The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [57]
I vowed not to include any stories of "zombie apocalypse", but there's always an exception and rules are there to be broken, for a very good reason.
* * *
ON THE SEVENTH day before the end, the aliens said goodbye. "It's all true," said a tired-looking man from the Government, being interviewed on the teatime news. "Non-Earth Originated Intelligences have been among us since 1947. They have contributed a great deal to our development over the past sixty years. It's highly doubtful we would have been able to make the strides in space exploration that we have without their help. And the work they have done with us on researching treatments for cancer and other conditions has been phenomenal. It's just a shame that they have to leave now, with so much yet to do."
"Why exactly are they leaving?" asked the reporter.
The man from the Government tugged at his collar and looked off-camera. "Uh, no more questions at this time, please," he said.
The general consensus was that it was all a big hoax. There were special news reports on all the channels devoted to the announcement.
They even cancelled the episode of EastEnders on the TV. Katy would not have approved.
It was with Katy that I really wanted to talk about all this, but she'd gone a long time ago. I sat in my cramped terraced house, cruising through the digital channels, every one with some expert or other talking animatedly about the aliens. They came from a planet circling a star that we didn't even have a name for, just a string of numbers. There was a lot of talk about the impossibility of interstellar travel, and someone asked a scientist if travel between stars was possible, why had the aliens only shown us how to get as far as the Moon?
Katy would be talking about it with Steve, about what it all meant for the future, for their future, their cosy little, middle-class, Volkswagen Touran-driving, holidays-in-Tuscany future. I went to the pub.
"It's a hoax," said Bob with authority. "Has to be, hasn't it? Can't possibly be true."
"Where are they, then, if they're here? Where's their space rocket?" said Alan.
There was a boom of voices as the barmaid turned up the volume on the television in the corner. The studio discussions on the BBC special news programme had cut to some shaky camerawork in a field somewhere in Cornwall, according to the caption. A reporter in a raincoat ducked into shot. "And here we are at the scene of the extra-terrestrials actually leaving the earth..."
The camera angle changed abruptly and focused on a cigar-shaped silver rocket standing in the dark, rain-soaked field. God knows where they'd been hiding it and how they'd suddenly got it there.
"I bet it's been there all the time, invisible," said Alan.
"It's a hoax," said Bob, lighting a cigarette, apparently satisfied. "I mean, look at it. It's like something out of Flash Gordon."
Alan's mobile phone buzzed on the table. While he fumbled with the buttons, the camera panned to three of the aliens standing on a platform near the rocket. They looked a bit like Stan Ogden, only with a slightly greenish tinge. They were wearing three-button black suits with Nehru collars. FIRST PICTURES OF THE ALIENS flashed across the bottom of the screen.
"Why are you leaving?" shouted someone from the huddle of press reporters.
One of the aliens looked at the other two. He coughed, and then said in perfect English: "We are very sorry. We have to go now. It's beyond our control."
"That was Margery," said Alan, putting the phone back into his jacket pocket. "The lads have taken the Focus and set off for Cornwall. They want to go with the aliens."
Bob stubbed out his cigarette and laughed. "Your lads? Wayne and Stu? What makes them think the aliens'll want to take them back to Pluto? Unless they're short of work-shy layabouts up there."
"I'd tell them not to bother," I said, pointing at the telly. "They're