The Reckoning (Earth Haven Book 3)

by Sam Kates

“I’m coming with you,” she said in a firm tone that she hoped would brook no debate. Wallace opened his mouth to object. “Shut it, Raccoon-eyes. I’m coming with you. Get over it.”

  Wallace shrugged. “I was going to say it’ll be nice to have you along, but whatever.”

  Lavinia rolled her eyes. “Jeez, you two. This is going to be a fun ride.”

  Simone sat perched on the edge of the seat in the back of the car, her arms around the front seats so that she could speak to the others easily.

  “Here we are,” she said once Lavinia had pulled the car out of the car park and set off down the road leading inland, “just the three of us. The Three Amigos. The Three Stooges. The Marx Brothers.”

  “There were five of them,” said Wallace.

  “I can only ever remember three. Groucho, Harpo and the other one.” Simone tittered. “So, what do you think of the drones?”

  “Do you mean the ‘people’?” said Wallace.

  “Oh, is it still Love the Drones Week?” She clapped Wallace on the shoulder. “Not to worry, George, you’re still feeling guilty about shooting the boy. You’ll get over it. It’s not like you killed him or anything.”

  “He’ll never recover full use of his left arm.”

  “Pardon me for being a realist an’ all, but he’s going to lose the use of pretty much everything before too long.”

  “Not if we can persuade the others to spare them.”

  “Come on, Georgie-boy, we all know that’s not going to happen.”

  “It might. When they see the girl and what she’s capable of. Glad I didn’t shoot her. And don’t call me Georgie-boy.”

  “Okay, okay. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” She laughed. “D’you like that? Don’t get your knickers in a twist? I heard the boy say it. The Brits can be quaint.”

  “Milandra says the girl can do pretty much everything we can,” said Lavinia. “But she doesn’t know how to control it.”

  “Maybe we can spare her, then. For further study. One day she’ll just die, though. Like they all do.” Simone thought hard; she was coming to the crux of the matter and must choose her words carefully. “Hmm. Perhaps Milandra can train her. She can be like her pet. It’ll give Milandra something to distract her. She looks weary to me. Tired of bearing the weight of all our worries on her shoulders.”

  Lavinia glanced at Simone in the rearview mirror. “D’ya think?”

  “I do. It’s not surprising. She’s been Keeper for a mighty long time. For much longer than she would have back on Earth Home.”

  “That’s true,” said Wallace, “but then we prob’ly would all be dead by now if we were still there.”

  “Not me, seeing as I ain’t ever been there.” Simone felt a flush of the familiar resentment and tamped it down. “Maybe Milandra should have the freedom to enjoy the last years of her existence. Kick back. Take up a hobby. Like dro– er, humans do.”

  “What,” said Wallace, “like retire?”

  “Why not? Just because we’re infinitely superior to them, doesn’t mean we can’t learn something from them.”

  “Ha!” exclaimed Lavinia. “Like to see you suggest that to Milandra.”

  “Yeah.” Wallace chuckled. “She’ll tear you a new one.”

  “Not if we all suggest it to her. The three of us.” Careful, now, we’re coming to it…

  “Like she’d listen,” said Lavinia.

  “We could–” Simone paused for effect “–persuade her.” There. It was out.

  “Huh?” Wallace half turned so he could look at her. “You mean, force her?”

  “I think force might be too strong a word. Encourage. Cajole. Make her see that it would be for the best if she stepped aside.”

  Wallace’s eyes narrowed. “The best for who?”

  “Don’t you mean ‘whom’?”

  “Don’t deflect. If Milandra agreed to step down as Keeper, always assuming such a thing is possible, then you’re hoping to take over?”

  “Of course. I am the Chosen.”

  “And you think you’re ready to take on the responsibility, do you?”

  “Yes. Why wouldn’t I be?” Simone could hear the hint of sullenness in her tone; she didn’t like the line Wallace’s questions were taking. “I’m ready, right, Lavinia?”

  Lavinia glanced at her in the mirror and almost immediately looked away, but not before Simone had read the doubt in her eyes.

  “Come on, guys,” she said, though she knew she’d lost them; had never had them. “Milandra’s old and tired and past it. We all know it.”

  Wallace faced the front, shaking his head. “You’re an ambitious bitch, Simone, I’ll give you that. But now is not the time to make a play against Milandra. The Great Coming is only days away. She’ll never be persuaded to step aside now, of all times. And, quite honestly, I don’t think that she should. A change like that should happen later, when the others are here and assimilated. It might happen anyway, what with there being another Keeper on her way. A choice will have to be made between them.”

  “There’ll be a second Chosen, too.” Now Simone could not mask the churlishness in her voice. “What if they choose the other one over me?”

  Wallace shrugged. “Then you’ll have to join the ranks of mere mortals with us.”

  “Yeah, baby,” said Lavinia, “be one of us.”

  “Yeah,” said Simone. She forced herself to put on the little girl voice. “We’ll have fun and shit, right?”

  “Right!” agreed Lavinia.

  Simone sat back and sidled across behind Wallace so she’d no longer be visible in the mirror. She didn’t want them to see her true expression.

  * * * * * * *

  From the journal of Elliott King:

  The German writer and former soldier Ernst Jünger is generally considered to have glorified war in his writings. I have a confession: despite recommending his work to students as a counterpoint study to All Quiet On the Western Front, I have never read it. Nor shall I, for I have learned over these endless days that there is no glory to be found in war.

  Courage, yes. Camaraderie, loyalty, fortitude. Yes, yes and yes. Armed conflict can bring out our nobler side. To see a man, eyes wide and hands trembling, grit his teeth and stride forward, thumbing his nose at fear, is to see him at his most imperious. Godlike, almost.

  By ‘man’, of course, I include woman, for there are many women fighting—and dying—with us. If they feel that war is male folly, that if only women were in charge there would be no armed conflicts, they are too kind to say so. Or perhaps they feel that, for once, it is not our fault.

  Our small group has gained a new member. She is Swedish, by the name of Aletta. She was left on her own after our first direct encounter with the enemy. Her only friend, a Hungarian, was shot by a drone—they have such little humanity left in them that I cannot think of them as people any longer—a Pole who had been their traveling companion. Aletta says that none of the essence of the man remained in the figure who pulled the trigger and blew the Hungarian’s brains out. Or maybe she tells herself that to be able to reconcile the fact that she in turn shot him dead.

  Our numbers grow fewer by the day. Each night, some slip away in the darkness. Nobody comments; nobody blames. In each encounter, we suffer fatalities and serious injuries. The beds in Hillingdon Hospital must be filling rapidly. And the morgue. I try not to think about those poor people who require surgery or other specialist care. Assuredly, Sarah and her colleagues are doing what they can, but I suspect that it will not amount to more than providing pain relief.

  Estimates vary, and nobody has the inclination to conduct a head count—it would only confirm that we are dwindling. My estimate? Around seven hundred of us remain, less than half of what set out from Hillingdon that sunny afternoon what seems a lifetime ago.

  We do not leave the dead behind on the streets, but pile them into vans and send them back the way we came, unloading them at an industrial area we passed through days ago. There’s an emp
ty warehouse there with steel roller doors that should keep out the most determined scavenger. The plan is to dig a mass grave when this is all over and lay our fallen to rest together for eternity. There is a rather gaping flaw in that plan, but I guess if none of us survives then we can all rot above ground together. Happy thoughts.

  Happiness. What a tricky concept amidst death and carnage. I guess I could describe myself as happy at this moment, sitting in some sort of safety inside an office building somewhere in West London with locked and barricaded doors and food in my belly. It’s all relative.

  Food has been more of a problem than anyone anticipated. As Zach keeps muttering darkly about, there is no supply chain. We brought all the ammunition, grenades and mortar shells with us, enough to service an army ten times our size, so that’s not an issue. But we didn’t bother to bring food, expecting to just pick it up as we went along. It hasn’t proved to be quite that simple.

  We have passed through many residential zones; come across grocery and convenience stores. There must be Walmart-sized supermarkets but we haven’t encountered them. So we go into these smaller stores looking for canned and dried goods, anything long-life that should still be edible. Apart from the occasional snack of dubious nutritional value, we are met by empty shelves. It’s the same with the residences we enter in the hope (expectation has long gone) of finding food. The occasional can of beans if we’re lucky or packet of chips, though they call them ‘crisps’ here, strange people. And there’s something else odd about the houses. Zach drew it to my attention; I doubt that I would otherwise have noticed.

  “No corpses,” he remarked as we made another fruitless search of a house.

  Amy wrinkled her nose; she possesses the keenest sense of smell of us all. Ironic, Zach reckons, since when he met her she smelled like a bobcat’s lair.

  “A faint odor,” she said. “There were corpses here.”

  “The bedding’s all gone,” said Zach. “Mattresses, too.”

  I needed it spelling out. “What does that mean?”

  “These houses have been cleared. Corpses, contaminated sheets, usable food. Same thing’s happened with the stores.”

  “But… huh.” I still didn’t get it. Sometimes I can be slow on the uptake; I’d never have made a detective.

  “Don’t know why they’ve got rid of the corpses, but I can guess why they’ve taken the food.”

  Then I got it, too. “Soon they’ll have seventy thousand extra mouths to feed.”

  “Yep.”

  “And that’s why they’ve been clearing corpses—seventy thousand extra people to accommodate.”

  Zach nodded. “Could be.”

  Seeing all those empty store shelves and kitchen closets brought it home: there really is a shitstorm due to arrive in the form of seventy thousand extraterrestrials to supplement the five thousand already here. That significantly smaller number has brought the human race to its knees; with their comrades on board they’ll be able to do anything they want. Anything.

  In that moment, I felt weighed down by desolation and futility. Something must have shown in my face because Amy asked me if I was okay. I waved her away and found somewhere to sit. If I didn’t take a moment, I’d most likely expire there and then through sheer panic.

  As I sat there trying not to hyperventilate, I questioned our sanity in going after these ‘people’. They held all the aces: outnumbering us, able to manipulate a small army of ‘expendables’ and familiar with the city. It also now appeared that they controlled the food supply. Oh, and they had seventy thousand reinforcements on the way.

  What did we have to set against them? Seething rage; a desire to take some sort of vengeance, no matter how puny; a desperation born of the knowledge that we would all soon die in any event.

  Maybe those things were enough. Better to go down fists flailing in a last gesture of defiance, however futile, than to perish on bended knee with an unheard plea on our lips. At least, that’s what I told myself and, so doing, got my terror under control.

  When we walked out of the house, I did so with shoulders back and the confident step of the righteous.

  That newfound assurance did not last. After each new skirmish, it becomes more difficult to find a way to ferry out our dead without drawing gunfire. I heard snippets of a whispered conversation between Zach and Frank. ‘Hemming in’; ‘encircling’; ‘funneling’. I don’t quite follow how this is achieved or why we are ineffective in countering it, although I assume it has to do with simple math: a lot can more easily ensnare a few.

  I have not heard anyone suggest that we cut our losses and flee the noose before it draws tight. That gives me a warm sensation that I struggled at first to recognise as pride in my fellow man and woman. If that is one of the last emotions I feel before I die, I shall count it a blessing.

  There is little enough else for which to be thankful. Our new fighting tactic that involved laying down rifle and machine gun fire to keep at arm’s length the drones, while mortar rockets were aimed at the line of black cars behind them, bore immediate fruit. A direct hit on one of the vehicles made it jump four feet into the air, blowing out its tires and windows, stunning its four occupants. The other vehicles did not pause to offer assistance to their stricken comrades. Our enemy is ruthless both in defence and flight.

  When the drones had been dispatched, Joe sprinted to the damaged vehicle, whooping with unrestrained joy.

  “Got the fuckers! Got the fuckers!” he yelled, over and over.

  Unburdened by heavy hardware, I was among the first to reach him as he stood staring into the vehicle. The stench of scorched rubber and smoke hung heavy in the air. Four figures reclined in the interior: three men and a woman. Groans and gashes and blood. Those not groaning lolled in their seats, unconscious, held in place by seat belts.

  “They’re dying,” I murmured.

  “No,” said Joe. “They’ll survive.” He looked up, eyes blazing with grim determination. “Get back. Everyone, get back.” He fiddled with his jacket pocket and withdrew a grenade. He yanked out the safety clip. People around me began to move away in a hurry.

  “No!” I yelled.

  He looked at me for a moment as if one of us had lost his mind and it wasn’t him.

  “It’s barbaric!” I insisted.

  “It’s justice,” Joe said. The calmness of his voice made him, somehow, seem even more insane. “Now get back.”

  For the briefest moment, I considered trying to take the grenade from him, had even taken half a step toward him, when he yanked the main pin and tossed the grenade through the space where the windshield had been.

  I turned and broke into a shambling run. Two seconds… three… four. The blast nearly knocked me onto my face, but my flight had taken me far enough and the chassis of the black car contained the worst of it. I looked back.

  Joe was returning to the vehicle. Thick, gray smoke poured from it. Cupping a hand over his nose and mouth, Joe reached the car and peered in.

  Eyes streaming, face blackened, he reeled away. He coughed and looked at me, raising a thumb.

  “Got the fuckers.”

  He grinned, abruptly turned his head to one side and vomited onto the asphalt.

  To the best of my knowledge, the four mangled bodies lying in that wreckage represent the sum total of the fatalities we have inflicted upon our enemy throughout this entire campaign. The rats alone have killed more of us.

  Some are calling this conflict The Battle of London. Massacre or Rout of London would be nearer the mark.

  Yet, I must not despair. The sky outside has grown dark, but I can continue with my scribblings. Wonder of wonders: this office building has power. The windows are tightly shuttered with blinds, but we are taking no chances in announcing our position to anyone looking for us out there. We do not turn on the overhead fluorescent strips; we use small reading lamps taken off desks and shaded in the leg spaces beneath them.

  Faces appear haggard in the shadowy light; eyes large and
black-ringed. It is not advisable to lie down in close proximity to another person unless you enjoy the sour odour of sweat-damp, unwashed bodies. The other smells are impossible to avoid.

  I blame the pickled eggs. Tonight we shall go to sleep not to the accompaniment of empty stomachs rumbling like distant thunder, but to the trumpeting of excess wind. We passed a bar—a pub?—whose kitchens had been ransacked, but there was also a kitchen in the living area upstairs that had been overlooked. Used as an overspill storage area for the bar and restaurant, it contained catering-sized jars and cans of meats, vegetables and fruit. A lot of them; the bar’s owners must have stocked up for the festive season just as the Millennium Bug hit and ruined everyone’s Christmas.

  Not forgetting the eggs. I had never tried an egg marinated in vinegar before, but I must confess to taking an instant liking to them. We also found boxes of chips (yeah, yeah, I keep forgetting, crisps) and salted nuts. Not enough that we could eat like kings, but sufficient for everyone to take a big chunk off their hunger.

  So we should sleep well, if rather musically and fragrantly, tonight. I’ve a feeling that we shall need our strength for the coming days. The going will be tougher, the stakes higher.

  If we look like employing a tactic that might be successful—like the mortar strike that claimed four of their lives—they change tack. They have stopped using the SUVs. They wait until we are approaching an area congested with buildings—no more open-space encounters for them and, trust me, they control precisely where we engage. We tried enticing them into a wide, tree-lined avenue by sending forward a small patrol, but they were having none of it. For hours the patrol waited like a tethered goat, but the tiger didn’t show.

  They send drones out while they stay hidden in nearby buildings, close enough to control the drones, but making it near-impossible for us to reach them. Our mortar shells rock the buildings, make holes in the outside walls, but can do nothing more than bring dust and the occasional chunk of plaster down on them in their hiding places. They have plenty of time to move to a safer place if we attempt the sustained mortar attack required to cause severe damage.