War of the Worlds

by Adam J. Whitlatch

  Goliath advanced, the turret swiveling as it approached the intersecting canyon where the Martian had staged its ambush. Nothing. The gorge was empty.

  “These bastards always move in threes,” Wells muttered.

  Wells heard heavy footfalls behind him and turned toward the sound’s source. The second Martian stepped out of the smoke pouring from its partner’s wreckage.

  “Shah, it’s on our six!” Wells shouted.

  The Goliath pitched, throwing Wells against the walls of the crow’s nest as the massive machine turned to face the new threat. The Martian fired its heat ray, raking the beam across Goliath’s legs. Wells heard a loud hiss below, and the tripod lurched backward.

  “We’re losing hydraulics,” O’Brien said.

  “Brace for impact!” Wells ordered.

  Goliath’s joints creaked in protest, and the tripod fell backward. Wells gripped the sides of the crow’s nest and closed his eyes as they struck the canyon wall. He covered his head with his arms as rocks rained down around him. Dust and smoke stung his eyes and lungs.

  Over the sound of falling rubble, he heard the Martian tripod approaching. When he opened his eyes, the alien’s shadow fell over him. Its tentacles slithered and writhed as its red, mechanical eyes stared down at him.

  Wells keyed the mic. “O’Brien, I need that heat ray.”

  A mortar struck the Martian’s cowl from behind and bullets streaked through the air around it, some bouncing harmlessly off its shell. Wells craned his neck and saw a dozen militia gunmen pelting the tripod with machine guns and portable heat rays. The alien turned and fired its beam, vaporizing several of the militiamen in a single blast.

  “Weapons systems report,” Wells shouted into the radio.

  *****

  “The heat ray’s gone to hell,” O’Brien shouted from the engine room.

  Shah unbuckled and clambered to his view port. All he saw was blue sky and white clouds. “We’re blind,” he said.

  Carter shook her head, dazed from the impact. Something wet and warm dripped onto her arm. She looked down and saw three blood trails streaking down her forearm. Another droplet fell. She looked up.

  Above her, she saw Douglas slumped over the side of his chair. His eyes were closed. Blood trickled down his forearm, collected on his fingertips, and dripped steadily.

  Carter tore at her restraints. “Abe!”

  She climbed up to his chair and held his head in her hands. After a long, tense moment, his eyes fluttered open.

  “Oh, thank God,” Carter gasped.

  “Abe,” Wells’ voice crackled over the speaker. “Status report!”

  Carter grabbed Douglas’ radio. “Abe’s hurt!”

  “I’m fine,” Douglas grunted.

  “No, you’re not,” Carter said. She removed her belt and fastened it around the sergeant’s arm in an improvised tourniquet. He winced.

  Douglas grabbed the controls, and the entire cockpit shuddered. The sound of grinding gears and screeching metal filled the compartment.

  “Jay-sus,” O’Brien shouted. “Whatever you just did, don’t do it again!”

  Douglas took the radio from Carter. “Sorry, sir. The turret’s jammed. I’ve got no movement and no shot.”

  “Can we fire?”

  Douglas cast a nervous glance at Carter and keyed the mic. “I think so, sir.”

  “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Douglas. He looked at Carter. “I’m fine.”

  Douglas pulled the lever with his uninjured arm and loaded a fresh shell into the breech.

  *****

  The Martian fired again, its beam disintegrating most of the remaining militiamen. Only one man remained. He stood his ground, firing on the tripod with his machine gun, pausing only to slam a fresh magazine into the weapon. The alien advanced on him, its heat ray glowing and readying to fire.

  “That thing is on the move,” Wells shouted. “Can you sight on him?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Abe?”

  “I’ve got a shot,” Douglas said.

  “Take it!”

  The eighty-eight fired, and the explosive shell struck the underside of the Martian’s cowl at the base of the neck.

  “You got him!” Wells cheered.

  Smoke billowed from the tripod’s head. The machine staggered a couple shaky steps, teetered, and fell to the ground, sending plumes of dust into the air.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wells knelt on the canyon floor, examining a foot-tall black metal box with dials and knobs on the top. Satisfied that the device was undamaged, he slipped it into a canvas satchel. He looked up at the carrion birds circling above the Beowulf’s wreckage, shielding his eyes from the noonday sun.

  Boots crunched on the sandy ground to his left, and Wells looked up into Shah’s sad, brown eyes. The lieutenant shook his head. “All dead, Captain.”

  Wells stood. “They were good soldiers.”

  Shah nodded.

  Wells hefted the satchel onto his shoulder and left the smoking, crippled Goliath behind. Shah fell into step beside him. Nearby, Douglas sat on a rock while Carter dressed his wound. Behind them, O’Brien checked their meager stock of weapons—a few Thompson submachine guns and a Torch.

  “Hold still,” Carter said. She coiled a strip of white bandage around the sergeant’s forearm.

  “It’s just a scratch,” Douglas insisted. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t make me pull rank, Abe,” Carter said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  They looked up as Wells and Shah approached.

  “We’ve got to move out,” Wells said.

  “We should bury the Beowulf’s crew,” O’Brien protested.

  Wells shook his head. “There is no time.”

  Carter and Abe exchanged nervous glances as Wells and Shah walked away.

  O’Brien wasn’t about ready to give up, however. “If we stay with the Goliath,” he said, “we’ll have a better chance of being found.”

  Deep down, Wells knew O’Brien was right. Staying with Goliath was the smart thing to do, and Pecinovsky and her men damn well deserved better than to be left to the vultures circling above. But orders were orders, and he was tired of repeating them to the disobedient Irishman.

  Wells whirled. “Our mission is to find that remaining tripod,” he snapped. “That is what I intend to do.”

  “On foot?” O’Brien threw his weapon onto the ground and crossed his arms. “No thanks. I didn’t join A.R.E.S. to be in the bloody infantry.”

  Wells clenched his teeth and stared daggers into the obstinate Irishman. The smug smirk on O’Brien’s lips made Wells’ blood boil. Since day one, O’Brien had been testing his captain’s limits, and now he’d pushed him well over the line.

  “You either follow orders….” Wells drew his sidearm and trained it on O’Brien’s barrel chest.

  “Or what?” O’Brien sneered. “You going to shoot me?”

  “Yes.” Wells’ stare was stone cold.

  O’Brien’s sneer melted away. He held out his hands and took a step back.

  Shah cautiously stretched out his hand toward Wells. “Captain—”

  A burst of gunfire rang out several yards behind them. Wells relaxed his aim and looked over his shoulder. Shah hefted his weapon and sprinted toward the source of the sound with Wells close on his heels.

  His noncompliance forgotten for the moment, O’Brien swiped away the beads of sweat pooling on his ruddy forehead. He picked up his weapon and followed while maintaining a safe distance from Wells.

  When Wells and Shah rounded a bend in the canyon, they found the wreck of the first Martian tripod. The cowl was blown open, and the pilot flailed and shrieked as a militiaman in a long, green overcoat fired his machine gun at it. The bullets tore through the alien’s body and severed the writhing tentacles, splashing green blood onto the twisted cockpit.

  The militiaman’s weapon clicked empty, and the Martian fell limp a
nd silent. The shooter calmly ejected the spent magazine, replaced it with a fresh one from his coat pocket, and resumed firing into the bleeding corpse.

  “I think it’s dead,” Shah shouted over the din.

  “Yeah!” The militiaman laughed and turned. “I just like to see ‘em bleed!”

  “If there are any more around, they’ll hear you,” Shah said, his voice barely over a whisper.

  The man snorted and spat on the Martian carcass. Wells watched the man as he sifted through his comrades’ ashes for supplies. He muttered under his breath, laughing and ending long strings of incomprehensible gibberish with “no-no-no-no-no-no.” His eyes were wide, searching; they rarely stopped moving as the man murmured.

  Wells held out a hand. “Thank you, Mister….”

  The militiaman regarded Wells with an air of suspicion. He did not take the captain’s hand, but finally lowered his weapon. He fished a small flask from his breast pocket and took a long pull from it. “Name’s Wilson.”

  “Mr. Wilson.” Wells withdrew his hand. “Thank you. Your squad saved us.”

  “Ain’t no more squad,” Wilson snapped. “‘Cept me. Hope your sorry asses were worth it.”

  Wilson slung his weapon over his shoulder and turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Wells asked.

  Wilson turned, his left hand gripping a leather pouch hanging from his neck. He grinned. “To kill me some more tripods!”

  “You know where they are?”

  Wilson’s grin widened. “Hell, I know where those bastards live!”

  *****

  Wilson led Wells and his unit up a path along the edge of the canyon. It wound into a narrow, intersecting branch. Wells kept a vigilant eye below them, determined not to let the Martians get the drop on him again, especially without the Goliath to shelter them from the heat rays.

  Wells noticed wooden poles strung with power lines on the opposite rim of the canyon. A heavy, steel-encased conduit ran parallel along the ground. It was strange to see either so far out in the desert, but Wells quickly put it out of his mind.

  Up ahead, Wilson muttered unintelligibly, often pausing as if listening to an unheard voice. Wells cast a nervous glance to Carter, who walked beside him. She wore the same worried expression. Her eyes asked the question they were both fighting the urge to utter.

  Why are we trusting our lives to this lunatic?

  “So, Wilson,” O’Brien said from the back of the line, “what’s your story?”

  “I have—had,” Wilson corrected himself, “a little ranch outside Española. Me and my wife. Damn tripods stomped through and, well… You can guess.”

  Wells nodded. “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks,” said Wilson. “Anyway, after they burnt out Española and blew up my wife, I joined up with that militia. They thought they got my Lucy. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I fooled ‘em good.”

  “And how’d you do that?” asked Carter.

  Wilson turned, reached into the small leather pouch hanging from his neck, and pulled out a pale, shriveled human finger. A silver wedding band encircled the base of the severed digit. He grinned. “I found a piece of her.”

  Wells and Carter exchanged worried glances again. This revelation only deepened their concerns. Wilson resumed walking, whispering sweetly to the finger as he left the A.R.E.S. soldiers behind.

  “You see what’s leading us?” O’Brien said. “The man’s out of his bleedin’ mind. He’s keeping his dead wife’s finger ‘round his neck!”

  If Wilson heard, he didn’t show it. He continued on, talking to a ghost only he could hear.

  Douglas frowned. “You ever been in love, O’Brien?”

  O’Brien grinned. “Dozens of times.”

  Douglas shook his head and walked after Wilson. “Anybody ever tell you you don’t know shit?”

  O’Brien stared after the sergeant. “What’d I say?”

  “Abe wasn’t talking about lust,” Shah explained, following Douglas and leaving the Irishman behind. “He was talking about love.”

  O’Brien shrugged and jogged to keep up. “Well, what’s the difference?

  Shah shook his head.

  They continued on in silence, save for Wilson’s occasional soft murmuring. Several minutes passed before Wilson raised his hand for silence and crawled on his belly up the path. The others followed his lead. The trail opened up onto a craggy rise overlooking a large concrete structure across a ravine.

  Smoke billowed from the numerous stacks rising from the building. A long, narrow cement bridge stretched across the ravine. Wells squinted. Something was moving down there.

  He raised his binoculars and trained them on the source of the movement. A Martian tripod stood with its back to them just in front of the bridge, then turned and surveyed the area. The cowl swept back and forth, its red eyes searching.

  “It’s the other tripod,” Wells said. “Looks like it’s guarding some sort of power plant.”

  “May I, Captain?” Shah said. He plucked the map from Wells’ breast pocket, unfolded it, and spread it across the ground in front of him. His finger touched the red X indicating the Goliath’s current position and traced a path along the snaking canyon to a small black icon. “Here. You’re correct, Captain. It is a power plant.”

  Wells remembered the lines he’d seen above the canyon. Indeed, there was a pole nearby, but the cables dangled limp on the ground. Broken, no doubt, by the tripod guarding the building.

  Carter looked over Shah’s shoulder. “They’ve taken over a power plant?”

  “That can’t be good,” Douglas said.

  Wells shook his head. “No, it can’t.”

  “You thinking of storming the castle, Captain?” O’Brien asked. “With one heat ray and a—” He held up the machine gun in his hands. “—pea shooter?”

  Wells lowered the binoculars and frowned. “They’re here for a reason. We need to get inside.”

  “Are you nuts?” O’Brien said. When he saw the look in the captain’s eyes, he quickly amended, “Sir? How the hell are we going to do that?”

  Wilson grinned. “Well, my guess is you’ll be needing a distraction.”

  *****

  Wilson led them down another path toward the bridge. They stayed low, ducking behind the rocks to escape the Martian’s watchful mechanical eyes. They took cover behind a boulder, close enough to hear the slight metallic creaking of the tripod’s joints, and the rustling of its tentacles.

  Wells edged along the rock and chanced a brief glance at the towering Martian. The tripod turned in his direction, and he ducked back behind the boulder before it could spot him. There was no way they could sneak past it and onto the bridge without it either raising the alarm or frying them with its heat ray.

  He turned to Wilson. “It’s too risky. We’ll find another way.”

  Wilson clutched the leather pouch and chuckled. “Lucy an’ me both know there is no other way. Hmm? What’s that?” He held the pouch up to his ear, listening intently. After a moment, he looked at Wells and smiled. “Lucy says that it was good meeting you… even if you are a damn Limey.”

  Wilson waited for the Martian to turn its back, and then darted behind another rock several feet away. Slowly, he made his way through the craggy terrain.

  Carter watched Wilson until he disappeared from view. “Now what?” she asked.

  “We wait for his signal,” said Wells.

  “Can we trust him?”

  Wells sighed. “I don’t think we really have a choice.”

  He knelt and pulled the black box from his satchel.

  Shah craned his neck for a better look at the device. “The emergency transponder?”

  Wells nodded and twisted the large dial on the top. “The Martians seem to know when we’re coming. I’m changing the frequency. Hopefully, they won’t be monitoring them.”

  “And, hopefully, the Leviathan will,” Shah said.

  Wells nodded.

  *****

  Wils
on crept low to the ground, darting from rock to rock. He stopped and peered over one to check on the tripod, and the machine turned toward him. It was almost a hundred yards away now. It stared a moment, unmoving save for the undulating tentacles, and then turned away.

  Wilson pressed his back against the rock and chuckled under his breath. “That was close.”

  His ears twitched. “What’s that?”

  He lifted the pouch and loosened the ties. The fingernail poked through the opening, and Wilson held it to his left ear.

  “What’s that, honey?” he said, pausing to listen. “Plenty stupid, yeah. But it’s the only chance they got.”

  He craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the A.R.E.S. soldiers squatting exactly where he left them. The run to the bridge would leave them exposed, but—with luck—he could buy them the time they needed.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” he said, “but I have to try.” His eyes flicked back to the finger. “I love you, too.”

  Wilson gave the pouch one final, gentle squeeze and stood. He stepped out from behind the rock and racked the Thompson, chambering the first round. The Martian took no notice of the sound and continued its vigil, allowing Wilson to stride unchallenged into the open.

  “Okay, you slimy sons-of-bitches,” Wilson shouted. “Here I come!”

  He opened fire, spraying the Martian’s cowl with a futile hail of lead. The tripod turned slowly and looked down on him. Instead of firing, the machine abandoned its post to inspect the bellowing gunman.

  *****

  Wells stuck his head out from behind the boulder and watched the Martian advance on Wilson. The rancher laughed as he shouted taunts and obscenities at the invader.

  “Let’s go,” Wells said, barely above a whisper.

  Wells and Carter led the way through the rocks. Douglas and Shah followed while O’Brien brought up the rear.