Christopher Nuttall - Invasion

He took a moment to take stock, watching as the remaining trucks sped past into the darkness, and took a quick compass reading. He knew, roughly, where he was, but he would still have to walk to the first safe area. He had been tempted to make directly for the border, but as Joshua had pointed out, correctly, it was a long walk. The information had to get to someone who could use it quickly, and that meant taking the risk of travelling to Fort Hood. He hadn’t told Joshua that. It would only have upset him.

The darkness swallowed him up as he started the walk. Fort Hood was still holding out, if a bitter underground struggle constituted holding out, and the aliens had sealed the area. There were over twenty thousand American soldiers in the area, according to the internet, and the alien attempts to dig them out had, so far, failed completely. Brent was a little surprised the aliens hadn’t simply resorted to nukes, or more KEWs, but given the size of Fort Hood, it would take hundreds of nukes to make a real impact. They had bombed the base once and barely dented the actual danger, as far as they were concerned.

But he had to make sure that they knew he was coming first. The Special Forces had been busy; they’d set up a whole series of hidden fibre-optic cables all over the Red Zone, using them to stay in touch and try to coordinate their operations. Brent didn’t trust them completely, not when the aliens could have found some — either through coincidence or prisoner interrogation — and that meant that they could have been subverted, but there was no choice. If he went blindly into Fort Hood, he would be lucky to find anyone… and if he did, they might shoot him on sight. That would be embarrassing. The data had been sent to his little resistance cell through the Internet — another detail he had kept from Joshua, although that was mainly from habit rather than any operation security procedure, as by now the aliens were well aware of the Internet — but it might not be easy to find the link.

If I can’t find it, I might have to make the walk after all , he thought, as he found an isolated path that ran towards the north. He didn’t dare go down and use the roads; if the aliens didn’t spot him, he might blunder into a IED and be blown up by his own side. There was supposed to be a hide around somewhere, one used by the soldiers who prowled the night and hunted aliens, but if they’d found it…

Dawn was starting to rise when he stumbled across the hide. Someone had been very clever and hidden it from view; the aliens would have to be very lucky to find it, even with directions. He found the entrance, checked it carefully for booby-traps, and opened the hatch. The small electronic panel confronting him lit up and pasted a question for him; which President got a blowjob in the Oval Office ? Brent chuckled, clicked on Clinton , and sighed in relief as the bomb defused itself, allowing him to enter the hide. The aliens, even if they got so far, wouldn’t know the answer… although he knew that collaborators would, if the aliens trusted them to hunt their own people.

Now , he thought, where are you ?

The hide wasn’t as sophisticated as some of the ones he’d seen in Iraq. It was barely more than a hole in the ground, hidden from view, with a tiny cache of food, supplies and a single terminal. He took a breath as he activated the terminal, placing his thumb against the screen and waiting for the scanner to confirm his identity, praying that it included his fingerprints in its memory. There had been times when details like that had been missed from terminals, screwing up entire operations or worse, and there was so much that could go wrong. The terminal bleeped, granting access, and opened up for him, revealing a link that stretched all the way back to Washington. He’d seen enough of the systems to believe that they would continue to work, even with Washington’s destruction.

His hands danced quickly across the keyboard, confirming his identity and sending a message to Fort Hood. The main buildings would have been destroyed, but that wouldn’t worry the soldiers, not the ones hiding out on the grounds. The trick would be to see if he could get there… and if they would be expecting him. It took nearly an hour before a reply arrived, confirming that they could meet him, but he’d have to make it there himself. He checked the location quickly, made a mental note of a route that would take him there by a roundabout route, and settled back into the hide. He’d have to sleep during the day and then make the rest of the journey by night.

He’d wondered if one of the other resistance units would come to the hide, but none came during the day, allowing him to get several hours of uninterrupted sleep. He awoke as darkness started to fall, ate a small MRE quickly, and then sealed off the hide again before starting the long walk. He was tempted to visit some of the smaller towns on his route, but the aliens would be active there, or they would have driven out the human citizens. He’d picked up the reports about them clearing towns by force, but it had taken Joshua to put two and two together and figure out why; the aliens didn’t just want an invasion, they wanted settlement as well. The towns they’d cleared were probably being demolished already.

Should just nuke you, you bastards , he thought. The aliens hadn’t, as far as he knew, reached the Pantex Plant in the north of Texas, but if they knew that the only nuclear weapons assembly and disassembly plant was in their grasp, they would certainly try to grab it. The Internet had been silent on just what had happened to the plant, but his imagination filled in all sorts of possibilities, from alien occupation to the plant rigged to blow… to the aliens having bombed it and destroyed the United State’s capability to make new nukes. He hoped that the equipment had been moved, but that wouldn’t be an easy task, certainly not with the alien control of space. Their unearthly glow was still lighting up the skies to the southwest, a reminder of the cities they were building, which meant that they would soon be trying to expand again.

The thought distracted him from his walk as he skirted all human or alien contact, walking northwards. The aliens had been balked from expanding further into America, but that wouldn’t deter them forever… and there were plenty of weaker countries out there. They’d landed in the Middle East, which couldn’t put up much of a fight against their capabilities, and that gave them access to most of Africa. There were plenty of people in Africa who would have welcomed their arrival, if only because it might actually give them some safety. The Janjaweed couldn’t stop the aliens for a moment… and if they were duly slaughtered, as they would be against any halfway decent military force, the aliens would make one hell of a lot of friends.

…And then the aliens wouldn’t need the United States anymore.

He saw a set of lights down on the road and detoured around them, spying the alien patrol from a distance, wishing for a pair of night vision goggles. The aliens seemed to be more on alert — this close to Fort Hood, they were probably terrified of IEDs and the human soldiers who were covering them — and operating on a random schedule, but there was no way to be sure. He didn’t need to be noticed, at least not by them, but if they saw him, they would certainly want to know what he was doing in the area. The Internet had claimed that thousands of refugees had tried to make it to Fort Hood, or out of the Red Zone, and by now he had dumped his ID card. He wasn’t going to be stopped now.

A flash of brilliant white light lit up the sky, followed by a rising explosion and a burst of shooting. It sounded as if the alien patrol had run into trouble. Fighting down the urge to go see what had happened, Brent picked himself up and ran, running as fast as he could over the road and into the sealed area, avoiding the aliens as they moved to respond to the attack. Fort Hood was so large that they couldn’t hope to guard the entire border and, if the reports were to be trusted, they weren’t even trying. He should have passed their forces now, heading into the trees and thickets of the training area, scrambling over the remains of a fence as if the devil himself was after him. Lights and sounds flickered through the night, the noise of alien helicopters — giving Fort Hood a wide berth, he noticed — sending shivers down his spine. He was used to fighting in an urban environment; it had been too long since he’d been to Fort Hood…