Total Conflict Read online

And then he started crying.

  Sol’s map reading was hopeless; we were miles from where he thought we were. The road we’d been following took one more sharp left turn and opened into a farmyard. The house had been hit hard. You could see where at least two pods had done their best to clean the place out.

  The boy, Alf, had abandoned the house when the first attack had taken his parents but had made himself a surprisingly comfortable shelter high up in one of the barns.

  It was well camouflaged, we’d never have found it without his help and even then we had a hard time scrambling up after his tiny frame.

  The space was big enough for all three of us to lie down, but though Solomon and I were exhausted, the boy just wanted to chat.

  He’d been alone for a long time.

  After an hour or so of constant interrogation I tried to shush him with the threat that a pod might hear us talking.

  “There’s no monsters around today,” he said, cocking his head, listening. “I can hear them when they come.”

  I looked at Solomon, who just raised an eyebrow and shrugged. Sol’s ears were sharp – his ability to hear the creatures before they heard us had kept us alive for the last six months. Perhaps the boy had the same gift.

  “Anyway,” the boy said, “we can see from here if they’re coming this way.”

  He showed me where he’d cut out little viewing slits in the roof of the barn then disguised them. From up here he had a panoramic view of the surrounding fields.

  The boy was right: nothing was moving out there except the low grey clouds that swept westward.

  The boy had plenty of food, too – apples and vegetables from the garden behind the house, and jars of homemade raspberry jam. Solomon sat for over an hour, solemnly dipping his finger into the sugary mush slurping it up, He rolled his eyes and moaned softly with each new mouthful.

  “I used to take this for granted,” he said once the jar was finally empty.

  The day went by slowly. Alf, exhausted at last, fell asleep with his head in my lap.

  I stared down at him, feeling totally helpless.

  I looked up. Solomon was smiling ruefully, knowing what was to come but refusing to meet my gaze.

  “We can’t leave him here,” I said.

  “He might be safer here,” Sol said.

  “Nowhere is safe.”

  Sol nodded.

  “I can’t leave him on his own.”

  “What if he doesn’t want to come?”

  “He will.”

  Eventually I slept.

  And that night the three of us set off. Heading north, to where it was colder and where, rumours said, there were still safe places.

  We rarely managed more than four or five miles a night – we were being cautious, finding places to bed down for the day early on, setting out only when we were sure the creatures had retreated. The going was slow, but the first chill of autumn turned the trees gold and lifted our spirits. Dusk was coming earlier, darkness lasted longer and it was getting colder. We felt that the planet was on our side.

  After a week we came to a small village and found a shop that was almost intact. We helped ourselves to the stock on the shelves and made a little camp.

  We hadn’t seen or heard from the creatures for days. We had full bellies and we were feeling good. We were happy.

  Solomon shook me awake. The sun was shining straight down through the gaps created by missing slates in the roof, so I guessed it was around noon. I turned to Alf, reaching a hand across to cover his mouth in case he made a sound but he was already awake, staring at me.

  He raised a single finger to his lips.

  I smiled.

  Then we sat and waited. I could hear the scuttling of rats and the steady drip of water into a puddle from a broken pipe. It was hot and I was thirsty and that water, no matter how stale, was very tempting.

  The sun moved slowly across the sky, pools of light from the holes in the roof shifting across the floor. We were in an attic that was perched precariously on top of the slumped ruin of a suburban house.

  How long passed before I heard the creature’s distant screech? It felt like hours but it might have been fifteen minutes, though I never doubted they were coming. Sol’s ability to pick out the high-pitched sounds the monsters made had saved our lives often enough. I kept silent and very still.

  Alf had heard them too. I felt him shivering next to me, but he jammed his tongue between his teeth to stop them chattering. The day was too warm for him to be cold. I reached my hand across and placed it on his chest. He gripped it tightly.

  I hoped they might slip off to the side of our little village. The resistance sometimes baited places like this; a vulnerable little hamlet stuffed full of thermobarics could take out everything for half a mile and was enough to make even the creatures cautious. But these things seemed confident today. We heard their thump and squeal and shriek as they came closer and closer.

  The creatures used sound. They used it to communicate, just as we did, though I never met anyone who claimed to understand what they said to each other, constantly chittering and squealing and mewling.

  They also used sound to see – echo-location, like bats – even though they had things that looked like eyes. I’d heard people say that you could stand still in front of one and they’d slither right past so long as you didn’t make a sound. I never felt the urge to find out whether or not that was true.

  And they used sound as a weapon.

  The first one was almost right below us when it boomed.

  We’d known it was coming. The only time a pod was silent was just before a boom and just after. We’d known it was coming, but still it was like being smashed in the chest by a hammer. We’d known it was coming, but it was still hard not to grunt or moan or gasp.

  And that would have been death.

  All around us we heard the things pounce. A spear-like tentacle crashed through the floor of our hiding place, impaling a surprised rat through the throat before flashing away again. Across the road we heard a dog yelp and something that, for a horrible instant, sounded like a baby’s squeal but was probably only a cat, or maybe a fox. The things snuffled, unhappy with their pickings.

  The second boom came quickly, faster than I’d expected. Too soon. We weren’t ready.

  “Unff!”

  Alf? I looked down, gripped with a sudden terror that mixed an almost maternal desire to protect the boy with the shocking awareness he had his arms wrapped tightly around me, making us both a target.

  The boy gazed up and I looked into his wide, wise eyes. He shook his head.

  Not the boy. I felt relief, then a sudden, cold shower of sickening certainty.

  Sol.

  I turned my head.

  The look of surprise on his face slipped into one of disappointment.

  “Ah fu-”

  Three spears splintered the slates and wood of the roof. One slammed through Sol’s skull, two pinned him in the chest. They whipped back. Sol disappeared, leaving just an after-image of his shredded body and a mist of blood.

  The boy and I watched but made not a single sound.

  For hours the pod circled our building, warbling their delight at their catch and booming, hoping for more, but the boy and I were still.

  As afternoon turned to evening they seemed to move away, though every now and then one would suddenly unleash a boom nearby. The desire to move became an urgent pain and then a constant agony, but we sat motionless and silent. The sun went down and the village became still, but we did not move. Only when it was fully night and the moon was high and clear and frost stung the air did I allow myself to shift.

  Alf smiled at me, then gasped, then sobbed and collapsed forward.

  His trousers were slashed open across his hip and his leg was soaked with blood. One of the spears that killed Sol must have glanced off him.

  “I didn’t cry!” He said.

  I gave him a kiss on the cheek.

  My first instinct was to flee
that village as fast as I could, but Alf couldn’t walk and we had plenty of supplies.

  So that night I ferried our stuff across to another attic, because I couldn’t stand to look at the dark stain of Sol’s blood on the floor, and then carried the boy across.

  In the new attic I washed out the boy’s wound and stitched it up as best I could. Through it all the boy bit his lip but never whimpered or cried. No sound left his lips except, when it was over, he whispered “Thank you” before falling asleep.

  The creatures didn’t return, but Alf developed a fever and the wound on his hip turned red and swollen.

  That night I did something I hadn’t risked in nearly two years – I lit a fire, just a small one in a metal bin downstairs. The warmth and flickering light were shocking. I boiled some water over the fire and used it to wash out Alf’s wound. I’d found some antiseptic cream in the little shop and slathered that thickly onto Alf’s hip, then wrapped it in gauze and tape.

  Alf’s temperature rose. He slept night and day for a week. I tried to feed him and give him sugary drinks but most of it seemed to end up on the floor.

  A lot of the time there was nothing I could do but wait and watch.

  He never moved. He never cried out. He never made any sound, even when the fever was at its worst. He was silent and still.

  And, as his fever broke and he started to come round, I began to realise something.

  These creatures, whatever they were, wherever they’d come from, they had the power to wipe us all out. They’d destroyed our cities and our armies and shattered our civilisation and left us scrabbling in the dark.

  They could wipe us out.

  But they hadn’t.

  Those of us they left alive survived because they thought we could do them no harm and because they enjoyed having us to hunt.

  They believed we were beaten.

  But they didn’t realise what they were creating.

  After ten days Alf opened his eyes and smiled weakly up at me.

  “Was I quiet?”

  I nodded, and wiped a strand of hair out of his eyes.

  “You were a proper little soldier,” I said.

  They were making us stronger.

  They were making the children who would one day defeat them. All over the world children were learning to use silence as a defence and silence as a weapon. One day, it might not be soon, but one day we would become the hunters again and the booming beasts would pay for their mistake.

  The War Artist

  Tony Ballantyne

  My name is Brian Garlick and I carry an easel into battle.

  Well, in reality I carry a sketch book and several cameras, but I like to give people a picture of me they can understand.

  The sergeant doesn’t understand me, though. He’s been staring since we boarded the flier in Marseilles. Amongst the nervous conversation of the troops, their high-pitched laughter like spumes of spray on a restless sea, he is a half-submerged rock. He’s focussing on me with dark eyes and staring, staring, staring. As the voices fade to leave no sound but the whistle of the wind and the creak of the pink high-visibility straps binding the equipment bundles, he’s still staring, and I know he’s going to undermine me. I’ve seen that look before, though less often than you might expect. Most soldiers are interested in what I do, but there are always those who seem to take my presence as an insult to their profession. Here it comes…

  “I don’t get it,” he says. “Why do we need a war artist?”

  The other soldiers are watching. Eyes wide, their breath fast and shallow, but they’ve just found something to distract them from the coming fight. Well, I have my audience; it’s time to make my pitch to try and get them on my side for the duration of the coming action.

  “That’s a good question,” I reply. I smile, and I start to paint a picture. A picture of the experienced old hand, the unruffled professional.

  “Someone once said a good artist paints what can’t be painted. Well, that’s what a war artist is supposed to do.”

  “You paint what can’t be painted,” says the Sergeant. It’s to his credit he doesn’t make the obvious joke. For the moment he’s intrigued, and I take advantage of the fact.

  “They said Breughel could paint the thunder,” I say. “You can paint lightning, sure, but can you make the viewer hear the thunder? Can you make them feel that rumble, deep in their stomach? That’s the job of a war artist, to paint what can’t be painted. You can photograph the battle, you can show the blood and the explosions, but does that picture tell the full story? I try to capture the excitement, the fear, the terror.” I look around the rows of pinched faces, eyes shiny. “I try to show the heroism.”

  I’ve composed my picture now, I surreptitiously snap it. That veneer of pride that overlays the hollow fear filling the flier as it travels through the skies.

  The sergeant sneers, the mood evaporates.

  “What do you know about all that?”

  I see the bitter smiles of the other soldiers. So I paint another picture. I lean forward and speak in a low voice.

  “I’ve been doing this for six years. I was in Tangiers after the first Denial of Service attack. I was in Barcelona when the entire Spanish banking system was wiped out; I was in Geneva when the Swiss government network locked. I know what we’re flying into, I know what it’s like to visit a State targeted by hackers.”

  There are some approving nods at this. Or is it just the swaying of the craft as we jump an air pocket? Either way, the sergeant isn’t going to be convinced.

  “Maybe you’ve seen some action,” he concedes. “Maybe you’ve been shot at. That doesn’t make you one of us. You take off the fatigues and you’re just another civilian. You won’t get jostled in the street back home, or refused service in shops. You won’t have people calling you a butcher, when all you’ve tried to do is defend their country.”

  This gets the troops right back on his side. I see the memory of the taunts and the insults written on their faces. Too many people were against us getting involved in the Eurasian war, numbers that have only grown since the fighting started. There’s a cold look in the troops’ eyes. But I can calm them, I know what to say.

  “That’s why the government sent me here. A war artist communicates the emotions their patron chooses. That’s why war artists are nearly always to be found acting in an official capacity. I’m here to tell your side of the story, to counteract those images you see on the web.”

  That’s the truth, too. Well, almost the truth. It’s enough to calm them down. They’re on my side. Nearly all of them, anyway. The sergeant is still not convinced, but I don’t think he ever will be.

  “I don’t like it,” he says. “You’ve said it yourself, what you’re painting isn’t real war…”

  All that’s academic now as the warning lights start to flash: orange sheets of fire engulfing the flier’s interior. I photograph the scene, dark bodies lost in the background, faces like flame in the foreground, serious, stern, brave faces, awaiting the coming battle. That’s the image I will create, anyway.

  “Get ready!” calls the sergeant.

  There’s a sick feeling in my stomach as we drop towards the battle and I wonder, how can I show that?

  A shriek of engines, a surge of deceleration and a jolt and we’re down and the rear ramp is falling…

  We land in a city somewhere in southern Europe. Part of what used to be Italy, I guess. Red bricks, white plaster, green tiles. I hear gunfire, but it’s some distance away. I smell smoke, I hear the sound of feet on the metal ramp, the rising howl of the flier’s engines as it prepares to lift off again. I see buildings, a narrow road leading uphill to a blue sky and a yellow sun. I smell something amidst the smoke, something that seems incongruous in this battle scene. Something that reminds me of parties and dinners and dates with women. It takes me a moment in all the confusion of movement to realise what it is.

  Red wine. It’s running down the street. Not a euphemism, there’s a lor
ry at the top of the hill, on its side, the front smashed where it’s run into a wall, the driver’s arm drooping from the open window, the silver clasp of his watch popped open so it hangs like a bracelet… Jewels of broken glass are scattered on the road, diamonds from the windshield, rubies from the truck’s lights and emeralds from the broken bottles that are spilling red blood down the street. It’s such a striking image that, instinctively, I begin snapping.

  The soldiers are flattening themselves against the vine-clad walls that border the street, the chameleon material of their suits changing to dusty white, their guns humming as they autoscan the surrounding area. Their half-seen figures are edging their way up and down the hill, changing colour, becoming the red of doors and the dusty dark of windows. They’re sizing up the area, doing their job, just like me, cameras in my hand, in my helmet, at my belt. Sizing up the scene.

  The peacefulness of the street is at odds with the tension we feel, and I need to capture that. The lazy smell of the midday heat mixed with wine. Lemons hanging waxy from the trees leaning over the white walls, paint peeling from window frames. A soldier pauses to touch the petals trailing from a hanging basket and I photograph that.

  As if in response to my action, someone opens fire from up the street and there is a whipsnap of movement all around. The sergeant shouts something into a communicator, the flier whines into the air, guns rattling, I see thin wisps of cloud emerge from the doorway of a house up the hill. Someone fired upon us, and now the flier’s returned the compliment. Incendiaries, I guess, seeing the orange-white sheets that ripple and flicker up the plaster walls of the building.

  I snap the picture, but it’s not what I’m after: it’s too insubstantial. If I were to paint this, the explosion would be much bigger and blooming and orange. It would burst upon the viewer: a heroic response to a cowardly attack.

  Then I see the children, and the image I’m forming collapses. Children and women are tumbling from the house. The sound of the flier, the crackle of the flames, they paint a picture in my mind that doesn’t involve children. But the truth is unfolding. There were civilians in there! The camera captures their terrified, wide-eyed stares, but it can’t capture that weeping, keening noise they make. It can’t capture the lurching realisation that someone just made a huge mistake.