Earthfall (16 page)

‘OK, if it’ll stop you worrying like a little old lady,’ Sam said with a smile, taking the gun and tucking it into the waistband of his trousers in the small of his back, where it was hidden by his T-shirt.

Sam turned back to the window, slid the heavy wooden frame upwards and climbed through. He landed silently on the pavement outside and watched the back of the patrolling Grendel for a few seconds as it continued up the street. As soon as the giant creature was far enough away, Sam sprinted across the road and climbed quickly over the railings surrounding the park. He landed in the bushes on the other side and waited for a moment before creeping forward through the foliage until he could peek through the leaves at what lay beyond. There were twenty metres of open ground covered in overgrown grass between him and the crater but there were also, thankfully, no Hunters hovering nearby. He took a deep breath and ran towards the edge of the crater. When he was just a few metres from the drop, he threw himself forward, landing flat on his belly in the long grass. He crawled carefully up to the edge and peeked over. Below him a group of Walkers was working at the rock face, pickaxes and sledgehammers slowly breaking up the stone and soil, while other blank-faced people shovelled the rubble into wheelbarrows and tubs, which they slowly pushed or dragged away towards the centre of the crater.

Sam heard a faint buzzing inside his head and looked around quickly. Off to his left, he saw a group of Walkers escorted by a single Hunter walking in his direction along the edge of the crater. There was no time for hesitation. He dropped over the edge of the crater, sliding on his back down the loose soil and gravel and landing in the middle of the group working to expand the crater. Just as he had hoped, none of the people paid him the slightest attention; instead they just remained totally focused on their tasks.

Sam got slowly to his feet and looked around, doing his best to mimic the blank, emotionally neutral expression that all the Walkers shared. He saw a large plastic tub nearby and slowly walked over to it. He saw a woman carrying a similar container approach a man who was shovelling up the rubble produced by the people working on the crater wall. Sam followed her, waiting patiently as the man shovelled dirt into her tub before stepping forward and having his container filled as well. Once the tub was full Sam set off after the woman, following her but maintaining a steady pace, his eyes staring ahead, desperately resisting the urge to look around. He knew if there was one thing that might alert a Hunter to his real state of mind it would be any indication of simple human curiosity.

He followed the woman deeper and deeper into the construction site as she headed towards a huge opening, ten metres tall, in the wall of one of the outermost black structures. They walked inside and entered a cavernous space lined on all sides with machines that looked like enormous high-tech furnaces – black cylinders three metres across with a large square opening in the front that glowed with a pale purple light. Hovering in the air in the centre of the area was a single Hunter, its multifaceted eyes twitching and rotating as it surveyed the activity below. Beneath the creature, dozens of Walkers queued at each furnace, taking turns dumping the soil and gravel that they carried into the glowing portals before walking back the way they’d come, presumably to retrieve another load. Sam followed suit, waiting his turn and dutifully tipping the box full of rubble he was carrying into the machine. The light within flared more brightly for a second and there was a short sharp hiss as the rocks and soil vaporised, filling the air around him with a faint, acrid odour. He turned and walked under the floating Hunter, silently praying that he had not done anything that might attract its attention. He headed back the way he’d just come and caught sight of the woman he’d been following before, on her way back to make another collection. He trailed her for a minute or so, but as he passed a dark, partially constructed section of the Threat structure he turned ninety degrees to his left and walked straight into the waiting shadows. Once he was out of sight he put the waste container on the ground and waited, ears straining for any sound of pursuing Hunters. After thirty seconds or so he let out a relieved sigh.

‘OK,’ Sam muttered to himself, ‘now let’s see if we can work out just what these alien creeps are up to.’

He crept further inside, walking down a darkened, half-finished corridor towards a dim light that was coming from round a corner. He could hear a faint tapping noise as he approached and he turned the corner to find a brainwashed man working alone, bolting a panel to the wall. Sam walked past him, heading still deeper into the structure. He walked for fifteen minutes, following the same corridor, feeling that he was now on a very gradual downward slope and the air in the corridor seemed to be getting warmer and drier.

Suddenly, he felt a buzzing in his skull and a few seconds later he heard the sound of approaching Hunters. He quickly ran back up the corridor and ducked into a gloomy side passage, crouching in the shadows behind a column of pipes as the sounds of the Hunters got nearer and nearer. From his hiding place he saw several Hunters race down the main corridor and back out the way he had just come. As the sound of the Hunters faded into the distance, Sam came out from behind the pipes. Just as he was about to walk back out into the corridor a bulkhead hissed down from the ceiling and slammed shut with a clang, blocking his path. Sam turned back towards the darkened passage behind him as the lights in the ceiling lit up one by one, creating a path for him.

‘Well, this can’t be good,’ Sam said to himself. The lights along the corridor continued to switch on just ahead of him. He hoped that it might be some sort of automated system, but he had a horrible feeling that it wasn’t. He suddenly felt very much like a lab rat trapped in a maze. He walked down the corridor for a couple more minutes. The air around was still growing steadily warmer and the persistent throbbing rumble that he had heard all night was louder. The end of the corridor came into view, sealed by a heavy metal door. The bulkhead hissed open as he approached and he was hit by a wave of stifling heat and deafening noise. He walked through the door and found himself standing on a gantry running along the wall of an enormous room. Above him, mounted on the ceiling, was an enormous spherical machine, at least a hundred metres in diameter, its surface pulsing with the same green light that he had seen lighting up the exterior of the structure. Hanging from the bottom of the machine was a semi-transparent crystalline barrel that seemed to be focusing the sizzling, green beam that speared out of the machine and down into the pit below. Sam stepped up to the railing at the edge of the gantry and felt a moment of dizzying vertigo as he stared down into the vast chasm, its bottom filled with bubbling magma, hundreds of metres below him. The heat that filled the air was rising up from the vast geological wound that this machine had torn in the surface of the Earth. Sam could not help but feel a sense of awe as he tried to take in the monumental scale of the machine and the immense power that it was channelling. A movement further along the gantry suddenly caught Sam’s attention.

Standing there was a man in a white linen suit with long curly dark hair that was streaked with grey. He was staring straight at Sam and there was a cryptic smile on his face. He pulled what looked like a mobile phone out of the inside pocket of his suit and spoke into it for a few seconds, even though Sam knew that was impossible. The entire cellular network had stopped working just days after the Threat had arrived. The man finished his brief conversation and placed the phone back in his pocket. Sam turned back towards the open door behind him, but a split second later it slid shut with a solid thunk. Reluctantly, he turned back towards the mysterious stranger and the man beckoned for Sam to follow him before walking along the gantry towards a door at the far end. Sam followed the man into a tastefully decorated office, completely at odds with the alien architecture. The man sat down behind the antique desk that stood in the middle of the room and gestured for Sam to take the seat opposite.

‘Who are you?’ Sam asked, fighting to remain calm despite the feeling of panic in his gut.

‘I think I’ll ask the questions, my young friend,’ the man replied with a smile. ‘Please, sit.’

‘No, thanks,’ Sam said, pulling the concealed pistol from the small of his back and levelling it at the stranger. ‘Now, why don’t you answer my question. Who are you?’

‘Oh, how very disappointing. I was hoping for slightly more than an adolescent thug waving a gun around,’ the man said, still smiling. ‘My name is Oliver Fletcher, and I assume you’re part of the resistance group that has been such a thorn in our side recently.’

‘What’s that thing out there?’ Sam asked, ignoring Fletcher’s question. ‘What are the Threat building here?’

‘The Threat?’ Fletcher laughed. ‘Is that what your pathetic little band of freedom fighters is calling them? Their true name is unpronounceable in our language, but the name they have given themselves in English is the Voidborn and this planet is and always has been theirs.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Sam demanded, keeping his gun trained on Fletcher.

‘We’re just caretakers,’ Fletcher said, his smile suddenly fading, ‘an engineered workforce that will help with the harvest when the time comes. That’s all we’ve ever been.’

‘And I’m supposed to believe that, am I?’ Sam snapped at Fletcher. ‘Coming from someone who’s actually working
with
these things.’

‘You can believe whatever you wish,’ Fletcher said with a shrug. ‘It makes no difference to me or indeed to the ultimate fate of the Earth. Now, I’d really appreciate it if you told me absolutely everything you know about your comrades-in-arms. Shall we start with the location of whatever rock they’re hiding under?’

‘In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m the one with the gun,’ Sam said.

‘A gun which you’re going to give to me,’ Fletcher said, reaching forward and touching a crystalline disc in the centre of the desk. ‘Or I shall have my sentries rip your friend to pieces right in front of your eyes.’ The air above the crystal disc shimmered for a second and then solidified into a three-dimensional projection of Jay standing between two Hunters, their tentacles wrapped round his arms. ‘Did you really think that you would be able to get within a hundred metres of this facility without being detected? I’ve been watching your every move for the past half an hour.’

‘Call off your Hunters and let Jay go or I put a bullet in your skull,’ Sam said, cocking the hammer on his pistol.

‘Hunters? Yes, I suppose that’s what they must seem like to you,’ Fletcher said. ‘No, I won’t tell the Hunters to release your friend. What’s actually going to happen, is that you’re going to put your gun down, so that we can continue your interrogation in a more civilised manner.’ Sam felt a sudden buzzing in his head and the door behind him hissed open. Three Hunters floated into the room, the barrels of the energy weapons mounted in their upper carapaces glowing with green light. ‘You
can
still shoot me, of course. You may very well kill me,’ Fletcher said, ‘but then these Hunters will vaporise you where you stand and your friend will die in agony.’ His voice turned suddenly cold, a look of pure malevolence filling his eyes. ‘Now put the gun
down
!’ The last word was a barked command, not a request.

Sam hesitated for a moment. It would be so easy to squeeze the trigger, but what would that achieve? Jackson’s words echoed through his mind.

Frightened but alive beats brave and dead every time.

Sam uncocked the pistol and laid it on the desk in front of him.

‘You see,’ Fletcher said, the smile returning to his face, ‘that wasn’t so hard, was it?’

Fletcher stood up and walked round the desk. He closed his eyes for a second and the buzzing that Sam could feel in his head was joined by a whispering voice, speaking in an unintelligible language. Immediately, the two Hunters wrapped their tentacles round Sam’s upper arms, their grip painfully tight.

Fletcher walked towards the door, which hissed open as he approached, with the Hunters dragging Sam along behind him.

‘This is only the beginning,’ Fletcher said as they walked up a broad corridor lined with black techno-organic panels, illuminated with patterns of flickering green light. ‘Soon facilities just like this one will have been built in every corner of the world. Everything will be ready for their arrival.’

‘Whose arrival?’ Sam asked.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise,’ Fletcher said. ‘Don’t worry, you and your friends won’t be around to see it anyway, so it really doesn’t concern you.’

‘Why would you do this?’ Sam said. ‘Why would you cooperate with these, what did you call them, Voidborn?’

‘The oldest reason in the book,’ Fletcher replied. ‘Survival.’

They walked towards a huge pair of double doors made from the same matt black material that covered the outside of the Voidborn structure. These slowly rumbled apart and the corridor was filled with the sounds of the enslaved humans labouring within the compound. Fletcher walked ahead of them, heading for the large building where earlier Sam had seen the slaves dumping the rubble from their excavations. In the centre of the brightly lit area, Jay stood between a pair of Hunters, just as he had appeared in the projection on Fletcher’s desk.

‘Sam!’ Jay yelled as he saw his friend approaching. His expression changed to a confused frown as he turned his attention to Fletcher. ‘And who the hell are you?’

‘You may call me Mr Fletcher,’ he replied. ‘Now, shall we get down to business?’ He walked over to a slave who was queueing up to dump his load of rubble into one of the black furnaces that lined the room and took a fist-sized rock from the container he was carrying. He walked towards the glowing portal at the front of the furnace and tossed the rock inside and it vanished with a flash.