Prompt: Invaders come from beyond from V Tsuion
A/N: something of a crossover, though it's not completely obvious and you can read it as different random invaders if you want
I have stolen these few moments to write, though I do not know who will ever read this account. We see few people anymore, and those few are as dangerous as the terrifying creatures who have taken our world. It seemed important once to leave an account for the future of what happened when the ships landed, though now it has simply become habit, I suppose. Something to keep us sane in the horrifying reality in which we now live.
We have found a small room, cut into a cellar and unlikely to be found, where we may spend the night. We are fortunate that Holmes knew London so well, once, for we would not have survived so long without his expert knowledge. We move from place to place each day, never staying for more than a night. I do not understand the technology these aliens have, but in the early days, they were always able to find us if we remained too long in one place, and so we learned the lesson well.
Many of those we knew in the old days were captured this way. The others thought to find safety in the countryside, though the stories we have heard of the mines and ore processing facilities have been enough to dissuade us from attempting the same. Holmes says it would be far too easy to spot runaways in the countryside, where everyone is herded into camps and strangers would be noticed. Doubtless he is right. Who knew that one day his intellect would lead us to survive an alien invasion?
Alien. Once I read of such things in novels, never believing that they could be true, but when the strangely round and flat ships landed, and creatures the likes of which we had never seen appeared in the skies and on the streets, we were forced to believe. The nations of Earth fought valiantly, and for a time it seemed as if we would forget our differences and band together to repel the invaders, but our weapons were primitive in comparison to theirs. Guns that shot beams of light so powerful they could reduce a person to dust and bombs which left the very air so contaminated that no life could exist in the blast zone without becoming horribly mutated.
Holmes theorized they did not wish to kill the entire population, or make the planet uninhabitable, for they only used such bombs on smaller targets. They must have survivors to work the mines, I suppose. They did not bomb London, which is how we survived, though many times I do not see the point in it. There is no resistance to speak of; such a thing is impossible, and the last free humans live as we do, hunted, running from place to place, and scavenging for any food.
"There is a window in the back where we may vent any smoke," Holmes said, returning from his inspection of our home for the night. "We shall at least be able to cook." We had spent much of the day in foraging for food. So far, we have been fortunate. In the aftermath of the invasion, kept animals such as dogs, cats, horses and town-bred geese roamed free and have continued to breed and repopulate the city, so that it sometimes resembles a strange jungle. My service revolver might do no good against the fiends who have taken our planet, but it is useful in finding us dinner each day from the now wild herds of formerly domesticated animals. Finding bullets has been easy enough - hundreds of them litter the ground from the last futile stand made by the army, and when I have none, Holmes and his knife are at hand.
"We shall have to find some vegetables, Holmes," I said. "We shall be prone to scurvy otherwise." Plant life was much harder to find, and we avoided what green spaces London had had. The once beautiful parks were patrolled incessantly by the invaders.
"Perhaps we should make our way to the botanical gardens," Holmes said. "It was known for its varieties of fruit, and the invaders have no use for it. Likely that the trees have been left to grow."
Holmes and I often wondered where the invaders had come from, but as they were never seen outside of their armor casing, I believed no one had ever seen what they looked like. I speculated that perhaps the armor was because they came from a planet of such different atmosphere that ours was poison to them, though Holmes scoffed at this. "Why would they choose our planet to invade if they cannot live here?" he asked. "That is hardly a logical plan."
"Well, they do not need the armor for protection, as we have well seen!" I said crossly. But Holmes was correct too, and we never got anywhere with these circular conversations. Whatever they looked like, they were likely nothing we had ever imagined. Certainly the shape of their armor - rather than a pepper shaker - implied a life form utterly alien to us.
"We shall have to find a permanent place," Holmes said. "We will not be able to keep up this movement in winter. It is sheer luck that they have not caught us at all."
I nodded. He would, I knew, be much better off without me. While my war injury did not slow me much in decent weather, in winter I would find it much harder going, and either way, Holmes was the quicker of us two. Yet he refused to leave me behind, for which I was grateful, as I do not know how I would have survived without him. "Perhaps the botanical gardens will prove a safer place," I said. We had not gone near the center of London since the invasion, and the huge, empty palaces might prove good hiding places that could shelter us for months. Unless another group had already staked a claim.
"We will have to chance it," Holmes said. "As you said, we need fruits and vegetables, and I know of no other place to get it. If the palaces do not prove good shelter, the Underground might."
The Underground had not been extended to our present location, but in the center of the city, it lay dormant, and I instantly saw Holmes's point. The invaders had few weaknesses…but stairs, such as the ones leading into the underground stations, were one of them.
"An excellent idea," I said. I looked at our tiny fire, on which was cooking a small hen we had found wandering in an alley. Better fare than on some days, and I was glad to have it. "We will set off tomorrow." Traversing London was a long journey now, and it had taken us several weeks to get from Baker Street to here. It would take longer to reach the heart of the city, and if we meant to reach it by winter, we had better start now.
We fell silent as the patrol rumbled by outside, the lights flashing as the invaders found some poor soul out too late, accompanied by the harsh, shrill voice warning that he was to be exterminated. But intent on the obvious prey, they did not look inside the buildings and so passed us by. I breathed a sigh of relief.
"Take heart, Watson," Holmes said softly. "We have been beaten, yes, but not destroyed."
"Not yet," I said. "There must be some way to defeat them, Holmes." I thought back to Well's novels. His Martian invaders were destroyed by an Earth virus, but these monstrous creatures seemed immune to such things.
"No creature is without weakness," Holmes said. "We have already discovered one, and where there is one, there is another. But we must take care of ourselves first, or we will never find it."
I agreed, and with that, I set aside this journal. Sleep is precious, and we have a long journey ahead.
A/N: This ended up becoming, like I said, sort of a not-obvious crossover, but it was either way heavily inspired by the 1964 Doctor Who serial The Dalek Invasion of Earth.