The door clicked shut again with a snap and the struggle suddenly ceased. Winnie kept pressed against it, ignored the pounding of her heart as she listened for sound on the other side. Only after she felt certain the assailant was gone did she remove her strained grip and turn to lean back against the door.
The airtrain jolted again, nearly throwing her off balance and into the indigo carpet beneath her boots. The jolt distracted she had not noticed the knob begin to turn until the clicking of bolts echoed in the otherwise silent car. Winnie lifted her skirts and ran as quickly as her stays and heels would allow, banged her fingers while trying to press the button to slide the door shut. Fear would win over logic this time, it seemed. She crouched low and absently tore the miniature top hat pinned to her hair as she peeked over the rim of the glass window.
“Calm yourself, Winthrop.”
“Pardon, but would you mind moving?” a posh voice called from over her shoulder.
Winnie pivoted so quickly she had to shove aside an unruly stray curl. “How did you get in here? Who are you?” The questions came barreling past her lips while her eyes remained glued on the golden gun in the man’s black gloved hands. She noted the double barrel and crackle of energy as he cocked the weapon with a quick snap.
“Fitzwilliam Abernathy at your service, my lady, and while you are lovely, I have no time to explain,” he replied her former seat. The man was dressed impeccably, from his gleaming black boots to tailored waistcoat and blue kerchief jutting beneath his collar. Here the illusion of propriety ended, for he also wore a brown, weather-stained trench and his close cropped black hair jutted in all directions. Twin sideburns framed what might have been an unremarkable face but for the fierce, intelligence in his focused gray eyes and smirk twitching about his thin lips. “See anything you fancy?”
“I say! You are no gentleman, sir.” Winnie huffed. She froze when she heard the sound of voices behind the compartment doors and several metallic clicks.
The man, clearly weary albeit amused by her, looked past her at the door. “Clearly, now you really should duck, ah, what was your name? Where are your manners?”
“Winnifred Wilhelmina Winthrop,” she said with an inbred curtsy and then scoffed. “Where are my manners? I’m not the one…and what do you mean, duck?” She shook her head at him and gaped as he suddenly threw himself down, flat between the seats.
“DUCK!” He grabbed her by the arm and yanked her down to his level.
“Unhand me!” She gasped as he tugged her closer. Her boots flew up in the air as her skirts turned up a flurry of petticoats. Fitzwilliam threw his body over hers, pinning her to the floor the same time the world exploded with sound. A rain of bullets showered overhead and poked noisy holes out the window, letting in deafening winds. Winnie threw her hands over her head and an embarrassing shriek escaped her.
“Silly woman, it’s only a few bullets…” Her would-be-rescuer mumbled in the brief silence after the gunfire ceased.
“A few bullets! They tried to kill us!” Winnie’s muffled words must have met his ears because he chuckled as he jumped up and reached down to wrap his hands beneath her arms. Strange tingling sensations played about her skin through layers of cotton and crushed silk. She yelped again when his strong arms swung her up to her feet behind him and dusted her skirts off. He was a good head and a half taller than her, even with her heels.
“No harm done.” He winked at her.
Winnie slapped at him in reply and he chuckled, then he turned to peek through the gaping holes of the pockmarked compartment door. “Hello gentleman!” The man called as he raised his pistol, kicked aside what was left of the door and jumped into a crew of gun toting mercenaries.
Winnie squinted to see the blur of bodies and electric gunfire darting through the haze of smoke. Her stranger was a blur of blue and brown amid a sea of black clad limbs. One moment it seemed he was dancing with them to some foreign choreography of kicks and punches; the next his gunfire sent them flying and screaming. Lights flashed and within the span of thirty-five seconds, ceased.
An odd tingling sensation trickled up her arms and she squeezed her hands into fists as she stumbled to the open doorway and took in the aftermath. Fitzwilliam Abernathy stood alone atop a pile of unconscious, potentially lifeless bodies. All of them were clad in uniform black frocks, same as the Watchers Society wore and their weapons lay scattered in broken metallic pieces.
Fitzwilliam’s shoulders heaved from his exertion while he reloaded shining silver bullets into his pistol. Without sparing her a glance, he moved his long legs across the car and shut the open door, crouching to his knees.
Winnie lifted her hefty skirts and gingerly stepped over the labyrinth of limbs in order to join him. Once more at his side, she watched as he flipped a second trigger and a beam of blue particle energy at the brass knob.
“What are you doing? That won’t work on old doors like…oh…” She held a hand to her mouth as the entire door soon began to glow with the same blue energy. “You’re making a trap for them, aren’t you?”
The man released his second trigger and with practiced ease, pushed back his trench and slipped the pistol in the holster at his belt. “There, that should keep them occupied.” He turned and favored her with a dark grin. “Hope you don’t have anything important on board.”
“Mr. Abernathy, whatever do you mean?” She stamped her heel on the carpet when he turned to march down the other side of the car. “Mr. Abernathy, what about the other passengers?”
“Oh the Watchers took care of them already. Can’t leave any loose ends, as they say. Odd that you aren’t decommissioned like the rest of them.” He pivoted and leered over her with narrowed eyes and a cruel twist of the lips. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Winnifred—…”
“No time for that, family name?”
“Winthrop.”
His gray eyes widened and then glazed over. “Ah, that explains it.”
“Explains what? I don’t see what my name has to do with anything… Mr. Abernathy, what are we doing?”
Fitzwilliam reached into his trench and pulled another contraption from his belt and touched it to the car door. “We’re getting off!”
“What!”
Another electric surge pulled from the door opposite them, slipped down the golden rod in his hand and the rod expanded to a staff. With his free arm, Fitzwilliam grabbed her waist and kicked the door.
“Hang on!” His shout was swallowed by the roar of howling winds and tapped his staff to the floor. The same blue energy exploded from the top and wrapped around their bodies, tingling her feet through the soles of her boots. Somehow, the force field kept them from being sucked into the atmosphere, yet her curls and skirts were still whipped about by the wind.
Fitzwilliam lifted her and stood onto the rickety metal platform connecting the two cars. Winnie felt what could only be described as a full out of body experience, or perhaps she was lodged somewhere safer in her mind.
“Certainly you have no intention of jumping,” she said.
Just then the train car before them opened and revealed another band of thugs who screamed the inevitable words, “Get them!”
Fitzwilliam tightened his grip on her waist and laughed as he jumped, pulling her with him.
Winnie screamed as her body was left behind in the sudden freefall, soft pounding pressure of wind against her bottom. She wrapped both arms around her mysterious rescuer, hitched up a leg about his in her panic and was too frightened to be troubled by his laughter.
Instead of picking up speed, however, the force field buffeted their fall. They fell upon a field of heather and murky earth. The force field disappeared once it touched the ground, letting them collapse in a heap on top of each other.
Winnie felt heat rise to her cheeks as she recovered her wits. She had never been this close to a man before and beneath her gloves she could feel the strength in his chest, in the arms wrapped around her, invading her
space and filling her senses with a blend of cinnamon, smoke and singed fabric. On her second inhale, she coughed and pommeled her fists against him.
“Hands to yourself, Mr. Abernathy.” With as much pride as she could muster, Winnie flipped her skirts back down over her exposed legs.
“Well, that could have gone a lot worse.” He leaned over his drawn up knees and then stood, coated in mud, rain sprinkling over his wild hair and reached a hand for her. With his other hand he attached the strange, retractable force field emitter back on his belt.
Winnie clenched her fists, her wrath growing in spite of all her efforts to reign in the madness brewing. She still had no clue who he was, but if Watchers were after him, then surely he was a criminal of some kind. But then…all those people.
She slapped his hand away and tore a shift in the struggle to stand. “Are you completely mad? Those people might be dead, those Watchers were shooting at us and I just jumped off a flying airtrain with someone who’s obviously a criminal!” She pounded his chest for emphasis.
He frowned and held up a finger. “First of all, yes, technically yes, I am a criminal, but not the sort you usually meet. Second, I saved your life, remember?”
“Oh yes, thank you so much kind sir for stranding in the countryside. I was only an hour from my sister, who is due any day, mind. What am I supposed to do now, with you, in the middle of God knows where? All my clothes—everything was on that airtrain!”
He tucked his chin and she thought she saw pity in his eyes before he thumbed at the sky. “Um, yes, about that…” An explosion ripped the words from his mouth and roared in her ears. His arms were around her again as the Queen Elizabeth Express combusted with a fiery bellow in the sky and showered down parts in the near distance. Debris and black smoke followed.
Winnie gaped, clinging to the man who just saved her life. “All those people…” And there were Watchers on board, murdering innocent people, for no reason. “Those Watchers…why would they hurt anyone? Aren’t they supposed to protect us?” She sounded so much smaller, so much younger than she intended, when she was supposed to be the big sister. Her little sister, Gwen, whose husband was a member of the Society.
Fitzwilliam patted her back and then took her hand in his. “Come on, it’s a terribly long story and some of our new friends might have made the jump before, too. Can’t risk staying out in the open like this.”
“Let go of me! We have to help!” Winnie growled past the ringing in her ears as her hand slipped from its glove and she darted for the wreckage. A thin but surprisingly strong arm snaked about her waist and lifted her in the air, pulling her back against his chest. She turned around and scratched at his face but his words stopped her attack.
“We have to help ourselves now, do you understand?” His clear gray eyes found hers and overhead, ashes fell with the rain. All at once the fight left her limbs and all she wanted was her sitting room, or better yet, her bedroom, a cup of tea beside a roaring fire. Father would call as ask her to fetch his notes, of course and…
No, she wasn’t going to cower and hide and shrivel up like a pathetic creature, incapable of conscious thought. Her spine and upper lip stiffened and Fitzwilliam smirked, a single black brow arched sharply in approval.
Winnie pushed against his shoulders and stood on her own two boots. “You know, Mr. Abernathy, my life was quite uneventful before you showed up.”
He popped a winning grin. “Afraid it’s about to get much more eventful, Winnifred Wilhelmina Winthrop.”
“I hope that’s a promise.” Winnie attempted her own winsome smile as she took his proffered hand in hers and decided she wasn’t going to press the fact he still had her glove. She liked the thrill of feeling his leather glove with her bare skin and shivered. Maybe her life had been too orderly, too much simpering and obeying and not only being trapped by her Father’s overprotective nature, but trapping herself.
“Where are we going?” she said as they walked down the hillside and toward a nearby forest. She decided she could be brave, too, even if that meant trusting this strange, wonderfully mad criminal.
“Away from here.”
“You aren’t taking me out here just so you can kill me, are you?”
“Thought did cross my mind.”
Winnie laughed, in spite of the horrors she witnessed, the uncertainties ahead and chose not to be upset by her appalling lack of decorum.
The Lost Capsule
by
Petter Skult
Johannes Van der Merwe had been there during the siege of Ladysmith in 1899. He had been there at the Battle of Colenso at the Tulega river, stopping general Buller’s troops from crossing. Johannes was a farmer. That’s what Boer meant; farmer. Someone who tilled the land the British wanted to usurp from him. That made him a soldier, and as a soldier he would protect his lands from the British uitlanders. As a farmer, he had been fairly small-time: he owned a farmstead, a few acres, with the accompanying Blacks that he kept under a close eye. He was married, with two children, a third one on the way. Not that he cared too much about that when out on the battlefield. He and his commando unit—his neighbours, mostly—were scouts, moving behind enemy lines, disrupting British supply lines and bringing back vital information.
That was how he was among the first to find out about the British counterattack that was planned for January 1900. 140 000 men; infantry, cavalry, artillery, meant to land on the Cape any time now. Johannes had gotten the information on exact numbers from a now-dead telegraphist, and was riding back to base, hard. He had to let general Cronjé know, although despair already gripped his heart. The Brits were too strong, and they were wising up to the Boer guerrilla tactics. For the first time since the start of the war, he was missing his farm.
That’s when the Event occurred. In the newspapers they’d call it the War of the Worlds. Apparently—and this Johannes had no knowledge of—eruptions had been seen on Mars months before, and ever since cold metal capsules had been travelling through the vacuum of space, until finally impacting in the Thames valley in England, one after the other. The notice would have appeared in the newspaper the next day, even down in the Transvaal, but it would not be until a few days later that the Martians would have climbed out of their tubes and begun their bloody, albeit short-lived conquest of Great Britain.
For Johannes though, the start of the War of the Worlds was different. He argued it like this, later: “Even the best shot misses his target one time out of ten. Wind, twitch, bad luck, malfunction - one shot out of ten will miss.” They said the ‘eruptions’ on Mars ended after the tenth shot, perhaps because their great interstellar gun broke. There were nine pods that landed, within a radius of a hundred miles, in England. And one pod, that missed entirely...
The explosion of sand destroyed the koppie entirely. Johannes’ horse threw him, and then galloped off, frothing in panic. For several minutes, there was nothing but dust in the air. Johannes struggled to his feet, disoriented and confused. British artillery? But there should have been more shells by now. A silence descended. Nothing. No shouts, no shots, nothing but the complete stillness of animal life fled. He dusted off his hat, then staggered towards the crater. Why? He had no idea, just that he saw something glint in sunlight that pierced the dust. Something metallic. This decision would come to change the world.
The Tenth Capsule. That was what it would be known as. The Lost Martians. The projectile was immense, smooth, singed from atmospheric re-entry, but remarkably unharmed. Unlike his colleagues in Britain, however, Johannes did not approach it with a white flag raised. He was a Boer, and a soldier, not a molly-coddled British gentleman. Revolver in hand, he approached the still-glowing canister, convinced it was some kind of trick. That’s when the top began to open.
It was said the Martians signed their own death sentences the moment they let terrestrial air enter their shrunken and weakened lungs, and with that air the millions of bacteria that ended up killing them in England. But for the Martians in this tu
be, it was first contact with terrestrial lead that ended them: Johannes had six shots in his Colt Single Action Army Revolver. There were six Martians in the cylinder. They were deformed, heavy, tentacled monsters, unused to Earth’s gravity, and so sure of the inferiority of the Earthlings they quit their vehicle with no protection. Johannes did not hesitate. By the time the cylinder was entirely open, his revolver was empty, and the Martians lay dead in their own greenish-black blood. It was only then that he realized this was probably bigger than just another British secret weapon.
Naturally, the 140 000-men strong troop never materialized. Those that didn’t die under the incinerating Heat-ray disbanded and joined the throngs of fleeing civilians. The Transvaal was saved. What more, the realization that there were other intelligences, other civilizations, out there in the coldness of space, ready to colonize Earth at a moment’s notice, gave the imperialists pause. Perhaps next time the Martians would bring with them gas masks, in which case the Earth was doomed.
The Second Freedom War was won for the Boers. Their leaders convened. The truth of the matter was that the isolationist politics could no longer stand. Johannes was one of those who spoke at the now-historical meeting.
“I saw the inside of the tube, sirs.” He said, all cleaned up in a new suit. “They were weapons, like the newspaper said. But they weren’t broken. They were whole, ready to be used.”
The Union of South Africa was formed - with no interference from the Brits, or the rest of the world. That Union, with the help of the tripods, would soon become the World State. The only thing capable of defending against further Martian colonial aggression. A necessary, if unfortunate, war of conquest would precede it, of course, but eventually White Man would stand astride the world, ready to fight back any aggression.
Johannes Van der Merwe was hailed as a hero. He never did return to his farm.
Bartleby and the Professor’s
Phantasmical Contraptions & Other Errors Page 17
