The Eternal War

‘Sir?’

Freeman turned back to Ray. ‘What is it, son?’

‘What’s that?’ The boy was pointing. Freeman followed the direction of his finger and squinted once again to make better use of his old eyes. It looked like thunder clouds on the horizon. Made sense. They were due rain sometime soon.

A row of heavily stacked clouds.

‘Pass me them field glasses, Ray.’

The young man fished them out of a pouch and passed them to the sergeant.

‘Now then,’ he said, fumbling with the lens-focus dial. ‘Let me just get a …’

The bell grabbed Maddy and hauled her out of a troubled dream. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the springs of Sal’s bunk above. For a moment, with the gentle glow of the light bulb above casting a patchwork of shadows from its wire grille, and the hum of the computers, she thought all was well once more. That the idea of a civil war still being fought across the rubble of New York had been nothing but her sleeping mind’s fun and games.

But then the long clattering trill of a bell again.

She turned her head and saw Colonel Devereau jerking awake in one of the armchairs. He reached out and unhooked the phone from its cradle on the table.

‘Yes?’

Maddy swung her legs on to the floor as Wainwright stirred and Becks ducked under the shutter and entered the archway.

Devereau nodded solemnly as he listened. Then finally: ‘Good man. Come back immediately.’ He hung the phone up on its cradle.

‘They’re coming.’

A moment later they were all emerging outside, stepping into the glare of morning. She followed the colonels along the trench, pressing past grim-faced men already mustering, checking their webbing, their ammo pouches, their carbines, buttoning their tunics, replacing forage caps with hard helmets. Up a short stepladder and out of the horseshoe-shaped trench, she joined them on the open ground sloping down towards the borderline and the river.

A motor launch was steaming across the glass-smooth water towards them, leaving a rippling V in its wake.

Becks stood beside her. ‘They are here.’

Looming low in the sky above Manhattan like an archipelago of floating islands, a fleet of giant sky carriers had arrived.

CHAPTER 74

2001, en route to New Chelmsford

Liam wiped sweat from his face. The morning had started out so chilly. Now, midday, with the sky a rich blue and the sun hanging high, it was a summer’s day come late.

Traipsing across field after field punctuated by the occasional meadow … and now finally in an apple orchard that seemed endless, they were exhausted.

‘Five minutes,’ gasped Liam. ‘I’ve got a stitch in me side.’ He slumped against the trunk of an apple tree. ‘Five minutes’ rest here, then we’ll carry on.’

Lincoln slid down beside him, equally spent and grumbling about blisters on his feet.

Sal didn’t want to sit. She knew if she did she’d not want to get up again. Anyway, more pressing matters.

‘I need to, uh … to go and …’

Liam waved her off. ‘Don’t wander too far.’

‘OK.’

She turned away and ducked down under the low-hanging branches of the nearest tree. She could still see them which meant they could see her. She walked a little further from them, between rows of trees, through grass tall enough to tickle her fingers. She ducked down again, under another cluster of apple-laden branches and found herself on the edge of a clearing.

A glance backwards. She couldn’t see them any more, although she could hear the gentle rumble of Bob’s voice.

Good enough for modesty.

She turned back and was about to step round the back of the tree trunk beside her and into the clearing when she spotted it. Almost yelping with shock as she immediately ducked down into the long grass.

A eugenic.

It was sitting on the edge of the clearing. Huge. One of the ape-like ones, a tiny head almost an afterthought emerging as little more than a lump from its huge shoulders. She froze where she was, petrified that if she moved again she might attract its attention.

She peered more closely at it. It looked a size larger than the apes, half as big again, even more top heavy with muscle-mass. But it was the creature’s face that struck her.

No mouth. Or, rather, where a mouth should have been a short length of pipe emerged, sealed at the end. It also appeared to be wearing a skullcap of some kind. She watched it for a good minute before suspecting it was quite dead.

Liam squatted down in front of it and peered closely at its small face. Its eyes were open, dilated and glazed. They could hear it breathing, air that rustled in through the slits of its nose and wheezed out like a blacksmith’s bellows.

‘Well, it’s not dead; I can tell that much.’

‘The creature is in a stupor,’ said Lincoln.

Sal reached out and touched its ape-like face, pale skin as smooth and as hairless as a baby’s. The cap she thought it had been wearing, a leather one, seemed to be attached. Fixed in place to a band round its forehead by a pair of clips. She looked at Liam. ‘It comes off, maybe?’

He nodded. ‘Go on … I don’t think this brute’s going to mind.’

Carefully, she undid one clip and then the other, and gently eased the cap up off the band.

‘Oh, that’s just gross!’

Beneath a scuffed glass cover, they could see its skull had been scooped empty of brain. In the cranial cavity, through the scratched glass, they could see something grey and ribbed, the size, shape and texture of a walnut. It was penetrated by half a dozen small brass rods, linked by wires to a control box that blinked an amber light.

‘Information,’ said Bob. ‘Electronic impulses sent through the rods to the organic tissue stimulate brain activity. A much simpler version of the silicon-organic interface in my head.’

Liam puffed a queasy breath out. ‘McManus said they were controlling their creatures much better now. So this is how: they scoop the poor thing’s brains out and shove in whatever that is instead.’

‘It is a brain, isn’t it?’ said Sal.

‘Aye … but a tiny one. Like a rat’s or something.’

Sal made a face.

‘Or maybe they grow these things without brains now,’ said Liam. That somehow seemed a more palatable idea. Better than growing smart creatures and then lobotomizing them like this.

They heard a distant whistle sounding.

‘What was that?’ asked Lincoln.

Men’s voices echoed through the orchard. They heard the clatter of machinery firing up.

Liam shrugged. ‘Maybe that was the end of a lunch break.’

The light on the box suddenly changed from amber to green.

Sal tilted her head. ‘Does that mean it’s just turned itself “on”?’