Trust

by David Moody

  Back to the car.

  ‘What are we going to do, Tom?’

  He looked at Clare but didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. What did they do? He went to open the car door.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she said.

  ‘I have to.’

  ‘You can’t leave us here.’

  ‘Come with me. We’ll get Penny, then go and get Rob, then go on to Siobhan’s. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  CHAPTER 31

  It was already afternoon, the gloom of the day making it feel like the light was fading ahead of time, almost as if it was being snatched away. It was bitterly cold. Clare went upstairs to try and dress Penny, leaving Tom pacing the ground floor rooms, trying to make contact with other people. He rang every number in his mobile, but no one answered. He did the same with Clare’s, then tried her landline, working his way through her entire phone book as well as any other numbers he could remember. Still nothing. He checked the computer upstairs, but information was loading incredibly slowly, and when he did manage to read something, it had been hours since anything had been updated. The flow of information had stopped along with the people who consumed it. He looked up the number and tried to call John Tipper at the Badger’s Sett, the last person he’d spoken to other than Clare, but the line just rang out unanswered.

  The silence outside gave him too much time to think. Was this some kind of sickness? A contagion? Was it somehow connected to the aliens – and he couldn’t imagine that it wasn’t – or purely coincidental? Some kind of infection they’d brought to Earth, perhaps, which had laid dormant until now? His inability to find answers served only to intensify the fear. He hadn’t seen any aliens since he’d last seen Jall, and with only a few hundred of them scattered across the surface of the entire planet, there didn’t seem to be any prospect of that changing. They could have been anywhere. For all he knew, they could have gone.

  Clare was taking forever. Tom waited impatiently, flicking through the channels on the TV now. Several channels just showed blank screens, others test cards or station identifiers. A couple were still broadcasting, but he guessed their programming must have been automated. Having some noise in the house – any noise – was welcome and he left it on as he stood at the window, scanning the street outside for any signs of movement. He looked around when Clare turned the TV off again, but she wasn’t even in the room. He tried the nearest light switch, flicking it up and down several times more than was necessary, then did the same in the hall. Clare was at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Power’s gone. Where’s your fuse box?’ he asked her.

  ‘Under the stairs.’

  ‘You got a torch?’

  ‘Should be one in there.’

  He found the torch and switched it on, but it wasn’t working.

  ‘Got any spare batteries?’

  ‘Shouldn’t need any,’ she shouted down. ‘I only changed them a few days ago. I’ve told you before, the wiring’s dodgy here. The lights are always tripping.’

  Tom checked the torch a couple more times and even unscrewed the base and removed and replaced the batteries before giving up on it. He felt for the fuse board in the darkness under the stairs and located and flicked the trip switch. Nothing happened. He pulled out the fuses and examined each of them in turn as best he could but couldn’t see anything immediately wrong.

  ‘Don’t bother, Tom,’ Clare said from upstairs. ‘It’s not just us.’

  He reversed back out of the cupboard, banging his head and cursing with pain, then went to find her. She was in her bedroom, looking outside. And he saw that she was right. Although it was too early for every light to be on, he would have expected to see a few lights out there by now. There were none, not a single damn bulb lit up for as far as he could see. Instinctively – though he already knew it was pointless – he tried a few more electrical items. A table lamp and small TV in Clare’s room were both dead, as was the phone.

  ‘Not even a fucking dialling tone now,’ he said, slamming the handset back down. He took his mobile from his pocket. His battery hadn’t been fully charged, but he knew he’d still had some power remaining. The screen was blank. He panicked. ‘I’ve got to go. Sorry, Clare, I’ve got to go.’

  She followed him down and out onto the street. He pressed the key fob to unlock his car as he ran towards it, but nothing happened. Clare grabbed his arm and tried to pull him back.

  ‘This is pointless. Don’t, Tom. It’s too late…’

  He unlocked the car door with the key and shrugged her off. ‘I’ve got to go. Got to get back to Siobhan and Rob.’

  He slammed the door shut, shoved the key in the ignition and turned it. Nothing. The engine didn’t turn over. Every light and indicator on the dashboard remained unlit. Clare banged on the window then opened the door.

  ‘Come back inside, Tom. Please.’

  ‘I can’t just leave them.’

  ‘Come in and wait with me. Maybe the power will come back on. Please, Tom…’

  He kept trying, forcing the key around, pumping the pedals… anything. He popped open the bonnet and checked the battery connections, then checked the fuses, refusing to accept the futility of his actions. He remained in the car alone, not wanting to move. Several minutes later, knowing he had little option, he reluctantly followed Clare back into the house. She shut and locked the door behind him.

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  He looked at her. ‘What the hell can we do? It’s like everything’s running down.’

  *

  Tom crept upstairs to check on Penny again a while later. Clare was sleeping. The house was cold. Much of the earlier cloud cover had disappeared, and the intermittent light from a three-quarter moon occasionally provided him with a little welcome illumination.

  He found Penny just where Clare had left her, half-dressed now but still on the floor, leaning over with her face pressed up against the wall. The moonlight played tricks, and several times Tom had to check himself because he thought the little girl’s expression had changed.

  He crept nearer, stopping when he was less than a metre away, reluctant to get any closer. He leant forward and listened for her breathing. There it was – shallow, but definitely there and reassuringly steady. He took hold of her wrist to try and take her pulse. Her skin was cold, her body limp. He pulled another sheet off the bed and covered her before going back downstairs to Clare.

  ‘Any change?’ she asked, startling him.

  ‘Nothing,’ he replied, feeling for a seat in the dark.

  ‘What’s happening, Tom?’

  He didn’t even bother trying to answer. How could he? And even if he knew, what difference would it make? What could he do about any of it? He got up and went into the kitchen. Clare continued talking, but he’d stopped listening. He sat at the table and screwed his eyes shut and covered his ears. He despised himself for being stuck in this damn house. He knew he should be anywhere but here but he was too scared to leave.

  CHAPTER 32

  Tom woke with a start, sprawled across Clare’s settee with her lying on top of him. He’d been drifting in and out of sleep for the last few hours. He couldn’t remember her coming and lying with him but he was glad that she had. For a long time he did nothing more than lie perfectly still and listen to the soft and reassuringly normal sounds of her gentle breathing. He took comfort from the closeness and warmth of her body. As long as they stayed like this together, he didn’t have to face what was happening outside.

  The first grey light of morning trickled into the room. Tom closed his eyes and went over the events of the previous day again and again, trying desperately to make some sense of the bizarre things he’d seen and the inexplicable behaviour of the people he’d known and loved. He’d heard nothing in the night, so he assumed Penny hadn’t moved. Regardless, he’d have to try and get home this morning, that much was clear. He plotted his route in his mind: home first, then he’d continue out through the village to Siobhan, maybe calling in on Ja
mes and Stephanie and those poor kids if time and circumstance allowed. He felt an obligation to try and get to them. Maybe he should have been doing all of this last night instead of hiding away in the darkness here like a fucking coward?

  He slid out from underneath Clare, doing all he could not to wake her, but desperate to relieve himself and also to check on the little girl upstairs. She’d be his barometer, he decided. Whatever state Penny was in this morning, Siobhan, Rob and all the others would probably be the same.

  Tom used the downstairs bathroom and looked out of the window behind the toilet as he stood over the bowl. Everything looked reassuringly normal through the small rectangular pane of frosted glass: the fence and bushes at the end of Clare’s garden and the fields beyond, the occasional bird darting through the dull grey sky.

  He flushed when he’d finished. The cistern was taking its time to refill. Low pressure, he decided as he washed his face and hands in a trickle of ice-cold water.

  When he returned to the living room, Clare wasn’t there. He heard her footsteps in the room directly above and went up to find her, hoping there’d been a change in Penny’s condition. He knew the moment he entered the room that wasn’t the case. Penny was where he’d left her last night. She hadn’t moved a muscle.

  ‘Any better?’ he asked hopefully, although he already knew the answer.

  ‘Same,’ Clare quietly replied, gently stroking the side of her daughter’s expressionless face. ‘What are we going to do, Tom?’

  He walked to the window, desperately trying to think of something constructive to say but failing miserably. As far as he could see, their position remained unchanged from last night. There was nothing they could do. He looked out over the back of the house and saw something which made his blood freeze.

  Clare, still crouching on the floor with her daughter, immediately picked up on his sudden unease.

  ‘Tom?’

  He simply looked at her, unable to speak, then turned and ran. She sprinted after him as he raced downstairs, following him through the living room and kitchen, then out into the garden. He scrambled over the fence at the back of her property, then kept running until he was in the middle of the field immediately behind the house, sending a small flock of sheep scattering in all directions. He stopped and looked up.

  ‘What is it?’ Clare shouted. Tom pointed upwards.

  Thousands of metres above them – maybe miles overhead – the hull of a huge alien ship was slicing through the cloud cover like a submarine.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, Tom? They got rid of that ship, didn’t they? We saw them send it away. For fuck’s sake, we watched it fly into the sun on live TV.’

  Tom continued to watch the massive machine power down towards the surface of the planet. And, as more of the behemoth was revealed, he began to realise that this wasn’t the same ship he’d seen previously. The alien vessel he’d seen arrive was long and narrow. This machine was more dart-shaped, almost like a flying wing.

  ‘They must have faked the footage,’ Clare said, craning her neck as the apparently endless metal monster continued to glide effortlessly above them.

  ‘It’s a different ship.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘This isn’t the ship that was here before.’

  ‘But they’re not due to be rescued for another year or so, are they? Wasn’t that what they said?’

  There was another one of them. Tom rechecked, certain he’d just got confused. He looked around and saw there were definitely two ships now. No, wait, there were more. He ran over to the far side of the field and climbed up onto a low stone wall to get a better view. From there he could see another five alien ships in total. They were all different shapes and sizes. Some moved, others were stationary. Some were close to Thatcham, others miles away.

  Feeling exposed, Tom jumped down and ran back to the house, following Clare who was already on her way inside.

  CHAPTER 33

  Tom shut and locked the door behind him then leant against it, head spinning, numb with nerves and cold.

  ‘Why so many of them?’ Clare demanded, continuing with a torrent of obviously unanswerable questions. ‘Why are they here?’

  He ignored her and barged past to get to the hallway. He reached for his mobile – an instinctive reaction – then cursed his own stupidity when the screen remained as dead as it had been yesterday.

  ‘Are they here to pick up the aliens or are they—?’

  ‘How the fuck should I know?’ Tom screamed at her. He threw his phone across the room and it hit the wall and exploded, sending shards of plastic and electronic components scattering over the laminate flooring. He looked up at Clare who backed away from him but continued to ask questions.

  ‘But they must be here to take them home, mustn’t they? There’s no other reason, is there?’

  ‘Just one.’

  Tom sat down at the bottom of the staircase and held his head in his hands, unable to bring himself to spell out his worst fears. He covered his ears, trying to block out everything else so he could find another explanation for what was happening, something he might have missed before. But he couldn’t. When he coupled the behaviour of the bulk of the indigenous population with what he and Clare had just witnessed outside, only one possible scenario remained: invasion.

  He walked to the front door. The street outside was as quiet as it had been all of yesterday, deceptively peaceful. Nothing was moving out there, save for yet another huge ship which cruised silently across the grey cloud cover. It was smaller than the others he’d seen, but no less threatening.

  Tom was numb. Terrified. And yet, bizarrely, he also felt sudden anger which stopped him being as scared as he knew he should be. It was more than just anger. He felt a genuine fury at the way the aliens had duped everyone, including himself. Sure, he’d not fallen in line to worship the visitors like just about everybody else had, but he was as guilty as the rest of them. Should he have made a stand… made more effort, asked more questions? Was there anything he could have done to prevent them taking a stranglehold on the human race then crapping on them from the greatest of heights like this? His mind wandered back to that night in Drayton, weeks ago now, when he’d first seen one of those extra-terrestrial fuckers in the flesh, and when one man had dared to stand up to them and question why they were here. And he thought about how everyone else had turned against the lone protester, and how he himself had done nothing to help. Things were immeasurably worse now. What chance did he have today?

  Am I going to keep being bloody useless, he asked himself, or do I make a stand?

  Tom knew he’d be pissing in the wind, and that this was no Independence Day moment. He wasn’t going to help the human race pull off some miraculous, last minute escape, nor were the aliens going to be caught out by an earthbound germ or disease or anything like that. Fuck, he’d barely made a noticeable impact on the people of Thatcham recently, so what hope did he have of making a difference on a grander scale? But there were people out there who needed him. More to the point, there were people out there he needed.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Clare asked, panicking as he went to leave. ‘Don’t go, Tom, please. I have to stay here with Penny. You can’t leave us now…’

  ‘Stay here and keep out of sight.’

  ‘You should stay here too. We should just wait until—’

  ‘Until what? I’ve done all the waiting I’m going to,’ he told her. ‘Stay here and I’ll come back for you later.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To get Rob and Siobhan. I can’t leave them out there. They’re all I’ve got left.’

  ‘What’s the point? We can’t fight back against this. We can’t—’

  ‘Don’t, Clare. You’d do the same if you were in my position. Just keep the door locked and don’t let anyone in.’

  ‘There’s no one else to let in.’

  Deliberately moving quickly so he couldn’t talk himself out of doing what he knew he had to, he l
eft the house. ‘See you later,’ he said as he pulled the door shut behind him.

  CHAPTER 34

  Tom ran to the car. He looked back and saw Clare watching from the window, then angrily gestured for her to get out of sight. The key fob was as useless as it had been yesterday, but he opened the door and tried the ignition in the vain hope that the engine might fire. There was no logical reason why it should, but he couldn’t leave without trying. Nothing. The total lack of power was as unsettling as the sight of the alien ships soaring through the air overhead. It felt artificial, unnatural, as if the laws of physics themselves had somehow been altered.

  He froze as another huge machine slipped silently across the sky above him. Back in the summer, the relative silence of the alien ships had been awe-inspiring, even to an alien sceptic like him. Today, however, their lack of noise just added to the cloying terror he now felt. The bastards could creep up on him and take him out in a heartbeat, the same way they’d managed to deceive the entire human race.

  He studied this particular ship in detail as it flew by him with an arrogant lack of speed. It was lighter in colour than the others he’d seen, with an awkward shape which looked anything but aerodynamic. Five angled spokes stretched down from a central hub to an outer wheel, making the ship look strangely like a connective piece from a kid’s construction set. It flew like a Frisbee which didn’t spin, and the incredible illumination from several equally-spaced engines underneath its hull made everything brighter and warmer for a few brief seconds. But that warmth faded quickly, leaving the world below a colder, more inhospitable place than before.

  With no means of transport, Tom had two options: he could either give up and stay where he was or he could try to get back into Thatcham on foot. The choice was a simple one.