LED Eyes (part 4)

“Over here!” Screamed a voice. “Over a here!”

I knew that voice. It was the perky yet satirical Lancashire broad of my good friend, Miss Katy McDonald. She screamed a little louder, adding their names. “Samantha! I’m here!”

I think it was the increased volume that drew their attentions. Their shining eyes had a strangely distant quality to them which, to me at least, suggested they were far too spaced out to recognise the calling of their names. With the assortment lawn mowers screaming, they twisted around and faced Katy.

“Demon, get the car.” The old man said. “And quick!”

Nodding, the big man with the machine gun ran around the side of the house behind us and disappeared. I looked around frowning. The watch on my wrist was cracked but the hands still crept their fourth dimensional imprint. It announced that it was six in the evening. The sun should have been beginning to dip yet it was still high, like it was midday. If the metal baths, the men with guns and the evil pink ladies of death didn’t have the effect enough, I found the unwelcome sunshine unsettling.

The old man cocked his gun and pointed it at the ladies. He fired six shots. Five of the bullets found their mark, tearing open the housewives’ heads. The sixth shot flew over the six housewife’s head and smashed a window in one of the houses. He fired the other four shots, one at the unharmed housewife and the other three at their legs. The legs tore open, spraying white foil and wire over the floor. I frowned. Then I realised I shouldn’t have been frowning at that. I should have been frowning at the fact that their heads had been torn open by bullets and yet they were still approaching Katy, ready to kill.

“Chris!” She shrieked. “I’m the Damsel in Distress for once, okay?”

“Samantha!” I shouted to a discerning, almost angered look from the old man. “Over here!”

“Did you not hear me when I told you to be quiet?” The old man asked. His gun clicked as he dropped the empty magazine and reached for another from his pocket to load it. He did it with the same calm detachment as that I exhibit when solving a Rubik’s Cube- it was more a case of muscle memory than actually knowing what he was doing. Meanwhile, the Samanthas split. Three continued to approach Katy, the other three turning to approach us. The impact of the bullets on the back of their heads was aesthetically evident; the small capsules of lead had torn through the soft material of their heads and fragmented the interior contents, forcing it to explode forwards and change the exterior shape of their faces. For two of them, it simply caused strange lumps and bumps. For the third, it meant a huge gash had opened where their forehead had been and one of their eyes was hanging out. “I was worried they’d do that.”

“What, split up?” I replied.

“No.” The old man said. “Learn. They must have witnessed me sending Demon off and estimated it was a logical strategy.”

I didn’t really hear what he said after that because I was too busy concentrating on Katy screaming. She was moving, jumping from one side to another but the Samanthas jerked their heads to follow her, shifting with imperceptible speeds to prevent her running. They appeared to study her, growing to know her more and more until they could predict her movements quicker than she could make them. The result of this was that they closed in on her, their lawn mowers ready to tear her apart.

“We need to do something!” I cried.

The old man nodded. “Everything is in hand.”

I frowned, ready to argue but I was rudely interrupted. There was the roar of an engine and then the flash of blue and black. The three housewives approaching Katy suddenly exploded, torn apart by a racing car. The part of me that had grown up spending evenings on a sofa beneath shelves full of kit car and touring car models instantly recognised it. That was the natural mating call of a straight eight engine, creating the sounds of three valves per cylinder and a single overhead camshaft. I heard the guzzle of its 5.4 litre big combustion chambers and the smell in the air told me they should sack their mechanic; it was running a bit rich. The paint scheme was the clinching factor before it pulled to a stop but I knew, for a fact, that the car before me was a Bugatti Type 46 Coupe. And it was pretty awesome.

The sound of its engine was joined by the sudden explosion of the old man’s gun. He emptied the magazine onto the three remaining housewives, who weren’t quite sure what to do. Their heads shattered and, although it didn’t stop them, they seemed no longer able to see or hear and that gave us an advantage.

“Come on!” The old man cried, running quickly enough to put me to shame. He pulled open the passenger door and threw himself in. I pulled open the back and climbed in, whilst shouting, “Katy! Get in!”

“Stranger danger, Chris!” She replied. “What about stranger danger?”

“Screw it.” I replied. “What about lawn mowing monster women off of the BBC?”

“It could be worse.” The big man called Demon said. “It could be lawn mowing monster women from the ITV.”

“This is hardly the time nor the place.” The old man said. “Miss? Are you coming?”

Katy, with eyes that told me we would be having words about this later, ran towards the car, jumped in and closed the door with a surprising thud. She turned to me as Demon began to accelerate the car out of the clearing and down the side of the hill. In the distance there was the sound of lawn mowers striking up but it wasn’t as attention catching as the sight before us.

The artificial sunlight ended in twenty metres, at which point a grey grimness took over. The car was moving at such speed that we exploded from the light and into the dark between one blink and the next. Metaphorically, it felt like the opposite way around. We were only just escaping the darkness.

Before I could voice this opinion, Katy had exclaimed over the roar of the engine, “What the freaking hell is going on?”

The old man shifted in his chair, once more reloading his gun with a magazine from, I noticed, a stash in the glovebox. “What’s your name, Miss?”

“Katy.” She said. “Yours?”

“My apologies. I was meaning your surname. Such informality as your first name isn’t befitting of such a young lady.”

“Chris,” Katy said, “you know when you took me to that festival and it turned out to be a celebration of nudist knitting because you’d read the website wrong?”

“Yeah?”

“And I nearly hit you when you suggested we make the most of a bad situation.”

“Yeah?”

“If you suggest we make the most of this bad situation I will kill you. To death. With my hands.”

“Miss, I really must press, what is your surname?” The old man said.

“McDonald. Why?”

“Miss McDonald, as I was explaining to Christopher-“

“How come he gets a first name but I don’t?” Katy asked.

I rolled my eyes. Not even getting mortally threatened by robots and then abducted by gun toting strangers would distract her from the pursuit of feminism. 

“Miss McDonald,” said Demon from the driver’s seat, taking his eyes from the road, “would you just go along with it? I don’t think anyone currently present has the stomach for a breakdown of the sexist attitudes of the fifties and sixties.”

Katy humphed. The old man went on. “Miss McDonald, as I was explaining to Mr Marten here, I believe the village you were staying in as somehow undergone a terrible transformation, potentially by alien invaders. I know it sounds ridiculous but you must trust me. I and my companion here are amongst the country’s utmost authorities on the concept.”

“And who are you and your companion here? And how come you have guns? And what the hell were you doing there?”

The old man rolled his eyes and remarked, to Demon, “Do you remember the days where having this accent just gained you unquestionable authority? I do and I miss them desperately.”

Creaking once more in the leather of his chair he spoke to the two of us directly. “My name is Percival Archin. Our driver is Graham Cooper, codenamed Demon. We’re representatives of the Fenwick Institute. I don’t imagine you’ve heard of us and, I’m afraid, now that you have, life is going to get a hell of a lot more complicated. I’ll explain more when we get back to the Sanctum.” He turned back to attend to a map Demon, or rather Graham, had handed him.

I mouthed ‘Sanctum’ to Katy and she shrugged in such a way that said, “Considering the day we’re having, that’s normal.”

Lizzy

She heard the phone ringing. It was on the other side of the room. Its electronic trill broke the heavy envelope of her slumber. She opened her eyes and stared at it. The blue bulb on the top was flashing unapologetically. She considered getting out of bed.

There were maybe three metres between her bed and the desk on which the phone was perched. She could cover it in four strides- three if she was willing to stretch- but she didn’t want to. Next to it was the frame, face down, dust mingling between the glass and the veneer of her flatpack desk.

The bed was warm, the sheets crumpled. The duvet was draped over her thin green hoodie. She’d knocked her Doc Marten boots off, pushing them beneath the bed and revealing her Batman leggings. She was lying in the foetal position, screwed up tight into herself so she took up less space. 

The phone continued to ring. She wondered how long it would take before it rang out but she knew the answer. She’d programmed it especially as not to go to answer machine if there was someone in the room. The motion sensor was above the door and she considered whether she could shoot it out but the answer came to her pretty quickly. Her gun was in the armoury, so of course she couldn’t.

It wouldn’t be that hard. All she had to do was get out of the bed, cross the carpet and pick it up. But what if it’s Malcom? What if he wants to formalise your redundancy, huh? What if it’s Antonio wanting to know what’s going on? Do you want to explain what’s going on?

Of course, these weren’t the questions having the biggest effect on her. The question that was gnawing away at her mind, like the woodworm in the belfry, was much more horrific. It was a question she didn’t want to contemplate because doing just that would cripple her, chain her to the floor, prevent her from moving.

What if it’s Annie?

The phone stopped ringing, the light stop flashing. Twenty rings and the game was up. Leave a message after the tone. BEEP. She’d never know who was on the other end of the line, she’d never know who was so desperate to speak. The part of her that knew she could never be happy reminded her of the uncertainty, the lack of knowledge, how it wouldn’t be perfect. It made her think of paper pulled from a ring bound book by an overzealous idiot, the paper all torn and creased, the thin dotted line ignored. She cringed and she grimaced, her body shaking ever slightly. The uncertainty, the lack of knowledge. She could see a glass of coke falling through the air, tumbling slightly, smashing and shattering against a newly cleaned floor, making everything sticky, making everything unsafe. And then the flies came, buzzing, screaming their unified screech, sharing their eternal pain in a monotonous hum. And from the swarming flies Lizzy saw her mother and she screamed.

The phone began to ring again. The noise was so loud against the silence of the Sanctum, like a hiccup in an exam hall, all eyes twisting slowly towards the source, burning a hatred of being interrupted, distracted, despite the exam conditions. The heavy thud of an examiner's footsteps as he marched over, court marshalled her for her interruption, her distraction, grabbed her paper, tore it straight through the middle. That imperfect ruin of freshly printed pages, destroyed, obliterated, violated, the staple falling and the final questions, the ones she was too stupid to understand, too stupid to even consider, never to be seen, always to be uncertain. And all the while, every eye in the entire room was fixed on her, grinning, smirking, whispering behind her about how stupid and insignificant and awful she was.

The phone continued to ring. She fought so hard to get out of bed, swearing to herself, damning herself when she was in a good mood, when she was deciding on how to make sure she acted properly when down. Why had she decided twenty rings? She’d change it. Fifteen rings. No, less. Ten rings. Five rings. Four. Three. Two. One ring and the game was over. Leave a message in the answer machine. One ring and the world was changed. Well, Lizzy? What’s your answer? That ring cost me a lot.

She looked at her hand, the hand Annie should have been holding, she looked at the finger, the fourth from the thumb, where that tan line should have been as she climbed off the aeroplane but it wasn’t. It was pale and ghastly and misshapen like every other inch of her body and she hated and she just wanted to climb back into her bed but she forced herself on until she picked up the phone and put it to her ear. For better or for worse. 

“Lizzy?” Asked Percival. “Are you there?”

It was Percival. Thank the Lord it was Percival. Anyone else, she would have hung up and gone to the armoury but it was Percival and she could trust him. He looked after her. He was on her side. 

“Lizzy? This is an auditory device. I can’t see any of your amusing facial expressions right now.”

He was stressed. She didn’t like it when he was stressed. The nails of her other hand dug into her palm, leaving their crescent moon imprints in the soft flesh. It was better than the blotchy red horizontals tracing up and down her forearms.

“I’m here.” She said, her voice breaking, but she gained a little confidence and allowed it to be deeper. “What’s going on? Was it a crash?”

“I’m not entirely sure what it is.” He replied. “We’re on our way back to the Sanctum with readings now. I need the Spectrometer warmed up and a forensic analyser ready for the front of the Bugatti. I’m hoping we’ve got some remnants.”

She cradled the telephone on her shoulder and grabbed a pencil, quickly scribbling Percival’s instructions onto a pad. “Remnants of what?”

“I’m not entirely certain but I should think some sort of android life form.”

“Hostile?”

“That might be an understatement.” Percival replied. “Call Richmond. Tell him to block off all roads going towards Condor Farm and Dentdale in Yorkshire.”

“That’s outside of his constituency, y’know.”

“Oh I know.” He said this in such a way you could tell there was a grin on the other end of the line. “That’s why I asked for him. We’re about forty minutes away. See you then.”

“I can’t wait.” Lizzy said and hung up. She dropped her pencil, looked over the notepad and then marched back over to her bed to grab her shoes. The stone floor could be chilly this time of year and, no matter how awesome they might be, Batman leggings weren’t that warming.

Chris

“Did you tell Lizzy about the passengers?” Graham Cooper asked, his voice the deep warbling of someone befitting the nickname, ‘Demon.’ 

“No.” Percival said. “I didn’t want her worrying.”

“She won’t thank you for that.” Graham said. “Firstly because it’ll annoy her. Secondly because she’ll refuse to talk.”

“She didn’t answer the first ring which we both know means something is wrong. Telling her there are going to be strangers in the Sanctum is not going to make the situation any easier for her.”

“Who’s this you’re talking about?” I asked from the rear of the Bugatti. It was a wonderful car and, even if it was running a bit rich, the mechanic had done a wonderful job on the suspension. 

“Elizabeth Dunstan.” Percival said. “My, well, I suppose my ward if you will. I apologise in advance for how she reacts to your presence.”

“No offence, mister, but we nearly got chewed up by evil lawnmower ladies from Mars earlier. I’m sure your ward, if that’s a word that’s been used since the mid sixties, won’t be that scary.”

“Young lady, I shall remind you of that when you have attempted to have a conversation with her.” Percival said. “And, may I add, the ‘lawnmower ladies’ are not from Mars.”

“Did you know that Mars is the only planet in our solar system entirely populated by robots?” Graham piped up. Nobody said anything.

We didn’t talk much on the road. It was a strange situation to find yourself in and dialogue didn’t spring eternal. Instead I concentrated on the road signs, one declaring we were entering Manchester and another one declaring the government hadn’t paid for anyone to wipe the graffiti off their signs. “We’re not in Blackpool anymore, Toto.” I muttered to Katy.

It turned out that ‘the Sanctum’ was located about ten minutes from the Arndale centre- “We heard the bombing. God, it was awful.” - and thus we had to undergo the rigours of driving through a busy city centre before we could park. We parked outside a dilapidated old church, sandwiched between two gleaming skyscrapers. They looked incredible. The type of building you could imagine posh men and women in suits marching around, making decisions that would ‘affect the future of the free world.’ “You guys own one of those?” I grinned.

“No.” Graham said. “We own the one that looks like it’s falling down.”

“Oh, don’t be so harsh on her.” Percival said, climbing out of the car. “That church has stood there since before either of us were born.”

“So since the Battle of Bosworth then?” Katy asked.

“Miss McDonald,” Percival replied, “I might remind you that you’d be bloody confetti if not for our intervention so perhaps it would be in your best interest to show some manners.”

Katy looked like she was ready to sulk. I frowned. There were a lot of words to describe her but sulky wasn’t one of them. Maybe she wasn’t happy that she couldn’t be the knight in shining armour for once.

Percival and Graham led us across the pavement and through the gate, up several steps, past some brambles and then around the side of the old church and towards its wooden doors. The key looked like something from a medieval dungeon and this semantic field of old creepiness was further assisted by the creaking of the door as it swung open, revealing stone tiled floor. There was a spiral staircase to the left and a wrack of keys to the right. Graham hung up his keys and we walked straight onwards, into the church body proper. 

I was no stranger to Anglican churches. The last one I had visited had involved a dead vicar (See Part One if you’ve forgotten- I know I haven’t) but the majority of features were identical in its kin. This one was completely different, as if it had been redecorated by an atheist interior designer. The choir stands were replaced with computers and complicated looking gizmos I doubted I could begin to understand. The organ was replaced with a single workstation that appeared more complex than the interior workings of a politician’s brain in the process of lying. Where there were once pews, there were a range of different things. A lounge area, more computers, a kitchenette and a small lab.

Standing in the lab was, well, Lizzy Dunstan. She was maybe five foot eleven with striking dark green hair in a pixie cut. She had a lip piercing and a nose piercing and was wearing a green hoodie with Batman leggings and a pair of Doc Martens. I didn’t need the iPhone in a docking station behind her to tell me the muffled hum of My Chemical Romance was emanating from her direction.

She looked up at us from where she was assembling a device- it might have been the Spectrometer Percival had mentioned on the phone- and stopped. There was a half formed smile for Percival and Graham which disappeared as soon as she saw Katy and I. She simply stood there and stared.

“Lizzy, have you got the analyser set up?” Percival called, his voice echoing slightly against the stone walls.

Lizzy said nothing. There was a momentary tremble in the lip holding her piercing. Then it was gone. She went back to holding herself completely still, like a golem with green hair.

“Lizzy? You haven’t enabled the holograms again have you?” Percival chided.

There was still no reply.

“I told you she wouldn’t like it.” Graham said. “Let me talk to her.”

We watched the big man stroll across the stone floor, stepping between the various sections of the central church and over towards the lab. Lizzy must have seen him approaching, he crossed her line of sight twice, yet she didn’t move. It wasn’t until he finally got to her, his warbling voice calling her name, that she realised he was there.

“Is everything okay, Elizabeth?” 

“New people. Who are they?”

“Victims. Lost souls. People who need our help.”

She continued to stare at us, then said, “I don’t want to talk to them.”

“You don’t have to. Just put up with them for a bit. And then, once this case is over, you never need see them again. Just smile. Can you do that?”

“You don’t smile. Ever.”

“That’s because I look like constipated horse when I attempt to smile.” Graham Cooper said. That simile made Lizzy grin and so Graham patted her on the back. “See. Wasn’t too hard, was it?”

She smiled a little more and Graham gave Percival a nod to approach. He led us towards the laboratory where he placed down a tablet from his pocket alongside a small evidence bag of samples from the front bumper of the Bugatti.

“Good day at work?” Percival asked, reaching for the forensic analyser. 

Lizzy shrugged.

”Well, I suppose that’s a little more positive than our day.” Percival said. “An entire village dead, Lizzy, and we had no idea. How do they do it?”

“Who are ‘they’?” Katy asked. 

They, I presumed, were the monstrous, murdering psychopathic death machines that had nearly shredded her and had left the entire village completely dead. I didn’t really want to find out any more about them because to do so would be to admit that they existed and I really didn’t want to do that.

“Graham, would you like to do the speech?” Percival asked.

“No.” Graham said. “I’m the big one who kicks doors open. You’re the inspiring speech ones.”

Percival sighed before gesturing over to the lounge area opposite the lab. “It might be best if I explain this whilst you’re sat down.”

“No.” Katy argued. “I’ve had it up to here with you being all enigmatic and concealing. Tell me what the hell is going on or I’ll-“

“You’ll do what, young lady? Try to intimidate a group of extraterrestrial investigators with a childish tantrum?” Percival asked. “We are the Fenwick Institute, the organisation tasked by the government to investigate and contain alien threats. I’m Percival Archin, physicist and team leader. This is Graham Cooper, mechanic and mathematician and this is Lizzy Dunstan, our resident programmer. The building you are standing in is our base of operations, nicknamed the Sanctum. I and Graham were in the right place at the right time to rescue you because we were investigating reports of a crash landing at Condor Farm. The crash seems to have been perpetuated by androids disguised as the pink adorned housewives of that BBC ident clip. I’m not entirely sure why. From first impressions, it would appear they are hostile, however I believe they are adapting quickly and will soon begin to convert human beings into extra troops to deal with the six we have destroyed. Any questions?”

I tentatively raised my hand.

“Yes, Christopher?”

“When did we walk on the set of Torchwood?”

Lizzy stifled a mild giggle. I took that as a small victory.

“This is no joking matter, Chris.” Percival said. “There were clear signs of conversion. The liquid/permeable metal in your holding cell, the awful heat despite the time of year and, of course, the number of housewives.”

“Why the number of housewives?” I asked, frowning.

“There were six, correct?” Percival replied.

I nodded. 

“Then how come in the TV clip there are only two?” He asked. “Furthermore, the spectroscopic readings of the gases emitted by the ship on entering our atmosphere, according to the spectroscope Lizzy set up for us, show that the ship must be a certain size. According to the Turner Chart, it’s most likely to be a dual piloted ship. Such a ship can carry a maximum of four androids at the most, so we know at least two of the pink ladies were conversions.”

I suddenly remembered the gardens next to the newsagents, opposite the park with the dead little girl. “There were four men mowing their lawns in unison just before I got knocked out.”

“Those men were turned into pink ladies, then.” Percival said.

“How?” Katy frowned.

“By a conversion matrix, duh!” Lizzy retorted as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“But if they can convert middle aged men to look exactly like them in the course of a day, how can we ever hope to defeat them? They’re going to have the technology of the Gods.”

“We’re the ones with a base in a church, Chris.” Graham pointed out.

“We have the advantage at this current moment.” Percival said. “All of their soldiers are destroyed and the analysers, that Lizzy is currently running on the android debris from the Bugatti, are devising us a characteristics sheet. If we can return some point in the next day, whilst they’re still rebuilding, we can hunt down the hive consciousness and destroy it once and for all. Simple as that.”

There was a loud beep and then the sound of printing paper. Lizzy let a smile cross her face for a second but it quickly died before she turned and heading over to the printer. She passed four double sided pieces of paper to Percival. He flicked through them briefly and then handed them over to Graham. The big man read through them and then nodded. “We’re going to need some big guns.”

“Are those the characteristics?” I asked.

Percival nodded. “We’re going to need some very big guns.”

LED Eyes (part 3)

Chris

I awoke to discover a torch in my face and a pair of eyes looking very concerned. I opened my mouth to talk but my observer shook his head, placing a finger up to his mouth. Recognising the universal symbol, I took the hint and shut up. Smiling, my observer reached out his hand and helped me up. My entire body seemed to creak and then instantly hate me for standing. I took a few deep breaths, a fog blowing from my mouth.

The observer removed the torch from pointing directly to my eyes and instead shone it around our surroundings. We appeared to be in a ten foot by ten foot by ten foot metal cube with no conceivable entrance. The metal was blunted and dull so the light didn’t blind me with its reflection. I let my eyes adjust and blink a few times and then stared at my new companion, aware of a throbbing beginning to nag at the back of my head. He was old, maybe in his late sixties or early seventies, and appeared to be wearing a pair of camouflaged cargo trousers with a blue shirt under a tweed waistcoat. He also sported a thick wealth of white facial hair that you had to ask whether he was growing for a bet and a slicked back quiff of equally white hair. The way the light caught his shirt sleeves made him look surprisingly muscular for an old timer. 

He leant towards me and whispered, “It is absolutely imperative you remain calm right now. One wrong move, we could both end up dead. Do you understand?”

I looked at him frowning. The crease of my forehead seemed to worsen the pain in my head. “You do get that telling someone they could die isn’t going to calm them down?”

“Still some fight in you then.” The old man replied in a hushed whisper. Despite the quiet tone, the Received Pronunciation in his accent was evident. I felt almost guilty for replying to him with my Lancashire grumble. “I need you not to ‘freak out’, otherwise I’ll have to knock you unconscious and that might damage my torch.”

I frowned. The man looked older than my grandfather and he was threatening me? I glimpsed momentarily towards his muscular arms and decided he probably had a point. I nodded, agreeing.

“Thanks.” The old man hissed. He pointed his torch up and flicked it off and on twice. There was nothing besides the beam of light shooting four feet up to find the metal roof. Then a pair of arms burst through, sending ripples in all directions.

Now, I’ve seen some crazy things in my time. I live in Blackpool and I once went out to watch the fireworks on the piers in September. They used to hold the celebrations on a Friday night, but this coincided with a mass rush of Hens and Stags, and we’re not talking the population of a farm. I’m still traumatised to some extent.

Compared to what I was seeing now, however, a few inflatable body parts and a woman so drunk she thought she could make out with a lamp post or bathe in a gutter was far from crazy. A pair of arms had burst through solid metal as if they were breaking through the surface of a swimming pool. The hands wiggled around, fastened around the old man’s and then hauled him up. I watched as the old man’s head slid into the roof, then his shoulders, then the entirety of his waist coat and before long his camouflaged trousers and shoes. 

I went through a momentary spate of disbelief. There was no longer evidence any of that had happened so my mind was willing to believe it hadn’t. Just a lack of food or drink- evidenced by the burning of my throat and the rumble of my stomach- getting to me. The question I should have been asking was where I was.

Before my mind could come up with a naively incorrect answer, the hands stuck through again. I backed away from them but they seemed to follow me, as if the owner could see me and was stalking my every move. I felt a metal wall press against my back, shifting and squashing and then allowing me to sink into it like quick sand. I leapt forward- not only did it feel strange but it was also immensely cold- only then to be caught by the hands from above. I was prepared to let out a worryingly high pitched scream but then the image of the old man’s eyes flashed back to my mind and I decided I didn’t dare.  

The hands dragged me up, my hair touching the metal, sinking inside. It passed over my forehead, towards my eyes, which were tightly screwed shut. Then my head was out and I was raggedly drawing in breath. It wasn’t as dark up here; there seemed to be the vague remnants of strip lighting on the roof, but the old man still pointed his torch at me and blinded me unnecessarily. 

He kept doing this until I was pulled entirely through the floor and my flailing legs were able to bump against gridded metal. 

The torch clicked off and my eyes blinked a few times, getting used to my new surroundings. It was warmer up here but a sticky warmth, as if elsewhere someone was boiling a thousand kettles. Despite this, the two individuals appeared relatively cool. There was obviously the old man with the waist coat but his long armed accomplice was equally strange. I’m six foot six, which by most of humanity’s standards is bloody tall. The gentlemen in front of me made me feel like a dwarf. He was easily seven foot, wrapped in a black suit that must have been bespoke on pure merit of its size. His hands were prickly and rough, like my face the morning after a shave. The more I came to study him, however, the more I realised that the description applied to all of him. His face, not just his cheeks and his chin but his forehead and nose too, looked like they were covered in a fresh sheen of small black prickles. He fixed me with beady black eyes as he passed something to the older man. As my eyes adjusted, I realised the object was an old fashioned automatic handgun. It’s barrel was sleek and long, much thinner than the rest of the gun so it looked slightly ridiculous. I didn’t know much about guns- I’m an English student, not a ballistics investigator- but I recognised this as a Browning Challenger. If my memory of detective noire novels served, it was twenty two caliber. At least if he shot me, there’d be enough left to identify the corpse.

Maybe I spoke to soon. Once the old man had taken the handgun, the big one reached down and hauled up a machine gun. The part of me that knew I’d one day write all this down wanted to thank the two men for choosing weapons I could easily identify. This was an AK47, the Ford Transit of firearms. I kissed goodbye to the contents of my body bag and closed my eyes in order to meet my maker.

“What’s he doing?” Hissed a voice so deep it could only belong to the big one. “Has he got something wrong with his eyes?”

“I think he believes we’re going to shoot him.” The old man whispered in reply. “Young man, open your eyes. Everything is fine.”

“Just shoot me already.” I whimpered. “Don’t draw it out.”

I heard the old man sigh and then the creak of leather. “I’ve put away my gun, son. My accomplice here would do the same but he can’t. His gun is too big to fit in a holster. Now, would you mind opening your eyes and getting up?”

I reluctantly did just that, climbing to my feet and staring down at the old man and straight at the big man’s chest. The old man smiled. “Nice to see you in some better light. What’s your name?”

“Chris.” I whispered. “Chris Marten. Who are you?”

“We are the gentlemen who are going to get you out of here alive, Christopher. If we are to have any hope of achieving that, however, you will have to follow each and every one of our instructions to the letter. Do you understand?”

I nodded. When two blokes with a combined height of over thirteen foot make a demand whilst packing enough fire power to take out Syria, you find that you have to go along with it. “What do you want me to do?”

“Follow me.” The old man whispered. “And, for God’s sake, be quiet. They have brilliant hearing.”

I didn’t dare ask who they were. Something about the guns convinced me I didn’t want to know.

The corridor was long and warm. On one side, it was bare metal like the walls of the room I’d woken up in. On the other side it opened up, revealing gridded metal walkways suspended by hanging metallic chains, circulating around patches of the liquid metal. There were large terminals next to each of these metallic patches but besides the occasional gauge, none of the readings made sense to me.

The walkway we were shuffling down seemed to ring with every footsteps, despite our careful attempts to avoid this. The old man kept his gun drawn, as if he was concerned our escape would be picked up any second. Part of me wanted to be caught to see who we were running from. Part of me could recall the glowing shining light, the computerised stuttering… I shuddered, the platform  shaking with me.

We got to the end of the platform, a large airlock door coming up in front of us. Whilst the big man began to study the small keypad next to it, the old one turned to me. “Christopher, do you have any idea at all what’s going on? Do you remember anything before waking up here?”

“I was in the village. It was unusually empty and, oh bloody hell, the vicar killed himself and-“

“We drove through your village on the way here. Do you know where you are?”

I shook my head.

“Condor.” The old man said. “There was a crash a couple of nights ago. All the Media crews that attended disappeared. We came to look around knowing we’re slightly more prepared then your average hack.”

“The crash. I remember. Oh bloody hell.” I whispered.

“What?”

“I was with Katy. She must have been taken.”

“Demon,” the old man said, “there’s another one.”

“What do you mean there’s another one? The entire village was missing! There must have been a couple hundred people.” 

“The village is dead, Christopher.” The old man replied. “You and your girlfriend are the only people who survived.”

“She’s not my girlfriend. We have separate tents.”

“I should hope so. You’re not wearing a wedding ring.” He replied. “Nonetheless, that’s hardly the part you should be querying. I just told you the village is dead.”

“Oh crap, you did, didn’t you?” The full force hitting me. “Are they all dead? Like, all of them?”

“Yes.” The old man replied. “Every last man, woman and child- slaughtered in their own homestead. Apart from you and your lady friend.”

“Door’s ready.” The big one said. The iota of my mind that wasn’t trying to comprehend the realisation that everyone in the village- the little girl, the lawn mowers, the Sun Inn patrons, the gastropub people and even the farmer with her straw hair- were dead silently contemplated the fact that the old man had called the big one ‘Demon.’ You’re out of your depth, Chris. These people have nicknames.

“She’s not in here by any account.” The old man said. “We’ll scan the other buildings when we’re out. Chris, listen here-“

“No.” I said, slightly scared that I’d found a backbone. “You listen. Who the hell are you? What the hell is going on? I was on a nice holiday with my best mate and the next thing I know, I’m trapped in a metal room where the walls are bloody liquid and two gun toting maniacs with accents that sound like they’ve just come straight out of a Neil Gaiman novel are prancing about with fancy nicknames declaring the entire bloody village has been killed! Well, listen here Croup and Vandemar, I’m bloody sick of being in the dark and taking instructions from whoever the hell you are! Why should I listen here, hmm? Why?”

The old man looked at me with eyes as deep as the oceans and twice as swashbuckling. He said with a voice as calm as it was composed, “You asked three questions. Two answers shall suffice. What the hell is going on? Personally, I believe an alien invasion is in process and I also believe that you and your lady friend have found yourselves caught in the direct centre of it. The other answer is in relation to the questions why should you listen and who the hell we are. I have a very simple answer. We, Christopher Marten, are the Fenwick Institute and we’re your only hope of survival. Unless you have a problem with this, please cease your insistent chattering and follow me. Demon, if you will.”

The big man grinned, revealing his horse smile, and then pushed open the door. A beam of light broke through the gap and blinded me. The old man and Demon wandered through and I reluctantly followed, feeling rather put in my place. As my eyes adjusted to the real light, however, any self pity I might have felt left me. What I was looking at was too odd for me to harbour any other emotion than total bemusement.

“Jesus Christ.” I said.

“Kindly, Christopher, refrain from blaspheming in my company.” The old man said. “And, if you really can’t contain yourself, at least do it quietly.”

Lawn Circles. You know the clip. Six suburban houses arrange in a ring topology around a glorified crop circle mown into a lawn by a selection of pink clad housewives pushing anachronistically varying lawnmowers. It’s the type of thing teachers show their students and then say, “Write what first comes into your head when you see this.”

For me, the first thing that came into my head when I saw it in real life, acted out in front of me on the other side of that airlocked door, was complete, unbiased terror. It was worsened by the reaction of the ‘housewives’ to my blasphemy. Their heads all turned slowly to stare straight at me. They opened their mouthes and said, in unison, “Welcome. My name is Samantha.”

Their voice was male, American and computerised. They began to stalk towards us. The old man and Demon raised their guns but the women kept coming, their mowers slicing through the grass towards us. “My name is Samantha.” The women repeated.

“Bloody hell. Bloody hell. Bloody hell.” I whispered but my blasphemies just drew them closer, burying us deeper and deeper in the glow of their shining LED eyes.

LED Eyes (part 2)

Lizzy

"How much are these?" Asked a gobby rich kid with a face like a slapped backside. She looked the sort who was only going to wear the Doc Martens because it would get her shouted at in Polo at her private school. She probably enjoyed it when the teachers shouted at her, probably relished the additional attention.

"It says the price on the side of the box." Lizzy Dunstan said. Lizzy was much taller than the girl, much taller than most girls, but that wasn't the only way she differed from her customer. Whereas the girl's soul was probably composed of glitter and spice and all things egotistical, pink and control freak, Lizzy's soul was a soap opera of angst, childhood trauma and rock music. She chewed her lip piercing slightly as she stared down at the brat in front of her. And people say I'm annoying. 

"I can see that." The girl said.

"Congratulations. I'm so proud." Lizzy said it with the type of drab, monotonous voice that would make a toddler cry at fifty feet. A small voice in the back of her head began to pray the child would give up.

"How much are they?"

Lizzy spent a second staring into the mirror next to her, having to stop herself from cringing. No one had ever called her an optimist, but if there was one thing she was in no way positive about, it was her appearance. That wasn't to say she wasn't happy about it; Batman leggings, an obscure band on her t-shirt and a hoodie with badges announcing she was LGBT proud and a campaigner for Animal Rights were cool in her opinion. But she certainly didn't like any of the pale, ghost like skin on show. Despite her colleague's concerns that she didn't eat, although her colleague was in his sixties so an obese child looked underweight to him, she felt startlingly ugly The way her green dyed pixie cut bordered her face didn't help much either. 

"You fancy yourself or something?” The girl asked, her voice squeaky and annoying.

"No." Quite the opposite. "I was just checking I hadn't turned into Bill Murrary."

"What?"

"Groundhog Day?"

The girl's face was still blank.

"God, what do they teach you for thirty thousand pounds a year? I was meaning you'd already asked me that question.” Oh God. Why am I provoking her? Just let her go already. 

"Yeah, but you didn't answer it."

Lizzy’s eyes glanced towards the clock on the wall. She wondered if she could pretend it was closing time to get the kid out of there. No. There were four of them- the posh one and her beastly friends- and they’d probably try to kill her. Just see it through to the end. ”We established you already knew the answer."

"Yeah, but is there a discount?"

"Firstly, you didn't say that. Secondly, was there an offer sign next to them?” Urgh. That sounded so clunky and forced. Why couldn’t she even talk?

"No."

"Then there you go. No discount. Do you want them or not?” She could practically feel her leg shaking, practically feel her entire body ready to set itself on fire.

"Nah, I don't think so now." The girl left the box on the counter and wandered out, into the street followed by her selection of pink adorned, little cherubs with their designer handbags. "And stay out." Lizzy muttered.

"Lizzy?" Call a voice across the shop. 

Lizzy turned to the door and saw Antonio, a lanky shop assistant, with exotic facial hair, sticking his face through the double doors that led to the stock/staff room. That room was down a few steps and, Lizzy reckoned, it was bigger than the shop proper. Not that she minded. The jukebox in the corner played good music and the smell of leather seemed to soak into her mind, more than making up for the claustrophobia. "What is it, Ant?"

“Malcolm wants to see you.”

The taste of sick in her mouth that had been forming whilst in conversation had returned, making her want to choke. There was a space under the counter which she knew was she was small enough to fit in. She wanted to clamber inside and screw herself up, sticking her earphones in and letting the music drown away her sorrows.

“He doesn’t like waiting, Lizzy.” Antonio said.

“No.” Lizzy said, but she didn’t know how the words had managed to get past the stomach trying to crawl up her throat. “No, I don’t suppose he does.”

She took the long walk of ten steps towards the double doors. There were no customers yet she still felt like there were eyes on her, as if the small eyelets on every pair of shoes were burning into her, studying her every move. She wanted to scream, wanted to cry, wanted to explode. Instead she brushed past Antonio and down the steps into the storage room.

Malcolm’s desk was wooden and cuboid like, arched securely in the centre of the room, between the shelves of boxes. In most shops, the store room was just a small cupboard containing a kettle and First Aid box. In Doc Martens, it actually contained shoes. And Malcolm. The ‘Store Manager.’

“Lizzy!” He smiled. “Do come and sit down. Please.”

Lizzy reached out and pulled the chair back. It scraped against the floor and she cringed. She was making too much noise. It sounded ridiculous. He probably hated her more because of the raucous racket she was producing. The very notion of sitting down filled her with unending dread. Should she put one leg over the other, and if she did, where should she cross them? At the ankles, over the knees? Was it too relaxed? Too informal? Okay, maybe she should sit with her legs straight and both on the floor. But what if that was too masculine? How could she be worried about that being masculine? Had she seen her hair? It was ridiculous! It looked like Sweeney Todd had been put off cutting her neck by how rank and disgusting she was and tried to actually cut hair for once, only to discover he’d gone into cannibalism in the first place due to how much of a bloody terrible barber he was.

And what if she leant too far backwards and the chair fell over or she was too heavy and it broke? She was a healthy weight according to the scales back home but the scales weren’t always right, were they? What if she cracked her head against the floor and he just sat there? Laughing at her, pointing at her, looking at her?

She sat down, stuffing one hand into the pocket of her hoodie to hide how much it was shaking. She could feel her lip twitching, her piercing shifting. She wanted to explode, to cry, to weep and curl up on the floor and die.

“Lizzy,” he smiled, his perfect teeth below his perfect face and his perfect hair and his perfect glasses sat above a perfect suit and he was just so wonderful and better than her and she hated him but she wouldn’t let him see that, she’d knocked out his perfect teeth and tear away his perfect hair because she loved this job and she wouldn’t let it go, no matter what, “we need to talk.”

Oh we’ll talk alright, buddy. Maybe we can talk about the fact that you installed a camera in the toilets but didn’t tell Leanna or the fact that you once asked me to fix your computer because it’d been infected with a bug from one of your dodgy sites, huh? Lizzy looked at him, unable to smile. “Er, do, er, do we need to, er, talk? S, er, sir?”

“Yes, Lizzy. We do.” Malcolm said. He straightened one of the four pencils on his desk so they formed a barcode of yellow and black lines but the varying heights irritated Lizzy beyond all belief. She could feel her cheeks burning and her insides on fire. She wanted nothing more than to grab one of those pencils and bury it in his neck.

She should ask him if it was about the boots. Knowing Malcolm, he’d suggest she’d stolen them but he knew as well as she did that she was accounting for her reduced clothing by reducing her wages. Hell, she’d designed the algorithm that calculated the monthly wages. She should bring that up, remind him of everything she’d done for the shop, remind him she was more suited to be the boss than he was. “What about, er, sir?” She asked instead.

“Your attitude and general personality, I’m afraid. It just isn’t what management wants.” He said it like he was calling Bingo numbers, as if he wasn’t happy to be here, as if he was wondering how his life could ever have become this terrible, unaware that for some people, this was the highlight of their day. Lizzy felt her heart breaking. She should tell him that at least she had a personality.

Instead, she said, “What’s, er, wrong with it?”

“It’s unwelcoming, Lizzy. Do you think our clientele wants you being rude to them? Hell, most of them’ll need a drop of Dutch courage to even approach you. You don’t exactly scream ‘helpful assistant' now, do you?”

Lizzy stared at him. She could feel tears welling inside her but she mentally whispered her mantra over and over. Don’t cry till you get home. Don’t cry till you get home. 

“Look at it like this, Lizzy, see it from my perspective. People don’t buy things unless they’re comfortable. Fact. Antonio, he makes people feel comfortable. He’s like that beloved cousin who comes over before Christmas with a load of American comics and an adorable dog. The kids love him ‘cause he’s quirky, the mum loves him cause he’s respectful and the dad loves him cause hanging around with someone cool makes him feel cool. You want another example?”

Yes, but only so I can stick that example so far up your backside, you stop being able to talk from it. She gulped and nodded her head about one degree up and down. “Er, yes, okay, er, then.”

“Look at Leanna.” Malcolm said.

If Lizzy’s chewed nails hadn’t already been pressing so hard into her palms they were leading conical indentations, she would have balled her fists. Instead, she just tightened them further.

Malcolm continued regardless. “Leanna is lovely. She looks good in the clothes, she gives our customers the feeling they can pull it off, even if they’re dog ugly. It’s like having a model working for us. Get her stood in the window, setting up a display, some people come into shop just for her. They wind up buying things, we’re quids in. You, on the other hand, Lizzy…”

As his voice trailed off and he fixed her with a cold glare, she felt her entire body on fire. She wanted nothing more than to stand up and slap him until he was bleeding. But she couldn’t. She could barely even breathe. Her skin felt blotchy and horrific, her eyes felt puffy and fat. She just wanted the chair to break beneath her and the ground to swallow her whole. But it didn’t because that would mean God was merciful and, in her experience, he was anything but.

“Lizzy, no offence my dear, you can be helpful at times. You’re cracking with the computer side of things. It’s just, well, you suffer at everything else. You come across as uninviting, as vindictive, you’re insulting to the majority of our customers and your sale rates are the lowest we have. You’re frankly too punk, Lizzy. People see you doing a display and cross the street. I’m afraid I just can’t employ you any longer.”

Lizzy stared at him.

“Don’t say I’m not fair though. I’ll give you a chance to convince me.” He leant back in his chair, relishing the power he had over her. He looked like the vampires of the music industry, leaching off the young and promising, stealing their ideas and losing the real meaning. “Come on, Lizzy. A few words could get you your job back.”

Lizzy could think of a thousand and one words to give him right then and most of them began with ‘F’ but she didn’t say any of them. Instead, she smiled the best smile she could. “Thank you.” She said, stood and walked towards the stairs, through the shop and out. She didn’t stop to answer Antonio’s questions, nor to grab her bag from behind the counter. She just kept walking and walking, as if she’d be able to outrace her terror. 

It took her ten minutes to get home and every second of that stretch of time was spent contemplating what she could have done differently, how she should have replied, how she should have told that pilfering arse weasel of a back stabbing monster of a coward, son of a gun and bloody idiot where he could stick his crap spewing head and that Leanna found him as repulsive as a pool of urine lingering around the limescale covered metal pipe beneath a graffitied urinal in the bloodied bathrooms of a back alley bar. GOD! She hated him.

More to the point, though, she hated herself for not standing up to him. She was so much better than that, Annie had seen it, Percival still saw it but they didn’t count. They’d still like her even if they couldn’t see it. Every time she needed to prove herself, she failed. Maybe it’s because there’s nothing to prove. You are a failure, Lizzy. You are a complete and utter failure.

She walked up to the iron gate and pushed it open. It didn’t squeak. Graham oiled the joints every Tuesday to stop her from getting annoyed. He was nice like that. There were brambles overhanging the path on the other side but that was fine. That prevented the youths from knocking on the doors and then running for the hills. She hated it when they did that.

The path carved up a brief cadre of steps and then along an orange brick path enclosed on either side by prestigiously cut lawns. At the end of the path was the south wall of the Sanctum, set with a huge stained glass circle in it. When the sun managed to break through the economic sky scrapers surrounding the church, its light would glint through the window and refract into wonderfully eccentric shades of red, amber and deep greens. Now, however, the sky was too dark for any light to glint.

Lizzy rounded the corner of the Sanctum and pulled her old brass keys from the pocket of her hoodie. They’d been pulling on the elastic a little too much and you could almost audibly hear the material sighing with relief that its pressure was being removed. She twisted the knob and the door swung open. There was a staircase immediately to her left, heaving down in short spirals, but she concentrated more on the rack to the right. She hung her keys up and clocked that the Bugatti keys, as well as Percival and Graham’s personal keys, were gone. 

A stone column, one of many, protruded down from the ceiling. Where once a blackboard would have declared the Psalm number of the day’s reading, a white board hung with a pen on twine next to it. It told her that, ‘Possible crash in Yorkshire. Back tonight. Don’t wait up. - G.’ She didn’t need the initial to tell her Graham had written it. His writing was mechanical and precise compared to Percival’s wild script. 

She sighed and wandered around the pillar. Where the choir stands had once sat there was now her range of computers but she ignored it, instead heading for the main body of the Sanctum. The pews had long since been scrapped, replaced by different sections; a lounge area, a lab, another range of computers, a privatised office for Percival and even a kitchenette. She ignored all of them, instead heading for the other staircase. It led rapidly down, into the dark corridors of what they called the Under Sanctum, a labyrinthine warren of bedrooms, an armoury, holding cells, a workshop, a larger lab and the garage. She trailed, absent mindedly, to her bedroom and pushed open the door. It swung shut of its own accord, the lock automatically clicking. She fell onto her bed, big enough for two but only housing her.

She slid her phone into the dock on her bedside table and clicked shuffle. The first song that played was ‘(One of those) Crazy Girls’ by Paramore. She began to cry.

She didn’t cry because she’d lost her job or because her only family were out or because she was all alone in a cold church or because the pathetic fallacy of the external weather demanded it. She didn’t cry because she’d accidentally knocked up the corner of the carpet and thus the room wasn’t perfect or because she was crippled with anxiety or because knocking up the sleeve of her hoodie had revealed the albino barcode of her self harm. She didn’t cry because she could still feel the press of the tattooist’s needle on her wrist or because she was cold. She cried because the song currently playing was Annie’s favourite and Annie wasn’t there anymore.

LED Eyes

Chris

“And, of course, today marks the funeral of Emmanuelle Carter. A mass attendance is expected for the former Minister of Defence and Home Secretary. Despite her recent years of leisure as a Baroness, Carter never forgot her humble Mancunian roots, always giving back to the community that raised her and supporting those with whom she shared a similar youth. Her meteoric rise to success from the various orphanages of Manchester made her an inspiration to the underprivileged children of the North and her fierce rejection of an all male Parliament made her a feminist icon. A documentary about her life will air on the BBC tonight at nine. Now to Daniel for the sport.”

I switched off the radio. “What does that even mean anyway?”

Katy looked at me from the passenger’s seat. “It means Daniel is about to tell us that Fleetwood Town has rose another league and Blackpool has dropped another two.”

“No, I mean ‘meteoric rise to success.’ It’s complete nonsense. Meteors aren’t inspirational.”

“They are to the dinosaurs.” Katy shrugged. “It inspires them to run for their lives. Since when were you an expert in astrophysics, anyway?”

“You don’t have to be an expert in astrophysics to know that burning and crashing is not a rise to success.”

“Meteorites don’t burn till they enter the atmosphere, silly. The phrase means she didn’t slow down, no matter what. She fought all the way to the end.” Katy looked out of the window for a moment and then back to me. “And there was me thinking you were an English student, hey? Take the highlighter out of your hand and what are you? Useless.”

“For the thousandth time! We don’t all use highlighters.” I said this knowing full well that my lecturer had a separate drawer in her desk specifically for highlighters, colour coded by plastic dividers so that she always had the suitable ink for a certain situation.

“Whatever you say, Chris.” She said. “Whatever you say.”

My father is a car enthusiast. I say this with a mixture of pride and embarrassment. I’m proud that I know every individual detail of Formula One racing from the point of my birth to the Sunday afternoon before I left home and that I could explain the Union Jack system of fastening a tire in such detail, I might as well be a master technician too. I’m embarrassed because it means that I can identify a Renault Twingo by its engine noise alone. My father is a Petrolhead to such an extent that, as he went through his midlife crisis, he decided to buy a original Ford Mustang. It’s not exactly the bonniest of cars but it's a got a look and classical feel to it that is greatly appreciated in a world of airbags and seat belts. When my flatmate and I decided to go camping, I asked him if I could borrow his Ford in an attempt to impress her. He agreed, so quickly that I was genuinely quite worried.

I understand now what I didn’t then. When I’d asked to borrow his Ford, he had sneakily decided I could have the keys for my mother’s Ford Sierra. And so that was how I found myself spluttering down a country road in the foreign land of Yorkshire, wondering how many times I’d have to call the AA before we arrived.

Despite all the odds, we managed it, pulling into the field where the campsite was located. Perhaps that was a slight exaggeration. Our campsite wasn’t so much a campsite as a field, separated from the only busy road in the entirety of the countryside by a dry stone wall that looked as sturdy as my grandmother sans zimmer frame. I climbed out of the car and set off up a brief hill to a farmhouse at the top. A woman, with hair the same consistency and colour as the straw in her hand, was feeding a sheep that eyed me with the same xenophobic suspicion as she did. “Hello.” I called. “Is this your campsite?”

She replied to me with an accent so thick, I barely understood a word. Miraculously, after having her repeat herself, I understood it as a more Northern equivalent of, “Hello there, good sir. I do hope you’re having the most splendid of days. This is indeed my humble abode, oh majestic as it may be. The honour and privilege of having such charming individuals as yourselves upon my landscape is, indeed, something I will remember until the day my mortal coil doth perish.” It came out more like, “‘Ey up, duck. That’ll be twenty quid please. Loos’re back there.”

I handed her a crumpled note from my wallet and then smiled, an action which was matched with a healthy dosage of bemusement, before trailing back down the hill to Katy.

Whereas I was sweaty, red faced and already stubbled from my shave the previous night, she looked like she’d just strolled out of a Matalan catalogue. She was wearing a summery dress and a sunhat, alongside a pair of sunglasses, and despite the fact that the field beneath her boots was more of a mud bath, she still looked glamourous. I doubt anyone would have placed us together.

“Everything alright?” She asked, reaching into the boot of the Sierra and hauling out the two tents.

“Seems so.” I nodded. “Have you ever put up a tent before?”

“I did Duke of Edinburgh at High School. Rained for three days straight, both the sky and my eyes. Still, at least the frozen Chilli Con Carne didn’t give me food poisoning.”

“I thought you were allergic to kidney beans?” 

She nodded. “That’s why it didn’t give me food poisoning; I didn’t eat it. While the others got to go to hospital because they’d contracted E.coli, I was suffering from starvation because I hadn’t eaten for three days.” 

“That is really depressing.” 

She shrugged. “Anyway, how come you’re asking me? I thought you went camping every holiday when you were little?”

“Ah, we went camping in a caravan. No tenting in a caravan.”

“Ooh.” She said, padding across the field to a dry spot. “Get you, you glamper.”

“Says the girl in a sunhat.” I grinned.

“Shut up and do your tent.” She replied.

I happily complied.

By the time that the tents were up- who knew that poles could be quite so confusing?- the sun was beginning to dip behind the huge grassy valley opposite us. Katy and I decided that we’d do what any self respecting human beings would do whilst they had the night to themselves. Visit the pub.

The village had two pubs, which was ironic seeing that there was a sign outside declaring that it only had a population of one hundred. One was a fancy gastropub full of tourists and good times. The barmaid, who didn’t look old enough herself, said that she couldn’t confidently serve Katy and so we left, marching up the road and to the next pub.

The Sun Inn could be describe in three easy characteristics. Firstly, the health certificate in the dirty window had been signed in ’96 and even then it’d had only two stars. Secondly, there was a dogs welcome sticker above the bowl of water outside. Thirdly, there were six people in the room and three of them were uniformed staff.

They all turned and looked at Katy and I with the same xenophobic suspicion as the sheep from earlier. In this type of situation, any sane person would look at their watch, mutter something about being in the wrong place and then spin around before racing away in the direction of the nearest dark corner to hide in, preferably outside the Sun Inn. 

I should probably take this opportunity to clarify that the description ‘any sane person’ does not include Katy McDonald. Oh no, it certainly doesn’t. Katy McDonald was the type of person who saw your obvious discomfort and revelled in it, grabbing your arm and dragging you forwards to sit with those way out of your league Sixth Form girls- not that I’m still bitter or anything.

As a result of this somewhat suicidal attitude, Katy marched towards the bar and announced in a voice that sounded normal in Blackpool but almost Southern in Yorkshire that we would be ordering a pint of lemonade and a pint of coke.

The woman behind the bar, who looked like she could go one on one with a rhinoceros and leave the creature with little hope of victory, gave Katy a look that said, “Do you mind, my darling? We’re having a chat here.” This thought was articulated as, “Aye, y’will, will y’?”

“Yes.” Katy smiled. “We will.”

The four men in the room, three of whom were customers, began laughing as if to say that nobody’s drunk lemonade in the Sun Inn since that yuppy festival in ’76.

Begrudgingly, the woman poured the drinks and pushed them, almost worried she’d catch something, across the bar. Katy took the coke and passed me the lemonade. We then backed away to the musty seats in the far corner of the room and sat down. I took a tentative sip on my lemonade but, in the process of looking up, I saw that the entire clientele were staring at us. It would be wise to point out that in this type of situation, any sane person would apologise profusely, leave the drinks where they were and run for your life. Katy, instead, decided to smile at them.

I gulped. It’d been a nice life.

The next fifteen minutes were arguably the scariest of my life. Even Katy didn’t dare make conversation. We just sat there, drank our drinks, tried not to make any sudden movements and hoped against all hope that the patrons of this wonderful tavern didn’t feel hungry and, if they did, that they weren’t out of pork scratchings.

Eventually, I finished my lemonade. I didn’t crunch the ice cubes beneath my teeth, not because I was worried that the patrons of the Inn would find this annoying and thus kill me for it but because they didn’t give me any ice cubes. That was how far from civilisation we were.

We both stood, began to walk away from the bar, but not before Katy had time to spin, sprinkle a wave towards the customers and say, “Next time you can buy us a round.”

That was the last straw. I grabbed her and pulled her out of the pub. We both stumbled slightly on the street but managed to regain our feet. 

“What the hell was that?” I cried. “You nearly got us killed! Like twice!”

“Oh stop being such a girl!” Katy replied. “We’re fine. Not everyone out here is a savage. This isn’t Silence of the Lambs.”

“You said not everyone. That implies some of them might be.”

“Hark at you with your implications! What an English student.” Katy grinned. “Look, stop panicking will you? We're having a nice little holiday. Nothing is going to happen."

A bright flash struck across the sky and then disappeared behind the hill our tents were pitched on. We heard a very loud explosion. It rang out at the same time as the church clock, that ancient tolling as loud as it was close, oblivious to the calamity of the world around it. I frowned at Katy. She frowned at me. “You had to go and bloody say that, didn’t you?”

The doors of the Sun Inn and the fancy gastropub, declared the Green Dragon by a swinging sign above the door, swung open and inebriated patrons began to stumble out. I happened to glance towards the Dragon and saw a television screen above the bar. It was playing one of those continuity idents, you know the type. A green lawn, perfect and pristine, shaved by a selection of lawnmowers pushed by identical women in pink. The screen flickered for a second, the screen wavering, changing, and then it returned to normal. I probably would have commented on it, if there hadn’t been another explosion followed by a stream of luminous smoke.

Those who weren’t using their phones to film the proceedings called the Emergency Services. I heard the gruff Yorkshire tones of the Sun Inn’s patrons muttering how it must have come down on Condor. I knew where that was- we’d ended up there by accident on our way to our campsite- and was glad to know it was on the other side of the valley to us. Still, a little close for comfort.

“Chris,” Katy said, pulling on my jacket, “let’s get out of here. It’s a little close for comfort with all these people.”

I nodded. “You got your torch? It’s awfully dark beyond the street lights.”

There were sirens deceptively close, probably in the village of Dent a few miles away. With them would come the flashing lights and the impossibility of us getting to sleep.

“I think, soon enough, we won’t be needing torches.” Katy replied.

I awoke with sunrise which, according to Siri the night before, came at about five in the morning. I knew Katy wouldn’t wake up for a while- we’d agreed that we’d get up about eight- so I tried to go back to sleep. I don’t know if you’ve ever been camping before or if you’ve got any intention to go but allow me to give you some advice. Don’t pitch your tent on a gradient. You will only end up sliding down to the bottom. It’s not so bad doing this when you’re asleep but when you’re in that horrible place between dreams and waking, it’s particularly irritating. I gave up trying to sleep after about half an hour of constantly sliding down the tent and instead scrambled for my bag and began reading. Call me a failure to geekdom but I was reading Stephen King’s ‘The Gunslinger’ for the first time. King had never really interested me- not after I watched the Shining age twelve and refused to ever visit a Premier Inn again- but I had to admit, this book was good. I was just sinking back into the bloody chaos when I heard the bells.

Dorothy L Sayers once wrote a story in which a man was crushed by bells literally. I felt like I was undergoing the metaphorical version of this. Chris Marten’s Top Tip of Camping No. 2: Don’t go anywhere near bells. Ever. It will drive you insane.

Eventually, I figured out the bells rang every fifteen minutes. I’d brought my phone and my charger but there were no plug sockets in a field so I wasn’t quite sure what time it was. I let the bells ring ten times before I estimated it was eight in the morning. I got changed tentatively- the lack of insulation and double glazing made taking off my pyjama top the equivalent of jumping into Antarctic Waters.

Once I was dressed, I went through the complex process of unzipping my tent and wrestling on my boots, before climbing out and wandering over towards Katy’s tent. I whispered her name as loud as I dared but there was no reply. I knew she could be completely monstrous when she was tired yet part of me decided to ruin the rest of my life and shake her tent.

I was expecting a dragon to tear through the canvas and roast me alive in a furious scream of lava. Instead, there was no reply whatsoever. The Coca Cola the night before must really have got to her. Sighing, I wandered back over to my tent and wrote a brief note explaining I was going to the village. I poked it under the porch of her tent and then wandered towards the stile in the dry brick wall.

The sirens had stopped the night before at about midnight and I’d been able to fall asleep quite easily after that. My dad had warned me, around the same time as he was handing over the keys for the Sierra, that sometimes sleeping in a tent was worse than going for a six hour walk. I wouldn’t agree. It was the best night sleep I'd had in ages. It was a shame to leave for the fresh air of the morning.

Walking down the path, I couldn’t help but admire the quaintness of rural England. It didn’t matter how many bankers and computer engineers stretched their fibre optic cables through muddy fields to seep under the stone walls of ivy clad cottages, it didn’t matter how many times the church council met to discuss the rejection of a fantasist’s application for their architectural haven, it didn’t matter whether you allowed Patel’s Newsagents to be bought and turned into a Subway, a British country village would always look like a backdrop to an episode of Pertwee Era Doctor Who. As I walked over a humble bridge protruding across the river Katy and I were planning to trace to its source that afternoon, I couldn’t help but wonder if any Sea Devils would stalk about from beneath. 

When you live in a city or town, the most shocking difference when it comes to visiting the country is, unequivocally, the silence. It’s almost eerie, the way that you can’t hear children playing or adults arguing or the buzz of notifications blasting through the wifi. I say it was almost eerie.

There was something a little more sinister in the air right now.

My first inkling of suspicion was the door of the Green Dragon. It was open, which meant I couldn’t see the sign I’d spotted the previous night that read, “Opens All Days At Lunch.”

It was half eight. I frowned and wandered on. There was an artistic monument in memory of the founding father of the village and on the right of it a small passageway leading down to the church. The clock ticked to the next quarter and a bell rang out. I frowned. It was a Sunday yet there seemed to be nobody about.

Deciding that there must have been a recent incursion of an atheist movement, I turned and began to trail down towards the Newsagents. I’d buy some milk and something to make the porridge bag things we’d packed a little more exciting. There were four houses between me and the newsagents, opposite a small, rusty park. A single child swung back on forth, her pigtails and legs swinging in unison. Opposite, in the gardens of the houses, were occupants of villages. They all looked spaced out, their eyes staring to a distance so far away, I doubted they even knew I was there. They were walking in almost perfect union, back and forth, mowing the lawns. One of them hadn’t turned their lawnmower on.

I didn’t think anything of it. Things like that didn’t seem so odd in a village like this. It was probably practise for the Yorkshire in Bloom competition or something. I continued walking, passing down the pavement, vaguely aware of the fact that, as I passed each lawn mower, they slowly twisted their head to watch me. The girl on the swing kept swinging back and forth. The rusted hinge creaked, the loudest noise beyond the whomping chop of the mower’s blades.

I reached the newsagents. The door's glass had a smashed fracture in it. The owner’s probably going to fix it in the next few days, I decided. In the back of my mind, there was an unsettling disquiet.

I wandered down the brief aisle, towering on either side of me were roof high shelves full of Budget Priced toilet rolls, feather dusters and unbranded cans of beans, fruits and pineapples. There was a counter about halfway down, buried into a natural alcove in the wall. The shop gave off the assurance that, if you asked for four candles, you would get just that. 

There was a goldfish bowl on the counter. Flakes of fish food, its pungent odour long since disappeared, floated on the water. The fish was missing. On the other side of the counter, next to a display advertising Cadbury Dairy Milk ‘For 4 Too’ on a spiked piece of cardboard, was a television set. The light protruding from it when static wasn’t crackling glowed across the newspapers in front. Yesterday’s newspapers. 

I thought I heard a swish behind me. Call it paranoia, I swung around like a gunslinger in a duel and stared. There was a flash of pink but nothing more. Probably my imagination. I turned back to the counter, just as the television began to play the BBC ident with the lawn mowing ladies, and pressed the rusted bell a few times. There was a paper notice next to it, stuck down by peeling cello tape, announcing tourists would require identification to buy, ‘Fags, Alcohol or Exotic Mags.’

I pressed the bell a few more times but, besides the shrill ding, there was no reply. Except, I should mention, from a wounded yeowl.

I frowned and set off in the direction of the sound. It was behind a few aisles, past the racks of exotic mags and plastic bottled apple cider. The large floor to ceiling freezers with the glass fronts, displaying frosted packets of Birdseye Breaded Chicken inside. I was glad I hadn’t had breakfast. I had no interest in becoming reacquainted with it.

Lying on the floor in front of one of these fridges was a dog. The glass door behind it was frosted by shattered forks, blood and fur stuck between cracked shards where the dog had impacted it. Now, the hound lay on the white tiled floor, bleeding out, howling in agony. Its fur was matted with blood and sweat. Its eyes were downcast. Three of its legs scrambled in terror.

The fourth was lying in front of it, shredded to mere remnants.

There was a loud crashing sound from behind. I turned, to see if I could see what was happening, when I felt fur brushing against my leg. I looked down to see the dog hobbling on three legs, sliding past me, growing from a stumble to a hop to a pad to a walk to a stride and then a run. I frowned, beginning to follow the bloody trail it left on the floor, out of the door, into the glaring sunlight of the outside. 

When my eyes adjusted, I saw the men still lawn mowing. From this angle, I could see into the nearest front room. Nobody was inside yet the TV was still on. Crackling, breaking up and occasionally cutting to a pink high heeled shoe striding through a thick green lawn.

Pink flashed in front of me but when I looked it was gone. Instead I saw the rusty park. The girl was gone. The swing had collapsed. 

I raced across the road, pushing open the swinging gate. The swing had snapped straight in half, as if the rusty metal had just given up. The girl was lying on the floor, blood oozing from the back of her head where it had cracked on a concrete block left below. More importantly, however, the cross bar of the swing protruded from her chest.

The dog clambered onto her and began to lick the blood covering the rusting metal, unaware of his own blood dripping from the stubby remains of his fourth leg.

I turned and saw all four lawn mowing men staring at me. To say I felt vaguely uncomfortable would be somewhat of an understatement.

There was a gate opening onto a selection of steps that led up to the path entering the graveyard. I raced up it, trying to get as far away from the lawn mowers and the dead girl as possible. If I’d been paying attention, I would have noticed the girl sitting up and petting the dog but I didn’t. My heart was pumping, my adrenaline circulating. My blood coursed through my veins as it coursed from the gaping wounds in the girl and the dog.

I leapt over a small row of privets, striding between the gravestones, heading straight for the church. As I got closer, I became aware of a screaming inside. For some reason, I ran straight towards it.

The doors were open now but it was dark inside. Light gleamed through the stained glass windows, adding the type of mood and atmosphere you normally can’t find outside of the first of two Young Adult finale movies.

My grandfather was a bellringer. He used to take me with him and, I must admit, the experience traumatised me. I didn’t like having that kind of power, nor the feeling of a rope chaotically sliding through my hands, connected to a one thousand kilogram weight that could easily come crashing down and killing me. Compared to what I saw in the church, those weekly excursions after school on a Monday to see a group of pensioners pull rope to worship a God all of them had long since realised was just a clever plot device to bring communities together were nothing more than a bad dream.

There was a woman in pink, curled blonde hair pulling away from her head, a lawn mower in front of her, a trail of blood soaked into the chewed up carpet behind her. At the rear of the room was an open bell chamber, located on the ground floor as was the case in some fancy churches. The vicar held his cross in front of him, almost like a shield, chanting something I couldn’t understand. Not because it was in a powerfully mystic language but because he was screaming it in such terror he was incomprehensible. I took a few further steps and saw that there were the remains of a dead body in front of the lawn mower, or at least there were for a few seconds before the mower came forwards and a red spray exploded through the air.

“Forgive me lord.” The vicar said, then slipped his head through the tail of the rope. It was rung up, ready for service no doubt. For those of you who aren’t aware of what this means, I should clarify. Once the vicar’s crucifix had bounced against the floor and fallen, upside down, onto the carpet, once the vicar’s hands had tugged hard on the rope, Treble was going, she was gone, the bell swung fully and he was rose up. The initial force broke his neck. 

As he moved up and down, his jiggling body carried by the momentum of the rocking bell, I let out a scream. The woman with the lawnmower twisted her head and smiled at me, the most hateful smile I’ve ever seen. 

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded. Sweat was pouring down my forehead, I felt like I was bleeding, I wanted to cry. I was so tired and so lost and I wanted to be anywhere but there.

Those lipsticked lips widened. “My name,” spoke a male, computerised American accent from the British woman’s mouth, “is Samantha. Samantha. Sa-Sa-Sa-Mantha.”

There was a pink flash and I was falling, my entire body exploding with pain. A northern accent chimed in my head. Not everyone out here is a savage. Where’s Katy? I asked myself, then I hit the floor and blacked out.

Blackening Church (part 6)

Previously: Georgia Callahan and her team of spies were sent by their boss, the man called Uncle, to execute a Russian sleeper agent. Upon returning to the hotel, an assassin delivers a bottle of poisoned champagne. A gunfight ensues as the spies come to the incorrect conclusion that someone in the room has poisoned the fizz. After discovering that her girlfriend Alicia is a sleeper agent and witnessing the death of her two friends, Callahan falls asleep, to wake up the next morning with no memory. On her return, the man called Uncle sends her after a red herring to Strasbourg where she survives an attempt on her life and regains her memory. Organising a meeting with her assassin’s employer, Callahan finds herself waiting in church, a rendezvous point, wondering how the evening will end…

There was an eerie coldness in churches. In England, pretentious vicars try to combat this cold by the sheer will of denial- the application of shorts and sandals regardless of season doesn’t have the required effect and instead increases the assumed hostility radiating from such centres of pointless obedience and hopeless belief. The eerie coldness seems to seep into you, to infect you like some terrible disease. In this case, the only noticeable symptoms are a lack of surprise over the cobwebs clinging to the walls and an imposed reverence that made the sufferer wish to whisper regardless of their company.

Georgia Callahan buttoned up her black blazer and walked between the rows of pews until she reached the altar. It was a place of God, a place of holiness, but that kind of thing hadn’t bothered her since childhood. At the age of seven, Georgia had had the incredible realisation that religion was the worst thing to have ever happened to humanity. If something bad happened, it was humanity’s ridiculous mistake. If something good happened, it was the success of the Gods. If you wanted to be horrible, you could practise the will of the Gods and if you wanted to be nice, then that was the bare minimum that the Gods expected of you. Religion, to Georgia Callahan, was an excuse for humans to be put down and oppressed. Fate, destiny and the will of imaginary friends was a patchwork of your own decisions and the quicker you could accept that, the quicker you could actually achieve something with your existence. To Georgia Callahan, God wasn’t so much dead as having never existed in the first place.

Despite this, she said a quick prayer.

There was the tap of footsteps behind her. They echoed through the church like an ancient cavern. Her gun was in her hand between one echo and the next. She spun, the gun raised, the silencer fixed on the man in front of her.

“Hello Georgia.” Said the man called Uncle. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Georgia didn’t lower the gun. Her mind raced, connecting dots, making connections. “I assume you received my message which means you also sent the assassin to kill me. First in Compiegne and then in Strasbourg. Question. Why? The working theory was that it was to avenge Petrov but you sent me after him. So why? Why did you send the assassin to kill me?”

“The simple answer is, I didn’t.” His voice was scarred and crackled from years of smoking. In the light gleaming through the nearest stained glass window, his double chin looked larger than usual. His shadow was pompous and round, from many years of state dinners and Sunday roasts. “I didn’t send him to kill you. Didn’t you ask yourself why the poison in the champagne didn’t kill you? No? Too busy jumping to conclusions, Miss Callahan?”

“Why didn’t it kill me?” Georgia asked.

“Because it wasn’t meant to.” He stalked forwards a few steps, pointing to the row of seats to his side. “Take a pew. Literally.”

“I don’t want to.” Georgia said.

“I insist. My knees aren’t as good as they used to be.”

Georgia kept her gun trained on him. The two of them walked over towards the nearest pew, taking a seat. He turned to her, looking at her face as if he hadn’t seen it for years, then turned away, back towards the large dome in the roof. “It’s not a proper oculus, you know? It has to be a full circle to be an oculus. That just lets a little light through. An oculus lets in a full beam of light, as if we’re staring up at the Angels.”

“Or they’re staring down at us.” Georgia said. “Why wasn’t the poison meant to kill me?”

He sighed. “My father taught me golf. The serenity, the silence, I think it was a preferable option to him than actually engaging me. It was how I met the Home Secretary, in the same golf club, the one where a memorial picture of my father hung above the bar. It was where he spoke to me. The Lords’ Club. Where he told me he wanted Military Intelligence fixed. I took over, investigated and that was when I realised the truth. This country’s security is a shambles. I mean, it’s hardly surprising. Every secret we have is trusted with employed spies. And, obviously, some of them don’t work for us. I knew there were moles. I knew there were two. A little investigation revealed Petrov; he’d tried to hide it in plain sight but failed miserably. The other spy was harder to find. What method would you resort to?”

“A fake information trace.” Georgia said. “Different files for every possible suspect. Whichever one gets back to Mother Russia is the one which we deal with.”

“Except, the results produced a problem. Both your file and Alicia’s file made their way back to Russia where my own mole registered their appearance. I didn’t know which of you was the mole. My plan was simple. Get you to deal with Petrov and then invent a scenario where Alicia would have to leave the Situation Room. Once she was out in the field, you’d be drugged with the champagne, a new drug that not only knocks you unconscious but makes your recent memory a little hazy too- the boffins are proud- and then thrown into a mock Russian torture situation. All four of you would be interrogated for information by our ‘Russians’ and whichever of you blabbed to be a mole would be shot, before we released the others. Simple.”

Georgia looked at him and shook her head. “There’s a man who used to live down the road from me. A policeman. Twenty five years he walked the streets, a police constable. He was the cleverest man I ever knew, yet he was never promoted from the role of constable. I asked him once, in that blunt way that kids do, why he wasn’t a detective or an inspector. He taught me one of the most important lessons of my life. He said, only fools are promoted. That way they can’t do any harm.” She put out her hand. “Congratulations on your promotion.”

He looked at her hand and slowly, tentatively, raised his signet ringed hand. It wrapped around Georgia’s, shaking it. She gave him a harsh tug towards her, jabbing the tough metal of the barrel into his roast dinner swollen stomach. She pressed her lips up towards his ear, so close she could feel the bramble of his facial hair against her cold flesh. Her breath was hot inside his ear. “It’s a good job there’s no oculus in the floor. You wouldn’t want to see where you’re going.”

PFFT. PFFT. The gun jerked twice. The man called Uncle tumbled back, his eyes wide, blood pouring from his stomach. He tried to speak, tried to express his surprise, but he couldn’t. His jaw simply opened and closed like he was a goldfish's. Trying to stand, he tumbled backwards and hit the cold stone floor. His head bounced, the skull fracturing. It knocked him unconscious, despite the terrible wound in his gut. Georgia took his gun and threw it to the other side of the church. Then she marched down the aisle and out of the church. A black blazer over a white shirt, a gun with a silencer in one hand. The doors swung out as she kicked them. She crossed the pavement, past where she and Delon had sat with the laptop. Her Jaguar was parked across the road. She didn’t know where she’d go next. Maybe Switzerland. It was meant to be a neutral zone after all. She still had friends in the Service, or at least she thought she had. Maybe they could bail her out. It would depend, she supposed.

Of course, sometimes, running away was the best option. She remembered when she was little, halfway to Guilford, nothing more than a Duke of Edinburgh rucksack stolen from school, a rolled up copy of 2000AD and a can of Dandelion and Burdock to her name. The future had seemed wide, it had seemed like anything was possible. She could be a princess or a scientist, a composer or a knight. Instead she became a spy and look where that had got her.

It was at this exact moment that she was hit by a car.

It came out of nowhere. The sudden gleaming of light, the blackening church like a shadow in contrast, and then the most excruciating pain of her life. She was knocked a fair way, her gun clattering out of her hand. Her head bounced off the tarmac. “Crap.” The driver whispered into his phone. “I’ll have to call you back. Oh bloody hell.”

The door of the car flew open, the man called Uncle’s driver leapt out, running over to her. He reached her, pointed his gun at her and said, “Oh crap. You’re still alive.”

Georgia’s eyes were rolled so far back into her head, they were almost back out again. He kept his gun trained on her and ran back to the car. If Callahan was there, that meant the man called Uncle was dead. And if the man called Uncle was dead, it meant he was screwed.

He opened the car’s boot and pulled out a bottle of champagne. The last one; the boffin’s had only made three prototypes. He’d knock her out then put her in the boot before taking her back to Britain for trial. Or execution. He popped the cork and ran back around to the front. The glow of the headlights formed a circle of white in the centre of the road. And that circle was empty.

He heard the click of a loaded gun behind his head and then the soft press of metal against his bald spot. Georgia Callahan, slightly dazed, blood pouring down her head, said, “Road safety. I know they’re lax on using your phone in cars over here but that gives you no good reason to run me over.”

“Miss Callahan, you’re a traitor and a fraud-“

“No.” Georgia said. “I’m a spy. Now listen close, punk. Take a drink.”

The driver did nothing.

“You have no choice here. I have a gun pointed to your head. If you want to try anything funny, the insides of your head will become intimately acquainted with the pavement.” Georgia replied.

The driver sighed, knowing he was beaten. He raised his bottle and took a healthy gulp. In such a high concentration, the chemical must have been disgusting.

“Take another sip.” Georgia smiled. “I want you to have a headache in the morning.”

He did just that, gulping on it.

“Good.” Georgia said. “Now, get in the car. We’re taking a trip.”

The next morning, halfway down a motorway, the driver burst awake. He was sat in the passenger seat of his car, a woman with blonde hair and a bloody face driving. He felt cold metal in his hand and looked down, to see a Walther PPK with silencer. “What the hell’s going on?” He asked. “Who the hell are you?”

“The name’s Callahan. Georgia Callahan.” She smiled. “British Secret Service. You’re Jerome, aren’t you? Sector Chief of the Franco-German Office.”

“How… how do you know about the Franco-German Office?”

She’d found files in his boot. She hadn’t known that the weapon smuggling there was so much of a problem, but evidently its severity was enough to require a specific office. Compartmentalisation at its best. “I’m British Secret Service. Of course I know.” She lied. “Jerome, do you remember the case we were working on last night?”

“No.” He said. “My memory is hazy.”

“As I feared.” She said. Now for the big lie. “Uncle has been secretly aiding an International Arms Dealer. He sent Anton Petrov, the Russian mole, to retrieve specific files from extremist Catholic Father Jean Thomas in order to get the jump on the Dealer so that he could strike a better deal. When I and my team stumbled too close to the truth, he had them assassinated and an attempt made on my life. I fled to Strasbourg in an attempt to provoke him into revealing his true game, which he did by attempting to take my life himself.”

“Where do I come into this?”

“I explained my findings to you, believing you were at the right distance to be trusted, so he kidnapped you. I came to rescue you only to discover he’d drugged you with the poisoned champagne- the one that knocks people out and hazes their memory.”

“I remember it.” He nodded.

“Good.” She smiled. “You killed Uncle using the gun in your hand whilst I distracted him, then you dropped unconscious from the drugs. We’re on our way to London to explain the situation now.”

“You’re not looking very good for it.” He looked at the way her right arm was slung over her chest, indicating it was broken. It was a good job the car was an automatic. 

“It’s a dangerous life.” She shrugged despite the pain that must have caused her. “Now, it’s imperative that we tell the truth, the full truth and nothing but the truth to the people back in London. Nobody can argue with the truth, can they?”

“Do we have proof?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I found Uncle’s laptop in the boot and it’s full of incriminating information. He wasn’t very tech savvy.”

Or rather, Lucas Delon was bloody brilliant at planting a fake trail on it.

“Right. I understand. Nothing but the truth.”

“Apart from in regard to your drugging.”

“What?”

She took her eyes off the road to look at him, but she was completely in control. It was as if the car was an extension of her body. “If the company discover you’ve experienced experimental, mind altering drugs, everything you say instantly becomes doubtful. It means your credibility will go straight out of the window. If we going to have any hope of saving our Service, you’re just going to have to emit those details from your report and support my story. It’s the only way.”

Jerome sighed for a second. It didn’t all add up but, then again, he’d been drugged. He couldn’t expect everything to make sense. He turned to her and said, “Run it all by me again.”

Georgia Callahan smiled. Piece of cake, or as the Russians said, “легко.”