Critical Dawn (13 page)

It was warm in Ben’s palm where it had been around Charlie’s neck just moments ago. The bead was just like the one that Charlie had cut out of Ben’s collar. Only this was wrapped in a cocoon of semi-transparent material.

“It’s what started all this in motion,” Charlie said. “The very first find, and the item that was the catalyst for the invasion. It was also the item that I kept to remind me of my beloved Pippa.”

“I can’t,” Ben said. “It means so much to you.”

“Which is why it’s perfect. Gregor knows this. If you turn up with it, he’ll know you stole it as he’d never believe I’d give it away. It’s your way in and your ticket to safety. I’ll be honest with you, Ben. You seem like a good kid, but you’re not cut out for this life out here. What you’ve experienced so far is easy street. It only gets harder from here on out. You won’t survive. I know that; you know that.”

Ben closed his hand around the bead and looked up at Charlie and Denver. They were right. He wasn’t cut out for their life. He needed security, a job, someone to guide him. And if going to the farm meant he could help these people, then at least he’d be doing something good.

“Okay, you’re right. I’ll go. But how will I get information out to you?”

“By radio of sorts. Here.” Charlie handed him a metallic object resembling a coin. The surface was dark grey and rough to the touch. “I took this from a croatoan helmet. It’s what they use to communicate. They’ve been paired, so they share a frequency. Don’t worry, they’re secure. Den and I have been using them for a while. As long as we keep things short, you’ll be okay. To work them, you just activate the transceiver by pressing those two notches on the side there.”

Ben did as he instructed and spoke into the transceiver. He heard his voice come out via the other one. “Okay, I got it.”

“Keep it to a minimum though, and make sure you don’t let it out of your sight,” Denver said. “If it’s found, just plead ignorance. It’s unlikely they’d suspect you of being able to take it from a croatoan.”

“One week from now,” Charlie said, “you’ll contact us, tell us what you’ve learned about the shipments to and from the mother ship. We want to know if there’s a schedule, how it’s handled, who oversees the packing.”

“So what exactly is your plan?”

“Better you don’t know, son,” Charlie said. “If you don’t know, they can’t extract that from you. But it won’t come to that. Just do as you’re told, be a good worker, and you’ll have no problem. When the time comes, we’ll get you out of there as there’ll be no more croatoans left.”

The howl of a croatoan fighter craft flying a low circuit over the camp kept Layla awake for most of the night. She punched her pillow and checked her watch after being awoken from the latest pass, probably an hour’s sleep if that, not much chance of any more.

At first, the sound evoked memories of the battle of Britain. Flashbacks to shortly after the vessels appeared from the sinkholes stuffed with ground troops who spread from the freezing smoke like locusts. The fighters appeared almost immediately in support, taking everything out of the sky in short order, firing powerful weapons at targets on the ground. They left almost as quickly as they appeared after annihilating the global population. That’s when she first met Augustus, after the overhead howling stopped, before the mini ice age took hold.

Layla thought about his threat to Gregor and wondered if he’d seen the same side of Augustus that she had.

A group of croatoan foot soldiers rounded up survivors, including Layla, who had been taking refuge in a supermarket. He appeared in his mask and robe and announced that everyone was to be interviewed in the warehouse.

Layla was fifth in line out of the twenty-five-strong group.

When she entered the warehouse, Augustus was sitting behind a desk, holding a pen. A pile of four bodies lay to her right-hand side. He told her he was carrying out a skills assessment for future operations, and it was her chance to shape a new world. She was the only survivor to leave the building alive, and witnessed Augustus sliding his pen across his neck after each person that confronted him revealed their skills and was apparently found unsuitable. They were executed on the spot by a croatoan soldier.

Light was already starting to seep through the drapes, illuminating the tatty trailer’s brown and cream interior. She commandeered it after the team arrived in Pennsylvania. The usual process was to grab the closest available accommodation to Gregor’s choice of office.

She peeled a large carrot in the kitchen sink and took a bite. A sour, metallic taste burst around her mouth as she crunched. Layla gagged, spat it out, and took a drink from a plastic water bottle, swilling the fluid, attempting to wash away the taste. For years, she’d always tried to keep a vegetable patch on the edge of camp. The yield was gradually becoming worse; this year’s crop was almost entirely inedible.

The alien root was having a larger combined effect on the ground and atmosphere. Layla decided that now would be a good time to check out the chocolate factory. Dawn was breaking, and the croatoans didn’t usually start work for another hour. She could slip inside the warehouse and have a good look around their equipment, check their latest charts, and maybe even try and make sense of their computers. It wasn’t worth risking before, but things were moving, and she wanted to know the direction.

She slipped on a black sweater and carefully opened the door, trying not to make a sound.

Thunder rumbled in the distance as she neared the chocolate factory. The last thing she needed. It was like an alarm for the aliens to go outside and revere the adverse weather. Layla tried to appear as casual as possible as she walked around the side of the building toward the front entrance.

Thin light shone out of the barrack buildings into the quiet main square, reflecting off the hover-bikes parked in the middle. Some aliens were busy. Layla could hear faint sounds of clanking and humming, nothing really unusual.

She reached for the chocolate factory door. It flew open, striking her hand as she attempted to pull it away.

A croatoan surveyor stood in the entrance and looked up. It carried a shoebox-sized device under its right arm, not one of croatoan computers; this had a luminous green display and several circular blue buttons. A transparent pipe curled around the box like a vacuum cleaner hose.

The croatoan clicked a few times and held its free arm to one side in a gesturing motion.

“Good morning. You’re starting early today,” Layla said.

The alien shuffled past her, followed by four of its colleagues, each carrying the same thing.

Layla stood on her tiptoes and peered into the gloom behind the outgoing procession. The place was a hive of activity. Nothing like she’d ever seen before.

Two more aliens filed past, carrying the large object on a stretcher. It was the first time she’d observed the back of the glowing sea-green piece of equipment. Five circular holes ran along the side, funneling into the internal machinery.

She stepped inside and walked past the croatoan worktable. A group of eight surveyors stood around it, busily communicating with each other, holding up their tablets, pointing. They stopped and turned as she passed. Layla pointed toward the back of the room where Vlad sat gazing at the screens, dutifully monitoring the harvesters.

Vlad remained transfixed on the screens as Layla approached. She said, “People are going to start to think you’re a chocolate factory ornament.”

Vlad twisted in his chair. “I’m not the only one who works here.”

“You are for at least sixteen hours a day.”

He grunted and spun back to face the screens. Layla remembered him close to breakdown when he worked with the livestock, turning up increasingly drunk for work, losing his temper before sobbing in open view. Vlad was the one member of the gang that didn’t seem to be able to simply brush things under the carpet for the sake of survival; he had little choice but to go along so he carved out a niche in the most bearable work. Layla got it; Gregor didn’t. He called Vlad
the wet lettuce
.

“How’s the conversion rate since the change last night?” Layla said.

Vlad twisted his chair around. “Seems to be doing the trick. I’ll have a better idea in a few hours, but the early signs are good.”

Layla glanced back to the croatoans. “How long have they been here?”

“About three hours. Came in the middle of the night. I’ve never seen so many of the little freaks buzzing around. One of them brought over a tray of food,” Vlad said, twisting his face into a grimace.

“You’ll let me know if you see anything strange?”

“Look around you,” he replied, and started writing something on a notepad.

***

Layla decided to follow the croatoans as they left the chocolate factory in a busy gaggle. She shadowed them left, into the eight-foot gap between the factory and training building toward the paddocks.

A loud, short electric buzz echoed ahead. The warning sound before the paddock gates were opened. She reached the other side and saw red lights spinning on either side of the entrance.

Two surveyors pulled the tall mesh gates open.

Humans remained at the opposite end of the paddock huddled under the shelter, staring over with blank faces at the croatoan activity.

To Layla’s right, the gravity trailer drifted past across open ground.

Four croatoans kept it on course at each corner. A large transparent structure, about the size of a single decker bus and split into five sections, balanced on top. Each section had a small, circular hole at one side and a door on the other. It must have been assembled in one of the warehouses. To her knowledge, nothing that size had come off a shuttle. That’s the way croatoans did things, assembling their equipment like hi-tech, flat-packed furniture.

The croatoans pushed the trailer through the gate and brought it down in a clear grassed area. They slid the structure off the trailer and moved it to one side. Other aliens joined them, carrying over their pieces of electronic equipment.

Layla crouched by the electric fence and observed their movements. Another roll of thunder boomed in the distance; the aliens collectively looked up for a moment before carrying on.

Each of the five devices was twisted in place around the holes of the large structure, one for every compartment. Two croatoans attached the hoses from the devices to the larger one that was carried over on a stretcher. It took on the appearance of a control panel once the whole thing was interconnected. Most croatoans gathered around the glowing, coffin-sized device, fifteen of them.

The remaining five made their way toward the far end of the paddock. Each pulled a single human out of the flock and led them at gunpoint back toward the main group and lined them up outside each individual compartment, all dressed in dirty sheets tied around their bodies.

A croatoan approached the back of the first compartment and knelt by the attached device. A series of lights started winking on it. A whirring noise drifted over to Layla.

As the alien moved along each compartment, the noise became gradually louder. It sounded like being next to a bank of servers with multiple running fans. All five shoeboxes collectively winked and hummed.

The left hand compartment started to fill with dark orange smoke. Its neighbor took on a lighter tone. The middle compartment was slightly more transparent. The one after that was only tinged with orange. The left-hand compartment remained clear.

Croatoans moved all around the structure, investigating it, checking the shoeboxes probably for readings, and pressing their gloved hands against the plastic-looking shell.

It looked to Layla like they were creating different types of atmosphere pressurized in individual compartments.

The aliens stood in a circle for a few moments before one broke from the group and opened the individual doors to each compartment. Puffs of orange smoke drifted into the cloudy sky after the last three doors were released.

Layla edged behind a tree stump and peered over. She was starting to feel that this was an experiment she needed to see and didn’t want to be chaperoned away by a paranoid alien.

A croatoan guarding the man outside the left-hand compartment opened its door by raising a lever, then cajoled the confused-looking man inside at gunpoint. It slammed the door behind him and secured the lever downwards.

The same thing happened in turn to all four humans outside the other compartments until all five sections were occupied. It looked like a strange zoo as the croatoans stood around the structure, checking the smaller devices and crowding around the larger console. The humans looked around, pressed against the interior. One sat cross-legged on the floor. A croatoan approached and ushered him up with a gun.

Through a gap between the aliens, Layla could see they were peering down to a light blue square on the larger device. Probably giving them data or readings from individual sections.

Dense, orange smoke billowed into the left-hand compartment, quickly filling it from top to bottom. Its black-haired inhabitant clutched at her throat, sinking to her knees. Layla momentarily lost sight of the human in the smoke until the top of her head pressed against the bottom edge.

After observing for a few minutes, looking between the console and the compartment, a croatoan released the door and pulled the lifeless body out by the hair.

Smoke pumped into the next compartment, having the same effect on the human. Because it was less thick, Layla could see a visible outline thrashing around inside. The man dropped to his backside and tried to kick at the door with his feet, eventually stopping and rolling to one side. He was dragged out shortly afterwards.

Fists thumped against the transparent middle section. The woman inside had seen what was coming. She tried shouting toward the croatoans. The structure must have been soundproof. One walked up and stood directly in front of the struggling woman as if mocking her, matching her actions as she slowly perished. Aliens clicked loudly from the console.

She was unceremoniously dumped on the increasing pile of bodies after five minutes.

The humans in the final two compartments were facing each other, hands placed on the internal separating wall against each other.

Layla cupped her hand over her mouth and breathed, “Oh my God.”

A light orange tinge surrounded the man in the second to last section. He looked around, squinting, and wiped his eyes. He remained standing for two minutes before doubling over and dry retching several times. He leaned against the side with his eyes tightly shut, nursing his stomach. The woman in the final compartment watched on. Her head gently rocked as she clasped her hands on her cheeks.

After a few more minutes, two croatoans opened the final compartment doors. The man staggered out and fell, gasping for clean air. A croatoan pulled him up by his filthy white toga and pushed him back toward the flock. The woman was also encouraged at gunpoint toward the shelter. She didn’t need a second invitation and sprinted, tripping and tumbling, before glancing back and hurrying away.

All doors on the five compartments were left open. Croatoans crowded the console and seemed to be communicating the results of whatever they were testing. Some were more animated than others, raising their arms and pointing at individual sections of the structure.

A croatoan with a red-rimmed visor stood on top of the console and raised its arms. The group fell silent. A minute later, five aliens walked to the front of the structure and stood in the individual sections; one secured each door behind them.

The whirring started and each compartment filled with various shades of smoke like before, going from thick to thin from one end to another. The aliens inside pressed their gloves against the walls, moving them round in a circular motion. More visible from right to left.

Layla edged back and observed from the trees. The croatoan with the red-rimmed visor checked the small devices attached to each individual compartment, signaled back to the aliens at the console, and then thumped its glove against the middle section.

The croatoan inside removed its helmet, revealing its ugly, tortoise-like head. Aliens surrounded the section, clicking loudly; others from the left and right of the structure were released and joined the mob. All excitedly went back and crowded around the console.

Their objectives started to make a little sense although Layla didn’t know the true motivation behind it. Were they testing an atmosphere where they could survive and a human would die, or was it a test to just try and find an atmosphere that they could survive in on Earth with enough of the root extract mixed into the atmosphere? Regardless of which one it was, Layla knew either way was bad news for humans.