Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

He escorted the young man down and into the police car, scowling at the rotten egg someone had smashed across the windscreen while they’d been in the house. A quick check around the vehicle revealed no signs that anyone had tried to place an IED under the car, like the bomb that had killed two policemen three days ago. The resistance seemed to be conserving its weapons, which hadn’t stopped it and various criminal gangs improvising weapons and using them to attack the police. Who would have thought that something would unite London’s disparate political and religious factions against a single target? Robin would have been mildly impressed if he hadn’t been the target.

The drive through London’s empty streets took longer than he had expected. Several cars had been moved out of place and used to block or divert police traffic, while several groups of young men looking for trouble had made threatening motions towards the car. At least the gangs weren’t trying to attack the alien base in Central London, not after they’d realised that the alien guards had authority to return fire with live ammunition. It hadn’t stopped the resistance from setting up a mortar every few days and lobbing shells into the alien positions.

He winced as he caught sight of the prostitutes on one street corner. So many women had been rendered homeless or broke by the invasion that there were currently thousands of prostitutes in London. Many of them would have preferred to be doing something — anything — else, but the aliens weren’t interested in relief programs. They doled out their tasteless food and otherwise left the population to live or die on its own. Robin knew that some policemen had suggested finding roles for the women within the civil service, but the suggestion hadn’t found favour with the collaborator government. Perhaps the civil servants had managed to cobble together a union and get a ban on scab labour. The thought made him smile. If there was anything capable of working through an alien invasion, it was the British civil service.

“So,” the young man said, “where are you taking me?”

“We’re taking you to the aliens,” Robin said. He wanted to tell a comforting lie. “I don’t know what they want to do with you.”

“And you work for them,” the young man asked. “How do you sleep at night?”

Robin bit down the response that came to mind. The truth was that he didn’t sleep very well at night, something shared by almost all of the policemen he knew. When he closed his eyes, he saw the slaughter the aliens had unleashed, or the helpless looks on their prisoners as they marched them off to an unknown fate. He thought about his wife, safe yet isolated outside the city, and shivered. If she knew what he’d done in the name of the aliens, she would never want to sleep beside him again. Some policemen had started popping sleeping pills and antidepressants, just to keep themselves going. He wondered how long it would be before he found himself doing the same thing, or perhaps taking one of the concealed weapons and putting a bullet through his own brain.

“Badly,” he said, finally. He took firm hold of his temper before the urge to lash out grew too overpowering. The young man wasn’t to blame. Several policemen had given into the stress and started beating their suspects, but he didn’t want to fall that far. “If I’d known what they would be like back then…”

But they hadn’t had a choice, had they? How easily they’d clambered onto the slippery slope! And how hard it would be to wash the blood from their hands. They’d told themselves that they were protecting the people, but they’d become the tools of the aliens — the same aliens who had slaughtered thousands in London just to keep the peace. They weren’t protecting the people any longer, were they? They’d become another alien tool.

And yet… what choice did they have?

He remembered the weapons and shivered again. They could take them and fight back… and be destroyed when the aliens started using heavy weapons on London. There were reports that the aliens had already destroyed a number of small towns for daring to fight when the aliens arrived, or that they’d wrecked havoc in other parts of the world. Against such firepower, what could they do? The only thing they could do was die bravely. And every day, the thought of death seemed more and more attractive. He looked down at his hands and wondered if he would ever be able to wash the bloodstains off his soul.

They came to a halt by the alien fence and waited for the alien guards to confirm their identity. Once they were satisfied that they had the right person, the aliens took the young man away, leaving Robin and Constable Jasper to their own devices. Robin watched the gate swing closed behind them and then ordered Jasper to take them back to the station. He had a bottle of brandy he’d picked up from one of the abandoned houses in his locker. If he drank it all, perhaps he would get drunk and forget about the rest of the world. Or perhaps he’d just wake up with a hangover and have to go back on duty anyway.

And tell me , he thought, rather sourly. Bitter self-hatred welled up within him. How many had died because he had chosen to collaborate with the aliens? Each of his justifications felt less and less logical every time he thought about them. What exactly do you deserve ?

“I can’t do much for the wound,” Fatima admitted. “The best I can do is separate it properly and bandage it up.”

“You mean amputate my arm,” the man in front of her said. He’d taken an alien bullet that had punched right through his upper arm, shattering his bone to dust. His arm now hung limply from what remained of his flesh, bound up with cloth to prevent it from tearing loose and falling to the floor. “There’s nothing else you can do?”

Fatima shook her head. The resistance had gathered what medical supplies they could, but London had been short on medical supplies and equipment ever since the invasion. There were wounded that would have made a full recovery — if they had the right equipment — who would almost certainly be cripples for the rest of their lives. The man who’d lost an arm was hardly the worst of them. She honestly didn’t know how some of them had held on to their lives. Determination to hurt the aliens before they died, perhaps.

“I’m afraid not,” she said, as she started to wash her hands. The NHS had a poor reputation for keeping hospitals clean, but none of the ones she’d worked in had been anything like as bad as the abandoned house they’d turned into a medical centre. It had taken her hours to clean the place to a minimum standard and even then she had a feeling that it was still alarmingly unhealthy. “We don’t have prosthetics we could use to give you a new arm, or replace the shattered bone. Even if we did have, I’m not sure you could recover after that level of trauma.”

The man nodded, scowling down at the floor. He’d been given a large dose of painkillers, but they clearly hadn’t been enough to keep the pain from making it harder for him to think. Fatima wasn’t too surprised. Taking too many of the painkillers would have been bad for his health too.

“And if I chose to stay like this?” He asked, finally. “I could…”

“You wouldn’t recover any function in your lower arm or your hand,” Fatima said, flatly. She didn’t really blame him for refusing to realise the truth. Humans hated losing parts of their bodies. Trauma victims never fully recovered. “You would be left with a useless dangling piece of flesh - one that would have to be bound to your body at all times. My best advice is to have it taken off, which would at least prevent the wound from becoming infected.”