Earthfall (9 page)

Jay pushed the doors open and led Sam into a much larger room beyond. There were just four people in the room, but Sam still hesitated. It might only have been four people, but that was four more people than he’d seen in the past eighteen months. He was still feeling overwhelmed by suddenly meeting all these new faces. Jay saw the look on Sam’s face and smiled.

‘It’s OK,’ he said, putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘I felt just the same when I first arrived. It was all a bit much to take in at first. I’d kinda got used to being on my own. You know what I mean?’

‘Yeah,’ Sam said quietly. ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

On one side of the room there was a short dark-haired girl and a tall red-headed boy who were looking at a map on the wall and having what looked like quite a heated conversation. Sam followed as Jay walked towards them.

‘Guys, I’d like to introduce you to our latest recruit,’ Jay said. ‘This is Sam. Sam, this is Kate and this is Adam – they’re our resident scavengers.’

‘I prefer the term
reclamation technician
, actually,’ Adam said with a sniff.

‘I dunno, I quite like the sound of scavenger,’ Kate said, offering her hand to Sam. ‘Makes us sound cooler.’

‘Nice to meet you both,’ Sam said, shaking Kate’s hand.

‘If you need something, but you’ve got absolutely no idea where to find it, these two are the people who’ll get it for you,’ Jay explained.

‘Assuming the Lost haven’t got there before us, of course,’ Adam said with a sigh.

‘The Lost?’ Sam asked.

‘You know,’ Kate said, ‘everyone else. All the people who got wiped by the signal.’

‘Oh, yeah right,’ Sam said. ‘I call them Walkers.’

‘Walkers, Lost, whatever,’ Adam said. ‘The fact is that they’re stripping the whole city bare. It’s getting harder and harder to find the things we need. We’re going to have to move further out of the city soon. Stirling knows it even if he doesn’t want to admit it.’

‘OK, Adam,’ Kate said, shaking her head slightly, ‘don’t lecture the new guy. Everyone’s already heard what you think, but you know it’s not as simple as that. Not all of us can just leave.’

‘I wasn’t saying that we should all . . .’ Adam began.

‘OK, OK, enough,’ Jay said, holding his hands up. ‘Much as I would love to have this conversation
again
, I was actually hoping to introduce Sam to everyone else at some point today.’

‘Fine, whatever,’ Adam said, turning back to the map on the wall. ‘No one ever listens to me anyway.’

‘That’s not true,’ Kate said. ‘I listen to you. How else would I be able to tell you exactly why you’re wrong?’

‘Come on,’ Jay said, nodding his head towards the three battered old sofas arranged in a U-shape in the middle of the room where two girls were sitting chatting while another boy was reading a book.

‘OK, Sam,’ Jay said, pointing to each of the others in turn, ‘this is Liz, Nat and Toby.’

‘Hi,’ the boy called Toby said, lowering his book. ‘Welcome to our burrow.’

‘Toby runs the kitchen,’ Jay explained. ‘He’s the one who makes sure we all get fed.’

‘Only because if I let anyone else do it we’d all be dead of food poisoning within a week,’ Toby said with a crooked smile before retreating behind his book again.

‘So, Sam, tell us, is it true what Rachel said?’ Nat asked. ‘Did you really get stung by a Hunter?’

‘Um . . . yeah, I suppose I did,’ Sam said, sounding slightly uncomfortable.

‘Got to tell you, then,’ the girl called Liz said, ‘you’re a whole lot more alive than you should be.’

‘Yeah, that’s what everyone keeps telling me,’ Sam said with a sheepish grin. ‘I’m just lucky, I suppose.’

‘You can say that again,’ Nat said, shaking her head slightly.

‘Nat’s a surface operative like me and Rach,’ Jay explained, ‘and Liz is in charge of the stores.’

‘So, you’d better be nice to me if you ever want anything,’ Liz added.

‘Yeah, but don’t forget that’s the
only
reason anyone’s nice to you,’ Nat said with a smile.

‘Anyway, much as we’d love to stay and chat all day,’ Jay said, ‘we’re on our way to see Jackson and you know how he hates to be kept waiting.’

‘Ooooh, you don’t want to make Jackson angry,’ Liz said, shaking her head. ‘You wouldn’t like him when he’s angry.’

‘I’ll tell him you said that, shall I?’ Jay asked.

‘Actually, no, probably I’d rather you didn’t,’ Liz said.

‘Thought not,’ Jay said. ‘Come on, Sam.’

Jay led him out of the room and along another corridor.

‘Dining area and the storerooms are down there,’ he said, pointing to a corridor that branched off to the left. They continued, passing a couple more closed doors. ‘Those are the Doc’s and Jackson’s rooms,’ he added as they walked past. They continued walking and soon reached a T-junction at the end of the corridor where they headed left, towards another set of double doors. ‘And in here,’ he concluded, pushing the doors open, ‘are the labs.’

Jay walked down the room past the benches covered in scientific equipment to the far end where Will and a tall girl with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail were both staring at an LCD monitor.

‘I still don’t get it,’ Will said as Sam and Jay approached. ‘I mean, I understand the basics, but I don’t see how Stirling isolated the waveform in the first place without . . .’

‘Sorry to break up brainiac club, Will,’ Jay said, ‘but I wanted to introduce Sam to Anne.’

‘Oh, hi, Jay, Sam, of course. Sorry, I was just trying to get my head around this training exercise,’ Will said, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘Anne, this is our walking miracle. The one I was telling you about.’

‘Hi, pleased to meet you, Sam,’ said Anne. ‘Will told me about what happened to you. I suppose you know by now how lucky you are to be alive.’

‘Yeah,’ Sam said, ‘so everybody keeps telling me.’

‘I’m sorry, you must be sick of hearing it,’ Anne said. ‘It’s just that we’ve all seen what normally happens to someone who gets stung and . . . well . . . it’s not good.’

‘Stirling’s locked away in his lab trying to work out how you survived,’ Will said. ‘I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him this puzzled before.’

‘Well, it’s nice to know that I’ve now officially been elevated to the status of scientific curiosity,’ Sam said, raising an eyebrow at Jay.

‘Yup, I suppose I’d better get you out of here before these two start sticking needles in you as well,’ Jay replied with a nod.

‘Actually,’ Anne said, smiling, ‘a full autopsy might be more efficient.’

‘OK, creeping me out now,’ Sam said.

‘Don’t worry, she gets less creepy once you get to know her properly,’ Jay said. ‘But only slightly.’

‘Anyway, nice to meet you, Sam,’ Anne said. ‘I hope that you’ve not been given too bad an impression of us by being shown around by this idiot.’

She and Will turned their attention back to the diagram on the screen as Jay and Sam headed out of the lab.

‘That was some pretty impressive-looking kit in there,’ Sam said. ‘Where did it all come from?’

‘Adam and Kate found some of it, but most of it was brought down from the building above us,’ Jay said, pointing up towards the ceiling. ‘It was nearly all set up by the time I came here. Stirling had already been training Will and Anne for months; he’s always saying that we can only win through science, or something like that. Gotta admit that pretty much all of what he’s got them working on and studying just goes straight over my head. I guess that’s why I’m on the surface-ops team. Best place to be if you ask me, though. I think I’d go crazy if I was stuck down here all the time.’

They walked down the corridor in silence.

‘I’ve been wondering how this place is powered,’ Sam asked, pointing at one of the lights in the ceiling. ‘The power everywhere else went out about a week after
they
turned up.’

‘You mean the aliens?’ Jay asked, looking him in the eye.

‘Well, it might sound sort of stupid, but that’s what I’ve always thought they must be,’ Sam said.

‘Yeah, me too,’ Jay said with a nod. ‘Stirling always says that “their origins are unclear”, but I say if it looks like an alien and it acts like an alien, then it pretty much has to be an alien. If you want to know what to call them round here, though, Stirling calls them the Threat and now that name’s pretty much stuck.’

‘The Threat,’ Sam said. ‘Yeah, that sounds about right.’

‘As for how the whole place is powered, apparently it’s thanks to a generator in the building up top. Believe it or not, we’ve got our own little nuclear reactor just like the ones they put on submarines. Least that’s what Stirling tells us.’

‘What was this place before the Threat arrived?’ Sam asked with a frown. ‘I know you said it was a government facility, but a nuclear reactor in the middle of London? What were they doing up there?’

‘No idea,’ Jay said, shaking his head. ‘You can try asking Stirling himself if you want, but you’ll just get the same answer that we always do – that it’s none of our business.’

‘That’s all he’s ever told you? Don’t you think he owes you more than that?’

‘I don’t think the Doc thinks he owes anyone anything,’ Jay said with a shrug. ‘He’s not forcing any of us to stay here, but it’s not like there’s anywhere better to go. I mean, sure, we’ve all got our theories about Stirling and this place, but don’t hold your breath waiting for any more than that. You’re not going to get any answers from him or Jackson.’

Sam thought about what Jay had just told him. There was something weird about Stirling’s refusal to give any more detail about what this place was and why it seemed to be so carefully prepared for such an unlikely scenario.

‘So, tell me, how’d you survive up there for so long on your own?’ Jay asked as they headed through another door and started down another flight of stairs leading to a lower level.

‘I didn’t,’ Sam said.‘Survive
up there
, I mean. I spent nearly all my time hiding in the sewers. I only went to the surface during the night and even then I tried to keep my time above ground to a minimum. You know what it’s like with the Drones . . . I mean, what do you call them . . . erm . . . the Hunters buzzing around up there.’

‘Yeah, I do,’ Jay said, a sudden look of sadness flashing across his face. ‘I’m not sure that this is really what people meant when they talked about an
underground
resistance movement.’

‘Probably not,’ Sam said, following him down the stairs, ‘but at least you guys are resisting. I was just hiding.’

‘Hey, we were all hiding till Stirling found us,’ Jay said with a shrug. ‘That’s probably why we’re still alive.’

‘I suppose,’ Sam replied. ‘So, Stirling found all of you?’

‘Yeah, far as I know,’ Jay replied. ‘Every so often he’ll send us out looking for a “contact” in a certain area and nine times out of ten we end up finding someone wandering around, just like you were.’

‘So how does he know where to look?’ Sam asked.

‘No idea,’ Jay said, shaking his head. ‘I don’t know how he finds us. I’ve asked him, we all have, but you can probably guess by now what his answer always is.’

‘Let me guess,’ Sam said. ‘It’s none of our business.’

‘Yeah,’ Jay replied, ‘like I said, the Doc’s not big on explanations. Sure, it’s frustrating sometimes, but no one’s forcing us to stay here. His house, his rules.’

Sam nodded, but he still wanted to know more about Stirling and the facility that seemed to have become his new home. All the evidence pointed to the fact that Stirling knew far more about the invaders than he was letting on. Jay might have given up asking why that was, but he needed some more concrete answers before he could be sure that Stirling was someone he should trust.

‘Can I ask you something else?’ Sam said after a few moments’ silence.

‘Sure,’ Jay replied.

‘I was just thinking about something that Rachel said when I first met her,’ Sam said with a slight frown. ‘She told me that you’d been looking for me for a long time.‘Do you know what she meant?’

‘Yeah,’ Jay said. ‘Stirling had sent us up top seven or eight times over the past couple of months looking for someone, but we never found any sign of anybody in the target area. It was weird because it never usually took us that long to track down whoever the Doc had sent us to find.’

‘Hey, don’t worry about it,’ Sam said. ‘Over the past eighteen months I’ve got really,
really
good at hiding.’

‘Haven’t we all?’

They reached the bottom of the last flight of stairs and headed through the fire door. Sam flinched involuntarily at the sudden sound of gunfire. It was a sound that he’d only really heard on television or at the cinema up until a couple of days ago and he still couldn’t get over just how
loud
it was. The room they had entered was long with a high ceiling held up by thick concrete pillars. Dotted around the room were tables that were covered in tactical equipment of all kinds; night-vision goggles, field dressing kits: ration packs, maps, backpacks, body armour, everything that a well-equipped soldier might need.