Darkness And Silence All Over The World

Darkness and Silence All Over the World

1. Day of Infamy

November 14th, 2003 will go down in history as “another Pearl Harbor”, when the Lizards came from a world many light years distant and tried to take over our Earth. They nearly succeeded, too, and considering their technological advantage over us, it is still a surprise to see humanity still flourishing more than forty years after the events I shall now relate to you. But we had someone on our side whom I still consider the greatest genius and most amazing woman I have ever met. If I hadn’t met her one day a few months after the Lizards had come and wiped out most of Earth’s population, then all the resistance that we put up would have been useless. Gather round, and I’ll tell you all about it…

2. Down a Hole

One bright afternoon I was walking through the shattered ruins of another of our cities: it was hard to imagine anyone or anything had survived the terrible pummelling that our planet had received a few months ago, but there were rats, and also new plants growing in the ruins. It was us humans who had come off worst out of all the Earth’s creatures: just huddled packets of us here and there, trying to scratch a living, scavenge what we could and some trying to fight the Lizards, or really what merely amounted to avoiding being wiped out. I’d escaped the destruction of just such a group only two days ago.

As I passed within a few yards of a hole in the ground, I heard a faint cry of, ‘help!’
I sauntered over to look, and in doing so heard it again. The voice was female, a bit thin and exhausted-sounding. I peered down into the hole, which proved to be about fifteen feet deep. Sitting at the bottom in a space not much more than a couple of feet across was a woman. She was looking, no squinting, up at me though an impossibly thick pair of glasses. She seemed to realise someone was there, because she got to her feet and squinted some more. She called up again,
‘hello? Is there someone there? Can you help me out of here?’
Her voice seemed quite guttural, like that of a German. She shrugged and said something in German, with a note of exasperation in her voice. I told her to wait while I found a way to get her out. I cast around for a means to enable her to leave her trap. Luckily I was in the middle of what was formerly a shopping area of the city; now I doubted there were many people queuing up to shop here. There was, however, a hardware store nearby, so I headed for it. Some of it was open to the sky, and some of the useful things I’d hoped to find there had been taken by others. But I found a ladder long enough to reach the bottom of the hole. I soon had the ladder in the hole, so that the woman could clamber up it and out onto ground level. For a long moment we took in each other’s appearance.

She wasn’t very tall, I’d say about 5'4", and quite heavily built, with a really big bust; she appeared to be older than me, around her early forties. She wore what appeared to be a sort of old-fashioned skirt suit, as if she had just come from a business meeting, with a sort of silky top underneath, however she looked quite dirty and bedraggled. She wasn’t ugly, but she was no real beauty. Short blonde hair fell around her chubby face, held in check by a black headband going around the back of her head. That was evidently required to hold her glasses on her face. And what a pair of glasses they were! The frames were light brown plastic, feminine in style, in a shape reminiscent of a butterfly, but seeming to come from a fashion era at least ten years old. The lenses were amazing! This woman wore myodisks, with quite a chunk of lens unused in each side, but it seemed to me that the left lens was noticeably weaker, and had a slightly larger bowl than the right one. That had a prescription of around minus 25, the other one a few less, I estimated.

She seemed to make every effort to catch my gaze, so it seemed to me, and when she had done so, she smiled gently and addressed me in her German-accented English, ’thank you for helping me. My name is Clara Schmidt.’
I responded to her introduction with my own. She then mused, ’this is an odd situation we find ourselves in, no?’
I nodded, and then she asked, ‘I’ve been trapped there for some days, I do not know how long. Please, if you have some food, can you spare some for me? Maybe I can repay you in some way.’
I looked at her for another breathless moment, at that point having no idea what she meant by repayment.

3. Feeding Time

I’d found food that morning in what remained of a supermarket, so I decided to lead her over, thus I set off with her in my wake. Within a few steps, she came jogging awkwardly around in front of me, her bust rolling and pitching appealingly; when she’d arrived, she asked,
‘please, are we going to find food?’
I wondered why she couldn’t have simply asked without all that running around in circles, but she continued ‘I am deaf. I can lipread quite well for a couple of metres with my glasses on. Please, if you wish to speak to me, you must face me.’

I sighed internally. What had I found, some half-blind deaf woman? Of what use was she? Nevertheless, I explained we were heading for the supermarket. I pointed at it, and she directed her gaze through her glasses in that direction. I didn’t think she could really see that far, but neither of us said anything about the subject. I walked across an area with some rubble in, and did so with little trouble, but Clara seemed to slow down and pick her way with care. She saw me stopped and looking back at her, and called out
‘I have tunnel vision. I have trouble with obstacles sometimes.’

We arrived at the supermarket, whereupon I started to guide Clara around. I soon discovered that she couldn’t really lipread beyond about 5-6 feet. She told me that she used her left eye to steer herself around and avoid most obstacles, and her right eye to lipread at longer distances: apparently the tunnel vision was made worse by the increased lens power. If she’d both lenses like that which was in front of her right eye, she’d be needing a white cane to feel her way around; she didn’t want that. She also remarked that she used to have a small telescope to look at more distant things, in combination with her right eye and lens. She sighed wistfully when talking about that: it certainly was useful, but it had been broken after the Lizard attack. She asked me if I’d seen something she could use instead, but I hadn’t. Her final bit of not-so-good news was her night blindness. I found Clara something suitable to eat then left her to it, while I went exploring the storeroom: nothing fresh was left by now, but there were a few oddments of tinned and preserved food. How much longer that would last was anyone’s guess. Thankfully the lack of mouths helped eke out the now-meagre supplies.

Suddenly I heard voices and footsteps: evidently someone else had our idea! I went to see who they were, and more importantly how many. It transpired that there were two of them, equipped with rucksacks for carrying food away, and guns to stop anyone they might find who had different ideas. I sneaked back toward Clara: there she was, only a couple of yards away as I crept into a hiding place. She’d managed to squirm her way behind some boxes, thus I could only see her left side. She was fairly well hidden, but was making soft eating noises that she presumably not hear. I waved at her, and hissed, ‘be quiet!’
Alas, she could only see me with her left eye. She tipped her head back, then tried to squirm around. She wasn’t trapped, but from this side, try as she might, all she could bring to bear on the problem of lipreading me was her left eye and lens. Realising something was up, she’d thankfully stopped eating. She pushed at her lens with her pudgy fingers, in an attempt at getting a little more resolving power out of it, in conjunction with a mighty squint from the eye behind it. Despite all this, she had no idea what I was saying.
She whispered to me
‘I can’t lipread you from here with this eye.’
Then shrugged. I tried a bit of sign language, hoping she’d be able to make that out instead. I held my finger to my lips, and she seemed to get the message. She sat quietly while the men walked past us.
Then she moved, creeping out to peek at them with her distance eye and lens. She turned to look at me, and whispered, ‘sorry’.
Thankfully the men didn’t see us, and after collecting what they could carry, they left us in peace. After that we talked about what to do next. Clara seemed a bit nervous at being out in the open, so proposed we find some sort of shelter. This I readily agreed to, but I assumed that I would be most of the looking.

4. The House on Chamberlain Road

So we set off down the street, looking for a likely-looking house. A lot of them in the central area had been so badly damaged as to be uninhabitable even if I was feeling particularly optimistic, so we had to go quite some distance, down and up streets into the outer parts of what remained of this town. Finally we walked along a street in a rather smart area of town, called Chamberlain Road: Clara had no idea what the street name was, of course. Most of the houses were smashed flat, but one near the end still looked safe enough to enter. I headed off to take a closer look, with Clara following me. A kick sufficed as a makeshift key, and we were in.

Quickly we explored the house: there was a kitchen, a bedroom and a sort of sitting room, with a couple of easy chairs, albeit a bit dusty. The upper level was too smashed to get into, so for the night these three rooms would have to suffice. We sat talking for a time, during which Clara told me more about herself. She had been a high myope for many years, and had been born with a little tunnel vision, both of which were gradually worsening. Despite this, she’d trained to be a medical doctor. At the age of twenty she’d lost her hearing due to an infection. She’d still managed to pass her medical exams, but had been unable to find suitable employment, so she’d decided to pursue another career, that of a physicist. In a few years she had gained a doctorate in that too. She reminded me that Germans with two Doctorates sometimes referred to themselves as “Doctor Doctor”: that made me smile, as I remembered some jokes that began that way.

Clara had been in England on the way to a scientific conference when the Lizards had attacked. She’d survived, and joined a nearby group in the capacity of doctor. She’d done her best, but had made a few mistakes due to her lack of hearing and poor vision. Then the Lizards had attacked her group about a week ago, but she’d somehow escaped. It was night, and normally she would not try to go far without help, but there was no-one to guide her and she felt she needed to get away in case the Lizards tried to pursue her. Unfortunately she’d fallen down the hole and been there for some days.

Just then I heard a noise: it sounded like a jet engine combined with the most unearthly humming. I’d heard it many times before: the sound of the Lizard ships. But this time it seemed persistent, if far off. I went to the window to see what was going on. Behind me Clara asked,
‘what is happening?’
I heard her get up and walk toward the window. My attention was on things outside. Way above my head soared three black dart-like shapes: the fighter/attack craft the Lizards used to attack ground-based objects. And everything else we had.

Clara appeared at my side, looking mystified. But she saw me looking up, so did so herself, squinting, but to no avail. She asked, facing me expectantly, ‘is there something there?’
Turning to her, I told her what I saw. She responded
‘I would have had no idea they were there.’

The Lizard ships flew off, so we returned to the chairs, where we talked until the light grew too poor for Clara to see well enough to lipread. I had to lead her into the bedroom, and I slept on one of the chairs. The following morning I saw and heard more Lizard patrols overhead, through mercifully they did not bother to stop and attack us. Nevertheless we decided it was a good idea to leave the remains of this badly hammered town. We raided a couple of shops first: in one place I found a rucksack for Clara, and back in the remains of the supermarket we found more food to carry with us, then we set out westward.

5. Gunfight

We travelled for a couple of days, out more or less in the middle of nowhere, walking down a country lane, looking for water: there was no running tap water anywhere I’d been, and bottled water was now very scarce, so we were obliged to replenish our supply from streams and the like. As usual Clara depended heavily on me for finding these: I saw a stream ahead, told her, and we headed for it. We filled our water bottles and then I left Clara to explore up the bank. Clara said to me,
‘don’t go too far… I need your eyes and ears!’
Despite her warning, I walked round a corner of the stream and out of sight. A few minutes later I heard a scream and a cry for help, and my name being called. It was Clara. I wondered what had she done.

I rushed back to see what had happened, hoping she’d just done something silly like falling in the water. But she was very much on the bank, sitting looking dazed and confused, with a man shoving a gun into her face. I heard her say to him ‘I don’t understand you. Please let me stand so I can lipread you.’
Fortunately I had a gun too, a small pistol pilfered from a gun shop near my home some days ago. I drew it and told her assailant to leave her alone.

He turned to me, aimed and fired. He was a lot worse shot than me, and that was saying something! I managed to shoot him in the lower right arm, although that wasn’t where I was aiming. He clutched at his bleeding injury and cursed. Upon seeing this, Clara told him to sit down and let her look at it, telling him she was a doctor. He wasn’t exactly happy at being shot, but looked at me and Clara with much less of a cruel, selfish expression. It transpired that his name was Mike, and he was part of a group currently living in a farm nearby. By the time we were walking across the fields to the farm we were not really best friends, but as near as possible considering what had recently occurred.

When we arrived at the farm, I saw that much of it had been given over to the production of food, and there seemed several people about doing various necessary things, from looking after livestock to simply being on guard. We were taken into the main farm building, and told to wait for their leader who would decide what to do with us. Presently he appeared: a tall, slim man, younger than me, with a calm ex-military air about him. His name was Dave, and he asked us about ourselves: about where we had come from, and what we could do. Clara told them she was a doctor of medicine and physics, the former seemed to please him, not surprisingly, as they didn’t have anyone with any real medical skills beyond first aid. I told him I used to be a computer programmer: that was about the limits of my skills. He shrugged, and told me bluntly there was little use for such skills, but as I’d managed to shoot one of his men, I must be some use.

6. Attacks

Dave seemed to be a decent sort of man. However, when the topic of conversation turned to the Lizards, he seemed a little intense to say the least. He seemed hell-bent on attacking and harassing them instead of meekly trying to scratch a living and stay out of their sight. That evening, he took some of his men in an attempt to capture one of the Lizards’ ships: what he intended to do with it, he didn’t make clear. A couple of hours later he came back without the hoped-for ship and with some of his men badly burned by energy bursts from the Lizards’ weapons. Clara and I immediately started to tend to their injuries. Alas for some there was nothing we could do: they died during the night. Later Dave came to see us to thank us for our efforts, and to say,
‘perhaps we shall triumph after all. They are not invincible!’
He came out with some more rather inane, jingoistic nonsense in the same vein, and then left us to it. I saw Clara shaking her head in disbelief, and when I had her attention asked,
‘do you think as I do, that this Dave is too belligerent for his own good?’
Clara shuddered as she replied,
‘yes… he is quite mad, I think. I do not feel safe around him.’

About two in the morning I started hearing the oft-heard jet-like humming sound coming from above, and moments later the loud explosions and ground tremors I’d learnt to associate with the Lizards’ energy weapons. Pretty soon the whole place was in chaos, people running around, Dave trying to shoot back, rather ludicrously, with his automatic rifle, and alas, some more casualties. Clara had some idea what was going on, because she had been through this sort of thing before, even if she couldn’t hear the blasts she could feel them and see the light flashes in the dark as she looked out the window.

I took her hand and said, leaning close to her,
‘we need to get out of here! We’ve had it if we stay around!’
‘Where shall we go?’
‘To the forest, it’s our best place to hide!’
‘I can’t see in the dark. Please hold my hand.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll guide you.’
I went out of the front door of the farmhouse and, pulling Clara along behind me, headed through and past all the confusion, dodged a energy blast, and then ran for the forest. Clara wasn’t expecting this, and nearly fell over, so I had to help her up and sort of pull her along in tow. By the time we got near the forest she was breathless and gasping. I didn’t really have time to look at her, as I was busy trying to get us out of here, but I did glance back at the farm buildings just as one got hit by a particularly fierce hit, and exploded. I saw Clara’s pale face in the dim light, confused and panting, her bust heaving and bouncing around as she shambled after me. She gasped,
‘squeeze my hand if we are nearly there!’
I’d momentarily forgotten that she was night blind. We were soon near the edge of the forest, but a squeeze of the fingers was all I could do to relay this to her. And then, a few dozen half-dragged paces on, we passed into the space between the very nearest trees, then I slackened our pace, just for a few more steps, until we were within the part of the forest that would just about conceal us, and we stopped.

7. In the Forest

Clara flopped to the ground and felt around. Her fingers soon found a tree trunk, so she said, while gasping raggedly for breath ‘I take it we are in the forest.’
She looked up blindly at me, squinting a little. But here in the dark, I couldn’t see that well. I could see Clara and her pale face and glasses, light from explosions glinting from them, but I thought she would have little hope of seeing anything. That she immediately confirmed ‘I am completely blind until sunrise. I won’t be able to lipread until then. I am in your hands. Just lead me and I’ll follow. But don’t expect me to do much more running, I’m exhausted!’
I wondered how I was going to communicate with her, and after a while thinking, I realised that I couldn’t, apart from the very simplest things by means of drawing letters on her hand, which would have to depend on Clara’s intelligence. I sat for about ten minutes, waiting for some signs that Clara was recovering, and watching the Lizards continuing to attack the farmhouse. I felt very glad we’d got away. Clara saw the bright flashes, but told me they were of no use for finding her way alone. Eventually Clara’s panting subsided, and she said, with a tremor of trepidation,
‘I’m ready to continue, that is if you are still with me.’
She reached out her hand, and when I took it, she gently sighed with relief, then said, ‘At least you didn’t desert me.’

Clara and I went deeper into the forest in an attempt to make certain we couldn’t be spotted by Lizards, or by anyone else who might have survived the attacks. After some time the noise from these ceased, and I supposed they must have left the farmhouse alone after seemingly tearing it to pieces. Clara walked behind me, holding onto my hand, or when the forest got too badly tangled and I needed my hands free, she held my belt or part of my rucksack. In this way we travelled for nearly an hour, before Clara announced that she was tired and wanted to rest.

I wasn’t keen on that idea, but we stopped anyway, being as I had no way to argue with her.
When she’d groped her way around the bit of dry ground I’d found, she lay down and said wistfully
‘I have had enough of this darkness, I hate it… But one day I think it will be like this for me always. If the Lizards have their way with us, it will be darkness and silence all over the world. There will be no humanity. This will be their world, stolen from us.’
I sat watching her, and after a few minutes she told me
‘I hope this is OK with you. I am so tired… and I would not be the best person to go on watch!’
She turned over and slept. When she woke, the sun was starting to rise in the East. I saw her open her eyes behind her thick myodisk lenses, and she smiled. As she sat up, she said
‘I can see you again, so that means you are still with me, unless my vision is playing games with me. But, I think the sun is not fully up yet, because your face is too blurred to lipread.’
At least now I could make simple signs to her and get some response. I waited for her to get to her feet, and beckoned her on. She followed me without having to hold my hand, which in some ways was a pity. I noticed that the light in places wasn’t that good, being as the trees were in places very dense: Clara needed a little help to get through such places. But after a while I realised that the trees were thinning: I could see more fields in the distance, though the gaps between trees. Even Clara noticed the change. She asked,
‘are we near the edge of the forest?’
I nodded.

A few dozen paces later we stood at the edge of the forest: by now we were in broad daylight, a lovely sunny spring day. Clara looked around with her poor squinting vision, and after a short pause turned to me and asked,
‘what do you see?’
‘There are fields, hedges, and over there a road leading to some sort of factory.’
Clara squinted in the direction I referred to.
‘I can’t make it out. Can we go and visit it?’
I wasn’t sure what she wanted in a factory, but I decided to humour her and take her there, so we walked across the field to the road, and thence to the factory.

8. Power Plant

We walked up to the factory gate; it seemed to me a rather odd-looking place, and I couldn’t tell by looking what was made here. Clara pointed up at a sign and asked for me to read it. All it said was
‘Danger - Radioactivity.’
She was fascinated by this and seemed even more eager to get in and look around. My reaction was rather less than excited: I wasn’t keen on getting irradiated on top of everything else that had happened to me. Clara cut in, asking,
‘is there some round, ball-like structure in it?’
I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, but I looked anyway. There wasn’t anything like that were I could see. I turned to her and replied, ’not this side. We’ll go around the other side.’
She followed me, and sure enough, there was a big white ball on one side. It was pretty big, taking up quite a chunk of this part of the “factory”. When I told her there was a ball, she clapped her hands and looked so pleased with herself, saying excitedly, ‘I knew it! It is a Nuclear Power Plant! Can we go inside?’
I began to feel that I should have never mentioned the factory. But I wasn’t to know.

Some more wandering around the perimeter fence took us to another gate: this one had a sign saying this was a power plant that had been decommissioned. To be honest, the place looked a little dilapidated. The “keep out” signs were out in force too! Clara pulled at the fence, and shook it in frustration. She asked me, ‘can you see any way in?’
I could not, and I told her. We then proceeded to walk all around the back of the place, and there we found a small hole ripped in the fencing: about half a metre high, or enough for an adult to scramble through on all fours. Clara immediately did this, and beckoned me in. I followed, just in case she did something she’d regret later.

She walked over to the main building, and found a door, again emblazoned with “Keep Off” and “Danger - Ionising Radiation” signs. Either she couldn’t read them or just ignored them; she started pulling at the door handle. I went up to her and asked, quite reasonably, why she was so fired up to get in. She replied
‘I have been involved in designing decommissioning schemes for nuclear plants such as this. I would like to see if the scheme is still safe.’

I had to push to door in for her, because quite logically and correctly it was locked. Inside it was pretty dim, simply because the lights were off. Naturally Clara didn’t see all that she could see in broad daylight and again sometimes relied on me to guide her as we made a quick tour of the place, including the control room and some of the offices. I’d never been in a place like this, so I didn’t know whether it was safe or not. Clara helped me find a Geiger counter conveniently stuffed away in a metal cupboard and that was that, we were impromptu nuclear scientists, except that I had next to no idea what I was doing; for the first time, Clara was guiding me.

We were there some time, and Clara told me although it appeared that the primary nuclear material had been removed and disposed of, there was some radiation from the place, which was quite apart from the normal background radiation. She watched the dial of the Geiger counter at times as we walked around, and then announced as we stood in one of the offices
‘I think this is safe enough for us. We would have to stay here some years to have a real chance of getting a dose powerful enough to do us any lasting harm.’
That was good news as far as I was concerned. I started to ask her why we were still here, and as Clara was agreeing that perhaps there was nothing particularly useful here, she stopped, deep in thought. I wondered what I’d said, then when she finally answered she said,
’this is troubling me.’
‘What is?’
‘The fact that the Lizards have not destroyed this place.’
‘Perhaps they would like to use it somehow?’
‘No, no. That does not make sense. They would be using it now if they wanted it so badly. I think… I think they don’t want to come here. Perhaps the radiation is somehow inimical to them.’
I nearly gagged at that… the leap of logic in Clara’s suggestion was quite amazing… yet quite convincing!

Clara then said determinedly,
‘we must find out exactly what it is that they are afraid of.’
‘How? Drag one in here kicking and screaming?’
She regarded me with a cold, calculating gaze: with her thick glasses her eyes often looked quite difficult to fathom, but now she looked at me almost as if I were some ignorant child. Flatly she told me, ’no. It is relatively easy to direct radioactivity’
‘You mean… we will build some kind of gun?’
‘The analogy is crude, but in essence is correct. Perhaps we shall shoot down a lizard ship. That is if you aim it for me and we are lucky.’

9. Resurgent

We spent a couple of days building our weapon. The source of the radiation was just a few pieces of brick work pulled from the structure of the building near the now defunct nuclear core. Bits of shielding served to direct the radiation… and that was really all there was to it! I stood back and laughed at our “weapon”: it seemed a refugee from a scrap heap, rather than something actually useful, let alone deadly. We waited for something to come near enough to “shoot” it at.

A day later a lizard ship roared overhead: it seemed to me that it climbed to avoid the power plant. I directed the invisible, to us quite harmless rays of radiation at the ship. The effect was quite amazing! The ship seemed to lose control and plummet toward us, before it regained control and flew away awkwardly. I smiled at Clara, and told her what had happened: the effect was exactly as she’d hoped for. She responded,
’this is a great day. We have a means to fight the Lizards.’

I was sceptical: looking at the virtual pile of junk that had produced this effect, I had some difficultly seeing it as useful in any sense. But I was wrong: Clara spent some time working out what was going on. It was amazing to see her work, covering notepaper with all sorts of arcane-seeming mathematical symbols. I was pretty good at maths, but this was way beyond me. She still wasn’t quite sure what was going on here, but had a good idea, and had ruled out some alternatives.

Then it was time to start turning this theory of Clara’s into some substance. I will condense things here: we managed to rejoin Dave’s group. He seemed to have some inkling that the Lizards didn’t want to go near the power plant, but had no idea why. He didn’t have a physicist on hand to get some understanding of the situation. Some of the survivors of his group turned out to be a lot better at making weapons than I or certainly Clara. With our unlikely arms we managed to clear the skies of the menace of the Lizards’ raids. Alas our primitive weapons - for primitive they were - couldn’t reach the Lizards’ mothership, far above the atmosphere. But again the genius Clara came to our rescue: she proposed the building of a device: scientist-speak for a bomb - that would release concentrated amounts of the particular sort of radioactivity that the Lizards found so uncomfortable. It took us weeks to build it, then Dave showed us his prize: a captured Lizard ship. He’d wanted to fight the lizards ship-to-ship in the atmosphere, but this was a far greater enterprise, so he allowed us to use it.

10. Sacrifice

So I, Clara, Dave and some of his group flew up to the Lizard’s mothership. They did not appear to notice anything untoward from us. We docked with their ship and started finding our way around. We’d never been up here before, but soon found our way to a place near what appeared to be the main control room, where hopefully the bomb would do the most damage. Clara set the bomb’s timer mechanism while we stood watch. Suddenly they seemed to take notice of us: from all around Lizards came, intent on stopping us. An awful fight then ensued; we forced them away with our radiation weapons, but having lost some men, we couldn’t hope to hold them off for long.

And there was worse news. Clara reported that the bomb had been hit by a plasma beam from one of the lizard’s weapons. She bent close to inspect it, and told us the bad news: the timer had been destroyed. We could have simply taken the thing back back to the surface, repaired it and tried again, but the lizards would have certainly been ready for our ruse a second time. There was only one thing for it: someone would have to stay behind and detonate the bomb.

To be honest, Clara had no idea how much damage the bomb would do. She hoped it would do enough to kill all the Lizards, maybe even demolish the mothership, but there was no way to tell. Dave suggested he stay behind to operate it. But Clara said firmly, ’no. I will do it. If it kills me, it does not matter. I am deaf and going blind. I do not want to live in darkness and silence for the rest of my life. No, this is better for me.’
I tried to argue with her, but there was no alternative.

Thus I had to leave my friend Clara in the chamber beside the control room. I gave her a first and last kiss, and told her I loved her: that really shocked her! Then we left her. Dave jammed the door shut in order to keep the lizards from getting to her, then we shot our way out of the mothership and into our stolen craft, and made a dash for it. A few minutes later, we saw a massive explosion behind us… that was the end of the Lizards’ mothership. I don’t know what Clara put in that bomb of hers, but it was certainly very effective. But, alas, it also meant the end of Clara. It took us a few weeks to find and kill the few survivors on Earth. And since then, we’ve watched the skies for another black fleet. But thus far, there has been no sign.

https://vision-and-spex.com/darkness-and-silence-all-over-the-world-t656.html