“I don’t want to talk about it,” she repeated. She wasn’t going to break, not after everything else she’d been through. “I need to rest.”
“But they’ll kill you,” the man protested. “You can’t help your friends now…”
Something clicked in Alex’s mind. She’d been slapped and beaten and raped and, afterwards, she’d found it incredibly difficult to walk. The man looked to have been tortured worse and yet he was still walking, if badly. They should have shackled him, yet they’d left him free to walk. And he didn’t sound as though he was in pain…
“Go fuck yourself, collaborator,” Alex said, wondering if it would be the last thing she’d ever say. He might lash out at her and she was in no state for a fight. “You’re nothing more than a goddamned Walt!”
There was a pause, and then the man stood up and banged on the cell door. His limp seemed to have vanished, she noted, as the door opened and he was hauled outside. She could hear the sound of someone screaming from further down the corridor before the door was slammed closed and the light went off, leaving her alone in the darkness. Alex chuckled, despite the pain it caused her to laugh. They’d tried to trick her into talking and failed.
She lay back on the hard bed and closed her eyes, trying to relax. It wasn’t easy; the pain kept her awake. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take before she broke, even though she was determined to hold out as long as possible. But what was going to happen to her afterwards? She had a feeling that she wouldn’t enjoy the answer.
The cell door banged open without warning. A dark silhouette appeared, standing against the faint light from outside. “Well, you’re certainly posing an interesting challenge,” the tall man said. He sounded more amused than annoyed. “I thought that you would have been fooled for sure.”
It was a mistake to talk to one’s captors, but Alex couldn’t resist. “Fuck you,” she said. “I won’t tell you anything.”
“I’ve already fucked you,” the tall man said, nastily. There was a faint chuckle, an inhuman sound for all that it came from a human throat. “I come with good news. Your suffering will soon be over, my dear. Our masters have decided to execute a number of people caught in the act of waging war against the new world order. They announced it on the BBC and everything. And unless you talk, you’re going to be one of the ones executed by firing squad.”
He leaned closer. “You could talk right now,” he said. “I’ll have your wounds treated and you’d even be able to rest properly, without any more suffering. There are places where you could live out the rest of your life, far from the maddening crowd. All you have to do is tell us what we want to know…”
Alex braced herself, and then threw a slap at his face. But she was wounded and drained and she moved far too slowly. He stepped back, effortlessly avoiding her desperate blow.
“I suggest you make your peace with yourself, bitch,” he said, in the same casual tone. “Tomorrow, you will die. And don’t even think that they will care, all the people you’re protecting. They will just forget you, or forever wonder if you betrayed them…”
“Go fuck yourself,” Alex said, as harshly as she could.
“I’ll fuck someone else tonight,” the tall man said. “Enjoy your last day on Earth.”
The door banged closed behind him, leaving Alex alone once again. She’d known that there was a prospect of violent death from the day she’d first joined the RAF. And she’d known that she might be shot down over enemy territory and interrogated. It had been one of her few nightmares, back when the world had made sense. If only it had stayed in her nightmares… quietly, alone in her cell, she prayed to a God she hadn’t spoken to for years. At least her death would have some meaning…
And perhaps it would be quick.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alien Detention Camp
United Kingdom, Day 41
“I strongly suggest that you don’t fuck up,” Chris said, looking over at the lorry driver. It hadn’t taken much to pigeon-hole their unwilling assistant as someone who could be threatened, although never fully trusted. “One mistake and they’ll have us — and they will never believe that you weren’t part of it.”
Jimmy Coates nodded, clearly nervous around the soldiers and their weapons. The aliens had summoned three of their tame lorry drivers — and their vehicles — to the detention camp, a stroke of luck that Chris intended to use against them. Each of the lorries could hold upwards of twenty soldiers, along with some heavy weapons. The remainder of the assault force had positioned itself nearer the camp, watching and waiting for the balloon to go up. Chris had devised the plan, but right now — on the verge of implementing his plan — it struck him that there were too many things that could go wrong. If they fucked up…
“I’m going to be in the cab with you,” he added. “If you betray us, it will be the last thing you ever do.”
He bellowed for the soldiers to clamber into the lorries, and then nodded to Coates to climb into his cab and start the engine. Chris had ridden in army lorries before, but it had taken some careful work to prepare the civilian vehicles for their use. They weren’t designed to carry passengers in the rear, let alone heavy weapons. Chris hadn’t mentioned it to the lorry drivers, but if necessary they wouldn’t hesitate to abandon the lorries and leave them behind. The aliens would know who had assisted the resistance, which would mark the drivers for death when they were caught. Their families were already safe and the drivers, assuming that they survived the mission, would be allowed to join them.
“Come on,” Coates bellowed. “We need to get moving!”
Chris nodded and scrambled up into the cab. It was warmer than he had expected, smelling of something he didn’t quite want to identify. Jimmy turned the key and the engine roared to life as Chris pulled on his seat belt and checked his Browning. He’d stashed a small bag of grenades and other surprises below the seat, out of sight of any alien patrols. If nothing else, the mission should convince the aliens that they couldn’t rely on their tame collaborators — at least not completely. And Coates, a drunkard with a shrew of a wife, would go down in the history books as a hero.
The vehicle lurched into life and headed off down the road, followed by the other two lorries at a safe distance. Chris wasn’t too surprised to see how empty the roads had become, even though the aliens had started doling out petrol to their collaborators. Most vehicles were driven by collaborators and they’d been targeted by resistance fighters — or just local youths — for destruction. Not many people picked on the aliens these days. The Leathernecks were clearly learning; not only had they improved their reaction times, but they didn’t hesitate to blast nearby towns and villages in retaliation for attacks on their vehicles.
Chris gritted his teeth as the roar of the engine grew louder, thinking hard. How long could they continue to fight if the aliens retaliated massively for every little attack? They had plenty of weapons, but the aliens would simply keep wearing them down — and force the local population into more active collaboration. If they started warning the inhabitants of towns near their bases that any attack would result in the destruction of their town, the inhabitants might betray the resistance fighters to the aliens. Chris couldn’t really blame them, even though it would make carrying on the war difficult. How could they keep fighting if they didn’t have a real hope of victory?
The internet — passing messages from cell to cell — was clearly trying to keep their hopes up, but he could tell that the resistance was fraying at the edges. None of the lads had ever expected to have to fight a war in their own backyards and many had seen to their families, only to be rounded up by the aliens and shipped… where? It bothered him that they still had no idea what happened to human military personnel. There were hundreds of rumours, but none of them had ever seemed more than marginally likely. Perhaps they’d just been taken somewhere isolated and murdered. It was as likely as any other suggestion.