The Invasion Read online

  The squad pulls away from him. His friend Ryan runs in a crouch. Karim and Ellie and Corless, and two brothers called Murphy, take the lead.

  Only the top of the monster can be seen around a curve in the road, but he can hear explosions ahead. The tarmac shakes under the soles of his clumsy boots.

  And then the enemy is staggering back towards them, spewing gore from rocket-torn holes in its torso. It moves more awkwardly than before, with one of the legs shorter than it used to be. But this damaged limb is now to prove the final undoing of the squad. The Murphys disappear under one bloody foot. Another man is kicked clear across the fields, like a soccer ball. The return sweep brushes Karim off to one side where she lies curled over an injury. And

  Anto knows, as sure as he knows his own name, as sure as he knows Nessa’s face, that the onrushing hindlegs are going to obliterate the sergeant as though she had never been. Anto runs faster than he has ever run in his life. He dives, his massive arm bouncing off the surface of the road like a skipped stone. But he catches Karim on the way past and the two of them roll off to the side before he has time to register the pain. Even as that’s beginning to hit him, Karim, her face like a map made entirely of scratches, presses something into his good hand. A grenade.

  ‘Jush … jush … pull the pin, little boy … pull, and throw.’

  He obeys. It’s straightforward enough. The pin comes free. His giant’s arm, torn and bloody, takes aim and fires it off. It arcs high and through the air.

  ‘Supposhed to aim at … at its legs …’ Karim manages.

  But her complaints die when the Sídhe driver is blown from the monster’s back. The few remaining squad members stand around, their jaws agape.

  ‘By Crom!’ says Corless. ‘That throw must have been sixty metres!’ Not to mention the added height needed to reach the top of the monster.

  ‘Impossible!’ somebody else whispers.

  And the creature, riderless now and lame, bashes off through the fields towards the bog that lies beyond.

  Anto watches for a minute, but then Ryan cries out. The birdlike man has only now realized that his sergeant has been injured and he comes running over. She stops him in his tracks with a murderous look that wrinkles the tattooed names of her children on her cheek. Then, she turns to Anto. ‘Here,’ she wheezes. ‘Come here, boy.’

  He winces as she grabs his face in her rough hands. But all she does is pull him down to plant a kiss on his forehead. Then she’s out cold.

  ‘You’re one of us now,’ says Corless, who’s standing nearby. ‘She does that with all the new recruits. You’re in.’

  But in what? The infestation squad?

  Not without Nessa. He needs to find her more urgently than ever.

  Ryan still stands where Karim stopped him as twitches ripple throughout his body. Other squad members lie smashed and scattered across the surface of the road.

  And there’s a dead Sídhe lying there too, his body shredded by the grenade. Did Anto do this? Did his arm do it?

  But there’s something else to think about here. He’s only half a day’s walk from the school. Nobody is in any state to stop him leaving. Yet his own legs refuse to cooperate.

  He can’t move at all until Corless takes him by the shoulders.

  ‘That was some throw, boy. But come on. You need stitches on that shoulder and a good long sleep.’

  ‘Yes,’ the boy mumbles. They’ll all have to sleep, won’t they? That’s when he’ll make his escape.

  Fingers

  Three minutes and four seconds. That’s how long the Called are missing. Then they come back, living or dead; twisted into hideous shapes or bewildered and whole. But return they always do.

  Or at least they used to.

  Nessa makes it to the door of Melanie’s cell to find Annie standing there, listening to the countdown. Ciara has the watch she was calling for earlier and she cries out the last few seconds: ‘Three … Two … One …’

  The count must be wrong, because there’s no sign of Angela. But more minutes pass and a great clamour rises up among the prisoners, because now there can be no doubt. Angela was Called – what else can it be when somebody disappears like that in front of so many witnesses, their clothing in a heap on the floor? She was Called, but she has not returned.

  ‘Get back! Everybody to your cells! NOW!’

  Guards have come through in a wedge of shields, their truncheons and sprays at the ready. But this isn’t a riot and nobody resists them.

  ‘She was too old,’ Annie says. ‘The little sweetheart! That’s why they didn’t give her back. It’s never happened before.’

  Nessa’s not so sure. Despite twenty-five years of Testimonies, holes and mysteries abound.

  Annie hangs by the cell door, her breath wheezing, her eyes pressed to the hatch. ‘Oh, look at them now!’ she says.

  Nessa steps up to join her. She barely knew Angela, but she’s feeling terribly uneasy all the same. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘A vacuum cleaner of course. You not seen one of them before?’

  ‘Only in movies. We don’t get a lot of electricity in Donegal any more.’ The machine moans like a tortured giant.

  Oh, poor Angela. They think the Sídhe have turned you into a puff of dust and now they can just suck you out of the air.

  But Nessa is sure the explanation must be otherwise.

  ‘You all right, sweetheart?’ Annie asks her.

  ‘Fine,’ Nessa says. But she has to force the words out through jaws that are almost locked together. Every muscle in her body is tense, ready to fight, despite the absence of a visible threat. She knows Angela’s failure to return is all part of a plan whose intended outcome is her own destruction. Something that will make her envy anybody who ends up as a mere cloud of dust. It’s been promised, hasn’t it?

  ‘Annie,’ she whispers. ‘The ground … Is the ground trembling?’

  ‘No, babe. No. Annie feels nothing like that.’ But then the woman cries, ‘Oh, sacred heart!’ and falls back, for a guard has appeared right at the door of their cell.

  ‘You. Doherty. Come with me. Annie, get to your bunk and stay there.’

  ‘Annie doesn’t like being locked in with nobody to talk to.’

  ‘Well, read a book for a change.’ They both know there are no books.

  The guards don’t bother handcuffing Nessa this time. There are five of them and a fourteen-year-old who has to limp to keep up, but who refuses to complain when they walk too fast.

  The last time she visited Warden Barry, the guards came into the office with her – he’s not stupid after all. But today they wave her ahead and close the door behind her. The warden has his own bodyguard with him, and Nessa’s blood boils with fury when she sees who it is: the same tall, muscle-bound detective who arrested her off the bus that was supposed to bring her to Anto.

  His startling blue eyes never blink as they bore into her skull. He needs a shave and a wash. His trench coat looks like he slept in it a week running and ate his dinner off it too. The whole room reeks with his sweat and, like her, he has a look of anger about him.

  ‘Detective Cassidy –’ Warden Barry mops his brow – ‘I believe you already know—’

  ‘Doherty!’ the detective says. ‘Doherty. They haven’t put you in the boat yet?’

  ‘She has two days left to confess,’ the warden says. He is tall enough to look the detective in the eye, but he keeps the heavy desk between them and grips it with both hands. ‘That poor girl has been informed how to earn an extension to her life. She—’

  The detective takes two strides to stand right in front of Nessa, who refuses to move out of his path. Perhaps he intends to pick her up by the neck? He’ll lose an eye if he does, because she’s not the kind of girl to waste time trying to loosen his grip, or to kick feebly like a puppet. Not that kind of girl at all. Already she’s planning the best ways to hurt this giant.

  Luckily for him, he doesn’t make the mistake of touching her.

&nb
sp; ‘The Nation doesn’t have two days to wait for your confession,’ he says. ‘All over the country, traitors are rotting us from within. This week alone we uncovered three. The first was a veteran in a college, if you can believe it! He returned from the Grey Land unharmed and he was making his own digitalis to poison the students. The other two had no orders yet. But one, the filth! He had a contact. An old woman with an actual Sídhe living inside her …’

  Like Frankenstein, Nessa thinks, from school. The poor man had become little more than a covering of flesh over a Sídhe spy. The detective nods at the recognition on her face.

  ‘I don’t have the warden’s patience,’ he says. ‘If you won’t tell me who your contact is right now, I’ll snap your neck.’

  Warden Barry slaps at his desk. ‘You will not!’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘The … the Nation … The professor! The professor is interested in this one.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure she is! Yet another traitor we’re wasting resources on! But the professor’s not the only one interested in her, is she?’ Detective Cassidy swings his intimidating, unpredictable bulk back towards the desk. ‘You said the ambassador spoke to this girl too. Specifically spoke to her. What did he say?’

  ‘It was … it was too quiet. The equipment never picks up his words.’

  ‘Well, traitor?’ Cassidy is facing Nessa again. ‘What did the ambassador say to you?’

  ‘He wants me dead. Like you do.’

  ‘How convenient that nobody heard it!’

  ‘The professor must have heard it. Angela too …’

  ‘Angela who is gone? Called and never returned!’ Cassidy turns to Warden Barry. He waves his mighty right fist in some random direction. ‘It’s time you put that professor in a boat. Time you let me have the so-called ambassador for questioning. We can waste no more resources on this entire prison. Things are becoming crazy out there.’

  The warden mutters, ‘I believe infestations are intensifying somewhat.’

  ‘Somewhat? Somewhat!’ The detective’s voice drips with scorn. One massive finger points at the warden, hunching behind his desk as though it is the wall of a fortress. ‘I will question this traitor. Here. Now. I will break her bones until she tells the truth.’

  ‘You will not!’

  Nessa looks around the room for a weapon and sees plenty of them, but they’re all on the warden’s desk – paperweights, letter openers, pencils, an inkwell. Too far for her to reach.

  ‘This is madness,’ she says. She’s good at controlling her voice, but can’t prevent the damp patches forming under her arms, or the light sheen she knows is on her forehead. ‘You think I betrayed my own people in the Grey Land to save my life? If I’m cowardly enough to do that, surely I’d tell you everything now, wouldn’t I? I’d have told you the day I came in.’

  ‘These traitors are clever!’ the detective says. ‘They’ll say anything.’

  ‘So, why amn’t I saying anything then?’ Nessa asks. ‘Why don’t I just make stuff up?’ And she pauses, in confusion, because it’s true. Why doesn’t she just invent something? By Crom, how she wants to live! Her close encounter with the horrors of the Grey Land has only confirmed that.

  She shouldn’t have allowed herself to be distracted, for in that instant Cassidy grabs her by the neck and pulls her close. ‘What strange skin they left you with, your Sídhe masters.’ Of course she goes for his eyes, fast as a whip. And he, just as quick, avoids her scrabbling fingers before she can draw more than a single drop of blood.

  Here is a man, after all, who survived the horrors of the Grey Land in a time when nobody was prepared for them. He twists her around, one massive arm pressed against her neck, her left hand enveloped in his.

  ‘We are not animals!’ cries the warden, but Cassidy ignores him.

  ‘Who is your contact?’ the detective growls, his hand squeezing down on hers. ‘I just want a name. Who is it?’

  He’s done this before. The pressure is gentle at first, increasing in tiny increments. ‘It’ll be an old person,’ he says. ‘They’re always old. Their tongue might be grey. They’ll sweat a lot, as you’re doing now, and sometimes they forget for a little while who they’re supposed to be. You know one of these, don’t you?’

  Nessa gasps – she can’t help herself – the bones of her left hand are rubbing together, the pain suddenly so intense it’s almost all she can think about. Give him a name. Give him a name.

  ‘The … warden,’ she cries, ‘Warden Barry!’ as the man himself sputters in outrage.

  ‘Nice try. He’s a fool, but not quite doddery enough.’

  ‘The … professor …’

  ‘Listen, girl.’ She can’t help but listen, because he’s whispering right in her ear. ‘I’m going to break your little finger now, understand? You have betrayed our nation, you have—’

  She swings her head with all her might, smashing him in the face, but he doesn’t let go. He curses, his voice thick and shaken. ‘Nishe move, girl.’ He spits blood. Then he carries out his threat. She hears the snap three long heartbeats before the pain registers.

  ‘Don’t lie to me. We burn them, you see? Old men, old women. If you give us a name, we have to burn them to be sure. Don’t add murder to your other crimes.’

  ‘You what?’ Tears are streaming down her face. ‘You do what to them?’

  ‘Give me a name.’ He squeezes her broken finger. Her eyelids flutter, her jaw comes close to dislocating with the pain.

  ‘A name, girl.’

  ‘For … for you to burn …? No! No!’ And then she panics, years of control giving way as he takes a firm grip on her ring finger. ‘Please! I don’t know—’ Snap!

  ‘A name. Just one. Any one. I’ll have to stop hurting you to check them out. It’ll be a break for you. Just one name.’

  A pistol appears. Warden Barry is the one holding it, pointing it right at Cassidy’s head. ‘You will stop this now, Detective. I’ll … I’ll shoot.’

  ‘He won’t,’ Cassidy tells Nessa. ‘He’s not like you and me. He hasn’t seen it and never will. Unless it’s where weak old men go when they die.’ He takes hold of her middle finger. He says, ‘I’m not going to break this one. I’m going to wrench it right out of its socket.’

  ‘Cassidy!’ wails the warden, and everybody knows he won’t pull the trigger, that he doesn’t know how and the only voice that matters here, the only one, whispers right in Nessa’s ear. ‘Say goodbye to the finger. Say goodbye.’

  ‘Please,’ she says. She can remember no other English words. ‘Please. Please.’

  He speaks so, so gently. ‘A name, and I swear I’ll stop.’

  Oh, how she wants to obey him! She knows a few likely candidates. That crotchety farmer back home who threatens to set his dogs on Dad for Crom-knows-what distant offence. Ms Breen from school. The ticket seller at the bus station in Letterkenny. The half-deaf shop owner at Devenny’s. Any one of them uttered aloud will put an end to this, and if she thought Cassidy would find some harmless way to test them, their names would fly from her mouth. But the madman will kill them. She knows it. She knows he will burn them alive for the survival of the Nation. That’s the sort he is; the sort that’s running things these days.

  ‘Please …’

  And remarkably, the pressure eases and she finds her face against the chill floor, the agony in her two broken fingers coming like a knife with every rapid beat of her heart. The ground is vibrating too, as though in sympathy with her pain, as though a giant keeps hitting it with a hammer.

  ‘She’s innocent,’ says Cassidy. And he laughs. ‘Holy shit! There’s no other explanation. What she said earlier is true: they’re all cowards, the traitors. That’s why they betray us in the first place.’ He tightens the belt on his coat. ‘All right. I’m off to the next one. You can release the Doherty girl. I’m done with her.’

  ‘I can’t release her,’ says the warden, miserably. ‘The professor … the ambassador …’

  Cassidy
spits. He actually spits.

  Then his boots are standing right next to Nessa’s face.

  ‘Well done, girl,’ he says. ‘Keep serving the Nation, and perhaps we’ll meet again. I have more survivors to interview. All over the country.’

  He’s gone in a puff of foul air, replaced some time later by Warden Barry and the prison doctor. ‘Want me to give her something for the pain? I have some ibuprofen. It’s out of date of course …’

  ‘Please.’ Barry’s voice. ‘Give her anything we can afford. She … she didn’t deserve this. That monster’s gone off on his motorbike to torture somebody else.’

  Nessa closes her eyes and tears spill onto the floor. But like all good students of Boyle Survival College, she knows that to stay down is to die and she fights waves of agony to get to her feet again.

  She is lightheaded. She has the strangest feeling that no amount of broken bones can shake. A feeling that Angela isn’t lost at all, but is on her way home right now, and getting closer all the time.

  The Tunnel

  The doctor does as he’s told and patches Nessa up – two fingers on awkward splints. She feels feverish. She stumbles as the guards escort her from the warden’s office back towards the women’s cell block.

  ‘You all right, missy?’ one of the men asks.

  ‘Speak English!’ one of the others warns him. ‘Or they’ll think you’re conspiring with her.’

  ‘Oh, for Crom’s sake!’

  She doesn’t answer. The doctor didn’t give her the pills in the end. Instead it was willow tea, bitter enough to make her gag. It has helped a little with the pain, but her fingers still throb, and her head too. It feels like an army is trapped in her skull and they’re smashing their way out.