Invasion

Chapter Thirty

Joshua had lost track of time. It had been days — or had it been weeks — since the aliens had burst in and snatched him and Loretta out of his apartment. He hadn’t seen her since the day of their arrest… and he hadn’t even seen any other humans. The aliens had kept him isolated, preventing him from having even the comfort of seeing another human face, while they decided what to do to him. His world had shrunk to the cell and the regular mealtimes; the aliens, it seemed, had a sense of humour. They might as well have fed him on bread and water. From time to time, they’d pulled him out of the cell into another room, where they’d asked questions, and then, without really caring about the answers, they’d placed him back in his cell.

The police stations in Austin, he’d heard, had been defended vigorously during the fighting. The aliens had rounded up police officers with the same care they’d used to round up soldiers and former soldiers, but armed and dangerous, some of the police had fought back and died in the defence of their city. Enough of the police stations had survived, he saw now, to ensure that the aliens could keep their special prisoners secure, regardless of the cost. Joshua, it seemed, wasn’t going into a work gang or the rumoured camps outside the city. They probably had a different fate in mind for him.

He had very little to do, but sleep, eat and speculate on what was going to happen to him. The aliens normally put people who resisted them in work gangs, but he’d been doing a damn sight more than just resisting them, hadn’t he? His blog from the middle of occupied territory had ensured that the rest of the United States knew what was going on… and what alien rule was really like. Joshua wouldn’t have bet against new appearances of The Truth in America, founded by humans looking for something to believe — hell, if there was a Jedi religion, there would be humans who wanted to embrace the alien religion — but if people knew the truth about alien-controlled territory, they’d resist, right? He’d spread the word… until, finally, he’d been discovered.

The thought tormented him when he slept. It wasn’t easy to sleep in the cell — the light burned brightly, day and night — but somehow, he managed it. He’d been betrayed, but why? He would have understood one of his ex-girlfriends, or maybe one of his enemies from the regular media outlets — or what was left of them — but Mr Adair? What had the aliens offered him to make him turn traitor and betray Joshua’s existence and activities to them? Joshua could have almost forgiven betraying him, but Loretta had been young and innocent; she didn’t deserve what the aliens would do to her. The only consolation he had was that the aliens probably wouldn’t try to rape her, even though they might just dump her in a camp and forget about her. He couldn’t forgive that, but why?

Maybe it had been the girls, Joshua wondered, and thought dark thoughts about strangling their father. Maybe he’d been threatened with losing them, or perhaps having them sent to a work gang, unless he turned informer. Or, perhaps, they needed something and only the aliens could provide it. He hadn’t known that either of them needed special medicine, but it wasn’t as if he’d known them that well before the invasion had begun. Perhaps Mr Adair had been threatened himself, or had been offered extra food, or…

There was little point in wondering about it. In a long career spent in the gutter, Joshua had seen how easy it was for someone to betray a sacred trust, or even someone they didn’t like or care about. It was easy to find a source on almost anything, if someone knew where to look; a dissatisfied employer, the victim of workplace bullying, the past wives or girlfriends of the rich and famous, the person who had committed a minor or major indiscretion in the past and didn’t dare allow the rest of the world to know about it. Anyone could be broken, or made to share secrets, given the right incentive… and no security precaution was ever one hundred percent effective. Mr Adair’s motive might even have been as simple as money; the alien money, handled through their ID cards, was starting to take hold.

Bastards, he thought, feeling in his pockets. The aliens had searched him carefully and removed anything that could be used as a weapon. Part of him was rather flattered by their assumption of his ingenuity, for he didn’t have the slightest idea how half of them could be used as weapons, the rest of him was furious. What was a reporter without even a pen and some paper? They’d given him a prisoner’s outfit, probably burned all of his remaining clothes, and made sure that if he escaped, he would be noticed. Without an ID card, they would probably pick him up a few minutes after he escaped… if it had been possible. He’d examined the cell in the first few moments after being dumped inside, after the panic had worn off slightly, and discovered that it was very simple and completely escape-proof. Picking the lock would have been impossible even without the bolts, while the cement walls and floor would have required high explosives or a drill to break through. In the absence of either — and, while he was wishing, he wanted a teleporter as well — he was stuck. He was caught like a rat in a trap.

He poured himself a glass of water, tasting the bitter tang as he drank a few sips, and scowled at the plastic jug. The aliens had given him a jug of water a day and expected him to use it sparingly. They hadn’t missed a trick, either; the plastic jug wasn’t even useable for slitting his wrists. Joshua had never seriously considered suicide, not since he’d been sacked from his last job, but now… now he would almost be tempted, if he had something to hurt himself with. He’d tried not breathing, as he’d read in one of the spy novels he’d read once as a younger man, and all he’d got was a headache. Real life didn’t seem to work as well as a novel.

The banging on the door brought him back to himself. He knew the routine by now; the aliens would bang to wake him up, then open the door and drag him out into the light. This time, there were three aliens standing there, their black helms regarding him, before one of them caught him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him out into the main room. It was as cold and barren as before — he’d wondered, despite himself, if they’d stuffed him in a warehouse, rather than the remains of a police station — but there were several more aliens there, watching him as he was carefully secured and marched off up the stairs. The lighting was better outside the cell and he found himself wincing as it struck his eyes. He hadn’t realised how gloomy the cell had become until he saw the outside world.

I probably look like a vampire, he thought, absently. The mixture of malnutrition and the limited supply of light had probably made him look very unhealthy. He couldn’t remember, off-hand, how much time it would take in the dark to leave someone with pale skin, but he was sure that he had passed that time, even if he hadn’t been in the dark. It was getting harder to think properly, although he wasn’t sure if that was because of the limited food or because of the way his horizons had shrunk to the four walls of the cell. How long had it been, after all?

He looked at one of the guards. “How long have I been in the cell?”

The guard didn’t answer. He just rammed the barrel of his weapon into Joshua’s chest. The pain was incredible and he almost collapsed on the ground, steadied only by an alien hand. In a movie, he would have captured the rifle and shot his way out, but in real life… the pain made it impossible to think. He dry-retched, wishing that he’d had enough in his stomach to throw up all over the aliens, but nothing came. Coughing and wheezing, feeling like a two packs a day man, he found himself being herded into a waiting room. A line of human prisoners, some of them looking much worse than him, waited there. No one spoke to one another, not to Joshua or to anyone else; they were all trapped in their own private hells.

Joshua felt reporting instincts coming to the fore and tried to study his fellow prisoners. Just seeing a human face after so long was a relief, but he didn’t see anyone he wanted to see, not even Loretta. There were girls, some barely entering their teens, handcuffed and waiting for the aliens. There were young men, some of them wounded badly, left to wait as well. Several of them looked as if they were going to die unless they got some medical treatment, but the aliens didn’t seem to care. The handful of older people in the room tried to ignore the aliens and Joshua himself, keeping themselves to themselves. The stink of hopelessness and sour death was everywhere.

He looked back towards the impassive aliens and shivered. What the hell was going on?

An alien caught onto his arm. “You will accompany us,” he said, in an accented voice. He almost sounded German. After everything else he’d seen, that made Joshua giggle, feeling right on the edge of sanity, but the alien ignored it. He pulled Joshua to his feet, escorted him through a pair of doors, and thrust him into another room. Three aliens faced him, all unmasked… and one of them, he saw, was a female. The breasts had to mean a female, right?

It almost sent him into another fit of giggles. If the aliens were going to enforce bare breasts on the human population, he wouldn’t mind in the slightest… and most young men would probably feel the same way, as long as it wasn’t their sisters, or girlfriends, or even mothers… but it would be. The people who believed in modesty and chastity would have several different kinds of shit-fit over the whole idea… and the aliens would probably be bemused. Did they really understand humanity, after all this time?

“You are the human… reporter Joshua Bourjaily,” the lead alien said. It was the male who spoke and the sound of his voice snapped Joshua back to full alertness. The situation was incredibly dangerous for him personally… and yet, he was fairly sure that he wasn’t going to get out of this one. Being interrogated by military police or spending the night in the cells after a demonstration suddenly seemed like a minor issue. “You have spread propaganda against us and spread perversion through the land.”

Joshua blinked. He actually had few kinky sexual tastes… and he certainly wasn’t one of those reporters who followed Hollywood stars and pop singers around, not least because he’d never had any of the contacts needed to gain admission to those scenes… and even then, he wouldn’t have defined them as perverted. Sure, they had silly lives and couldn’t sing, but they were hardly perverted. How could the aliens have assumed he was perverted? They might have read one of those books where all reporters were worthless weak-chinned liberals, out to sabotage the bravery of the granite-chinned Marine/Soldier/Spy/Republican, but even so…

He wasn’t getting out alive. Who cared what happened to him? “I did my duty,” he said, and tried to plaster a determined expression on his face. A human observer would have probably recognised the terror hiding under the expression. “The free press is a vital tool for keeping the country honest and the government’s nose firmly clean…”

“You were not operating under the laws of your former country,” the lead alien said. Joshua stared at him; had the aliens overrun the remainder of America? He didn’t think they could have done it so quickly, but if the internet was to be believed, they had smashed most of the army during Operation Lone Star. “You operate as a subject of the Theocracy, one who has accepted the Truth.”

Joshua didn’t — quite — speak the words that came to mind. “I still have little idea what the Truth is,” he protested. “I know some of your prayers, but nothing else! How am I supposed to abide by the tenets of a religion when I don’t even know what I’m not allowed to eat?”

“You were brought into the Theocracy by right of conquest,” the alien informed him. “You are not a soldier, one expected to remain loyal to an old ideal. You are not a leader, one expected to maintain the old ideal. You are not a priest, one expected to…”

“I know what I’m not,” Joshua burst out. “I was raped!”

The alien regarded him blankly. Weeks of pent-up frustration burst up within Joshua’s mind. If he was going to go out, he was going to tell them exactly what he thought of them.

“You seem to think that just holding some of us in your clutches means that we will convert to your religion,” he snapped, expecting every moment to be his last. “What value does such a conversion have when we don’t even know what is required of us, or why we should choose your religion over the others…”

“It is The Truth,” the alien thundered. “We are its guardians and its proponents. We have replaced your religion with our own. You will follow it or accept the fate of those who commit heresy.”

“And you have perverted others,” the alien female added. “The female we arrested with you has developed a quite unseemly attachment to you and believes that she is yours. You have… corrupted her into believing that she belongs to you.”

Joshua stared at her. “Loretta,” he asked. “Is she all right?”

“She appears to have been a minor partner in your treason,” the alien leader informed him. “She will be treated in a camp and, eventually, permitted to rejoin society. You, on the other hand, betrayed your religion and served as a spy within our land. You will be treated accordingly.”

“You don’t understand us, do you?” Joshua asked. “Each and every one of us makes his or her own decision in the matter of religion. We all do. How can you convert us all? Do you think to punish everyone who steps away from your beliefs, beliefs they don’t share because they don’t even know what they are…?”

“The act of worship pleases God,” the alien said, firmly. Joshua realised, grimly, that he wasn’t even getting through to the alien. They were speaking the same language, but they didn’t mean the same things. “You have a choice. You may work for us, spreading the word throughout the land, or you can die. There are no longer any other alternatives.”

“Join you or die,” Joshua mused. The old Joshua, he was ashamed to admit, would have probably accepted the alien offer and sold his soul for survival. The aliens wouldn’t have had anything to complain about with him. The new Joshua, who knew what was really important and what wasn’t, had other ideas. He wasn’t going to bow down to them any longer. “No.”

The alien seemed surprised. “You are a man of no convictions,” he said. “Do you really wish to die?”

“No,” Joshua said, “but you’re not going to let me go, so…”

“Very well,” the alien said. He straightened up. “I am the Inquisitor. As is my right and duty, I find you guilty of heresy, treason, and activities that risked the lives of the warriors… and those of your race who have converted to the Truth. The sentence is death. You will be taken to a public place, where you will be burned alive.”

Joshua said nothing as the alien guards grabbed him and marched him out of the room. They had to have received orders, somehow, because they didn’t hesitate, but took him right out of the complex and into one of the hovering trucks they used for transport. A moment later, the truck started to move, gliding out through the streets towards one of the soup kitchens, established in the remains of what had once been a building. Austin seemed almost duller now, drabber… the remains of life slowly being extinguished as the occupation took hold. He looked, desperately, for some sign that there was still an insurgency, but saw nothing. He was alone.

They’d already prepared a bonfire and a stake, almost like something out of one of the Salem Witch Trials. The humans who had been at the kitchen watched, their faces betraying nothing, as Joshua was hauled out and marched over to the stake. The guards lashed him to the stake and stepped back, one of them producing a small lighter-like device and bending down to the wood. Judging from the odd smell, the wood had been treated somehow to allow it to burn faster and hotter…

“I commend my soul to God,” Joshua said. He didn’t know why he’d said it. It just seemed like the right thing to say. The crowd, growing larger all the time, watched him, perhaps wondering what he would say next. He wanted to pray, but somehow all the prayers he had known had deserted him, even the alien prayers. His mind was calm, composed… and accepting. He was going to die. “You bastards, burn in hell.”

The alien clicked on the lighter…

And then there was a shattering explosion from the other side of the kitchen.