by Mark Walden
‘OK,’ Sam said quietly into his throat mic. ‘Looks like we’ve avoided a welcoming party. Pull back another fifty kilometres, but stay on station. No telling when we might need a fast pick-up.’
‘Understood,’ the Servant replied.
A moment later the alien drop-ship rose silently into the starry sky before accelerating away into the distance.
‘Let’s just hope that our arrival went unnoticed,’ Rachel said as the four of them crossed the field, heading for the country lane on the far side, their boots crunching through the undisturbed snow.
‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough if it didn’t,’ Jay said, opening the gate leading to the road. ‘Keep your eyes open, guys. We have no idea what we’re walking into here.’
Over the next couple of hours they picked their way through the deserted outskirts of Edinburgh, the snow-covered fields giving way to long-abandoned suburbs. It quickly became clear that the Voidborn Mothership that they had expected to find hovering above the city was nowhere to be seen. Sam couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved, even if it did now present them with the equally troubling question of where it actually was, if not here.
‘So where the hell are the Voidborn?’ Jack asked as they walked through the deserted back streets, heading for the centre of the city. ‘Stirling seemed pretty sure that this was where we’d find them.’
‘No idea,’ Rachel said, pushing her night-vision goggles up on to her forehead and squinting into the gloom. ‘We need to find somewhere to hole up for the day. Just because we haven’t found any Voidborn yet doesn’t mean they’re not here and, if they are, I don’t want to get caught out in the open in daylight.’
‘Agreed,’ Sam said, checking his watch. The first light of dawn was appearing on the horizon. ‘Let’s find a good bolthole and keep watch for a few hours. If there’s still no sign of Voidborn activity, we can concentrate on trying to find any trace of whoever made that transmission.’
‘That looks good,’ Jack said, pointing to a hotel, one of the tallest buildings nearby. ‘We could set up a nice discreet little observation post on the top floor and keep an eye out for any visitors.’
The others nodded their agreement and hurried over to the entrance of the building. The once grand marble floor of the lobby was now half covered in snow. Suitcases and bags lay on the floor where their enslaved owners had mindlessly abandoned them nearly two years ago. Jay pointed to a door on the other side of the lobby marked ‘Stairs’.
‘You guys head up and check out the upper floors,’ Jay said. ‘I’ll keep watch on the street.’
Rachel nodded, gesturing for Sam and Jack to cover her. She opened the door and stepped into the stairwell beyond, weapon raised, scanning for any sign of a threat. The two boys followed her quietly up the stairs as they began a systematic sweep of the building. Sam would never have admitted it, but there was something exciting about the feeling of once again being in hostile territory.
‘OK,’ Rachel said when they’d completed their sweep of the top floor, ‘looks like we’ve got the place to ourselves.’
‘Jay, we’ve checked the building, looks clear,’ Sam said into his throat mic.
‘Roger that,’ Jay replied. ‘I’ll take first watch down here for now.’
‘OK, I’ll take over in a couple of hours,’ Sam said. ‘Stay sharp.’
‘Will do.’
Jack made his way over to a window, peering down on to the streets below. ‘I’ll set up here. I can cover this side of the building,’ he said, unslinging the massive rifle from his back and resting its long barrel on the back of a chair. He sat down on the bed and pressed his eye to the scope, scanning the empty street below.
‘We might as well get some rest for a couple of hours,’ Rachel said. ‘Until we have a better idea of what’s going on here, it’s too risky to travel any further into the city during the day.’
‘I suppose,’ Sam said, placing his assault rifle on the bed. ‘It really doesn’t look like anyone’s home, though. Remember what it was like in London before we took the Mothership? The Hunters were everywhere. From what we’ve seen so far there’s no sign they were ever even here.’
‘No sign of Sleepers either,’ Jack said, his eye still pressed to the scope. ‘Place is a ghost town.’
‘Maybe Stirling and the Servant got the calculations wrong on the source of that signal,’ Rachel said with a shrug.
‘Let’s just keep watch for a while and see,’ Sam said.
‘Starting to think we might be on a wild goose chase here,’ Jack said. ‘If there’s no Voidborn, then who exactly was whoever made that transmission fighting with?’
‘Too many questions, not enough answers,’ Rachel said with a sigh, removing her pack and sitting down in the armchair in the corner of the room.
‘No change there, then,’ Sam said.
Sam dozed fitfully for the next couple of hours, until finally it was his turn on watch. He headed back down the stairs to the hotel lobby, where Jay sat in the shadows near the plate-glass windows that looked out on to the street beyond. It was starting to snow again.
‘My turn,’ Sam said as his friend stood up and stretched.
‘Nothing out there,’ Jay said with a slight frown.
‘That’s supposed to be a good thing,’ Sam replied. ‘So why do you look so worried?’
‘Because I mean there is literally nothing out there,’ Jay said, looking back towards the street outside. ‘No birds, no dogs, nothing. You know what it’s like in London with the strays.’
Sam knew exactly what he meant; one of the consequences of the Voidborn attack had been huge numbers of abandoned pet dogs that soon formed large feral packs, a phenomenon that was just one of the reasons that they all still carried weapons when on patrol in London.
‘Could just be the weather,’ Sam said as the snowfall began to intensify outside. ‘They’re probably taking shelter somewhere and waiting for it to pass.’
‘I suppose,’ Jay said, ‘but I can’t shake the feeling that something about this just seems off. Gives me the creeps.’
‘Well, we’ll check the centre of town later and see what we can find,’ Sam said. ‘If it’s as dead there as it is here, we’ll head back to the pick-up point. Maybe Stirling and the Servant will have a better idea of where we should be looking by then. In the meantime, go and try to get a couple of hours’ sleep. We’ll head in as soon as it gets dark.’
‘OK, keep your eyes peeled,’ Jay said with a nod, picking up his pack and slinging his rifle over his shoulder. ‘You see anything you call, OK?’
‘Yes, Mother,’ Sam replied.
‘Hey, if my mum was here, the Voidborn would be the least of your worries,’ Jay replied with a crooked smile.
Sam watched as Jay crossed the lobby, before turning his attention back to the street outside. After he had been watching for nearly half an hour, he started to feel some of the prickling unease that Jay had been talking about. The street outside was as quiet as the grave, a feeling enhanced by the gently falling snow that covered everything in its sound-deadening blanket. There was also this vague whisper at the back of his skull. It was nothing like the strange sensation that he felt when his implant reacted to the presence of the Voidborn – this was different, more like a nagging sense that there was something they’d missed.
Sam shivered. The temperature in the lobby couldn’t have been much above freezing and the wind was beginning to blow in through the front doors, bringing with it flurries of fresh snow. He huddled up inside his heavy coat and tried to focus on what they still had to do. The vague sense of excitement that he had felt earlier at finally being back in action had gone, replaced by a feeling that he had not wanted to experience ever again. The feeling that they were being hunted.
Sam heard the familiar high-pitched whine as his night-vision goggles activated, illuminating the darkened street outside the hotel in shades of green. They had watched and waited all day, but there had been no sign of life,
human or otherwise.
‘OK, let’s go,’ Sam said, heading out of the door and into the street. The wind had dropped but the fresh snowfall had already blown into thick drifts that concealed all sorts of obstacles, and at times the four of them were slowed to a crawl. As they made their way closer to the centre, the buildings around them grew taller, their looming shapes making the ice-bound streets feel almost like valleys in some high mountain range.
A few minutes later Rachel held a clenched fist aloft and the others quickly spread out across the street, taking up cover positions as she pulled a map from her coat pocket.
‘OK, we’re at the west end of Princes Street,’ Rachel said as she looked up from the map at the surrounding buildings. ‘There’s no mistaking that thing.’ In the distance, just visible atop its ancient volcanic crag, outlined against the night sky, was the imposing shape of Edinburgh Castle.
‘There’s nothing here, man,’ Jay said, shaking his head.
‘Even if there was, we’d never find it buried under all this snow,’ Jack said with a sigh.
‘We’ve got a few more hours before we need to head back to the pick-up point,’ Sam said. ‘Let’s take advantage of the time we’ve got and make sure that we don’t miss anything. If there are other people awake here, we have to try to find them. At least we haven’t run into any Voidborn yet.’
‘Starting to wish that we would,’ Jay said, scanning their surroundings. ‘Never thought I’d say that.’
‘Let’s work our way up to the castle and then head back out of the centre,’ Sam said. ‘We need to be out of here before it starts to get light.’
The others fell into line behind him as he walked slowly down the broad road that had once been the busiest street in the city. The abandoned cars were barely visible beneath the snow drifts. The tattered shopfronts looked like cave entrances, their frozen interiors hidden in blackness that even night-vision systems struggled to penetrate. The wind was starting to pick up again and what had once been a persistent but gentle snowfall rapidly transformed into swirling eddies of ice that stung any exposed skin they found. Sam flexed the fingers of his left hand, trying to convince his numb fingers that they wanted to maintain their grip on his rifle. His other, less human hand felt perfectly warm, but then he supposed that now it always would, whatever the conditions.
Sam was peering into the increasingly dense cloud of snow that lay ahead of them, when a hideous, unearthly howl came from nearby. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, somewhere between agony and terror, and it made his gut tense in pure, instinctive fear.
‘What the hell was that?’ Rachel whispered as the four of them sought cover behind the snow-covered vehicles.
‘Nothing good,’ Jay said, his head snapping from side to side as he strained to spot any sign of movement in the rapidly developing blizzard. Another screeching howl came from a different direction, off to their right and then was answered in turn by another somewhere behind them. The hairs on the back of Sam’s neck prickled as he felt a sudden, almost primal fear.
‘We should pull back,’ Rachel said. ‘Whatever that is, we can’t fight in these conditions. We need more cover.’
‘Agreed,’ Sam said with a quick nod.
‘What about in there?’ Jay said quickly, jerking his head towards the frontage of a department store.
Sam quickly weighed up their options. It would be dark in there and they ran the risk of getting trapped, but they had their night-vision goggles and they were far too exposed out here on the street. From somewhere off in the darkness there was another shrieking howl and Sam quickly made a decision.
‘OK,’ he barked, ‘everyone inside. We find a good spot and let whatever’s out there come to us.’
The four of them dashed across the street and inside the gloomy store. They were surrounded by displays for cosmetics and perfumes, all now covered in a fine layer of snow, relics of a lifestyle that seemed like very distant history. They ran past the gaudy displays, weapons raised, heading deeper inside, constantly scanning for any sign of movement or threat.
‘Head upstairs,’ Sam said, pointing over towards the stationary escalators in the middle of the ground floor.
‘You sure?’ Rachel asked, glancing over her shoulder anxiously as more unearthly howls came from outside. Whatever it was that was out there was certainly no pack of feral dogs. ‘We could get trapped up there.’
‘If there are enough Voidborn outside, we could get trapped anywhere,’ Sam replied. ‘We need to find a good firing position, somewhere we can hold out until this storm passes.’
‘Sam’s right,’ Jay said with a nod as they approached the escalators. ‘We don’t stand a chance out there. We need to hunker down.’
‘Well, let’s find some cover fast,’ Jack said, swallowing nervously. ‘Because whatever it is, it’s getting closer.’
The four of them sprinted up the immobile metal staircase, taking the steps two at a time. The next floor was filled with dust-covered racks of clothes and the slightly creepy humanoid silhouettes of mannequins frozen in mid-pose. They ran between the displays, hunting for a place to take cover.
‘There,’ Sam snapped, pointing at the far end of the floor where they could just make out the tables and chairs of a café. Sam led the others through the dining area, leaping over the stainless-steel counter and pushing the swing doors that led to the kitchen open just a crack, enough so that he could see what was on the other side. He surveyed the empty kitchen quickly and then turned back to the others.
‘OK, we set up here,’ he said, gesturing back towards the escalators. ‘If anything comes up, we should have no problem spotting them. If it looks like we’re going to get overrun, then fall back to the kitchen. There’s plenty of cover, and stairs on the other side that give us an escape route if we need it.’
‘Stairs work both ways you know,’ Jack said with a frown as he unfolded the bi-pod from beneath the barrel of his sniper rifle before resting it on top of one of the display cases filled with the grey, desiccated remains of the snacks that the café used to serve. ‘We don’t want to get trapped in here.’
‘I know,’ Sam said. ‘I’ll watch our backs – just get ready to fight.’
Sam fought to keep the nervousness from his voice. He had no idea what was out there, but he did know one thing: it was nothing they’d seen before. If they were going to get out in one piece, they were going to need to keep their heads clear. From somewhere below them they heard a muffled crash, and Sam felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. It had only been a few months since they had last fought the Voidborn, but that didn’t stop the slight tremor in his human hand caused by the sudden rush of adrenalin that was surging through his system.
‘OK,’ Sam whispered as the others took cover behind the counter, their weapons trained on the escalators fifty metres away. ‘Don’t open fire unless you have to. I’d much rather avoid a fight here if we possibly can. We still don’t know where the main Voidborn forces are, but you can bet that a pitched gun battle is going to bring them running.’
‘Gotcha,’ Jay said as Rachel gave a quick nod.
Sam peered out into the darkness, the limited range of his night-vision goggles turning the gloomy shop floor into a confusing jumble of indistinct shadowy objects.
‘You see anything?’ Jay whispered to Jack as he slowly swung the massive sniper rifle left and right, using the thermal-imaging system built into its scope to scan for targets.
‘Nope,’ Jack replied quietly, ‘but it’s gone awfully quiet all of a sudden.’
The howling had stopped. Whatever was downstairs was now moving in silence, hunting them. Sam clicked the safety off on his rifle, his finger slipping inside the guard and curling round the trigger.
‘Movement,’ Jack whispered as he saw something flicker through his sights. Whatever it was, its heat signature was barely visible, nothing like the rainbow hues of a normal person’s thermal image. ‘Definitely not human.’
; Sam sighted down the barrel of his rifle, waiting for a clear shot. There was a flash of movement around the escalators and he had a fleeting glimpse of a humanoid form.
‘You sure about that?’ he whispered to Jack. ‘Looked pretty human to me.’
‘The only people with heat signatures like that are dead people,’ Jack said.
There was a thunderous double bang as Rachel opened fire at something.
‘Definitely humanoid,’ Rachel said, ‘too fast to be human, though.’
She had only glimpsed the figure for a second, just enough time for a pot shot, but whatever she’d fired at had vanished, her bullets passing through empty air.
‘What the hell is th—’
Sam never finished his question as dozens of figures burst from hiding amidst the displays surrounding the escalators and began sprinting at impossible speed towards them. The creatures might once have been human, but now they looked like something from the deepest recesses of a nightmare.
Their swollen, misshapen skulls were elongated and swept back with tiny blackened eyes either side of noses that were little more than two oozing slits in the centre of their faces. Their mouths were lined with five-centimetre-long crystalline teeth, their jaws opening impossibly wide as they howled in unison, signalling their attack. Their naked bodies were covered in black veins that bulged horribly as the creatures sprinted towards them, the long glinting talons at the tips of their spindly fingers outstretched.
Sam felt a fleeting moment of hesitation as his horrified mind tried to make sense of what he was seeing. If these things had ever been human, they had been corrupted beyond recognition.
‘Take them!’ Jay yelled, firing a short burst into the lead creature. The bullets hit the creature in the chest, knocking it spinning off its feet, its twitching body sliding to a halt, its companions not even slowing as they raced past their fallen pack mate.
The four of them opened fire, the constant roar of Sam, Jay and Rachel’s weapons punctuated by the massive booms from Jack’s sniper rifle.
‘On your left,’ Jay yelled at Jack as he saw a flicker of movement in the periphery of his vision. Jack swivelled the rifle on its mount and fired, the massive bullet striking a hole the size of a grapefruit clean through the creature. It fell beside another of its companions, which lay twitching in a pool of black blood.