The scent of food – good food – touched her nostrils as soon as she stepped through the door. She was looking down a long flight of steps into a ballroom decorated in a style that screamed wealth, fame, and a complete lack of taste. Gold and silver decorations were scattered everywhere. The crowd below seemed primarily composed of fat men with poorly-fitting suits and women clinging onto their arms. A handful of women were on their own, clearly powers in their own right, but most of the women seemed to be little better than prostitutes, or desperate. A swimming pool, of all things, occupied one corner, filled with young men and women wearing tiny costumes, when they wore costumes at all. Karen found herself blushing and had to look away. She’d had her own sexual adventures when she’d matured, but nothing like the…orgy that was going on down below. It stunned her…
And yet there was something odd about it. There was a faint air of desperation in the air, a sense that the crowd knew that something was wrong, that the wolf was at the door…and that if they concentrated enough on the good things, the wolf would fade away through sheer ignorance. Karen followed Daisy as she led her down the steps and into the ballroom, where she was given a glass of bubbly by a maid wearing the briefest of outfits, trying to keep her face under control. The tables groaned under the sheer weight of food, food that was desperately needed by the people outside. Had Paris looked like this, she wondered, on the eve of the French Revolution?
“You must meet some of these people,” Daisy said, and led her from person to person. They all blurred together in Karen’s mind, a progression of businessmen, politicians and even a handful of foreign ambassadors. The latter seemed to take a certain amount of pleasure in watching the downfall, sharing smirks from time to time at America’s disgrace. The businessmen were more concerned with getting their people back to work and rebuilding the country. The politicians seemed concerned about their own power and position. None of them impressed her as much as President Chalk had impressed her, back when the world had made sense. “They’re all going to shape the new America.”
Karen kept her thoughts to herself as Daisy finally led her over to the buffet table. Her mouth was salivating in anticipation as a maid passed her a plate and invited her to help herself. There were little pieces of French bread, with sliced ham, beef, chicken and turkey, with salad and sauces. There were steaming pots of stew and curry, surrounded by smaller bowls of rice and other dishes. It was a feast unlike anything she’d seen before the invasion, yet…it was odd. Several of the guests were clearly making return trips to the food, but it never seemed to run out. A maid brought in a plate of tiny cakes and the guests gathered around her, taking as many as they could carry in their hands.
“Tell me something,” she said, slowly. “Where does all of this come from?”
“The food comes from warehouses and suchlike,” Daisy said, vaguely. “The People and their assistants requisitioned it for their own use and stored it until it was needed. In the long term, the farms will be pushed into producing much more food to keep the country going and feed our new population.”
Karen saw the implications at once. “They can eat our food?”
“Yes,” Daisy said. “They seem to have something of a problem with alcohol, but they can eat pretty much anything else. In fact…”
She broke off. “Look,” she added. “That’s one of the aliens in person.”
Karen followed her gaze. A single alien, inhumanly tall and thin, was making his – or her – way through the room. He was coming right towards her and, as he moved, the crowd seemed to shift around him as if they couldn’t stand to be too close to the alien. The horde of sycophants and collaborators seemed to be trying to talk to the alien, yet the alien was ignoring them, or so it seemed. The massive dark lidless eyes looked deep into hers and she felt dizzy. She had never been so close to an alien before.
“Welcome to our service,” the alien said. He had a faintly unpleasant voice, as if he was talking through water. “Your service will be richly rewarded.”
“Thank you,” Karen stammered. Her legs were unsteady and she would have collapsed if Daisy hadn’t put a hand on her arm. The alien had looked at her and left her feeling naked and vulnerable. “I live to serve.”
The alien seemed to take it at face value. “You have served us well already,” he informed her. “Your service in the future will be appreciated.” One inhuman hand made a motion towards the plate of food she carried. “Eat, drink, enjoy our bounty. Tomorrow, the real work begins.”
He departed, leaving Karen staring after it. “Why…?”
“Ethos wanted to meet you in person,” Daisy said. “That alien is the leader of their entire race.”
Karen stared at her, disbelieving. “Really?”
“Apparently,” Daisy said. “They don’t seem to think the same way we think.”
A bell rang before she could say anything else. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” a voice said. An alien stood on a podium at the head of the room. It seemed to be a different caste from Ethos, which meant…what? “I present to you the new leader of this country, President Jacob Thornton!”
Karen felt her mouth drop open and she closed it with a snap. Jacob Thornton had been the Vice President under Chalk, a man she’d never met. She couldn’t believe that Chalk had chosen a collaborator to serve under him, yet the evidence seemed unmistakable until he started to speak. His voice was flat and tired, as if he couldn’t even muster the energy to lie. He spoke as if he were speaking against his will.
My God, Karen thought. All around her, the collaborators were cheering their new leader. If they realised what had happened to him, they showed no sign of caring. What have they done to him?
Chapter Three
Mannington, Virginia, USA
Day 97
The bunker dated from the Cold War era. It was cramped, with barely enough room to swing a cat, decorated in a style that was oppressive at best and unpleasant at worst. The handful of modern computers and communications equipment that had been recently installed in the bunker only added to the sense of general depression and isolation. It was easy to believe, in the bunker, that the universe had shrunk down to the tiny complex and the real world only existed as a figment of imagination.
President Andrew Chalk found it maddening. After the flight from Washington – and the successful destruction of one of the massive alien command ships over Washington – the small party had eventually reached Mannington, a small town in Virginia. Mannington was, like many other small rural towns, intensely patriotic and conservative, populated by residents who muttered suspiciously when the government’s name was invoked. The President had grown up in a nearby town – he was the town’s most favourite son, according to the billboards – and in some ways coming to Mannington was like coming home. He’d never spent time in a bunker as a child, of course, and just knowing that his home town was nearby was somehow worse than being isolated. He could have walked home in a few hours, except that that would have risked exposure and captivity. The aliens would be keeping an eye on his home town, expecting him to show up.
Assuming, of course, that they care, he thought, studying the latest intelligence reports from Washington. The alien lockdown continued despite the crashed ship and the devastation strewn in its wake, leaving the handful of observers in the city dangerously exposed if they were captured. The aliens had handed out ID Cards as they registered the humans within the lockdown, organising them into work forces and deploying them at will. The reports suggested that more and more humans were turning to collaboration as a relief from serving the aliens in other ways. The President hated the thought of any American – any human – serving an alien power, yet he had to admit that it was more than likely. The UFO nuts had been telling people for years that, one day, powerful aliens would arrive to set the world to rights. They probably felt vindicated when the aliens crushed the military-industry complex and occupied Washington, believing that the aliens came in peace. The President couldn’t allow himself suc
h delusions. In his nightmares, he remembered the first visit to the alien mothership and the alien leader’s quiet statement.
“We want your planet…”
The bunker itself was supposed to be completely off the books, although the President knew better than to take that for granted. It had been originally built during the Kennedy years as an emergency fallback position for some elements of the government and placed in the care of a very patriotic and loyal family. The only record of its existence lay with the Secret Service, who had kept it on a contingency plan that no one had ever expected to have to use. The bunker had internet access and enough stored food to last a handful of people a year, yet it wasn't a command bunker and it wasn't secure. Mannington was a small town. Even if everyone took arms, the aliens could still blow their way through the defences and capture him, if they knew that he was there. He had to assume that he was still Number One on their capture list. They’d want him to give a veneer of respectability to their conquest.
He looked down at the reports and winced. The aliens continued to land in America – and North Africa – and were expanding the area they directly controlled. Most of the major cities and population centres were in some kind of lockdown, with alien forces surrounding them and preventing people from leaving, often with lethal force. There were reports of thousands of skirmishes on the internet, with the aliens sometimes taking losses – sometimes even losing fights and allowing people to escape – but always sealing the gap and regaining control. Some of the reports were unbelievable, some were depressing and some…were just absurd. He doubted that the aliens were genuinely interested in kidnapping thousands of human women and transporting them to the mothership, not when they were working desperately to get as many aliens as they could off the mothership. Their willingness to get as many of their people down to Earth as possible, even at risk of human attack, suggested that they’d been telling the truth and their life support really had been pushed to the limit. They seemed to be willing to tolerate population densities that no human society would tolerate for long, yet they were still expanding the areas they were controlling directly and pushing humans out. It wouldn’t be long before they had vast swathes of Flyover Country permanently under their control.
The map told a chilling story. The aliens had established massive bases in Utah, Wyoming and North and South Dakota. They’d probably expand into the other thinly populated states over the next few months, even though they were apparently running into heavy human resistance. The Mormons in Salt Lake City were armed to the teeth and determined to resist the alien landings, even though the aliens had sealed off the city and barred any human from leaving. The fighting was spreading out of control, yet it would always be a low-level conflict, unless the human race somehow unlocked the secrets of alien technology and fought back. He remembered the hidden nuclear submarines, with their deadly cargos, waiting for targets. Even if they all fired on the alien settlements, the aliens would probably shoot down all the missiles before they could detonate. It was hard to remain optimistic in the bunker. His surroundings pushed at his mind, convincing him that there was no hope, not even a chance of escape into civilian life.
They’d told him that the President was a symbol, the Head of State as well as the Head of Government. The President’s word counted, they’d said; his orders to surrender would be accepted, if he issued such orders. He had no illusions about his treatment if he fell into alien hands, or his ability to resist. They’d have him ordering a surrender within a few days, unless he managed to kill himself first – of course, with their technology, they could probably create a virtual President and have him issue the order to surrender. The people probably wouldn’t be able to tell the difference; hell, he wasn't sure if there was a difference. There were times when the President’s job consisted of little more than patting people on the head and promising them that it was all going to be fine. He knew better. It wasn't going to be fine at all.
The collaborators – the Quislings, an old word dusted off and put back into service – certainly felt that nothing was ever going to be the same again. There were reports of thousands of people serving the aliens now, from political leaders who probably felt that they had no choice, to people who could have walked away and done nothing. The aliens had put out an announcement, a day after their landings, and ordered all bureaucrats to return to service, with an implied or else. Thousands had gone back to work in the cities, trying to sort out the chaos caused by the landing…and, just incidentally, make it easier for the aliens to maintain control. The President had been flabbergasted to discover just how much information was held by the government on each and every citizen, even – perhaps especially – on those who were trying to remain unnoticed. The information had been ordered destroyed, but in the chaos of the final days of the war, it was quite possible that much of it remained intact. The aliens would be able to use it to find other collaborators, or resistance fighters. They might even be able to use it to find him!
There was no way to know for sure. The bunker should have been wiped from the records and the computer hard drives destroyed, but what if they hadn’t been? What if the aliens had captured the Pentagon records intact? There were several sets of duplicates stored within Washington DC and the aliens might have stumbled across them, or perhaps their Quislings might have pointed them in the right direction. They might even have located the network of bunkers, storage points and weapons dumps that had been established towards the end of the war. What if they were already on their way? He shook his head angrily. There was no point in worrying about what might be going on in alien minds. It was a sure route to madness.
He looked back down at the computer and sighed. The internet was still running, mercifully, but no one expected that to last. The main trunk lines over America and the rest of the world still worked, allowing him to send messages to the resistance, yet no matter how much he wished to do so, he couldn’t take direct command. How could he? The aliens might be able to use it to trace him back to the bunker, or round up the other insurgent groups. Semi-leaderless resistance was the only way forward, but he knew that coordinating thousands of different insurgent groups would be difficult, if not impossible. No insurgency had ever driven a determined occupation force out, ever. The key to winning an insurgency lay in breaking the enemy’s will to carry on the fighting and how could they do that to the aliens? The logic of the situation seemed inescapable. The aliens had nowhere else to go. They couldn’t break off and abandon Earth.
Bastards, he thought, tiredly. Pepper was running late and that was worrying. Only one person outside the small protective force knew that he was in Mannington, yet there were plenty of other things that could have happened to her. The irony gnawed at him. Once, he’d been an Army officer with a promising career ahead of him. Now, he lurked in a bunker, afraid to show his face. He was dependent upon her and he knew it. If it wasn't for her…
***
The residents of Mannington all seemed to wear the same solemn expression, Pepper noted, trying to ignore the glances that followed her as she walked back to the house. They made her nervous, not because they were lustful male glances, but because they were clearly wondering who the stranger was in their midst. Small towns tended to be more than a little clannish and suspicious of outsiders, even at the best of time. Three months ago, the residents might have been mistrustful of the Federal Government, even as they staunchly upheld the values of American civilisation. Now…now there were aliens in Washington and collaborators appearing everywhere. They would be fearful of anyone who might upset the balance and attract the aliens to their town.
In the distance, she knew, the residents had set up roadblocks, intent on keeping looters and refugees out of their town. The aliens might have put the main cities into lockdown, but tens of thousands of people had fled before the aliens landed, camping out in the countryside or hiring hotels in small towns. With money increasingly worthless and supplies at risk of running short, local towns and villages
were taking desperate measures to protect themselves, even at risk of breaking the law. It had once been illegal to set up roadblocks without permission. She doubted that the aliens would care enough to force Mannington’s local defence force to take them down. In some ways, it helped – the last thing she wanted was an influx of people who might threaten the President’s safety. In other ways, it was a nuisance. If food and supplies really started to run short, she knew the visitors and guests would be the first to be evicted and sent out into the countryside to die.
She caught sight of Sheriff Chris French and waved at him, noting how enthusiastically he waved back. French’s family had been in secret government service for over sixty years – his grandfather had been a Secret Service agent – and they’d been entrusted with the secret of the bunker. He was the only person in Mannington who knew about the President’s presence and wouldn’t breathe a word to a soul. He was also organising the teenage males from the High School into a small army for when the aliens or their collaborators finally came to call, although Pepper suspected that they’d be wiser not to resist openly. The aliens had wiped the floor with the most formidable military force in history. They wouldn’t have any problems destroying Mannington and, without even knowing what they had done, killing the President. Perhaps they thought he was dead already. It might explain the absence of a concentrated search effort.
There was nothing particularly special about the house, save only that its door looked thicker than normal. A team of experts had designed it years ago and installed all kinds of concealed defences – Pepper had been astonished when she’d first read the briefing papers – and since then, it had been nothing more than a holiday home, at least on the surface. She stepped inside and, out of habit, went through the entire house before slipping down into the basement and through the secret door that led to the bunker. She pressed her fingertips against the sensor and smiled in relief as it accepted her identity. It wouldn’t have been the first time that a highly complex piece of software had failed for no apparent reason, or proven impossible to fix.
Outside Context Problem: Book 02 - Under Foot Page 3