by Rob May
Brandon had just wanted to collapse into the straw of the barn, go to sleep and forget about everything. Instead he had found himself trying to get some rest in a badly-driven car. He tried to shake off his exhaustion—and hunger; he was so hungry—and attempted to concentrate on the problem of getting them heading in the right direction.
He leaned across Kat. ‘Go up that hill,’ he said, pointing it out to Jason.
Jason took the junction too fast, throwing Brandon and Kat across the car. But he stayed on the road at least, and soon brought the car to a skidding halt at the top of the hill.
They could see the remains of London to the north: a dull red glow flickering behind a smothering swathe of smoke. Kat stared out in awe. ‘I know it’s wrong,’ she said, ‘and maybe it just hasn’t sunk in yet, but it’s almost exciting: like some horrific news story that you just can’t get enough of. Is it wrong to feel like this?’
‘I don’t feel excited,’ Brandon said. ‘But I’m not distraught either … I just feel detached from it all. It doesn’t seem like it’s real yet.’
‘What is wrong with you two?’ Jason said in exasperation. ‘This is a catastrophe, and it might only be the beginning. Do you still think it could be something other than the start of an alien invasion, Brandon? Only aliens would destroy London.’
‘Humans have never needed help from aliens to destroy each other,’ Brandon replied philosophically. ‘I think I’m still going to need to have a close encounter to believe it’s aliens.’
‘That fight in the train not close enough for you then?’
‘I think I’d have to talk to them to be sure,’ Brandon said, smiling for the first time since the train crash. ‘I think that would be a close encounter of the fifth kind.’
‘Whatever,’ Jason said. ‘There’s the road we need, anyway.’ He pointed out a glowing line running from north to south in the distance. The traffic was heavy, despite it being three in the morning. People were panicking and rushing to their families; the ones that weren’t bolting their doors and hiding under their beds, at least.
‘And there are your flying saucers!’ Kat said in an awed voice.
Breaking through the cloud layer were speeding, glowing shapes, twisting and looping tighter and faster than any aeroplane possibly could. They zipped up and down the length of the main road, occasionally shooting out across the fields and back. One was heading their way.
‘Lights,’ Brandon hissed. ‘Kill the headlights, Jason.’
‘Yeah,’ Jason agreed, plunging them into darkness.
The craft hovered closer, shooting a beam of bright light down into the valley below, illuminating the road that they needed to take. The beam of light then began sweeping back and forth across the road and the surrounding fields, getting closer with every pass.
Brandon couldn’t help staring at it, open-mouthed. It really did look saucer-shaped, although it was hard to make out any details: it was like trying to identify a car coming towards you on a dark road with its headlights on.
‘We’re sitting ducks,’ Jason said. ‘I’m getting us out of here.’ He released the handbrake.
Brandon saw Jason’s plan, and it was a good one: Jason timed it so that as the searching beam swept across the road and out across the fields, he rolled their dark and silent car down the road and into the valley beyond. There was a frightening few seconds when they were descending in pitch blackness, with Jason trying to control the speed of the plummeting vehicle with his foot on the brake pedal.
Then they were clear. Jason fired the engine while they were still rolling, and they soon joined the flow of traffic on the busy A23 heading down to Brighton. The flying saucers had moved away, hunting around in England’s villages and lanes.
Brandon watched them go. What destruction would follow, he wondered, if they couldn’t find what they were looking for?
‘Anyone got any sweets for the journey?’ Kat asked hopefully.
They arrived at the outskirts of Brighton at almost five in the morning. The sun was beginning to rise. This was quite a rare sight for Brandon; usually at this time on a Sunday he would be looking forward to another six hours’ sleep.
Instead he was stuck in traffic. The road into town was bumper to bumper; cars were queuing to get in, and there was also a long jam on the other side of the road heading out. It was like both morning and evening rush hours at the same time, when everyone really should still be in bed.
A giant billboard loomed over them as they sat in the queue. A nineteen-thirties-style girl in a bikini and a floppy hat posed by a pool above the words BRIGHTON, AMUSEMENTS, SURF BATHING. Parked behind the billboard was a tank. Two soldiers in khaki were watching the road.
‘I don’t think that they’re after us,’ Brandon observed. ‘It was just those special ops troops in black that know who I am.’
‘These guys are just looking for under-age drivers without a license!’ Kat laughed.
Jason sat up straighter in the driver’s seat and tried to look manly.
Kat was playing with her phone. ‘No signal or internet around here either,’ she said. ‘How can the whole internet be down everywhere?’
‘Maybe the army are blocking it here,’ Brandon guessed. ‘Or something else is.’
They rolled forward a few metres. A tandem rotor helicopter flew low overhead with a large truck-sized container swinging beneath it.
‘That’s a Chinook,’ Brandon noted. ‘They use them for moving troops and artillery around. They must be expecting something big to go down here.’
Kat turned to look at Brandon. ‘How come you know so much about military hardware?’
‘Operation Flashpoint in Modern Combat Three: you have to fly a Chinook around and pick up survivors from different landing zones.’
Kat looked confused.
‘It’s a video game!’ Jason explained. ‘He knows as much about flying helicopters as I do.’
They crawled along slowly, the road curving so that out of the left windows they could see the town beyond a golf course. There were no golf buggies out this morning though. Instead, an army truck was dragging one of the large containers across the fairway. Unfolding out the back of the container was a snaking concertina-like barricade, three metres high and two metres thick.
‘They’re barricading the town,’ Brandon realised.
‘They must be turning all the traffic around, and kicking out the locals too,’ Jason said. ‘This place must be where they expect the aliens to attack next.’ He actually grinned at Brandon. ‘Trust you to want to go there.’
‘We need a plan to get past those barricades,’ Brandon said.
The Chinook was coming back in their direction, this time without a container. Brandon looked out across the golf course. On one of the greens near the road there were five of the large containers lined up in a row.
‘The heli is picking up the barricade containers and deploying them around the city,’ Brandon said. ‘I’ve got a crazy idea!’
Kat jumped out of the car straight away when she realised what Brandon was planning. ‘Come on then!’ she urged them. ‘We’d better be quick!’
‘You’re mad!’ Jason said. He was still driving, trying to keep pace with the traffic, when Brandon also disembarked.
Eventually he applied the brakes. ‘Damn it!’ he exclaimed, thumping the dashboard of the MG. ‘I liked this car … it was my first one!’ Then he got out and followed Brandon and Kat, abandoning the car to a chorus of horns and shouts from the other drivers on the road.
They raced across the fairway and threw themselves down in a bunker. Kat wriggled up the sand to the edge and peered out. ‘All clear!’ she reported. ‘The soldiers have gone round the other side.’
They scrambled out and made it to the containers over on the cropped grass of the green. The container doors were locked by four thick metal rods, their release levers secured by padlocks. Jason took a quick look at the set-up, then went over to the hole in the green and pulled out the
flag.
‘No door is safe,’ Kat said proudly.
Jason fixed the pointed end of the metal flag-pole into the padlock’s loop and then pulled it down sharply. The lock broke open and Jason quickly released the lever and opened the container door.
The space inside was packed with the collapsible barricades. They appeared to be made out of steel wire mesh, so Brandon and Kat found that they could push them back just far enough to make some space. Once they were in, Jason pulled the door shut.
It was pitch black. Kat turned on the Maglite that they had got from the lab. ‘I hope there’s not one of those aliens in here with us,’ she teased.
‘Kat, stop it,’ Jason said. He turned to Brandon. ‘I don’t suppose you also have a plan for leaving town when we’re done here?’
Brandon hadn’t even thought about it. ‘Boat?’ he hazarded.
Jason seemed to like the idea though. ‘Could do. We’ve not done boat yet.’
They could hear the rotors of the helicopter getting closer. There was a loud clang as the hooks hit the roof of the container. Soldiers were moving about outside making sure that everything was secure. Luckily they didn’t check the doors again.
The container shook and swung as it lifted off the ground. Jason gripped the inside lip of the door tight to stop it swinging open mid-flight. Brandon twisted his fingers around the wire mesh behind him just in case. Kat was safely wedged behind the other door that was still bolted shut.
Thankfully the flight was short, and there weren’t any aliens hiding in the container. As soon as they hit the ground, they prepared to move out. Jason opened the door a crack and looked around.
‘Dual carriageway. Bushy bank to the right. Go go go!’
They made it to the bushes without being seen. Once they were concealed, Brandon looked back. The container had been set down on the back of a truck, which was preparing to extend the barricade along the length of the dual carriageway, which he guessed was the main ring road around Brighton.
‘I hope after all that, that we’re inside the barricade,’ Brandon said. Keeping low under the cover of the bushes, they climbed to the top of the bank to get a view of the surrounding area.
It turned out that they were on the edge of a housing estate, a few kilometres from the city centre and the coast. Across the houses, they could see a few high-rise hotels and glimpses of blue sea.
There was also a hazy cloud of smoke in the air over the city centre, still rising from where a meteor had struck: the one that had hit Brighton at the same time that Highgate Cemetery had also been hit.
‘That’s where The Grand Hotel was,’ Brandon said. ‘So that’s where we’re going.’
They walked cautiously through the quiet suburban estates. There was no sign of normal Sunday morning life; no kids playing in the streets; no adults out walking, jogging or washing cars in drives. All the houses looked empty. Brandon kept his eyes open for soldiers, aliens or any kind of aircraft.
Kat seemed oblivious and chattered away.
‘So, these aliens. Where could they have come from? Another universe far, far away?’
‘There’s only one universe, Kat,’ Brandon said. ‘The universe is supposed to include everything, after all. But there are billions of planets in this galaxy, let alone the whole universe, so I reckon they must have come from somewhere nearby.’
‘Nearby? Like … Mars?’
‘Well, maybe not that near. It depends on how fast they can get around. Even a nuclear pulse-propelled rocket would take four-hundred or so years to get to Alpha Centauri—the nearest solar system—so either they’ve been travelling for a very long time, or they’ve developed some form of faster-than-light travel—’
‘Who cares where they’re from or how they got here,’ Jason interrupted. ‘What I want to know is where, and how hard, to hit them to make them go down.’
‘Between the legs?’ Kat giggled.
‘But what if they’re not male?’ Brandon wondered. ‘Or what if they keep their reproductive organs—I don’t know—under their tongues or something?’
‘Those super soldiers on the train had some pretty interesting weaponry,’ Jason went on, ignoring Brandon. ‘I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one of those wicked-looking machine guns.’
‘Or one of those alien laser blasters!’ Kat said.
‘I think that you might have to wait a few years before you can sign up,’ Brandon reminded Jason.
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. ‘When we’re some of the last few humans to have survived the alien apocalypse, they’re not going to be fussy about who they hand the guns out to. Wait here; I need to pee.’
Brandon and Kat stood about awkwardly while Jason watered the flowers down the side of one of the houses.
‘That’s better!’ he said as he returned. ‘I didn’t want to go while we were in the container!’
‘You didn’t wash your hands,’ Kat scolded him.
‘Look out!’ Brandon said.
Two silver saucers were flying high overhead. Brandon led the others quickly under the cover of an empty garage that had been left open. They peered out cautiously. In the morning light they could see the saucers in greater detail; they were about twenty metres in diameter, almost flat at the edges but with a spherical centre where the cockpit must be. On the underneath, a ring of glowing blue circles suggested some form of propulsion.
Both saucers slowed down and hovered above them.
‘They must have seen us,’ Brandon said. Jason swore.
Then one of the saucers exploded in a massive orange fireball. The other immediately sped away, pursued by two sleek grey fighter jets.
‘Alright! The RAF have got our back!’ Jason said. ‘Now come on! Let’s get to that crater and find out what’s left of Brandon’s mum.’
Brandon gritted his teeth and followed.
Hiding behind the smashed windows of a deserted ice-cream shop, they looked across at the fenced-off crater that had once been Brighton’s Grand Hotel. There were still people on the streets here, running back and forth with stuff looted from the nearby shopping center. An army truck rolled by, evacuation orders issuing from its roof-mounted speakers.
When it was clear, Brandon, Kat and Jason went up to the wooden fence and looked through a gap at the rubble-strewn crater beyond. Brandon just stared at the mess for five minutes. It was probable that his mother had died here, and all her secrets were lost forever; but what else could he do but come here and hope? He felt the primal urge to shout, ‘Mum!’ across the open space.
A section of the fence was covered in missing persons posters; hundreds of people must have been booked-in to the Hotel when the meteor struck, and no one knew how many were in their rooms at the time. Brandon scanned the posters for any clues about his mother or her colleagues, but saw nothing.
He didn’t know what to do. Jason was standing by the fence with his fingers interlocked to provide a step-up. ‘Well, go on,’ he urged. ‘Get over the fence and have a poke about in the crater.’
Brandon clambered up. Kat gave him a push as he went over, almost causing him to lose his balance on top of the fence. He dropped down on the other side and nearly twisted his ankle on the uneven ground.
It was still warm in the crater. Dust hung in the air. Under the summer sun it was as if a small round desert had been dropped in the middle of an English town. Other than some twisted remains of metal girders, it was as barren as a desert too.
He reached the centre of the crater. Now what? There was nothing to discover here. The aliens, or whatever they were, had done a pretty good job of obliterating anything that might tell him what his mother was doing here. If they spotted him, exposed and alone in the middle of the crater, they could finish the job completely. Up in the sky above Brighton, the silver saucers were too busy mixing it up with the fighter jets to notice.
He turned to head back. Then his phone buzzed.
It was a message sent from his mother’s computer. Brandon was conf
used; the mobile internet network was still down, so how …
He opened the message. It read: you’re close. love mum xx.
Close! The message must have been sent wirelessly over Bluetooth, and that had no more than a ten metre range. Brandon looked around.
Then he looked down. His heart sank, but he started to dig in the rubble. After a few minutes he pulled up a battered—but intact—laptop case.
It must have been made out of some kind of military-grade ABS plastic. But the best thing about it was the letters stamped on the top: SLW.
Sarah Louise Walker. It was indeed his mother’s case. The message must have been sent automatically, which wasn’t good news, but Brandon couldn’t bear to jump to any conclusions just yet. At least not until he had investigated his find.
He hurried back to the fence, lobbed the case across and then climbed back over and rejoined the twins.
‘What you got?’ Kat asked, curiosity evident on her face.
‘Whatever it is, we had better get out of here before you show us,’ Jason said. They could hear the sound of the army truck returning.
Brandon nodded. ‘Fancy a stroll along the pier?’ he suggested.
Brighton Pier: half a kilometre of Victorian iron and steel that stuck out into the English Channel. Brandon, Kat and Jason walked down its length, past the empty shops and arcades. Most of the seaside souvenir junk on sale here wasn’t worth the looters’ time. Behind them, the RAF jets shot down the last of the UFOs, which crashed somewhere in the town centre. There would be fighting in the streets soon, Brandon guessed, if any of the saucers’ occupants survived.
At the end of the pier was a giant dome surrounded by a funfair. Inside, they found a deserted amusement arcade and a restaurant. Brandon sat in a booth and put the laptop case in front of him on the table.
‘This place is nice and quiet,’ Jason said, ‘but I’m going to make sure we’ve got an escape route. There might be stairs down to a dock under the pier or something.’