Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

The thought was chilling — and the internet speculation had been downright horrific. Introducing rabbits to Australia had been disastrous because the rabbits had had no natural predators and had bred like… well, rabbits. Alien plants might be resistant to Earth’s formidable array of crop-destroying pests, while alien animals might be tougher than foxes or weasels or the other predators that hunted rabbits and field mice. Alex had tried to imagine an animal from the alien homeworld, but had drawn a blank. They could look like anything.

She could hear the sounds of alien helicopters in the distance as they walked onwards, watching carefully for any sign of an alien or collaborator patrol. They’d had some close calls in the days since they’d started trying to ambush the aliens, but the aliens seemed to have preferred to keep their distance. Maybe their current sweep was intended to change that — no matter what some of the young men thought, she had no illusions. They were barely pin-pricking the aliens. The aliens might not consider them significant enough to bother killing.

“You could come to the dance with me,” Henry said, breaking into her thoughts. “It would be a fun time to let your hair down.”

Alex rolled her eyes. Henry was seventeen; she was twenty-five. And she wanted to minimise the contact between her and the townspeople as much as possible. Officially, she was Smith’s niece from across the country, but it wouldn’t be long before someone guessed at the truth. There had been quite a few fugitives who had found new homes in the countryside, yet the aliens were alarmingly good at using human files to track down military personnel. And if they caught Alex… no one knew what would happen to her.

And Henry was clearly interested in her. Part of her was tempted, despite the age difference — Henry wasn’t a bad person at all. But the rest of her knew better. She’d been between boyfriends when she’d been shot down during the opening days of the invasion and… if she opened herself up that far, it risked creating emotional ties. One day, she would have to leave Long Stratton if the aliens threatened to take over the area directly — and then she would have to avoid looking back.

“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to be seen,” she said, finally. There were younger girls in the town, she told herself firmly. He’d find someone closer in age to himself. “I need to spend more time at the hole anyway.”

The thought made her smile. Smuggling guns and explosives to hiding places well away from the town had been a challenge, but once they’d completed the program it had been easy to separate the different resistance cells. The aliens might catch one of them, only to discover that they had no leads to the next one. Or so she hoped. If someone had defied orders… she shook her head. The RAF had tried to control every aspect of her life as a pilot, but the resistance needed a much looser organisation. She would just have to trust that they knew what to do — and knew better than to contact her.

Henry said nothing for the rest of the walk back to the coppice that served as a rendezvous point. Alex’s RAF training hadn’t included building shelters, but Archer had uncovered a couple of ex-poachers who were remarkably talented at slipping unseen through the night, or building hidden dumps for the weapons. She knew she could live alone out in the countryside for quite some time, but that would mean giving up the fight and walking away, forgetting her oath to the country. They dumped most of their weapons in the stash and headed down towards Smith’s farm. He’d been spending the last few days planting the alien seeds in the ground, cursing the aliens all the while. At least they’d gotten a petrol ration out of it.

“That’s funny,” Henry commented. “Where is he?”

Alex looked over at him, and then down at her watch. It was early afternoon, the time Smith normally worked in the fields. Henry was right. Where was he? More carefully now, Alex walked forward to the farmhouse and quietly peered around the corner. There was no sign of his Range Rover in the shed. He had to have gone out and… she touched the door and it opened, revealing that it was unlocked. Alarm bells ringing in her head, she inched into the farmhouse and looked around. There was no sign of Smith, or his wife.

“No sign of a struggle,” Henry pointed out. Alex relaxed slightly. He was right. It looked as if Smith and Jean had had to go down to the town, leaving the door unlocked for her. And yet… something wasn’t quite right. She slipped upstairs and checked the bedrooms, finding nothing that suggested trouble. “They might have just gone out for a drive…”

“Maybe,” Alex said. “Or maybe…”

The sound of alien helicopters echoed out of nowhere. Alex started, and then ran for the door, suddenly certain what she’d see outside. Five helicopters were racing towards the farmhouse, aliens already rappelling down ropes to hit the ground just as the helicopters came to a halt. Alex reached for the gun she’d shoved into her belt, but it was far too late. A dozen aliens were advancing towards her, weapons pointed right at her chest. How the hell had they known…? It struck her, suddenly, that the aliens might have been watching as they walked back from Dereham. They could have orbited a drone so high overhead that the naked eye couldn’t have made it out against the sun’s glare…

“Put up your hands,” the lead alien ordered. “Resistance is futile…”

Henry drew his pistol and opened fire, shooting madly towards the aliens. Alex could have told him not to waste his energy. The handguns they had weren’t that accurate and alien body armour was more than enough to protect them, unless they were hit in the uncovered parts of their heads. They opened fire, their shells blowing Henry apart and scattering his bloody remains across the farmyard. Alex kept very still, thinking hard. Who had betrayed her? Smith and his wife, or someone down at the town? Probably the latter, she told herself, and she hoped that she was right. She didn’t want to think that Smith might have betrayed her.

The aliens came closer, dark unblinking eyes fixed on her form. Their hands seemed to end in oversized fingernails — no, those were claws — and she had to fight not to cringe back as they tore at her clothes, removing her pistol and everything else she’d been carrying on her person. The claws seemed sharp enough to cut through her bare skin, convincing her that trying to fight hand-to-hand with the aliens was a bad idea. They kept two weapons pointed at her at all times, even after they’d finished searching her and wrapped a plastic tie around her hands, binding them behind her back. She wanted to laugh, or cry. They’d caught her — and if they knew how important she was to the resistance cells, they’d torture her until she talked. If they hadn’t caught Archer, perhaps he’d know to order the cells to scatter before Alex broke. He’d assume the worst, wouldn’t he?

They pushed her to the ground and left her there while they searched the house. It was hard to see what they were doing from her position, but it sounded as though they were tearing down most of the walls and smashing the windows. God alone knew what they were looking for, unless it was a weapons dump. She snorted at the thought. The only weapons kept in the house were her pistol and Smith’s shotgun. They wouldn’t find anything else. Finally, they pulled her to her feet and marched her towards one of their hover-vehicles. The interior was surprisingly roomy compared to some of the vehicles she’d seen in Afghanistan, but it would have been designed for alien bodies. They clanged the hatch shut behind her, leaving her in darkness. There was no light at all inside the chamber.