Scarlet Traces: An Anthology Based on H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds

by Edited by Ian Edginton

  It was her favourite thing, seeing it lit up, the silver reflecting the green. Its three legs dangled above the floor. They should be much longer, but she’d only had this much room. Each of its articulated leg sections were near twice her height; its head, so big she could have put her bed inside, was just over half the size it used to be. It had an open basket strapped to its back. Suspended from the roof by the ropes she’d stolen from the fishing boats, the head lolled to the side, and those big eyes—which Coira had to remind herself were not eyes at all, it was not a living thing—looked sad. She took it in. Then she noticed the impatient pulling on her hand.

  “Dis way!” Brodie said, tugging harder.

  “Two minutes, then bed,” she said, trying to sound firm.

  Brodie near dragged her to the shelves. Her ‘Menagerie’—that’s what she called it, a word she’d found in one of her stolen spelling books. Pa told her it meant a collection of animals that rich people brought from strange, far away lands and kept in glass cages, sometimes letting other rich people see them. She imagined them, in fine clothes, marvelling at bright coloured monsters, daring each other to tap the glass.

  Her Menagerie had no glass, but they came from further away than any tiger or bright coloured bird, though she’d found everything she’d needed to make them in that pool. She was almost five, then. She’d put it off that long, but the desire to go back had only grown. She’d gone after curfew; so easy to avoid the loud tapping of Hussars on the cobbles, even with her little pull-along cart. She’d tied rags over the wheels to muffle them. She’d remembered where it was. She’d taken off her shoes and smock, taken a deep breath and jumped in. Nothing grabbed her, but her presence had provoked a reaction—green light. The water had been murky, but lit well enough to see their faces. Huge and rotten, somehow still recognisably faces, even with the tiny crabs that pinched at their lips. She’d screamed. A scream of muffled bubbles. Gasping, she’d scrambled out to the surface again, crouched into a ball, her teeth chattering. She’d stayed like that, counting her thudding heartbeats. After a hundred, she’d walked to the edge and jumped back in. They were dead, those Martians. They couldn’t hurt her. She swam past their swollen, rotten bodies dozens of times over the next few months, and every night a few more pieces filled her wagon. The metal was so light, even large pieces were easy to move.

  Here was the result: the forty-one toys she’d made from those broken pieces of the Martian killing machines. The porcelain doll had been hardest. It was the most precious thing she owned. Her Pa had given it to her when she’d turned five. “Looks just like you,” he’d said. Dark curls, blue eyes, rosy cheeks. It looked nothing like her, Coira thought. The doll’s clothes were never torn or muddy, her curls never matted. It was too still; it bothered Coira, so she’d decided to fix it. The doll’s cloth body had to be unstitched, the metal skeleton inserted and the stuffing padded around. She aimed her switcher at it now and the doll, its legs hanging over the edge of the high shelf, swung them to and fro, and waved. Beside the doll, the first bear she’d made. Above them, several spider creatures she’d stopped making—they were easy, but too like the Hussars. There was a crab-like one, too. She picked up and set it on the wooden floor. It darted away just like the crabs at the beach in a funny sideways tiptoes dance. She’d called it Claws as it could carry things in its pincers—it always made her laugh. It was her favourite.

  “Biwdie!” Brodie pointed at his favourite.

  She reached up for the metal bird. Smooth and silver, it had only a passing resemblance to a bird. No feathers; she’d added a beak eventually, but it had no feet, its wings permanently outstretched. Coira gave it to him.

  “Throw!” she said, and he did.

  She aimed the switcher. The bird soared high in an imitation of life, and was soon zooming in low circles above their heads. Brodie chased it, laughing and jumping, trying to reach.

  Coira had no idea how it worked, but she’d known how to make it. She’d only made one, as it had been too unsettling. She’d tried to sell it, to be rid of it, but the little boy she’d showed it to ran away terrified, screaming she was a witch. After that, she’d covered her toys with material. Sacrificed a much hated dress, stole her mother’s needles and thread. The bird only worked uncovered, so the only one who enjoyed it was Brodie.

  She caught the metal bird and switched it again, letting Brodie take it. He cuddled it despite its hard edges.

  “Ca... can biwdie sweep side Bwodie?” he asked, as he always did.

  She was about to give her usual answer, but this was a special night.

  “Aye, just for tonight. Sleep up here, he cannae go to yer room.”

  “Biwdie!” He ran out the room to his makeshift cot. He showed Birdie his bed and introduced it to Dunk Duncan. He tucked them in and turned, comically stern-faced to Coira.

  “Shh! Biwdie and Duncan sweeping!” he shouted.

  He climbed in beside them, and she went to tuck him in, his hands clasped around the eerie metal bird.

  Coira waited until his eyes closed and returned to the workshop, sliding the panel shut.

  She breathed out, as if she’d been holding it. Her eyes looked where they always did.

  “Hello, Pod. Ready to wake up?”

  COIRA GRABBED HER most important tool from her workbench: the cutter. She’d used the cutter to cut through the floors above, but had to keep buckets of water nearby for when the floorboards started to burn. The long and narrow line of flame could burn through anything, as well as melting and softening the Martian metal so she could re-form it into any shape she could think of.

  When she sat at the workbench she moved almost without thought—cutting, heating and forming the pieces of each creation until light spilled through the boards over the windows.

  She strapped the cutter to her waist by a piece of fishing rope, then turned back to Pod. She ran toward it, and launched herself to catch a knotted rope that hung next to the Pod’s three legs, and started to climb.

  “Is not a monster” was always Brodie’s comment on Pod, aping her reassurances. Not a monster. Not anymore. It felt like... a friend. Coira didn’t have friends; she had too many secrets. She had customers, she had Brodie and she had Pod.

  “Last piece now,” she told it.

  As she passed the first boarded window, she heard the pub empty. Curfew about to begin. Between the broken boards, she saw Pa as he wrapped his jacket around some of those rolls of paper she’d seen him looking at earlier, followed by Ma and other men she didn’t know.

  Coira smiled and kept climbing. Good. They’d gone.

  At the underside of the metal head she raised her hand and knocked. It swung open, the dark gaping mouth she’d made, with space only just big enough to let her in. Coira jumped.

  It closed behind her. The last piece was waiting by the panels and pistons. In the green light, she was soon at work.

  THE SCREAM BROUGHT her out of it. Brodie. She dropped the cutter, and kicked the mouth open, leaping to grab one of the smooth articulated legs to slide the twenty feet to the ground.

  As she opened the panel she had to duck as something flew straight at her head.

  “Brodie, what ye doin?!”

  Brodie cowered in the bed, wailing.

  She turned to see where it landed, and realised it was Birdie, flying, zooming to and fro in the workshop. Then she noticed: the bird wasn’t the only thing moving. Every toy on the shelves was moving, waving, stamping their spider legs. A bear stood, then fell, then stood again. The porcelain doll kicked its feet and clapped its china hands. She hadn’t noticed over the screaming. She fumbled for the switcher in her skirt pocket, but they were already silent. The bird fell to the ground with a loud clang. Coira jumped.

  She rushed to Brodie. “I’m here!” He clutched her, making gasping sobs.

  Dunk Duncan’s head was on the floor. Black smoke was in the air. Maybe she’d hit the switcher. Maybe this was her fault.

  “I’m so sorry, Brodie. Sha
ll ah put his heid back?”

  He wiped his nose and nodded.

  “What happened?” she asked as she put the head back on the bear.

  “‘Sjuss deam, Coywa. Juss a deam,” he said.

  It’s what she used to say to him when she woke them up screaming. The strange visions of other worlds, other... creatures, some like men, and then the Martians, flat and wide headed and terrifying. The dream always ended the same way.

  “Fiya,” he whispered.

  Fire. Her heart pounded.

  She rocked him and he calmed, soon going back to sleep.

  Laying him back down, Coira tucked Dunk Duncan and Birdie back beside him, pulling the blanket around them all.

  Coira didn’t get up yet. She needed to work out what had happened, she needed to not be distracted. So the sudden banging was less alarming than it was irritating. She knew immediately what it was. No one else dared make that much noise after curfew.

  “Open up!” the voice shouted below. “It’s the Hussars. Open this door!”

  She sighed, pulled the panel shut, and trudged to the stairs.

  The banging grew louder, and by the time she got to it, the door was shaking. She twisted the key in the lock and tugged it open.

  “Aye?” said Coira. There were two Royal Articulated Hussars outside.

  The sight of them made her feel almost sick. Those long metal legs. The goggles that turned their eyes into black pools.

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Workin’?” she offered, refusing to be intimidated.

  “They were observed leaving after curfew.” The man’s grey whiskers bristled under the goggles.

  “Then why don’ you ken where they are?” Coira shrugs.

  The two men looked at each other. Her parents had evaded them.

  “We will look inside,” said the younger man.

  “You will not! My Pa says you cannae jus’ go into people’s hames.”

  THUD. The noise came from upstairs. They all looked up.

  “Coiwa!” Brodie’s scream was piercing.

  “Yev gone and woke my wee brother! Come back when Ma and Pa are hame,” Coira shouted, and slammed the door.

  The only reason they didn’t break it down, she guessed, was that they knew her parents were not inside. They’d be back, though.

  “Brodie!” she shouted as she ran.

  Inside the room again, she rushed to the cot.

  “Did ye fall? Wis it another dream?”

  He wasn’t there. The blanket was gone, so were the toys. The panel was open. She ran in.

  “Brodie, I’ve telt you, you dinnae go in there alo—”

  Pod was staring at her. Not lifeless, not hanging at an angle, its eyes on her. She took a step back. The head moved, tracking her movement. She looked at it. Then she grinned, marvelling.

  “Pod!” she shouted. “You’re awake! You can move...”

  Coira rushed forward to get a better look, and tripped, landing on something on the floor. A pile of rope. She hadn’t left rope there. Then she remembered what she came in looking for.

  “Coiwa..?”

  There on the floor, looking up at the alien machine, she understood many things at once. Pod wasn’t suspended from the roof anymore. It was standing. She understood what the Tripods had used the baskets for, which the grown-ups had never wanted to explain. Tiny hands stretched out of Pod’s basket. This was what it was for. It caught people. It had caught Brodie.

  Coira didn’t get a chance to scream. A flash of metal whipped past her face. A long curling arm snatched for her. She rolled as another swiped the floor.

  She saw where to go and scrambled toward it: the shelves. Pressing herself flat on her chest she reached a hand in; her nails grasped the edge of a floorboard as she tried to pull herself under. She turned her head to look back. Then she screamed.

  Pod’s eyes were right there. It has dropped into a crouch, its long legs folded at the knees she’d so painstakingly reassembled. They look at each other for a long moment.

  “Dinnae... dinnae hurt him.” Her voice was small.

  It wasn’t going to listen, she realised. This was what it wanted. What it had always wanted, since that first meeting at the pool. Someone who would fix it and set it loose. Somehow it had reached out to her young mind, telling her how it worked. The toys were only practice until she was ready. It had never been her friend. There was no escape. This pause was all the thanks she would get. A sob escaped her mouth. Stupid. Stupid and pointless to cry now.

  “Git oan wi’ it, then!” she shouted.

  Coira closed her eyes. She didn’t want to look. She wanted her Ma. Coira tried to picture her.

  BOOM.

  Her eyes flew open. The sound wasn’t inside. It was outside, but not far. The vibration shook the house, the panes shook in the windows.

  Something fell on the floor next to Coira, issuing a crack. It was the porcelain doll, a long line spidered across its face.

  Pod was gone. She slid herself out from under the shelf. Pod was stretched up to the window, its long curling silver appendages feeling out the nails on the boards, pulling them.

  Another boom. Pod reacted, as if listening. Coira took her chance. Leaving the doll, she dragged herself onto her feet, started for the panel, then stopped. Brodie. She couldn’t leave Brodie. She needed a hiding place. She took in the available hiding places: the pile of floor boards against the wall, the desk, the shelves, the piles of parts from the Martian pool. She darted behind the floorboards. She could see Pod and make a plan, or run, if she had to.

  One of Pod’s metal arms scraped against the window, a noise like nails on the old school blackboard. Coira pressed her hands to her ears. It wasn’t enough to block out the screech, or the crack and smash of glass.

  Pod was trying to get out. It couldn’t fit through the window, Coira thought.

  There was a whirring and then a familiar hiss. A bright, white light split the green gloom. A fierce heat. Pod had started up its heat cutter. She’d made it one just like her own, out of the much bigger one she’d found on it originally. It was aiming at the wall. It was going to make a door.

  She fumbled at the rope tie around her waist. She couldn’t let it out—she’d stop it, use the cutter on its legs if she could get near enough, she...

  ...she had left it inside Pod when she’d checked on Brodie. She only had her switcher. Useless. She pulled it out of her pocket, flicked it in frustration, wanting only to throw it away, but afraid to make a sound. The porcelain doll on the floor sat up. She hadn’t meant to aim it, but at least it looked like the switcher was still working, though she couldn’t think what help that might be. The doll stood, then started to walk, its little porcelain feet clack-clacked against the wooden floor. It stopped and waved, as if it could see her. Coira found it strangely reassuring.

  With no warning, a white line of flame engulfed it. Coira fell back, clamping her hand over her mouth as she watched the precious doll burn. Soon it was just a charred, smoking mark on the floor.

  She pressed herself against the wall behind the boards. Pod towered above, looking down, cutter ready. She kept her hands over her nose and mouth, trying to quiet her terrified breaths. Hot tears ran against her hands. Stop crying, she thought. You have to get Brodie. Get Brodie, get out. Run, as far and as fast as you can.

  But Pod would get out. Of course it would. And how long would she, Brodie, or anyone last? Ma and Pa would come back soon. What if it saw them first? Where were they?

  She thought of Pa’s face, that the last thing he’d said was he didn’t want to see them. She thought of those rolls of yellow-brown paper.

  Noise spilled in from outside, clear through the broken window—people running, shouting.

  “Ah see it! Aye, it’s the train station!” a woman yelled.

  “Git back in here!” shouted another.

  “Ahm goin tae help! Someone might be hurt.”

  Pod turned toward the new sounds, but she could
n’t feel any relief because it was suddenly obvious where her parents were, and her heart jumped in her chest again. Those paper rolls were not paper. They were explosives. Ma and Pa had used them on the Newhaven Station, blown it into pieces, like her grandpa had used them to blast the railway tunnel. They needed fire to work.

  Fire. It always came back to fire.

  She refused to think about her parents, to worry that they were...that they might be anything other than safe and waiting.

  She already knew what she’d have to do to stop Pod. Pod was busy, prying away another floorboard from the window. Coira had a few seconds, she hoped. She stepped, tiptoe to tiptoe, out of her hiding place and toward the shelves of toys. She reached up, her eyes on Pod, as another board crashed to the floor. She could see Brodie now. He was wrapped in his blanket, eyes closed. She hoped he was sleeping.

  She grabbed a spider, pocketed it, took another, then reached for a third. She dropped it. Pod swung round, leaving the boards, cutter raised. She darted behind the edge of the shelves, shaking. The dropped spider was facing Pod. She pointed and flicked the switcher. The spider took off. It was the first one she’d made, incapable of going straight. The first blast was close and so bright it must have revealed her location, but Pod ignored her, moving to follow the spider.

  It lumbered in a circle after the spider, and blasted again and again, more charred holes appeared in the floorboards. Coira took her chance and ran toward Pod, timing her move for the next blast. She jumped, catching the knotted rope and tensed, waiting for Pod’s reaction. Nothing. It was still blasting the spider. She climbed, as fast as she could, the rope swinging from Pod’s attempts to follow the scuttling creature. Flashes of light and heat burst around. The spider was soon incinerated.

  She clung on tight with one hand, and with the other she pulled the second spider out of a pocket, dropped it, then pulled out the switcher and aimed. It took off. Coira was level with the basket now. Brodie was curled up in his blanket. He was clutching Dunk and Birdie close, eyes wide. He saw her and started to speak, but she put a finger to her mouth, struggling to hold on.