The Invasion (Extended Version) Read online

She pushed back against the presence in her mind but this time couldn’t break the bond between them. She swirled down, gaining speed, spinning dizzily, accelerating towards where something waited -- something that wanted a closer look at her.

  She tried to scream, but nothing came, like being caught in a nightmare and being unable to wake yourself up. She passed the mouth of the hole in the pyramid and tumbled deeper into blackness. It sucked ever more eagerly at her.

  “No,” she screamed in her head, and pushed with all the strength of her mind.

  She blinked, and opened her eyes to find herself looking down at the creature’s head. Fresh green fluid poured from what might be a mouth.

  “What just happened?” Dave said softly.

  Alice stared at the creature. Its legs no longer moved. She had rarely seen anything more dead.

  I think I blew its brains out.

  ***

  Over the next four days Hiscock watched as the world went dim.

  The newscasts went to static at regular intervals. The BBC was among the last to fail. By that time Buckingham Palace was completely overrun by lance-like stalks and Hyde Park was a vast hole filled with diggers. The British Parliament had met, one last time, only to succumb en-masse to Hydrogen Sulfide suffocation when a deadly sinkhole of the gas moved, a silent assassin, along the length of the Thames.

  The US administration fared little better. The President had made it to NORAD despite several scares on the way. Most of his Chief’s of Staff and a small army of advisors joined him in seclusion. They thought they were safe, deep in a complex built to withstand a full-scale nuclear attack. That feeling of security lasted just one more day.

  A swarm of diggers focussed in to an area adjoining the mountain and started to tunnel. What was left of the President’s armed escort moved to try to neutralize the situation, but they too succumbed to asphyxiation, this time from a high build up of Methane in the vicinity – different gas, same result.

  The diggers kept digging. Several hours after they started a black egg-shaped craft arrived and hovered overhead. An hour later it got really interesting for the people inside the complex.

  The first sign of just how much trouble lay ahead came when their radar reported something huge coming their way. Not long later a mile-wide craft hove into view over the mountain. One of the external NORAD CCTV cameras captured what happened next for what was left of posterity.

  The craft was sleek and with a deep-bluish black hull unbroken by any sign of window or propulsion mechanism. It hovered above the mountain. It developed a glow – tinged green at first then increasing in intensity until it was a brilliant yellow almost matching the sun.

  The ground around the entrance to the complex broke up, first in a rising cloud of dust, then faster as pebbles, then stones, then rocks the size of cars rose up in the air defying gravity. As they approached the hovering craft everything was vaporized, dancing light flashing the length and breadth of the ship. Nothing came back down but a fine rain of gray dust.

  That camera failed soon after. The ones inside the complex kept going for some time – long enough to show the concrete and metal being torn apart and dragged away upward – along with anyone who happened to be in the vicinity at the time. The last thing on screen before everything went dark was an Air Force General, waving frantically as he was torn away from a hold on a table before disappearing up out of view of the camera.

  Homeland Security managed to divert a satellite to check out the site several hours later. Nothing remained of the mountain but a deep gouge in the ground, ten miles long and nearly a mile deep.

  The original speculation was that this was a direct attack on the leadership of the USA. But it soon became apparent it had been merely a coincidence. Larger craft descended all over the world, hovering over selected dig sites, some in remote areas, some in the midst of great cities. In all cases the result appeared the same – the craft glowed, gravity was reversed and the sub-strata was vaporized until the craft moved on, leaving only a deep wound in the earth behind.

  A geologist in Australia was the one who finally figured out what the craft were after. He studied global maps, pinpointing the locations of the new wounds. His training immediately told him what they sought.

  They are mining Uranium.

  ***

  After spending the next four days in the house Alice was ready to start climbing the walls. She was getting squirrelly. They had packed the body of the alien creature in an old chest-freezer in her basement. She had to go down there for provisions from her larder, and every time she passed she was sure she could hear it scratching.

  They were taking it in turns to sleep, keeping watch on the hole outside. The wreckage of the craft still lay where it had fallen but, just this afternoon, the scene had changed.

  A heavy thaw set in, and in its wake new lanceolate shoots forced their way up through the soil. They were not yet ready to seed, but there were far too many for them to be burned out. Alice eyed them apprehensively.

  Dave’s requests to leave the island had become more strident in the last twenty- four hours. He too had been twitchy -- ever since CBC News went abruptly off-air in the middle of a report. Both of them were having trouble steering clear of what was left of the liquor. Indeed, Alice was starting to come round to the man’s viewpoint.

  We cannot stay here. Not for long anyway.

  She couldn’t shake the dreams – of that purple sky, and the black pyramid below. The more she thought about it, the more she thought someone should know of her experiences in the shared mind between her and the creature.

  It might be important.

  She had spent several hours trying to contact the authorities, but no one responded. Twelve hours after the creature’s demise her Internet access had gone, never to return. And now that CBC had gone to static they were completely cut off from the outside. Dave tried the FM radio, but, apart from a single Russian station neither of them could understand, all was just white noise.

  “We should go,” Dave said at her shoulder. They stood together looking out over the forest that seemed to grow even as they watched.

  She came to a decision.

  “Let’s do it right now. If we leave in the next twenty minutes we can be on Grand Manan by nightfall.”

  Once the decision was made she found it surprisingly easy to let go of the house. Dave helped inflate the Zodiac and fifteen minutes later they wheeled it from the boat shed and slid it into the water of the Bay.

  She had to leave the creature behind. They had no way of keeping the body cold enough to prevent it decomposing. All she could do was leave it in the freezer and hope the power supply held out long enough for someone to find it – if anyone would even be looking.

  The Zodiac was as reliable as ever. Even laden with fuel and provisions bringing its total carrying weight close to the safe limit, it rode flat and smooth in the water, and the comforting roar of the engines served to remind Alice of happier times and warmer days. She was almost smiling as she took the controls and steered the dinghy away from the jetty, slowly at first in the shallow water, then faster as she reached sufficient depth to lower the engines all the way down.

  She wasn’t intending to look back. But she couldn’t help herself. Not for the first time she noticed how fragile the small island seemed from out on the water. She was about to mention it to Dave when a new movement caught her eye in the area where the craft had crashed.

  Dusk was falling, and she was tired through lack of sleep, so at first she did not trust her eyesight. But after only a few seconds it was undeniable. The diggers were no longer merely land-based. Three of them already hovered on gossamer wings above the hole – each with a body nearly six feet long, looking jet-black in the dimming light. More and more of them emerged from the hole, swooping and diving around the wrecked craft like mayflies over a pond. Dave stood in the bow of the dinghy, the shotgun gripped tightly to his chest. She saw him raise the gun and sight along the barrel.

&
nbsp; “Don’t,” she shouted. “If they are hive beings, it’s best not to antagonize them.”

  Dave laughed bitterly, but he did put the gun down.

  Alice’s hunch was proved right seconds later. The winged creatures rose as one, a swarm of maybe fifty creatures.

  They headed north, on a tangent to the direction of the boat, and were soon lost in the gloom.

  By the time night fell over Saint John the US Homeland Security Broadcast was the only show in town. They alone managed to stay on air, broadcasting from a studio on an aircraft carrier in an undisclosed position off the Eastern Seaboard – and they only managed to keep it going by retaining control of a satellite.

  Hiscock was still in touch with several other bunkerites, but several more had gone – two at least after complaining of bad air. Hiscock spent much of his time worrying about Hydrogen Sulfide, Methane, and the state of his air filters, but after a while he reached a resignation with his lot.

  Either it will get me, or it won’t.

  He suspected that several other survivalists had already eaten their guns, dismayed at the sheer scale of the collapse around them and the almost overwhelming certainty that, in order to survive, they would be bunkered for a long time to come. Hiscock’s resignation with his own lot stretched to his own incarceration. He had taken and re-taken inventory over the last few days, reassuring himself he had been paranoid enough to squirrel away sufficient stocks for any eventuality. He even had a large supply of books and movies on DVD for when all contact with the outside disappeared – as it surely would.

  And soon.

  He had just settled back in his chair from a check of his perimeter when the first pictures of the flying bugs started to come in. As had become usual there was much chatter and speculation on the airwaves as to what this new development might indicate.

  They didn’t have to wait long for their answer.

  The Homeland Security broadcast showed a scene of a downtown area of a city. It could have been almost any city in North America, and Hiscock realized it didn’t matter that he didn’t know the name of this one – the same scene would be being played out on hundreds, if not thousands, of streets.

  At first the picture showed only the now-familiar scene of prone bodies on the ground. A dark shadow seemed to flit over above the view of the camera. Then they descended.

  It was similar to watching flies descend on a piece of decomposing meat. They swarmed all over the street, crawling over each other in their frenzy to get at the flesh. The clacking of pincers showed Hiscock what he had already suspected. These were modified diggers.

  And I have a good idea what they want with the bodies.

  He had an ant-farm when he was a boy – a sealed environment in some ways very similar to this bunker he now inhabited. Once he’d dropped a large chunk of Smeat in with the ants, just to see what happened. They’d torn the meat into chunks within seconds and carried it triumphantly down into the nest. The swarm he watched on the screen behaved in much the same way, tearing the corpses into chunks of a size they could carry, then taking off, dripping gore and blood in Jackson Pollock patterns as they returned with food to their burrowing brothers.

  And with the still spreading threat of suffocation from noxious gases hanging over most of the planet, it looked like they would have an all-you-can-eat buffet available to them for some time to come.

  Hiscock wondered if this too was part of the master plan – the annihilation of the human race. But other pictures had come in, from ranches across the Great Plains, of swarms of the new flyers descending on herds of cattle. And in one of the last scenes to come out of the continent of Africa, a survivor in an air-balloon managed to post a picture of a swarm nearly two miles long. It was packed solid like a black sheet, descending on a vast herd of wildebeest. The wildebeest would never be able to run fast enough.

  The last report of the night went back to scenes of mass death in the world’s major cities. Beijing had succumbed to a huge mist of Hydrogen Sulfide. The Chinese had tried everything to halt its inexorable path – firebombing huge tracts of countryside -- and people, into oblivion. It hadn’t mattered. Tens of millions died in less than an hour.

  The reporter was somber.

  “The atmosphere of our planet has already undergone a more drastic change than any seen for many millennia. Now, tonight, as the green slime coats more than half the planet, we can only watch and wonder what the future holds for us – if indeed there is to be any future at all.”

  The report signed off. Hiscock was about to leave his desk for some much-needed sleep when his laptop beeped.

  You have mail.

  It came from the last people on the planet he’d expect to contact him.

  “From General Samuel Davis, Department of Homeland Security.

  “Mr. Hiscock. We know you are still there. Please reply to this mail.

  “We need your help. You may be our last chance.”

  PART THREE

  THE SURVIVORS

  Alice brought the Zodiac into Grand Manan just as dusk gave way to night. She already knew the town was in trouble from much further out in the Bay – there were no lights on any of the approaches, and the town sat in complete darkness. Tall lance-like stalks stood silhouetted against the dark sky, the pods at their tops open and split.

  They’ve all ripened.

  And they’re much bigger than the ones we’ve seen already.

  Suddenly all she wanted to do was turn and sail for home as fast as the engines would take her. But there was nothing left there for them. They had no choice but to forge ahead and try to find other survivors.

  Dave had gone quiet. She knew he’d been pinning his hopes on a semblance of normality in their nearest town. Grand Manan had been the place where the Roddie brothers went to blow off steam – to drink beer, play pool and have yet another try at persuading a woman – any woman, that life on an even smaller island was a good idea. But his hopes – like his quest for a wife – were dashed.

  The view that met them in the harbor was far from normal. The town sat in a secluded Bay and had its own microclimate. That had obviously worked against it. There had been a thaw – enough for the dark stalks – and the resulting diggers, to thrive.

  Alice knew every house on the skyline, having made the journey many times both in daylight and at dusk. But no rooflines could be seen against the night – only more of the tall stalks. And now that full darkness was upon them there was something more – the alien growth gave off a faint glow, an oily green luminescence wafting and swaying in a slight breeze.

  She wanted to yell out, to let any survivors know they were there. But something about the whole eerie scene made her keep her silence. With the engines turned down to their slowest revs they drifted towards the main quay.

  Normally, even at this time of year, there would be people about – either on the quay itself, or on the main street just beyond. There were several bars and cafes along the main drag and local fishermen liked to gather for drink and tall tales during the close season.

  But tonight all the windows were dark. She knew there were large basements in many of the houses, basements large enough to hide families in. All the way here she’d been holding out hope of finding someone – anyone. But the stillness and sheer alien quality of the night around them told her she shouldn’t let her hopes rise too far.

  “We should stay here for the night,” Dave said. “Tie up beside one of the fishing boats and lie low until morning.”

  That’s what she wanted to do. But the thought of people – and children, possibly cowering in dark basements, was too much to bear. After tying the boat to the gunwales of a fishing boat she grabbed a heavy rubber flashlight and made her way over the decks of the moored boats to the quay.

  Dave was at her side, shotgun gripped tight, as they stepped ashore.

  She walked off the quay onto the street and by instinct checked for traffic before stepping out. There seemed to be no movement anywhere in the to
wn.

  “I don’t like this,” Dave said beside her, but he followed as she walked the length of the main drag through town.

  The ground underfoot felt rougher than expected. It was only when she shone her light at her feet that she realized why. The surface they walked on wasn’t the road – it was dried and hardened sludge, itself glowing slightly green in the darker shadows.

  This is stupid.

  She’d always scoffed at women in horror movies, always walking around in the dark alerting the monsters to their presence. Now here she was, doing exactly the same thing.

  “Just another hundred yards,” she said to Dave. “I just want to have a look over the hill.”

  The bulk of the residential area of town was over a slight hill some way east of the quay. When they crested it they found the reason why the town had gone dark.

  The residential properties were completely gone. In their place was just a deep hole lying in black shadow. It seethed with crawling diggers.

  Dave tugged at her arm.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered. “Before they see us.”

  She turned to agree with him… just as the diggers took to the air, a vast swarm of them. The air buzzed with the vibration of their wings. They were each more than three feet long, moving in unison like a flock of starlings as they swooped up – and down, heading straight for where Dave and Alice stood.

  Dave turned to run.

  Alice stood her ground.

  They’ve shown no interest in us before. Why should they start now?

  The flyers kept coming.

  Maybe I’ve miscalculated.

  At the last second, when the leading flyers were less than ten yards overhead, she shouted, at the same time sending out a mental command.

  “No! Leave me alone.”

  As one the flyers veered aside, swooping back up into the sky to be lost in the black of night.

  Dave stood by her side, shaking.

  “How the heck did you do that?”