Inkers

by Alex Rudall

  She was free.

  She scrambled to her feet. She did not seem to be injured. Surely someone would have heard that. She stuck her head out and checked the corridor for anyone waiting for her, and then, seeing no–one, ran to the window. Some of the boats had already landed. Dark shapes were moving on the beach.

  She ran down the corridor, past storage rooms on her right, hoping Brian and the others were all in VR, hoping she had banged around enough in her dreams for them to ignore the strange noises. She stopped just before going down the stairs. The last storage room door had a large bar over it that she was sure had not been there before. She lifted the bar and tried the handle – locked. She knocked gently on the door. There was no response. She knocked harder, and on the edge of hearing she heard a moan.

  “Tom!” she whispered, as loudly as she dared. “Tom!” There was another faint groan.

  “Tom,” she said, “get back from the door! I’m going to blow it open!” She gave him as long as she dared, and then stood back, closed her eyes, pictured Tia once again. She could almost immediately see the corridor before her this time, looking in her imagination just as it did in reality. She imagined Tia there, in all her strangeness, stepping forward –

  There was another blast, but not as large this time, and Lily was only knocked back a step. She opened her eyes. The door was shattered. Inside, against the far wall, bound and gagged and lying on some sacks, lay Tom. He was staring at her with wide eyes.

  “Tom, Tom!” she whispered. She ran inside and untied his gag. The room stank.

  “Lily,” he muttered.

  She did her best to untie the tight rope around his wrists, and then gave him a hug.

  “Tom, we have to move, people are coming,” she said. “They’re going to kill us. We have to leave now.”

  She heaved him to his feet, Tom’s arm over her shoulders.

  They exited into the corridor and started towards the stairs, the pain in Lily’s back excruciating. She wondered if she could use Tia to stop the men, somehow. She wondered if she risked destabilising the universe each time. She was still here, wasn’t she?

  “Wait,” Tom said, “Wait.”

  “We have to go, we have to go!” she hissed.

  “No,” he said, turning back. He was almost walking on his own. “My gun,” he said, walking back down the corridor, Lily supporting him with one arm. He stopped at a door. He tried the handle. It swung open.

  He hobbled inside, walked to the back and started feeling about on top of some high shelves, stacked with planks of wood.

  “Here,” he said, lifting out a long wooden box. He set it gently on the floor, unlatched it and opened it. There was a long grey gun inside, and a cloth bag for shells. He cracked the shotgun and peered inside, loaded it and then snapped it shut. He reached up and pulled a brown jerry can from the top shelf.

  “Come on,” he whispered.

  They stole down the corridor, Tom leading the way now. At the top of the stairs there was a little window looking over the back of the house where the cow barn was. Tom waved to her to stop and crept forward, peering out into the darkness. Lily craned her neck to see if there was anything out there, but she could only see the squat barn, the waving treetops and the stars glinting overhead. After a moment Tom carried on down the stairs and she followed him. The light was on in the hallway but Tom switched it off. He crept towards the front door. The security light was off. There was a bang from outside, and the security light went on, flooding the courtyard. The door to the ink barn was open, and Leonard came out, looking at the beach and then peering suspiciously about.

  “Hello?” Leonard hissed into the courtyard, looking around him, and then more loudly, “Hello?”

  Lily crouched at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Get round there,” Tom said to Lily, indicating the living room. “If something happens, go out the window at the back and hide.”

  She went in where he had pointed. She crouched in the corner under the front window. Tom crept into the kitchen on the other side of the hall. She could see him gently prop the gun on the deep window–seat and crouch down, putting it to his shoulder, the barrel pointed towards the window, towards the main gate to the farm.

  Suddenly there was a roar from the trees and a huge black jeep burst from the darkness, headlights blazing. It revved towards the closed gate. Lily fell back against the wall and saw Leonard spin, thin body half crouched as the jeep smashed through the gate. It skidded to a halt and the doors flew open, men in black combat gear pouring out, a blur of gas–masks and helmets and sub–machine guns.

  Lily watched as Leonard sprinted back towards the half–open doorway of the ink barn. Two of the intruders lifted their sub–machine guns and opened fire and he went down, blood spraying upwards and back, Leonard’s feet skittering. He slid to a halt on the slabs, dead, the intruders still firing at him, his body shaking with the impacts. Lily suddenly saw Annie standing there at the open door to the ink barn, half her face horror–stricken. Across the hall she saw Tom lunge forward, heard the smash as he shoved the barrels of his gun through the window. Out the window the intruders were spreading over the courtyard like mice. Tom fired with both triggers and one went down amid the deafening shots.

  “Cease fire!” a woman’s voice shouted over the noise of the shots, amplified somehow, “Cease fire!” the voice continued. “We have you surrounded!”

  Lily could almost see Annie’s mind working. She had a chance to escape. The intruders would take her but she would live. But Brian was still inside the barn. Annie looked behind her, looked out once more at the soldiers, and then stepped back inside and slammed the door.

  Tom fired again. With a roar the huge black jeep barrelled backwards towards the gate, where Lily could see another vehicle coming up the track. The intruders were running for cover, some shooting, but none seemed to be firing at Tom. Tom was pushing two fresh shells into his shotgun, crouched below the window, glancing at her. He rose up a little. There was a crack as Tom fired again, and then the hallway erupted into wooden splinters between them, holes opening in the planks where she had been thirty seconds before. She pulled herself lower into the corner, making herself as small as she could. Between bursts of machine–gun fire shattering the windows and thumping into the stairs she could hear Tom reloading. She pressed her hands over her ears.

  After a long time it stopped. There was shouting outside. The loud woman was screaming “Cease fire, cease fire!”

  There were running footsteps. Lily pushed her head out over the doorway to the hall. She gasped. She could see Tom lying on his back on the floor of the kitchen, blood pooling around him. He had the jerry can on his chest and was unscrewing the lid. He looked at Lily and grinned. There was another burst of fire over their heads and she flinched back. Slowly he tilted the can of ink towards his face.

  “No!” Lily said.

  It poured out. She gasped as half a million pounds of black poured onto his face and into his mouth. Finally the can fell to the side and, with an audible thud, Tom’s head dropped back to the hard floor of the kitchen. Lily couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was starting to twitch now, bulging under his clothes. His right shoe split suddenly, his foot growing out of it long and wide and black, toes hooked. He slowly raised his face to look at her, and as she watched it warped, his eyes growing large and black, mouth gaping.

  Something flew through the remains of the window above him and clanked smoking on the slabs of the kitchen floor. The Tom–thing snapped its head back to watch it and Lily threw herself into the corner in fear. There was a noise like cracking bones and then she heard a single word, in a voice that sounded nothing like Tom, more like a tree creaking, more like Tia sounded: RUN…

  Another grenade bounced down the corridor and hissed. The smoke billowed around the corner and the gunfire started again, but it was dwarfed by a roar that seemed to make the ground shake. A section of black, shimmering, shuddering skin flapped around the door–frame and the
n disappeared. Then there were shouts and screams and the gunfire became erratic and Lily dared to poke her head up to the window. The intruders were running and something huge and black and winged was flying, swooping on top of one, huge jaws biting through the man at his waist and bursting back into the air with a beat of the great wings.

  Some of the others were not running, and she could see a woman without a helmet on, blonde hair flying about, standing and firing a machine gun up at the Tom–thing. The air was unbreathable with the smell of gunfire and the smoke from the grenade. The Tom–thing twisted in the air and fell right down onto a crouched soldier, who turned to leap out of the way a moment too late. The gunfire continued for a few more seconds and then finally ceased.

  Lily dropped and sobbed into her hands. He was dead. She heard footsteps hammering across the courtyard, shoved herself to her feet and ran doubled over along the length of the living room to the back window. She slammed into the wall underneath, her palms stinging on the exposed farmhouse stone. There were shouts behind her but the smoke was too thick to see them, and, she hoped, for them to see her. She reached and fumbled with the latch, found it, unhooked it and pulled the window open. The air was cold and delicious, and there in front of her at last was the outside. Even if she was shot in the back as she ran across the garden she would die outdoors, free. She put one knee up on the window–sill and stared out, and up at the sky, and for the first time she saw it: a circle of grey–white, bigger than the moon, with a white ring of light around it. The GSE. It was coming home.

  Terror overwhelmed her. She started to lift her other leg onto the windowsill, and then rough hands grabbed her arms and jerked her back into the room. She struggled but they pulled her arms behind her and tied them, pulled something dark over her head, and carried her back into the smoke.

  “Stand up,” a man’s voice said by her ear, and she was dropped onto her feet. She struggled to balance, starting to fall a little until the arms caught her again.

  The loud woman’s voice again, this time yards away, not so loud.

  “Is she hurt?”

  “No,” the man said near Lily’s head.

  “Get the hood off.”

  The arms let go of her and the hood whipped off. Lily yelped. She was facing the blonde woman. She had a kind face and heavy body armour. They were at the front gate to the farm, behind one of the police jeeps the intruders had arrived in.

  “Hi,” the woman said. Her accent was strange, like the man’s, but a little gentler. “It’s going to be OK, alright?” She smiled. “My name’s Mary,” she said, “I’m the commanding officer here. We won’t hurt you, OK? What’s your name?”

  “Lily,” she muttered.

  Behind Mary Lily could see the smoke billowing from her home. The bodies. She said nothing more.

  “I’ll come talk to you in a minute, OK?” Mary said. “Put her in the van for now,” she said to the man.

  The man behind Lily grabbed the ties still holding Lily’s wrists together and cut them, releasing her arms.

  “No running, now,” he said, and with a hand on the small of her back led her to the door of the big jeep. He swung one of the doors open and pushed her up the steps, putting a hand on the top of her head to guide her in. Inside was lit by little lights along the edge of the ceiling. There was a cage with benches on either side.

  He stepped out, slamming the doors behind him. There was a click as he locked the doors. Lily sat down. She could hear their muffled voices but she couldn’t pick out the words. The van smelled of plastic and sweat and urine. She leaned back against the cage, feeling the cold metal against her neck. She shut her eyes. She was exhausted from adrenaline and emotion. Her mind began to drift, the flashes of gun muzzles and the images of the deaths of Tom and Leonard moving before her eyes. Did they all have to die? Suddenly there was a huge bang and the jeep rocked. Lily jumped to her feet. She could hear screaming, but it quickly faded away.

  A few minutes later the door opened again. Mary closed it behind her, stepped carefully over and sat down opposite Lily. She had bright blue eyes.

  “I’m sorry about your friends,” Mary said. “I didn’t want them to get hurt.”

  “Are they all dead?” Lily said.

  “We think two are, in the courtyard. There are more in the barn, though, aren’t there? They’re not dead yet, but we can’t get in to them. A lot of people may die if we don’t get in there quickly, a lot more than just my men and your friends. Do you know what they’re doing in there?”

  “No,” Lily said.

  “I think you do,” Mary replied. “Your skin’s got a lot of colour to it for someone so young. And now your friends inside the barn have flooded that courtyard with the stuff, and we can’t get across it. That – thing ate two of my men, and three more got a faceful of ink and died straight away. Our protective gear doesn’t do anything, there’s just too much ink.”

  “I won’t help you,” Lily said.

  “Do you have any idea what’s going on out in the world?” said Mary. “You don’t have the net here, do you?”

  Lily shook her head.

  “Five months ago there was a very big radio signal from somewhere on Earth. We think it came from this farmhouse, probably from the barn where your friends are hiding. It contained a lot of information, and our best people don’t understand what it means. But it made the GSE come back to Earth. That ring in the sky. Do you know what the GSE is?”

  Lily looked Mary in the eye. “My parents were at GCHQ,” she said. “It took them. It almost killed me. I watched it leave. I know what it is.”

  Mary blinked. “What?” she said, “both parents? You were there?”

  Lily turned away.

  “Listen,” Mary said, “I’m sorry. Listen, I don’t know what you thought your friends were trying to do, but whatever they’ve done, it’s got the attention of the GSE.”

  Lily shook her head. “I won’t help you,” she said. “You’ll kill Annie.”

  “Not if we don’t have to!” Mary said. “I don’t want to, we just need to understand what they’ve done, and if we can, find a way to stop it, to send a different message. But there are a lot of very angry and frightened people in the world. Thousands of their drones are on the way here already, and they won’t be so understanding. But we can’t get across the courtyard, we need an immune for that, and we’re flying one in but it’ll take an hour and we just haven’t got time.”

  Lily stared at her.

  “I think you’re an inker and I think you’ve taken a lot of ink. You’re not immune, but you’ve got very high resistance, maybe high enough to walk across that courtyard and live. Enough to get in there and talk to them for us, tell them we want to work with them to stop the GSE.”

  Lily tightened her mouth into a thin line. “I won’t help you,” she said.

  “If you don’t,” Mary said quietly, “We will blow it all up. We’ve got the equipment to do that. A lot of important people want us to do just that right now. And after we’ve blown it all up, we’ll take you away and lock you in a very small room, and if the world doesn’t end in a few hours, you’ll stay there for the rest of your life.”

  The fear must have shown in Lily’s face.

  “You’ll be put in a prison cell and you’ll never leave, never have ink again, never see the outside again.”

  Lily imagined being trapped in a room until she died. It gave her a rush of the fear that she always felt in the nightmares, the forever–fear, the fear there was no cure for except ink. What did she really have to live for? Tom was dead. Brian she wanted dead. But Annie was still in there.

  “Could I be outside? Sometimes? If I helped?” she said, quietly.

  “I can’t promise anything,” Mary said. “But I promise you, if you refuse to help us you will be locked away for good.”

  They took Lily back outside the van. Her watch read 4am. She felt like she’d been awake for days. They gave her heavy overtrousers to wear over her jeans, a pair o
f boots a size too big for her, heavy body–armour with long sleeves, thick gloves, a gas mask.

  “It won’t help much,” the man said, ‘the ink burns straight through the filters. But you already know that.”

  Lily nodded.

  “You’ll have to run. We’ll warn them you’re coming in. What’s your surname?”

  “Brook,” she said. She hadn’t used it in a long time.

  “Lily Brook. OK.”

  He gave her a communicator, too, and showed her how to use it.

  “Mary will want to talk to them. Just hold it up and press the button when they talk. Who’s in there?”

  “Brian. And Annie.”

  “OK. If they talk hold it up and it’ll pick up their voices, no problem. Just make sure you get out of the ink as fast as you can. Anything it’s touched, get it off you. But I guess you know that too, right?”

  Lily nodded.

  “OK. Let’s walk up to the front jeep. We’ll let you know when we’re ready. Just stay with me until I say.”

  Lily walked ahead of him through the gate that she had walked through a thousand times before, along the track past the cow barn. The cows were mooing madly, roaring at all the new sounds and smells.

  “Shh,” Lily whispered, stopping for a moment to lean in to them. “It’s OK.”

  “Keep going,” the man said.

  Mary was standing with a group of about ten other soldiers, halfway to the farmhouse. Lily could see many others dotted around the edge of the farm, making a circle around, long guns and SMGs pointed at the ink barn. There was a big hole in the bricks where the door had been and it was all dark inside. Lily could just see the green and yellow vats, both bent and open. The vats had emptied onto the courtyard, and everywhere there was a layer of yellow intertwining with green perhaps two inches deep. The bodies of the ITSA soldiers and Leonard and the Tom–thing seemed to have collapsed. They looked hollow.