“That’s funny,” Henry commented. “Where is he?”
Alex looked over at him, and then down at her watch. It was early afternoon, the time Smith normally worked in the fields. Henry was right. Where was he? More carefully now, Alex walked forward to the farmhouse and quietly peered around the corner. There was no sign of his Range Rover in the shed. He had to have gone out and… she touched the door and it opened, revealing that it was unlocked. Alarm bells ringing in her head, she inched into the farmhouse and looked around. There was no sign of Smith, or his wife.
“No sign of a struggle,” Henry pointed out. Alex relaxed slightly. He was right. It looked as if Smith and Jean had had to go down to the town, leaving the door unlocked for her. And yet… something wasn’t quite right. She slipped upstairs and checked the bedrooms, finding nothing that suggested trouble. “They might have just gone out for a drive…”
“Maybe,” Alex said. “Or maybe…”
The sound of alien helicopters echoed out of nowhere. Alex started, and then ran for the door, suddenly certain what she’d see outside. Five helicopters were racing towards the farmhouse, aliens already rappelling down ropes to hit the ground just as the helicopters came to a halt. Alex reached for the gun she’d shoved into her belt, but it was far too late. A dozen aliens were advancing towards her, weapons pointed right at her chest. How the hell had they known…? It struck her, suddenly, that the aliens might have been watching as they walked back from Dereham. They could have orbited a drone so high overhead that the naked eye couldn’t have made it out against the sun’s glare…
“Put up your hands,” the lead alien ordered. “Resistance is futile…”
Henry drew his pistol and opened fire, shooting madly towards the aliens. Alex could have told him not to waste his energy. The handguns they had weren’t that accurate and alien body armour was more than enough to protect them, unless they were hit in the uncovered parts of their heads. They opened fire, their shells blowing Henry apart and scattering his bloody remains across the farmyard. Alex kept very still, thinking hard. Who had betrayed her? Smith and his wife, or someone down at the town? Probably the latter, she told herself, and she hoped that she was right. She didn’t want to think that Smith might have betrayed her.
The aliens came closer, dark unblinking eyes fixed on her form. Their hands seemed to end in oversized fingernails — no, those were claws — and she had to fight not to cringe back as they tore at her clothes, removing her pistol and everything else she’d been carrying on her person. The claws seemed sharp enough to cut through her bare skin, convincing her that trying to fight hand-to-hand with the aliens was a bad idea. They kept two weapons pointed at her at all times, even after they’d finished searching her and wrapped a plastic tie around her hands, binding them behind her back. She wanted to laugh, or cry. They’d caught her — and if they knew how important she was to the resistance cells, they’d torture her until she talked. If they hadn’t caught Archer, perhaps he’d know to order the cells to scatter before Alex broke. He’d assume the worst, wouldn’t he?
They pushed her to the ground and left her there while they searched the house. It was hard to see what they were doing from her position, but it sounded as though they were tearing down most of the walls and smashing the windows. God alone knew what they were looking for, unless it was a weapons dump. She snorted at the thought. The only weapons kept in the house were her pistol and Smith’s shotgun. They wouldn’t find anything else. Finally, they pulled her to her feet and marched her towards one of their hover-vehicles. The interior was surprisingly roomy compared to some of the vehicles she’d seen in Afghanistan, but it would have been designed for alien bodies. They clanged the hatch shut behind her, leaving her in darkness. There was no light at all inside the chamber.
A faint hum echoed through the vehicle and she realised, after a moment, that they were on their way. There weren’t supposed to be any IEDs hidden around Smith’s farm, but she found herself hoping that someone had disobeyed orders and planted one in a position where it might catch the alien convoy. If they interrogated her… she resolved to hold out as long as possible, or invent lies to keep the aliens happy. She knew that there had been hundreds of attacks on the aliens that had had nothing to do with her little band — if she claimed credit for them, it should confuse the aliens a little. It might even might them slow down their sweeps in the belief that they’d caught the resistance’s leader…
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
She had almost lost track of time when the hum faded away and she heard the sound of scrabbling on the outside of the vehicle. The hatch clicked open, revealing a pair of aliens looking down at her. One of them reached for her leg with a clawed hand and pulled her towards the hatch, while the other held a gun pointed at her head. Alex almost burst out laughing, wondering just why the aliens thought she was so dangerous. She was alone, her hands were bound behind her back and she was unarmed. Did they think she was Wonder Woman or someone else with superhuman strength?
They pulled her out of the vehicle and held her upright long enough to regain her balance, before pushing her towards a gate in a massive fence. Inside, there were a large number of humans — all female, wearing rags. A second camp, some distance away, held men. They didn’t look to be in any better shape. One of the aliens caught her hands, clipped the plastic tie free, and then shoved her through the gate. It closed behind her with an ominous click.
“Alex,” a voice said. “Thank God you’re alive!”
Alex turned to see Jean, Smith’s wife, standing there. “Someone in the town betrayed us,” she said, bitterly. It looked as if she’d been crying. “They came for us, arrested us and dumped us here. I hoped you’re get away.”
“I walked right into them,” Alex admitted. It gave her no pleasure to admit the truth, but there was no point in lying. She looked at her fellow captives and shivered. Most of them looked to have spent weeks in the detention camp, fed on very little. They looked thin and worn. There were some blankets to lie on, but no shelters. Alex realised that many of them were suffering from exposure. The aliens didn’t seem to care. “And then they just brought me here.”
Over the next few hours, she chatted to many of the women. They’d all been taken as prisoners by alien sweeps, apparently because they were linked to one or more of the insurgents. Several of the women thought that they’d been picked up at random, although they liked to think that their husbands or brothers were still fighting the aliens. A number had had military personnel in their families, although Alex was the only actual military person in the camp. The male camp didn’t look to be any different. In fact, both camps appeared to be reaching capacity.
Jean caught her arm. “What are we going to do?”
Alex looked up, past the wire. They were inside an alien base, surrounded by aliens — and she didn’t even know where they were. The alien vehicles moved with astonishing speed. They could be in Scotland, or Wales, or on the other side of London… there was no way to know for sure. It looked as if the aliens had built their base on top of a RAF base, but it wasn’t one she recognised. That really only excluded a handful of bases from consideration.
And if they were removing military personnel, why hadn’t they taken her? A moment later, it struck her — they hadn’t identified her. They presumably thought she was just a civilian insurgent, rather than a military officer carrying on the war. And that gave her an edge, if she stayed alive long enough to figure out how to use it.