A red coat, dark pants, dark boots, bright blond hair. The hair killed me. Stopped my heart. Just like both I. and N. when they were little, before it began to turn mousy… bright, bright blond, like the hair of a doll.
And the statue sprang away with a creak, the scream of its victim fading. A photo come to life.
Somehow I found myself with V. in the arch of a doorway, breathing hard, unspeaking. At my ear, the Byzantine grid of scribbled letters and names on the buzzer pad, my head striking it again and again in my eagerness to bolt. Let go, I said, and tried to wrench my coat free, and he said, You’ll do something stupid.
Yes. Yes. I will. Let me go.
We waited far too long, perhaps half an hour, before moving again; the sun sank into full dark. I stared vacantly out at the long violet shadows moving across the buildings. We were in the oldest part of town, the medieval streets higgledy-piggledy, and if I had run after the thing, I would have fallen right off that stone drop and about ten meters into someone’s backyard.
Have you seen Them eat people, I finally said, in what I was surprised to hear was a very normal tone of voice.
V. thought. I don’t know, he finally said. I’ve seen the sentinels and the statues kill people with their mouths. But not eat the bodies. And I’ve never gotten a good look at Them. He paused. Then: Do you think They came here to Earth because people are food?
I don’t know, I said. But if they aren’t eating people, what was that thing doing with that little boy?
All the possible answers were too horrible to contemplate… and I really mean that, in this city where I have eaten, myself, human flesh, like a dog, like a fox creeping into the home of someone who has died, where I have killed my fellow man, been forced to kill, where I have seen the blood of my husband, where my children are gone from me, I can barely contemplate what the monsters are doing if they are taking children alive.
There was an evacuation, I said.
Yes, I remember that, V. said. Trying to get families out. About three months after the Invasion. And everyone died.
Well, they couldn’t have known that would happen, I said.
But you didn’t leave, he said. You thought it might happen.
Yes.
He paused: What should we do?
We have to tell the others, I said. Someone will know something.
He nodded. We’re having another neighbourhood dinner this week. A. is hosting. I don’t know why I have this faith that someone will know, but…
I’m so angry that They have taken fellowship from us. We eat in secret fortifications because They inevitably find groups and leap in like a wolf in the fold, as if there is nothing They hate more than that we might find comfort and safety with one another. We tire of the same faces again and again, and then any strange face means we panic, not knowing who works for Them. If only there were ways to tell. If only we were a little less tired, a little more awake.
That boy, that fading cry!
THE DESCRIPTION OF the Invasion is the same everywhere. As ridiculous as it sounds to us, we cannot write it off as mythology; it’s history. And how strange, that Eva has noticed the usage of ‘Them.’ In every country, in every language, that’s what people defaulted to. Now, with the distance that allows us to be merely uneasy instead of terrified, we call them ‘the Invaders.’ But back then you’d be too scared to think. You’d just say ‘Them’ and everyone would know what you meant.
I check the museums and galleries, and find the sandbagged statues that Eva and V. protected, the stashed paintings, and I race back to get the others. Panting, exhausted, we unbury them and stare. Light falls like chalkdust from the broken roof. Solemnly, one of the crawlers begins to climb the massed heap of sandbags, its claws digging into the rotten canvas, the only sound in the building. Dust filters down from the opened windows. Winnie nudges the robot down with her foot.
“Oh my God,” she whispers. “You’ll be famous!”
“We’ll all be famous,” I correct her, also in a whisper.
Darian snorts, and erases us with the flat of his hand, and goes outside, into the cleaner air. I’m not surprised.
But something else bothers me, as we point-mark it and head back. It’s that any of these things should still be intact after the events described in the journal. No one’s touched them in fifty years. No survivors came in here seeking shelter or culture or scavenging for weapons or supplies. Half a century, and no one came back here? No one?
I don’t like it. I mean, it’s useful for my research (hell, that could be my PhD when I’m done my masters—something something study of returning residents in siege cities, if any) but it goes against everything I know about the post-Setback years from the things I’ve read. People craved fellowship, company, comfort. They coalesced again in their tiny bands of survivors, and they found cities to reoccupy. No one could build anything again those first years; you had to find somewhere with a solar farm or wind farm or hydro plant or something—something where you didn’t have to drag in feedstock on trains or cars that no longer operated—so you could get electricity again. And that meant cities. And for some reason, it never meant the siege cities. Why? Once They were gone, They were gone. It would have been perfectly safe.
I don’t get it.
But that’s why we’re here, right? To study. To guess. Even if we can’t know.
My ears are starting to hum. I’m guessing that’s from the enormous level of sodium in our food, and dehydration, and forcing my noodle-like legs to climb several flights of stairs an hour. Very strange though. And only at night.
June 25
Under the pretext of looking for dinner party food we returned to old town, swarming now with sentinels. Our waved pipes and thrown stones did not deter them (I’m a terrible shot anyway), and we fled, ignobly, our empty sacks whispering on our backs, like thwarted gnomes.
We moved uphill, twenty blocks away, and went through the rich houses that had of course been looted first—broken glass everywhere, and the kitchens empty, not even curtains blowing in the wind. I ran my hands over silk gowns, thick wool jackets. You can’t carry all that, V. said from the other room.
You can’t even see what I’m doing, I said.
I can hear you.
I fled any room with hints of toys or cribs, anything with little clothes or board books, I couldn’t bear it, it was like entering a room full of poison gas. I could barely look for a second before my eyes began to tear up.
Everywhere we saw the signs of people succumbing to whatever They did to the brain in those first few days—empty nooses, guns, brain splatter, pill bottles. No bodies, for some reason. But the intricate sigils on the wall, drawn in ink or paint or blood, and the pitiful cries for help in ten languages.
Do you think they all really died? I said.
V. said, Or lost their minds and tried to join Them.
How do you join something like that? I said. That’s like an ant trying to join a multinational corporation. Though I suppose that’s what the agents are doing. If they exist.
I know, he said. But that happens in wars. Doesn’t it? People don’t just… knuckle under the conqueror and nurse their grievances. Not everybody. They fire themselves up, put on their nice suits, sign up for the party or whatever. Not just play along. If they’re genuine, they get, you know. Special favours. They survive.
Yes, I said, for betraying and killing their own people. I know our history too, you know.
I know, he said, dejectedly. It’s human nature to betray.
They’re up to something, I said.
They’re not up to anything more than a nest of wasps is up to anything, V. said. They don’t have intent. People just went crazy, that’s all. From the pull, and the noise, and that damn singing, and the nightmares.