But we’ve no choice, he wanted to shout. They can kill the entire human race.
A rock was thrown by one of the crowd, followed rapidly by a small volley of stones, bricks and bottles. Robin ducked for cover as objects began to bounce off the side of the vans, or strike policemen. They were wearing armour, but no body armour was totally perfect. Two of the policemen fell to the ground, bleeding. One of them was caught up by the advancing mob and stomped to death.
Damn you, Robin thought. Don’t you know what the aliens will do to you?
He barked an order and the water cannons activated, spraying water over the advancing crowd. They staggered backwards, some of them choking for breath as the hose was played right over their faces. Some of them seemed to have the sense to run, but others seemed far too aware that the police vans could only carry a small amount of water. A few minutes and they’d run out completely. And then they’d be forced to use the gas…
The engines roared to life and he barked orders. They’d have to leave the body of their fallen comrade behind, even though it tore at him to leave it. The only way to recover the body was to use gas — and he wasn’t ready to use it unless they were in desperate straits. He watched as the remaining policemen scrambled for the vans, and then beat a hasty retreat. Absently, he wondered how the other teams were coping. The aliens had designated three hundred relatives of the suicide bomber and his friends for capture. Some of them would probably be arrested easily, but the others…? The Islamic community might hide them from the aliens.
He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding as the vans lurched down the empty streets. They’d made it out without having to kill any of the civilians. But next time…
Next time, he was sure, it would be a different story.
“I strongly suggest that you don’t go any further,” a man’s voice said. “You’re already in deep shit.”
Fatima jumped. She’d been walking home from the bomb site, lost in her own thoughts — and yet surely someone should not have been able to surprise her. The streets of London weren’t safe — hell, they hadn’t been safe before the invasion. She had been asked to take up lodgings at one of the hospitals, but she’d declined. There was no way to explain it to her stepmother. Respectable girls lived in the family home until they married, whereupon they moved to their husband’s home and found themselves slaving for their mother-in-law.
“Don’t worry,” the man said. “I’m on your side. Call me Abdul.”
“Right,” Fatima said. She’d met men who thought that they were God’s gift to women before, brimming with unjustified confidence… but this man seemed to be more relaxed than confident. “What’s going on…?”
She glanced around the corner and stopped, dead. There looked to be a small army of policemen outside her house, and a growing crowd of friends, relatives and neighbours surrounding the policemen. As she watched, her stepmother was hauled out by two of the policemen and dumped in the garden, her hands cuffed behind her backs. The rest of her extended family followed moments later. Fatima realised, in growing shock, that she would have been arrested herself if she’d been in the house.
Abdul caught her arm. For once, she wasn’t offended at a man touching her without an invitation. “Walk with me,” he hissed. She could feel his breath against her ear even though the scarf. “Pretend we’re a married couple and walk slowly. We don’t want to attract attention.”
Behind her, Fatima heard the sound of angry shouting in three different languages and the sound of hosepipes. She felt her heart clench inside her as they walked away, nearly fainting when a row of police vans shot past them and down the road at terrifying speed. The district was normally crammed with cars inching their way through the streets, but now it was empty, allowing the police to move fast. And they were taking her family away… she wanted to scream after them, but what good would it have done?
Abdul looked down at her. Oddly, she felt safe with him. “I’m afraid your… cousin managed to blow himself up earlier this morning,” he said. “The police — and the Leathernecks — identified him and marked your family down for retaliation. You’re a wanted woman now, I’m afraid. The moment you show that ID card of yours, they’ll snatch you up and put you in one of the camps.”
Fatima stared at him. “How do you know that?” She demanded. Something else crossed her mind. “And who are you?”
“My name is Abdul,” Abdul repeated. “And I’m part of the resistance. And now so are you.”
They reached a small apartment block, one that catered to students at London’s universities. Some of the students, Fatima had heard, had managed to get permission from the aliens to return home, while others had found themselves trapped in London. It seemed an odd place to hide a resistance cell, but it did make a certain kind of sense. The landlords would be used to people coming and going at all hours of the day and they’d turn a blind eye to certain activities. They walked up two flights of stairs and entered a small suite of rooms, clearly ones that had been abandoned in a hurry. Somehow, she was sure that Abdul himself wasn’t a student. He walked more like a mature and experienced man of the world. The kind of man her cousins had wanted to become.
“But I can’t,” she protested, finally. Her entire body was shaking. She had to be in shock, she realised. Her entire life had just fallen down around her. God alone knew what would happen to her family. “I can’t just leave and… I’ve got patients to see!”
“The moment you show yourself,” Abdul said, kindly, “they will arrest you. There’ll probably be a reward on your head before too long. You can’t do anything for your patients now — the only thing you can do is get yourself arrested.”
He placed one hand on her shoulder. “We have this flat for the next fortnight, at least,” he added. “Get a shower, have a long rest — and I’ll see you tonight. You’re a doctor — the resistance could make use of you. Certainly better use than the aliens could…”
Fatima found her voice. “But what will happen to my family?”
Abdul looked, just for a second, uncharacteristically guilty. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I don’t think it will be anything good. It’s rather more likely that they will execute them — to encourage the others, as they say. The only thing you can do now is help us to avenge them.”
Fatima watched him go, her mind spinning. Her world had turned upside down… and she couldn’t even cry. What could she do now?
Chapter Twenty
Near Gayhurst
United Kingdom, Day 20
“I just got the buzz,” Private Cole muttered. “The Leathernecks are on their way.”
“How unlucky for the Leathernecks,” Chris Drake muttered back. The aliens were certainly predicable, all right. It seemed odd that they made mistakes that human armies had learned to avoid, but from what he could tell, they might have good reason to believe that this particular alien routine wasn’t dangerous. There were reports suggesting that, two days ago, several men armed with hunting rifles and shotguns had tried to take on an alien convoy. They’d been killed without harming a single alien. “How long do we have?”
“Fifteen minutes, at most,” Cole warned. “Maybe less. They do seem to speed up from time to time.”
Chris shrugged. The alien hover-tanks moved at speeds that Challenger tanks would have found flatly impossible. Even the smaller armoured vehicles in the British Army — or the barely-armoured Snatch Land Rover — would have had trouble matching their speed. But human trucks and lorries were slower and the aliens, it seemed, were willing to press human drivers into service to help their logistics. It stood to reason that they’d prefer to use human labour where possible, but it didn’t seem to have occurred to their commanders that this meant that their convoys were slower than they might have preferred. Or perhaps their commanders simply didn’t care. Chris had encountered a couple of senior officers who issued orders that forced the soldiers on the ground to do more with less — and mistook the map for the terrain. And given that the aliens seemed alarmingly inflexible, they probably didn’t give their troops on the ground any latitude at all.