She turned back to the sleeping figure of Khosi, mostly to make sure that she was still asleep and not about to pounce on her, as she feared. Ever since she had first met Khosi, there had been something about her that just seemed wrong. Her scent was wrong, for a start. It wasn’t that she didn’t smell of Herbaht, but she never seemed to have any emotions that her scent should betray. It was as if the scent was just a blanket to her real scent.
It was obvious to her now that Khosi was herd. The authorities had branches of special operatives that would make the Elite Guard look like a kindergarten patrol. Might they be able to hide their real scent? What other answer was there?
Then there was that speed. Khosi had moved faster than Lara had ever thought it possible for someone to move. No wonder she was tired. But how had she done that? Had Khosi been able to hide some sort of drug on her person? The searches the Elite had carried out on her had been quite intensive. She couldn’t see how a drug could be smuggled in unless the guards were in on it.
That answered another question, that of whether Khosi had tried to rescue her at the end, or if she had another reason for wanting Lara along with her. If this special branch of the herd forces had discovered who she was, then they might well want to question her themselves. It was too much of a coincidence when there were probably more than two hundred cells in the Cattery for the guards to have put her in, that they’d put her with Lara.
Lara looked again at the truck parked just beyond the tree line of the forest and at the dead guards that lay together at the rear of the truck where the three civilians who had arrived shortly after had placed them. It wasn’t right. The herd might well be capable of killing off some of their own if it meant a gain of some sort, but there had to be a better way to go about it in this case. After all, if the guards were in on the deal, why not just hand her over to the new authority? Why go through this pantomime, unless of course Khosi was going to play at being rescuer. Even then, though, why kill the guards; why not just knock them out? Lara wouldn’t have been any the wiser; no, something didn’t sit right.
She wondered for a minute if they really were civilians or if they were really soldiers disguised as civilians for some obscure reason that when she thought about it didn’t really seem too important. She should make a move, regardless, because when the truck didn’t arrive at its intended destination, they would almost definitely send people to investigate, and it was probably better if she wasn’t still in the area when they arrived.
The noise made by an approaching shuttlecraft seemed to illustrate even more clearly the reason why Lara should leave the area. She remembered that just before hitting the ground and falling asleep, Khosi had spoken some sort of code into a radio that she had taken off of one of the soldiers. The gist of the message was clear, even if the language hadn’t been. Khosi had been calling for help, and most likely she had been calling for the shuttle that was now approaching.
There were a lot of them down by the road now. It looked as if the civilians had actually been releasing the prisoners, and most of these prisoners were standing around looking pretty much like helpless sheep, while one she recognized as Starlight was talking with the newcomers over by their car. By the look of it neither the civilians nor the prisoners seemed to be even slightly aware of the shuttle’s approach.
It was most likely that Khosi had left her radio on so the shuttlecraft would have a guide as to where she had fallen. Lara decided to move in the opposite direction from where the shuttle was approaching in relation to Khosi’s prone body. If they were expecting Khosi to have taken her prisoner, then it would probably be better if they didn’t see her when they flew overhead.
Lara moved through the undergrowth, wondering if her rags were protecting her at all from the rain or actually helping it to soak into her skin. She had to admit that Khosi had really scared her, especially with that speed and strength.
She didn’t go too far; those in the shuttle might have some way of detecting movement, and if they were expecting her to be nearby then they might well be using such devices to find her. It would be better for her to stay put just out of sight of where Khosi had fallen and wait for the shuttle to leave again. She also noticed that she was no longer in sight of road and couldn’t see what was happening over there any more either. Then she heard the clear sound of an engine starting near where the truck had been. It sounded more like a car than a truck. The civilians must have seen the shuttle at last and had probably decided that they didn’t want to hang around and wait for it to land either.
The shuttle came in low over the treetops as if checking the area carefully, and then it stopped just above where Khosi’s prone form lay. Now that she could get a good look at the thing, she realized it was a shuttle unlike any she had ever seen before. Not that she would consider herself an expert on such vehicles. The six small lasers that seemed to appear on the underside of the shuttle, which opened fire, cutting through the trees below it so that it would be able to land unhindered, suggested that this was probably a military shuttle of some description. This went a long way to explaining why she had never seen anything even close to it before.
Having cut itself a place to land, the shuttle descended gently and out of sight from Lara. She heard the doors open and could hear figures talking, but the sounds of the rain falling on the leaves made making out any of the words virtually impossible.
For a moment she considered trying to get a little closer to them so she might make out what they were saying, but she dismissed the idea as foolhardy. She would almost definitely be caught, and in all likelihood they were discussing nothing more important than the previous evening’s soccer results. A further idea occurred to her that she might try to sneak on board the shuttlecraft and find out who Khosi was actually working for, but she dismissed it before it had even started to coalesce in her mind.
After a minute or two the figures returned to the shuttlecraft. From the sounds of their groans, they seemed to be carrying a third, probably Khosi, between them, and they didn’t seem too pleased with their task.
Then the shuttle’s engines kicked in again and the craft rose slowly to a height where it was just above the tops of the trees. Once there it hovered for a minute or two, and Lara assumed they intended to make a quick sweep of the area before leaving. It moved slowly down to the road and hovered above where the truck had stopped. Almost immediately the gentle hum of the shuttle’s engines was replaced by loud zaps as the shuttle again opened fire. Then there was silence.
A couple of minutes passed, and the forest remained quiet except for the irritating and constant pitter-patter of the rain. Lara moved a little closer to where she had last heard the shuttle; still there was nothing. All she wanted was to see where the shuttle was so she would know where to avoid. Well, it made sense to her at the time. She moved slowly closer to the tree line and the parked truck.
The shuttle had gone. There was no sign of it anywhere. The three guards who had been with them on that fateful journey were all lying at the rear of the truck, and there was some kind of jacket stretched across the faces of two of them, denoting they were dead. They weren’t the only ones.
She moved closer, almost running now. There were the remains of a number of bodies scattered around the truck. The lasers on the shuttlecraft were probably capable of penetrating the hull of a similar craft if called upon to defend itself. It hadn’t left much behind when it attacked the figures on the ground. From what was left, it was hard to tell how many had been caught by the shuttle. Other than herself and Khosi, there had been ten Herbaht in that truck, and judging from the remains, all ten might be here. As for trying to actually identify any of them, other than a charred head lying near one of the rear wheels of the truck, there was nothing to tell her who might’ve been on the receiving end of the attack.
Lara had seen many bodies in her time—in fact, she had butchered many herd herself—but to see this sort of slaughter actually made her feel sick. She didn’t want to hang arou
nd longer than necessary. The herd might still send reinforcements, to clean up the mess if nothing else.
Lara backed away slowly from the scene. She was a little disorientated from having been in the back of a truck, but she thought she knew the way to London. There was nothing she could do here, and she had a long walk ahead of her. She wanted to find her mother. She felt a strong need for her mother after seeing what she had and suffering as she had, and she had no doubt that her mother would want to know that she was safe. Lara also felt the need to tell her mother that Myajes was now a prisoner in the Cattery.
She followed the road for a short way, surprised at the lack of traffic, though that might explain why the soldiers had chosen this route in the first place. After maybe twenty minutes she came to a well signposted fork, which told her which way to go for London. She was on the right path.
The new road was still fairly quiet, but it was busier than the side turning she had just emerged from. When the first car passed her, the passengers pointing and screaming at her as they passed, she decided to move into the relative cover of the forest. She would keep the road in sight and still follow it, but hopefully she wouldn’t be seen again.
It was a very long walk to London, and she was feeling both cold and wet, and without a disguise or a weapon she was feeling very exposed. On top of which, just getting to London wouldn’t be enough because her mother lived on the far side of the city, somewhere between the capital and Sou’nd. As she walked, she had no idea how she might circumnavigate the city without getting caught again. But what else could she do?
Day Seven
Exodus
Early in the twenty-second century, some car manufacturers experimented with hover technology. The vehicles were more fuel consumptive and as a result very unpopular with the population at the time.
At the end of the last century (29th) a man by the name of Doctor David Milton declared he had discovered a usable version of anti-gravity. Even now, fifty years later, no one has been able to create a version small enough and cheap enough to have any real commercial possibilities.
27
Homeward Bound
The time was fast approaching one-thirty in the morning. The tanks that had returned from their mission in Sou’nd slowly threaded their way back through the streets of London, returning to the barracks they had left two days earlier.
Most of the tanks took as direct a path as the streets of the city would allow. However, one of them took a slightly different route, heading instead for the place from which they had originally launched the invasion, the green outside the Houses of Parliament museum. There was a good reason for this. The commander of the tank, Captain Charles ‘Slim’ Dorris, was thought by most of the denizens of the city to be a civilian, and it would probably be better if no one saw him near the barracks. Besides, he had had to make his own way to the kickoff point for the invasion in the first place, and as a result his car was parked not too far from the famous clock tower.
He waved the tank goodbye as it drove off again, having left him by the edge of the green just across from the main entryway into the museum. It was a short walk from here to his car, but a walk he needed—his legs were feeling very stiff from having been in a sitting position in the tank almost constantly for most of the last forty hours. He had read somewhere that it was dangerous to sit in one position for so long. The arteries in the legs could harden and actually kill him. He needed the walk. He needed to flex his muscles. He needed to stretch his legs.
He was feeling both very tired and very hungry, and probably appeared more awake and alert than he really felt because of his training. He had been awake for all of the forty hours he had been in the tank, as well as several hours before his assault force had set out for Sou’nd. Once the cats had taken out the catering vehicles, before they had even reached the town of Sou’nd, all they had had left to eat were some emergency rations that the tanks carried by rote. At least they hadn’t dropped him too far from his car; if it had been much further than it was, he wasn’t sure he would have made it.
He climbed into his vehicle pretty much on autopilot, wondering a moment later how he had gotten there, but glad he had. He hesitated over starting the car. He was so very tired, and it might be better for him to grab a nap here at the wheel rather than try to drive in his current condition. Then again, he had a nice comfortable bed waiting for him back at his apartment, and he was sure he would feel far more rested in the morning napping there. Also, he hadn’t had a proper meal for what must be getting on towards fifty hours now.
He gave in to his desire for the bed and started the vehicle’s engine. He began to think about what he might cook for himself once he got home, but these thoughts were replaced by the realization that he was far too tired to cook, despite how hungry he felt. Perhaps his hunger would wait until he had gotten some sleep, but the moaning rumble of his stomach seemed to suggest otherwise. He had been trained to go without food for a few days if necessary, but he hadn’t enjoyed that part of his training at all. He really didn’t like to fast for so long, and somehow it just didn’t seem to be necessary that he should do so tonight.
Before he’d left for Sou’nd, these streets would have been filled with traffic. Now that so much of the population of London had fled the city to escape the latest threat from the cats, the roads were relative empty.
The commission in charge of the street lighting in most parts of the city hadn’t yet had a chance to adjust their policy to account for this, assuming they even intended to. Most areas were still well lit even if the traffic through them was negligible.
Charles’ trip home took him through many very empty looking streets. Streets that might have once had cars parked along the sides of them for their entire length now had one or two at most. He also passed through many well lit areas in which the shops, whether they had been open or not at this time a week ago, were now all closed. Some showed signs of having been deserted, the owners having left the city, taking as much of the shops’ contents as they could with them, whilst it seemed that others were expecting to return when it was over. London was slowly becoming a ghost town.
Then he saw it, as he approached another well-lit area. He knew that to be operating at this time of night, the shop must be fully automated. Shopkeepers tended to value their lives more than just a few extra sales in the middle of a desolate city. It was a huge sign: ‘Fast Food Fish Restaurant –Open All Night,’ and it seemed to beckon to him welcomingly, hovering over the road and calling his attention to the row of shops where the pertinent building waited with a smaller version of the same sign above its doors.
Climbing out of his car, he heard the unmistakable chatter of gunfire. It was close and even made him duck at first, but he soon realized that wherever it was, it was still over a mile away. Hopefully some soldiers had cornered a few cats, but it was only too likely that a group of cats had attacked some civilians.
He turned and walked calmly into the restaurant. If a cat had seen him and was lining up a shot, there was nothing much he could do about it. Chances were that he was the number one target on the cats’ hit list anyway. And it seemed quite likely that he’d made the hit lists of many humans too. There was no telling how people might react to him, considering what had happened recently.
He wasn’t surprised to see that machines seemed to be controlling everything. Sitting on the middle of the counter was a large box with little more than a speaker to break the monotony of its design. Next to that was a small machine about the size of a small calculator that would take and count the money it was handed and return any change that was required. Next to that was a small sensor, little larger than the size of a pen, which detected when someone was close.
As soon as he entered through the door, the sensor must have detected him because the box spoke: ‘Good morning, sir. What would you like?’
Charles ordered his meal in clear tones, knowing that if the machine got his order wrong there would be no one here he could actually
complain to. He then pulled out a small credit card and gave it to the appropriate machine.
It didn’t take too long for his order to be filled, but while he waited, propping himself up on the counter with his shoulder, he closed his eyes for a few moments and enjoyed the absence of light, all the while resisting his body’s demands for a nap.
Then a trolley with a tray on top of it rolled in from the kitchen. On the tray was a wrapped package, the food Charles had ordered. It stopped at the counter and then with some sort of simple hydraulic system lifted the tray and the food to a height comfortable enough for Charles to take.
As he left the door of the restaurant, a group of six teenagers not far away headed towards him. They all seemed very young. The eldest could’ve been no more than sixteen, if that, whilst the youngest might possibly have been eleven. Two of them seemed to be carrying laser rifles in full view of the public, and neither of them seemed even slightly worried to be doing so. They were moving from shop to shop, all of which were closed apart from the restaurant, chatting nonchalantly and walking as if they owned the street.
They caught sight of Charles as he walked over to his car.
‘Hey,’ one of them virtually shouted, ‘that’s Slim Dorris, the Cat Killer.’ If it hadn’t been for the lighting, there would probably have been no way they could have recognized him at such a distance.
‘Are you sure?’ said the one who seemed to be the youngest of the group. His expression seemed doubtful despite the difference. ‘I seen ‘im on the newspaper.’
‘Me too,’ the first replied, not looking round. ‘That’s definitely him.’
Although Charles was tired, his reflexes responded as if to a threat. Charles glanced at the oldest of the group, checking the telltale area that might identify this boy as actually being a cat. Then he checked each of the others in turn. His eyes moved with a skill born of experience. Unless the cats had come up with some new disguise technique that he wasn’t yet aware of, these six were exactly what they appeared to be: children.
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