Trask watched Fremd as he cut into the remains of the Other. Both wore protective clothing, even though they were certain that the creature’s spore sac had been removed completely. Trask had supervised the operation himself, in a field by a an old farmhouse, surrounded by the smoking husks of three drones. His people had been fortunate; they’d come across the drones while they were on the ground, and had disabled them with grenades before they could take off. Only one had contained a Cutter, though, and its response to the attack had been sluggish. They’d killed it easily.
It was the only thing about the expedition that had been easy, though. Trask was weary, weary to his bones. The previous day, he had officiated at a memorial service, for two years had passed since they’d lost Dolan and Burgess to a Cutter. It seemed to Trask that he spent a lot of time leading prayers for the dead. He sometimes found it hard to believe that it was only four years since the Others had been unleashed on Earth. The time before felt like a dream of another life lived long ago. The days dragged in the bunker, where everything—food, light, heat—was rationed, but they dragged outside as well, while the humans ranged these deadly lands, scavenging for anything that might help them to survive a little longer underground.
On his darkest days Trask almost envied those who’d been taken quickly, at the beginning, because for those who remained it was a slow, squalid march toward death. He marveled that there’d ever been a time in his life when the minutes would fly into hours and hours into days, until he worried at where all the years had gone. It was one of the great mysteries of time; it sped for happiness, and slowed for sorrow, until the final sorrow came to an end, and it stopped entirely.
Funny, he thought—except that it wasn’t, not really—how their lives had gradually drifted into something from yesteryear. The survivors were now unable to use diesel or petrol, for oil products have a shelf life, and all stocks were now stale. Trask and his people were reduced to ranging on bicycles, and transporting what they could on carts and wheeled baskets, like children and old folk used to do. The water purification and desalination plants still worked, which was something, and they had food, even if it was limited to what they could grow in the bunkers, or the occasional tinned produce they still found, but life was growing increasingly hard, and they felt more and more isolated. The bursts of radio contact with other bands of survivors were becoming rarer. Humanity was dying out.
And all because of the Others.
Frankly, even wearing a full suit and mask, Trask felt uneasy anytime he was forced into close proximity to one of the parasites. He’d witnessed firsthand what they could do, watching impotently as animals and people succumbed to them, their bodies swelling agonizingly before exploding in clouds of spores. What the Illyri and the Others had done to his planet could never be sufficiently avenged.
But in his quieter, sadder moments, Trask acknowledged to himself that it would probably never be avenged at all. Who knew how many human beings were left alive?
For a time, all contact between the pockets of survivors had ceased because the Illyri had begun targeting shortwave transmissions and bombing or raiding their sources. Some transmissions had resumed since the Illyri stopped making regular sorties, but they were kept short, and most told the same story: dwindling supplies of medicines, children weakening, despair setting in. Trask and his people were luckier than most, but they were just about keeping everyone healthy through carefully rationing the last of the tinned food to add to what they were cultivating underground.
And then there was Fremd, an Illyri living alongside the humans that his own race had sacrificed to the Others. He and Trask had butted heads when they were both fighting the Illyri, mainly because each thought that he should be the one in charge of all Resistance operations in Scotland. Now, trapped in a bunker, they had been forced to work together. It wasn’t easy at the start, but there was now mutual trust and respect between them, even if it hadn’t quite blossomed into actual affection.
Fremd wasn’t the only Illyri in the bunker either. Two others, a female named Telia and a male named Ralic, had traveled to Ireland with him. Telia was an engineer, Ralic a scientist, and both had deserted from the Military as the Illyri Conquest grew more brutal. Initially there had been anger at their presence, especially as the scale of the Illyri genocide became apparent, but both had proved invaluable to the survival of all. It was Ralic who cultivated the crops, hybridizing and improving them for essential nutrients and sustenance. Telia kept the bunker functioning, combining human and alien technology to patch systems so that they continued to provide heat, light, and water and air purification. Without them, the humans would have been dead long ago. It was kind of ironic, Trask supposed, that they were being kept alive by representatives of the very species that was determined to wipe them out.
Three Illyri in the bunker with the last humans. Once there had been four, but Trask tried not to think of Althea. He’d destroyed the Cutter that killed her. He’d emptied an entire magazine into it, then gone at it with an ax. It hadn’t made him feel any better, and it hadn’t brought her back.
Fremd sliced into the head of the Other, revealing its brain tissue.
“It’s different,” he said.
“How?” Trask asked.
Fremd used the tip of the scalpel to point at a slight swelling on the right rear lobe of the brain.
“We haven’t seen this decay before.”
“I don’t suppose you can remind me what that bit of it does?”
“It’s something to do with the interrelationship between the host Cutter and the organism, but in this one it looks diseased.”
Fremd took a sample of the tissue and placed it under a microscope. He adjusted the focus, and an image of the tissue appeared on the screens above their heads. Trask saw what looked like particles of dust around the nerve endings, one of which also appeared to be withered.
“What is that stuff?” he asked.
“It’s plaque,” said Fremd. “Abnormal clusters of protein fragments.”
He adjusted the magnification again, zooming in on the withered nerve cells.
“And those are tangles,” he said. “More proteins.”
Trask was lost.
“But proteins are good, right?”
Fremd gave Trask the kind of long-suffering look a teacher might bestow to a child who managed to add two and two and get five. Trask hated that look.
“It depends. Some are responsible for initiating cell death, which looks like what’s happening here. I see tissue loss, and atrophy.”
“Good for you. Now maybe you could explain what all that means. And without the pitying glance, please.”
“It’s possible that this Other had developed, well, Alzheimer’s, I guess,” said Fremd. “Or some version of it.”
Trask knew what Alzheimer’s disease was. He’d seen it take his own father, gradually robbing him of his memory, his speech, his bodily functions, until finally it robbed him of life itself. But how could an alien have Alzheimer’s?
He was about to ask Fremd, but the Illyri had moved back to the dissected Other, and was poking at various parts of its brain.
“Ah,” he said.
“Ah what?”
Once again Fremd moved a tissue sample to the microscope.
“Looks like it’s got holes in it,” said Trask.
“More plaque,” said Fremd. “Deformed proteins, not dissimilar to those associated with mad cow disease.”
Trask was familiar with mad cow disease as well. He recalled the carcasses of cattle being burned in great pyres to prevent its spread to humans. It had something to do with eating dodgy meat, he thought, although he couldn’t be sure.
“So this thing had Alzheimer’s and mad cow disease?” he said.
“I’m saying that whatever it had resembles both of those conditions,” said Fremd. “But to put it simply, its neurological functions were degenerating.”
“That’s putting it simply? Try again.”
“Its brain was rotting. Will that do?”
“That’ll do all right. Now why was its brain rotting?”
“It could be only this single specimen, just as some humans get Alzheimer’s and some don’t . . .”
But Trask knew there was more.
“Or?”
“Or . . . the Others may have contracted something from one of the species they’ve infected here on Earth: humans, horses, cattle, bats. It could be any one of them—or more than one.”
“They’re dying?” said Trask, and for the first time in forever, a bud of hope swelled a little in his heart.
“No,” Fremd corrected him, “this one was dying. I haven’t seen it in any of the previous remains you’ve obtained, so we won’t know for sure if it’s widespread until you bring me more specimens.”
Fremd could see this news made Trask less than delighted, even though his face was partially concealed by his protective suit.
“The only way we can do that is by killing Cutters,” he said, “and that’s easier said than done.”
But not as hard as it used to be, Trask thought. He’d believed himself to be mistaken when he thought they were slowing, becoming less lethal, but Fremd’s diagnosis of the diseased Other had given him another possible answer.
“I know,” said Fremd. “I still need more specimens.”
“But this is hope, right?”
“Perhaps.”
“No, it’s hope—and we haven’t had much of that for a long time.”
“Bring me more of the Others.”
“I’ll find a way.”
A red light began flashing in the corner of the laboratory, instantly joined by the noise of a klaxon. Trask moved to the nearest intercom.
“What is it?” he asked.
Maeve Buchanan, Fremd’s human partner, was on monitoring duty. Her voice wavered as she spoke.
“An Illyri ship,” she told Trask. “It looks like it’s coming in to land.”
And Trask felt all hope die. He’d known this day might come. They all did. But why now, just as it seemed that the Others might not be invincible after all?
But there was no time for regrets. They had practiced for an assault on the bunker. Everyone knew their positions and their tasks.
“Sound the battle alarm,” said Trask. “We’re on our way.”
• • •
A group of tense faces watched the monitor as the Illyri ship landed on a patch of high grass about forty feet from the main entrance to the bunker, which was hidden beneath a layer of earth and grass. Miniature surveillance cameras encircled the bunker at a radius of a mile, but never before had they picked up an Illyri vessel.
Beyond the bunker’s main control room, the survivors had taken up their designated positions, ready to repel a frontal attack. They didn’t wear masks or protective suits because there weren’t enough of either to go around; and anyway, the decontamination process would kick in automatically if the bunker was breached. Farther away, a small team of suited Resistance fighters, Lindsay among them, was working its way underground to come up on the other side of the craft, and ambush it with grenades.
“I haven’t seen one like that before,” said Trask. He had his shotgun ready, and a pistol on his belt.
“Neither have I,” said Fremd. “It’s bad news for us if they’re sending fresh troops.”
“It’s bad news either way.”
The ship’s door opened, and a figure appeared in a biohazard suit. It paused at the doorway before descending the gangway to the ground. It was not armed, and raised its hands in the air as it reached the grass, then stood there, waiting. It appeared to be male, judging by the contours of the suit, and it had something colored wrapped around its neck, although the camera couldn’t quite capture it.
“What’s he doing?” someone asked.
“Small for an Illyri,” commented another.
Trask, who had been leaning over the desk, squinting at the screen, straightened. He tapped a button, and opened a channel to Lindsay’s team.
“Lindsay?”
“Receiving. We’re almost at the door now.”
“Hold your position.”
“I’m sorry? Repeat, please.”
“I said ‘Hold your position.’ ”
Trask grabbed a protective suit from a locker and began pulling it on.
“What are you doing?” asked Fremd.
“I’m going outside.”
“It could be a trap. That Illyri could be bait.”
“It’s not a trap, and that’s no Illyri.”
“You can’t know that!”
Now it was Trask’s turn to give Fremd a withering look.
“When was the last time you saw an Illyri wearing a Motherwell football scarf?”
• • •
The bunker door opened, and Steven watched a man slowly ascend the steps from below. He took a deep breath. It had been a huge risk to leave the Revenge and expose himself to possible attack, but Alis could find no way to contact the bunker, and leaving the ship seemed to be the only solution. Alis had thought him mad when he’d made her turn back to find a sports shop before continuing on to Ireland. He just had to hope that nobody in that bunker was a Hearts fan.
The man approaching him was carrying a shotgun, although it wasn’t pointing at Steven, not yet. He continued walking until he was close enough to see Steven’s face through his mask, and Steven could see his. Neither moved for a moment, until Steven tapped the earpiece on his suit. Trask did the same, and the receivers on the suits opened up a channel between them.
“Why are you wearing a Motherwell scarf?” asked Trask.
“I couldn’t find any other one.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you on sight.”
And then the watchers in the bunker were treated to the strange sight of Trask dropping his shotgun, apparently the better to hug the waiting Illyri.