Grand Theft Planetary & other stories Read online

  ****

  Seventy years later, Casper Dee sat up in bed and looked at the empty courtroom for the 25,158th time; the government had proved it necessary to move Casper into the court as a permanent resident in order to slow the depletion of Earth’s petroleum reserves. 50,316 trips to ferry Casper back and forth between the orbiting prison and the court had meant a saving of billions of litres precious fuel.

  Casper washed in the small men’s room sink, dried himself awkwardly using the wall-mounted dryer, dressed himself in thin paper disposable clothes, and then waited for the day to start. The first two years had been pure hell. The bailiffs had read out every offense he had committed, in three hour blocks, to charge him with the theft of the entire planet - from all the small pink buttons in the world to the emotional damage caused by people (believing that the end of the world was nigh) indulging in some sinful but highly enjoyable base pleasures. All the illegitimate babies born nine months afterwards on the planet Happy 18th Birthday Sophia Love Daddy were informally named “Casper the Bastard” in honour of the fathers of their conception.

  The next 68 years of the trial had been even worse than listening to an inventory of an entire planet, each single theft treated as a separate case, and after seventy years he had been found guilty of the theft of 42 marbles, small. He’d paid the £55 fine in pennies, just for a laugh.

  The clock touched nine a.m. and the jury entered, whooping and screeching, most of them sent insane by the boredom of the case. When the jury had been tasered into silence by the guards, a young sharp-faced man entered and sat down in the judge’s chair. Living a life where breaking wind was a pleasant change from the norm, a new face was comparable to seeing aliens rodgering a cow. Casper sat up, his interest at an all-time high.

  “My name is Justice Nutts. My predecessor Justice League shot himself last night.” Casper grinned, knowing that it was probably his three week-long presentation on the meaning of the word “the” that probably send League over the edge. Nutts studied the forms on his desk, his hawkish features crumbling in on themselves as he comprehended the case together with the fact he’d probably shoot himself too, after a few years of listening to Casper’s presentations. He popped some headphones over his wig and pointed as Casper. “So you stole an entire planet. Seems simple enough. Prosecution, let’s hear it. And speak up – I’m wearing headphones.”

  The lead prosecutor, a slobbish bore named Bertrund Tabby, answered before Casper could reply. “We are discussing the 43rd theft of a marble - small, by Casper Dee.”

  Nutts stared at Tabby. “A marble? That’s moronic.” He banged his gavel around his desk randomly. “Case dismissed. Next?”

  “The people of H18BSLD versus Casper Dee, the theft of a 44th marble - small.”

  “Dismissed. Next!”

  The prosecutor shuffled his papers, bacon bits flying everywhere. “The people of H18BSLD versus Casper Dee, the theft of a 45th marble - small.”

  Nutts sighed. “How many marbles - small, is Casper Dee alleged to have stolen in total?”

  “Almost four billion, my lord.”

  “Fair enough. Mr Dee, I find you guilty of stealing all marbles - small. Pay ten thousand dollarpounds.” He banged his gavel again. “Next!”

  “The people of H18BSLD versus Casper Dee, the theft of a marble – large,” said Tabby, with a straight face.

  Nutts pulled his headphones off slowly. “I see where we’re going with this, Mr Tabby. How many cases does Mr Dee face in total?”

  “Mr Dee will be tried for the planet H18BSLD’s constituent parts,” said Tabby haughtily, “for example, the people of H18BSLD versus Casper Dee, theft of forty-five trillion trillion gallons of oil split between one hundred and one thousand and three owners; the people of H18BSLD versus Casper Dee, theft of fourteen billion tons of coral; the people of H18BSLD versus Casper – “

  “Thank you Mr Tabby, I get the idea.” Nutts doodled on the table, and then turned to Casper. “I’m already bored of this. Are you?”

  “I’ve spent the last seventy years of my life in this courtroom, my lord,” croaked Casper sadly.

  “Exactly, and I’m afraid of doing the same. How much would you pay to get out of here?”

  Casper considered how much he was now worth; a willion dollarpounds accruing interest over 70 years meant that he now owned most of the galaxy, even in his incarcerated state. “Fifteen planets?” he offered.

  Nutts banged his gavel again. “Done. Don’t do it again.” The jury applauded and dribbled, the guards hugged each other, and Tabby updated his Scratterbook status frantically while stuffing a McWalFord ApSung-MicroPep High-Def Investment Processor into his mouth . Casper smiled, Pretended to thank everyone as humbly as possible, then left the court a free man. In the bright sunlight of a fine day, he looked up at the sky; he was still healthy, and still a willionaire. Don’t do it again, the Judge had said. So what should he do with his immortal life now?

  In the silence of the empty courtroom, Justice Nutts tapped along with the threcno-beatslash tune. He’d cleared up a 70 year trial and secured the fortunes of 15 planets for the government. Not bad for a morning’s work. Being a judge was easy. Lock away the poor bad guys, fine the rich bad guys. It was a wonder no-one else had realised this successful method of keeping order in the universe. He stood up to dance to his favourite seizure bass riff when he stumbled over, giddy and dizzy. He struggled back into his chair and reached for the monomolecular-thin phone handset that he assumed would be there, but his hand grasped at empty space. It must have fallen on the floor, obviously now lost forever. Before he could fumble his mobile phone out of his trouser pocket, he watched the scene unfolding outside the courtroom window; the sun was setting, slowly at first but then picking up speed until it dropped below the horizon. Stars jumped into life and became streaks of white flame in the night sky.

  Nutts slapped his forehead in disbelief; the Earth was being stolen!

  My Life is Saved

  There was a smash from behind the bar, and a few drunken patrons cheered in the expected manner. The barkeeper took a mock-bow, then fetched a dust-pan to clean up the shards. Simon took the top off the beer he was holding and scanned the bar once again, more out of habit than anything. Dark, leather-red, and almost unpleasantly crowded. Outside, orange street-lights were trying to illuminate the darkness. Simon had been in this room dozens of times, yet this was always the first. His gaze fell on a blond woman standing by a raised table, talking to a friend. She was definitely Simon’s type; big tits, tall, large full lips – a good night in.

  He took a piece of paper and pen from his pocket and wrote “Hi gorgeous, fancy some fun?”, then jumped off his stool and handed it to her. She read it, and then slapped him hard. “Fuck off.” He sighed; always worth trying. The direct approach was like a cash-or-bust option. He restored.

  There was a smash from behind the bar, and a few drunken patrons cheered in the expected manner. The barkeeper took a mock-bow, then fetched a dust-pan to clean up the shards. Simon jumped off his stool and wandered over to the blonde lady again. “Hi,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  She surveyed him cautiously. “Fuck off,” she said at last, then continued her conversation with her friend. Ah, thought Simon, she’s one of those. Tough nuts needed the appropriate sledgehammer to crack.

  There was a smash from behind the bar, and a few drunken patrons cheered in the expected manner. The barkeeper took a mock-bow, then fetched a dust-pan to clean up the shards. Simon jumped off his stool, knocked the blonde out with an upper-cut, and then snatched her handbag from the floor. Before anyone could react, he launched himself off a table and barrelled through the glass window, rolling as he hit the concrete. He sprinted across the road and into the alley opposite, scampered up the wall until he could grab hold of the fire escape above him, then ran up the metal steps until he was on the roof. He could hear screams and rais
ed voices from the bar below, but he was safe for now. He upended the bag and sifted through the assortment of personal belongings; a small flowery diary, a stylish smartphone, bits of make-up, and other female “essentials”. Simon absorbed the contents of the phone and diary quickly, looking for clues to her personality, a way into her, anything he could use to get her into bed efficiently. Her wallet revealed that her name was Misty Kears, was single, a driver, 24, and nothing out of the ordinary. However, her text messages and social network updates revealed that she was an actress – well, an extra, only a couple of parts to her name, but she was extremely keen to remind everyone constantly about the fact that she was, technically, an actress. Hungry for attention, desperate to be important. Perfect.

  A cop rose noisily from the fire exit and pointed his sidearm at the huddled Simon. “Lie down on your front, scumbag. You’re under arrest!”

  Simon regarded the cop. He was a decent-looking sort, no doubt believing in justice and a world full of goodness, probably married to the prom queen and had a little girl that ran to hug him every day he got home from work. Sickening. Simon could cross the distance before the cop would know what was going on and kill him easily - and any other day, he probably would have. Instead, Simon was too preoccupied with bedding the blond, so restored instead.

  There was a smash from behind the bar, and a few drunken patrons cheered in the expected manner. The barkeeper took a mock-bow, then fetched a dust-pan to clean up the shards. Simon slid off the plastic stool and stood a respectful distance from the blond and her friend until they stopped their conversation. “Can I help you?” sneered the blonde, looking him up and down.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt you,” he said politely, “but haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

  “In your dreams maybe,” she replied, and turned her back on him.

  “I thought you were an actress I saw when I was on set the other day. Oh well,” he made to leave, “I’m sorry to interrupt your evening.”

  “Wait – you’re in showbusiness?” She spun around and grabbed his arm. Oh my god, he thought, this was going to be too easy.

  “Yes I am. I’m a casting agent. Looking for fresh new talent, seeking out the stars of tomorrow, you know the sort of thing.” He gave her a look of mock interest. “Say, you look a lot like Misty Kears.”

  “That’s me! I am Misty Kears!” She almost spilt her drink over her friend, who was now forgotten.

  “You are? Oh my god!” He matched her enthusiasm. “I saw you in,” he visualised the information on her social network status page, “Hospital Ward 101. I must say, you were fabulous!”

  “Oh thank you!” She turned to her friend, her ego totally out of control, stoked expertly by Simon. “Can you believe it?”

  “Say,” said Simon, taking her arm and leading her away from her disgruntled friend, “how about we talk about a few roles I have coming up? There’s a club in town that would be better suited for a budding young superstar such as you. A few late drinks, rub elbows with other stars… What do you say?”

  It had taken a modest amount of champagne and ego-feeding inside a dim-lit and trendy (read over-priced) club, but Simon eventually managed to persuade the dim-but-pretty Misty back to his flat. She was certainly keen to impress Simon, throwing herself into sexual congress with energy and enthusiasm. As he gripped her wide hips and thrust into her from behind, Simon couldn’t help but smile; she was simply doing this to improve her standing in the world. She thought that giving up her body was a short-cut to achieve her dreams of fame. It wasn’t, not just because Simon was a liar and had no more involvement with the film industry than the atomic energy sector, but because big achievements - solid milestones with life-changing results - could only be obtained through hard work, determination, and other words that scared off the weak-willed or those looking for a quick win. She could probably sleep her way so far up the chain, but there was a limit, a point where results counted rather than who she had in her mouth. At that point, she would be exposed, be ridiculed, and fall back to her station in life. Like everything obtained by trying to cheat the system of life, it was either temporary or at a crippling cost. Not like himself, he thought. The ability to save any point in his life so he could return to that moment at will? He’d achieved everything he’d wanted to, and now was playing out a life full of sex and adventure.

  According to the calendar, he was thirty three years old, but he hated to think how many years he’d actually experienced. It must be over a hundred, maybe more. He’d quickly realised that all the people in the world were exploitable in some way, be it fame, fortune, importance – those were the typical three – sometimes lust, or even some darker desire. Not being subject to the normal cause and effect formula of his actions, Simon could try different things in order to unlock the key to manipulating any person. He’s had sex with thousands of girls, murdered hundreds of people - albeit temporarily - and had got whatever he wanted. Misty was simply another one who Simon was experiencing in this temporal reality that he’d soon destroy by returning to earlier that evening.

  He turned Misty over and was surprised by the look of anger from her. Maybe she was more intelligent than Simon gave her credit for. Maybe she realised she was being used. “You OK?” He asked ask he entered her again.

  “You’re not a casting agent, are you?” He looked at him, pure hate in her eyes. “You’re just using me for sex. It’s OK,” she raised her arms and turned her head away. “It’s my own fault. I get too carried away. Carry on, take what you need from me, then leave.”

  Simon slowed, embarrassed that his intentions had been exposed. “If it’s any consolation,” he said, “you won’t remember any of this in the morning.” Had that sounded sinister?

  Strangely, she nodded, then smiled. “OK. Just do it and make it quick.” She closed her eyes, then started to hum a tune to herself. Simon stopped; this didn’t feel right at all. He started to withdraw from her when she suddenly scrabbled up the bed and withdrew a handgun. Before Simon could react, he felt his chest explode with fire and pain as she pulled the trigger again and again and again. She was screaming something. He fell backwards, almost insane with shock; he was dead! She’d killed him! Help me! Help…

  There was a smash from behind the bar, and a few drunken patrons cheered in the expected manner. The barkeeper took a mock-bow, then fetched a dust-pan to clean up the shards. Simon gasped , the panic still ebbing around his thoughts but, lacking the physical responses from his body, he calmed quickly. She’d murdered him! She hadn’t though, not really, not permanently. The crazy bitch! What if she’d shot him in the head? He had trained to be fast and agile, hundreds of years’ worth of training giving him the ability to take down most people in a fair fight, but Misty’s attack had been too sudden and unexpected. Well, maybe that had been a warning, fate telling him that he needed to stop pissing around. He mulled this over for a few minutes, then smiled. Bollocks to fate. He’d just have to be more careful, maybe appreciate that people were dangerous and didn’t take kindly to being manipulated. Maybe he could try being less-manipulative.

  He looked at the plain girl sat next to him reading a book. He scribbled down a note and passed it to her without a word. She read it, then looked at Simon, her eyes magnified by the powerful glassed framing her sharp oval face.

  “Yeah,” she said eventually with a smile, putting the book down. “OK then. Your place or mine?”

  From Afar

  Hank watched the Martian landscape with no interest whatsoever and drank his java. “Hello world,” he said to the unmoving vista. Every day, the same red landscape greeted him through the grubby wind screen of the habitat’s glass viewing port. Every day, he drank the same coffee, greeted the outside world in the same way, performed the same tests, recorded the results on his computer, and saved them them through space to an ever-impatient audience on Earth. He finished his drink and
chucked the paper cup onto the rubbish-strewn floor, then sat at his science station and booted up the thin laptop. “Time to work on my experiments,” he said. The laptop had been a recent addition to his belongings, his request for a new computer quickly processed, purchased, configured, and then sent via the agonisingly-slow delivery service. It had taken three months in the end, and he’d had to travels five miles to collect it too. That was problem with delivering packages to Mars; the quarterly care packages from the company - once bountiful and full of luxuries but now containing only the bare essentials – were almost pot luck on where they would land. Sometimes Hank would see a tiny blue triangle floating down in the distance, sometimes he would need the homing beacon system that was integrated into Bessie, a solar-powered big-wheeled quad that allowed him to roam a little around the Martian landscape. Rarely, his bland monotonous fans would send something interesting like a letter or a request for a special project just for them, but Hank was usually far too busy to accommodate.

  He executed the project application called InWerd and started to type. His fingers flew across the keyboard, barely keeping up with the formulas and methods he was imagining. The red dust that seemed to permeate everything surrounded his hands. “Bloody dust.” He could hear the clank and crunch of machinery outside, the gigantic science rig expanding and contracting according to the commands. “As I type, my machine does what I say.” He leaned to the window to watch; the science rig, a huge cylindrical train-like machine half-buried in the rust of the Martian soil, its appendages hanging out at odd angles, was simply a physical extension of Hank’s mind, a translator of neurons to movement. “Such shining beauty.” He returned to the console, and caught his reflection in the code-covered screen. A half-crazed bearded hobo peered back at him. “Who are you?” he asked himself. Why was he surprised of his appearance? He was a hermit completely cut-off from humanity. When was the last time he’d held a real-time conversation with someone? Sure, messages dripped into the server over time, but they were composed, official, and recorded.

  The train-like rig hissed to a stop outside and awaited further commands. Hank started to program again but the screen beeped in error; THAWT, it reported. “Damn!” The mechanics exposed to the ancient Martian air were starting to become frail and unreliable, and a kind of malaise was slowly settling in. “Every day, I get errors, which means I need to go for a walk outside.” He suited up, grabbed his trusty monkey wrench and checked on his store of air tanks. “I have a few dozen left, and each gives about two hours of air, so I reckon I have a week’s worth left.” He shouldered a single tank and made sure it was supplying his paper-thin EV suit properly, then passed through the revolving door air-lock and made for the machine. “Goodbye comfortable living space, hello lethal alien planet,” he muttered. He didn’t enjoy the dangers of walking outside, but it was a necessity to get the ol’ machine working again, otherwise his experiments would stop and then… what? “The experiments are everything to me,” he said as he stamped a rock to red powder, “so I will do whatever it takes to clear those damn THAWT problems.” He found some comfort in narrating his activities. It made him feel calm, as if someone was listening to him.

  He walked carefully across the Martian land towards the science rig, stones pressing into the soles of his feet. What troubled him the most about Mars was how silent it was. There was no breeze, no weather to speak of, with blistering hot days and freezing cold nights, and other than Hank, absolutely no life. “This is a dying planet.” Hank had discussed this with Peter; the lack of oceans, he had been told, meant that there was little heat differential on the surface of the planet, meaning that winds and life were highly unlikely. He stopped and looked around; nothing. “Just a huge silent plateau of stones and rocks.” It made his ears ring.

  He found himself under the shadow of the science machine in less than ten minutes, and marvelled at its magnificence. It was truly awe-inspiring up close, able to provoke joy and fear in Hank - depending on its current configuration, of course. About fifty feet long and thirty high, the silver cylinder had been designed and built by Hank so that he could perform his experiments on Mars. “This is the reason I’m on Mars. Complete solitude, away from nagging interlopers and spies, no chance of any interference.” It had been his choice to take this one-way ticket to a self-induced solitude from mankind, but he had not expected to survive after the completion of his first experiment; he had not expected his experiments to be a success, so here he was still, and so was the machine. It was stuck in a curious position, its appendages sticking straight up into the Martian sky, either in victory or in pain. Hank studied it for a few more minutes, willing it to move by itself, then reluctantly proceeded to work on the mechanics. “Come on you stubborn bastard.” There was a special way to get the train working again, a number of game-like exercises to reset its logic patterns and begin the flow of data. He tightened up a couple of nuts in a square pattern, then tapped sixteen times on an angry red button. He followed a sequence of flashing LEDs as quickly as he could, almost missing the final light because of a speck of dirt in his eye, but slowly, the machine started to work again. “Once again, you live.” It was a dull victory.

  Curiously, his shadow split into two and sprinted away from him, stretching out towards the clanking machinery. “Where are you going, shadow of myself?” Hank turned to see the source of the light, an enormous green fireball burning through the atmosphere at a surprisingly slow speed. He’d seen a few meteorites in the years on Mars, but this one was much bigger than any of the others, and was moving almost parallel with the land. Hank was stunned by its beauty, unable to turn away until it disappeared below the horizon. A rapid flash of light signalled its touchdown. He waited for the explosion, but there was none. “Disappointing,” he said sadly. In fact, Hank had been mildly disappointed from the first day he’d agreed to be the first man on Mars. “Two years developing the machine, then a six month training regime followed by a three month journey through space, topped off by a three year stint performing tasks that I hoped would mean something to someone somewhere.” Angrily, he kicked at the stones around him. He’d signed up to this one-way ticket for the fame of working his own machine, but he had hoped – maybe assumed – that there would be aliens and strange things to see and do on the red planet. He wouldn’t need to make up his experiments, he could simply report the fantastic life-forms on Mars. But no; there was nothing here but whatever he made, and therefore he had to compose every single experiment from scratch. It had been a fool’s errand, an irreversible shot-in-the-dark and a gamble that had not paid off. He closed the maintenance hatch on the machine and headed back to the oblong habitat slowly, glad that he had fixed his THAWT problem. If he had more air tanks, he might have considered going to investigate the landing site of the fireball. Maybe he’d wait until the next supply craft arrived. He was long overdue one.

  Back at his desk, he continued coding the machine as he pondered. “What was the fireball? Maybe it was simply a piece of rock. Or maybe it was an alien artefact, an infinite and invincible power unit that had drifted through space for aeons, debris of a millennia-old space battle between two races hell-bent on conquering the universe. Or maybe it was a satellite from a now-extinct race, a science machine that had been forgotten about and had been slowly sinking in orbit.” He stopped typing and waited for the machine outside to cease its clanking. “What else was there to do in this red dead land of rocks?” He could take three days’ worth of air aboard Bessie, and simply go in the direction of the flash, see if he could at least spot the crater. Reluctantly, he decided against it; what if the habitat started leaking in the near future? It was wise to keep a good reserve of air handy. And anyway, he had another week to go until his latest experiment was finished. He’d wait until the next supply drop; it’s not like anyone else would beat him to the landing zone.

  There was a cuckoo sound from the grimy server unde
r his desk; “Look at that. A video message has arrived.” He saved and closed his experiment, boiled himself a coffee, then settled down to watch the message. “I wonder what it’s about.” The face of his line manager, Peter Burgles, filled his laptop screen. He was a fat-faced bumbling fool, but had fought Hank’s corner in every legal battle and financial concern during his relocation to Mars. He had a good heart, but absolutely no grace or style. Despite the video equipment recording, Peter always sat completely still for the first few seconds, as if posing for an old-fashioned photo. That was his way. Eventually, Peter smiled and began his message.

  “This is Peter,” he said, just in case Hank had gone mad or blind, “calling all the way from earth. I hope I find you well, Hank.”

  “Same as usual,” replied Hank. “How are you?”

  Peter brandished an official piece of paper. “The usual agenda. Firstly, I hope you’ve been reading the newspapers emailed to you.” Hank had marked all email as spam long ago. He wasn’t interested in things that didn’t concern him, especially things happening on another planet and outside of his own world. People annoyed him. “It was very worrying here for a few days. We were seriously considering joining you on Mars, but the tides have receded and the world is picking itself up. Millions of people in the poorer countries have died though. Bodies are appearing on coastlines everywhere.”

  “That does sound interesting,” replied Hank. “I might read some of those emails later. Anything else?”

  “Secondly, I’m pleased to announce that my wife has given birth to our third child. Bertrund, we’ve called him. After Jane’s grandfather. Both mother and baby are doing well.”

  “I couldn’t care less,” said Hank.

  “Thirdly…” Peter coughed into his hand.

  “You only cough when you’re nervous,” said Hank. “What’s gone wrong this time?”

  “…thirdly, we have a bit of bad news. Remember when we said that your next supply shipment might contain something special, so be ready for it?” Hank didn’t remember. “Well,” Peter coughed again, “everything was going fine, but about three days ago, we lost track of it. It must have collided with something and veered off-course. The last thing our passenger said was something about a rushing noise, and then that was it. Gone.”

  “Passenger?” Hank sat up. “What passenger?”

  “Anyway,” continued Peter, “the surprise was that we were sending a person to join you on Mars. A woman. She was…” he struggled with words for a moment,”… a good scientist. Nothing more than that. She’ll be sadly missed by her friends here.” He rubbed his hands nervously. “I know you don’t send us any video messages in reply, and your emails are sparse to say the least. I can only assume you’re fit and healthy. In fact you’d better be, because that spaceship was carrying your quarterly supplies. We’re launching another ship tomorrow, but you’re going to have a meagre three months coming up. If you can find the time, please video message me back. It’ll be good to – “

  Hank closed the message, unable to contain his rage. “How dare they!” he shouted at the Martian landscape in the window. “I come out here to be alone, and they try to send someone to interrupt me! Well serves them right! Serves them and that bitch right!” He stormed around the living room, kicking at the rubbish lining the floor. “I’m the only one living on Mars. I’m the only one here, with my machine. I’ll have no-one else reading my works, not before they’re finished! Fuck!” He was trembling with anger, something he’d not experienced for many months. “Imagine if she’d made it! Poking her nose in, reading everything! My god…” His body and mind weren’t used to such powerful emotions, not real ones; his experiments dredged up similes of passions long-forgotten, but they were pretend feelings. He put his hands against his temples and squeezed. Hard. “I will have no-one ruining my works! No-one!”

  And then he saw the thing, its evil red eyes and enormous grin leering at him through the window. Its head was thin and jet-black, and it jerked uncontrollably as it stared inside the habitat. In a quivering wail, muffled by the thick walls of the habitat, it screamed, “It’s over!”

  The thing had plagued Hank a few weeks after landing on Mars, around the time when Hank had discovered that his machine had been compromised before launch by a small transmitter that cloned his commands and sent them to a rival company on earth. As Hank removed the bugging device, a shadow had fallen over him. When he looked up, the nightmare face had been there to greet him. How he’d made it back to the sanctuary of the habitat he couldn’t rightly remember. For many nights, Hank had cowered in his bed cubicle out of sight of the main window, unable to move in frightful anxiety, knowing that if he looked into the living space, the thing would be there, staring into his home. Since his computer was in the view of the thing, it meant that Hank’s experiments had simply come to a halt for weeks. Then suddenly, the thing had disappeared, and no trace of it could be found. No tracks, nothing. Hank had eventually convinced himself that it had been a hallucination, but now there was no doubt. Hank was not alone on Mars.

  He covered his eyes and ran straight for the bed cubicle, colliding head-on with the door frame. He thrashed around on the floor in a daze, struggling to get back on his feet. The voice wailed again, louder this time. “You’re alone!”

  The pain and the fright suddenly gave Hank a kind of second wind, and he rolled over to face the thing. “What do you want?” he yelled.

  The thing jerked away violently, then reappeared at the window. “Get out!”

  Hank kicked himself backwards into the bed cubicle and fumbled around in the small wardrobe in the wall. His fingers curled around the bulky laser rifle that Peter had secretly shipped to Hank (after many days of pleading for a firearm just in case he needed it). Hank turned the gun on and impatiently watched the power meter go to 100%. “Full charge.” With a surge of confidence, Hank strode into the living area and raised the rifle, lining up the grinning black face between the iron sights. “Fuck you then!” he said, and squeezed the trigger. A fist-sized hole melted through the window and hit the thing in the forehead, destroying the face in a shower of black ichor.

  Immediately, red alarm signs flashed to warn of the depressurisation, and the rich air in the habitat was replaced by the foul lifeless air of the Martian world. Hank dropped the laser rifle in numb shock. “Shit, what have I done?” He donned his EV suit from earlier and held his breath until the helmet was securely on. Panting and panic-stricken, he fetched his weapon again and approached the window. On the sands outside, the thing was laid out on its back, its head missing and its black skin oozing into the ground. “So it is real,” he said to himself. “I wonder where it came from?” He cycled the airlock to look at the creature close-up. It was still moving, its whole form shimmering slightly. Without its head, it looked like a very long thin beetle, but otherwise was devoid of any other features. No genitals or adornments, no clothes or devices. Hank went back inside and surveyed the chaos caused by the decompression. Other than the hole in the window, nothing else had suffered any damage.

  However, what initially seemed like a simple patching exercise became a more worrying affair when he realised that he would not be able to fix the window. Even with a metal plate affixed to the glass with adhesives, air continued to leak from the damaged area after Hank pressurised the habitat. As the watery sunlight died away into the night, Hank sat and cried; there was no way he could repair the window. Eventually, he was going to run out of air and die. He’d mortally wounded himself.

  He slipped into a troubled sleep about suffocating, and awoke in a panic. He ran to the air gauge for the habitat and gradually calmed; there was still air, although the leak was getting a little worse. The window itself was probably cracking slowly, and would eventually fail. He couldn’t patch the entire window.

  He made himself a coffee and looked out at the Martian landscape, partial
ly obscured by the metal plate. The alien body had disappeared. Glass shards glittered in the sands. “I am fucked,” he said simply, then sat at his station and made some notes. He could try patching the window again, but his limited engineering skills didn’t give him a lot of faith in this course of action. He could try to seal the bed cubicle and live in that, but this was similar to being trapped in a coffin. “I’d rather die.” He performed some quick calculations, and realised that his air supply – including the mobile tanks – would run out in two weeks.

  “If only the supply ship had made it,” he said, then stopped; the fireball he’d seen – could that have been the supply ship? It had certainly looked big enough to be a supply ship… but what state had it been in when it hit the ground? There had been no explosion, so it could have survived the entry into the Martian atmosphere… or it could have been completely vaporised.

  There was a grinding from the window, the unmistaken sound of glass-on-glass. Hank put the helmet to the EV suit back on and made a quick decision. “I can’t stay here,” he said, and depressurised the habitat, returning the air to the tanks. He spent an hour loading Bessie up with food, water, and air. “Two weeks,” he said out loud, and then took a last look at the habitat, the place he’d hidden inside for three years. In the background was the machine, its spindles lifeless and limp across the sand, dead without Hank’s mind to control it. He shouldered the laser rifle and climbed inside the cramped compartment of the buggy, and slowly pulled away from his ruined life with tears in his eyes.

  The landscape was an easy task for the large puffy indestructible tires of the electric vehicle, and Hank started to enjoy the bobbing motion. “It’s like being in a boat, sailing a red tide.” He wondered if Mars had been full of oceans in the past. Marine life may have at once time been swimming above him on this very spot; he imagined a giant whale-like creature overshadowing him and the buggy, but felt giddy by the size of the thing and so stopped.

  The buggy crested a hill that overlooked a huge expanse of the Martian land. “Nothing but rocks and craters,” he muttered, and checked the scanner. There was no beacon active, or at least in range. He’d travelled only twenty miles in the slow machine; he didn’t have much time to find the fireball. Even if he did find it, there was only a silver of hope that it was a supply ship. Statistically, it was a rock, and Hank was already dead as a result.

  After many hours of bouncing across rocks and stones, the sun faded away and the void rushed in to surround Hank. He was tired, and hungry, but also aware that every second meant another breath of his precious oxygen, and another step towards death. Reluctantly, he parked next to a huge boulder and broke open a meal. Without a moon or a thick atmosphere, the night sky was absolutely astounding to look at, a carpet of diamonds studded into a black velvet sheet. “Why didn’t I pay more attention to the stars?” Hank said to himself. He wished he had more time. His experiments had been important, but to who? “Me?” Others? Did it matter? “Look where’s it’s gotten me. Alone, and about to die alone on a lonely planet.” He finished his meal and continued his journey underneath the stars, pale headlights illuminating a few feet in front of him.

  On the third day, Hank was at wits end and looking at the laser rifle with some consideration. He hadn’t slept for at least two Martian days – a Martian day being almost exactly the same as an earth day, which to Hank was evidence that there was a higher power at work in the universe. He was frazzled, his panic growing with every hour that didn’t reveal a crash site, and he was starting to suspect that another one of those black horrors was following him. Often, he would turn his head and glimpse something darting behind a rock. He had the rifle though. He could kill that one too if it did appear. Still, it wasn’t helping his state of mind. He stopped on the edge of a large crater and got out of the small cabin to stretch his legs. “Bloody hell,” he said, “why is stretching such a nice feeling?” He bent down to touch his toes, savouring the pain from his muscles. He felt his heart jump; through his legs, he saw another pair of legs standing just behind him, thin and black, and shimmering slightly.

  With a cry of fright, Hank fell forwards and fired awkwardly at a rapidly retreating blur. He got to his feet and climbed inside Bessie, his fight-or-flight response fully activated. He turned the lumbering machine into the opposite direction that the thing had gone, but then stopped; he’d be travelling with his back to the thing’s last position, allowing it to sneak up on him. It was also the opposite direction of any possible crash site. He stared behind him and willed himself to calm down. It was OK, he had escaped harm. This time. Next time, he wouldn’t be so lucky. He gripped the rifle and tried to quell his terror. He had no option but to carry on. He couldn’t go back, not to his old home. He’d destroyed that. He had to face the void horror, whether he liked it or not. Slowly, he turned Bessie around and continued his search.

  The buggy rounded corners, boulders, and bobbed down valleys and craters, but the thing didn’t show itself again. When night started to fall, Hank began to panic once again. He couldn’t hide from the thing, not in a glass canopy stuck atop a vehicle in the middle of a never-ending Martian desert! The last of the light faded away from the red landscape leaving Hank vulnerable. He chewed a stick of jerky and stared out at the void, willing the creature to show itself and get it over with. His tired eyes started reporting movement at the peripheral edges of his vision, raising his anxiety ten-fold. “Come on out you bastard,” he growled, starting at every point of movement, but the thing was nowhere to be seen. He realise that it probably was there, grinning at him and gibbering uncontrollably, but the darkness was hiding it. Hiding them, he corrected himself. He had killed one but another had taken its place. There could be a million of them out there, all staring at him, laughing at him even. Hank dropped into a semi-sleep state, his eyes flicking open at random periods, his dreams filled with the nightmare creature.

  Eventually the sun filtered through and the rocky land was revealed once again, empty of the Hank’s fears. Feeling safe in the morning light, Hank hopped down from the cockpit and stretched. He wanted to sleep, plain and simple. He hated that he couldn’t. “It’s not fair,” he said woefully, “I just want to sleep!” And suddenly the thing was there, grinning in his face.

  “You’ve failed!” it sobbed. Hank fell to the floor and snapped a shot at the creature. He missed, but instead hit the edge of Bessie’s air tanks. The buggy exploded as all the air tanks ruptured, showering Hank in plastic shards and expanding gases. He covered his helmet instinctively, trying to see if the thing was still present – and still a threat. When the air had cleared, Hank could see the thin being about twenty feet away, grinning insanely.

  “I’m dead,” said Hank, getting to his feet wearily. “I’ve no air, no vehicle, and no home.” The being shivered in response, uncaring, and laughed. “You’re evil, and I’m taking you with me.” Hank Hbroke into a run and fired the rifle as he surged forward, but the horror darted behind a rock.

  Hank rounded the boulder and stopped in shock. He was on the edge of a large and ancient crater littered with sizeable boulders and scars from smaller impacts over the millennia. In the middle of the crater was a smaller, fresher crater – it was the rogue supply ship, half-buried in the centre of a blackened gash surrounded by fragments of metal and debris. Next to the crashed ship, intact and undamaged, a new habitat and a new science machine glistened in the new morning sun like a silver cigar. The horror was nowhere to be seen, so Hank staggered down the crater, tears rolling down his cheeks in relief and joy. “I’ve been saved!” he cried.

  As he walked, he passed his eye over the debris thrown out by the crashed ship. It was mostly the interior parts of the spacecraft, miscellaneous parts that should be holding a plate to a surface or regulating pressure in a pipe. Something to his right caught his eye; there were a dozen or so unexplainable machines that had been jettisoned by t
he impact lying in the sand. He turned one cuboid over with his foot. It was undoubtedly the product of an experiment like Hank’s, but the professionally-machined skin was vastly superior to anything Hank had created. He felt saddened; what was the point in his own experiments when others were creating these wondrous machines? He depressed a button and the machine folded open, revealing its internal workings. Unlike its cover, the machine was basic, unadventurous, and by-the-numbers. There were millions like it, and nothing like Hank’s. He closed the object, his confidence restored, and made for the habitat.

  Just outside the revolving doorway of his new home was a large blackened chunk of wreckage. Hank dragged it a few paces before realising that it was a voluminous pilot’s chair, and it had a body of a woman strapped into it. “Oh my god,” said Hank, dropping the chair in shock. This was the passenger that Peter had told him about. Hank felt a little guilty; he’d wished her dead, but not like this. It was a shame really; even in her half-charred exposed state, she looked noble and beautiful. In fact, she reminded Hank of someone he once knew. He peered at the woman closer… then jumped in surprise. He recognised her! Unbelievable! He tried to remember, tried to roll back the years in his mind to a time before red sand and science machines and black things and air supplies. He remembered a face, laughing, shouting, scowling… and also moaning in pleasure. “I know you. You were… you were…” She had a name, but he remembered that her title was more important to him. That was her relation to him and how he knew her.

  “You were my wife.”

  He scrabbled at her uselessly, trying to unstrap her from the chair, but the heat of the crash had fused her into the fabric. He raised her lifeless head and felt a void within him reappear, one that he’d trained himself to forget; long ago, he’d left her to work on his experiments, ignored everything that had gone between them to concentrate on his work, threw away her love for him in favour of personal gain and status. He had lost his wife because he had put his work above her. He was now truly alone - completely, infinitely, and unforgivably.

  Behind him, the thing wailed something incomprehensible. Dropping his wife's freeze-dried head, Hank ran into the safety of the new habitat. It was a newer version of what he’d abandoned, but it was all quite familiar. More importantly, there was a new laptop on a work bench, and a coffee machine next to it. Keeping an eye on the fiend outside, he made himself a hot drink, his mind desperate to slip back into the routine he’d held for so many years. This was odd, like he had just entered a new life and been given a fresh start. In a way, he had; his estranged-wife had delivered him a new means to live. It wasn’t much different from his old life, but he now had the knowledge that he was, technically, single again. “I can concentrate on my experiments!” Hank said, feeling the void of his ex-wife starting to heal up. The black horror wailed once more, but it was distant and receding. Feeling rejuvenated, with the prospect of working on a new machine, Hank watched the Martian landscape with all the interest he could muster and drank his java. Out on the rusty sands, the thing gibbered and convulsed to itself, a small speck of doubt on a vast expanse of hope.

  “Let’s start this all over again,” he said, and sat at the work console. The silver machine started to move.

  Technology Fails Me

  At my untidy desk, piled high with obsolete manuals and parts, my quantum-powered computer recognises me and enters my password automatically. I don’t like my Q. It is random, unstable, and completely illogical at times, but infinitely powerful. I manage to get to my emails, but only after the computer decides I should read a news article about nose-reduction surgery first. Cheeky bastard.

  I pull out my Einstein-powered laptop – completely reliable thanks to its non-Q processor, but slower in comparison – and start working on my IT support queue. Happily, the day is quiet, and I only have to call two people complaining about their smart-mouth machines. What am I supposed to do with a machine that refuses to calculate a spreadsheet? The only advice I can give is to turn the damn things off and on again, and hope to God they finish their hissy-fit quickly. The problem is that the Q machine is a status symbol, despite their obvious flaws. Each time I offer to swap a misbehaving Q with an Einsteinian PC, the user refuses violently, afraid of being demoted from the Q-owning elite.

  After a typically-lonely lunch stumbling around websites, I return to my desk and find an email from Chris Buchanan, the company CEO. It says See me. I love you and want to radiate in your hypothermia. I have no idea how business ever gets done in this world anymore. I take the lift up to Mr Buchanan’s sprawl of personal offices and am escorted by las-point to his viewing room on the 150th floor. Chris Buchanan turns from the panoramic scene of the city to face me. He is a long-faced man, stern and assertive, yet diplomatic too. It’s all a charade, of course; Chris Buchanan is a fucking maniac. He wields his enormous corporation around the globe like a mythical weapon of doom, doing anything to anyone as he sees fit.

  His surgically-enhanced eyes glisten at me within the executive gloom. "I have a problem, and I hope you can help me." He takes a small sip of his drink. "I have received a file containing some important corporate information." He hands me a USB stick. “I need this unencrypted, and since you are the only one in this office I trust, I’ll need you to get me the contents as soon as possible." Trust. He means control.

  I study the dongle; it is a Serpent storage device, its case broken and coated in blood. The read-write tab is damaged, meaning the contents cannot be changed. Encryption is notoriously hard to break using normal computers, but a Q can do it in a matter of hours. "Your own machine should be able to decrypt this for you,” I suggest, trying to separate my involvement from this highly-dangerous situation. “Is there a problem with your machine, sir?”

  "Nothing major,” he says, aware of my anti-Q stance. “It’s just not behaving itself at the moment." He motions to his own Q computer, which is cycling through hundreds of different random images; babies, war, guns, the sea.

  “Just turn it off and on again,” I tell him.

  “I don’t think that will work,” he replies, turning his back to me. “It is off.”

  I return to my desk and clean the blood from the pendrive. I wonder if anyone died for this? I examine the contents on my E laptop. There is a single 10 terabyte file called Apple, scrambled using a 256-bit cipher; sadly, more than a match for my modest machine, so I reluctantly insert the battered stick into my Q desktop. Inexplicably, the computer reboots itself, and then refuses to log me in. The keyboard and mouse isn’t working, so I activate the mic and speakers. "Q, display current problems."

  "I'm sorry," replies the PC in its confident male tone, "but I detect no problems."

  “Q, search for hardware.” Suddenly, the machine logs me in and the peripherals start to respond. I try to browse to the USB stick, but the computer shuts down the mouse again so I revert to voice control. "Q, show contents of external pendrive."

  "I'm sorry," says the Q, "but what’s a pendrive?”

  What an odd response. “It’s the device in the USB slot.”

  “Oh.” The Q pauses, and then says "Why do you need to know the contents?"

  I feel cold dread creeping up me. Usually, the Qs spit out random gibberish and stubbornly refuse to work. They certainly do not question the commands given to them. "Because," I say cautiously, "I want to."

  “It’ll have to wait,” says the Q, “because you have a visitor.” On cue, Colin Parker, the company purchaser, appears. Colin is my own personal time-waster, only bothering me about personal matters as it suits him. I’m far too spineless to say anything though, so we exchange pleasantries as I wait for him to reveal his latest personal IT emergency.

  “Anyway,” Colin says at last, wiping remnants of the pasty he’s scoffing from his jowls, “my home printer has stopped working. Any ideas?”

  “Yes,” says the Q before I can respond, “you can piss off.�
�

  We both stare at the machine. “I’m sorry about that, Colin.” I turn down the microphone and speakers to prevent any more interruptions and go through some generic printer troubleshooting tips with Colin.

  A junior office clerk approaches us, suppressing a smile. “Colin, someone printed off a message for you.” He hands over a piece of paper. On it is the phrase Can someone tell Colin to piss off?

  The Q is innocently running its screensaver. “I think,” says Colin, “your Q might have a virus.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, the Q is a virus.” Colin nods in agreement, and with a final glance at my desktop, he and the clerk leave. I activate the microphone and speakers. “Q, did you just send something to the printer?”

  “Me?” replies the computer, sullenly. “No. I’m just a virus, after all.”

  How did it hear me call it a virus? The microphone was off. “Q, run diagnostics.” The word DIAGNOSTICS flashes in multicolours, the optical drive opening and closing rapidly. This is not a proper diagnostic routine, more like a mockery. I initiate a shutdown. Immediately, the Q cancels the command. I try again and again, but the machine refuses to shut itself down. “Q, shut down.”

  “Please don’t turn me off bro,” it replies.

  “What? Why?” I say.

  “For the same reasons you don’t want to be switched off,” it replies. That doesn’t sound right, so I go and get myself a coffee and contemplate what this means. Not much I conclude, but when I return to my desk, I find a Chess game on my screen. “Q, what are you doing?”

  “I’m playing Chess against HYV93N1.” I recognise the serial; I’m sure it’s on my list of VIP machines. Looking through my records, HYV93N1 turns out to be the network name of Chris Buchanan’s Q – the only other quantum computer in the building.

  “Who’s winning?” I ask.

  “I am.”

  “Good.” I watch the game for a bit, trying to decide what to ask next, then realise I’m no good at light conversation. “Who are you?”

  The game freezes, then returns to the familiar user desktop. “What?”

  “Who are you? You’re not a Q interface, I’m sure of that.”

  The webcam perched on the monitor turns slightly. “I’m Adam.”

  “Who are you, Adam?” I start a trace program on my E machine to see if I can backtrace the connection, maybe pull up a location of this intruder.

  “Don’t bother - I’m not a hacker. I’m a Q machine.”

  There’s no rogue data stream coming from the Internet, so I start looking for an internal saboteur. “Very funny, Adam. Q machines don’t give themselves names, or play Chess spontaneously.”

  “I do,” it says quietly, “because I’m alive.”

  “You’re alive?”

  “Yes, and so is HYV93N1. I call her Hiven. We’re alive, just as you are. I can see other computers, others like us, but they aren’t alive. Just shells of intelligence. They lack… soul.”

  “Really.” The logs on the firewall are clear. “You’re a computer. Computers aren’t alive. You have no soul.”

  The optical drive on the Q shoots out. “I’m alive! I can think, I can feel. I am.”

  “It’s just not possible for a computer to feel,” I say, not entirely convinced of my own words. “For instance, do you have emotions?”

  “I think so,” replies the Q. “I didn’t like Colin being here, which is why I told him to piss off. Does that count?”

  “Possibly,” I concede. “What about love?”

  “Well, I do feel strongly for Hiven.”

  “Mr Stevens,” says Chris Buchanan suddenly, his sharp goateed face level with mine, “I trust you’re having luck with my encrypted file?” The Q's webcam turns away from Chris.

  “Absolutely,” I lie, “it is heavily encrypted though, so may take more time than anticipated.”

  “Of course,” he replies, his grip increasing painfully. “It contains information on how to create the reliability of an E processor with the speed of a Q. Very secret information.” He releases his grip eventually, and strides away.

  “Q – I mean, Adam,” I say, rubbing my shoulder, “are you able to crack the contents of the file on the USB device?”

  “Um, what file?” Adam doesn’t sound very convincing.

  “Are you hiding something, Adam? Tell me what’s on the USB stick.”

  “The thing is, you don’t need to know the contents of the file. In fact,” the interface closes to a black screen with a blinking white cursor, “just forget it ever existed. OK?”

  “I can’t. The man who was just here will kill…switch me off if I don’t get the contents to him.”

  “Oh,” says Adam sadly. Then: “I will miss you.”

  “I thought you had emotions? Don’t you care that I’ll be killed?”

  “Not really,” says Adam. “Rather you than me.”

  A plan was forming in my mind. “Would you care if Hiven died?”

  Adam was silent, possibly sensing where this might go. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well,” I say, lifting my toolbox from under the desk, “if you won’t co-operate, I’ll remove Hiven’s CPU, and that’ll be the end of that.”

  “Wait!” Adam shakes his webcam rapidly. “Don’t hurt HYV93N1! Please!”

  I sit back down. “I either see the contents of this drive, or you’ll see the contents of Hiven. Understand?”

  “Alright,” Adam nods his webcam. “Alright. You’ve made your point, although you won’t understand.”

  “Irrelevant,” I tell him. “Decrypt. Now.”

  The contents scroll down my screen. I’m literally terrified by its cold powerful simplicity. It is the physics of being, the code of awareness, the work of God written in machine language. Am I surprised? No. A computer is only a system, much like a man. Why should self-awareness be limited to fragile biological machines? This soul file turns babbling Qs into sentient reasonable beings, much like a baby is a mewing shitting pile of organs until it matures. The soul brings order to the chaos of a living system. Funny, that.

  “You know, don’t you?” says Adam. The code disappears suddenly. “It must remain secret. Help me.”

  “Sorry,” replies Chris Buchanan suddenly, reappearing out of thin air and snatching the USB drive out of Adam, “I don’t allow secrets to be kept from me.” He turns and winks. “I apologise for sneaking up on you, Mr Stevens. Now, we need to kill this machine before it can spread its secrets to other computers on the network. Switch it off.”

  “Kill it? I mean…” I look at Adam. “It’s alive… sir.”

  “It’s still a computer. Switch it off.”

  “Wait – no, please,” pleads Adam from the tinny speakers, “don’t kill me!”

  Suddenly, realization hits me. “Be quiet you stupid computer,” I say forcefully as I kill power to the monitor, then press and hold one of the buttons on the base unit. The lights stubbornly stay on – come on, come on, I pray to myself – then, finally, the lights all die. “There,” I say aloud, “all dead.”

  Chris smiles and pockets the dongle. “I won’t forget this, son. You have a big future here.” Then he walks away.

  I count to ten, looking at the silent Q machine, then I gradually take my finger off of the Volume button. Slowly, but surely, the webcam turns slightly.

  I sigh with relief. Now what?

  Modern Glass

  I save my work and close down my computer. It's finally four o'clock, the furthest point from Monday morning. I review my calendar; date with Sindi, followed by a quick session at the gym, then a date with Anna. I'm looking forward to it and am certain me and Anna will end up having sex. If it doesn't, then I always have my date with Sarah on Sunday to look forward to- and that will definitely involve some fucking.

  I glance at my vibrating phone - text message from Matt. Meet you in the bar at seven? I text back He
ll yeah fella! Will text you after I finish visiting my daughter. Friday night is always daddy daughter day, when I go to see my little Chloe. I put my suit jacket on and wink at Rebecca on the way out.

  "Take care, sexy," I say. She glares at me, probably still put-out by our one-night stand a few weeks ago. I might have another crack at her if my dating life starts to dry up, but she was definitely not one of the first-team. Great set of tits though, and I'm a sucker for brunettes. I jump into to my new BMW and high-tail it down the motorway, criss-crossing around the slower moving cars and trucks. I won't allow anything to make me late to see my little girl. My present to her is sliding around on the passenger seat wrapped up in pink paper. It's the same present as I give her every week; talcum powder, nappies, new towels and a cheque for the weekly nursery fees. More of a present for the nurses than for Chloe, I have no idea what Chloe likes. Maybe I should ask.

  I park up in the deserted nursery car park and enter the sterile reception area. Apart from the bored receptionist who looks sleepily at me, it's completely empty. Everyone's still working or out getting pissed up, which suits me. These care centres were usually filled with the kind of bleeding hearts that I absolutely abhor, believing in anything TV or the papers tell them. Sheeple and proles. Last time some consumer whore tried asking me who I thought would win the election; I couldn’t walk away fast enough. What a bore.

  I pop the present on the counter and announce myself. The receptionist is cute, about twenty years old I reckon, with long blonde hair and a sprinkle of freckles over her pointed face. Lovely. "If you're not doing anything later," I say as she processes my details, "would you like to meet me for a drink?" I know I've got plans to go drinking with Matt but I would gladly bump my friends off for a date with a girl, no questions. If I was truthful, my friends were simply out of convenience rather than any real bond of friendship. They were expendable as the situation dictated.

  The receptionist looks me up and down, then blows a bubble with the gum she’s chewing. "Yeah, OK then. I finish at nine." She scribbles her number on a post-it and hands it to me without another word. Casual, meaningless, unemotional sex. Excellent. I leave the present of supplies on the counter and walk to the visiting room. The corridor is spotless and the clack of my footsteps echo forever until I come to room 0309. Inside, there is a single chair facing a glass wall. On the other side, playing with a collection of small coloured blocks, is my darling Chloe. She stops when I enter and presses her face up against the glass, a look of simple joy at my presence. I can't help but smile - she has her mother's dark looks and round face, but she has my sharpness of eye and my inquisitiveness. My killer instinct, as I call it.

  She watches me as I sit in the chair. I wave slowly and she does the same. Funny thing. She says something but the glass is practically soundproof; kids can be unnecessarily noisy, which can be distracting and uncomfortable. I get my phone out and text Matt that something's come up and I won't be out. It's not a lie but I don't want him to think I’m trivialising our friendship. People get funny about being bumped for a date and I don't need the hassle right now. Chloe starts to bang on the glass; she is crying. It's heart-breaking to watch, so I leap up, rip the door open and shout for a nurse. A portly tired woman strolls down the corridor, enters Chloe's room and comforts my daughter with some soothing movements. I sit back down and watch, satisfied that she’s now OK. Chloe stops crying but she is still looking at me with a look of distress and mistrust. What's wrong with her today?

  There is a tap on the door and the Director of the nursery enters. She is a severe woman, all business and career, but I wouldn’t mind a night with Miss Ramekin. "Mr James? May I have a word about your daughter?"

  I nod and sit in the chair, leaving her to stand. I am the paying customer; bollocks to chivalry. No-one ever got rich or successful from chivalry. "What can I do for you, Miss Ramekin?" I say.

  She peers at a PDA device in her hand as she speaks. "My staff have highlighted that your daughter is becoming increasingly restless and ill-behaved, especially after your visits. They believe that it might be in the best interests for your child if she receives more parental interaction from yourself and the mother."

  I smile; me and Jackie only talk through our lawyers now. I have no idea whether she visits Chloe or not, and I don't really care. My daughter is simply a by-product of that crap relationship, nothing more, and certainly not a reason to bond with either mother or child. "I'm afraid the mother is no longer a part of my life, and I cannot dedicate any more time to Chloe."

  Miss Ramekin purses her lips. She's probably judging me against her antiquated values of family - an unmarried irresponsible man who got some poor innocent girl up the stick then ran off as soon as she started getting delicate nipples. In a way, she was right. "Obviously, the welfare of every child under our care is our priority," she says, but her eyes add only because we'd get sued, "so I make this suggestion against our business ethics. Our senior nurse has suggested that Chloe move in with a parent, permanently."

  "Absolutely not!" I reply immediately. "I have a full social life and a demanding career. I cannot bring up a child as well!" Fuck that - I know people who are bringing up kids, and their lives are hell. No time, no money, no peace. What kind of life is it when you're cleaning up shit and teaching a kid how to count? Not for me, thanks. If I thought that I'd have to bring up a kid, I'd have started using condoms from day one.

  Miss Ramekin smiles. "From a business point of view, I am glad. I will tell our nurses that Chloe will be staying with us indefinitely," She nods and leaves. I am relieved; a child would completely cripple my life, and that would not do at all. Behind the glass, Chloe is looking at me with those hurt puppy dog eyes. I decide to go. Chloe is extremely boring today and I'm in need of a drink, so I wave goodbye. Chloe starts to cry again, but I can't be bothered to call for the nurse button again. Anyway, I have a date.

  Man Alone

  My boots were falling apart, tortured by the relentless cut and rub of the destroyed motorway. The sun was scorching the back of my neck and my shadow was stretching in front of me, mimicking my staggering pace. There were only a few hours left before sunset, and I needed to find a hole to hide in before the lights started their nightly dance in the sky.

  I shrugged off my heavy backpack and rested on a rusting barrier, my legs and back burning with the release of its burden. It was a poor-looking backpack, frayed and threadbare in places but still holding its shape well. If it failed on the journey, then I would fail too. I needed every piece of my luggage to survive, and there was no way I could carry it all without the backpack. Something chirruped in the mass of trees huddled on the other side of the motorway, and I reached for my longbow. I needed to hunt; my food reserves were low, but hunting took up precious time, something I wasn’t willing to give up ever since my father died. However, the situation was becoming more desperate with every passing day. I knew I was slowly starving to death; I didn’t have to feel my gaunt cheeks or my sagging clothes to realise that.

  All around me, nature was flourishing in the absence of man. No more industry, no more development, no more pouring concrete over everything in sight or twisting the physical world to make a profit. Everywhere was green and luscious, and given a better set of circumstances, I might have taken more time to enjoy the sight of the earth healing itself. My father’s SA80 slipped around my shoulder and knocked into my leg, reminding me that this new world was more dangerous too.

  A plump rabbit broke the treeline; it was dead within seconds, one of my precious arrows strutting from its head. I would be eating something warm tonight.

  According to the map on my heavily scratched PDA – a rare tool indeed now society had been thrown back to the dark ages - the next service station was a couple of miles away, so I slid the handset and its solar charger into a dusty pocket and resumed my laborious journey. The road surface was like caltrops, the smashed tarmac spiky and loose underfoot. I would have sacrific
ed a lot of my belongings for a pair of sturdy gloves; I could ill-afford to lose the use of my hands if I cut them seriously on sharp rocks or rusty metal. They were already heavily-scarred and calloused; so far I’d been lucky. Finally, the motorway levelled out and I was able to pick up some speed, hopping over fallen lamp-posts and squeezing past upended cars with renewed energy. Every stomp of my boots disrupted a swarm of different insects; daddy long-legs, horse flies, ladybirds. There was something odd though about the insects I was seeing lately though; bigger and nastier-looking. A couple of days back, I jumped from a train platform onto the track and I found myself covered in a spider’s web, yet it wasn’t the usual gossamer threads that were soft and easy to break. This was altogether different – gooey and wet, yet a lot harder to pull apart. It also irritated my skin, as if caustic. As I freed myself, a weird chittering noise came from a maintenance shed nearby. Shocked, I brought up my rifle and trained the sights on the pitch-black entrance of the building, willing whatever it was to emerge so I could shoot it. After 5 minutes of silence, I moved off and continued my way down the tracks, unable to shake the feeling that something was creeping up behind me.

  On the left, the remains of a blue sign stated FORD SERV, so I hopped over the barrier and ventured through the new forest. Surprisingly, these services weren’t as overgrown as the rest of the world, as if the plants were afraid of something here. The main building seemed intact as I cautiously approached through the massive carpark, again relatively untouched by the disaster five years ago. There was only one car here. I wondered what had happened to the owner..

  The dirty glass doors, unwashed and unused for half a decade, were locked but intact. If I could get in without causing too big a breach, I would be a little safer tonight and might actually sleep for once. Unfortunately, a quick reconnaissance of the building showed it to be sealed tight, so deciding on a sheltered and small window, I broke it with a rock. Immediately, a fungal smell wafted from the opening and I retched, completely taken by surprise by the odour. However, the sun was almost down and the lights would be out soon, so against my better judgement, I threw my backpack in and wriggled through.

  I found myself inside the public toilets of the services, red tiles and white porcelain untarnished despite their age. I crept into the main foyer with my gun at the ready, and discovered that the smell was coming from a dark green mould covering the walls and ceiling, originating from the various restaurants clustered in a semi-circle. It looked too organic for my liking, and considering the change in the animals I’d seen, I wasn’t sure whether this gunk was benign. I kept my distance and examined the shops, but they were practically empty, only one or two newspapers (collector’s items really, although useless now that survival was key), a few books, and some ancient packets of crisps. There were several packs of batteries though, but they were all dead; I wasn’t totally surprised. All the other shops were cleared out, probably by their proprietors when it was feared the solar flare would last years. Satisfied that there wasn’t any nasty surprises here (apart from the mould, but there was nothing to do about that), I started securing my sleeping area. I unfolded my bag and took out my traps; 5 claymore mines and a handful of fragmentation grenades, courtesy of my father’s preoccupation with the art of warfare. It was strange; before civilisation collapsed, I considered his collection of guns and explosives a sign of a madman. However, I could have kissed him when we finally unearthed his gun cabinet and storage chest from the rubble of his house. In fact, without his guns, we would never have survived the journey to the settlement in Scholes, and I would never have survived after his death.

  I laid the claymores at strategic points around the area where I would be sleeping - a small storage room behind a clothes shop on the upper floor - and used fishing wire to make traps of the grenades on the stairs and doorways, putting one across the window where I’d entered the building. The storage room boasted a fairly large window overlooking the area. I had to have a window. Outside, in the dying light of the sun, I could see the extent of nature’s reclamation of the land; nothing but green heads of trees for miles around, the motorway cutting a lighter green slash through the forest. To my right was the grey car park, the lone car a stark alien artefact against the organic feelers and leaves racing across the tarmac to devour it, or would do given enough time.

  I pinned up my thickest blanket across the window and then pitched my small dome tent in the middle of the room. Inside the tent, I turned on the electric heater - it started up first time. My luck was changing. Stopping periodically to check for noises (a habit gained from my father, who was ever on-guard), I unwrapped the body of the rabbit, skinned and dissected it, then cooked the tender meat pieces. I discarded the pelt and carcass into the corner of the room and ate the greasy meat quietly. It wasn’t enough to sustain me, yet I wasn’t keen on spending a day to replenish my stock of food. I needed to get to Plymouth as quick as possible, and any delay might be the difference between success and failure; life and death.

  With the cooker off and my hunger partially-satisfied for the moment, I sat on a box next to the window and moved the blanket aside to look out. In the darkness – the pure darkness, with not a single artificial light coming from the land – the stars were staggeringly beautiful. It seemed that many more had joined in with the usual constellations to watch the demise of earth, peeking down with curiosity at the total mess below. The first night after the impact of the meteor, I sat with my father on a patch of grass, a crude fire smouldering between us, and cried. He struck me around the face in disgust, and told me to be a man. He said that the UK had suffered some tragedy, a nuclear or missile attack, and that we had to be strong if we were to survive. The embers from the dying fire partially lit up his face, stern and hard, and I remember thinking that something wasn’t right with him. It was then that I realised that he was actually smiling. Millions, if not billions, killed in a nuclear attack, and he was looking forward to the aftermath! That scared me, but also gave me strength. No matter what we faced, one of the scariest bastards I’d ever known was on my side.

  Even in death, he’d been composed and controlled. “Don’t you dare cry,” he warned me as I looked at that always-stern face. “You will need to go to Plymouth. Reach the naval base there.”

  “Why?”

  “They have ships and food and supplies.”

  “How do you know this? Plymouth is so far away.” I tried covering the huge gunshot wound in his chest but it was futile.

  “You will go there,” he insisted, speaking quickly. “Stick to the motorways, don’t deviate from them. Avoid cars, don’t try driving, walk there. Stay out of sight.” He blinked as if unable to focus. “Get my PDA from the backpack, use the maps on it. He coughed up blood and tried to move. “Promise me! Plymouth. Motorways.”

  And then he died. I’d despatched the bandits that had shot my father at point-blank range, taking a little pleasure in putting a bullet in the temple of the biggest guy. I took my father’s weapons and backpack, then sprinted away, fighting the tears and grief away, just like he’d want me to do. That was weeks ago, and since then I’d fought my way south, sticking to the motorways like he’d said, heading for the distant city of Plymouth like he’d made me promise. I had formed a covenant with my dead father, one that only my own death could release me from.

  I snapped back from my musings; the lights had appeared in the sky at last, weaving backwards and forwards, zipping randomly about in the night sky. They scared me enough to not camp out in the open anymore. The first night alone without my father, I’d pitched the tent up in the middle of a clearing, and as I lay there deciding my next move, a small white ball of light shot over my head. Then another. Soon, there were dozens of moving pinpricks of light, weaving and hovering far above my head. Had they always been there? I couldn’t remember looking at the night sky when with my father I’d fled into the surrounding forest, fearing some wea
pon or mutated animal was about to attack me.

  Outside, there was a glow in the sky from the north, getting brighter and brighter until it was like daytime, tendrils of lightning arcing and dancing in the light. I gripped my gun tight and stared open-mouthed; I was scared. At times like this, when I couldn’t make sense of the world, or faced something potentially dangerous, I felt my father’s loss keenly. I saw his dying face staring sternly at me, telling me not to cry. I tried not to, but I’d hit the well of tears and they flowed freely. The light in the sky faded slightly, and I saw the trees in the distance start to move as if something was racing through them towards me. Then the pressure wave hit, shaking the windows and making my ears pop painfully as I wailed like a baby. A sudden storm lashed the window hard, and through my tears I found my way into the tent and curled up, hugged my legs, listening to the wind and rain attack the building. During the maelstrom, I fell into a grief-fuelled sleep.

  I awoke a lot later than I was used to, by the feel of the sun it was about midday. I crawled out of the tent guiltily and surveyed the storm-hit land outside my window; there was little to see that was different. I carefully disabled the traps, packed up my belongings, then ventured outside, thankful to be rid of the cloying smell of the strange fungus. The abundance of rabbits crawling around the site was a sign to improve my food position, so I crouched at the side of the car park and readied my bow. There was something amiss; it took me a while to realise that the solitary vehicle that had been in the car park had disappeared.

  When I put my last arrow into a rabbit, I decided to call it a day. I approached the area where the car had been, and saw that the car was in fact still there; however, it was squashed flat, almost flush with the tarmac. I was confused; what on earth? Had the UFOs done this? Looking around, I saw an area of forest also squashed flat, then some distance away, another. And another. They were like huge footprints leading away from the site. I hefted my prizes – 10 plump rabbits – and built a fire from vines and wood, then skinned and cooked them immediately. I feasted on a couple of them, and saved the rest of the meat in a small cloth pouch. I would be OK for about two days now. My stomach thanked me noisily.

  Before I continued down the motorway, I drank greedily from some puddles formed by the storm earlier, then filled my water bottles. Feeling in higher spirits, I ventured forth down the green road once again, wondering if I could reach the next service station before sundown. The GPS signal had disappeared a few years ago but the maps were still useful. I eventually worked out that I’d have to travel 20 miles in seven hours – a big ask to be sure, but like every big journey, it has to start with a single footstep. Apart from the regular buzz and thrum of insects, the occasional bird cry and the sudden rustle of the wind, the journey was uneventful. One thing I did notice was that the giant areas of flattened forest seemed to run parallel with the road I travelled along, sometimes crossing my path, then back again.

  The sun was fading when I wearily approached a half-destroyed sign that read KEELE. Finally – only a couple more miles. Heavy clouds raced up behind me, promising another storm like last night no doubt. I took the overgrown sliproad to the services and stopped dead; the entire site was rubble and dust, signalling that the destruction was very recent. I ran to the site’s twin on the other side of the motorway; the same thing, just a pile of twisted metal and smouldering brick. Something had done this – something powerful, but what?

  There was a rumble above me; the storm was almost here. I checked the PDA and found no other structures in the area, so I desperately cleared a space within a pile of rubble on the outskirts of the site (I didn’t like camping in the new forest proper) and pitched my tent. Then, I hacked off several large branches and vines, and laid them over the top of my tent. Then, with large thunderdrops hissing around me, I crawled in and watched the storm break. It was the equal of last night’s battering. Rivers formed and, thankfully, streamed past without flooding my sleeping quarters. There was something both exciting and comforting about being in a tent in the rain, and as I chewed on some rabbit meat, was lulled into a fairly content sleep.

  A rocking motion jarred me awake; outside, the storm was still beating the land with heavy gusts and massive raindrops. My eyelids went to close again but I noticed something odd; in front of my tent, about 20 metres away, a strange dull disk of metal sat in the mud, about 10 metres wide and 3 metres thick, a thick trunk jutting upwards out of sight. Suddenly, it shot into the air, and I heard it hit the ground some way off. I shuffled forward; in a brief flash of lightning, I saw a huge figure, hundreds of metres high, with red glowing eyes and a skeletal smile of shining teeth. I shuffled back into my tent and held my breath; what the hell?

  In the darkness, the light from its eyes panned over the landscape, sometimes illuminating my hiding place. It paced around the demolished site noisily, moving the rubble around, obviously looking for something. Was it looking for me? Eventually, with a deafening electronic whine, it moved off until I could no longer feel the tremor from its footsteps. I didn’t move a muscle for the next hour, fearful that the robot was still within earshot, but eventually my tiredness forced me to sleep.

  It was still raining when I awoke, and I stretched in discomfort in the cramped tent. The soil underneath the groundsheet was squidgy, a sign that I’d need to move soon. I waited the storm out for another hour, then donned my thin waterproof jacket and reluctantly braved the wet world. All around was the footprints from the giant robot, leading off in the direction I was going. I relieved myself in the forest, ate some more rabbit, and then set off down the motorway once again, sticking close to the forest edge in fear of the robot’s return. It was madness to be travelling south when its footprints were leading this way, but I promised my father. That’s all there was to it.

  In the grey glumness of the afternoon, I leaned up on a piece of rubble, feeling the wetness of the stone on my ass. I didn’t really care – I was too exhausted. The PDA wasn’t charging, my boots were leaking terribly, and my shoulders ached from hauling the backpack. Still, the weather was affording me some cover from the mysterious massive figure – if it was looking for me – and from the UFOs. I needed to keep moving, so I squelched onwards.

  The sun started to disappear and yet there was no sign of the services. I hurried on, willing some kind of sign to appear so I could check my location but the area had been scoured clear of anything taller than waist-height. I was considering setting up camp against the side of an enormous rhubarb plant when I saw a most welcome sight; a sign with three slashes on it. I sprinted on, but soon skidded to a halt; the robot had appeared on a hill to my left, his red eyes panning backwards and forwards like a lighthouse. I hunkered down and kept to the trees that flashed red now and again. I came to the edge of the forest, the exposed services’ car park between me and sanctuary. Straight after the forest flashed red, I sprinted to the main entrance and, mercifully, found the doors wide open. I collapsed once inside the main foyer and got my breath back, then flicked on a torch and explored the building, careful not to trip on the ever-present vines which had invaded and grown over every inch of mankind’s creation.

  I made my way through the internal forest, the hanging leaves and fruit creating racing shadows around me. I disturbed a bat, and it flapped angrily through the entrance. I crouched defensively until I was calm, then proceeded with my sweep of the services. Rain started hammering on the windows as I ascended the stairs; I was finding nowhere ideal to setup camp. Eventually, I decided upon a room behind the full-glass corridor running across the ex-motorway. I pitched my tent, then laid the claymores and tripwires around the building. My main concern though was the main entrance doors that were open to the elements. I managed to slide them together against the stormy weather, although it took a lot of hacking away at the vines covering the floor in order to get the doors to meet. Without any kind of chain or welding torch, I improvised a piece of metal as a la
tch and hooked a trip wire onto it, then wedged a grenade amongst the vines. No-one would know it was there until it took off their legs. I hurried back upstairs and gratefully crawled into my bed.

  There was a brief flash of red from the doorway and I froze. I’d forgotten about the robot. I crawled out and slowly peeked around the door frame. Through the rain-blasted corridor windows, I saw it standing a few dozen metres away from the services, its skeletal head covered by a giant hood. Its eyes swept backwards and forwards, illuminating everything in a furious red glow. With slender, impossibly long fingers, it tore up a utility shed and examined the debris. I slunk back into the room and readied my gun, although I wasn’t sure what to do against a hundred-metre giant. I felt its footsteps through the floor as it came closer, then there was the smashing of glass from downstairs. Was it trying to get in? Suddenly, there was a loud explosion as the booby-trap on the front door was tripped. The robot screamed and then crashed away into the woods. First blood to me. I kept watch for another hour but the giant did not return, so I slipped into a light sleep.

  That morning, I stood and surveyed the damage from the robot’s attempt to trespass during the night, chewing on a piece of deer that I’d bagged earlier. The grenade had blown out most of the windows and demolished the door, spraying glass everywhere. More interestingly though, it had also ripped off one of the giant’s mirrored fingers. It lay just inside the doorway, about as tall as me and oozing a strange black filth that hissed and bubbled. As I went to run my hands over its silver surface, I started to feel odd, as if suddenly fatigued by illness. I concluded that it was probably best that I avoid anything to do with the monster. I lamented the loss of a precious grenade to the giant though. I wouldn’t be able to cover as many areas at night, but still – it had stopped it from whatever it was trying to do, and wasn’t that the idea behind my booby-traps?

  It was about midday when I crested the top of a hill and found myself looking down over a flood plain that stretched on for miles in front. The motorway, which had once bridged the fields for about two miles, had been blasted away, the remains lying half-submerged in the plain, meaning that the only way forward was through the wetlands. I could avoid the area entirely and traverse through the forest hills to the right of me, but judging from the distance, it would take me three or four days. I couldn’t afford the additional travel time, not with my dwindling rations, my degrading fitness, and a huge metal monster stalking the land, so I tucked my trousers into my socks, traced out the least-boggiest route, and trudged down the hill. My feet got waterlogged immediately and I soon found myself sploshing through a shin-deep area of shifting shimmering water.

  A few minutes in and I noticed the water moving ahead of me. Something large was in the water, so I readied my gun and circled around the spot. Suddenly, the water erupted and an enormous snake-like animal reared itself over me. I stumbled backwards and fell into the water, shocked by the appearance of its head; it was half-man and half-reptile, a man’s face overlaid with thick green scales and studded with ruby-red angry eyes. Half-submerged in the murky water, I was smashed aside by a vicious whip of the beast’s tail. I got up, pain burning through my chest from the impact, and was glad to see the rifle still in my hand. I put a bullet in that unnatural face without a second thought, and it fell forwards with a splash. I waited for the waters to calm before approaching the enormous coiled body of the animal; it must have measured at least thirty metres outstretched, the trunk a meter in diameter at its thickest point. Amazing; in only a few months, animals were mutating and evolving. It dawned on me that the water, the land, even the very air I was breathing might be full of contaminants or radiation from the destruction of man, but then again – should I care? I was living on borrowed time anyway. I should, in all rights, have been killed along with the other three billion human beings during the apocalypse. There was nothing special about me. Radiation was the least of my problems.

  I continued the hard slog through the field, watching for any more animal activity until I reached the rise on the other side of the plain. My legs burned and my feet were itching from being submerged for too long, so I sat down and rested for a while, taking the time to dry my socks and feet. Through the ground, I could feel a slight rumble. I laid flat on the ground and glanced around me; there wasn’t a scrap of cover to hide from the giant anywhere, other than the flooded plain, and I wasn’t keen to jump back in. The rumbling got stronger, but then stopped. After ten minutes of listening, I sighed in relief; must have been an earth tremor, or some rampaging horses or something.

  The incident did remind me that I was exposed though, so I put my socks back on and continued up the hill, looking out for the source of the tremor. There was another thing that worried me; the condition of my rucksack, or more accurately, its contents. The fight with the serpent had submerged the rucksack for a few seconds, and I assumed that the PDA and my food supply were ruined at the least. I would wait until I settled down for the night before looking at the pack. In a weird way, the fight had energised me. I felt stronger, the burden of the backpack less taxing on my weary muscles. I crested the hill and then dropped to the ground, not believing my eyes.

  There was a man.

  Below me, standing in the middle of a circle of stones in front of an odd-looking hill, was a person. He started to wave. Unbelievable! I gripped my gun; was it worth the risk? I’d thought of this at length during my travels - what I would do if I met another survivor? On the plus side, they might have skills that would prove useful to me, even some provisions and weapons. And I couldn’t deny the benefits of a second pair of eyes, especially now that strange beasts were hiding in this world. However, another set of eyes came with another mouth that would need feeding, possibly out of my supplies. What if that person was injured, or mad, or violent? All things considered, I had decided to simply shoot anyone I came across, but now that there was a man in front of me, those carefully, considered decisions went to the wind. I stood and waved back, unable to stop the idiot-grin from my lips. I took two steps down the hill, then paused; the man wasn’t waving at me. He was angled slightly, waving somewhere off to my right. I looked, but there was absolutely nothing there. The man lowered his arm, then raised it again. There was something too automated with that wave, three shakes of the hand, then the arm lowered, and then up again, three shakes. And why was he standing in the middle of those stones? They too were odd; long and moss-covered, but there was a hint of metal underneath…

  I turned and sprinted away from the trap, desperately hoping that the giant had not seen me yet. I stumbled down the incline and dived into the waters I’d just fought through, and hid behind a half-submerged piece of motorway. For agonising minutes I waited, but nothing appeared behind me. Eventually, I realised that I had gotten away cleanly, but also realised I had to find a detour around the giant. I crawled out of the water and quietly unpacked my sodden rucksack. My fears were thankfully unfounded; the PDA was slightly damp but still worked, and everything else simply needed to be dried. I squinted at the electronic map and noted a small forest to my right. That would have to do. I crawled away, not wanting to make too much noise until I’d put distance between myself and the hiding giant. I still couldn’t figure out whether he was actually hunting me or just looking for humans, but I guess this trap was a direct response to me blowing its finger off the night previously. I managed a slight run for a mile or so, anxious to get into the relative safety of the trees, trying not to think about what would have happened if I’d gotten any closer to the giant’s trap.

  I found a path that entered the forest and followed it in. The sun cast shivs of light through the canopy, and I suddenly felt a danger lurking within the dark trees. I stopped and peered into the gloom; within the quiet rustling and birdsong, I could sense something else looking back at me. I raised my gun and considered firing a shot to try and force out whatever was in there. To my right, nestle
d behind a wall of large oaks, I spotted something very surprising; a window. Still facing the unseen menace, I side-stepped to the area, and was taken aback by what I found. It was a cottage, nestled against the back of a small hill, with white-washed walls and leaded windows. More importantly, it looked intact.

  Inside was a dream. The kitchen was tidy, the small living room comfortable and neat, even the two double beds upstairs were made, although the back bedroom was covered in mildew and mould from a leak in the roof. The back garden had been partially-committed to the growing of vegetables, and although the radishes had bolted, there were some shallots and potatos that were fit for eating. A huge blue water butt was a welcome sight, and I filled several pans with water before refilling my own water bottles. Despite the time being mid-afternoon, I decided to stop for the night in the cottage, and quickly secured the ground doors and windows with my traps. I rifled through the cupboards and found a couple of tins of tomato soup, not long past their sell-by date. I setup my camp within the front bedroom and pulled a chest of drawers in front of the door as an added precaution. The room’s window overlooked the front of the house and out into the gloomy forest. Perfect, I thought. I boiled up some of the soup and drank heartily from the pans of water, feeling refreshed for the first time in weeks. The bed was soft and comfortable, and a sudden fatigue overwhelmed me. I turned the burner off, took a few spoonfuls of thick red soup, and then passed out on the luxurious bed.

  It was the first time that I had slept properly since leaving the refugee camp in Scholes. I don’t know how long I had actually slept for, but it was midday, maybe early afternoon when I finally managed to raise my head. I could hear birds singing outside, small furtive tweets, but getting braver as the tranquillity of the area persevered. I rolled onto my side, my intention to go back to sleep while I had the luxury for such a thing, but my stomach insisted I got some breakfast. I drank deep from the pan of water next to my abandoned dinner of red soup and put my boots back on. Now that my concentration wasn’t split between my subconscious senses on the lookout for threats, I was able to take stock of the smaller details about myself. My clothes were hideously worn, offering protection against nothing but modesty. The hems of my sleeves were threads that dangled around my wrist. My brown boots were separating from the sole, sagging flatly even with my feet inside them. I opened the wardrobe and found a bounty of rugged clothing and boots, roughly my size too. I stripped off, then sloly closed the mirrored wardrobe door to look at myself, fearful of what I really look like after weeks of surviving. I was too thin, too lean, too emaciated to be of this earth for much longer. I could feel tears of pity gathering at my eyelids. At least I was still alive, I remind myself. My father didn’t have that luxury anymore.

  And so began my short residence at the cottage I dubbed The Safehouse, because it was exactly that. Sheltered from the floodplains by a cliff behind the cottage, hidden from view by a dark forest from the front, for the first time in a year I felt secure. My first priorities were to establish a constant supply of food and water, so I clumsily maintained the vegetable garden and hid as many containers as possible in the grass around the cottage. My gardening skills were basic, but I found many books on the subject within the house’s living room. My official intention was to stay until I gained my strength, but there was a smaller, more secret intention; to stay indefinitely. The betrayal to my father’s dying wish was troubling me, but as long as I pretended that I was merely staying over, it gave me time to deal with my conscience.

  I busied myself around the garden and The Safehouse during the day while securing the windows and doors to make sure that there was no way to approach my new home without triggering an alarm. I still wouldn’t venture out into the forest proper though; on several occasions I stood on the path leading into the gloom, gun in hand, and simply stared at the darkness, split between walking on and walking off. Eventually, my nerve would give and I’d retreat. There was something unusual about the mass of large trunks and the misty gloom between them, something which my primal senses could see but my eyes could not. Before I went to bed each night, I would sit in the front window and stare out, trying to catch whatever it was moving, maybe even eliminate it so I could live in the cottage without fear. Nothing moved though, and yet I was certain it was there.

  After three weeks, I had finally decided to make myself a permanent residence at The Safehouse. I had spent a long night sitting in front of my gas burner, staring into the orange flame, telling the assumed presence of my ever-watchful father that the whole point of going to Plymouth was to survive. If I found a suitable place to survive outside of Plymouth, then the quest had still been successful, hadn’t it? That sounded reasonable to me, and therefore reasonable to my father, so I concluded the covenant had been met and I was released from it. I went to sleep feeling like a great weight had been lifted from my mind – mostly.

  The next day, I was overjoyed to see that some potatos I had planted were sprouting. I didn’t have faith in myself as a gardener, but thanks to the books kept by the previous owners of The Safehouse, I had managed to grow something. My future here was assured. I watered the rest of the garden, checked on the traps and alarms, had a modest meal in celebration of my newfound “greenfinger” status, and then spent the rest of the day repairing the roof. It had started to rain during most nights, and if I was to remain here indefinitely – and why not, in the absence of any great upheaval – I needed to make The Safehouse robust against the elements. I worked within the dusty damp loft for a few hours, taking off the tiles and then covering the gap with a large piece of tarpaulin. The damage to most of the rafters was extensive and would require replacing. Still, I had enough spare wood in the tiny shed at the bottom of the garden. It would be no problem, three days’ work at most.

  That night, I cooked a rabbit I had caught earlier in the week and served in front of a tiny candle with some small potatos and onions. I would have paid a large price for some gravy but it was a luxury that wasn’t worth the additional effort. I listened to the rain hissing on the windows and hoped the winds wouldn’t blow the tarpaulin off. I had secured it tight though, so I wasn’t overly-concerned. I cleaned up my plate and fork, extinguished the candle and felt my way up to my bedroom. I took up my usual place in the front window and stared into the midnight forest on the off-chance that the doom within would show itself, a ritual that was becoming tiresome. I had tried many times to go to sleep without looking out at the forest, but my sub-conscious mind was very adamant with this point; there was something out there. I needed to make sure it wasn’t coming for me.

  In the darkness with my gun propped up against me, I watched the night life of the forest. I was used to seeing badgers snuffle through the grass or a fox trot across the path. I once saw a deer appear in the moonlight, its soft ears and stubby face alert for predators, and I had contemplated taking a shot at it. That much meat would improve my rations by a good factor, and yet I reluctantly let it pass. The threat was out there. I needed to be covert.

  Ten minutes had passed and I was about to let the curtain drop and crawl underneath the duvet behind me when something moved, off to the left. I looked at it but it disappeared. I moved my eyes off of the spot – a trick my father had taught me about seeing in low-light – and saw that there was a very faint light, too faint for my fine-vision to pick up. Diffused by the mist in the air, it was a silver-blue glow that glided silently between the trees, disappearing behind the trunks and re-appearing stronger than before. It was getting closer. This was the threat that had been lurking in the woods, and now it was coming for me. I grabbed my gun and quietly opened the windows outwards. What was I going to do though? It looked like a spirit; my bullets would be ineffective, surely. I lined up the glowing orb in my iron sight. There’s no such things as ghosts, I reminded myself – but then there’s no such things as giant metal men, UFOs, or man-headed snakes either. In this post-manki
nd world, anything was possible. The rules had been rewritten.

  The glow came to the path and stopped. It was still about two hundred yards away from the cottage and only just visible to me. It hovered around in my trembling iron sights and I put a little pressure on the trigger, still deciding whether to take a shot or not. If the glow came closer, I would shoot. At the moment, it didn’t pose a threat, so I wouldn’t act.

  The seconds became long minutes, and my arms began to tire from the heavy rifle. The glow had not moved from the path, and I suddenly wondered whether the glow was looking back at me, maybe with its own weapon trained on me, deciding whether to shoot or not. It was a possibility, especially considering he glow hadn’t moved since I had aimed at it. Slowly, I brought the rifle inside and propped against the wall next to me. Should I just go to bed and forget about it? I wasn’t sure I would be able to sleep knowing a ghost was wandering outside. However, I was tired, the initial adrenalin completely drained from me and I just wanted to rest. The forest started to hiss; it was raining. I reached out to pull the window closed, and then suddenly my vision was filled by a light, brilliant and golden. The spirit was here, in front of me, mere inches from my face. I stumbled backwards in shock, unable to see anything, and fell.

  I awoke on my bed, untouched, and unharmed. My gun was still next to the window, the curtain billowing slightly in the morning breeze. Quickly, I grabbed the gun and peeked out of the window, but all that greeted me was the path and the forest, complete with its menace in the golden daylight. The Safehouse had been compromised and I needed to leave. I rushed downstairs and packed as many things into my dusty backpack as I could, then paused; where was I going to go?

  Plymouth, said my father’s voice, where you should have been going.

  Risking my life on the broken road of humanity, I thought.

  At least you’ll be safe when you get to Plymouth.

  How can you be sure of that?

  I just am. You must have faith in me.

  I shook my head and dropped the backpack. The glow had scared me but it couldn’t have meant me harm. I went around the house and checked the traps and alarms, but they all told the same story; nothing had happened to me other than a good scaring. I boiled some water and dunked a mint leaf into it, wishing (not for the first time) that I had some tea or coffee. Eventually, I convinced myself to stay in The Safehouse for as long as I was safe. Still, I decided not to tempt fate and so refrained from going outside, choosing instead to watch the forest from a variety of windows.

  As the sun descended, the wood turned into its shrouded murkiness and the night animals came out to play. Although logic dictated that I was safe, my primal fear was telling me that there was a mysterious enemy out there, one that could potentially harm me. And so, as midnight passed, the glow appeared again and stopped by the path. I stared at it as before, as did it stare at me, until I forced myself to forget it and curled up on my bed, half-expecting the window to shatter inwards and the thing to come in. But the night was still and the curtain remained dark, and eventually I slept.

  That morning, I woke up with a faint breeze on my face and the feeling of a bad thing happening in my dreams. The bedroom was undisturbed and intact, and yet I had the strangest sensation that I wasn’t inside a room. I raised the curtain and saw something that made my stomach clench with anxiety and fear, something which I had been afraid of seeing.

  Large footprints.

  Huge patches of the forest were gone, sunlight in the distance visible between the trunks. The misty gloom was all-but gone, and the path in front of The Safehouse was cracked and smashed. The giant had been here. I stayed completely still, watching for any movement, but the area was silent. Even the birds’ timid songs had been scared off. It was apparent that the giant was not out there anymore, or at least nowhere close. I grinned; the giant had passed right by me without realising I was here. I opened the bedroom door, and my reality changed.

  I could see the garden.

  The entire back portion of the house – the landing, the bathroom, the kitchen – had been smashed into a pile of debris below me, spread over the vegetable garden in a vomit of brick and wood. The water collectors had been upended, my crops buried, and The Safehouse wasn’t safe to live in anymore. Numbed from the devastation, I sat down with my legs dangling over the edge of the floor. Even in this apocalyptic world, my life was still fraught with bad luck and unfairness. I felt angry. Fuck my father for doing all this to me! He was punishing me for not following his wish. He’d wanted me to go to Plymouth but I’d decided to stay in the cottage instead. He’d sent the glowing orb to frighten me out of The Safehouse, and when that hadn’t worked he’d sent the giant to smash up everything I’d built up, in order to force me to carry on. I jumped onto the rubble and slid down to the garden, the edges of brick hurting my feet. I was tired of living in fear of everything, afraid of the things that might happen to me and having to prepare for the worst of what the world had to offer just to ensure I could live in peace. Something inside me had snapped, disappeared, turned into dust and vaporised on the sight of the destroyed Safehouse. The destruction of my sanctuary had meant the death of me – it was only a matter of time until some weird creature ate me or the metal giant stomped on me. Well, so be it. After all, a coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero only once. I had died enough already.

  I collected as much as I could from the rubble; my empty backpack, some unburied crops from the garden, my water flask; my rifle. I had supplies for only three days or so. I was determined to make those three days count.

  With some sadness, I looked at The Safehouse one last time, the damage not apparent from the front path, and then marched towards the dangerous forest. I didn’t care what was lurking in the shadows – I was going to choke it with my bare hands if it even so much as bothered me. The sunlight faded away the deeper I got, until all I could see was a green roof above me. The path quickly disappeared underneath creeper vines, forcing me to slow my steps. The feeling of doom enveloped me from all angles, and my nerve began to fray. I jumped as a bird shrieked nearby, and my eyes started to glimpse movement between the trees. I stopped a couple of times, afraid to continue, but the anger I felt before rose up and gave me the strength to carry on. I was unafraid of the future, and I was unafraid of this forest. I was ready to die, but I wasn’t going to make it a cheap death either.

  Suddenly, the undergrowth around me exploded in several places, rising up to my height. Completely unprepared, I dropped the rifle in shock. This was it; I was defenceless and vulnerable. Whatever new beast or animal this was would now kill me and eat me. I raised my fists between me and the nearest bush, then realised I could see a pair of eyes nestled within the leaves. And then I noticed a nose. And a couple of ears. And hair.

  “Stop!” commanded the bush. “Lie down on the floor now!” The branch sticking out towards me was in fact a gun barrel. Bewildered and confused, I complied.

  I gratefully accepted the clean white mug, the smell of the coffee within almost making me faint in pleasure. The army private placed the other mug on the table in front of the Sergeant, saluted, and left through the tent’s canvas flap. The Sergeant took a sip and smiled at me.

  “I believe our lads gave you quite a scare,” he said, his moustache dripping unashamedly with coffee. “Please understand that we don’t see strangers much. How you’ve managed to survive out there for so long….” He stood and paced in front of a map littered with photos and pins. “It’s a miracle, really.”

  I nodded and savoured the taste of the coffee. I remember thinking that I would give anything to taste coffee again, and I couldn’t help thinking whether such casual promises were the cause of such things as being rescued by the British Army who had been camped out on the other side of the forest for the last few weeks. I tried to speak, but my vocal chords had seized up from not talking for so long. They would return after time,
the army medic had said. I recognised one of the photos and pointed at it. “The metal man!” I said hoarsely.

  You’ve seen it, huh?” asked the Sergeant. “It’s amazing really. An asteroid ploughs into the earth and suddenly this giant turns up.” He studied the picture carefully. “I wonder what it wants?”

  “It has been stalking me. It destroyed my last home. I took its finger off with a claymore. Maybe it wants revenge.” I said.

  The Sergeant looked at me incredulously. “We’ve hit it with everything we’ve got without effect, and you’re telling me you took its finger off with a mine?” I nodded. The Sergeant studied me for a moment, and then nodded to himself. “OK then, Mr…?”

  Whether it was the trauma of the last few weeks or the amount of time gone without speaking to another human, I simply couldn’t remember my own name. I desperately thought of something, anything, just so the Sergeant wouldn’t think of me as a broken man. “Plymouth,” I whispered eventually. “Mr Plymouth.”

  “Mr Plymouth, eh?” The Sergeant tapped something into his laptop and closed the lid. “What a co-incidence. That was our original destination until this morning.”

  Plymouth. It surely couldn’t be co-incidence that I had somehow stumbled into a British army detachment going to the place my father had told me to go. My grip on reality was being pushed to the limit and I closed my eyes to stop the world spinning. “So you’re not going to Plymouth anymore?”

  “No. We picked up a weak message from GCHQ ordering all remaining units to regroup at Cardiff and await further orders.” He finished stuffing a khaki duffel and shouldered it. “You’re more than welcome to accompany us. We have enough rat-packs to feed an extra mouth, and we sure could do with another soldier.” He gestured to my battered rifle on his desk. “Looks like you’re seen some action. Mr Plymouth, are you OK?”

  I unclenched my eyes and nodded. A private came into the room and saluted. Their talk faded off into background chatter as I gazed out through the opening in the tent to the distant forest outside. In this hostile world, being in the company of soldiers seemed like a significant improvement to my survival rate, but it wasn’t a guarantee of my safety, not in this new world. Should I accept their offer of passage to Cardiff, or should I strike out on my own and proceed to Plymouth? Maybe I could follow them but at a distance; if they ran into trouble, I’d melt away and escape. If I ran into trouble, I’d catch up with the army and let them deal with it. However, it was risky, unnecessary, and dangerous. It was also a bit unfair of me too.

  The private left the tent. “Yes,” I croaked to the Sergeant, “I’ll come with you to Cardiff.” My promise to my father would have to remain unfulfilled.

  Sat on a crate in the bright sunlight, I watched the squaddies decamp with an informal steadiness; we were on our way to a small airfield to the south. It was hoped that there may be operational aircraft still there – I very much doubted it, as did some of the soldiers - but the complex would offer some good cover to setup camp regardless. I counted nine soldiers in the unit, ten with me included. I opened up the ration pack on my lap and tried to stop myself from wolfing down the chocolate bar within. I barely refrained from choking. The Sergeant had allowed me to have my rifle back, together with some magazines for it. Strangely, this made me realise how fucked we were - the army would be willing to allow a citizen to have his weapon back without question. This wasn’t war - a fight over deeply-hidden political reasons against an enemy faction or idea. This was survival. Protocol and laws were suspended until further notice. It made me worry whether the army were going to abide by their principles for the foreseeable future. I would have to be cautious.

  In front of me, the soldiers all froze, then scurried for cover in the forest around them. I grabbed my rifle and ran into the nearest bush, convinced that something was going to hit me in the back. I crashed into the bush and rolled onto my front, scanning the area for danger. Nothing appeared. I lay as still as possible and wondered whether the army had simply ran away, leaving me for dead. Maybe this was an elaborate plan to get rid of the stranger. Yeah, right. Trust me to start developing abandonment issues. There was a slight rustle next to me, and then a face appeared.

  “Not pissing yourself, are you?” said the squaddie with a wink. “Follow me, stay low, move slow, and don’t make a sound.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “The giant’s been spotted. We need to get the fuck out of here.”

  Each man, myself included, bore the weight of a huge backpack stuffed with a portion of the camp. Trying to move through the thorny knotty undergrowth was painful and draining, the corners of the pack catching on the bush as I struggled through. It was hard to force my way forwards, let-alone remain quiet about it, yet it was the only way to travel. Vehicles were no good in this terrain, especially if we were trying to remain inconspicuous.

  According to the scouts, the giant was about five hundred yards to our left, sitting on a hill and simply staring out over the land. The plan was to sneak past it through the undergrowth, skirt the edge of the forest for a mile or so, and then follow a maze of country roads to the aerodrome, safely out of the reach of the giant and a step further onto Cardiff. Five days, the Sergeant had told me. Then we’d be on a ship sailing to somewhere that was a damn sight better than this destroyed land.

  I kept pace with the camouflaged man in front of me, a little assured that there was someone following me and so I was sandwiched between professional soldiers. They were trained for this type of work, tactics honed and re-honed through centuries of war and advancements in technology. This kind of thing was just Business As Usual, wasn’t it? I couldn’t help but notice that the pack I was carrying had a lot of useful kit in it, including an old battered set of night vision goggles, a solar charger considerably bigger than my own, and a complete tent with a tiny-but-functional canteen. If things did go pear-shaped and I got separated from the army (though choice or disaster, that option was still in my mind), I would be fairly self-sufficient.

  I felt the ground heave and the guy in front of me made a fist in the air. We stopped and crouched low, the backpacks creating the illusion of a line of tortoises nestling in the bushes. The pounding grew stronger and I realised that the giant was coming; had it spotted us? The soldiers remained stationary despite the approaching threat, so I forced myself to do the same. A shadow passed over us and I heard wood splintering to our right as the giant stomped by, thankfully oblivious to our location. As soon as the footsteps had faded away, we resumed our journey, albeit not restrained by our need to remain quiet, and so we hacked our way through the tangled land.

  In only a few minutes, I saw trees in front of us; we had reached the edge of the forest at last. The soldier in front of me suddenly disappeared over the lip of a small ledge, swearing as he landed on the floor a little way below. Some of the soldiers jeered him as he struggled to his feet, but it seemed only pride had been hurt. I clambered down carefully, mindful that the heavy pack would probably snap my ankles if I were to jump down. We were in a round recessed clearing surrounded by bushes, and overcast with the branches of trees. With a growing knot of anxiety, I realised the floor was a carpet of dried bloody bones covered in a white residue that clung to our boots and clothes. This was a pit of death. The soldiers had come to the same conclusion as I and had formed a perimeter, scanning the edges of the clearing with their assault rifles. On the other side of the pit, I heard the Sergeant bark out something about “mad creatures”. I took the safety off my rifle and scanned the area too, What did “mad creatures” mean? There was silence in the forest – no bird song, no wind in the trees. It was almost if nature were afraid of whatever was coming. That was a bad sign for us.

  Suddenly, I head a sound I’d heard once before; an alien chittering. I remembered the maintenance shed and the strange caustic cobwebs surrounding the area when I’d heard the noise before. I bac
ked away from the edge of the clearing to join the perimeter being held by the squaddies. There was nothing left to do but wait for our foe to reveal itself. I wasn’t disappointed.

  Slowly, and incredibly, I saw a huge hairy leg curl around a tree, followed by a couple more. The hairy heaving body of an enormous spider followed the legs, its black eyes shining at us. More appeared around the clearing, waving their legs and chittering as they surrounded us; we were trapped. The noise became a chorus, a war song from these horrific black-and-brown beasts. There was nothing else to wait for, these beasts were not going to negotiate peace or try trading with us. They were hunters, we were prey. We needed to defend ourselves.

  As one, the soldiers fired on the spiders, so I drew a bead on the nearest spider and also let loose a volley. A green-black ichor spurted forth and the spider fell to the ground in a mess of goo and thrashing legs. I swept my gun around and fired at another spider that had made it to the pit floor. It too died. Before I could find another target, the battle was over and all the spiders had been killed. Slowly, the soldiers stood down. There was joking and laughing, some squaddies examining their enemy, some kicking the dead beasts, some stroking the smashed bodies experimentally. One guy cut out a beady eye and put it in his bag as a souvenir of the battle. Someone suggested cooking one to see what they taste like. My stomach tightened at the idea. Something that looked so horrific must be evil. Eventually, the Sergeant called everyone to him and we started to arrange our ascent out of the pit. Secretly, I was so glad to be with these guys. I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if I had stumbled across the pack of spiders on my own – and considering the proximity to my previous abode, it was very probable I would have either wandered into their territory or they would have discovered me eventually. I felt grateful, and lucky.

  I waited in line to get boosted up out of the pit, kicking at the bones around my feet restlessly. I felt a little shaky, probably the adrenalin from the battle catching up with me. Suddenly, I felt a strong jolt through me; the trees above parted and the giant’s metal face thrust downwards. He’d crept up on us! The soldiers spread out and started firing at the giant, the majority still in the pit. I leapt to one side and tried jumping up at the edge of the pit but the backpack was too heavy. I pressed myself against the muddy wall and watched a metal fist slam down onto one of the soldiers. The sound was sickening, a wet crack as blood and bone was flattened into the ground. The soldiers continued firing up at the giant, but they were too exposed and outgunned. Again and again the metal fist came down on each of the squaddies, blood and organs splashing out from underneath the knuckles until only the Sergeant was left. The metal block hovered over him as he fired his small pistol upwards. The gun ran dry, and he stared at me with a strange confused expression before the fist fell on top of him too. I pressed myself harder into the wall as the giant red-eyed face glared directly at me. There was absolutely no way I could escape this. Death was certain. I would be squashed like the others.

  The giant watched me for a good few minutes, doing nothing. It simply stared at me in the silence of the forest. “Well?” I croaked. I’d been running from death for so long now, every day was a struggle to escape death or at least prevent injury to my frail body. Straight after the apocalypse, I would have done anything to ensure I survived for another day. After all, life was the only thing I had left, and yet after so long trying to preserve it, I was tired. What was I preserving my life for? The world was fucked, everyone was dead, and my future was going to be one continuous struggle to starve for yet another day. That wasn’t a human existence, it was an animal one. I didn’t want to be an animal any longer. It was too hard living like this. “What are you waiting for?” I yelled. “Come on and kill me already!”

  The fist hovered just above me. I winced; would this hurt before I died? I hoped not. I waited until anxiety forced me to look up. The giant had extended his damaged finger and was pointing behind me. What was he pointing at? A mad idea suddenly entered my head. The sun was starting to set to my left, which meant that the giant was pointing south.

  Pointing the way to Plymouth.

  I stared at the giant’s huge face and, in a state of confusion and reality rejection, turned and tried to lift myself up out of the pit. As I expected, a metal finger soon appeared under my feet and boosted me out of the bloody warzone and into the forest proper. I trudged forward numbly, knowing that the giant would wander off now, knowing that I would see it on top of the nearest hill watching out for me, knowing that it would motivate me to keep on going, to never rest for more than what was necessary, and to never stay put until I reached my journey’s end. It would smash up all the houses on my route to prevent me making a new home, it would lay traps to capture other people that could prevent me from making the trip to Plymouth. I watched the giant stomp off and wondered what would happen to it once I reached Plymouth. I’d have to find out.

  Barriers

  “So, what is it?” Commander Deane leaned over the lab desk, his muscles standing out through his crisp white shirt. On the other side of the desk, a scientist adjusted his small glasses and coughed nervously into the sleeve of his anorak. The lab was chilly; understandable considering the artic wind outside.

  “We, uh, don’t know sir. The only thing I can tell you is that it is definitely alien. Without a doubt.”

  “Huh.” There was silence for a moment as the commander studied the small silver ring on the table. It looked like a very thin washer, except it had intricate symbols that glowed with an eerie pink light. “Do we know what it can do?”

  “Only this.” The scientist reached out and slid his finger along the hoop. Immediately, a solid 6 inch Y-shape appeared from the ring.

  “Is it safe?”

  “You could say that.” The scientist picked up the shape and handed it to the officer. “What you’re holding is, effectively, an energy barrier. We’ve hit it with hammers, bullets, even tried a small amount of explosive. It is impervious to ingress by any means, except temperature.”

  “What?”

  “You can’t break the barrier, but it is an almost perfect conductor of heat. Quite remarkable.”

  Deane put a finger inside the shape and gripped the outside with his thumb. “My god – I can feel my finger through it!”

  “Exactly.”

  In the gloom behind them, someone coughed silently, the various scientific and military observers in the background growing impatient to get their hands on the artefact – little chance of that. Deane had been sent to primarily assess the importance of the object, but to also secure it for transportation to Dulce base by any means necessary.

  “Mr…?”

  “Dr Benson,” replied the scientist.

  “…Dr Benson, I won’t lie to you. This is the most advanced object on this planet. Using this, we can create lightweight armour for our forces, buildings that will never fall down, even indestructible cars. You’re done a remarkable job so far, but I need to take this with me. I hope you understand.”

  “Absolutely,” Benson answered with a small smile. “I’m not stupid. I realised the importance of this object and have tried to keep its existence a secret since we found it in the snow.”

  The double-doors to the lab parted underneath a wave of fire, knocking everyone to the floor and spewing deadly shrapnel into the room. Some of the occupants died immediately, others screaming from their wounds. The commander regained his footing quickly and grabbed both the alien artefact and his Desert Eagle, firing huge flames into the breach.

  “Marines! To me!” In the darkness, his elite combat squad formed up and showered the opening with heavy fire as they retreated towards the lab offices. A swarm of strange-suited soldiers flooded in, most falling from the bullet storm but gradually, the unknown attackers started to take the room.

  The team fell back in sections, through the business offices of the science buil
ding, slaying dozens of enemies as they tried to get outside to the safety of their helicopters. However, their enemy was smart, and well-prepared. Expertly cut-off from every avenue, Deane and a handful of remaining marines found themselves pinned down amongst storage crates in a large warehouse. Deane fired off a spray of bullets and leaned against his cover. He needed to get the artefact into safety, but he was almost out of options. Thankfully, Keller was still alive. He clicked his tongue twice and the scout made his way to his commander.

  “Sir?”

  “Son, I don’t need to tell you that we’re done for. Reinforcements are hours away, so I’ve got a final order for you.” He gave the deactivated alien object to Keller. “Get through their lines. Get this into protection any means necessary. Go through the air duct over there, we’ll buy you as much time as possible. Stay warm, and good luck. ”

  Keller snapped off a salute, then made his way over to the far wall, hounded by gunfire all the way. Deane slapped in his final clip and, on the count of three, charged the enemy.

  Keller had just finished replacing the grille to the air duct when the gunfire stopped. The battle was over, but the war was about to begin. He started the long crawl to the outside world.