Christopher Nuttall - Their Darkest Hour

Carefully — there were bitter-enders out there — he peered through the tiny spy hole and frowned. Two brisk young men stood in front of the door, wearing civilian clothes. They didn’t look like religious freaks. Maybe they wanted to sign up with the aliens — it wouldn’t be the first time he’d been approached by someone looking for a job. He opened the door and scowled down at them. They didn’t seem intimidated by his face.

“We need to talk to you,” one of them said. He stepped forward, put his foot neatly in place to prevent Jimmy from shutting the door, and pointed a gun right at his face. Jimmy jumped back in shock, feeling the pleasant haze of near-drunkenness fading away. “You’re going to help us rescue our friends.”

Jimmy found himself on the floor, looking up at them. “And if you don’t help,” the man added, “you’re really not going to enjoy what happens next.”

Alex rolled over as she heard the sound of the cell opening. They seemed to take her to a different cell after each interrogation session, sometimes with someone in the cell, sometimes empty so she had a chance to brood on what would happen to her next. Her body just ached constantly, the pain blurring together into a single mass tearing away at her mind. She was half-convinced that they were torturing her for the fun of it, or perhaps they were waiting for her to break. They certainly hadn’t bothered to ask her any questions.

The light came on, revealing a man with a blood-stained face hobbling into the cell. Like her, he was naked, with dark blue-black bruises covering his entire body. She found herself wondering if she would recognise him, but as her eyes adapted to the light she realised that he was a stranger. The blood on his face suggested that he’d been tortured worse than she had, at least physically. Being at the mercy of a pair of sadists who could do anything they wanted to her was taking its toll. The only thing keeping her from breaking was a bitter determination not to give them the pleasure.

“Hi,” Alex said. So far, all of the other prisoners she’d met had been women. She hadn’t even known that there were any male prisoners in the complex, although she wasn’t really sure how large the complex actually was. It felt as if they were underground, but there was no way to know for sure. God alone knew if they were even still in Britain. “What did they do to you?”

The man stumbled to his knees, grunting in pain as he hit the stone floor. “They caught me two days ago,” he said, quietly. Alex blinked in surprise. It looked as if he had been worked over more than once, but maybe she was mistaken. “They were lying in wait — wiped us out, apart from me. I was the lucky one they took alive.”

There was a bitterness in his voice that was alarmingly convincing. “I was in Chester’s group,” he added. “Good old Chester — Shiny Two’s Colonel. He’s dead too, now.”

Alex winced. Shiny Two was the nickname for 2 Para, one of the toughest units of fighting men in the British Army. She’d flown missions supporting their operations in Afghanistan, before returning to Britain and flying in defence of the UKADR. If they’d been wiped out, what hope was there for anyone else?

“We lost contact with everyone else,” he admitted. “Who were you with?”

“No one,” Alex admitted. The memory was a bitter one, although if he was telling the truth it would seem that the professional soldiers hadn’t done much better. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s over,” the man insisted. “None of us are ever going to see the outside world ever again. What possible harm could it do now?”

Alex considered the point for a long moment. She didn’t know who had betrayed her and she probably would never know. It was nice to think that Archer and the others would carry on the war without her, but the traitor might have betrayed them as well. And if that had happened, their resistance cell would have been blown open and destroyed. The supplies that Archer had guarded ever since 1940 would have been confiscated by the aliens.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she repeated. She wasn’t going to break, not after everything else she’d been through. “I need to rest.”

“But they’ll kill you,” the man protested. “You can’t help your friends now…”

Something clicked in Alex’s mind. She’d been slapped and beaten and raped and, afterwards, she’d found it incredibly difficult to walk. The man looked to have been tortured worse and yet he was still walking, if badly. They should have shackled him, yet they’d left him free to walk. And he didn’t sound as though he was in pain…

“Go fuck yourself, collaborator,” Alex said, wondering if it would be the last thing she’d ever say. He might lash out at her and she was in no state for a fight. “You’re nothing more than a goddamned Walt!”

There was a pause, and then the man stood up and banged on the cell door. His limp seemed to have vanished, she noted, as the door opened and he was hauled outside. She could hear the sound of someone screaming from further down the corridor before the door was slammed closed and the light went off, leaving her alone in the darkness. Alex chuckled, despite the pain it caused her to laugh. They’d tried to trick her into talking and failed.

She lay back on the hard bed and closed her eyes, trying to relax. It wasn’t easy; the pain kept her awake. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take before she broke, even though she was determined to hold out as long as possible. But what was going to happen to her afterwards? She had a feeling that she wouldn’t enjoy the answer.

The cell door banged open without warning. A dark silhouette appeared, standing against the faint light from outside. “Well, you’re certainly posing an interesting challenge,” the tall man said. He sounded more amused than annoyed. “I thought that you would have been fooled for sure.”

It was a mistake to talk to one’s captors, but Alex couldn’t resist. “Fuck you,” she said. “I won’t tell you anything.”

“I’ve already fucked you,” the tall man said, nastily. There was a faint chuckle, an inhuman sound for all that it came from a human throat. “I come with good news. Your suffering will soon be over, my dear. Our masters have decided to execute a number of people caught in the act of waging war against the new world order. They announced it on the BBC and everything. And unless you talk, you’re going to be one of the ones executed by firing squad.”

He leaned closer. “You could talk right now,” he said. “I’ll have your wounds treated and you’d even be able to rest properly, without any more suffering. There are places where you could live out the rest of your life, far from the maddening crowd. All you have to do is tell us what we want to know…”

Alex braced herself, and then threw a slap at his face. But she was wounded and drained and she moved far too slowly. He stepped back, effortlessly avoiding her desperate blow.

“I suggest you make your peace with yourself, bitch,” he said, in the same casual tone. “Tomorrow, you will die. And don’t even think that they will care, all the people you’re protecting. They will just forget you, or forever wonder if you betrayed them…”

“Go fuck yourself,” Alex said, as harshly as she could.

“I’ll fuck someone else tonight,” the tall man said. “Enjoy your last day on Earth.”

The door banged closed behind him, leaving Alex alone once again. She’d known that there was a prospect of violent death from the day she’d first joined the RAF. And she’d known that she might be shot down over enemy territory and interrogated. It had been one of her few nightmares, back when the world had made sense. If only it had stayed in her nightmares… quietly, alone in her cell, she prayed to a God she hadn’t spoken to for years. At least her death would have some meaning…