Calmly, she pushed the button. There was no sign that the neighbours had realised that the house’s lone occupant was married to a collaborator, but if they ever found out… some wives and children of collaborators had been bullied, or isolated, or even murdered by their former friends and neighbours. The door opened a crack and a lady with Italian features peered out.
“I have a letter for you,” Alex said. “I suggest you read it now and then come with me.”
Helene Harrison skimmed through the letter, her eyes going wide. “I am to come with you?”
“Yes,” Alex said. There was no time to argue. “Don’t worry — you’ve nothing to worry about. Just come with me for your own safety.”
There was a pause as Helene picked up a bag she’d positioned at the doorway and then came outside. Alex felt an odd flicker of jealousy as she realised just how beautiful Helene was, before seeing the fear in her eyes. She hadn’t seen her husband for over a month and yet her neighbours would condemn her, if they ever realised that he was a collaborator. But he could have died when the aliens hit Scotland Yard… Alex glanced at Helene and realised that she pitied the girl. The Helene Harrison’s of the country were whom the RAF had existed to defend.
She climbed into the car, checked the Helene was buckled in, and started the engine. They had a long journey before they reached the safe house — and they’d have to abandon the car along the route. Who knew how closely the aliens monitored human vehicles?
Chapter Thirty-Six
Near London/London
United Kingdom, Day 50/51
They approached from the west, crawling low to be sure that they weren’t seen as they neared the isolated station. A simple chain-link fence provided security, barely a moment’s delay for SF soldiers who’d been taught lock-picking as part of their intensive training before they were unleashed on Britain’s enemies. No one should have been anywhere near the station, but they checked twice before relaxing slightly and locating the keys they’d taken from the bunker. The door clicked open, revealing nothing, but darkness inside.
Chris Drake pulled a torch from his belt and clicked it on, aiming it into the darkness. They’d been briefed that the isolated station — part of a contingency plan that had been drawn up during the Cold War — had been left untouched for years, but it wouldn’t be the first time some vagrant had set up home in an isolated building. The building looked untouched, however; a thick layer of dust bore silent tribute to the years since it had been built and then abandoned. He found the hatch on the ground, inserted a different key, and breathed a sigh of relief as the hatch opened without trouble. It led down a long rusty ladder to an isolated part of London’s sewer network, one that had been sealed off from the main network years ago. Chris hooked the torch onto his belt and started to climb down the ladder, bracing himself for the smell. None of these tunnels had been cleaned for decades.
“Clear,” he called back up, once he’d reached the bottom. The sewer network extended all the way from London out into the countryside. London was honeycombed with tunnels, some known to the public; others known only to the government, or simply forgotten in the years since they’d been built and abandoned. It was a way to get in and out of the city without being detected or stopped by the aliens. “Come on down. The smell is terrible.”
The others chuckled as they clambered down and found themselves in an abandoned sewer, standing on a walkway that led into the darkness. “Better not fall into that,” one of the Marines commented. “Worse than that shitty pond at Kandahar.”
Chris snorted as he started leading the way down the walkway. “You want to bet that some mutant turtles have been breeding down here,” he said, flashing the beam of light over the still water. “People used to put crocodiles down here with the rest of the shit they threw out.”
“Thank you, sir,” the Marine said. “I won’t ever be able to wipe that image from my mind.”
The walk seemed to stretch out into hours. It was strange to think that the aliens were just above them, watching for any signs of trouble. Chris knew that smaller parties of insurgents were meant to be launching a series of attacks to keep the aliens busy, but there was no way to know just how they were faring down in the tunnels. The torch flickered once as they reached a crossroads, reminding him of all the horror stories he’d read of monsters lurking deep underground. Aliens from Alien, sewer monsters from The X-Files… as a kid, he’d loved watching horror movies. And even as an adult, the memory still sent a chill running down his spine.
They reached the end of the tunnel and stopped dead. There was supposed to be a way around the blockage, into the parts of the sewers that were still working. Chris puzzled over the chart, before realising that they had walked past a smaller tunnel that connected to the main stream. The roof seemed to be closing in on them as they passed through a hidden door and out into the main body of the sewers. From what he recalled, most of the sewage was pumped out of the city, cleansed and then… actually, he couldn’t remember what happened then. They weren’t allowed to simply pump it into the Thames any longer, if he recalled correctly.
“Jesus,” one of the men commented. “What a fucking pong.”
Chris nodded, trying hard to breathe through his nose. In the distance, he could hear the sound of pumps pushing the sewerage through the tunnels. The environment was a breeding ground for rats, according to the briefing — he saw one running along a pipe before vanishing into the darkness. They seemed to have almost no fear of humanity, running up and almost touching their boots before jumping back to avoid kicks from the soldiers. Chris remembered that rats had carried diseases in pre-modern times and shuddered. The aliens had broken down a great many health and safety systems. There were probably places in Britain where scurvy and other long-forgotten diseases had returned to torment the human race.
He saw a light in the distance and reached for his pistol, before realising that it was the welcoming committee. Two of the soldiers who had been in London ever since the invasion were waiting for them, including someone he hadn’t seen since the Battle of London, when he’d been swept out of the city by the river. He called his name and ran forward, heedless of the danger of slipping and falling into the shit. It had been far too long since they’d seen one another.
“Bongo,” he said, as they hugged. “I thought you were dead!”
“I thought you were dead, you old pirate,” Bongo said. He’d come from Jamaica to join the British Army and had been streamlined into the Household Division. “What the fuck blew you out of London?”
“The aliens,” Chris said, as Bongo pointed to the ladder leading upwards to the safe house. He couldn’t imagine which civil servant had been so paranoid as to designate a handful of houses as emergency evacuation points, but he had to admit that the paranoia had made it a great deal easier to slip into London. “What have you been doing with yourself, then?”
Bongo filled him in once they reached the top and clambered out into the safe house. Chris had seen a couple like it while he’d been on close-protection details, places where MI5 could debrief defectors or notable public figures could hide from the media. It looked perfectly normal from the outside, but most of the building would be wired for sound and the tapes stored at a different location. He hoped they’d taken out the bugs once they’d started to use it as a base.
“Oh, we’re not based here,” Bongo said, when he asked. “There’s too much chance that someone will come across a reference to the place in the files — too many damn bureaucrats went over to the aliens. We just use it because it has access to the sewers.”