Igor kicked him in the lower back, forcing him toward the edge of the clearing. They were moving back from where Igor had come. “I don’t doubt that, son, but you’re mistaking me for someone more generous if you think I’m going to trade anything with you. I’ll get that information in my own special way; don’t you worry about that. Now get moving, and don’t make as much as a squeak unless I tell you; otherwise, I’ll put a bullet in your head. Is that clear enough for you?”
Ben was about to speak but chose not to. Instead, he nodded.
“Good, little pig. Good.”
***
Ben stifled a scream as the gaffer tape, as Igor called it, was ripped suddenly away from his mouth, the adhesive tearing away small patches of skin on his lips and cheeks. His eyes filled with tears. Igor placed his clammy hand over Ben’s face. Leaning in, he whispered, “Make a noise, little pig, and you’ll join those.”
The former gangster pointed to a rack of meat hooks upon which hung half a dozen men and women, their hands and feet pointing downwards, their chins resting on their chests, the hook embedded deep into their backs.
Below them, flowing in a channel to somewhere further off in the slaughterhouse, was a tiny river of blood. It dripped from a series of cuts among the people’s bodies, now stained dark brown with dried blood, forming external arteries like dried rivers.
The smell made Ben gag: a heady mix of coppery blood and lung-scorching bleach. Every breath brought with it a stinging sensation, making his guts turn. He fought to keep the bile down as it rose into his throat.
Igor backed away. Beneath the bright white glare of the overhead strip-light, a piece of dark leather material wrapped around Igor’s waist, presumably for protection, shone glossily. Red stains covered the white, ankle-length jacket he wore beneath.
Trying to move, Ben realized his wrists and ankles were shackled to the legs of a steel chair bolted to the floor. A steel desk stood in front of him. Pieces of meat that were once limbs filled a series of containers.
A yellow glow surrounded the edge of a door beyond the hanging bodies.
“No-no,” Igor said, standing in front of him, blocking his view. “There’s no way out unless I say there is. Now, let’s get this party started, shall we? I’m on a schedule.”
Before Ben could say anything, Igor placed his left hand over Ben’s mouth, and with his right brought out a small blade from a front pocket. The blade glinted beneath the strip-light as Igor brought it close to Ben’s face. His eyes hurt as they tried to focus close up, but the image just blurred as he screamed and thrashed against the chair.
Aggravating the wound on his face caused by a twig, Igor’s blade dug deeper into the flesh, widening the wound. The blade scraped across his cheekbone, making him yell out, but Igor’s hand was too tightly clasped over his mouth for it to escape the slaughterhouse and raise an alarm.
Ben sobbed with the agony as Igor cut him three times more on the cheek and once across his forehead. The blood dripped down into his eyes, making him blink as the world became dark and blurred.
“Now we’ve got the introduction out of the way,” Igor said, “I trust you’ll do as I suggest. Nod if you understand me.”
Of course Ben nodded, unable to do anything else as his face felt alive with pain, burning and unyielding.
Through his darkened vision, he saw Igor’s face come closer. He wore a sick smile. Ben realized then that he’d done this kind of work many times before. Just what the hell had Denver and Charlie got him into?
“First of all, tell me everything. If you lie, I will know, and I will continue to cut you. No one knows you’re here. I have the only key to this facility. We could be here for days if need be. I’m sure you understand that the truth is the only way out of this for you now?”
“Anything,” Ben said, spitting the blood from his lips. “I’ll tell you anything.”
“That’s good, Ben, you’re learning. I like that. Okay, let’s start from the beginning. If you leave anything out, or if you lie, I will start with your eyes and work my way down to your testicles. Trust me, there’s no easy to way to do this. It will hurt. A great deal. And what really gets people is that they sometimes think I’m bluffing. They don’t think that for very long.”
With the threat of the blade just inches from his face, Ben answered every question Igor gave him. On it went for what seemed like hours until finally, his voice hoarse and his will truly shattered, Igor left for a smoke.
He returned two minutes later with a small, silver tray containing a needle and thread and a clear bottle of orange liquid.
“You did well, Ben,” Igor said, setting the tray on the table. “Let’s get you fixed up, and then we’ll introduce you to Gregor. You will remember what to say when he questions you, won’t you? I won’t have to visit you in the night and continue where I left off, will I?”
“No,” Ben said firmly. The pain had started to dissipate. The first injection of root compound acted quickly. Any desire to sob and beg had long gone. His will had been broken; his fear had run out. All he felt now was a savage desire to end Igor’s life and that of anyone else who would use him.
Throughout the hours of pain and threats, Ben came to realize the futility of it all. Life to these people meant nothing. It was bad enough what the croatoans were doing to the people, but so far, he’d learned that humans were far worse to their own kind.
He eyeballed Igor as the torturer wiped Ben’s face clean and stitched the wounds. Just a few hours ago, those skilled fingers had brought pain, but now, they sutured his wounds with delicate skill.
That Igor wanted Ben to lie to Gregor told him more than he had told Igor. Despite the pain, he hadn’t given up his friends. For all Igor would ever know, Maria and Ethan were dead, and Charlie and Denver had disappeared into the forest, leaving him behind. Ben would continue with the plan, give Gregor the bead and the location of the decoy shelter, and make sure he dealt with Igor before the bastard had a chance to act on his threat.
There was a clear division on the farm between Igor and Gregor. Ben thought about it as Igor continued treating his wounds. It seemed that Igor wasn’t happy with his status and planned some kind of coup against Gregor.
This gave Ben something to work with. An angle he could exploit. Although Igor was highly skilled in pain, he wasn’t very smart when it came to language and intent. His motivations became obvious during the interrogation. He hadn’t even realized he had shown his hand early.
Even on the ship, Ben was the best poker player, figuring out the other crew members’ plays before they did themselves.
“There,” Igor said, “that’s the last of them. You’ll tell Gregor that Charlie did these. You will tell him about a decoy shelter to get him out of the way and play along, and tomorrow, I’ll go visit the real one. Have Gregor take you at dawn. And if the weapons you promised aren’t there … Well,” Igor turned and indicated with a sweeping gesture his future fate among the meat hooks.
“Don’t worry,” Ben said. “I understand clearly. You will get everything you deserve. Now, shall we go see Gregor? I’m eager to get this over with.”
“Good little pig,” Igor said, smiling, showing his yellow, decaying teeth.
Yes, Ben thought, you will get everything you deserve.
Chapter Twenty-One
Charlie pulled back the camouflaged tarp, revealing a rusted Ford F-150. The oncered paintwork had given way to a colonization of orange rust. Among the conquering march of time and decay, small islands of defiant paint remained.
Leaves and twigs covered the hood, clinging to the surface.
Charlie swept them off and cleared the debris from the cracked windshield.
The noon sun streaked through the surrounding trees and gleamed off the glass, the cracks refracting a rainbow of light in thin slivers.
A solid metal lockbox took up a quarter of the rear bed. It contained a few days’ supplies, water, ammo, a pair of shotguns, and an old Army tent.
Pip jumped up into the extended cab as soon as Denver opened the passenger door, curling up on an old grey blanket between the two front seats.
Ethan stood by the river’s edge with his mouth open as he stared on. They’d hidden the truck in a tight copse of trees and shrubs the week before as they scouted the harvester’s route.
Charlie waved him and Maria forward from their temporary camp.
“Does it run?” Ethan said, running his hand along the fender as though it were an ancient relic. To Ethan, it probably is, Charlie thought. He’d have only seen them on whatever brainwashing videos the aliens had given to them to watch.
“Yeah,” Charlie said. “Of course it runs.”
“How did you keep it working all through the invasion and the ice age?” Maria asked as she joined them.
“My old Army friend was a mechanical genius,” Charlie said. “Between him and a colleague of mine, we sourced spare parts and kept it running. With so many people dead and so many vehicles abandoned, it’s not difficult to source fuel and parts. Back in New York, there’s a number of Ford dealers and warehouses that we got replacement parts from.”
“So where are we going?” Maria said as Denver loaded up more supplies and the weapons taken from the croatoans.
“Going to take a trip to the East Coast. The Big Apple. Come on, get in; we need to set off if we’re to get there in good time. It’s going to be a long journey. The roads aren’t exactly easy these days,” Charlie said. He held the rear passenger door open and waited for Ethan and Maria to settle in.
Denver jumped into the front passenger seat.
Once inside, Charlie turned the key, and after a few splutters, the old diesel power plant roared to life, belching out a little black smoke before purring like a wild cat. He put it into drive and slowly pulled away from the hiding place, keeping the wheels on the harder parts of the forest floor.
From their shelter in Mohan Run, a small clearing within the forest, Charlie drove the truck out through the trees, only once scraping against a branch, and joined the hard surface of Interstate 219. The plan was to head south to I-80, which would take them all the way into New York.
Fragments of blacktop had long peeled off the road. Multiple croatoan-engineered environmental changes, especially the ice, had conspired to ruin the surface. But as long as he stayed vigilant, they could make good time.
“I would have expected more cars and trucks,” Ethan said, leaning forward from the rear.
“That’s the kind of thing you see in the films,” Denver said.
“He’s right,” Charlie added, steering around a ten-foot-wide pothole and accelerating onto a clear patch. “When the invasion happened, it took many by surprise, but the war waged for a number of years. Plenty of time for people to get off the roads and go somewhere safe. You’ll see most of the cars still parked near people’s homes or service stations and car lots. The roads were deserted during the war to allow military traffic to get into position without worrying about the public.”
“Where are all the bodies?” Ethan asked. “I’d have expected to see more.”
Charlie looked at the young man through the rearview mirror. He didn’t really know what he was asking. The idea that billions of people were butchered had to be entirely alien to him. There just wasn’t a way for someone like him, so detached from his own species, to fully comprehend what had happened.
But he’d soon get the idea.
“Most were buried,” Charlie eventually said as he found a clear patch of road. Even without the blacktop in place, the hard concrete provided a brief section of smooth ride. “Despite the situation, many families, neighborhoods, and government organizations did their best to give everyone a proper burial, but sometimes, that wasn’t always possible.”
“So what happened then?”
Charlie wanted to tell Ethan to drop it, to focus on survival rather than the dead, but as painful as it was to bring back those memories, it could just be what he and Maria needed to bring some perspective.
“I’ll show you,” Charlie said. “For now, try and get some rest. We’ll be travelling for at least nine, maybe ten hours. If we’re lucky.”
He thought about the croatoans. They wouldn’t be happy with the previous day’s losses. That was as many of the aliens as Charlie and Denver had killed since the war. Up until now, he and Denver were probably just a minor thorn in their sides, but now … If he were on the other side, he wouldn’t take those losses without some form of vengeance.
Charlie stared out of the windshield and thought that it didn’t look too bad. The trees, bushes, and vines that had built up beside the road and some that had sent roots through the concrete and gravel broke it up into large fragments. It looked quite beautiful.
But the cost of attaining this natural beauty wasn’t worth the blood in the soil.
At one point, the branches that stretched across the road were so thick, they had to get out and chop their way through with machetes and blades Charlie had fashioned from the alien metal. An hour later and they were back on the road, finding clearer spots, making good ground.
When they approached towns or cities, Charlie always took the outer route, preferring to avoid going into the center where there were likely to be pockets of survivors. At one point, a distant sniper fired upon them, a warning shot, hissing over the hood.
“I don’t understand why they would fire on us,” Ethan said. “Surely with so few of us left, they’d leave us be.”
“They’re just frightened,” Denver said. “Not many with working vehicles. Probably think we’re scouting for the farms.”
Charlie noted the change in Ethan’s thinking by the use of us. Good, he thought. The kid is starting to think the right way. If his plans to take down the croatoans were to work, he’d need people like Ethan and Maria to see that humanity was not at war with each other for resources or survival. They had to be united in their struggles.
***
A further four hours passed without incident; they’d crossed into New Jersey and were only a few hours from their destination of Newark. Charlie drove the truck up a hill; the road had crumbled away to dirt and gravel, but the F-150’s 4-wheel drive dug in deep and pulled them up to the summit. Putting it into park and engaging the emergency brake, Charlie got out, leaving the engine running.
He opened the door and gestured for Ethan and Maria to get out. They looked at him suspiciously. “I just want to show you two something,” Charlie said, turning his back and approaching the edge of the hill.
Ethan and Maria joined him, and both took a sharp intake of breath.
Down in the green valley beyond, a two-hundred-foot-wide sinkhole scarred the earth like a huge wound. Around its crumbling edge, houses and other buildings were left in ruin. Half of their walls had collapsed long ago, their open sides providing shelter for shade-loving plants or trees.
But it wasn’t the ruined homes that caused the surprise; neither was it the huge CAT diggers rusting away on the perimeter. It was what was in the sinkhole that caused the reaction.
The very thing Ethan had expected to see.
Bodies.
Or more accurately—skeletons.
“When things got really bad, after the gas and the initial attack, it became impossible for the authorities, what were left, to handle so many bodies,” Charlie said. “Hospitals were overrun. Funeral homes and cemeteries were full to bursting. Families, those that survived the initial stage, buried their dead in their gardens or in makeshift graves in the woods or other common areas.
“But when the numbers got too huge, the remaining militia, in an effort to prevent the spread of disease, used the same sinkholes the croatoans created to come to the surface to bury the dead.
“All over the country, you’ll find huge ones like this with thousands and thousands of bodies in them.”
Charlie stared away into the distance. The evening sun silhouetted a dozen birds as they glided above the sinkhole. But there was no meat
on the bones anymore. They were picked clean by scavengers and the elements years ago.
“That’s terrible,” Maria said, her voice barely a whisper. Ethan remained silent, taking in the scene, realizing what he was looking at.
Charlie didn’t want to have to show them this, but he needed them to understand what was at stake, what had happened to humanity. They had no sense of the numbers or what life was like before. But this would help bring the necessary perspective.
They all got back into the truck, silent, haunted by what they had seen. Charlie didn’t say anything, just let it sink in, let the enormity of what happened finally get through to them.
He turned around on the summit and headed back down the hill, rejoining I-80 and moving toward Newark Bridge. He gunned the engine, taking advantage of a rare section of clear road. He wanted to get to the bridge before sun up. They’d have to complete the rest of the journey throughout the night, swapping driving duties.
Over the sound of the engine, he heard a throaty roar streak by them overhead. An icy chill crept up his spine. The last time he’d heard a sound like that was when the croatoan fighter craft first descended upon the earth.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Layla huddled under her duvet with a flashlight, poring through personal notes from the last few years. She needed irrefutable evidence before going to Gregor with her findings. Something to join up the dots.
She cursed under her breath as she read her last two diaries. Self-indulgent, whiny, and lacking solid information. With the benefit of hindsight and clear focus, it felt like she was reading extracts from her college days. The Layla that thought the world was against her, living like a hermit in her student apartment, studying the very thing she purposely avoided.
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