Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  “I will detail units to continue the search,” he said. It would be straightforward to push blocking forces forward, although he had the feeling that the humans would successfully evade contact. They’d had plenty of time to plan their retreat. “I suggest that you start thinking about what your officer could tell the humans. Who knows what they will do to him to make them talk?”

  He’d heard rumours about how the intelligence service was conducting its interrogations, ugly rumours. The humans certainly wouldn't hesitate to retaliate in kind, once they learned the truth. And it would only stiffen their resistance. If they had enough Assault Units to tie down most of the country...but they didn’t. They’d have to call in reinforcements from the rest of the world and that wasn't going to happen. Earth had already absorbed far more Assault Units and troopers than the planners had believed necessary.

  The Command Triad would have to make some decisions, sooner rather than later. Perhaps if they pulled out of some parts of the world and left them to rot, they’d be able to return later, once the humans had finished killing each other off. The Middle Eastern humans had unleashed nuclear weapons on each other. Who knew what the British humans would do?

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Resistance Hideout, Near Coventry

  United Kingdom, Day 42

  “Well, you’ve been through the wars,” the doctor observed, cheerfully. “Let’s have a careful look at you, all right?”

  “Let’s not and say we did,” Alex said. Her body still hurt, even though she’d had a good meal and a proper sleep once they’d evaded the alien pursuit and found their way to a resistance base near Coventry. “I don’t want anyone to look at me ever again.”

  “I need to examine you if I am to prescribe treatment,” the doctor said, patiently. “I’m sorry that I'm the only doctor here, but...”

  “Never mind,” Alex said. The original owner of the house had left a dressing gown behind when they’d abandoned their property for the illusionary safety of the countryside. She shucked it off and climbed onto the examination table, wincing as she saw the bruises covering her body. The interrogation team had seemed more interested in hurting her than actually dragging information from her unwilling lips. “Get on with it.”

  “Lie flat,” the doctor said. He started by examining the bruises covering her chest, including a nasty one right across her left breast. “They hit you with a cane, I presume?”

  Alex nodded. “Canes can break the skin, which is why some people use them for S&M frolics,” the doctor observed. “There’s an extra layer of danger as the cuts can become infected and cause greater hardship down the road.” He studied the cuts in view and relaxed a little. “There’s no sign of any infection, but I’m going to give you some cream to rub on them every night before you go to bed. It should encourage faster healing.”

  “They lashed my feet as well,” Alex said. She couldn't keep the bitterness out of her voice. “Do people do that for fun as well?”

  The doctor snorted. “There are people who choke themselves nearly to death for the thrill it gives them,” he said. He studied her feet carefully. “Luckily, your feet weren’t too badly damaged – I expect they wanted you to be able to walk under your own power. A couple of the wounded we plucked from the alien base were hamstrung – the bastards cut the nerves in their ankles, making it impossible for them to walk properly. It’s hard to tell if they were being paranoid or sadistic. Roll over for a moment.”

  Alex obeyed, tensing as she felt his fingers working their way over her back and buttocks. “I can't see any infection,” the doctor said, after a moment. “I think you’ve been very lucky. The disgraceful conditions in that camp would have meant that you would have picked up something, sooner or later. A number of the prisoners from the main detention cages have been suffering vitamin deficiencies, of all things. We don’t have the resources to treat all of them here, so we’ve had to spread them out a bit and hope that the aliens or their collaborators don’t realise what we’ve done.”

  His hands grasped her buttocks, pulling them apart for a moment. “There’s far too much scarring down here,” he said, grimly. “How many times did they rape you?”

  “I can't remember,” Alex admitted. It was shameful, but no amount of thinking could unlock the puzzle. She should have remembered. “Why don’t I remember?”

  “They gave you a mild drug in your food,” the doctor said. “I took a blood sample last night and found traces of a particularly obnoxious date rape drug. My guess is that they were working to break down your resistance by disorientating you – it probably would have worked, given enough time.” He winced. “Turn over and let me have a look at you from the other side.”

  Alex had always been embarrassed when her sexual organs had been examined, even by a female doctor, but she submitted without complaint. “I assume that you weren't a virgin when you fell into their hands?” The doctor asked. Alex flushed, but nodded. Her first time had been nothing to write home about, although it had gotten better over the weeks that had followed. “There’s quite a bit of scarring down here – I don’t see any signs of any STDs, but I don’t have the equipment to do proper tests. I’m going to give you a course of antibiotics and I expect you to take them for at least a month.”

  He shrugged. “Normally, we would have sent you for counselling as well, but we don’t have any of the trained specialists here,” he added. “I spent half my time as a civilian GP referring people for counselling who didn't need it and now there are more trauma cases on my hands than I ever saw in my worst nightmares.”

  “It's tough all over,” Alex said, as she sat upright. It still hurt to move, but it was getting better – or maybe she was just getting used to the pain. Her hands shook as she reached for the dressing gown and she found herself having problems picking it up. The doctor gave her a sympathetic look and helped her stand upright. “I...why don’t I feel balanced?”

  “Delayed shock,” the doctor said. “I’ve seen it quite a bit in military and police personnel. You keep plugging onwards while the crisis is going on and then you start coming to pieces. My advice, my very strong advice, would be to rest for the next few weeks. You don’t need to spend any time on the front lines...”

  “The entire world is on the front lines,” Alex pointed out, dryly. “What happens if the aliens come crashing in here and demand our immediate surrender?”

  “Try and relax,” the doctor said, with a faint smile. He hesitated, briefly. “One other thing. I’d strongly recommend that you refrain from sexual intercourse for the next month or two, at least while you’re taking the antibiotics. You really need to let your body heal before you do anything else.”

  “I don’t think that that’s going to be a problem,” Alex said. She caught sight of herself in the mirror and scowled. Her blonde hair had been hacked off by a manic, her face was bruised and covered in tiny cuts and what little of her legs could be seen had been marked by the cane. “No one’s going to be interested in me for a few weeks anyway.”

  The doctor shrugged. “I’d suggest refraining anyway,” he said. “I should warn you – some people putting out propaganda on the internet want to use your story to embarrass the collaborators. They will certainly want to talk to you about it, maybe have you filmed talking about it or take pictures of your wounds. If that bothers you, tell them to go to hell. They captured enough footage from the interrogation chamber to thoroughly embarrass the collaborators without needing your input.”

  Alex looked up at him. “Footage?”

  “The bastards recorded all of their interrogations,” the doctor said. He looked sick, even at the mere thought of it. “I saw a handful of them when they wanted a medical opinion. My considered opinion is that they were torturers first and interrogators second. At least one of them was supposed to be locked up in jail for the rest of his life. One of their sessions was the slow murder of a young girl with no real connection to the resistance. God alone knows what they did with the body.”<
br />
  Alex remembered some of the reports from London. “The aliens had their prisoners dig pits and they simply dumped the bodies there,” she said. “Maybe there’s another pit near the detention camp. The girls in the cage told me that quite a few of them had died while they were in alien custody.”

  The doctor shrugged. “I’d suggest telling that to the review team,” he said. “They may want to go back and look.”

  He looked her up and down, and then nodded. “I’ll have the antibiotics and cream sent up to you,” he added. “We don’t keep them all here, for obvious reasons. And then I strongly suggest that you get plenty of rest.”

  ***

  Outside, she met a young man who was wearing civilian clothes, but carried himself with a military bearing. “I’m Gus,” he said, with a faint smile. “I was wondering if you would be willing to discuss your time with the enemy with me?”

  Alex blinked in surprise, even with the doctor’s warning. Part of her wanted to forget the entire experience, but the rest of her knew that telling the entire world could serve as a warning to other resistance fighters not to get caught. Or perhaps they’d be too scared to resist the aliens when the time came. But that would be their choice – and besides, perhaps talking about it would help her get over it. The headshrinker who’d visited the squadron after they’d lost a pilot to equipment failure had certainly believed that that was the case.

  “If you wish,” she said, finally. “I’m afraid I intend to ask as many questions as you.”

  Gus led the way into a large room that had once been a living room, with a sofa, a plasma television and a computer placed against the wall. “We have been going through the recordings taken by the collaborators,” he said. He nodded towards the television, which was showing a frozen scene from one of the recordings. Someone – Alex was relieved to see that it wasn't her – was being whipped. Blood was dripping off his back and down to the ground. “Some of it is for propaganda, but the rest of it is for building a case against them. We have them as prisoners, you see.”

  “Shoot them,” Alex said, sharply. She remembered the girl who had tried to help her, after her first session with the torturers. And the others, only half-remembered in the haze her memory had become, who’d been there. “Is there any fucking doubt that they deserve to die?”

  “None at all,” Gus said, seriously. “But we intend to put together a series of videos for the internet that will prove them guilty, before we execute them. There’s been quite a bit of debate over the issue, I’m afraid.”

  Alex snorted. “They chose to serve the aliens,” she said. “What excuse is there for their actions? They weren't pushed into collaboration and they didn't have any noble motives – they wanted to indulge their fantasies. And they did.”

  She shuddered as she remembered the feelings of helplessness that had almost broken her, the awareness that she had lost all control over her body. Alone in the dark, she had come far too close to breaking, to begging them to listen to her as she spilled everything she knew. Who knew what might have happened if they’d been allowed to keep working on her for longer?

  “We have to prove that,” Gus said, quietly. “And we need your help to do it.”

  The next hour passed slowly. Alex watched one of the videos the torturers had recorded, fighting down the urge to be sick. She hadn't even been the worst-treated person in the underground complex. Two men had been sawn apart by their tormentors, while a girl had been practically raped to death. She told herself that she was right, that the torturers had been more interested in hurting people than learning anything the aliens could use, but it was no mercy. How could anyone indulge themselves by torturing helpless victims?

  Alex had known how Third World countries treated their prisoners. She’d always known that being shot down and landing in enemy territory was a possibility. Saddam’s regime had had entire corps of torturers, many of whom were nastier than the people the aliens had found and put to work. Iran and Saudi Arabia tortured dissidents and democrats with equal abandon, but they were both barbaric states. The thought of anyone in Britain willingly torturing someone was horrifying. And it was so pointless!

  She recorded a brief interview with Gus, where she explained what had happened to her and how she’d been rescued from the firing squad. Gus proved to be a surprisingly good interviewer, although as an army intelligence officer he’d probably been trained to talk someone into revealing more than they intended. He replayed it for her and she was struck by the sense of hopelessness she saw in her eyes. The video would be put out on the internet and the entire world would see her. She’d never wanted to be a film star, but it was worth it if it turned hearts and minds against the aliens.

  “So,” she said, finally. “What happens to me now?”

  “You recover,” Gus said. He paused, just for a moment. “Did you hear about the Area Commanders the aliens have been creating?”

  Alex shook her head. After she’d been arrested and sent to the detention camp, she hadn't heard anything new from the outside world. The last she’d heard was that the aliens were handing out seeds and expecting the farmers to plant them and raise crops before the onset of winter. Maybe they could, but Smith hadn’t been too confident of it.

  The thought reminded her of her friends. “What happened to the others from the camp?”

  “The ones we got out are scattered over the country,” Gus said. “Most of them will go into action units once they’ve recovered from their ordeal. I’m afraid we don’t keep records here...”

  “For fear the aliens will capture them,” Alex said. Al Qaida had been notoriously good at keeping records, too good. Documents uncovered by raids on their hideouts had often led to more hideouts. “Who are the Area Commanders?”

  “Senior collaborators,” Gus said. He picked up a folder and placed it in front of her. “From what one of our sources says, they're going to be responsible for integrating Britain’s economy with the alien empire. We believe that the aliens are doing something similar in America and France, but we don’t have any confirmation. I was wondering if you recognised any of them.”

  Alex opened the folder and skimmed through the photographs. None were familiar, apart from one she vaguely remembered as having been an MP during the Expenses Scandal. A note beside the photograph claimed that he’d volunteered for alien service, rather than being press-ganged into unwilling collaboration by the aliens. She put the photo to one side and glanced down at the next – and swore.

  “That’s Rupert Leigh,” she said, in shock. He’d been one of the few who’d known who she was, and what she had been before the invasion. And he’d known about the resistance movement she’d led even though he hadn't been an active member. “He...”

  It clicked in her mind. “He betrayed me!”

  “Almost certainly,” Gus agreed. “From what we have been given to understand, Leigh was offered a chance to rule the entire county – in exchange for his service to the aliens. He probably was the one who betrayed you, along with several others. He’s marked down for death if we ever get a clear shot at him.”

  “I want to go after him,” Alex said, sharply. “You cannot deny that I have the right to kill him...”

  “Maybe, but that doesn't mean that you should,” Gus said. He held up a hand before she could say anything. “The doctor said that you should rest – so rest. There will be time to kill the traitor afterwards.”

  ***

  The underground chamber was cold, illuminated only by a single overhead light. Chris strode into the chamber and stopped in front of the five chairs positioned in the centre of the room. The men sitting on the chairs had been cuffed to render them immobile and hooded to make sure that they saw nothing, just in case they managed to escape and run back to the aliens. Besides, being blind was disorientating and demoralising. Chris hadn't enjoyed it during his training and he doubted that any of the collaborators would have enjoyed it either.

  He reached for the first hood and pulled it of
f, revealing one of the alien torturers. The man stared up at him desperately, but the ball someone had stuffed in his mouth prevented him from speaking. Chris removed each of the hoods in turn, revealing the remaining torturers and collaborators. They had all featured in the videos they’d recovered from the alien detention camp. There was no doubt whatsoever about their guilt. Chris had watched the videos himself, just to prepare himself for the task ahead.

  Quickly, he pulled his own facemask on and looked up at the cameras. “Start filming,” he ordered. The set of cameras within the chamber came to life, recording the five faces – and Chris, standing behind them. They wouldn't see his face behind the mask. “Each of you has been found guilty of collaborating with the alien occupiers and of torturing your fellow humans for your masters. The evidence has been placed on the internet, there for all to see. For your crimes, there can only be one penalty. The sentence is death.”

  He lifted his Browning and put it to the head of the first torturer. The stench of shit arose as the man fouled himself, suddenly realising that the game was truly up. Chris felt nothing as he pulled the trigger, putting a bullet through the man’s brains. The torturer had deserved far worse than a quick death. He moved to the second torturer, remembering the videos he’d seen that were now firmly burned into his mind. The man had gloried in watching helpless people screaming in pain. He pulled the trigger a second time and watched as the man died, bound and as helpless as his victims.