Independence Day: Crucible (The Official Prequel) Read Free

so drained of color, it nearly matched his cottony hair. “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “Home,” Dikembe said. “May I borrow your bicycle?”
    “You can have it, mate,” Brian said, “but you’ll have to pump the tires way up to cross the Channel.”
    “I’ll deal with that when I get there,” he said. They shook hands and parted company, as around them the world unraveled.
    The bicycle proved the way to go. The main roads were packed, not so much with refugees from London—there weren’t very many of those—but with people fleeing every other city, fearing they were next.
    * * *
    In some cases, they were right. Birmingham and Liverpool were annihilated within the next day. News of the rest of the world was hard to come by on the road.
    He stopped for a sandwich and some crisps at a roadside convenience store whose owner still had the stones and the greed to remain open. Everything was double price. He didn’t flinch about it though, guessing that the ten pounds he’d paid would be worth slightly less than dog piss in a day or two.
    He rode south and west toward the coast, skirting very wide around where London used to be, often going cross-country when the roads were too mad. He wasn’t sure what he expected—squads of aliens on the march, fliers murdering people from the air—but if the world was ending, the scenery didn’t know it in the fields and meadows of the West Country.
    He first thought to go to Portsmouth, but remembered there was a Navy presence there the aliens might be interested in blasting, so he went farther west to the little resort town of Weymouth. He reached it, exhausted, about eight o’clock in the evening. He couldn’t find a room, but he did find another pub, where he ate and watched the television, which had maddeningly little to say, especially about his homeland. In England and Europe, the pattern was clear—each ship destroyed a city and then moved on to the next. So Lagos was finished. What about Kinshasa? Was it now a smoking ruin like London and Paris? From what he gathered, the first targets had been chosen by size, and some military installations had been targeted, as well.
    “Is this seat taken?” someone asked.
    He looked up from the well of his thoughts and saw a young woman with slightly wavy flaxen hair and a dimpled chin.
    “No,” he said. “Please.” He stood and pulled out the chair for her.
    “Oh,” she said. “A gentleman.” She craned her neck in an exaggerated way. “A very tall gentleman. You don’t see that a lot these days. The gentleman part.” She was about his age, maybe twenty-five. Her eyes were gray, and she had a nice smile, judging from the single one she had let slip when he pulled the chair out.
    “I still can’t believe it,” she said, looking up at the television. “It’s like science fiction. So unreal.”
    “It’s—difficult,” he said.
    “Did you have anyone—in any of the cities?” she asked.
    He shook his head. “Not really. Not that I know of. Where I’m from is pretty far from any major city. And you?”
    She nodded. “I’m from Atlanta,” she said, a little sadly. He had noticed the American accent, but had declined to ask about it. People were always making assumptions about him and where he was from, or else fishing to find out. He generally tried not to do the same, and found that people usually wanted to tell you about themselves anyway.
    “Atlanta had time to evacuate,” he said.
    “I know,” she replied. “I hope they made it out. They would have tried, but there’s no place to call, you know? Even if the phones were working.”
    “I know,” he said. He had tried placing a few calls, to no effect. “Look, my name is Dikembe. And you are?”
    “Oh,” she said. “Sorry, misplaced my manners. I’m Hailey. Pleased to meet you.”
    “Hailey, may I fetch you a lager?”
    “Yes sir,” she said. “You certainly may.”
    He pushed his way politely through the crowd at the bar and