and that she'd be as alert, lucid and emotional as she had been when I'd left her.
It was nine o'clock.
I allowed myself to glance back over my shoulder at my cold, dark house and I was again filled with pain. I knew that I was walking away from the house, and from Rob, for the last time. As I stared another one of the huge black alien ships appeared and flew out from behind my home, over my head and then over the village and out towards the ocean. Then another ship, lower this time and slightly different. This machine had a rounder, more bulbous head than any other I'd seen before and the sight of this new arrival increased my anxiety. The words of the alien I had killed still echoed round my head and the thought that I was of no concern to the invading alien hordes provided little comfort.
How many other people nearby now remained to helplessly watch the alien invaders take hold of our planet and make it their own? Their occupation had been so quick, unexpected and perfectly planned and executed with such precision that there had been nothing anyone could have done to avoid our total domination. By the time that the alert had been sounded and the need for reaction had arisen, those left capable of free thought and rebellion had already been weakened, smashed and shattered to a point far beyond that at which any recovery might ever have been possible. No matter how I looked at it, I was in a hopeless situation.
The ship which had just flown overhead stopped.
Hanging high and motionless above the centre of the village it hovered ominously. It waited there, open and vulnerable but safe in the knowledge that there was nothing left of mankind to attack it. The bastard thing seemed almost to be lauding over the defenceless world that it had helped invade and capture. I, on the other hand, felt increasingly nervous and exposed out on my own. The alien had warned me to keep out of the way of the cull. Was this the beginning that he'd talked about?
I had no option but to keep moving, and whichever way I decided to go I would be walking further into the village and closer to the ship. From ground level it was hard to accurately judge the size and scale of the thing and I couldn't tell whether it was hovering a mile above me or ten. As I watched, a single opening silently appeared from the base of the rounded front end of the machine and, from that opening, a long, stem-like object appeared. From where I stood it looked to be about the length and width of a telegraph pole. I stopped walking and started running and then sprinting, desperate to get out of the way of whatever might come next. Nothing.
I dared to look up again as I ran, just in time to see the stem retract back into the ship. Once it had disappeared inside and the hatch was closed the ship turned and moved on. Confused, I watched until the light from its silent engines had faded from view.
I carried on running.
It was about a minute later when it began.
I became aware of a noise. The world had been smothered by a dense, foreboding silence all morning but now, unexpectedly, I could definitely hear something. It was directionless. It seemed to be coming from all sides. It was the sound of footsteps.
And then I saw the people.
As if they had been perfectly choreographed, the front door of every occupied building for as far as I could see suddenly opened and the people inside stepped out onto the street. They waited outside their homes until, taking their mark from the figures nearest on their left, they walked out into the middle of the street, turned to face the centre of the village and began to march. In less than a couple of minutes a vast column of silent figures had formed and was making its way deep into the village with an unnerving military precision. I stopped running and stood and watched and was ignored.
The endless queue of people that walked past me was geometrically accurate. Evenly spaced groups of four individuals that moved in perfect step and perfect time with all the others. Their faces were blank and expressionless - the same vacant look as that I'd seen on Rob's face when I'd left him and