Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

In Joshua’s admittedly sexist view, Loretta looked very good when she was at prayer, alien-style, but he knew better than to say that out loud. “Painful,” he said, rubbing his knees. Muslims, he’d decided, had it easy. They got to sit back. The thought reminded him of a group of Baptists whom the aliens had discovered holding prayer meetings… and executed them publicly for heresy. “And how was yours?”

“You old fogy, you,” Loretta said, slipping her arm through his. “I swear — a single twinge of pain and you men just curl up and die.”

The thought wasn’t as amusing as it seemed. The alien religion was complicated — as were most human religions — but one thing was clear; the alien females chose their mates. There were details that seemed to be beyond human understanding, at least as the aliens had explained them — and he’d gotten the impression that the aliens hadn’t wanted to discuss them with their human pupils — but it was clear that the women ran the alien families. The men might have been the breadwinners, insofar as alien society had that term, but they didn’t call the shots at home. They might be divorced at any moment if they didn’t behave themselves.

It had led to a whole series of new understandings. The alien society was full of Mrs Grundy-types. They would watch everyone from the cradle to the grave and they wouldn’t hesitate to report any misbehaviour. It reminded him of how Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia had encouraged their children to report their parents for anything remotely criminal — as defined by the state — and the horrors of 1984 . If that was what they were teaching the children, they would have made progress on completely changing human society.

“Bitch,” he said, trying to avoid thinking about the future. They were just two lovebirds out for a stroll, as far as anyone knew. The aliens continued to snatch people off the streets if they were armed, or carry out the occasional random search, but otherwise they tended to leave the human civilians alone. They were trapped by their dependency on food and water from the aliens, now that the aliens had taken control of the latter. The entire supply of food left in the apartment, he’d calculated, would last them barely more than a week. “What do you want to do now?”

“Well, I thought we’d go for a big expensive lunch and then an afternoon at a swanky hotel,” Loretta announced, mischievously. “I suppose we’ll have to settle for a walk, a feed at the kitchen, and then perhaps an afternoon at the computer.”

“No arguments,” Joshua decided. If nothing else, having Loretta on his arm lead to a lot of envious glances. She was blonde, bubbly, and looked around nineteen years old, a tall girl with great legs. He wasn’t sure what she saw in him when she could have had hundreds of boyfriends, but maybe it was the shared danger, the sense that they were getting back at the aliens, even in a small manner. Accurate information from inside the occupied zone would be vitally important to the entire human race. “Come on then, let’s go eat.”

The aliens had, if nothing else, cut down on crime in the city. Between the rapid destruction of most of the street gangs, the curfew and their patrols, criminals found it harder to operate without being caught and either shot or dumped into a work gang. The aliens punished every misdemeanour, no matter how small, and the net result was that people could walk the streets in safety — apart from the risk of an IED, of course. They reached the soup kitchen in perfect safety, showed their card to the handful of aliens guarding the cooks — all human — and took bowls of soup and curried meat from the table. It was a far cry from the hamburgers and freedom fries his stomach was crying out for, but it was the best that they could do. He really didn’t want to think about what sort of meat was in the curry, but he was damn sure it wasn’t beef, chicken or pork. There hadn’t been a lot of cats about lately, he’d noticed.

Loretta chatted happily about nothing throughout the meal, almost monopolising the conversation on her own. Joshua had learned that she could switch from ‘girl genius’ to ‘dumb blonde’ in seconds, comparing notes on computing and reporting one moment, the next chattering away about pop stars and films. It was one hell of a disguise, he’d realised; men would tend to talk more to someone who looked attractive on their arms, but had nothing in their heads. As a reporter, Loretta would be a terror.

“I wonder what they did?” She asked, in a moment of distraction. Joshua turned and saw a bunch of chained humans being marched through the streets. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he recognised a priest — a human priest — among them. The aliens could have whisked them out of the city without having to make them walk, but he suspected that they were actually trying to make a point, rubbing the human race’s nose in its defeat. “Hey, boss, you wanna interview them?”

Joshua tried to scowl at her, but didn’t quite manage it. “I think they probably did bad things,” he said, very aware of the ears nearby. The aliens had too many collaborators working for them. The insurgents, he hoped, didn’t come to the soup kitchens. “Once you finish your dinner, we can go.”

Ten minutes later, they were on their way back to the apartment. “They probably got picked up at prayer,” Loretta said, the airhead act vanishing as soon as they were out of earshot. The streets were almost deserted now; the ‘airs’ were at prayer, and the remainder of the population was out of sight. “You want to ask around and see who knows something?”

“Not now,” Joshua said, as they reached the apartment. It had been easy enough to convince the others to allow Loretta to stay with them, despite the limited food; her very presence lit up the place. It was a sexist thought, but who cared? They were well past the stage of caring about PC thoughts. “If the aliens figure out that someone is interested in finding out… and if someone betrayed them…”

He didn’t have to finish the thought. The aliens had plenty of collaborators… and not all of them were forced into the role. If someone had tipped off the aliens about the prayer meeting, perhaps to settle some pre-invasion score, they wouldn’t hesitate to report two reporters as well, before their names and faces got onto the Internet. It had happened before… and those collaborators hadn’t lasted a week.

Once they were back in his apartment, with the door firmly bolted, he dug up the new laptop from where he’d hidden it, under the bookshelves. A quick search of the apartment would miss it, but he had no illusions about how well hidden it was if the aliens searched his room thoroughly; they’d find it within moments. His old laptop had failed the night of the big human attack — he suspected EMP, although entire swathes of the city had been undisrupted — and Loretta had found him a new one, although it didn’t work as well. He’d lost most of his secure files when the old laptop failed, but luckily he’d kept the passwords to the blog in his head. It was a matter of moments to read through the comments for his last post, make a few notes of questions that needed answers, and then started to write the next post.

Loretta draped herself over the bed and winked at him. “Can’t I distract you, even for a few minutes?”

“I have to make this post while everything is fresh in my head,” Joshua said, absently. “Besides, this game of Solitaire won’t finish itself.”

“Nerd,” Loretta said, pulling herself off the bed and wandering over to him. “What are you telling them?”

Joshua smiled. The one thing they’d disagreed upon had been that Loretta’s name hadn’t been mentioned at all. If the aliens caught him, they wouldn’t know about her… and he’d given her his passwords. If he got carted off to their work gangs, or whatever, Loretta would be able to carry on. He’d written mainly about the religious ceremony, in hopes that someone with a bigger brain than he had could work out how it worked, but he’d also mentioned the work gangs and other alien innovations. The aliens might not have believed in hearts and minds, although they obviously believed in souls, but they certainly believed in grabbing people by the nuts.