Bradley - The Silent Invasion

About The Silent Invasion

Its 2027 and the human race is dying. Plants, animals and humans are being infected by spores from space and becoming part of a vast alien intelligence.

When 16-year-old Callie discovers her little sister Gracie is Changing, she flees with Gracie to the Zone to escape termination by the ruthless officers of Quarantine.

What Callie finds in the Zone will alter her forever and send her on a journey to the stars and beyond.

The first book in a heart-stopping trilogy from award-winning author James Bradley.

CONTENTS

For Annabelle and Lila

When I look back it sometimes seems as if it all happened to somebody else, which in a sense it did: I left behind the me that was there, the me that did all those things, long ago. Perhaps that other self is still out there, somewhere across that impossible distance of space and time, perhaps she even thinks of me, here, on this alien beach, under a sky so full of stars that even the night shines, or perhaps she is gone, swept away like all the others. All I know is that sometimes, when I dream, I feel like all those other versions of me I have left scattered across the stars are moving just out of reach, as if we are remembering each other back into being.

There was a time when I used to worry about who I was, about whether I was real any more, or whether I was simply a copy of a copy. In those moments it was difficult to know whether I was her, whether she was me. But perhaps I was asking the wrong question. Perhaps nobody ever feels real. Perhaps we all fall through life looking for those instants of connection that anchor us. Perhaps who we are is never set but a process of becoming, in which we invent ourselves over and over again.

I once thought love was about giving yourself over to something, about losing yourself. Yet Ive done that, lost myself in something larger, and its not like love. Love is not about losing your self but about finding it, about allowing somebody else to know you, and even when youre in it, in that place where its difficult to know where you end and they begin, when all you want is to lose yourself in the thing youre making together, you know you will find your way back, that they will lead you. Love isnt about surrendering yourself. Its about being connected, through space and time, to others who know you, and care for you, and will help you be.

Sometimes those connections are ones we make every day, worn smooth by proximity. Sometimes they are more distant, connections of memory that bind us to those we have left behind. Yet either way we are all caught in a web of connection to the living and the dead and the yet-to-be born, a web of memory and forgetting that connects past to present to future, in which each of us is forever becoming and passing away. This is what makes us real, even if, as I have, we travel so far we leave almost all of it behind. And at the same time we are made real by the fact we too will pass in time.

I know this because I have been both. I have been part of a whole, spread across space, stretching endlessly back through time and on, onto the horizon of the future, and I have been alone, or thought myself alone, only to discover I am still connected, that I bear them in me, and always will, just as they will bear me in them, onward, into the light.

I was at the bike racks outside school when my stepmother Vanessa messaged me.

Gracie has wandered off again.

At first I considered ignoring her: it was already after five and Id had a crappy day. But I knew shed just keep messaging if I didnt reply.

Not in her room?

Not in house.

I buckled my helmet and yanked my bike from the rack while I thought about what to do.

OK. Will find her.

As I accelerated down the drive toward the school gates
I imagined how satisfying it would be to just ignore Vanessas request. For as long as I could remember shed treated me like an unpaid nanny or live-in babysitter, able to be called on to look after Gracie whenever she was busy or she and my stepfather Tim needed help. But no matter how much I did, it was never quite enough to be treated like one of the family: in Vanessas eyes I was always an outsider, an inconvenience.

It had been particularly bad since Caspar was born, but the truth was Vanessa and I had never really clicked. Even when Dad was still around shed always spoken to me with the false brightness people use to stop themselves having to actually talk to kids. To be fair, she was a bit like that with Gracie and Caspar as well, but it was different with them: even if she talked to them in her prattling baby voice, she was still their mother, and there was never any question she loved them.

Outside the school I turned left down a side road. Although the back way took longer, most days for the past few weeks there had been roadblocks and random scanning stations set up on the main road, which were at best a hassle and sometimes worse. A few days earlier Quarantine had pulled a black-clad woman out of the line in front of me, dragging her away while her husband shouted desperately and their two kids bawled, an experience I wasnt in a hurry to repeat.

The afternoon sun was hot on my back and shoulders as I cranked up the hill, Adelaide spread out across the plain below. I knew where Gracie was, of course: she had always loved the patch of bush at the end of our street, and was never happier playing by the old dam that lay a little further down the hill. She was unusual like that: most people, even kids, were so paranoid about contamination they avoided places where plants grew wild, but for Gracie such places had always held a special fascination.

Still, I was a little surprised shed snuck off. When Id left home shed been complaining she didnt feel well. I didnt know what had happened after that but it was clear Vanessa had agreed to let her stay home. It struck me as odd, because although she was still in her first year, Gracie liked school and wouldnt usually have stayed home unless she really was sick. Yet somehow she had recovered enough to slip out by the afternoon, which suggested she hadnt been all that sick to start with.

It was quiet as I bumped my bike down the track toward the dam. Stopping by the water I laid my bike down under one of the trees and called her name, but there was no reply. I glanced around, beginning to wonder whether I was mistaken and she was somewhere else entirely, but just as I was drawing breath to call out again I spotted her beneath an old gum on the far side of the dam.

I walked toward her slowly. She had her back to me, and was immersed in some kind of game. In one hand she was clutching her Bunny, his bedraggled fur even dirtier than normal, in the other a small stone she seemed to be explaining something to Bunny about.

She was so absorbed she didnt notice me, not even when I stopped on the bank just behind her, and stood, smiling. Although I loved watching her grow, there were times I wished she could stay like this forever.

Jeez, Gracie, I said at last. Vanessa said you snuck out without telling her.

She turned with a start and stared up at me, the expression on her face telling me what I already suspected: shed been unhappy in some way. That wasnt surprising: in the months since Caspar had been born Vanessa hadnt found much time to be with Gracie or to give her the attention she needed.

She looked down again. Sorry, she said in a small voice.

I sat down next to her and brushed a curl off her face.