Garrick took aim with his weapon through the broken window pane, his clothes sticking to his skin in the unseasonably hot weather. Squinting, he clocked a group of five Chittrix further up the street outside, jointed black bodies moving with an elegant grace.

Scutters thronged through their feet like a rippling black carpet. On the shoulders of the Scutters were two large, rubbery pods poised in an obscene balancing act, gently bobbing their way down the street. Garrick had seen these pods before. They contained Chittrix pupae undergoing metamorphosis from bloated white larvae as chunky as a man’s waist into the viciously elegant creatures in front of him now.

The entourage proceeded down the street, heading north, sweeping from left to right with methodical detail, leaving no inch of the road unexamined. At their current pace, the Chittrix would be on them in five minutes.

He removed his face from the scope and rubbed his eyes, gritty from lack of sleep. Part of him wanted to walk away from this, pretend he hadn’t seen it and disappear down a hole somewhere. But his sense of duty was too well-developed. He couldn’t walk away from this, even in their current circumstances—an overnight scavenging expedition that had degenerated into a three-day marathon across London trying to return to the Command Base near Salisbury without losing supplies or men.

An SAS officer with extensive field experience, Garrick had questioned the mission from the beginning. But he’d ignored his instincts, past experiences leading him to believe his own decision-making process was fatally flawed. So he’d accepted the orders from General Fox, and now here he was, trying to hustle his team home in one piece and eliminate Chittrix vermin at the same time.

Beside him, Ben Sawyer reloaded his MP5, slotting a new magazine into the gun. Tendons and muscles strained on his well-developed arms as he worked the loading mechanism. He glanced up at Garrick and grinned, his teeth showing white through the layer of grime under the short mohican that bristled from his shaved skull. Sawyer had been a Drug Squad Officer with the police for fifteen years, which had left him with more than a few rough edges and a taste for taking risks. He was mouthy and opinionated, and Garrick was sure he was alive mostly through sheer bloody-mindedness. But he trusted him, and that went a long way nowadays.

Garrick turned and gazed upward through the skeletal remains of the roof, signalling to Foster who was parked behind them on the flat roof of a school building. Foster raised his arm and made a slicing motion across his throat, then waved his fingers in a fan to indicate the dissipation of body parts through the atmosphere. With a shaved head and wiry, tattooed arms, Lincoln Foster was ex-army and ex-bomb squad, relieved of duty for taking unseemly risks with unexploded ammunition. Still, for all his risk taking and defiance of authority, Foster had decommissioned more unexploded devices than anyone Garrick knew.

Sawyer grunted and shook his head at Foster’s antics. “Bloody loony.” He made a flattening shape with his hands at Foster, who paused his jigging dance then flipped him the bird.

Satisfied they were covered from behind, even if their cover was mentally unhinged, Garrick pressed his eye back to the sights of his MP5, scanning the broken landscape in front of him for a sign of Ryan Hardy. He observed no sign of the fourth member of his group, despite Hardy being almost as broad as he was tall. An Irish cage-fighter in his previous life, Hardy had the tattoos and cauliflower ears to prove it, but he liked to get a bit too close to the Chittrix given the opportunity.

Garrick slid back on his haunches, his back resting on the gritty wall. He blinked and squeezed the bridge of his nose, trying to clear his tired brain. No one had had more than a few hours sleep for the last two nights, and they were all feeling the worse for it.

He scanned the empty windows lower down. Nothing. “Where the hell is Hardy?”

Sawyer frowned. “What?”

“I can’t see him. The radio’s silent. What is he doing?”

The Chittrix were closer now, only about a hundred and fifty feet away. Their clicks and burrs were loud and strident as they communicated. Garrick’s fingers flexed on the trigger of his pulse rifle. He knew from the last few news reports months ago that the Chittrix were impervious to nuclear radiation, emerging from the scorched desolation of an atomic explosion unharmed, but they were not immortal. They could be killed with direct hits to the vulnerable areas between the plates of chitin that covered their exoskeletons.

Millions of people had died during the invasion. A few continued to fight on, to live. Although Garrick doubted this counted as living.

He’d discovered the Command Base bunker two months earlier, after spending several months living by his wits in the ruins of London with his sister, Violet. Garrick had formed a bond with the motley group of men who were an unofficial unit of sorts within the base, which was controlled by General Gerard Fox.

Fox was a pen pusher of the worst kind. He’d joined the army as a graduate and slid his way up the ranks with minimum real life combat and maximum help from the old boys’ network. He’d held a staff position in the Ministry of Defence when the meteorites fell, giving him access to the location of bunkers such as the CB.

Fox was the reason they had been out here for the past two days, dodging Chittrix and scavenging supplies at the furthest reaches of their capabilities. Garrick had doubted Fox’s ability to lead since he met the man and this foolhardy mission infiltrating Chittrix territory was only serving to reinforce his misgivings.

But he followed orders. Taking a chance had cost him his SAS team and his brother, Tom, when the Chittrix had first arrived. So, he had pushed his questions and doubts to the back of his mind where they were safest. Images of the men who had died and Tom’s face were burned into his memory like ink. He closed his eyes for a moment and blinked the past away. There was no time to think about that here. Fox had put them in this mess, and he needed to get his team home. When they returned, he would deal with Fox.

A roar from below broke Garrick’s chain of thought. Hardy.

He scrambled to check. Below them on the street, Hardy was bellowing like an enraged bull, head to toe in black, grey scarf wrapped round his face and neck. He charged up the street at the advancing insects, firing his pulse rifle at the leading Chittrix. Garrick swore loudly, bringing up his gun in tandem with Sawyer, firing into the street below to distract the Chittrix from Hardy’s apparent suicide run.

A tall Chittrix caught the full spray of bullets. It fell to the road, barbed legs jerking. The others abandoned the pods and flew at Hardy, their hard, shiny wings filling the air with a terrible buzzing. Garrick let rip with his MP5, the bullets cutting their wings, causing one to falter and plummet earthwards.

Sawyer’s volleys hit, scattering the Chittrix further apart. Sometimes, a small group like this could be twisted into disarray and eliminated; their strength was usually in sheer numbers. Garrick ducked back behind the window frame, the air tight in his chest. He needed to get closer. While Sawyer continued to fire he sprinted down the stairs and out onto the street, now closer to the alien pod than Hardy.

They were seeing these pods with increasing frequency now. Glistening, transparent entities that shifted and pulsed before disgorging a splatter of fluid and hatchling Chittrix, spreading the alien infestation quickly through the city. Garrick was near enough. He took aim and fired.

The pod bulged, then the top section ripped, and fluid spouted out in a greasy torrent packed with creamy, gelatinous bodies. Most shuddered a few times and then were still, not fully developed enough to survive. But one rose up, swaying like a baby cobra, a slash of tiny teeth glinting in the afternoon light. Garrick pulled the machete from his belt and decapitated it with a swift blow. He swallowed bile, bitter in the back of his throat.

“Don’t hog all the fun,” Hardy protested, jogging the last few feet.

Garrick shook his head, wiping his machete on his thigh. “I wouldn’t have to if you’d stop doing shit like this.”

Scutters were retreating now that the larger aliens were no longer there to co-ordinate them, leaving behind the bodies of five Chittrix.

Foster shouted from the top of the office building where he was perched on the roof.

Garrick squinted up into the sunlight. “He sounds excited. Let’s go see what he’s found.” He secured his machete and headed over, slivers of Chittrix pod crunching under his boots.

* * *

Garrick and Hardy climbed up the fire escape ladder onto the roof. The tar under the gravel was sticky from the afternoon heat and pulled at Garrick’s feet.

Foster hopped from one foot to the other as Garrick and Hardy approached. “Where’s Sawyer? He has to hear this.”

“Hey. I’m getting too old for this shit.” Sawyer topped the fire escape at the other side of the building, pulling his large frame up onto the flat gravel roof. He pointed one sturdy finger. “Better be good Foster, making me climb all this way.”

Foster blew him a kiss, his lips making a loud smacking sound. He gestured back to the radio, like a child pointing out their Christmas present under the tree. “Listen.”

He turned the dial, and the grey hiss of static filled the air between them. His fingers expertly twisted in gradual increments, first one way and then the next. He held up his hand for silence as he worked.

A voice filled the air. Female, well-spoken, and educated. “...survivors. We are located at Magdon Down.”

Foster flicked the switch to speak.

“Magdon Down. We hear you. This is Lincoln Foster. Confirm your location please.”

He released the button. The woman’s voice spoke on, regardless. “… supplies are virtually extinguished…weapons... Is anyone still out there?”

Sawyer spoke. “It’s a recording. They’re all dead, Foster. We can’t go on wild-goose chases all over the city. Our resources are stretched far enough as it is. We shouldn’t even be this bloody far into the Chittrix zone.”

Foster shook his head enthusiastically and bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Magdown Down, Sawyer. Ministry of Defence, Science and Weapons Lab. Top-secret shit. We’re talking chemical, biological, and nuclear research. That’s the party line anyway. It’s also unofficially a weapons development lab, cutting edge like you wouldn’t believe.” He spread his arms wide to demonstrate the enormity of the secret shit he was talking about, then rubbed his hands together in glee. He focused on Garrick, and his face became serious.

“We need to go. It’s less than a day from here. We can’t pass on this chance. If we go back to base for supplies, it’ll be another three days at least before we return, and by then someone else will have heard the message, gone there, and looted the place and all its secret shit.” He pointed at Sawyer’s knife in his waistband. “That’s all very well and good, but it’s not going to win the war.”

Sawyer was unimpressed. “Garrick?”

Garrick dragged his eyes from the northern skyline where the labs Foster was so excited about were located. Smoke hung on the horizon in a suffocating blanket, tendrils extending East and West. It was a risk. They were exhausted and filthy, but much of the weaponry at the CB had been destroyed when the meteorites had fallen. What remained was dated from the eighties when the bunker was built. New and better firepower was tempting.

As were the tones of the cultured female voice on the recording.

A hot wave of emotion flashed through him. For a few moments, he was back in the green fields that circled London, spring air in his lungs, blood on his hands, and the screams of his team dying harsh in his ears. The men standing with him now were nothing like the highly-trained squad he had commanded, and yet here they all were, survivors. Still alive six months later. Foster bumped up against him, his breath hot in Garrick’s ear.

“We need the tech man.”

Garrick sighed. He was bone-tired, but Foster was right. They needed the weapons and resources to take on the Chittrix. If they were going to have any hope at all of surviving, they needed any advantage they could garner.

“It’s not my call anymore. We go as a team or not at all,” he answered.

Foster’s eyes flicked from Sawyer to Hardy. Hardy’s heavy face was covered in a sheen of sweat and grime. “Man, another night sleeping in piles of broken bricks?” He shook his head and shouldered his weapon.

Garrick stared at Sawyer.

Sawyer laughed. “Like I’m going to let you rescue the pretty lady all on your own.”

Garrick contemplated the black clouds gathering over his head, heavy with rain. “Foster, radio base and let them know we won’t be coming back tonight.”

Foster danced over to the pile of explosives he’d arranged around his watch point. “Done deal then,” he said happily. “Let’s get my bomb picnic packed up and go rescue some ladies.”