by Mark Walden
‘Hi, pleased to meet you, Sam,’ said Anne. ‘Will told me about what happened to you. I suppose you know by now how lucky you are to be alive.’
‘Yeah,’ Sam said, ‘so everybody keeps telling me.’
‘I’m sorry, you must be sick of hearing it,’ Anne said. ‘It’s just that we’ve all seen what normally happens to someone who gets stung and . . . well . . . it’s not good.’
‘Stirling’s locked away in his lab trying to work out how you survived,’ Will said. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him this puzzled before.’
‘Well, it’s nice to know that I’ve now officially been elevated to the status of scientific curiosity,’ Sam said, raising an eyebrow at Jay.
‘Yup, I suppose I’d better get you out of here before these two start sticking needles in you as well,’ Jay replied with a nod.
‘Actually,’ Anne said, smiling, ‘a full autopsy might be more efficient.’
‘OK, creeping me out now,’ Sam said.
‘Don’t worry, she gets less creepy once you get to know her properly,’ Jay said. ‘But only slightly.’
‘Anyway, nice to meet you, Sam,’ Anne said. ‘I hope that you’ve not been given too bad an impression of us by being shown around by this idiot.’
She and Will turned their attention back to the diagram on the screen as Jay and Sam headed out of the lab.
‘That was some pretty impressive-looking kit in there,’ Sam said. ‘Where did it all come from?’
‘Adam and Kate found some of it, but most of it was brought down from the building above us,’ Jay said, pointing up towards the ceiling. ‘It was nearly all set up by the time I came here. Stirling had already been training Will and Anne for months; he’s always saying that we can only win through science, or something like that. Gotta admit that pretty much all of what he’s got them working on and studying just goes straight over my head. I guess that’s why I’m on the surface-ops team. Best place to be if you ask me, though. I think I’d go crazy if I was stuck down here all the time.’
They walked down the corridor in silence.
‘I’ve been wondering how this place is powered,’ Sam asked, pointing at one of the lights in the ceiling. ‘The power everywhere else went out about a week after they turned up.’
‘You mean the aliens?’ Jay asked, looking him in the eye.
‘Well, it might sound sort of stupid, but that’s what I’ve always thought they must be,’ Sam said.
‘Yeah, me too,’ Jay said with a nod. ‘Stirling always says that “their origins are unclear”, but I say if it looks like an alien and it acts like an alien, then it pretty much has to be an alien. If you want to know what to call them round here, though, Stirling calls them the Threat and now that name’s pretty much stuck.’
‘The Threat,’ Sam said. ‘Yeah, that sounds about right.’
‘As for how the whole place is powered, apparently it’s thanks to a generator in the building up top. Believe it or not, we’ve got our own little nuclear reactor just like the ones they put on submarines. Least that’s what Stirling tells us.’
‘What was this place before the Threat arrived?’ Sam asked with a frown. ‘I know you said it was a government facility, but a nuclear reactor in the middle of London? What were they doing up there?’
‘No idea,’ Jay said, shaking his head. ‘You can try asking Stirling himself if you want, but you’ll just get the same answer that we always do – that it’s none of our business.’
‘That’s all he’s ever told you? Don’t you think he owes you more than that?’
‘I don’t think the Doc thinks he owes anyone anything,’ Jay said with a shrug. ‘He’s not forcing any of us to stay here, but it’s not like there’s anywhere better to go. I mean, sure, we’ve all got our theories about Stirling and this place, but don’t hold your breath waiting for any more than that. You’re not going to get any answers from him or Jackson.’
Sam thought about what Jay had just told him. There was something weird about Stirling’s refusal to give any more detail about what this place was and why it seemed to be so carefully prepared for such an unlikely scenario.
‘So, tell me, how’d you survive up there for so long on your own?’ Jay asked as they headed through another door and started down another flight of stairs leading to a lower level.
‘I didn’t,’ Sam said.‘Survive up there, I mean. I spent nearly all my time hiding in the sewers. I only went to the surface during the night and even then I tried to keep my time above ground to a minimum. You know what it’s like with the Drones . . . I mean, what do you call them . . . erm . . . the Hunters buzzing around up there.’
‘Yeah, I do,’ Jay said, a sudden look of sadness flashing across his face. ‘I’m not sure that this is really what people meant when they talked about an underground resistance movement.’
‘Probably not,’ Sam said, following him down the stairs, ‘but at least you guys are resisting. I was just hiding.’
‘Hey, we were all hiding till Stirling found us,’ Jay said with a shrug. ‘That’s probably why we’re still alive.’
‘I suppose,’ Sam replied. ‘So, Stirling found all of you?’
‘Yeah, far as I know,’ Jay replied. ‘Every so often he’ll send us out looking for a “contact” in a certain area and nine times out of ten we end up finding someone wandering around, just like you were.’
‘So how does he know where to look?’ Sam asked.
‘No idea,’ Jay said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know how he finds us. I’ve asked him, we all have, but you can probably guess by now what his answer always is.’
‘Let me guess,’ Sam said. ‘It’s none of our business.’
‘Yeah,’ Jay replied, ‘like I said, the Doc’s not big on explanations. Sure, it’s frustrating sometimes, but no one’s forcing us to stay here. His house, his rules.’
Sam nodded, but he still wanted to know more about Stirling and the facility that seemed to have become his new home. All the evidence pointed to the fact that Stirling knew far more about the invaders than he was letting on. Jay might have given up asking why that was, but he needed some more concrete answers before he could be sure that Stirling was someone he should trust.
‘Can I ask you something else?’ Sam said after a few moments’ silence.
‘Sure,’ Jay replied.
‘I was just thinking about something that Rachel said when I first met her,’ Sam said with a slight frown. ‘She told me that you’d been looking for me for a long time.‘Do you know what she meant?’
‘Yeah,’ Jay said. ‘Stirling had sent us up top seven or eight times over the past couple of months looking for someone, but we never found any sign of anybody in the target area. It was weird because it never usually took us that long to track down whoever the Doc had sent us to find.’
‘Hey, don’t worry about it,’ Sam said. ‘Over the past eighteen months I’ve got really, really good at hiding.’
‘Haven’t we all?’
They reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs and headed through the fire door. Sam flinched involuntarily at the sudden sound of gunfire. It was a sound that he’d only really heard on television or at the cinema up until a couple of days ago and he still couldn’t get over just how loud it was. The room they had entered was long with a high ceiling held up by thick concrete pillars. Dotted around the room were tables that were covered in tactical equipment of all kinds; night-vision goggles, field dressing kits: ration packs, maps, backpacks, body armour, everything that a well-equipped soldier might need.
‘Home sweet home,’ Jay said, ‘or to give it its proper name, the Operations Training Area. This is where we learn how to take the fight to the Threat. You see that guy down there by the range? That’s Jackson.’
Further down the room there was a shooting range constructed out of sandbags where Sam could see Rachel and another boy standing with pistols raised, aiming at paper targets. Standing behind them was a muscular man who l
ooked to be in his late thirties or early forties wearing a black T-shirt and grey, camouflage-patterned trousers tucked into combat boots. His head was shaved and his cold grey eyes watched carefully as Rachel and the boy fired at their targets.
‘Trust me when I say that, apart from the Doc, Jackson is the one person in this place you really don’t want to mess,’ Jay said. ‘I’ll introduce you to him in a minute, but first I want you to meet someone else. Come on.’
Jay walked over to a heavy steel door set into the wall with a skull and crossbones hand-painted on it.
‘This is the armoury,’ Jay said as he opened the door, ‘where we keep all the really cool toys.’
Sam followed Jay inside and let out a low whistle.
‘OK, that’s a lot of guns.’
The room was divided in two by a long counter, behind which the walls were lined with racks and shelving, filled with a breathtaking array of different weapons. There were pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers and grenades, as well as numerous crates of ammunition. Sam reckoned that it looked like just about everything someone would need to fight a small war – or a big war for that matter. Sitting with his feet up on the countertop, reading a comic book, was a boy with bright red dyed hair, wearing jeans, flip-flops and a T-shirt with the words ‘From My Cold, Dead Hands’ on it. He looked up as Jay and Sam walked in and smiled.
‘Jay, how you doing, man?’ the boy asked.
‘I’m good,’ Jay said as he bumped fists with the other boy. ‘Just wanted to introduce you to the latest stray we found wandering the streets.’
‘That would be me,’ Sam said.
‘Sam, this is Jack,’ Jay said, jerking a thumb towards the boy behind the counter. ‘He’s pretty much certifiable, but he knows a lot about guns.’
‘Hey,’ Jack said, ‘you’re the one who goes up top and gets chased by homicidal aliens and you call me crazy? So, Sam, you going to the surface with these nutters or is Stirling going to have you washing test tubes?’
‘Umm . . . I don’t really know yet,’ Sam said.
‘Rach says he can handle himself,’ Jay said, ‘so I reckon he’ll be coming out with us.’
‘Sounds to me like Jay thinks you’re going to be one of my regular customers,’ Jack said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘Hey, it’s better than being stuck in a hole underground,’ Jay retorted.
‘Yeah, you know what, you’re right, there’s nothing worse than a nice, safe, warm hole underground,’ Jack said, nodding.
‘Where did you get all this stuff?’ Sam asked, looking around the room.
‘Oh, we’ve been collecting for a while,’ Jack said. ‘Jackson always seems to know where to find the best kit. You actually met the big man yet?’
‘No, I wanted him to meet you first,’ Jay said. ‘Thought I’d save the best till last.’
‘Just remember when you meet him, Sam, that his bark is worse than his bite,’ Jack said. ‘Actually, no, now I come to think of it, his bite’s just as bad. Never mind, I’m sure you’re going to love him.’
‘Are you going to be watching the movie later?’ Jay asked.
‘So what’s Liz got for us to watch tonight?’ Jack asked.
‘Oh, just a little something that Adam found on a scouting mission last week,’ Jay said with a smile.
‘Come on, don’t tease me,’ Jack said. ‘What is it?’
‘Die Hard,’ Jay replied with a grin.
‘Oh, I am so there,’ Jack said, grinning back.
‘OK, we’ll see you in the common room later,’ Jay said.
‘Later, guys,’ Jack said with a wave, picking up his comic book.
Sam followed Jay out of the armoury and across the Ops Area towards the firing range. Rachel and the other boy had finished shooting and Jackson was watching as they carefully field stripped and cleaned their weapons. Sam was impressed by the speed with which they disassembled the pistols and set about cleaning the component parts. When he had realised that there were other survivors fighting back against the Threat, he had expected to find a ragtag bunch of kids with guns, but what he saw around him was a well-trained and disciplined guerilla force. That had to be down to this man called Jackson. He looked every inch the professional soldier and, if what Jay had already told him was true, he was the one responsible for turning a bunch of frightened kids into something resembling the beginnings of an army. He looked up as Jay and Sam approached.
‘Good morning, Jacob,’ Jackson said. ‘I assume that this is our new recruit.’
‘Yeah,’ Jay replied. ‘I’ve just been giving him the guided tour.’
‘Robert Jackson. Pleased to meet you,’ he said, offering Sam his hand.
‘Sam Riley,’ Sam said, shaking his hand. ‘Pleased to meet you too.’
‘You’ve met Rachel, of course,’ Jackson said, ‘and this is Tim, another member of the Ops Team.’
‘Hi, Sam,’ Tim said as he pushed a brush through the barrel of his dismantled pistol. ‘Hope Jay hasn’t been annoying you too much.’
‘Rachel tells me that you put up a good fight when you encountered the Threat forces on the surface,’ Jackson said. ‘What’s even more impressive is that you did it while suffering the effects of a Hunter sting. How are you feeling now – fully recovered?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Sam replied. He glanced over at Rachel who smiled back at him.
‘Good,’ Jackson said. ‘I understand what you’ve been through, Sam. I know that you’ve spent the past year and a half running, hiding, struggling just to survive, but we’re going to teach you to do more than that; we’re going to teach you how to fight.’
Sam thought of the world, the people he’d lost and he suddenly felt something cold and hard in the pit of his stomach.
‘You know, I think I’d like that,’ Sam said with a nod. ‘I think I’d like that a lot.’
‘Excellent,’ Jackson said, gesturing to a pistol on one of the tables nearby. ‘Then we might as well get started right now.’
A couple of hours later Sam was sitting with the others eating lunch. He hadn’t really realised how hungry he actually was until Toby had handed him the steaming bowl of vegetable chilli and rice that he was now devouring. The other kids he’d met over the past couple of hours were chatting and laughing as they ate. Sam ate in silence, partly because he was enjoying a proper hot cooked meal for the first time in a very long time, but also because he was simply enjoying listening to the bubbling sound of the conversation around him. It was funny how something that he would have once taken for granted could have now become so special.
‘Looks like you’re enjoying that,’ Rachel said with a smile as she sat down opposite him.
‘You have no idea,’ Sam said with a sigh.
‘I think you impressed Jackson on the range this morning,’ she said, ‘and trust me when I say that he is not an easy man to please.’
‘Yeah, I kind of got that impression actually,’ Sam said, raising an eyebrow. ‘How long have you been training with him?’
‘Since I first got here and that was only a couple of months after the Threat landed, so I suppose that must be getting on for a year and a half now.’
‘So were you one of the first people that they found?’ Sam asked.
‘Yeah, though Jack and Will were here before me.’
‘So how did they find you?’
‘I don’t really know, to be honest,’ Rachel said, shaking her head slightly. ‘After the Signal I was hiding in the back offices of a superstore. I only ventured out to grab what I needed off the shelves. Then one day Jackson and Redmond were waiting for me out in the store. I almost had a heart attack when I saw them. I thought they were a couple of the Lost at first. You know, people wiped by the Signal . . .’
‘Walkers.’
‘Yeah, then Redmond says, “Hello there” and I freaked out. I ran, but they caught up with me and explained that they weren’t going to hurt me, just take me somewhere safe. I wa
s so glad to see other people who’d not had their brains wiped. Then they brought me back here.’
‘Who’s Redmond?’ Sam asked. ‘I don’t think I’ve met him yet.’
‘Yeah, well, you won’t,’ Rachel said, her eyes suddenly dropping to look at the table. ‘He and Jackson were really close. I got the impression that they’d served together for a while. Then, one day, about six months ago, they both went up to the surface on a retrieval op, but only Jackson came back.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Rachel said with a sigh. ‘He’s not the first person we’ve lost and I doubt he’ll be the last. Nobody really knows what happened up there, but I’ll tell you this much; Jackson’s not been back to the surface since.’
‘He doesn’t strike me as the sort of person who scares easily,’ Sam said.
‘He’s not,’ Rachel replied. ‘That’s what worries everyone.’
They both ate in silence for a few seconds and Sam looked around the table at the others.
‘So, how come there’s no one else here who’s older than us?’ Sam asked. ‘Surely Stirling and Jackson can’t be the only people over fifteen years old that weren’t affected by the Signal?’
‘I wish I knew,’ Rachel said. ‘The only people we’ve ever been sent out to find were about the same age as us. I asked Stirling about it once and he told me that it probably had something to do with the fact that our brains were still developing and that somehow that made us immune to whatever it was that the Threat did to everyone else, but I’m not sure he was telling me everything. That’s not all that unusual, though. You’ll find that Stirling likes to play his cards pretty close to his chest.’
‘Yeah, so I keep hearing. Jay told me that he always seems to know where to go to find people who weren’t wiped by the signal, and that was how you found me.’
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Rachel nodded, ‘but before we found you we hadn’t met anyone else who’d not been brainwashed by the Signal for a couple of months. We’re all worried that there might not be many more of us out there. Or worse, that there might not be any more of us.’