Earthfall: Retribution (8 page)

Sam gave a quick nod. She was right – they had other priorities right now.

‘Can I ask your name?’ Sam asked after a couple more minutes of walking in silence.

‘Maggie,’ the girl replied, ‘but you can call me Mag – everyone does, or should I say
did
.’

‘So you’ve not seen any sign of the Voidborn?’ Sam asked.

‘Other than those few you saw in the castle courtyard, no,’ Mag replied. ‘Oh, and that big ship floating above the castle on the day of the invasion.’

Stirling had been right, Sam thought to himself. There had been a Mothership here. So where had it gone and, more to the point, when and why had it left?

‘We need to move faster,’ Mag said, glancing up at the sky. ‘I want to be further away from the main nest before it gets dark.’

As the sun began to set, they found themselves walking through a quiet suburb of the city. Sam had got very used to the night’s cloak of darkness being an ally over the past couple of years, but here it was something to fear. Mag had finally sheathed her knife just a few minutes earlier, having obviously decided that Sam did not pose much of a threat, though she had not returned his gun. Sam didn’t ask for it back, not wanting to do anything to jeopardise what little trust she might have in him.

‘We should shelter for the night in one of these houses,’ Mag said, looking at the comfortable detached homes that surrounded them, sniffing the air. ‘I don’t think there are any Vore around here, but we’d still be better off staying out of the open.’

‘I could do with resting for a while anyway,’ Sam said. The wound in his side was throbbing. He needed to clean it and apply a fresh dressing if he wanted to reduce the chances of infection.

‘That one looks good,’ he said, pointing at a slightly larger house that was set further back from the road than the others. The wide expanse of lawn that surrounded the house would give anyone on watch good sight lines.

Mag gave a quick nod and the pair of them walked up the long driveway leading to the front door. The heavy wooden door was firmly locked.

‘I’ll try round the back,’ Sam said.

‘No need,’ Mag said. She grabbed the door handle and pushed, shattering the doorframe around the lock effortlessly. ‘Not just a pretty face,’ she added, holding the door open for Sam. Clearly it was not just her appearance that she shared with the Vore, but at least some of their inhuman strength too. Sam realised that if he had attacked her she would have been able to subdue him effortlessly.

As they entered the gloomy hallway of the house, Mag removed the sunglasses that she had been wearing all day and Sam finally saw her jet-black eyes. She caught him staring at her and gave him a slight smile.

‘Not a fan of bright lights any more, I’m afraid,’ Mag said, pulling back her hood to reveal her long, white hair. ‘At least it can’t kill me like it can the Vore.’

‘So that’s why they don’t hunt during the day,’ Sam said. ‘They can’t.’

‘Exactly,’ Mag replied. ‘Come on, let’s see if we can find anything to eat.’

They headed deeper into the house and Sam struggled to find his way through the darkened rooms, arms outstretched to avoid walking into anything. Mag was clearly having no such problems, suited as she obviously was to a nocturnal life. She found the large open-plan kitchen at the back of the house and rooted through the drawers and cupboards. After a minute or two there was the sound of someone striking a match and Mag lit a large church candle on the counter top.

‘Thanks,’ Sam said as he sat down on one of the high stools at the breakfast bar. ‘Not as good in the dark as you are.’

Mag placed a couple of cans of apricots on the counter and a tin of corned beef. They ate in silence for the next couple of minutes.

‘I haven’t thanked you,’ Sam said as he ate a spoonful of syrup-covered apricot.

‘For what?’ Mag asked.

‘For getting me out of the city centre,’ Sam replied. ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I might have just holed up for the night somewhere near that nest. I’d have made pretty easy pickings if it hadn’t been for you.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ Mag said. ‘I’ve seen what those things can do to people. It’s not pretty.’

‘What people?’ Sam asked with a frown. ‘I thought you said that you’d never found any sleepers in the city.’

‘The soldiers,’ Mag said. ‘They used to come into the city at night, but the Vore soon put a stop to that.’

‘What soldiers?’ Sam asked urgently. ‘Where do they come from?’

‘Dunno,’ Mag said with a shrug. ‘I stay clear of them now. I’ve seen them shoot other people like me and take them away in their helicopters. There used to be a few of us; now there’s just me. They stuck together – it made them too easy to find. I’ve always preferred to go solo, seems safer that way. The soldiers are bad news – trust me.’

‘We have to try and find them,’ Sam said. He didn’t tell her how much she reminded him of himself when he had been alone in London after the invasion. He too had believed it was better to hide. It was only later that he had learned to fight.

‘Did you not hear what I just said?’ Mag asked, frowning.

‘You don’t understand,’ Sam said. ‘Those soldiers must be the ones who made the transmission that brought us up here in the first place. If I can get my hands on whatever radio equipment they’re using, I can get in touch with my friends in London and they can come and collect us.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Mag said, shaking her head. ‘The Vore are no threat to me. I leave them alone and they leave me alone.’

‘That’s how I used to feel, but I learned that you can do more than just survive,’ Sam said. ‘You can join us and help take the fight to the Voidborn.’

‘No thanks,’ Mag said. ‘I’ll take you to the western edge of the city, then you’re on your own. That’s the direction the soldiers usually come from. If you keep walking, I’m sure you’ll bump into them eventually.’

Mag put down her fork and quickly sniffed the air.

‘You’re bleeding again,’ she said. ‘You’d better go patch yourself up. If I can smell it, so can the Vore.’

Sam finished the last of the apricots in the can, finally silencing his growling belly, and took the candle through to the dining room next door. By the candle’s flickering light, he unclipped his combat harness before removing his jacket and T-shirt, one side of which was now wet with fresh blood. He walked over to the large wall-mounted mirror and gingerly pulled the field dressing off the gash in his side. Blood trickled from the deep cut and ran down his skin. The wound needed stitches, not a field dressing, but for the moment he would have to make do with what he had. He reached into his pack and removed one of the handful of dressings that remained in the first-aid kit. He carefully applied the self-adhesive pad as Mag walked into the room.

‘Here,’ she said, placing a roll of bandage on the table and some painkillers. ‘Found these upstairs, thought you could use them.’

‘You couldn’t give me a hand, could you?’ Sam asked as he held the dressing in place beneath his left arm. He suddenly realised that she was staring at him with a puzzled expression. He looked down and saw what it was that had surprised her. He held his gleaming golden forearm and hand out in front of him, flexing the fingers. ‘Sorry, should have mentioned it earlier. Just a little souvenir of our last battle with the Voidborn.’

‘Can I?’ She reached out to touch the metal.

‘Be my guest,’ Sam said, holding his arm out to her.

Mag gently ran her clawed fingers over the golden surface. It was warm, and subtle sparkling trails were left in the surface where she had touched.

‘It feels alive,’ Mag said.

‘It is, in a way,’ Sam said. ‘I don’t really understand how it works, to be honest, but it seems to behave itself most of the time.’

‘Doesn’t it worry you?’ Mag asked. ‘After everything you’ve told me about the Voidborn, do you really want their technology to be part of your body like this?’

‘Hey, it’s this or no arm at all,’ Sam said with a shrug. ‘I try not to think about it too much. I’m more worried about the Voidborn tech up here.’ He tapped the side of his head.

‘And that’s what kept you awake when the Voidborn came,’ Mag said.

‘Yeah, lucky old me,’ Sam replied with a crooked smile. There had been moments over the last two years when he had wondered if the Sleepers weren’t the lucky ones in a way. At least they didn’t have to face the nightmare of living in a world overrun by the Voidborn.

Mag helped Sam wrap the bandage tightly round his chest, pressing the dressing firmly against his injured side. He winced slightly at the pressure on the wound, but he knew it would help staunch any further bleeding. If the Vore were still on their trail, that might turn out to be the difference between life and death.

‘I’ll go and see if I can find a clean top,’ Mag said. ‘You should burn that.’ She gestured to the blood-soaked T-shirt on the table.

A few minutes later Sam pulled his jacket back on over the clean, if much too large, T-shirt that Mag had found upstairs. He tossed the bloody shirt into the kitchen sink and Mag passed him a small tin of fire-lighting fluid. He squirted the clear liquid over the shirt and tossed a lit match on to the sodden cloth. It went up with a flash, the flickering flames lighting up the room for a couple of minutes before fading away to nothing.

‘That’s better,’ Mag said, sniffing the air. All that Sam could smell was the smoke from the burning cloth, so he decided to take her word for it that he was no longer a walking dinner invitation for the Vore.

‘You should get some sleep,’ Mag said. ‘You have a long walk ahead of you tomorrow.’

4

‘You OK?’ Jay asked Rachel. He had found her sitting on the boot of a car near the ruins of Big Ben, staring into the distance.

‘Not really,’ she replied with a sigh.

‘Me neither,’ Jay said, sitting down beside her. ‘I can’t help wondering if I’d just held on to Sam a bit better he might not have fallen. I can’t get the look on his face out of my head.’

‘It’s not your fault, Jay,’ Rachel said, putting her hand on his knee. ‘It’s no one’s fault but theirs.’ She pointed up at the colossal Mothership hovering above them.

‘I know.’ Jay stared at the ground. ‘Doesn’t stop me wondering
what if
, though.’

‘We didn’t . . . we couldn’t have known what we were walking into,’ Rachel said, shaking her head. ‘Who knows what other new horrors the Voidborn are cooking up for us?’

‘I don’t want to think about that at the moment,’ Jay replied, ‘but I tell you this – I’d rather take on a Grendel solo than face another swarm of those things.’

‘I suppose you’ve had Stirling grilling you too,’ Rachel said.

‘Yeah, I think he’d quite like us to go back and get him a live sample.’

‘Don’t think he’ll get many volunteers for that mission,’ Rachel replied. Sam’s death had knocked everyone in the group’s morale. It had never been formally decided, but they had regarded Sam as the leader of the group. After all, without him they would now either be dead or still hiding in a hole in the ground. His sudden loss had come as a devastating blow to everyone.

‘Hell, it’s just another bug-eyed Voidborn freak,’ Jay said. ‘What more does he need to know?’

‘He’s just worried,’ Rachel said. ‘To be honest, I am too. You saw how many of those things there were – what happens if the Voidborn release more of them here?’

‘Then we’ll beat them back,’ Jay said. ‘As long as we’ve got our own pet Voidborn. we’ve got an advantage that no amount of those freaks can offset.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Rachel replied, ‘because I don’t want to know what would happen if a swarm of those things found a building full of Sleepers.’

‘I know what you mean,’ Jay said, flashing back in his head to the horrifying sight of the thousands of creatures swarming up the sides of the department store in Edinburgh. ‘It’s weird. The Hunters and the Grendels are bad enough, but at least they always felt like they were under some sort of control. Those things up in Edinburgh, man . . . that was just bloodthirsty chaos. It’s as if the Voidborn don’t care about whether or not they could control those things. They’re like a force of nature.’

‘Scorched earth,’ Rachel said quietly.

‘What?’

‘It’s something that Jackson once taught me,’ Rachel said, remembering the words of the ex-marine who had trained them all to fight before heroically giving his own life to save theirs. ‘An army in retreat will destroy everything as they fall back to make sure that there’s nothing left for the enemy to use. Humans used to be really good at it – maybe the Voidborn are the same.’

‘You think they’re just going to wipe us out?’ Jay asked with a frown. ‘If that’s true, why didn’t they do it when they arrived? There’s nothing anyone could have done to stop them.’

‘Perhaps,’ Rachel said, ‘but maybe that’s the point. There was no need to wipe us out when we’re no threat to them, but if we become a threat by, say, capturing one of their Motherships, maybe we’ve gone too far and they’ll just wipe out everyone in the country. Let’s face it, what’s one little island worth when you have the whole of the rest of the world in the palm of your hand?’

‘There are easier ways to destroy us surely,’ Jay said, shaking his head. ‘You can’t tell me that machines with the intelligence and power of the Voidborn don’t have nukes or something like that.’