The Invasion Read online

  The only purpose he could serve in a place like this is to get in the way. Sergeant Karim has made that very clear.

  ‘All right!’ the captain calls now.

  And everybody except Anto knows what he means. Faces grim, they troop out the doors and into three trucks, each decorated with the disturbingly red-eyed stag. Engines sputter into life and the fried-food smell of bio-diesel clogs the air.

  ‘Come along, boy,’ says Sergeant Karim.

  Anto is pushed into the last truck and shoved along like baggage until he’s right up behind the driver’s cab. He can hear the captain’s voice coming in over the radio. ‘Move out!’

  And then, it’s off into the night. The soldiers whisper to each other in a bizarre mix of English and Sídhe and made-up words of their own. One of them, a skinny man with the twitching manner of a rat, pokes Anto in his massive left shoulder. ‘Did it hurt?’

  Anto nods. It felt like his arm was being ripped off, not just once, but for the entire time the Sídhe woman was touching him. Her smile grew as she tortured him, and she whispered, ‘How marvellous! A giant! How I have longed for a giant of my own!’ Those are the words he hears in his dreams, and more than once he has woken in the stink of his own urine.

  He doesn’t want to say any of that to the skinny man, but he doesn’t have to.

  ‘I’m Ryan,’ the soldier says. ‘Look.’ He bends over in the crowded space to show two spurs sticking out of his shoulder blades. They twitch as though they have a life of their own. Anto feels that way about his arm – that it’s not really his; that it doesn’t belong in this world at all.

  ‘They were going to make me into a bird, but I got away.’ The man shudders and twitches, although the event must be two decades in his past by now. ‘Doctors couldn’t cut them out without killing me. Have to sleep on my front.’

  Ryan covers up again and they shake hands. ‘Thank you,’ Anto says. And he means it, because however useless he may feel, now he belongs.

  They clatter over roads, passing the lights of farm dorms that Anto can only see in flashes through the open flap at the back of the truck. He hasn’t eaten in hours and nobody thinks to offer him anything.

  ‘Where are we?’ asks a hoarse voice. It’s Corless, the hulking man with the cross on his forehead and gleaming sweaty skin.

  ‘Meath,’ says Ryan.

  ‘The worst ones are always in Meath.’ Corless rubs at the cross.

  ‘The worst what?’ Anto wants to know.

  ‘That should be obvious,’ says Karim. ‘Infestations of course. But don’t you worry, dear. You shall have the big, big job of minding the truck. Don’t let anybody siphon off the diesel.’

  Anto hangs his head.

  ‘She’s not so bad,’ Ryan whispers in his ear. ‘Honestly. You’ll see. She’s great.’ The soldier has no chance to say more. He’s interrupted by the captain’s voice coming in over the radio. ‘We’re pulling in by the field on the right. Everybody exit the vehicles. Extinguish all lights. It’s time for a hike.’

  A moment later the truck swings over beside the two others.

  ‘Off we pop,’ says Karim, and as everybody rushes to obey, she turns back to Anto, ‘Stay put,’ she warns him. ‘We may be all night.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘And let there be no sneaking after us. Some of the boys and girls are a little flighty and might shoot you. We’d all be devastated by the mistake of course.’

  ‘Uh, of course.’

  Anto’s not the sort to sneak. Not like poor Squeaky Emma or Megan. He’ll hang out all night in the hopes that in the morning they’ll send him home again, or at least let him know where Nessa went. Oh, where is she? He’s hardly had a second to think of her all day.

  The soldiers pile out of the truck and not one of them is speaking now, apart from the odd muttered prayer. Anto slides down the empty seats to look out of the flap. A full moon shows him moss-covered dry-stone walls with men and women clambering over them, ripping themselves free from brambles without so much as a curse.

  What could possibly be out here? he wonders.

  Time passes. Enough for the moon to rise a finger in the sky. He’s starving.

  Since … since his experience, he needs so much more food than he used to. His arm needs it. Or so the doctors tell him. He’s hungry enough to eat the wooden benches, to chew on the leather straps, for all that he’s a vegetarian. But in the end what drives him outside is the shivering. The truck was never meant to stay warm, and the soldiers didn’t think to leave him so much as a blanket.

  He jumps up and down a few times on the gritty ice of the roadside. He windmills his normal arm and does some of the back exercises the doctors gave him while his breath forms clouds through chattering teeth. The only distraction is the sight of a rabbit, and then another, running through a gap in the wall and sprinting across the road.

  Anto laughs aloud. Are rabbits even nocturnal? Nessa would know, culchie that she is. He adds that question to the growing list of jokes and endearments he’s been saving up for her. But then the rabbits fall right to the back of the queue as another pair of shadows expose themselves to the moonlight. ‘Badgers!’ he cries. ‘By Crom! By Danú!’

  And now a whole flood of animals are squeezing themselves past the wall: fieldmice, a fox, more rabbits, something that might be a weasel or a pine marten or Crom knows what. Above him are crows and bats and birds of every size and shape and slowly, slowly, Anto’s delight fades.

  The infestation squad. Was it named for all these animals? Certainly, the wildlife of the countryside thrives now that both Ireland’s population and its industry are dying. But even a city boy like Anto knows something is terribly wrong here.

  In the distance, far across the fields, a great crump sounds. Two more follow, each accompanied by a flash on the horizon. Next come tiny pops and cracks, like the snapping of twigs. And now the ground shakes through the thin soles of Anto’s shoes. It’s a rhythm, somehow familiar: the pounding, panicked heartbeat of a dying land. And in the moonlight Anto sees it: an inkblot that grows enormously quickly even as the tremors intensify.

  It’s just another fleeing animal, he thinks. What else could it be? But then it reaches the edge of the field, and the dry-stone wall explodes. Rocks bigger than his head smash through the cab of the nearest truck, ripping apart the shrieking metal, shaking it on its axles. Other stones hurtle over the icy ground as though shot by a cannon, spraying splinters as they skip across the road.

  And then silence.

  Except for the breathing. A great bellows.

  Anto finds himself on hands and knees with no memory of falling. Blood drips from his scalp and he realizes then that a stone must have clipped him. He crawls over to the wreckage, pulls himself up and looks round the edge of it.

  The first truck stands completely unharmed, but the second has been thrown right into the next field. Anto doesn’t spare it a thought – how can he? – because all his attention is taken up by the bull. Its mighty boulder of a head whips from side to side in what must be fury, while thick mucus dribbles from nostrils that could hold a man’s fist.

  The boy has seen minibuses that are smaller.

  Moonlight glitters off its hide. Some of that is sweat, and some of it is darker, pooling on the ground beside it. It takes one step – away from Anto, thank God! – and then another. Limping. But a shot comes out of the darkness of the field and Anto fancies he can see where it hits the creature in the buttock. The bull roars. Anto cries out at the sound of it, stumbling backwards even as the beast whirls around and sees him there.

  It charges: a tank of flesh. Its twisted horns are longer than he is. It barges through the wreckage to get to him even as he flings himself out of its path and scrambles away. The monster skids on the icy surface; makes ruins of another wall before wheeling around to take a second run at him. More shots come, worse than the sting of any horsefly, each creating its own geyser of blood, so that the monster roars and spins in search of the enemy
, finding none except, again, the boy.

  ‘It’s not me,’ Anto says to it. He’s used to terror, yet that’s not what he feels as it moves towards him again. The bull isn’t charging now because it can’t. But it’s not giving up.

  Bullets ripple against its hide. Its breath bubbles and it must be thinking – if such a beast can think at all, it must be thinking – I’ll take one; I’ll take just one down with me. And Anto weeps to see its bravery and its pain, for how is it any different from a child that is hunted in the Grey Land? And he feels a kinship with it. Of course he does! Because a bull this size is no natural thing. No more natural than he is himself. Twisted by cruel hands to become a monster. Turned violent and dangerous.

  It bellows suddenly, a sound of pain, betrayal, fury. Then it lunges, its head thrusting forward with the weight and power of a wrecking ball. Anto gets his huge arm in the way and is flung towards the dry-stone walls of the field from which the monster emerged.

  His clothes shred against the frosty ground. He’s bleeding everywhere. But just as Nabil would have wanted, he rolls immediately on to his feet, facing the poor beast.

  It staggers after him, leaving a dark river behind it. More fluid leaks from sad, fist-sized eyes.

  ‘Boy,’ somebody says. Karim, he thinks. She’s speaking calmly and quietly. ‘Be so kind as to get out of the way. Slowly, yes? No sudden movements. Just … step aside and we’ll do the rest.’

  ‘No,’ he says. Instead of getting out of the way, he walks towards the bull, his big arm held in front, but not as a threat. He wants to show it something. I’m you. I’m like you.

  ‘Boy!’ Karim’s voice has anger in it. Menace too. ‘We’ll have to shoot. By Crom, I mean it!’ And she does. All his senses are hyper-aware. He can hear even the sounds of rifle stocks fitting into shoulders. The shifting of leather straps.

  The monster pauses to consider Anto’s arm, caught between goring him and turning aside. Its eyes, its huge eyes, are pools of pain and madness and fading hope.

  Then, like an enormous sack, it simply settles to the ground, emitting a long, slow moan. Even now, it clings to life. One eye swivels to follow Anto as he kneels next to the head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, stroking it. ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

  In the field behind him, one of the women laughs. ‘By all the saints! If he wants a pet, let him get himself a dog.’

  They take him back in the only working truck, leaving most of the soldiers to start walking.

  ‘Never get in our way again!’ Karim says. ‘I ought to break your darling little face for you.’ She looks like she could. Like she’s had practice. Then she snorts. ‘You’re shivering. Corless, give him your jacket.’

  ‘But he’s still bleeding!’

  ‘That, my dear, is why he’s not getting mine. Now hand it over.’

  Corless opens his mouth to object further, but then he slides across to place the jacket around the boy’s shoulders himself. ‘I hate Meath,’ he grumbles. ‘It always goes to pot up here.’

  The jacket is warm enough to smother the shivers. Anto thinks it strange that the only two sergeants he’s ever met have been women. Taaft and Karim. Both quite short; both harsh of tongue. But Karim’s manner is a necessary shell, he thinks, that surrounds a core of genuine love. It also serves to keep the madness of her visit to the Grey Land at bay, and maybe also the sadness from the loss of her children. Taaft’s cynicism, he suspects, is all real.

  But for now, all Anto wants to talk about is the bull. ‘How … how did it get that way? Are animals Called too?’

  It’s Ryan who answers. ‘It was grazing, that’s all, lad.’ He shrugs his narrow shoulders, careful not to brush his wing stubs against the back of the bench. ‘There must have been a Fairy Fort in those fields. Maybe nobody recognized it because it blended in with the landscape. Or maybe the farmers here didn’t report it during the surveys. Probably trying to keep their land from confiscation.’

  ‘But … but if there was a Fairy Fort there, other animals must have eaten the grass too at some stage.’

  ‘Sure. I suppose so,’ Ryan twitches, biting his lips with small, straight teeth. ‘I mean, yeah, Crom knows a lot of animals must have been exposed. But it’s all very random. The one thing I can tell you is this: we get sent out every single month now. I mean, it used to be only once or twice a year.’

  Corless nods. ‘Well, you’d know why it’s increasing if you read the Testimonies.’

  ‘Oh!’ Ryan waves his skinny hands, ‘You shouldn’t read those, my friend. They always make you de-pressed.’

  ‘Well, if you’d read them, Ryan, you’d see how the Sídhe keep boasting about the two worlds getting closer all the time. And if you ask me, the closer they get, the more the evil of the Grey Land leaks into Ireland to mess it up. That’s what I think.’

  ‘But the bull wasn’t evil,’ says Anto. ‘He didn’t want to hurt anyone. He was just afraid.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt anyone either,’ says Corless. ‘But you shouldn’t have protected it. We’re at war, lad. We’re clinging on for our lives.’ And then, bizarrely, the big man ruffles Anto’s hair.

  ‘Rest assured, my dears,’ says Karim. ‘Next time that child indulges his sweet nature, it will be my pleasure to put a bump in that perfect nose of his. But I still don’t know why he was sent here. I don’t think even our great captain knows. It’s all too ridiculous.’

  ‘Anto’s brave though,’ says Ryan. He never seems to look at Karim directly. ‘You gotta give him that, Sergeant. Standing between the squad and its prey.’

  ‘Brave is no use to me,’ she says, ‘if he hasn’t got the pluck to hurt a fly.’

  Anto hangs his head. He wants their admiration, longs to boast about the Sídhe he killed when he thought Nessa had died. But his whole body convulses with revulsion at the thought of it. He closes his eyes, looking for an image of Nessa to help him relax for the rest of the journey.

  The Professor

  Nessa wakes to the smell of stale teeth, a weight on her chest.

  A face presses right up against hers. ‘I could hurt you,’ says a squeaky voice. A white tongue moistens cracked lips and for a moment it’s as though Nessa is in the Grey Land again, with one of its creatures perched on her belly. A head-butt might be the best thing now, the easiest way out, except she has no room to swing back. And her arms are pinned at the wrist.

  ‘But you’re right, sweetie,’ the stranger says. A woman. ‘Why would I fight you?’ She climbs away from Nessa. ‘You and Annie’s going to be best friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘You’re … you’re Annie?’

  The woman grins, and squeezes a pair of ample breasts. ‘Well, I’m hardly Jeremy or Michael with these beauties, am I?’ She’s about forty years old and Nessa spots three separate gaps in her teeth. Her every breath comes with a slight wheeze.

  ‘They brought me in an hour ago. You slept so sweet, baby, and they told me to turn out the light, but I didn’t.’

  ‘What … what time is it?’ asks Nessa in English. This woman comes from an era when almost no Sídhe was spoken in the country, when the enemy’s language was still being pieced together and barely three in a hundred teenagers made it to adulthood.

  ‘We’re to share everything, you and Annie. We’re to be best friends.’

  Best friends? Nessa wants to laugh at the thought. Her best friend is Megan – was Megan. A red-headed terror. An absolute joy to be around. Or she would have been, if Nessa hadn’t spent half her time worrying what she might do next. At school Nessa never said anything bad about anybody. She didn’t have to, because Megan always got in there first, her tongue like a whip soaked in acid. But funny too; she was always funny.

  And when the girl was lost to the Call, Nessa had Anto to turn to. Quiet after his time in the Grey Land, but still charming underneath it, still adoring and protective, although it was really Nessa who looked after him. And she still can look after him. She knows she can. Oh, Crom! Her throa
t constricts.

  ‘That’s right,’ the older woman says, misunderstanding. ‘You’ll be safe with Annie.’

  Nessa wonders that no guards have seen the light through the little square grate on their cell door, but nobody comes, just as they didn’t come when Melanie was practically the centre of a riot.

  They really don’t care about us. The thought brings a shiver as she remembers the warden’s threat.

  The strange woman has no intention of letting Nessa get back to sleep. ‘Annie woke you up, sweet thing, because she thought you’d want to see the midnight visits.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘You ain’t been here before.’ The woman grins. ‘But Annie has seen it all, so she has. So now I’m gonna turn off the light, OK? We have a few minutes to train our eyes to see what they must see. But not a word, baby. Not a word from now on, OK?’

  Nessa nods. The room goes completely black and the only sound is the wheezing of Annie’s breath.

  How long do they wait like this? Nessa can’t tell. It might be an hour or even two. Yet those who have trained to be hunted have learned endless patience for the times when predators fumble for them in the dark.

  She hears the rattling of keys first and sneaks over to the door. Annie’s wheezing and bad breath follow along.

  ‘Not a word,’ Annie whispers.

  Flashlights appear down at the main corridor. Dark figures approach one of the cells with a cylinder on wheels. They insinuate a tube in through the grille and twirl a knob. The hissing of gas follows.

  Moments later, two limp bodies are carried out of the cell before the door is closed again.

  ‘Where are they taking them?’ asks Nessa, fearing the worst.

  ‘Oh, some are released back to their families. Like Annie was last time. But then they say I messed up again, even though anybody would have taken that bicycle. They left it right out in the open with no lock! In the open!’ She’s not bothering to whisper any more, and from another cell a sleepy voice growls a command in Sídhe to shut up.