The Last Of The First

by Ian W. Sainsbury

Daniel raised the binoculars, focussing to compensate for his missing eye. He took his time searching, but their camouflage was near perfect.

  "Nope, nothing," he said.

  No planes or helicopters patrolled the sky. All military personnel were under orders to observe radio silence until the enemy was sighted. Wifi and mobile signals had been shut down or blocked, much to the annoyance of locals. It hadn't made them any happier when they were confined to their homes, but a little misinformation about a biological weapon had guaranteed their cooperation.

  Tom had insisted events would unfold just as they did in the dream, so Daniel and TripleDee couldn't be at the Devil's Chair when the Old Man arrived. Which meant, if the dream was correct, their attempt to stop him at Cranberry Rock would fail. The best they could hope for was that they might injure Methuselah, or hurt some of the First enough to put them out if action - maybe even return them to dormancy.

  It was possible they would die trying.

  Not a cheerful scenario.

  Looking out at the Shropshire landscape, the border with Wales only a few miles to the west, Daniel remembered a BBC children's science fiction show he'd watched when he was just old enough to be captivated by it. He could picture a scene where the three main characters were hiding on a hillside, waiting for a horrifying creature. When it appeared, it was a giant tripod, a mechanical monster striding incongruously across the British countryside, its metal feet crushing everything in its path. It had terrified a nine-year-old Daniel then, and he felt the echo of his fear now, even as he recognised his usual defence mechanism of focussing on trivialities.

  "I hate waiting," said TripleDee, after a few minutes. "I bloody hate it, man."

  "Me too," said Daniel.

  Saffi was back in the camp. They had hugged, and Daniel hadn't looked back.

  There had been something else about that BBC drama. Something much worse than the metal monsters. It had been the ending. The heroes, unthinkably, had been defeated by the tripods. Daniel had been distraught for weeks until he read the books the series had been based on. The BBC hadn't filmed the final book. The tripods had been wiped out in the trilogy's conclusion. The experience had left him with an inescapable and disconcerting conclusion: heroes didn't always win. Good didn't always prevail. He had seen the TV series first, and it had stayed with him. In Daniel's memory, both outcomes coexisted: the tripods were victorious, and they were defeated.

  Later on, he found out that the BBC had run out of money, and had changed the ending because of it. The tripods had triumphed because of bad budgeting. It hadn't made him feel any better.

  "What are you thinking about?" said TripleDee.

  "Oh," said Daniel, wondering whether he should tell him the truth or go for something more heroic in case these proved to be his last words. In the event, he was spared the necessity of deciding.

  "Aw, shite," said the Geordie, as the radio on his belt crackled into life. "They're here."

  37

  The Old Man's feet touched British soil five miles from the Devil's Chair. He had mostly avoided flying during his long, long, life, preferring to feel the earth under his feet. His eternal wandering had led to myths springing up around a mysterious character who ceaselessly walks the planet. Ziusudra, Ashwatthama, the Wandering Jew, Nosferatu - they couldn't die, but each of their stories carried a curse attached to their deathless existence. They were doomed to keep moving, never to find rest. The Old Man's power surged through him, and he rejected the curse human stories would have him suffer.

  His wandering days were over. Humanity's dominance was at an end. Today, the slate would be wiped clean, and a new story would be written.

  He walked now, and the First followed.

  Their resistance had crumbled once he had broken The Deterrent. Abos walked a pace behind him, ready to do his bidding. The Old Man had been minded to kill him as a warning to the others. But he needed every one of the First if they were to build a new race, and his continued control of Abos and dominance over onemind was a sufficient display of power to deter potential challengers. Once the traitor's legacy was wiped out, his submission would be complete.

  They walked, striding across the fields and hills, unstoppable, the true inheritors of the Earth.

  The Old Man's victory already felt tangible to him.

  They reached the final valley leading to the rising landscape of the Stiperstones. Silhouetted against the skyline, the Old Man saw two figures waiting beside a rock formation. Daniel and TripleDee. It could be no one else. They had expected his arrival. He experienced a moment's disquiet. Then he remembered the halfheroes' link to onemind. Was it possible they had sensed the approach of the First through that tenuous connection? The idea that these mongrels should have any access to the shared mental state of the First disgusted him. He would sever that link today.

  He stopped walking as did the nine figures behind him.

  The Old Man looked to his left and right, examining the hillsides, looking for movement, seeing none. He had been a soldier, a general, a strategist in many of his lives, and he knew a good spot for an ambush when he saw one. He laughed. Let them try.

  He started to walk again, and the others followed, their eyes fixed on the two waiting figures.

  "Let them get closer," said Daniel into the radio. "We'll only get one shot at this."

  "Much closer, and you risk being caught in the blast. Over," came the reply.

  "Leave it as long as you can," said Daniel, then, a little self-consciously, added, "over and out."

  He dropped the radio.

  They waited.

  Methuselah, the Old Man, had passed Bog Mine and was on the hillside now. Close enough that Daniel could see he was still wearing the same dark suit. It was smeared with mud and dirt now, but the creature inside it practically glowed with latent power. His dominance of the First had increased his strength, and it was coming off him in waves.

  "Oh fuck," said TripleDee.

  The Old Man's golden eyes blazed like a thousand fires. His focus was so absolute that neither he nor any other of the First saw the telltale puffs of smoke from the farm behind them, the feed store to the west, or the ancient mine entrance to their northeast.

  Sixteen missiles covered the distance in seconds. The First reacted, peeling away from their positions, taking to the air. The missiles twisted to follow them.

  The Old Man stayed where he was. Rather than avoiding the missiles, he made a pushing motion with his fist towards the halfheroes by Cranberry Rock. The force lifted them off their feet. One of them was pushed back into the rocks, the impact breaking bones. He dropped to the ground and lay still.

  The other fared better, spinning into the air, but righting himself and landing further up the ridge without injury.

  The Old Man roared and took to the air, just as three missiles converged on him. He accelerated away, but two of them exploded as they hit each other, triggering the payload of the third. The blast caught the Old Man and threw his body into a series of uncontrollable pirouettes. His weak human form, even protected by his power, could not resist the effect of the explosion and he blacked out.

  The rest of the First had been quicker to move, and the missiles were no match for their agility. They led them upwards, climbing at a speed no human-made technology could match. The missiles converged on them as they rose, and they deliberately slowed to let them get closer.

  Thirteen missiles followed the flying superbeings like well-trained dogs as the First searched the area for the source of the attack. They found the squad at the mine entrance and, with a gesture, sent four missiles to blow a crater in the side of the hillside. The farm was next, then the feed store, and great plumes of black smoke soon rose where they had stood.

  Daniel saw the smoke. He looked back to what was left of Cranberry Rock and spotted TripleDee's crumpled body.

  A figure dropped out of the sky in front of him to block his path. He looked up into familiar golden eyes.

  "Abos," he sai
d, then took a step back. His father's expression was unrecognisable, blank, without pity. As he watched, other expressions flitted across the face, were replaced by the blank look, then returned. He had a very real fear that Abos might be about to kill him.

  "Father," he said. "It's me. Daniel."

  Abos moaned, a horrible, lost sound that seemed to come from far away. His fists were clenched, and his body was rigid. He shut his eyes and tilted his head back. When he opened his eyes, the danger had passed. For now, at least.

  "Daniel," he said, "he is too strong. You cannot win. He is unconscious now, but he still dominates us. I cannot resist it for long. Leave."

  "I can't," said Daniel. "I must protect the children. We must protect them."

  "I will do what I can," said Abos, "but I have little hope of success. And you will be a distraction."

  He grabbed Daniel and rose into the air.

  "No!" Daniel struggled against the strength of the arms around him. "NO!"

  Abos paid no attention and flew to the east, away from the Stiperstones, carrying his son to safety. As he flew, he noticed something moving in his peripheral vision, and turned in time to see, and avoid, the fist that had been swinging towards his head.

  The Old Man bellowed in frustration. Wasting no time with words, he flew to one side and unleashed a two-handed blow at Daniel that would have killed him, had it landed. Abos, anticipating the attack, twisted in mid-air and took the full force in the middle of his spine. Daniel heard bones break, saw the light dim in his father's eyes.

  Then they fell.

  They seemed to fall forever although they were less than a five hundred feet from the ground when the punch landed. They dropped with no grace or control, plummeting towards the unforgiving earth.

  The Old Man watched to see the inevitable result of the fall, roaring with triumph, the First lining up behind him.

  The ferocity of his roar gave the two approaching Typhoon jets an extra precious second to get closer unheard. Each of them fired, unleashing a hundred and seventy rounds of ammunition a second from their single-barrel, twenty-seven millimetre cannons.

  The bullets could not penetrate the skin of the First, or do as much damage as the missiles, but they had the effect of getting the Old Man's attention. Leaving Abos and Daniel to die without an audience, he and the First pursued the jets, catching them in six seconds and swatting them to the ground with the casual violence of toddlers bored with their toys.

  Halfway towards the Devil's Chair, Bardock got the call from the army commander.

  "We can't risk any more lives. They're coming. I'm sorry. You're on your own."

  She looked at the teenagers. Most were still climbing, but a few, including Tom, had reached the top and were standing, waiting.

  "I know," she said.

  Daniel clung to his father's limp body as they fell. His life hadn't flashed before his eyes when he had stopped breathing in the wreckage of the Liberace, and it wasn't doing it now. As far as he could tell, he had two or three seconds left.

  He thought of Saffi.

  Abos opened his eyes, the supreme effort it took to do so etched on his dying features. He moved his hand and Daniel was pushed away, his fingers losing their grip on his father's clothes as he shot backwards. He had a brief flash of memory - he and Sara falling from a tower block in Birmingham.

  Then his descent slowed, he seemed to hang motionless for a moment, and the next thing he knew, he was in the water, panicking, arms and legs flailing. The fall with Sara had ended with them landing in a rooftop swimming pool. Abos had managed the same trick, but this time Daniel was in the middle of a stagnant pond. He surfaced, gasping, and struck out for the side, pulling himself onto the bank.

  His body was aching from the first attack by the Old Man, and the punch which had landed on Abos had been powerful enough to crack four of Daniel's ribs. He got to his feet, clutching his side and stumbled away from the water. Seconds after Abos had slowed his fall, he had heard his father's body hit the ground. In Abos's case, there had been no slowing down.

  The two RAF jets exploded behind him as he ran. He turned his head and caught sight of the Old Man and the First flying over Cranberry Rock, heading for the Devil's Chair. They would be there in seconds.

  He had failed.

  38

  The Old Man's suit hung in tatters around him as he rose into the sky in front of the teenagers who faced him at the Devil's Chair. The ancient pile of stones may have been there for thousands of years, but the creature flying above it was, literally, older than the hills.

  Tom remembered his dream. The Old Man had been wreathed in smoke, not a suit of rags fluttering in the wind. For a second, he seemed less formidable. But only for a second. Then Tom looked at his face, at those terrible eyes, and he saw all the power and insane determination from his dream.

  Tom had never been so afraid.

  Behind the Old Man, other figures hung in the air, but Tom didn't see them. No one saw them. They could only see the Old Man. His bearded face was human, but none of the children were fooled. They saw something so ancient that its insanity had developed a kind of intelligence of its own. This creature believed its path was the only true path. All others were in error. There could be no reasoning with such a being. No pleading. There was no empathy in its blank gaze, and it would offer no mercy.

  These weaknesses, these gaping holes in character, might in other circumstances have been pitiable, but since they had removed the Old Man's capacity to recognise his own psychosis, they made him more dangerous. He wanted to refashion the world in the image he called his Purpose, and he would destroy those who stood in his way.

  Tom's fear threatened to overwhelm him. He could not think, he could not move. No one around him spoke. The breeze carried a foul stench, and he realised some of the younger ones had lost control of their bowels. Tears stung the corners of his eyes. Time slowed.

  The Old Man raised his arms. Tom remembered this from the dream. He was about to unleash his power, and there was no escape, nowhere to run. Why had his dream brought him here if only to die?

  The connection to the others was at its lowest ebb since he had first experienced it.

  The Old Man's arms were at waist height.

  Tom knew it was over. He couldn't fight. He couldn't bear to look at that awful face anymore.

  Tom closed his eyes. All the teenagers did the same. They became aware of each other again and, beyond them, they became aware of others. Different, alien, hostile. With an instinct they hadn't known they possessed, they fought back. Reacting as one, they pushed the foreign group of minds away.

  The Old Man lowered his arms. Onemind was under attack. He could feel the bonds loosening under the onslaught from the human children. How was this possible? He drew on all the power of his long existence, all the pain across millennia of waiting. He had suffered for lifetimes, animal in nature, before a new chance at sentience presented itself. Then came tribal societies, violence, killing. And moving, always moving. Walking the planet, coming back to places as if for the first time, to find everything had changed, yet nothing had changed. All the while unable to hold on to who he was, what he was, cursed to live while others died. Until all he had was the instinct to continue, to survive, hating everything and everyone, hating himself, but always moving, always surviving.

  He gathered his power and drew the First together, bringing onemind to a tight-focussed solidity, curled up tight, defences in place.

  Ready to attack.

  The First hung motionless in the air like puppets in a child's toy cupboard.

  And the real battle began.

  The Old Man created a channel of pure destructive energy and, opening a gap in onemind, sent it towards their attackers. It dissipated as it hit them, sending shock-waves through the minds of the teenagers. He knew it was only a matter of time. He would destroy them.

  Tom fell to his knees under the onslaught. His nose started bleeding, but he didn't wipe it away. The de
bilitating fear was gone, replaced by the knowledge that they were too weak. They had pushed the First away, attacked onemind, but the counterblow was devastating in its intensity, and onemind was putting up defences, like a hedgehog rolling into a ball. There was nowhere to push now without hurting themselves.

  Each of the teenagers reached out and found the hand of another, shuffling together until they were all linked physically and mentally. Their heads were bowed as if they were being slowly forced to the ground.

  The look on the Old Man's face was one of rage, pain, and victory. The children had proved surprisingly strong. He had never suspected his species' ability to link minds might have found a new genetic home in the humans. Even more reason to finish them.

  He kept up the attack and prepared his reserves of power for a killing strike.

  Bardock and Saffi stood to one side. They watched the teenagers stagger, some of them dropping to their knees, others falling to the ground. That they were being attacked was obvious despite the lack of any visible conflict. They looked on at the frightening tableau of the immobile Old Man and the First facing Tom and the others in attitudes of frozen aggression.

  The teenagers, Daniel's children, nephews, and nieces, were losing. And if they lost, they died.

  Saffi ran forward and grabbed the hand of the nearest child. For a moment, her eyes closed and she, too, slumped. Then, with a gasp, she let go of the hand, opened her eyes and looked at Bardock.

  "He's killing them. They need you."

  Bardock stared at Saffi. "No," she said, "not me. It doesn't work with me. What they do. I.."

  She looked again at the teenagers.

  "I'm autistic," she said. Even now, she was reluctant to admit it. So few people understood. Or knew just enough to think they knew it all. She'd been made to feel stupid at school. She had struggled to understand it herself until an RAF doctor had picked up the signs.

  Saffi looked back at her evenly.