Chapter 1 – Trafalgar Square

"This country has been ruined by aliens and all we're saying is that now we're rebuilding we're not going to make the same mistakes of the past. No more aliens and that includes the Asians, Africans and Europeans who have come over here and ruined the country for decent British people. They brought crime, brutal Islamist terrorism, disease and took so much in benefits that we could not we had nothing left to use in the fight against the aliens."

The speech was being given by a sinewy man with a determined expression and a hard, serious bald head. He was speaking to a crowd of a couple of hundred, hardly the significant number needed to achieve the change they wanted but enough that a passer-by would notice. The crowd responded with cheers and awkward exclamations of support, their voices tinged with anger and purpose. Meanwhile this crowd stood within a far larger crowd: refugees from the fighting lolled around the square in clothes that were dishevelled and dirty whilst three UN peace-keeping troops stood next to a Skyranger by the Red Cross tent in front of the National Portrait Gallery looking bored and half-listening to the speech. "The political parties of the past have failed the people of Britain. Nobody saw any of those politicians lead the fight when the people were being terrorised and abducted from their homes, they kept themselves safe whilst we suffered and where are they now? They've gone to their friends in foreign countries, all the immigrants who took our taxes have returned the favour to their disgusting, criminal politician friends and saved them whilst the people they abused have been left to the alien menace!"

Adam Kandoci looked on, worried. He was English but his parents had been from the Czech Republic. They had died in the war, a plasma blast blew up the house. He had always lived in Britain, Czech was his second language, but this still was ugly and threatening. Supplies were hard to come by and money had become worthless, he had had to walk eight miles into town to get supplies for himself and his girlfriend. At least that went all right, the Red Cross tent in Trafalgar Square was still open and he had arrived safe and sound, which was quite a feat. When he would have to return to his girlfriend and the small, rag-tag collection of flat-mates and neighbour survivors it would be more dangerous. He'd be carrying stuff and that would make him an easy and lucrative target for other, less scrupulous survivors.

"The parts of London filled with ethnics will burn again tonight unless we go and protect them. People are afraid to leave their homes and are burned, raped and robbed without any hope of justice. No one else is going to defend them from the Jihadis and the black gangs so it's up to us! Time for the British to stand together again! You've come here today because you share the view that enough is enough, so let's go take back our country!" The crowd cheered but it was still jarring with their modest number, you could hear that they mostly cheered because they thought that they should. The English weren't much for cheering and marching. Also the crowd was split and some of them would be much better at fighting than others. There were lots of skin-heads and football hooligans in their little friendship groups of six or seven, drinking beer and looking yobbish and intimidating. Then there were fit and hard couples in their early thirties, they looked more respectable and civilised, P.E. teachers and policemen, some had brought along their kids. They were the people who would've supported this kind of thing even before the chaos. Peppered amongst the crowd were a few people waving large Union Jacks and flags of the Cross of St. George, some of the more approachable rally attendees had also painted their faces white with St. George crosses on too. There were others though, those who had been educated and upper-middle class. People who would've been seen swanning around cocktail bars in the City, people who had been bankers and lawyers, journalists; the kind of people who would have sympathised with the nationalist cause privately but who never would have gone to a rally. Still the aliens had changed all that, in the charred remains of the capital one could see that the aliens had changed everything.

Adam knew from growing up in England that this kind of right wing politics probably appealed to half the population even before the attack. The march would probably pick up more people on the way, it was really difficult to get to Trafalgar Square, not to mention dangerous. He also sympathised slightly with the fascists: even if they did want to persecute him and even kill him (an ethnic Eastern European), the gangs that controlled the other parts of the city were worse. They would kill you for no reason: to rob you, because someone thought you didn't show them enough respect, maybe they didn't like the colour of your clothes or the look on your face. He was already dreading going back but he knew that he couldn't abandon his girlfriend and friends back in Chiswick in case there was a riot or raid. When put like that he would prefer the fascists, at least until people were safe. There were a few Muslim communities that had resisted the extra-terrestrials and the subsequent anarchy too, some of them had restored order to their streets and instituted Sharia law. If you wanted to go there you had to convert to Islam but even then they didn't normally let people in, too much of a drain on resources. Nonetheless, the fact was all the options were bad, almost as bad as the chaos the aliens had brought. Adam and likeminded people just tried to keep on keeping on until someone else came to save them, but those likeminded people were far fewer in number since first contact.

"Hello, my name is Adam Kandoci." He said to aid worker.

"ID?" she replied, with surly exasperation. He duly got out his wallet and was handed some high energy bars and a large container of water.

"Thanks," he said as he left. Some of the people who had been lolling around had been convinced to join the 'March For Britain' and Adam saw that this was definitely the safest way to get back to Chiswick, nonetheless he still had business to attend to, bartering to get some supplies. He approached a man standing by a blocky outcrop with a display platform on top of it, to the left of the National Portrait Gallery; now most of the portraits had been looted by the more discerning rioter. The man looked unusually stern and it would not have been a pleasant prospect to approach him under normal circumstances, but the chaos had meant that you had to build up an emotional callous of fortitude, you couldn't pussy around. "Hey, do have anything for sale?" he asked in the hushed tones.

"Might be I 'ave, what are you after and what 'ave you got?" replied the man, in a ridiculous westcountry accent that immediately made him seem nicer, or at least simpler, and put Adam slightly more at ease.

Adam knew better than to say what he had straight away. "Fruits, vegetables, stuff like that. Crisps, chocolate, alcohol, anything really."

"Well what have you got to trade first?"

He hesitated, if he told he definitely couldn't get a good deal but he couldn't think of anything to say so he just said what he had and relied on the goodwill of this black-marketer, and goodwill was the thing that was in the shortest supply in the anarchy. "I've got some alien weapon fragments, alien alloys and elerium and m-money"

"I 'aven't got much use for weapon fragments or lumps of broken metal"

Even though pounds and Euros from most of Europe were worthless, Euros minted in Germany were still worth something, a lot in fact. They had become a major currency in black market dealings. Dollars and RMB were also acceptable but German Euros were preferred. The problem was things had descended into panicked anarchy nine months ago and the country, everyone's homes and savings, was ruined. Once things had got back to some semblance of normality then all people could definitely rely on to buy basic products would be this foreign money, especially Euros as Germany was much closer than the other countries. Hopefully that time was going to come soon though, the alien mothership had been destroyed and the rest of the world couldn't just leave France and the UK like this, could they? Surely that would destabilise the whole world.

"I've got some RMB, is that going to be possible?"

"Let's 'ave a look." Adam flashed a few red Maos. "OK. John, we got a customer." A young man, the marketer's son, came out with a gun and pointed it at Adam, trying to keep it hidden, holding it facing the side of the National Portrait Gallery wall and away from the Square.

"What? No, you can't shoot me, there's all these people here! There's... Scottish soldiers by the Red Cross and..."

"Look! Calm down! The last thing I need is everyone knowing that I've got stuff to sell. Now I accepted you because you look like a nice kid and you're not one of these gangbangers. I'm just going to frisk you, to make sure that you're not going to try something stupid with me."

This was going really badly: serious things like having a gun pulled on you or being mugged never got easy. The stern farmer walked up to Adam and gave him some sort of hug, an amateur frisking. Adam had an alien plasma pistol in his bag but he didn't want to cause any more problems than he had to. If the guy found it then he would just tell him and hope for the best. The gun was difficult to use anyway because it needed the dead Sectoid's hand to use it. Someone else had hacked the hand off, presumably during a confrontation with the alien. Both the hand hacker-offer and the alien had been killed, when they found him the human had been covered in a green plasma web and turned into mucus. Now they used the gun, still in the alien's cold, dead hand.

"He's all right" the marketer told his son and then ambled behind the raised, paved platform in front of which he had been standing, took a cursory glance around and opened a cool box which had been hidden under a blanket; crouching down so as to cover it and not to draw attention. Adam had a look: he had strawberries and carrots and broccoli and potatoes, apples, really pretty much all the things that can be grown in Britain, he even had some eggs.

"Um… how much is the broccoli?"

"Broccoli is 100RMB"

"€20!?" That was a rip-off even in a civil war.

"Apples I'll do you for 50 and Eggs I'll do for 25. If you don't want them then that's fine."

Adam and his girlfriend had 1500RMB in total and that he couldn't spend 300RMB on that, they did have euros and dollars too though.

"How about my iPhone, it's pretty new?"

"'ow do I know you 'aven't just stolen it from a shop and I'll be locked out by the security?"

The problem was he had stolen it from a shop, it was a spare and he normally used a Samsung.

"What about elerium?"

The farmer looked at him with resigned frustration. "Well what do you want exactly?"

"Maybe a broccoli, a couple of apples, some strawberries and a couple of eggs."

"All right 'ow about a broccoli, 2 apples, 2 eggs and 5 strawberries for 300RMB and about 15g of Elerium?"

"I guess… Could I have 3 apples for that? Also, is this piece of elerium OK?" the farmer nodded reluctantly at the small shard of elerium and started putting the items in a plastic bag. 300RMB... Now that that unpleasant business was over, the small-talk could begin.

"So are you a farmer?"

"Yeah, I come up 'ere from Gloustershire on Saturdays and Tuesdays if you want to come back."

"How is it in Gloustershire?"

"Well… I'm in the countryside so at first we got a lot of abductions, about half of John's mates from school disappeared and a lot of neighbouring farms got lost cattle. There you go. It's not as bad as here though, we got problems but we get by."

Adam politely nodded and left.

Elerium was another thing people used now. The Red Cross and Scottish government had managed to get generators out to a lot of people, at least in the capital, in spite of the chaos. Also the recent generators used the new elerium technology from the alien ships which was a god-send because all the UFO wrecks had meant that you could salvage elerium and alien alloys from wrecks and aliens' equipment. For that reason most people had access to cooking and lighting at night-time. In terms of heating it was almost better value now than it had been before the chaos. Some could use TV's and you could recharge your phone but most places didn't have any cover or internet, Trafalgar Square was different though. Still, once things got back to normal, well not normal but something, you wouldn't be able to go into shop and buy something with elerium or buy something on the internet with elerium, you needed foreign specie.

Checking the news was important. The war had been quite successful, at least in most of the world, which many hoped meant that the chaos would soon be over. In the first couple of months very few people believed that humanity would survive the alien attack but in fact, against all the odds, the aliens had been defeated in less than a year. That filled even the most ardent pessimist with hope. The UK had suffered a lot, everyone had at least one family member die and most people lost more like half the people they loved. In some towns and villages the entire population had been abducted en masse, whatever became of them on those UFOs nobody would ever know. Things didn't improve after the aliens had gone either: the very human reality was that almost as many people had been killed by other people as had been by the aliens, particularly in the places that the ETs overran and then, later, were abandoned by their governments. But more importantly, looking on the internet at the news was an escape, a moment where you could imagine yourself back at home doing normal, routine things and so wouldn't have to think of the reality of life in the chaos, where death was always around the corner.

Adam looked up the BBC news website on his phone. The BBC headline read: 'China and Russia refuse to disband alien military program.' Apparently the US had proposed to the UN Security Council that as the alien threat had abated, all emergency supranational military organisations set up to deal with the alien threat should be disbanded in the interests of cost, peace and security. As the US had been the largest financial contributor to these projects, America would take sole responsibility for overseeing the projects' closure. The Chinese and Russians had vetoed this proposal as they believed that a multinational group should oversee the future management of the various projects. They also protested the idea that military personnel recruited from outside the United States, in particular from Russia and China, should come under the sole authority of the US government, as would be the case under the US's proposal. The US took the view that Russia and China wanted to advance their own weapons programs so they were trying to obstruct the US wherever possible, they were supported by the French and British representatives and this seemed to be the BBC's editorial stance too.

There was also an article about the crisis in the UK, the world governments still couldn't come to an agreement about how much aid would be provided for the reconstruction of areas affected by the alien warfare, nor who was going to provide it. The worst affected regions like France, Britain, Argentina and India which would need substantial funding which no one wanted to pay. There were no new developments but as the war had been over for three months surely there was going to be some progress, some solution was going to come soon, surely they were over the hump.

Adam considered downloading a movie onto his phone that they could then plug into the TV back in Chiswick but it by now the fascists' march had almost left and he didn't want to walk alone. Trafalgar Square also had many drug dealers now, ironically selling their wares much more openly than the food sellers. There were no real police to stop them and, as the drug trade had always been clandestine, it had survived fairly intact. Food was scarce, narcotics were not. LSD or MDMA sometimes offered respite but many survivors who chose this course had gone crazy: violence, desolation and death did not facilitate a good experience and any euphoria was so out of kilter with the reality of life in the chaos that it seriously damaged your mental health, it felt so unnatural. Nonetheless, still a bit of respite. He asked approached a circle of people sitting near the Red Cross Tent, they were all laughing and playing music and some had visibly huge pupils.

"Do you guys happen to have any MDMA or acid or anything?" Adam inquired. A man with a beard looked annoyed with the interruption from this interloper and sighed. He turned to a pretty woman with huge pupils sitting in the centre of the group:

"Val, have you got any acid or mandy for sale?" asked the bearded man.

The woman, Val, scrutinised Adam and said "You're not one of those BNP fascists are you?"

"No"

"All right, how much do you want?"

"Maybe 2g of MDMA, €10, yeah?"

She nodded and brought out a bag of milky coloured crystals. As well as available, drugs had also become incredibly cheap as people wanted the money more for food than for fun.

Adam started off on the long walk back to Chiswick, now laden with food and water. The marchers had been armed by someone and had taken a while to get organised but they were now leaving, singing 'Land of Hope and Glory' and 'Rule Britannia' and some football songs along the way. Many of the men carried weapons, some sub-machine guns, others assault rifles and some shotguns; all were of a standardised type as if they were taken from the old government's armouries. Adam took his backpack off, put his newly bought items into it and carried it in his hand. A backpack was the most likely thing to get robbed and could only really be worn in the charitable atmosphere of Trafalgar Square. He waited till they got to the statue of Winston Churchill in front of the water-filled crater where Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament once stood to bring out his gun and fiddle with holding it around the alien's hand. In one hand he held the supplies, which must have weighed more than 20kg with the water and chunks of alien metal and elerium, and in the other the plasma pistol. The crowd's mood was jubilant, they had wanted to terrorise the ethnic minorities for ages and now they were enjoying holding and playing with the guns, firing them into the air and shooting at street signs. Adam held his gun uneasily. It was unwieldy, it looked impressive but alien weapons were notoriously difficult to use and were liable to explode when humans touched them, often taking off half the unfortunate person's arm with it. He had fired this one a couple of times but never killed anything. He'd fired it at looters and raiders but only once at an alien, it scared people off but it drew the aliens' attention, as he had found out. That one incident still gave Adam nightmares but now there were so many nightmares from so many different things.

Adam struggled along with his heavy load when a man approached him. "You alright mate, need a hand?" He was a fit man who had short blonde hair and was medium height; Adam looked at him, what an obvious ruse to steal stuff. "Do want me to carry that water for you? It must weigh a fuck load." Adam still looked at him with suspicion. The man was marching with his wife and son behind, observing their conversation. That seemed like a trustworthy alibi and the water was the heaviest and least valuable thing he was carrying, so he consented. "You must be fucking mental to carry all that around with you. Why are you travelling alone?" said the short haired man.

"No one else would come with me" replied Adam. They chatted away for about an hour and a half; Adam listened uncomfortably as the man espoused his racist beliefs and his excitement at a chance for a 'bashing' and told Adam of how his kid 'should see it, to make him proud to be English'. The man was helping him and they were in a march of racist fascists so Adam let discretion be the better part of valour and didn't disagree. "Do you know where the march is going?" Adam asked at one point.

"Well, I think we were going to go to go to Brixton but there just aren't enough of us to take them on, so I think we're going to free the English trapped in Hammersmith and then maybe Shepherds Bush." Shepherds Bush had a large Asian community that had created a fairly civilised micro-polity in the chaos. They were threatened by drug gangs in Hammersmith and a major Yardie who had set himself up as a despot in the Westfield Centre in White City, styling himself 'King of the Humans'; now they had to face this armed mob as well.

"Good." Adam was relieved, Hammersmith was right next to Chiswick. Nonetheless, if the fascists won then they would just be swapping on tyranny for another, but maybe by then America or the Scots would pull their collective fingers out and sort out this country. Then he it dawned on him, Hammersmith was literally right next to Chiswick so he would have to go through the warzone himself. Panic gripped him as he thought about when to leave and what way to go around. He had to leave before they got to Hammersmith. South was really far and Fulham was dangerous, the best bet would be to go through Shepherds Bush before the fascists got there, he could warn the people there too, if anyone would listen. He looked down at the plasma pistol and dreaded how many people he would have to shoot his way through to get back to his girlfriend and flatmates.

'Maybe this time I'll have to kill somebody,' he pondered 'maybe this time I'll have to kill loads of people and no longer be one of the 'good guys',' but what worried him most was 'maybe this time someone would kill me.'

Along the way the fascists abused any people they came across that they did not like. They always smashed up Indian and Chinese restaurants, they'd often go in and pull out anyone they found in there. The restaurants had been closed since the alien invasion but sometimes the families of the people who ran these places were still living near-by. These people would be beaten by the sinisterly jovial crowd and then killed. Women would be shamed, anyone with a hijab would have their clothes ripped off and be tortured, often by the white women in the crowd. After the beating they normally lynched the black people and Asians, all accompanied by the sound of laughter; it was horrible for anyone who had any memories of the civilisation that existed before the alien invasion, it seemed most didn't. Soon every other lamppost back to Trafalgar Square had a sad body dangling from it. A few half-naked, bloodied and bruised Chinese bodies lay in the street as well as those of some white bystanders who had had the mad courage to intervene, under the circumstances they were the lucky ones. When they brought out a woman and started molesting her Adam's companion would tell his son "Come over here and hold Daddy's hand." He obviously didn't want his kid to see the sexual assault, he didn't think that would make him feel proud to be English.

They eventually got near to Hammersmith and Adam told the family that he thought he'd dropped something and to go on without him. He struggled up a road he thought was north with his goods and his gun. This street was deserted, a small road lined with medium sized terraced houses, most of which were largely intact, and colourful gardens that had once been well kept. The burnt out shells of cars displayed the logos of Mercedes, BMW, there were a few Priuses; this would have been a nice place to live once but now either the people were dead or lying low, maybe some of the richer ones had got out; now it was filled with an eerie silence. He struggled further down the road and when it came to an end he came to an identical road of early 20th century houses, these dark roads continued one after the other. He thought that if he continued North he would eventually come to the main road that led to Shepherds Bush roundabout or at least a signpost, however after about an hour he realised that he had become lost in this residential labyrinth. It was getting late, 7pm already. People would be more aggressive at night. Also roving gangs were more active at night; even though there was nothing to stop them during the day, the instinctive criminal allure of darkness meant that night was the more dangerous time. The streets were empty and quiet, in streets like these there were even rumours that aliens were still about, hiding now that the mothership was gone. Nonetheless, he heard a faint sound and it was not aliens, people and the smacking sound of running feet against the pavement. Loud voices echoed down the street:

"Hurry the fuck up!"

Adam could see three men on the corner on the other end of the street he was on, they had stopped to catch their breath. They breathlessly talked about what had just happened.

"We should go back to Brent" said one.

"We can't, Jay will get us if he sees us and he rolls deep."

"I'm not scared of him, I'll cut him up."

"Why didn't you cut up those racists back there then?"

A quarrel ensued and Adam started walking in the other direction. In the echoing distance he could hear them make up agree that they would go and look for some girls, then he heard the sound of footsteps. The footsteps got louder. At this point the thought crossed his mind if maybe he should hide in one of the houses until tomorrow, it was unlikely that there would be an alien there. Still the others would worry, they could even go to look for him and get caught in the crossfire so he turned a corner and went up the other street. He turned the corner again to double back so he could still be going North. As he turned the corner he saw the boys: there were five of them, the three he'd seen plus two of their friends who must have been out of sight, and they were about 25yds away.

"Look at all that stuff he's carrying! Let's rush him!" Adam turned to run but he was too slow, he dropped his backpack and clutched the plasma pistol in both hands, pressed his finger down on the Sectoid's hard, decaying hand. 'Pssho!'- a bright neon green burst of plasma shot across dusky street and gave a glancing blow to one of the boy's shoulders before smashing through a house's wall.

"AAAARRR!" the boy screamed as the plasma bolt took the arm and the left side of his body clean off and left a glowing green burn on his face. Adam was stunned by what he'd done as the boy lay writhing in agony. The other boys scattered for cover.

"I couldn't find any…!" a large young man of about 19 walked out from around the corner from behind, startling both himself and Adam who whisked around to face him.

"Run Deon!" one of the boys shouted from behind the car, but Deon panicked and entered fight or flight mode. Deon was naturally brave so he lunged for Adam whilst the other boys shot guns from behind a car at the two of them locked in struggle. The two wrestled, trying to get control of the weapon, until one pushed the alien hand too hard and bolt of plasma shot into the ground, the force knocked them both into the air and over onto the ground, also burning their shoes and trousers. Deon's friends saw this as their chance. Two of them: the one who had suggested they go back to Brent, a short and wiry man; and another, boyishly handsome, ran over to restrain Adam whilst two others: the one who had said they shouldn't go back to Brent; and another, smaller one went to tend to their friend who had been hit by the plasma shot.

The friend who had been shot was rolling around, one side of his body was a black cut-out silhouette with flecks of glowing green, the other side a blue hoody that looked completely unharmed. He cried and moaned with the pain of his injuries and died slowly whilst the smaller friend sobbed and the other one, a big man, forcefully told him to "Stay with me! Don't you dare shut your eyes!" but it was too late.

The big one looked up with bitter hatred, pointed a Tec-9 fully-automatic-pistol at Adam and shouted "Connor, get his gun, I want a plasma gun." Connor, the handsome one, dutifully went over and bent down to pick up the plasma pistol and pulled it from the half-rotten Sectoid hand. As he did the gun exploded and blew the offending forearm and the front half of Connor's head off, he fell forward to the ground in a pool of blood mixed with pieces of brain, skull, weapon fragments and bits of cotton.

This gruesome scene also caused a shocked pause among the group. Adam quickly seized upon this and wriggled free from the wiry one's hold. He ran and a split second later he heard the rat-tat-tat of bullets whizzing past but they didn't hit him and the adrenaline rushed through. It was close but he would make it, he would live! Then he felt a shoulder, a mass of human body tackled him to the ground. He felt a stab. It didn't hurt, maybe it just grazed but then there was another stab, twisted. He shouted for help and there was another stab. This time he did feel it but the pain was numbed by adrenaline, he could feel it and not feel it all at the same time. It started to go dark. In the distance he heard a deep, commanding voice, very echoing. Other voices too, perhaps the ones of the people who attacked him but they also sounded distant. That didn't matter now, he was dying. As the world went black he heard himself thinking 'all this technology and I have been killed by a simple knife.'