Eric Brown: The Serene Invasion

She looked up, through the windscreen. It was late afternoon, and the sun should have been bright above the distant tree line. All she saw was a diffuse blur where the fiery ball should have been.

She said, “Their guns jammed, Ben. We were lucky.”

“You saw them, saw what happened. It was the work of the Lord. Their guns did not jam, Sally. They just could not bring themselves to kill us.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell happened. I’m just grateful…”

She brought the truck to a sudden stop, leaned through the window and vomited.

SHE FOLLOWED THE wadi to the road running north-south, and turned left.

She accelerated, residual fear pushing her to drive at speed. She knew the terrorists had no means of leaving the hut other than on foot, but it was as if what they had subjected her to was affecting her rationality. She half expected the men to leap out at them from behind the passing trees.

They came to a T-junction and Sally braked.

Ben said, “I know where we are. See, in the distance, the village of Moganda. We are perhaps one hour away from Kallani.”

“Turn around, Ben, and I’ll try to untie you.”

She picked at the tight knot until she had worked the twine loose and pulled the binds free. He smiled at her, rubbing his wrists.

She gunned the engine and turned right. She checked the fuel gauge, smiled when she saw that it indicated the tank was a little less than half full.

The decision came upon her unexpectedly. She knew, once she arrived back at the medical centre, that she would locate Dr Krasnic and resign then and there. Krasnic would demur, tell her to take a break and think through her decision. But she also knew that she was never going to work at Kallani again.

She had given the place five years of her life, and that was quite enough.

They came to the outskirts of Kallani just under an hour later. A crowd surged along the high street. An almost palpable sense of excitement filled the humid late afternoon air. The attack at the medical centre was big news, in a place where for month after month nothing ever happened.

They edged through the crowds, drove through the centre of town, and minutes later arrived at the medical centre. The gates were open, and within Sally made out two Ugandan army trucks, a police car and a Red Cross jeep.

Crowds milled outside and within the compound so that their return, edging through the citizens and into the medical centre, was hardly commented upon.

The charcoaled bodies of the dead soldiers had been covered in dark green military tarpaulins. The watchtower still burned feebly, a mere blackened timber skeleton against the hazy sky.

Army officers, fat Ugandan policemen, and Red Cross officials stood about in small groups, conferring and consulting softscreens and speaking into wrist-coms.

Sally killed the engine, the truck just another vehicle amongst many. The engine ticked, cooling. She stared out at the activity in the compound.

A tiny African girl moved from a prefab ward and crossed towards the truck. She paused to turn and call something, and a dozen faces appeared at the windows. Sally opened the door and climbed out. The little girl ran to her, repeating her name and saying in Swahili. “You come back! You come back! Kolli, she says bad men took you.”

“I’m back, Gallie. I’m back. Don’t worry.” Sally swept up the child, hugged her to her chest and carried her over to the prefab. Inside, twenty children were cowering in their beds, staring at her with wide eyes.

Mary, the nurse fresh out from England, hurried to her and said, “It’s Dr Krasnic. You must see him. He’s… he’s in his office. He has a pistol. I tried talking to him, but…”

Sally transferred Gallie to Mary’s custody, turned and hurried from the prefab. She almost collided with Ben on the way out.

“Sally?”

“Come with me!” she ordered. “It’s Yan.”

She feared what she might find as she ran across to Krasnic’s office. His frequent depressions, allied to what had happened that afternoon at the complex, was a combination that did not bode well.

She came to the office and pushed open the fly-screen door.

Krasnic sat at his desk, looking like a statue carved from grey granite. He looked up when she entered. Ben stood behind her, a hand on her shoulder.

Krasnic said, incredulously, “Sally? Ben?” His eyes brimmed.

“We… got away, Yan.”

Only then did she see the pistol lying on the table between his outstretched hands.

“I saw the carnage…” Yan said. “Mary told me you’d been taken.” He shook his head. “I… I don’t know what happened. I’d suddenly had enough, all I could take. So I filled my pistol…” He gestured to the gun on the desk, “raised it to my head and tried to pull the trigger. And nothing happened. So I tried again, yes? And… again, nothing. Was it God, telling me something?”

Sally opened her mouth to speak, but the words would not come.

She stepped forward, reached out and took the pistol. It was far heavier than she had expected, and cold.

“Yan, we need to talk…”

She was interrupted. Someone barged into the room, shouting. “Dr Krasnic!” The Ugandan orderly stared at Sally and Ben, then went on. “Dr Krasnic, amazing events in the south! You must come and see. The road is blocked!”

Before anyone could question him, he ducked back through the door and sprinted across the compound.

Sally looked out. The police car, the Red Cross truck and the army vehicle were rumbling in convoy from the compound.

Sally turned to Krasnic. “Yan, come with me.”

She waited until he stood, like a tired old bear, and she took his arm. They crossed the compound to the terrorist’s truck and all three shuffled along the front seat. Sally stowed Krasnic’s pistol alongside the other above the dashboard.

Five minutes later they left the compound behind the slowly moving convoy and headed south.

Krasnic was the first to see it. He pointed, stirred from his suicidal fugue by what had appeared in the distance. Sally recalled the flash high in the sky earlier that afternoon and, later, the diffuse nature of the sun.

The convoy had halted in the road ahead, along with dozens of other vehicles, cars, motorbikes and bicycles. A crowd of perhaps two hundred citizens milled about at the end of the road — the end of the road because, spanning the patched tarmac that should have headed ruler-straight south without hindrance across the sun-parched desert, was what appeared to be a wall of glass.

Dazed, Sally climbed from the cab, eased her way through the crowd, and approached the silvery membrane. She could see through it, to the road on the other side, the dun African land stretching away to the horizon.

She looked up and stared in wonder at the concave expanse of diaphanous material that stretched high above their heads. It appeared that the town of Kallani was enclosed within the confines of a vast dome.

Krasnic was beside her. “What the hell…?”

Ben said, “It’s a sign, Sally. A sign…”

She reached out and touched the sun-warmed membrane.

THE BOARDING OF the Air Europe flight from Heathrow to Entebbe was delayed for two hours due to a bomb scare in terminal six. Geoff Allen bore the hold up with customary patience. His job entailed prolonged travel, and these days delays were an inevitable part of the process. He unrolled his softscreen and spent the time editing a file of shots taken on his last assignment, a freelance trip to cover the aftermath of the bombings in Ankara.

A rainstorm was lashing the tarmac, and when the time came to board the ancient Boeing 747 the passengers were informed that, because of ‘technical difficulties’, the umbilical corridor leading from the terminal building was out of commission. As he dashed through the rain, he looked ahead to the sun of Africa and the week he was due to spend with Sally.