2021

  ‘The horses all knew where the invisible barrier was’ one man informed them as he made his way through to the other side.

  Stuart overheard him and just shook his head.

  ‘Then we could have just used animals to tell us where the hidden barrier was all along? Oh gosh, why didn’t we think of that?’ he smiled.

  In truth, the whole process took until late into the night until no one else could be found and the order was then given to then close up the defences once more and make them fully secure.

  Just before the walls were sealed though, General Iram suddenly had an idea. He was watching the people all coming through and looking up ahead at the potential battlefield.

  ‘LEAVE ALL THE VEHICLES ON THE OTHER SIDE!’ he ordered.

  ‘I beg your pardon, General?’ queried the sergeant.

  ‘The vehicles will be of no use to us anyway once the Migrators stop them working, so they might just as well form obstacles out there on the battlefield to slow them all down’ he explained.

  ‘That’s a brilliant idea, General’ smiled the sergeant ‘I’ll pass that instruction all along the line’ he nodded.

  ‘Leave them well out though’ added the General ‘we don’t want the Migrators using them to leap over the defence walls.’

  ‘Will do, Sir, I’ll pass that along’ saluted the sergeant before he immediately dashed off.

  As he watched the endless lines of people all moving through, Stuart just shook his head and then just smiled at Tom.

  ‘I don’t know how you knew this, Tom, but you’ve saved an awful lot of lives out there today.’

  ‘We were just lucky, Stuart’ nodded Tom ‘now we need to warn General Iram how the Migrators intend to attack us just before dawn tomorrow. So remember, that means previous to that, you will have no lights with which to even be able to see them coming’ he explained.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ uttered Stuart ‘then we’ll need to tell General Iram straight away!’

  ‘Hold on!’ suddenly interrupted Joan as she now stared at Tom ‘quite how do you know all this stuff?’

  ‘Tom just breathed out a large sigh as he wondered just what to tell them.

  ‘He just does!’ answered Alec. ‘Don’t ask me how he does it, but if he says this will happen, then it will happen’ he insisted.

  ‘Well that’s good enough for me after what you did earlier, Tom’ nodded Stuart ‘I certainly don’t want to take any chances’ he smiled.

  ‘Our only hope then is to set up some traps that will fire off automatically in order to alert our troops and slow the Migrators down. We need to instruct our troops to be ready so the very moment they hear the traps go off they will need to fire off their guns and keep them firing non-stop’ suggested Jack urgently.

  ‘We must go and warn General Iram immediately then’ uttered Stuart as he went to leave.

  Then he paused for a moment.

  ‘But how can I explain to him quite how we know all this?’ he pondered.

  ‘I’ll tell him I know this, because I could see them from the airship and have just worked out their rate of progress’ suggested Jack.

  ‘Excellent!’ nodded Stuart before Jack quickly passed him and then ran off towards General Iram’s tent.

  ‘We’d better get our heads together on working out a way to automatically set off the first line of guns’ suggested Joan urgently.

  ‘Yes and it will have to be something that doesn’t rely upon electricity’ nodded Stuart as they both sat down and began furiously scribbling away on some note pads.

  Jack meanwhile, made it to the General’s tent.

  ‘Oh, hello, Professor’ one of the guards outside greeted him.

  ‘I need to speak to the General urgently’ insisted Jack.

  ‘The General has turned in for night you’ll have to come back tomorrow’ insisted the army guard.

  ‘If I don’t speak to him right now, there may not be any tomorrow’ Jack stated firmly.

  Reluctantly, the guard let him through.

  The General was just studying his maps as usual and he looked up at Jack as he briskly walked in.

  ‘General, I have just worked out the Migrator’s progress from my latest airship observations’ explained Jack urgently. ‘If the Migrators continue at their current speed they will hit us just before dawn tomorrow!’

  ‘DAMN!’ uttered the General ‘then we must get ready for them.’

  ‘There’s more, General’ explained Stuart ‘there is strong evidence that as the Migrators advance, so they will extend their dead zone to prevent our electricity from working.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’ queried General Iram.

  ‘It means, when they first strike us early tomorrow, it will be in total darkness!’ explained Stuart.

  ‘GOD DAMN THESE THINGS!’ cursed the General ‘THEN WHAT CAN WE DO?’ he uttered banging his fist down on the table in front of him in frustration.

  ‘I thought, General, I mean, my friends are now working on a system whereby we set traps, so the moment the Migrators reach us all our guns automatically fire off’ suggested Stuart.

  ‘Can we do that?’ asked the General.

  ‘We’re not sure at the moment’ Jack admitted ‘it may work on a simple trip wire or similar’ he suggested ‘but once our troops hear the guns fire they will then have to just keep them firing non-stop from then on’ urged Jack.

  ‘BRILLIANT! THEN LET’S GET GOING!’ shouted the General as he stormed out with Jack struggling to keep up with him.

  Just outside, they met both Joan and Stuart who explained they had worked out a way to quickly set up a serious of bells the Migrators would trigger off.

  ‘We can use all the vehicles you ordered to be left out there, General and string together either rope or metal wire between them, putting bells and things on them’ explained Stuart.

  ‘If we have metal wire the Migrator’s idea of attacking in total darkness may even backfire on them, as at the speed they travel it could seriously injure them running into it!’ suggested Joan with a smile.

  ‘Excellent!’ smiled General Iram ‘alert all the men!’ the General then ordered as using a sophisticated method of banging a spoon onto a saucepan, the guard alerted all the troops all around them.

  ‘RIGHT NOW LISTEN HERE! I WANT EVERY AVAILABLE MAN ON THIS!’ he shouted and the General then explained what needed to be done.

  As Stuart went to walk away General Iram grabbed his arm.

  ‘General?’ he queried.

  ‘I’d been thinking, Professor Keys, is it possible for you to work out the exact angle the guns would need to be at where the trucks we left out there all are?’

  ‘Yes, possibly, I expect my daughter could do it’ Stuart nodded ‘why, General, what have you in mind?’

  ‘I was thinking of the old English archers’ nodded General Iram. ‘They all used to fly all the arrows high into the air to make an instant strike and cause casualties that actually slowed their enemies advance. Could we not do the same? It would mean altering the angle of the guns and then putting them back down again?’

  ‘I’ll get my daughter and Jack onto it, General’ replied Stuart ‘actually, that’s a brilliant suggestion, General’ smiled Stuart.

  ‘Just sound military tactics’ smiled General Iram before they both had to rush off.

  Stuart and Joan between them designed a simple trip wire system that could be set up all along the front line, to stretch between the vehicles they had left out in what would eventually be the battlefield and very quickly the word was passed all along the front line for everyone to set up the same. Then it became a race against time to get them all set up before morning.

  All along the line manually operated sirens had also been set up, so the moment any part of the line was attacked or the alarm wire had been triggered, everyone would know to then commence firing!

  Jenny
, after being supplied the necessary information from Jack quickly calculated the distance and so the angle the guns would have to be changed to for their initial strike to work, whilst all the Captains in charge had already established a way to correctly check the position of the guns to return them back to normal again.

  All the troops slept where they planned to fight and make their stand against the Migrators first thing in the morning. Remembering they could well find themselves fighting in pitch darkness, they positioned themselves carefully so they could feel their way around the guns and find their ammunition easily to hand.

  This was to be the beginning of the war against the Migrators, a war that could decide the fate of the entire human race!

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Day Twenty Four:

  30th January 2021

  The International

  Fortress Defence Wall

  Just Outside San Diego,

  United States/Mexico Border.

  It was a really restless sleep everyone had that night.

  General Iram had ordered all lights to be left on, especially all along the front line, so the moment the Migrators extended their dead zone to include their defence wall, the International Defence Army would then know.

  Stuart, Joan and Jack had stayed up even later whilst they began to wind down a little, but also Joan wanted to share an idea she had thought up.

  ‘Looking at our guns and thinking about if the Migrators begin to fly, I came up with this idea’ she explained. ‘I know it’s too late for us now, but maybe if we survive this we could use it later if we need to?’

  She then showed Jack and Stuart a rough sketch she had done.

  ‘I see’ nodded Stuart as he looked at it ‘mounting the gun up on a turntable and using two small air pressure engines to control it, it could moved around.’

  ‘I see and the guns move up and down and using much shorter foot long arrows we could have a magazine of ten to twenty missiles allowing rapid fire before needing reloading. This is just brilliant, Joan’ smiled Jack ‘I wish we had this now.’

  ‘I was just thinking about how we could shoot them down in the air’ Joan nodded.

  ‘Beautiful and very smart’ nodded Stuart as he smiled at her.

  ‘Anyway, we’d all better get some sleep’ smiled Joan ‘before it all kicks off’ and both Stuart and Jack nodded their heads in agreement.

  In truth though, knowing the Migrators could begin their attack on them at virtually any moment no one was really able to sleep at all, not a single wink.

  Stuart just lay awake in his compartment. Then he quietly called out to Jack who was in the compartment next to his.

  ‘Jack, are you awake?’ he whispered.

  ‘Yes, I can’t sleep’ Jack replied.

  ‘I was just thinking, if they extend the dead zone, wouldn’t we all be disintegrated?’ pondered Stuart.

  ‘Maybe’ replied Jack ‘I don’t know how it works.’

  ‘No, me neither’ replied Stuart.

  ‘Maybe we’d all be better off anyway, I mean if that happened, at least it would be quick’ pondered Jack quietly.

  ‘What do you mean, Jack?’ puzzled Stuart.

  ‘Well, given the choice, I think I’d rather be instantly disintegrated in my sleep than devoured by a Migrator.’

  ‘Quite’ agreed Stuart.

  Both Alec and Tom had been left to sleep in the main living area of the tent and they couldn’t sleep either.

  Then around 4 a.m. all the lights around the camp suddenly went out!

  Stuart instantly sat up on his camp bed and reached for his cigarette lighter.

  It wouldn’t light!

  ‘Christ!’ he uttered in shock ‘it’s started!’

  All the troops on the front line now sat there on full alert, just waiting for any sound of an alarm bell having been tripped.

  Then, just before 5 a.m. one sounded and quickly others followed!

  ‘COMMENCE FIRING!’ An army Captain shouted as troops began firing off their guns as the sirens immediately sounded all along the front line!

  Instantly, Stuart and the others all sat up startled.

  The very first salvo of shots were all fired high into the air by every single gun, exactly how Jenny had worked them out, then they were very quickly lowered to their correct angles once again.

  Outside on the front line, the guns were now firing off in strict order so that as one team reloaded their gun, then the next would fire and so on, and the same was being done by every team of every nationality all the way down the line! The result was exactly as Stuart had predicted as it formed a non-stop salvo of missiles!

  Each Army Captain was in charge of his own section and there were hundreds of sections all along the wall defences, consisting of almost as many troops from as many different nationalities.

  They were all working completely blind having to fumble around for the ammunition and feel their way for the loading chambers and release triggers.

  As the hundreds of thousands of missiles now rained down onto the Migrators, frightening screams could be heard all the way down the line as literally hundreds of thousands of Migrators had either been killed running into the hidden alarm wires or had been struck by the hundreds of thousands of metal missiles as they suddenly come raining down on them!

  Soon, the very first loud screams were heard as they approached closer to the defences, as the first Migrators were struck and impaled by the flying missiles! Their screams of pain became almost deafening as they got closer and then just gave out one loud high pitched squeal before they finally dropped down dead!

  Jenny just put her hands over her ears as she just cried in terror!

  ‘DAD, WHAT’S THAT TERRIBLY SOUND?’ she screamed as Stuart just stumbled around in the dark and tripped over as he ran to hold her in his arms.

  ‘I think that’s the sound of the Migrators themselves’ he told her.

  ‘God, what a horrific sound!’ commented Joan as they now all sat in the complete pitch dark in their large tent.

  Meanwhile, the sound the guns themselves being fired, were surprisingly noisy. Stuart had expected them to be relatively quiet as no explosives were being used. It would seem though that although not explosive by their nature, the sound of thousands of these guns firing was none the less explosive and quite deafening in fact now!

  Using the tactic first employed by the British infantry as the first line of guns fired and then reloaded, then another line would then fire off and so on, so a non-stop salvo of missiles impaled thousands upon thousands of the giant creatures and temporarily halted their advance!

  The Migrators had been completely caught by surprise by the sheer ingenuity of the human’s defences.

  Not for long though, as a second and much stronger wave of Migrators now came and their screams now became even more deafening as the battle now really began in earnest!

  People had suddenly been awakened in their beds and they now just sat there and trembled as they huddled together in the dark, as the terrifying cries of the Migrators just filled the air all around the camp.

  The armies of the world meanwhile just worked flat out in the pitch dark to keep the huge creatures at bay!

  Soldiers and even civilians now relayed a non-stop supply of ammunition to the guns as they continued to work completely blind.

  Having carefully laid out their ammunition however, they were able to find new missiles quite easily to hand, although not being able to see had slowed the reloading of the guns.

  Stuart, Joan, Jack, Alec, Jenny, Tom and Andre just remained in their tent as they just listened to the now terrifying sounds coming from the defences just a short distance away.

  Suddenly there was a loud roar from one of the larger Migrators but no one even knew quite where it was!

  ‘Oh, Dad, I can’t stand this!’ cried Jenny as Alec felt his way to hold her han
d.

  ‘The very moment the dawn arrives we must head for the airship!’ stated Jack urgently.

  ‘Blimey, it can’t come too soon for me’ uttered Alec in panic.

  ‘But how can they see in the dark, the Migrators I mean?’ questioned Joan.

  ‘I don’t know’ admitted Stuart ‘it’s just yet another weapon they have in their arsenal I guess’ he surmised.

  ‘Yeah, like they haven’t got enough already’ moaned Jack.

  Soon the high pitched screams of the Migrators were now mingling with the screams of wounded men on the front line and now Jenny just began to cry as she tried to cover her ears!

  ‘I was going to leave you behind in the camp, Jenny, thinking it was somehow safer, but I think you’d better come with us’ Stuart informed her. ‘There’s no way I could leave you here on your own in this’ he uttered.

  ‘This is like something from a bloody nightmare!’ uttered Alec in shock.

  Suddenly there was a terrifying human scream that sounded really close by them and it was followed by a deafening Migrator roar!

  ‘Oh God, I wish it would just get light!’ cried Andre ‘how can we fight in the dark like this?’

  ‘Just sit tight everyone, it can’t be much longer now’ commented Stuart positively.

  Just then though, Jack began to get excited. He was now seated right by the exit of the tent just staring out into the blackness.

  ‘LOOK! THERE’S SOME DAYLIGHT! GET READY TO RUN FOR THE AIRSHIP EVERYONE!’ he suddenly shouted as they all instantly jumped to their feet.

  Soon they were all stumbling their way out of the large tent and following Jack as best they could as they made their way towards the airship in the very dim light of the early dawn, as the noise of the fighting now became even louder and even more terrifying!

  The mixture of sounds consisting of both men and Migrators screaming was shocking now and was truly nightmarish!

  ‘It’s still not very light, but at least I can now see where I’m going’ uttered Jack, followed by an immediate ‘OWWWW!’ as he instantly fell over something in the darkness.