Invasion! Earth vs. The Aliens

by Robert Reginald

  “The Army’ll stop ’em,” one woman said, but she didn’t sound too sure of herself.

  Then explosions came seemingly from everywhere, left and right and all around, and the air began filling with clouds of smoke and dust and signs of fires burning in some of the houses in San Rafael. I could now hear the unique zzzttt of the weapons used by the great metal striders.

  “HQ, HQ!” Vásquez Caballero shouted into his radio, “Cease fire! You’re firing on us!”

  “Here they come!” one of the soldiers said.

  Across the Bay near the Richmond Bridge they appeared, one tripod striding after the other. One, two, three, four of the armored machines advanced through the city of Richmond, looking like miniature Eiffel Towers in the distance. I could see the squirts of green fire emanating from under their hoods.

  A fifth strider materialized further north in San Pablo, its glittering body shimmering in the afternoon sun as it swept forward, destroying the gun emplacements there. One of the aliens in Richmond aimed a shot at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, damaging it. A second bolt accidentally breached the walls of San Quentin Prison; God knows what happened to the men sequestered there.

  At the sight of these terrible machines the crowd of refugees near the water’s edge seemed struck mute by horror and dismay. They could only stand there, mouths agape and faces stricken, shocked silent by the approaching danger. There was no screaming or shouting—not yet anyway!

  Two of the Martian tripods entered the water, and began heading across the Bay towards San Rafael.

  “Get out of here!” I shouted to the masses, but they needed no urging from me. They rushed west into the park and then into the streets of the city. But where could they go?

  As I turned around again to face the Bay, I realized that the fifth machine was coming right across the water to Peacock Gap, where we were standing. Then I broke and ran, not waiting for Mayer or anyone else. The approaching fighting-machine rushed right up the gravel beach towards us. The recon site was blasted out of existence with one shot. One of the boatloads of fugitives was swamped by a huge wave when the tripod’s foot splashed into the water nearby. The stones under my feet were muddy and slick. Then, as the Martian machine towered overhead just a couple of hundred yards away, zapping some target off in the distance, I flung myself forward into a depression in the ground, and put my hands over my head.

  But the strider took no more notice of the people running from it than a man would of a bunch of ants in a nest that his foot had disturbed. The machine’s hood pointed at the batteries that were still firing near Fairfax and let loose a mighty blast. Most of the guns went silent.

  However, the Army had hidden a couple of camouflaged tanks in a nearby residential section. Two or three of these weapons now opened fire at close range. The sudden near concussion, the last one close upon the first, made my heart jump. The monster was already raising its sting-ray when the first shell burst just six yards from its cowl. Simultaneously, two other shells exploded in the air near its body, slewing it around—and then a fourth shell impacted directly on the hood. The strider’s carapace bulged, flashed green and red, and disintegrated into a thousand tattered fragments of ruby flesh and glittering metal.

  The refugees uttered a collective cry somewhere between a scream and a cheer.

  Amazingly, the decapitated colossus didn’t topple. It must have had some automatic stabilizer that restored its balance, because it started walking forward in a straight line into the city, obviously without direction, crushing cars, people, and even houses beneath its huge pads. It smashed forward until it hit the brick façade of St. Gandalf’s Church, which it demolished in the act of destroying itself. There was a muffled explosion that sent pieces of the machine in all directions, but the greater part of it was still intact, although crumpled on its side.

  I ran the several city blocks to the wreck.

  Thick clouds of smoke were pouring from the downed strider, and through the whirling wisps I could see its giant limbs churning the soil and flinging a spray of dirt into the air. The tentacles swayed and struck out like living arms, maiming anything they encountered. It was as if some great wounded thing was struggling for its life. Enormous quantities of a reddish-brown fluid were spurting in noisy jets out of the machine in all directions. I didn’t know whether it was blood or oil or some combination thereof.

  Two other machines responded immediately to the plight of their brother, heading in our direction, advancing with gigantic strides from the beach. As soon as they were in range, the tanks opened up again.

  I ran a half block and hit the ground once more. I could hear the shells whistling over my head and impacting on the Point, and the returning zaps of the Martian weapons. The noise was deafening. Then I saw them again, those twin towers of gray, as they attacked and destroyed the tanks. They’d passed me by somehow, and were now stooping over the still-spurting remains of their comrade.

  A third and fourth machine now appeared, zapping their sting-rays in every direction. I heard rather than saw a flight of jets high above me, but they either quickly passed by or were blasted out of the sky, because they were only evident for a short period of time. The whine of shells, the crackling hiss of the Martian beams, the crashing of the houses, the screaming of the people, the burning of the fires, all mingled together to form the cacophony of battle.

  I wanted to hide.

  I wanted to run away.

  I had no idea where to go.

  Clouds of dense black smoke obscured the city and San Pablo Bay, limiting my vision on those occasions when I was able to raise my head. I knew that the tanks were out of action, because the distinctive whoof-swish sound of their shells had vanished.

  I stood up, finally, to see what was going on. Through the fog of war I could spy some of the refugees, still trying to find some hole in which to hide. In the distance they looked like little frogs leap-hopping through the grass, running back and forth in dismay.

  Then the sting-ray was back again, its emerald lance poking ever closer to me. The nearest row of houses caved in as it dissolved with the touch, sending flames of despair into the sky; the trees in the park caught fire with a roar of protest. And still the green light flickered up and down, here and there, licking up the people, and coming within fifty yards of where I stood.

  I screamed out loud, and staggered through the leaping, hissing earth back towards the beach. Had my foot stumbled, that would have been the end of me. I ran helplessly away in full sight of the Martians.

  I expected to die.

  I have this dim memory of a great Martian foot coming down within yards of my body, driving straight into the loose gravel, whirling its way forward and lifting again. Then the four remaining machines strode away from me and gathered around their fallen brother. They picked up the shattered remains, and gently carried the debris of their comrade between them back across the Bay to Richmond. I thought of a baby rocking in its cradle.

  Slowly, then, so very slowly, I realized that by some miracle I had once again escaped the touch of death.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE MINISTER’S LAMENT

  Ministers who spoke of God as if

  they enjoyed a monopoly of the subject.

  —Henry David Thoreau

  Alex Smith, 27 December, Mars Year i

  Marin County, California, Planet Earth

  The Martians then retreated back across the Bay to their major base at Richmond. Had they just pushed on immediately towards San Francisco, there would have been nothing to stop their advance south of San Rafael other than a few scattered tanks and half-tracks. Most of our forces had been knocked out already, apparently including the military headquarters at Fairfax.

  But the aliens seemed in no hurry to redeploy. If anything marks the Martian invasion of Earth, it was their slow but steady plodding as they moved from one place to another. “One small step for Mars, one giant step for Marskind!”

  Spaceships were landing in North
America every few hours, adding to the alien forces. And not just on the West Coast, either: I heard later that capsules had fallen near Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Grand Forks, British Columbia; Chinook, Montana; Wichita, Kansas; Craig, Missouri, and many other locations, mostly west of the Mississippi. No one knows why these towns were picked, or whether the targeting was random.

  Meanwhile, our military command was now fully aware of the power and potency of the enemy, and worked furiously to target the new landing sites. A few of these were actually destroyed, I later understood; but any that managed to assemble a fighting-machine quickly became invulnerable. Every minute counted when countering the Martian threat.

  In the Bay Area fresh troops and equipment were airlifted to the San Joaquin Valley, since Sacramento and the big cities had already been compromised. The Air Force tried bombing several of the alien landing pits with Stealth aircraft, but they weren’t stealthy enough, apparently, at least after their first run. One 500-pounder did manage to cripple a Martian tripod, which was, however, soon rebuilt; but all of the other jets that approached the pits thereafter were shot out of the sky before they could even come within range. The buggers learned very quickly indeed.

  A similar pattern was repeated when the military tried deploying cruise missiles: the first one was effective, the others almost wholly ineffective. The aliens seemed able to communicate almost instantaneously—as we now know, their ability was telepathic in nature.

  The digging-machines began clearing away all of the vegetation surrounding their pits, preventing anyone from approaching closer than about three-quarters of a mile. As our forces began employing larger, more effective weaponry, the aliens became more attentive to even minor incursions by our soldiers.

  Gradually, the enemy was consolidating its operations into strategically-placed campsites, abandoning the smaller ones once they’d been stripped of anything useful. The sites were chosen to dominate and control all activity in a particular region. The great striders then began systematically destroying communications facilities, power plants, major transmission lines, bridges, and anything else that might link or aid our security services.

  I became separated from Mayer and the others during the battle, and so as evening approached, I had to decide what to do next. The way south still seemed open to me, although for how long, I had no idea. Our bicycles were gone, probably grabbed by refugees, many of whom were still milling about in the late afternoon sun. I decided to head to San Francisco. I was curious as to what was happening in that great city by the Bay. Since I had no transportation, I walked.

  Parts of San Rafael were burning fiercely, but as I headed south through the lower reaches of town, I gradually passed out of the damaged area. Most of the stores had been ransacked by looters, but I did manage to find some bottled water at a service station, along with a few chocolate bars and crackers and stale sandwiches. I wolfed down the food and drank a bottle of water. I rigged a makeshift pack from rags to carry additional provisions, and loaded the sack with as much as I could tote. I was parched enough that the water was quickly consumed.

  The refugees diminished rapidly as I moved south. Apparently, everyone thought that San Francisco was a danger area, and had headed west towards the coast. I encountered one or two strays here and there, and a little brown dog who was so skittish that he wouldn’t come anywhere near me; I threw him a cookie, which he gobbled down immediately before running off in the other direction. I have no idea what became of him—or of so many others that I encountered on my journey.

  I walked for hours as the sun drifted ever lower in the sky. I was almost on my last legs by sunset. Every time I stopped, though, my fears would get the better of me, and soon I would get up and resume my plodding course southwards. At last I was able to spy the Golden Gate Bridge shining in the distance, although I couldn’t tell how far away it was.

  Suddenly and without warning I was violently ill, vomiting most of my dinner onto the grass by the road; one of the sandwiches must have gone bad. I suppose this was around four; I’m not really sure—it was late afternoon. I lay down in a garden to rest. I seem to recall talking to myself during that last interval, something about Becky and the Martians. I was very thirsty, having drunk all of my water.

  I was angry with my wife all of a sudden. I don’t really know why. Perhaps it was my worrying about what’d happened to her in Sonoma, combined with my desire to see her safe again. I hated the fact that I had to cope with this godawful burden on top of everything else. It was totally unfair to her, of course, but that’s the way I felt—and I’m trying to relate what happened to me with as much honesty as possible.

  I don’t remember exactly what came next. I was just so damned tired. At some point I became aware of a figure standing in front of me: someone in a soot-smudged, short-sleeved shirt with white collar, his pinched face staring down at me in concern. Framing him was the splendor of a mackerel sky, rows and rows of orange and pink clouds streaking the horizon, illuminated by the brilliant sunset.

  I sat up and groaned.

  “Water?” I managed to gasp.

  He shook his head “no.”

  “You’ve been asking me that ever since I found you,” the minister said.

  As soon as he spoke I realized that “he” was actually a “she.” The closely-cropped hair and the narrow, gaunt body had initially thrown me off.

  For a moment we were silent, taking stock of each other. I’m sure that she found me a strange sight indeed, with my filthy pants and shirt, and my face and shoulders blackened by the ever-present smoke. The minister had a weak chin, short, black hair, and large, pale brown eyes staring vacantly at me. She spoke again, her gaze turning to the sky.

  “What does it all mean?” she asked.

  “Who are you?”

  “The Reverend Lesley,” she said—I didn’t know then whether “Lesley” was a first or last name—“St. Gandalf’s was my church.”

  I just stared. What could I say? God had nothing to offer me.

  She extended her thin white hand and then spoke almost a complaint. I had no sense that her words were addressed to me:

  “Why did it happen? What have I done? This morning I conducted the service as usual, asking God to save our town and preserve our church. This afternoon the Martians came, saw, and conquered; and then—and then—it was Sodom and Gomorrah again! All my work undone. All my work thrown back at me. What did I do to deserve this? What kind of devils are these Martians?”

  “Where are we?” I asked, trying to clear my throat. I was so parched that it was hard for me to speak.

  “Corte Madera, I think,” she said. “Or maybe Mill Valley, I’m not really sure.”

  She sat down beside me, gripping her knees very tightly, and then turned to look at me again. For a moment she just stared silently at my face.

  “The agent of God came walking through the city streets, its hand of death pointed right at St. Gandalf’s,” she said, “and suddenly—fire, brimstone, and destruction!”

  She waved her hands again.

  “All my work—my Sunday school, my preaching, my building of a congregation—it’s gone. Why is God punishing me? Everything that I had that was good is dead; everything that was truly fine is finished. Oh, that beautiful place of worship—it’s demolished! My life has been swept away from me! Why? Why? Why?”

  She began ranting then.

  “‘The smoke of her burning goeth up for ever and ever’!” she said, standing up and gesturing at the horizon, her face contorted in disgust.

  I was finally beginning to understand. Her tragedy—she was obviously a refugee from the destruction of San Rafael—had driven her to the brink of insanity. She was suffering from massive psychological shock and trauma. Her world, her hold on reality, had been so firmly displaced by events that it was irretrievable.

  “How far are we from Mill Valley?” I said matter-of-factly, trying to restore the conversation to some semblance of normalcy.

  “But what
are we to do?” she said, completely ignoring my question. “Who are these creatures of Satan everywhere around us? Has the Earth been given over to them?”

  “Ma’am. Are we very far from Mill Valley?”

  “Only this morning I officiated at an early celebration of the….”

  “Yes, Reverend,” I said quietly, “but you have to look after yourself now. You can always rebuild your church, but you must conserve your strength. While there’s life, there’s hope. God hath spared you for a reason.”

  “Hope?” She looked over at me with her large brown eyes. They reminded me of a cocker spaniel’s.

  “Yes,” I said. “Hope! Hope that we’ll survive this invasion! Hope that we’ll begin life anew. Hope that we’ll live rather than die!”

  I told her that our military would soon rally and the Martians would be defeated. Those of us who survived would have to pick up our shovels and begin reconstructing our lives. She listened to me very intently, but as I rambled on, her attention gradually faded, and she looked again at the distant, declining sun, which had now reached the horizon. (I often had the same problem with my history and philosophy students!)

  “It’s the beginning of the end,” she finally said, interrupting my most learnèd discourse and thoroughly irritating me in the process. How dare she! “The great and terrible day of the Lord, when all men shall be called to account, when men shall call upon the mountains and the rocks to fall upon them and hide them, yes, hide them from the face of Him that sitteth upon the throne on high, when the great Judge shall levy out the fines and punishments for all our sins! ‘Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death’….”

  I ceased reasoning with this woman. There wasn’t any point. I struggled to my feet, put my hands on her shoulders, and shook her hard to get her attention.

  “Come on, wake up, Lesley!” I said. “I know you’re scared! So are the rest of us. Quit your whining. What good’s religion if it fails the weight of tragedy? Think of all the earthquakes and floods, wars and volcanoes. Think of the lives that have been lost. Do you believe God’s given San Rafael a pass? He’s not an insurance agent, you know.”