Alien Disaster (14 page)

‘Where to?’ he barked.

‘What?’

Hewson sighed. ‘Where do you want to go? I’ve lost all of my team; HQ have gone dark; I figure that I may as well start taking orders from a fourteen year-old kid.’

Brandon was delighted. ‘We need to get to Salisbury plain, maybe Stonehenge,’ he said, jumping aboard. The others bundled in the back and Hewson set off across the fields again. He was a better driver
off-road
than Jason ever was
on
.

‘Salisbury Plain?’ Hewson muttered. ‘That’s where I was heading … until I saw that huge spaceship chasing you in your little rocket. Well, I guessed that it was probably you, running rings around the aliens just as you did with me.’

‘Why were
you
heading that way?’ Brandon asked. He was concerned.
Did Hewson and MI Zero know about the third secret lab?

‘The RAF has a temporary base there. Northwood Headquarters outside London got taken out by a meteor yesterday; Army Strategic Command in Hampshire was attacked by flying saucers this morning. Every jet, tank, pilot and soldier left in the country is regrouping in Wiltshire to plan some last ditch assault on the space invaders. I heard that The Chief of Joint Operations is there. I hope that’s true, because otherwise the chain of command is going to break down completely.’

Jason was navigating, flicking through the pages of Hewson’s road map. He hadn’t managed to connect to the internet. ‘You need to find the A272 and follow it to Winchester.’

‘Got it,’ Hewson confirmed. ‘Looks like the UFO is closing in,’ he said, checking his rear view mirror. ‘So, is there something at Stonehenge that will defeat these things?’

‘Something like that,’ Brandon said evasively. He sounded like Dravid Karkor, but right now he needed Hewson’s help. So what if he believed that there was an alien super weapon hidden somewhere? ‘Haven’t the army tried nuking the big saucer?’ he asked.

‘Tried,’ Hewson admitted. ‘And failed. They’re protected by some kind of energy field that misdirects incoming missiles and throws them off course. I think the next plan is to try boarding the thing instead.’

They left the fields and dirt tracks and joined the road. The Land Rover seemed to still be shaking though.
Was the suspension damaged?
Then Brandon realised; it wasn’t the vehicle that was shaking; it was the road.

The saucer was deploying its seismic beam, this time on land.

Brandon could see trees shifting at the side of the road, and the ground started to buckle beneath them. Cracks were appearing in the tarmac. Hewson had to pull off a dramatic swerve as a long split opened up in front of them.

They’re going all out to stop us this time
, Brandon thought. The alien king must have regretted not destroying the cylinder when he had the chance. Brandon wondered if Dravid Karkor would be held accountable for suggesting that the king keep it. Maybe he had already been incinerated in the star reactor.

Kat leaned in between the two front seats. ‘They must have been dragging that earthquake beam up and down all over the countryside behind us to block off our escape. They’ll ruin the whole country!’

Hewson grimaced as he concentrated on the road. ‘When you got pulled aboard that saucer … did those creatures take that device off you?’

‘No,’ Brandon said. ‘They wanted it. They didn’t get it.’

‘So what made you decide,’ Hewson asked, ‘not to just give them what they wanted and hope that they go away? More people are going to die so long as that saucer continues ripping this country apart!’

‘What?’ Brandon was shocked. ‘Are you saying that it’s
my
fault? You’re talking like it was me who dropped a giant asteroid on London, and not some genocidal aliens! And besides: this technology that they’re after could kill millions more people if it fell into the wrong hands, so who are you to say if I should or shouldn’t have given it to them?’

Hewson turned to Brandon, caught his eye and nodded, as if to say,
correct answer
. Brandon realised that he was being tested.

Hewson looked back at the road, then swerved and drove up a grassy bank as a chasm opened up in front of the Land Rover. Everyone on the back seat screamed. There was a thud as Jason’s head hit the side window. As Hewson fought to bring the vehicle back under control, Brandon stared at the scene ahead.

The straight flat road that they were following into Winchester was suddenly rising behind them and falling ahead. What was once an empty horizon was now a vista filling their field of view: the city before them was sinking into the ground.

As they watched, the ground split in hundreds of places along the length of the river that flowed through the centre of the small city. Almost every building, road and tree was shifted to a new angle. The city hung in its new arrangement for a few seconds, and then the buildings started to collapse. The white stone cathedral, having stood for a thousand years, fell apart as easily as if it was made of wet sand. A terrific cloud of dust was thrown up by the destruction and started to fill the newly created pit.

As the dust enveloped the Land Rover and blocked the world from view, Hewson spun the vehicle around and started to drive back uphill. The road was still rising though; the Land Rover’s wheels began to lose traction and they felt themselves moving backwards and down towards the sunken city.

Brandon estimated that the angle of the slope was over forty-five degrees and still getting steeper. Hewson seemed determined though, working the revs and the clutch with focused intensity. Everyone else waited in terrified silence.

‘Would it help,’ Kat asked after a while, ‘if we got out and pushed?’

Then the wheels bit into the tarmac and the Defender was inching its way back up the road. At the top of the slope, they found themselves back at a motorway junction that they had passed coming into the city. Seeing the alien mothership wrecking havoc to the north, Hewson headed south.

‘You’re not going to make it to Stonehenge,’ he told them.

Brandon agreed. ‘Even if we do, they’ll destroy the lab. We can’t get there in secret with that thing hovering over us.’

‘So what are we going to do?’ Jason asked. ‘We’re driving aimlessly down one of the only roads in England that’s still in one piece, with a mile-wide flying saucer hot on our tail.’

‘How
are
they following us?’ Gem cut in.

‘They’re right above us!’ Jason shouted. ‘They can
see
us!’

But Brandon knew what his sister meant. He’d seen first-hand the high-tech gadgetry and weapons that the saucer had at its disposal and guessed that they could easily scan and track his DNA, if not tag them with some kind of impossible-to-detect bug. But the only person on board who would have the brains to do that was Dravid Karkor, and Karkor wanted them to escape.

‘They must have just been following the rocket, and now the Land Rover, by sight,’ he said.

‘Look in the back,’ Hewson interrupted them.

Behind her seat, Gem pulled out some hold-alls and cases.

‘There’s dried food, medical supplies, tents, thermal blankets and tools,’ Hewson said. ‘Take what you need.’

‘We’ll take it all,’ Jason said, checking out a pair of night-vision goggles. ‘Can’t you give us any guns?’

‘What are
you
going to do?’ Kat asked Hewson.

‘I’m going to do my job,’ he replied, ‘and get you civilians out of the warzone.’

Hewson left the motorway at the next junction and headed south along a tree-lined B-road. He kept checking on the mothership as it passed in and out of view behind the trees. He turned to Brandon. ‘MI Zero has special executive powers, and since I’m probably the last operative alive then it’s my decision what to do with you.’

Brandon nodded.

‘So I’m letting you go. Get to Stonehenge, do what you have to do to stop or get rid of these invaders. Find me at the RAF base if you need help. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll see you back in London for the clean up.’

As they sped down a tunnel of thick tangled elm trees, Hewson braked hard and brought the Defender to a halt. Brandon didn’t need to be told what to do next. He opened the door and jumped out. Gem, Jason and Kat quickly followed with the bags and cases of supplies.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ Brandon said, raising his hand in farewell to the Lieutenant.
What a stupid thing to say!
Hewson gave Brandon the thumbs up, then accelerated away. The mothership passed overhead in pursuit, and Brandon and the others were thrown to the ground as the earth shook. The trees cracked and twisted, but then sprang back into shape. It was suddenly very quiet and still. Then a heavy branch fell out of the tree above Brandon and smashed down onto his wrist.

It really hurt. He waggled his hand to try and shake away the pain. Typical that the worst injury of the day so far should have come from a tree.

‘You alright?’ Gem asked.

‘I hope I haven’t broken it,’ Brandon said.

‘Well, just so long as you can still walk,’ she said.

Brandon looked at his watch on his other wrist. It was half past six in the evening. The day was starting to cool.

Gem flipped through the road map. ‘Come on, let’s get going. It’s only twenty-five miles to Stonehenge. We can even jog some of the way!’

Jason laughed as he hoisted a pack onto his back. ‘Race you!’ he said.

Six hours later. Brandon lay on his back in one of the two-man tents and waited for the sleep his body so badly needed. His wrist throbbed from the attack by the tree. They had walked, jogged and sometimes even climbed across a quake-riven landscape to get here. Circling the remains of Winchester had been the worst, but there were plenty of other tragedies on the way: farms and villages reduced to rubble; cars crashed and crushed beneath folds in the earth; rivers that were dry and roads that were flooded.

But even worse were the stunned groups of wandering survivors that they passed. Brandon couldn’t bring himself to speak to them—it would only bring home the reality of the tragedy. He could hardly bare to think about what had happened to Brighton, and to London; he couldn’t imagine ever returning to those places and facing up to the destruction.

Now they were camped in a field in Wiltshire, in the middle of the prehistoric circle of Stonehenge. The earthquakes hadn’t reached this far west, so the ancient monoliths were still standing in the same positions that they had occupied for over three thousand years. Brandon and the others had hunted around for any signs of the third lab, but darkness and exhaustion had overtaken them. With the aliens off their backs for the time being, Gem had insisted that her troops try to get a few hours’ sleep.

She was lying next to Brandon now, tossing and turning, clearly as unable to get to sleep as he was. Jason and Kat were sharing the other tent. Gem rolled over to face Brandon. She gave him an encouraging smile.

‘We’ll do it, Bran; we’ll avenge Mum and Dad’s death.’

‘I know,’ Brandon replied.

‘How exactly will it work, this alien weapon?’ she asked him. ‘Is it like a bomb? One that only affects aliens and fries their brains? It almost went off in the saucer. I could feel it.’

‘It can do a lot of things,’ Brandon said. ‘Depending on its programming, it’ll affect different people in different ways, and all on a large scale: thousands of people at the same time, maybe more.’

Gem considered this. ‘Are you worried about what the alien king said? About you being alien too? That’s nonsense, right?
You
said it was nonsense.’

‘I’m not sure it is now,’ Brandon admitted. ‘I’ve been thinking, Gem. Mum said there were complications with my birth. What if to save me they had to—I don’t know—inject me with alien blood or something. Or maybe the reason that there were complications was because Mum had offered to be a surrogate for a half-alien baby as some kind of experiment …’

On the long walk to Stonehenge, Brandon had told Gem all about the video message that their mother had left him. They had both agreed then that they needed to find and talk to the alien called Talem to fill in the gaps in the story. In the meantime, all they could do was guess.

‘Don’t worry,’ Gem said. ‘We’ll get you clear. Somewhere safe. I’ll take the bomb back to the alien saucer myself.’

Brandon rolled over to face the wall of the tent. ‘You know, this place—Stonehenge—was once thought to be a place of death and destruction,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘There are lots of bodies buried here, many with terrible injuries. And then there’s the slaughter stone that turns the rainwater blood-red …’

‘Did you steal a guide book when we searched the visitor centre?’ Gem asked him.

‘No, listen,’ Brandon said. ‘There’s another explanation for the bodies and the injuries: Stonehenge was in fact a place of pilgrimage and healing; people came here from all over Britain, not to be killed or sacrificed to some horrible god … but to be cured!’

‘What are you trying to say, Brandon?’ Gem said. ‘Well, whatever it is, tell me in a minute because I need to go outside for a smoke.’

Brandon lay on his back and sighed. How could he tell his sister that maybe they didn’t need to kill an army of aliens to put things right.
She
was dead set on revenge.
He
was wondering if perhaps there wasn’t a peaceful solution.

The tent flap opened and a small shape jumped in. Brandon fumbled for the torch.

‘It’s okay! It’s me!’ said a voice.

‘Kat?’ Brandon mumbled. She was almost right on top of him.

‘I’ve found it!’ she exclaimed.

Brandon was wide-awake in an instant. ‘Really? The lab?’

‘Maybe. I’ve found
something
, anyway,’ she said, showing Brandon a tourist leaflet that showed an aerial view of the stones and the surrounding countryside. She put her finger on a field near where they were camped. ‘Remember that hill here?’

‘What hill?’ Brandon said, unsure of what he was looking at.

‘Exactly!’ Kat exclaimed triumphantly. ‘There’s no hill on this photo. Yet earlier we were walking around that low mound in the same field; the one you said was probably an ancient burial mound.’