Earthfall by Mark Walden

down. There were none of the silver machines in the room as far as he could tell, but he could still feel the tingling in his head, which he assumed meant that they must be somewhere nearby. He lay there in silence; the only sound he could hear was the gentle breathing of the hundreds of people lying around him. A few minutes later the odd itching inside his skull faded away and he lifted his head from the ground, slowly looking around. The floor was filled with people, all lying motionless, their arms and legs straight, their eyes shut. He sat up and gently shook Jess by the shoulder but, as he had feared, she did not respond. Just like everyone else in the room it was as if she had been switched off.
    ‘OK, Sam, think,’ he whispered to himself. ‘What do you do now?’
    His options were limited. Jess wasn’t going anywhere right at this moment, but there was no way of knowing when the people around him might get back on their feet and start walking once more. If he wasn’t there when that happened, he knew he’d probably never see Jess again. He decided to check what was going on outside. Only then would he know if it was even possible for him to try to get his sister out. There were no windows on this floor of the building, but a door on the far side of the room had a ‘Stairs’ sign on the wall beside it. He stood up and carefully picked his way between the dormant bodies, heading for the exit. Looking back across the room, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle at the sight of the dozens of unconscious but strangely stiff bodies, all lying in neatly ordered rows. He shuddered involuntarily and stepped through the door, creeping quietly up the stairs, ears straining for any sign of the return of the sinister silver machines.
    The upper floor was filled with empty offices and the only light in the gloomy space was coming from the monitors on the desks displaying the open documents and web pages that had been suddenly abandoned. Sam walked into one of the offices and looked out of the window. It was getting dark outside and the rain was heavier. The streets below were empty; there were no signs of life, either human or alien.
    ‘You’re certainly not from around here, are you?’ Sam whispered to himself as he looked at the giant vessel that hovered over central London, clearly visible from here, despite the fading light. As he watched, he saw several smaller shapes, illuminated by green light, drop from the underside of the larger ship and then shoot off, flashing through the sky above the city rooftops. It felt ludicrous, but the more he looked at the huge floating object and thought about the bizarre events of that day, the more he was forced to admit to himself that the most likely explanation was that it was the work of an extraterrestrial intelligence. That still did nothing to explain what it was that these visitors had done to the people downstairs or what their future intentions might be. Sam feared that whatever they were planning it was nothing good.
    He walked back to the desk in the room and sat down in front of the keyboard. He clicked the icon on the computer’s desktop and opened the browser. He was half expecting an error message, but the internet connection still seemed to be working. He spent nearly an hour looking for signs of life online, but there was nothing. The last posts on any of the forums or blogs he visited were startled reactions to the arrival of the alien vessels all over the planet, but then there was silence. It confirmed one thing, Sam realised as a chill ran down his spine: whatever had happened to everyone, it hadn’t just happened here in London. It was the same everywhere – this was global.
    He put his head in his hands, rubbing his temples, fighting to control the rising tide of panic that he could feel in his gut. He told himself to stay calm, that everyone might wake up in the morning and that the intentions of the extraterrestrial visitors might not be as