The Primark Invasion

Lucy, the 22-year old who worked in Schuh, begins to weep again. Tim offers his shoulder. Others roll their eyes and I expect you do as well. Under this structure, this child’s den, this Armageddon tent, it is only natural that thoughts of loved ones and the world we once knew would creep back into our minds. The survival instinct can only guard against such things for short adrenaline bursts.

Lucy is worried for her family, for her sister, her lover, her dog, but aren’t we all? I can almost hear you telepathically. Give it a rest, love. You have no patience for others, and nor should you.

‘Come on darlin’,’ growls Gareth, job unknown, thirty-something from Macclesfield. ‘Let’s have some of that Mancunian spirit, ey?’ He says it to us all, with half a Manchester-based grin; he would swagger like a Gallagher if there were room.

‘I’m from Leeds,’ she spits through tears.

‘God, sorry, love…’ And we can see that Gareth and some of the others need cigarettes instead of tears.

Never mind. What are cities now? What is the Earth now? Even if the evil robot bug aliens retreated back to their own galaxy the regional bubble is well and truly burst.

‘Keep it together everyone,’ you say and we try. Me most of all. You are squeezing my hand again.

One of the soldiers opens fire.

*

For a time it is only the calamity of those guns that we are party to so we stay silent and huddle together. The soldiers make a movement and feet thunder past us towards the Piccadilly Gardens entrance.

Mike creates a peep hole. You fidget, annoyed.

All of our heads move when we hear the liquid creak of their hinges and then their silent heat rays are smashing windows and soon we cannot tell what is the sound of tinkling glass and what is the sound of burning clothes.

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