Darkest Hour 1: Their Darkest Hour

by Christopher Nuttall

  “It’s all we have left,” Abdul commented. “You do know that the Vietnamese drove the Americans away after years of inconclusive warfare?”

  “Years,” Robin grated. It felt almost as if the aliens had always been on Earth. Had it really been less than two months? “Do you think that we can keep fighting them until they give up and leave us in peace? Or simply drop a massive rock on our heads and slaughter the remaining humans on Earth?”

  “There’s little other choice,” Abdul said. He leaned forwards, warningly. “We need your help to hit them, policeman. Think about your people and join us.”

  Robin hesitated. “My wife...”

  “We can get her out of their reach,” Abdul assured him. “We’ll fake her death and hide her in one of our bases. All it needs is for you to decide which side you’re on. Do you support your fellow humans, or ugly aliens intent on turning us all into slaves?”

  Robin looked down at his hands. How much blood was on them? How many had died, at least in part, because of him and his fellow collaborators? The aliens had slaughtered humans when protest marches had gotten out of hand, to say nothing of threatening mass slaughter to get one of their captives back. And they’d succeeded. The resistance had surrendered their captive, despite endless complaints on the internet that one city was a worthwhile trade for an alien who might finally provide real answers.

  “My fellow humans,” he said, finally. He reached for his uniform, feeling a flicker of the old pride he’d felt when he’d first donned it as a fully-fledged policeman. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

  Abdul smiled and told him.

  “Write a letter to your wife,” he said, afterwards. “We’ll make sure it gets delivered.”

  ***

  I should be part of the attack force, Alex thought sourly, as she parked the car outside the house. It was situated in one of London’s surrounding towns, a nice place to live if you could afford the rent. I want to hit back at the bastards, not play secret agent...

  Most of her wounds were healing, thankfully, but the medics had been insistent that she should avoid actual fighting for at least another month or two. Alex had pointed out that they could hardly send someone back home to recuperate when the aliens had occupied the entire country, yet they’d been insistent. She’d been tortured, raped and abused and she really needed time to recover. They seemed to expect her to break down at any moment, rather than being determined to get back out there and keep righting the Leathernecks. The doctor had strongly urged her to go to the Highlands of Scotland or one of the other long-term resistance bases and had been surprised when she’d refused.

  She climbed out of the car, ignoring the handful of sharp glances from pedestrians as she locked the door behind her. Only collaborators had fuel for cars these days; the aliens hadn't touched this part of Britain as much as they’d touched London, but their presence was keenly felt. They had a base only a few miles away, part of the ring of steel surrounding London proper. She touched the Browning she’d stuffed into her coat pocket – just in case, even though she had papers that should have fooled the aliens – and walked up to the house. There was the faint sound of music coming from inside.

  Calmly, she pushed the button. There was no sign that the neighbours had realised that the house’s lone occupant was married to a collaborator, but if they ever found out...some wives and children of collaborators had been bullied, or isolated, or even murdered by their former friends and neighbours. The door opened a crack and a lady with Italian features peered out.

  “I have a letter for you,” Alex said. “I suggest you read it now and then come with me.”

  Helene Harrison skimmed through the letter, her eyes going wide. “I am to come with you?”

  “Yes,” Alex said. There was no time to argue. “Don’t worry – you’ve nothing to worry about. Just come with me for your own safety.”

  There was a pause as Helene picked up a bag she’d positioned at the doorway and then came outside. Alex felt an odd flicker of jealousy as she realised just how beautiful Helene was, before seeing the fear in her eyes. She hadn’t seen her husband for over a month and yet her neighbours would condemn her, if they ever realised that he was a collaborator. But he could have died when the aliens hit Scotland Yard...Alex glanced at Helene and realised that she pitied the girl. The Helene Harrison’s of the country were whom the RAF had existed to defend.

  She climbed into the car, checked the Helene was buckled in, and started the engine. They had a long journey before they reached the safe house – and they’d have to abandon the car along the route. Who knew how closely the aliens monitored human vehicles?

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Near London/London

  United Kingdom, Day 50/51

  They approached from the west, crawling low to be sure that they weren’t seen as they neared the isolated station. A simple chain-link fence provided security, barely a moment’s delay for SF soldiers who’d been taught lock-picking as part of their intensive training before they were unleashed on Britain’s enemies. No one should have been anywhere near the station, but they checked twice before relaxing slightly and locating the keys they’d taken from the bunker. The door clicked open, revealing nothing, but darkness inside.

  Chris Drake pulled a torch from his belt and clicked it on, aiming it into the darkness. They’d been briefed that the isolated station – part of a contingency plan that had been drawn up during the Cold War – had been left untouched for years, but it wouldn't be the first time some vagrant had set up home in an isolated building. The building looked untouched, however; a thick layer of dust bore silent tribute to the years since it had been built and then abandoned. He found the hatch on the ground, inserted a different key, and breathed a sigh of relief as the hatch opened without trouble. It led down a long rusty ladder to an isolated part of London’s sewer network, one that had been sealed off from the main network years ago. Chris hooked the torch onto his belt and started to climb down the ladder, bracing himself for the smell. None of these tunnels had been cleaned for decades.

  “Clear,” he called back up, once he’d reached the bottom. The sewer network extended all the way from London out into the countryside. London was honeycombed with tunnels, some known to the public; others known only to the government, or simply forgotten in the years since they’d been built and abandoned. It was a way to get in and out of the city without being detected or stopped by the aliens. “Come on down. The smell is terrible.”

  The others chuckled as they clambered down and found themselves in an abandoned sewer, standing on a walkway that led into the darkness. “Better not fall into that,” one of the Marines commented. “Worse than that shitty pond at Kandahar.”

  Chris snorted as he started leading the way down the walkway. “You want to bet that some mutant turtles have been breeding down here,” he said, flashing the beam of light over the still water. “People used to put crocodiles down here with the rest of the shit they threw out.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the Marine said. “I won’t ever be able to wipe that image from my mind.”

  The walk seemed to stretch out into hours. It was strange to think that the aliens were just above them, watching for any signs of trouble. Chris knew that smaller parties of insurgents were meant to be launching a series of attacks to keep the aliens busy, but there was no way to know just how they were faring down in the tunnels. The torch flickered once as they reached a crossroads, reminding him of all the horror stories he'd read of monsters lurking deep underground. Aliens from Alien, sewer monsters from The X-Files...as a kid, he’d loved watching horror movies. And even as an adult, the memory still sent a chill running down his spine.

  They reached the end of the tunnel and stopped dead. There was supposed to be a way around the blockage, into the parts of the sewers that were still working. Chris puzzled over the chart, before realising that they had walked past a smaller tunnel that connected to the main stream. The roof seemed to be closing
in on them as they passed through a hidden door and out into the main body of the sewers. From what he recalled, most of the sewage was pumped out of the city, cleansed and then...actually, he couldn't remember what happened then. They weren’t allowed to simply pump it into the Thames any longer, if he recalled correctly.

  “Jesus,” one of the men commented. “What a fucking pong.”

  Chris nodded, trying hard to breathe through his nose. In the distance, he could hear the sound of pumps pushing the sewerage through the tunnels. The environment was a breeding ground for rats, according to the briefing – he saw one running along a pipe before vanishing into the darkness. They seemed to have almost no fear of humanity, running up and almost touching their boots before jumping back to avoid kicks from the soldiers. Chris remembered that rats had carried diseases in pre-modern times and shuddered. The aliens had broken down a great many health and safety systems. There were probably places in Britain where scurvy and other long-forgotten diseases had returned to torment the human race.

  He saw a light in the distance and reached for his pistol, before realising that it was the welcoming committee. Two of the soldiers who had been in London ever since the invasion were waiting for them, including someone he hadn't seen since the Battle of London, when he’d been swept out of the city by the river. He called his name and ran forward, heedless of the danger of slipping and falling into the shit. It had been far too long since they’d seen one another.

  “Bongo,” he said, as they hugged. “I thought you were dead!”

  “I thought you were dead, you old pirate,” Bongo said. He’d come from Jamaica to join the British Army and had been streamlined into the Household Division. “What the fuck blew you out of London?”

  “The aliens,” Chris said, as Bongo pointed to the ladder leading upwards to the safe house. He couldn't imagine which civil servant had been so paranoid as to designate a handful of houses as emergency evacuation points, but he had to admit that the paranoia had made it a great deal easier to slip into London. “What have you been doing with yourself, then?”

  Bongo filled him in once they reached the top and clambered out into the safe house. Chris had seen a couple like it while he’d been on close-protection details, places where MI5 could debrief defectors or notable public figures could hide from the media. It looked perfectly normal from the outside, but most of the building would be wired for sound and the tapes stored at a different location. He hoped they'd taken out the bugs once they’d started to use it as a base.

  “Oh, we’re not based here,” Bongo said, when he asked. “There’s too much chance that someone will come across a reference to the place in the files – too many damn bureaucrats went over to the aliens. We just use it because it has access to the sewers.”

  He made a show of glancing at his watch. “We'll have to wait here until the sun goes down,” he added, “so we may as well have a brew. I hope you bought some teabags from outside...?”

  “And a few army-issue packed lunches,” Chris said, with a grin.

  “Bastard,” Bongo said, without heat. “Anyway...what have you been doing with yourself since Westminster?”

  ***

  It was an hour before Bongo decided that the night had fallen far enough to allow them to slip out onto the streets. The aliens and their collaborators had put a stop to London’s once-celebrated nightlife by enforcing a curfew, but they didn't really have the manpower to keep it firmly in place outside Central London. Bongo and the rest of the resistance could still move about with impunity as long as they didn't go too close to the aliens, who had night-vision gear and a willingness to open fire without confirming that the contact was actually hostile. Most humans knew to give them a wide berth.

  Chris had grown up in London and had loved the city, even though he’d left school with few qualifications and little hope of a worthwhile job outside the army. Looking at the city now tore at his heart. Buildings had been destroyed, or reduced to blackened shells of what they’d once been; the once-endless traffic had been driven off the road, leaving London’s population forced to walk from place to place on foot. Burned-out cars were everywhere, a reminder that the aliens sometimes used them for target practice; others had bullet holes through their windscreens or superstructure. He saw a handful of dead bodies as they slipped onwards and wondered just how many had died in the weeks since the aliens had landed. London had had a huge population once, but now...now there was no way to know how many were left. He only saw a couple of living humans as they walked through the gloom.

  Bongo had said that many of the gangs had wiped each other out. They’d been dependent upon selling drugs to customers, drugs that were no longer available because the aliens had sealed off London and destroyed world shipping. The gangs had been reduced to fighting over the last few bags of cocaine or heroin, while their customers had been forced to go cold turkey, weaning themselves off the drugs the hard way. Chris had nothing, but contempt for those who became enslaved to the needle or snorting powder, yet many of the addicts would have suffered greatly for lack of their crutch. One more crime to blame on the Leathernecks, he told himself, as they reached what had once been a large housing estate. The locals probably knew that the resistance had a base there, but hadn’t breathed a word to the police. They’d probably felt that having the resistance there was good for them. The resistance certainly didn't waste time taking protection money or all the other tricks the gangs used to pull.

  “Come on,” Bongo hissed. Inside, the massive block of flats smelled faintly of urine. “I’m sorry about the stench, but we can't risk standing out from the crowd.”

  Chris nodded as the doors closed behind them. “Welcome to one of our staging bases,” Bongo said. He nodded towards a team of four people who had been waiting for them. “Abdul – SAS dude, very brave or thoroughly crazy. Jake – local volunteer, smart-ass. Janet – our...ah, contact with some of the police. And Fatima – our doctor.”

  “Welcome to London,” Abdul said, dryly. He might not have been wearing a proper uniform – none of them were – but he managed to look as if he was dressed for parade. “I think you’ll hate what we’ve done to the place.”

  He shrugged and stood up. “There are places to sleep here, so get some rest,” he added. “In the morning, we will start checking out our targets and planning the final stages of the operation. And then we’re going to send a lot of people out through the tunnels before the shit hits the fan.”

  Chris nodded. “Let the CO know that we got here,” he said. “How do you plan to check out the targets?”

  Abdul smiled. “Let’s just say that we had a little help and leave it at that,” he said. “You don’t need to know the precise details.”

  ***

  The following morning, after a breakfast that mainly consisted of the ration packs they’d carried through the tunnels, Abdul led Chris and a couple of others out into the city. They’d all been issued ID cards that noted their occupation as workers, people who moved from place to place to do manual labour for the alien overlords. London had simply too much damage to clear up and almost everyone who wasn't in a priority occupation had been tasked to help with the work – or starve. It was an attitude that Chris found rather understandable – it would certainly have helped clear up many of Britain’s inner cities and housing estates – but the aliens didn’t care about the niceties. From what many of the resistance fighters who’d stayed in London had reported, the aliens pushed the workers as hard as they could.

  Dozens of work gangs roamed the city, clearing up smashed or burned-out cars, carting away debris from fallen buildings and even picking up dead bodies from where they’d been abandoned. Chris wouldn't have been surprised to discover that Londoners had an epidemic on their hands as well as everything else, just from the number of dead bodies that had been left to rot for a few days. The teams that cleaned up the dead wore NBC suits and were apparently granted special privileges by the aliens. Chris doubted that anyone could be given
enough privileges to make the work worthwhile.

  And there were policemen everywhere in Central London. Chris watched them checking ID cards as they patrolled, remembering the stories he’d heard about the French Resistance and those who had collaborated with the Germans. The police might have started to collaborate out of a desire to keep the public safe, but now they were nothing more than a millstone around London’s neck. Some of the men wearing police uniforms reminded Chris of the torturers he’d pulled out of the Detention Camp and executed, men who wanted to indulge their dark tastes and were willing to serve the aliens in exchange for having their way with their victims. Others looked ashamed and tried to do as little as possible.