Darkest Hour 1: Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  She was yawning when she heard two helicopters high overhead, followed by the sound of vehicle engines rumbling into life. It wasn't quite dawn yet – perhaps the aliens were harder taskmasters than she had assumed. Or perhaps they were just bastards. It hardly mattered. A moment later, she saw lights in the distance, suggesting that the aliens were on their way. She’d been worried about accidentally blowing up civilians, but most civilian vehicles had run out of petrol in the last few days. The remaining supplies were being carefully hoarded.

  The lead alien vehicle came around the bend and accelerated down the road. Alex was mildly impressed by how it seemed to glide above the ground – it was almost silent compared to the trucks carrying policemen – but there was no time to stare. She reached for the detonator and held it in her hand, cradling it while running her finger over the button. There were no safety features, Archer had told her, with a thin leer. They’d been less careful in those days. Of course, the planned resistance cells in Britain had also had more training than Alex had ever received. If there was ever a day when the RAF returned to service, she made a mental note to insist that ground combat skills were included in what they taught their pilots.

  Just before the alien vehicle reached the grit bin, she pushed down on the button. There was a heart-stopping pause – and then there was a thunderous explosion. The alien vehicle was picked up and flung right into the following truck, crushing a number of policemen under its weight. An engine caught fire and another truck went up in flames, just before two more trucks collided with the vehicles ahead of them. The second alien vehicle was untouched, but the alien infantry dismounted anyway. They moved with eerie grace as they surrounded the scene, clearly expecting another attack at any moment. Alex silently cursed her own oversight. She could have had several men with hunting rifles in position to pick off most of the aliens – but then, they would have had to risk remaining at the scene long enough for reinforcements to arrive.

  She’d had time to plan her own exit and so she ran, keeping her head down and praying that she wouldn't be noticed. The alien helicopters had returned to the convoy to hover menacingly over the ruined vehicles, no doubt looking for enemy insurgents to target and kill. She almost fainted as she heard the sound of gunfire, before realising that the aliens were shooting at rabbits. The noise had flushed a number of the little beasts out of hiding and the aliens had thought that they were humans! She was still grinning at the thought when she headed further into the countryside, back to her hiding place. They’d never find her.

  ***

  “You hit the bastards,” Smith said, three hours later. The aliens had visited their farm yesterday and given the farmer and his wife their ID cards. Alex had examined them and concluded that the aliens had actually encoded information into the cards – hardly an unfamiliar form of technology, but one with ominous implications for population control. “What do you think they’ll do in response?”

  Alex shrugged. There was no way to know. She’d actually offered to leave, knowing that her presence would bring danger to their house, but they’d refused to hear of it. Besides, as Smith had assured her, they needed help on the farm. The aliens had stated that they would be expected to start expanding their yield and Alex suspected that failing to produce food for the aliens would result in losing the farm. Their children were still lost somewhere in Britain, unable to return to their home.

  She looked down at Smith’s ID card. The policemen had been very clear on what the farmer could and could not do. Leaving the county without permission would result in arrest. Failing to produce the card when requested would result in arrest. Their grown children and their families, if they ever arrived, would be expected to report to the aliens through the local police station – or they would be arrested. It seemed that putting even a single foot wrong would result in arrest. Alex could almost understand why they were issuing such edicts; it was as demoralising as hell and it certainly kept humanity under foot. Given enough time, the aliens could start organising the country to suit themselves.

  The sound of helicopters – they had to be alien – nearby sent another chill down her spine. How much could they mobilise to hunt her and her little band down? An entire army, a small force of soldiers...or would they bombard the nearest town purely for the hell of it? There was no way to know, but she would have to find out – somehow. She rubbed her face, fought down a yawn, and headed outside. There was work to be done on the farm.

  ***

  “But the last time I fought was in Malaya!”

  Major Terrence Smyth scowled at the aliens, who seemed unresponsive. For all he knew, they couldn’t speak English. It wouldn't be the first time that some conquering bastard had thought that keeping his soldiers from speaking the native tongue would stop them from developing any attachments to the locals. Of course, humans had always been able to communicate, even if by gestures alone. And they’d always wanted the same things – women, money, a chance to go home without having certain vital parts separated from their bodies. The thought of the aliens paying attention to human women was sickening.

  The policemen at least looked ashamed, when they bothered to meet his eyes. They’d taken his son away somewhere, purely for the crime of trying to defend his old man. Terrence had fought in Malaya before leaving the British Army, decades ago. It seemed that the aliens didn't give a damn about how long ago a person’s military service was – if a person had military experience, he or she was to be arrested and taken away.

  He stared around the small holding pen. It was a simple fence of wire, holding seventeen men and one woman, surrounded by the aliens. Escape seemed impossible; even if they’d been able to cut or climb the wires, the aliens would shoot them down before they managed to run away from their base. Hell, he didn't even know what they’d done to the area – they’d set up a handful of oversized buildings surrounding the holding pen. And he wasn't entirely sure of where he was.

  Must be getting old, he thought, bitterly. And to think that he’d been planning a comfortable retirement. He was in his seventies, after all, but still as active as ever...well, maybe not as active as he’d been when he’d been a young soldier in the trenches. His wife wanted to travel the world and he’d been happy to oblige her. But now...

  He looked up as a heavy lorry roared its way into the camp. The driver was a human, probably yet another of the damned civil servants who’d managed to find a soft landing in the arms of the aliens. Terrence glowered at him, before deciding that he was being unfair. The arsehole might have joined up to feed his family. Not everyone in Britain lived on a farm.

  The policemen opened the gates and waved the prisoners forward. They didn't bother to shackle them, but what would be the point? Inside the lorry, they’d be prisoners just as much as they were prisoners inside the holding pen. He shuffled as slowly as he dared until it was his turn to climb into the vehicle, and then he pretended that his leg had failed, staggering down and collapsing on the ground. A moment later, a policeman helped him into the lorry.

  He found a place to sit as the doors were closed and the big vehicle made its way out of the camp. There were no windows to allow him to see where they were going. A quick check revealed that they couldn't force open the rear doors to escape. The sound of engines grew louder, suggesting that they had joined a small convoy. Or maybe it was a very large convoy. He found himself praying that resistance fighters – or the remains of his old service – were still out there, ready to attack the convoy, but nothing happened. The hours wore onwards as the truck took them further and further away from the land he’d known.

  It almost made him want to cry. His wife, his children...would he ever see them again? Or would the grandchildren grow up without knowing their granddad? He told himself that they wouldn't keep him prisoner forever, but there was no way to know. For all he knew, he might be going to his own execution. But they could have killed him easily without bothering to transport him halfway across the country. Maybe they wanted slave labour, o
r maybe they just had a holding camp for former military personnel somewhere isolated from the general population. They’d grow old and die there while the aliens took control of the rest of the country they’d sworn to defend. His grandchildren would grow up in a world where the aliens were a fact of life.

  Shaking his head, he remembered the hills he’d once climbed as a younger man...and wondered, bitterly, if he would ever see them again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  London

  United Kingdom, Day 15

  “They’re doing it on purpose,��� Aashif proclaimed, loudly. The small gathering of young men around him murmured in agreement. “They are showing no respect for our religion at all!”

  Seated halfway across the room, with the women and young children, Fatima could still hear him voicing his anger. Aashif was twenty-one years old, born to a family and community that was largely excluded from the mainstream population. A stronger person might have broken down the barriers or carved out a career for themselves, but Aashif – like so many others – had chosen to fall back into his community and wrap himself in a tissue of imaginary grievances. She’d heard it all before; the world was against him, no one liked or trusted him because of his religion, and he had rights. It never seemed to have occurred to him that his failures were a result of his personality, or that he could have made something of himself if he tried. He found it so much easier to blame others for his failings.

  She rolled her eyes. Men like Aashif were a persistent pain in the posterior. Deprived of the sort of wealth and power they thought the world owed them by rights, they turned upon the women in their lives. Aashif’s sister was terrified to talk to strangers for fear that her brother would hear of it and beat her; his mother was a pale shadow of a woman, scared of the boy she’d brought into the world. Only his grandfather had ever been able to exercise any kind of restraint on the young man, and he’d passed away two years ago. She listened to his bragging and shuddered, inwardly. There was a new conviction in his voice that had been missing several months ago.

  Not that she could really blame him. The aliens had taken over every building large enough to hold their oversized forms – and that included a number of London’s mosques. Even the police had been reluctant to just barge into the mosques, fearing the effect such provocative acts would have on the Muslim community. But the aliens had just taken the buildings and evicted everyone who complained. They’d done the same to a number of churches, yet they seemed to have targeted mosques deliberately. Given the rumours coming from the Middle East – and spread over the internet, along with far too much outright nonsense – it seemed as though they were attacking Islam directly. From what she’d seen herself, Fatima suspected that the aliens simply didn't care. Humans were their property now – and property didn't get a vote, or the right to complain.

  “We’re going to do something about it,” Aashif continued. Bragging about his connections to the underground Jihad movement wasn't new either, but she’d always known that he was just a poser, someone who would probably faint dead away at the thought of being asked to blow himself and a great many innocent civilians up. There were too many girls out there who were prepared to allow such claims to overpower their common sense. “I’m going to see to it personally.”

  Unseen, Fatima rolled her eyes. Of course he would – and while he was at it, he’d create the perfect Islamic State...never mind that such a state only existed in the deluded rants sprouted by preachers with nothing better to do. There were times when she was tempted to believe that suicide bombers were God’s way of weeding out the unworthy from the Muslim community. The young fools who died for a dream rarely got to spread their seed.

  She shook her head, and then helped her stepmother and the rest of the girls clear away the dishes and wash up. They knew their place, all right – and the fact that she was a doctor cut no ice with the men. Men like Aashif wanted women to stay in their place. It was the only way they could convince themselves that they were in charge. She smiled, in a moment of dark humour. The world could hardly be worse if women were in charge.

  ***

  Sergeant Abdul Al-Hasid was feeling dirty. Not the feeling he’d had when he’d first discovered pornographic magazines, despite knowing that his God-fearing father would thrash him to within an inch of his life if he’d been caught looking at naked sluts. And not the feeling he’d had when Salma – his first girlfriend – had allowed him to touch her bare breast. It was the feeling of knowing that he was doing something utterly wrong – and the fact that the people he was helping to do it wanted him to help them didn't make him feel any better. He couldn't shake the feeling that he would be called upon to answer to God and that no answer he could give, nothing he could offer in his own defence, would help his case.

  He’d grown up in a strictly Islamic environment – so of course he’d rebelled. School hadn't given him much in the way of qualifications, so the Army had seemed a logical choice. And it had been the making of him. He’d knuckled down at it and worked hard for the first time in his life, deploying to Iraq and then Afghanistan with the Green Jackets. Along the way, he’d seen just what living under Islamic Law really meant – the only people who wanted Taliban-style rule were the people who had never had to live under it. He’d seen enough to convince him that the rulers, for all their dedication to making others follow the rules, enjoyed breaking them every chance they got. Walking through a Taliban-run whorehouse had been enough to convince him that they had to be stopped. They’d killed the girls rather than risk having them freed by the British Army.

  After the aliens had invaded, he’d volunteered to return to London with several other Londoners. They’d known that it would be dangerous – no one could describe the military as a safe job in the best of times – but he’d known people who might be able to help them fight the aliens. Wearing civilian clothes, he’d wandered through the communities with his ears wide open, listening carefully. Finding the would-be suicide bombers had been depressingly easy. Like so many others, they had bad intentions – and no contacts with the underground world. Obtaining explosives on the black market wasn't exactly easy. He’d lost count of how many idiots seeking a quick death had tried to buy weapons and explosives off police informers.

  He glanced around the garage, rolling his eyes. Like many other business in the area, as much of the business as possible was done off the books – just to keep the taxman from taking an undue interest in their profits. He found it hard to blame the struggling small businessmen for trying to keep their profits for themselves, but the garage had clearly been involved in preparing stolen cars to be released back onto the market. The tools to rig up a small van with enough explosive to really ruin someone’s day had been easy to find. God alone knew what had happened to the owner and his family. They hadn't returned to work in the days since the invasion.

  A tap at the door brought him to full alertness. He half-drew his pistol with one hand as he padded over to the door and peered through the one-way glass that the previous owner had installed. The young fool was standing there, waiting for him. Abdul rolled his eyes, silently grateful that he wouldn't have to rely on such fools forever, knowing that the man wouldn't have bothered to walk in a manner that might deter a shadow. His confidence that God would protect him was grossly misplaced. In Abdul’s experience, God helped those who helped themselves – although He probably wouldn't want to help suicide bombers. Part of him wanted to tell the young fool to go home and enjoy the rest of his life, but there was no real alternative. They had to remind the aliens that they existed before the aliens broke their determination to resist.

  He opened the door and waved the young man into the garage. The young fool had dressed for the job, all right. He’d washed, cut his beard and then dressed in his finest white robes. If he’d paid as much attention to his schoolwork as he had to his appearance, he might have made something of himself without slipping into bitterness and paranoid conspiracy theories. Abdul shook hands with hi
m firmly, and then nodded towards the white van. It was ready to leave the building.

  “I’ve been watching the alien guards,” he said. Quite why the aliens had bothered to take over a technical college in London was beyond him, but it was clearly important to them. They weren't using their tame policemen to guard it. Instead, there were upwards of thirty aliens on guard duty and they weren't shy about urging human onlookers away from the scene. “You should be able to get into the parking lot if you leave in twenty minutes.”

  One thing that had been hammered into his head time and time again during the dreaded Combat Infantryman’s Course at Catterick Garrison had been that they should never be predicable. Any routine was dangerous because a watching enemy could pick the best moment to launch an attack, catching the defenders by surprise. But the aliens didn't seem to have realised that. Their guards patrolled in regular, easily predicable patterns, changing every hour. He could almost set his watch by their movements. It had taken him two days of observation to be reasonably sure that it wasn't a trap of some kind, although they were definitely going to get more than they bargained for if he was wrong. The van carried enough explosive to be fairly sure of totalling the college when it exploded.