain affected them. He counted thirty-seven people in the furthest forward row, and each of those people stood at the front of columns more than fifty deep. He lost count after a while, but he’d already seen enough to know that there were tens of thousands of people out here tonight. Was there anyone else like him and Clare left, or were they the final two?
He was about to say something to Clare when she scrambled to her feet and started to run, catching him off-guard. She sprinted down the other side of the hill towards the fields full of people.
‘Clare!’ he yelled. ‘Clare, don’t...’
He got up and ran and almost immediately lost his footing in the wet grass. He rolled over and over, unable to stop or even to slow his uncontrolled descent until he reached the bottom. He landed in a deep puddle and swallowed a mouthful of filthy water, which he coughed out as he got up, and continued to run.
Clare had kept her balance and was racing towards a gap in the hedge.
Tom looked up and saw that the alien ship hovering over the fields was moving again. The hatch in the bottom of its rounded head began to slide open and the long, stem-like appendage he’d seen earlier was lowered down.
He ran faster, diving forward and managing to catch Clare by the waist, tackling her before she could step back out onto the road. He fell back and dragged her over with him. She pushed him away then scrambled to get up again.
‘Clare, wait! Don’t go out—’
His words were abruptly truncated as the world was filled with unbearably bright, incandescent white light. He was vaguely away of Clare staggering for cover as he buried his face in the mud, his eyes burning. He reached out for her but she pulled away when his outstretched fingers made contact with her leg.
Tom sat up, his back to the light, leaning into the hedge. He opened one eye slightly and saw that, bizarrely, the incredible illumination was limited to a specific area behind him, leaving the rest of the world shrouded in darkness. It was filling the field and nowhere else; a perfectly shaped beam.
And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the light was extinguished. Everything was immediately bathed in inky black, this time even deeper and darker than before.
‘You all right?’ Tom asked. His voice sounded weak. Frail, almost. Clare didn’t answer. She picked herself up and continued through the gap out onto the road. He walked after her, no longer able to run, every footstep an effort now.
When they both reached the entrance to the field, they found it completely empty. The ground was littered with clothing, but every other physical trace of every last person had gone. The alien ship was already moving away, casually drifting further down the coast.
‘You bastards,’ Tom mouthed at the disappearing machine, his mouth too dry to properly form the words. ‘You fucking bastards.’
He kicked his way through the rags covering the ground. Clare dropped to her knees and picked up a shoe, no trace of its owner. She stared at it in disbelief, even tipping it upside down and looking inside to see where the person who’d worn it might have gone. Everything was bone dry, covered in dust. The rain began to soak the arid ground again.
‘It’s a cull,’ Tom told her. ‘I didn’t want to say anything, didn’t think there was any point. They don’t need us, Clare, they just want the planet. They’re wiping us out.’
For a while they remained in the field, exhausted and beaten, the enormity of what they’d witnessed almost too much to bear. Thousands of people had been destroyed in seconds. Penny, Rob, Siobhan, James, John and Betty Tipper, everyone else they could think of... all gone.
Part v - CULL
43
The driving rain increased in intensity and although unnaturally warm, the swirling wind battered them from every direction. They kept walking, because they didn’t know what else to do. They knew whatever they did was most probably pointless now, but carried on regardless. Better to be on the move when it happens, Tom had long since decided, than to just be sitting there waiting for the apparently inevitable. They were disorientated and lost, but it didn’t matter anymore.
And then, just when he was on the verge of finally giving up, Tom saw something which both confirmed their location and gave him renewed impetus to keep moving. It was the dark, boarded-up shell of The Black Swan, the burnt out restaurant he tried to take Siobhan to early on in their relationship. The memories of that night both filled him with a crushing sadness while also reinvigorating him somewhat. He remembered how much of an idiot he’d felt as he pulled up outside the ruin of a building, and how Siobhan had laughed at him, unable to understand how he’d managed to avoid hearing it on the news all week: a cash-strapped celebrity chef setting light to the restaurant to avoid bankruptcy. He remembered the evening they’d gone on to have together, and how they’d made love for the first time...
The memories of that night made him sob with pain, and yet that pain also made him more determined to keep moving forward. He wasn’t prepared to give up, and getting off the mainland still seemed the only viable option.
‘Down here,’ he said to Clare. They’d reached the top of a muddy, uneven and well-worn footpath which wound down a steep slope towards the beach. He looked back and saw that she hadn’t moved. She remained standing on the road outside the burned-out building. Behind her he thought he could see Thatcham or, at least, the space where it used to be. The village itself – normally an obvious bright cluster of street lamps and houses – had melted into the landscape, wholly unlit. The only lights he could still see came from the myriad alien ships above and Christ, there seemed to be hundreds of them now, cross-hatching the skies at different altitudes and speeds, perfectly coordinated. He looked back along the coast line towards the cliffs from where he’d witnessed the arrival of the first aliens. A ship of a similar shape and size bore down towards the land from which they were now trying to escape. It was so black and so featureless that it seemed to be eating its way through the heavens, blocking out thousands of stars at a time.
Clare still hadn’t moved.
‘You coming?’
Before she could answer, another ship drifted overhead. Its vast belly slid open and a phalanx of seventeen smaller vessels dropped down into the squally skies. Tom crouched down, battered by the sudden warm wind and the change in air pressure, but Clare remained standing, looking directly up at the alien machines as they whipped through the air just metres above her. The physical closeness of the aliens unnerved
Tom, but Clare seemed not to care. She’d seen enough. She’d had enough. Tom stood up again and tried to hold her close but the warmth and strength he’d felt in her previously had all but gone. She felt like a shop-window dummy: all life extinguished. But he refused to let go, and gripped her tighter still. Over her shoulder he watched as the aliens continued their work. In the distance, bright blocks of controlled light shone down intermittently, and he knew that each brilliant flash resulted in the eradication of untold numbers of innocent lives. He counted more than ten bursts of light as he scanned the horizon – hundreds of thousands of people reduced to nothing in seconds – and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to stop it.
The longer he looked into the clouds overhead, the more alien activity he saw. The air was teeming with their smaller ships. Some were flying low, ground-hugging reconnaissance flights, others darted from one mother ship to another, the pulses of white from their engines illuminating their routes and drawing bright connective trails in the sky. It was like watching electricity flow around a circuit, like blood being pumped around a body. And it occurred to him that he was watching something new being created. The old being discarded. New life beginning. He thought about the words of the alien he’d killed, how he’d talked about mankind’s plundering of the planet, filling the atmosphere with fumes, cutting down the rain forests, forcing natives out of their homes to build shopping malls and factories. Jall had been right. This wasn’t any different. This wholesale reclamation of the planet was the same thing, but on a massively increased scale.
He dragged Clare down the narrow coastal path, forcing her to move. She was slow to react, almost falling over when her feet didn’t move quickly enough. She didn’t resist, but she didn’t comply either. She was beaten. Empty.
The gradient of the path steepened, their footing becoming more treacherous with each step. The waterlogged, sandy loam made the ground impossible to read, particularly at speed. Tom almost fell, but he didn’t dare stop or slow down, nor would he let go of Clare. He kept his eyes fixed downward, desperately trying to distinguish the zigzag route the path took through the darkness, but just for a moment he allowed himself to glance up. His stomach dropped and his heart leaped. The steep landmass seemed to have momentarily fallen away, and all he could see now was the ocean. It stretched out ahead of him for endless miles, a vast vista untouched. But the illusion was shattered seconds later when another alien ship swept out over the waves.
The slope worsened again, then gradually levelled out, the sandy mud eventually giving way to the shingle of the beach. The noise of their footsteps as they crunched across the bay was reassuringly loud: a pathetic yet satisfying act of defiance. They stopped just short of the wet line where the waves hit the beach and Tom spat and cleared his throat, panting hard. He let go of Clare and stood with his hands on his knees, struggling to breathe. Was it his imagination, or was the temperature rising again? He looked over at Clare through another sudden shower of rain, and thought that he saw a flicker of emotion. She caught his eye.
‘We did it,’ he said. ‘Told you we’d make it.’
She looked around. ‘Now what?’
Tom shielded his face from the driving rain. He didn’t immediately recognise the cove they’d found, but he knew roughly where they were. There were several of these small bays along this part of the coastline. He was certain he’d seen boats moored around here before now.
‘This way,’ he said, already marching back up the shingle shore. He checked back and when he was sure she was following, led her along the crescent shape of the beach. The land narrowed and he was soon ankle-deep in ice-cold sea water, its icy temperature a stark contrast with the unseasonably warm air. He ignored the discomfort, long past caring. They were both soaked through and exhausted, what difference would anything else make now? He steadied Clare as a wave caught her by surprise, and she almost lost her footing, then dragged her towards a shadowy headland which separated this bay from the next.
‘I’m tired,’ she said, shouting over the wind which had suddenly increased in ferocity. ‘Want to stop now.’
‘Keep going. Not much longer,’ Tom yelled back. He began to climb, wondering if the aliens were somehow controlling the wind to spite them, using its speed to make life even tougher. He forced himself to focus, knowing that was as ridiculous as it sounded. The aliens weren’t going to waste any time or effort on them. They didn’t give a damn about the two of them. Whether they were standing in the middle of Thatcham or on a boat rowing out to sea, it didn’t matter. They were of no consequence.
Tom waited for Clare to catch up then scrambled up the rocks behind her, pushing her forward and keeping her moving. The moss-covered rocks under his boots were slimy and his foot slipped as a large wave hit the headland and broke over him. He fell back, under the surface before he’d realised what was happening. Complete darkness. Muffled silence. An intense cold punch which sucked every last scrap of air from his lungs. He flailed in the water but couldn’t find anything to hold onto until another wave seemed to cradle him and flip him back over onto his front. His feet and hands made contact with the ground and he stood up. Clare was standing right in front of him. He looked up and took her outstretched hand. She pulled him up, the lights from an endless procession of alien ships illuminating the sky behind her.
Tom vomited salty water and struggled to stay standing upright. He held onto Clare for support, urging her to start moving again and climb back down the other side of the rocks, so they could reach level ground once more. He followed her down to the next beach, tripping through pools of water. He was relieved when they were finally able to stop and rest, temporarily shielded from the wind and driving rain by the headland they’d just negotiated.
He looked around, the weather making it difficult to make out detail. And then, away from the beach, back towards the land, he saw a number of dark, rectangular outlines. Caravans. He started towards them, dragging Clare behind him as he struggled to remember if he’d been here before. It looked vaguely familiar, but the conditions combined with his state of mind and fatigue to leave him confused and disorientated. They walked further along the beach towards where Tom could see more caravans and then, in a flash of alien light, he caught sight of a concrete ramp and, next to it, a narrow wooden jetty stretching out into the water. The wild waves constantly battered the flimsy looking construction. And there, moored right at the very end of the dilapidated slatted walkway, bobbing up and down on the viciously swirling water, he saw several small boats.
‘Clare,’ he said, pulling her close and shouting into her ear to make himself heard over the storm. ‘We’ve done it. Look!’
But she didn’t look. He stared deep into her eyes and saw that they were gone, trance-like.
‘One last push,’ he said, and he began marching across the beach, head down into the wind, pulling her along behind him, almost having to drag her through the sand. He’d suspected she might be close to succumbing to the alien programming, but he wasn’t going to give up on her now. Not here. Not after getting so far and coming so close. ‘Not now, Clare,’ he pleaded with her. ‘Please stay with me.’
And then everything stopped.
It was as if someone had flicked a switch. One second, ferocious gales and driving rain. The next, nothing. Absolute calm.
Clare didn’t even notice.
Tom kept moving, kept pulling her. Was it starting to get lighter now? He thought it was his mind playing tricks because, although it was late, he could definitely see more of his surroundings than he’d been able to just a few minutes earlier.
Tom continued along the beach, tired feet digging into the sand and fine shingle, then he climbed up onto the jetty and pulled Clare up after him. The three boats moored there looked reasonably seaworthy – not that he knew enough about boats to be able to tell for sure, and not that it mattered anyway because he didn’t think they’d be out there long – and he threw his sodden rucksack onto the furthest of the three. It was littl
e more than a small rowing boat, barely big enough for the two of them. He helped Clare on board, resorting to manhandling her when she wouldn’t move, then scanned around for something to use as an oar. He ended up grabbing a piece of the jetty, struggling to free the sodden wooden slat, realising just how much energy he’d already used to get this far, and what little now remained. With a grunt of effort he finally wrenched the slat free and then, with numb fingers, untied the frayed knot which had so far kept the boat moored.
Tom half-climbed, half-fell into the boat. It rocked precariously. He used the wood to push them away from the jetty, and then began digging into the water on alternate sides, desperate to get away. The light levels seemed to have increased another notch, because now he could definitely see more than before – far more than he wanted to. He took one last look at the land they were leaving, then turned his full attention to the water which stretched out ahead of them. He looked out towards the horizon, and what he saw there made his already heavy heart sink further.
‘Oh fuck.’
Coming towards them, as silent as every other alien machine he’d so far come across, was a bizarre looking craft. It was unimaginably long and narrow, gently curved, appearing to span several miles across. It looked like it was flying sideways, disobeying every known rule of aerodynamics in the process. And as it flew, a curtain of intense blue-white light shone down onto the water from beneath its entire length, sweeping across the surface of the waves.
Was this it? After getting so far, would this be the light that finally ended his life? Tom watched the ship steadily approaching, knowing there wasn’t anything he could do now. Maybe he could get in the water and try and get under the boat? Maybe he could paddle back? Maybe not. What was the point? He could see even more of them now flying tip to tip: lines and lines of them steadily sterilizing everything. The ship and the light came nearer and nearer, seeming to increase in speed the closer it got. Tom dropped his makeshift paddle and reached across for Clare. He held her tightly and buried her face in his chest, then screwed his eyes shut and waited for the inevitable, for the light to cover them both and reduce them to nothing.
