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

by Edited by Ian Edginton

  She dropped the third spider, wishing she had more, and reached up to rap on Pod’s underside. Pod stopped moving as the spider tapped across the floor, forgotten. She held her breath, and looked up.

  She didn’t see it coming—the silver arm wrapped around her waist.

  She gripped the rope, fighting. The rope came free, and still holding it, she felt herself raised high into the air. Soon she was eye to eye with Pod, again at its mercy.

  “Put me doon!” Coira shouted, unthinking, but it wasn’t like last time. She was terrified. She didn’t understand what she was facing last time; she was little more than a baby. She did now, as it squeezed her harder. She gasped, trying to breathe.

  “Coiwa!”

  Brodie was staring through the basket. He had Birdie. Birdie. Her arms were still free. She grabbed the switcher out her pocket.

  “Throw!” Her voice was hoarse, but he seemed to understand, because he frowned and hugged it closer. Lights burst in her eyes.

  “Brodie... dae it!”

  He threw it. She managed to click the switcher and Birdie took to the air.

  Pod let her go.

  She hit the floor hard, winded. She watched as Pod swiped and shot fire at Birdie. Brodie wailed. It took everything she had to move. The air came back to her chest at last as she pushed herself up. With a last look back, she ran out through the open panel, past Brodie’s makeshift cot and slammed the door behind her, stopping on the landing. She jumped as a blast of heat burned the air behind her. The door was burning.

  It was impossible to go back, but she’d left Brodie in there. Looking at her hands, she saw she was still holding the knotted rope. That was all she needed.

  She turned, ran up the stairs, turning and turning again until she was at the top, and launched herself at the small door to the attic. It sprung open. She stopped herself going further, peering inside. Pod was below, turned back to the window. She was above it by only a few feet.

  Coira wrapped the rope around her arm and held the rest tight, her eyes never leaving Pod. She took a tentative step forward. The cut edge ran in a wide arc around what used to be the attic floor. There was just enough room to walk around the edge. Pod had its cutter aimed at the wall again.

  She was as close as she dared get. The basket was almost directly below, Brodie curled up inside with Dunk Duncan and his blanket.

  The cutter started up, shooting its long thin line of flame with a loud hiss.

  “Brodie!” she whispered. He didn’t react.

  Crouching, Coira gathered the rope and threw it down. It glanced off the edge of the basket. Brodie looked up, terrified until he saw her. She pulled the rope back, watching as the Pod’s cutter started to melt through the soft sandstone.

  On her third throw it landed in the basket. She jerked it, motioning for Brodie to grab on. He shook his little head, pulling Dunk closer. Of course, he had to be difficult now. She jerked the rope again and tried to smile encouragement. He shrank back further.

  “Please,” she mouthed. He shook his head again, tears flowed down his face.

  The sound of burning and cracking stone got louder.

  “Brodie! Get on that rope right now or ah’ll gie you somethin tae cry for, ah swear ah will!” She said it as loud as she dared, trying to get that tone her mother used. He stood and sniffed. She glared. He reached a little hand to the rope.

  “Now!” she warned.

  Brodie grabbed on with one hand and lifted a foot onto a knot, still holding the bear. Coira wanted to tell him to leave it, but didn’t want to push her sudden luck.

  “Dinnae let go,” she said, and pulled the rope up, bracing it against the edge. He was soon out of the basket. There was a hole right through the stone now, the bright line of fire working to make it bigger.

  He was almost at the top when he dropped the bear.

  “Dunk Duncan!” he screamed, almost letting go.

  Pod reacted, the heat blasting toward them as she dragged the thrashing Brodie over the edge. She picked him up, her muscles protesting almost as much as he was, and started down the stairs, now blanketed in smoke.

  The workshop door was almost completely burned away, an arch of fire reaching toward the ceiling, smoke rising. She put Brodie down, edging him to her side. The steps were stone, she reminded herself, and stone is hard to burn. She listened. All was quiet. Maybe it had burned through the wall and was gone.

  “Shh!” she hissed.

  Brodie clutched the back of her smock.

  She moved forward, peering through the flaming doorway, close as she could, a hand raised to keep Brodie back.

  Pod was still blasting the attic. The shelves were on fire now. Her toys engulfed in flames. On the floor at its feet she could see Dunk Duncan and Claws. An impulse gripped her, or some madness.

  “Stay!” she whispered back at Brodie and she was inside the workshop before she could think about it. Pod was standing right above the toys. She ran forward, and stopped directly underneath. It had heard. It turned, hunting. She dropped into a crouch, and reached out her hands.

  She had them. Pod was turned away as she took off, it bought her only a second before a line of fire stuck so close her hair sizzled at her ear.

  “Go!” she pulled Brodie down the stairs, away from the fire, away from Pod, her only thought to get out. They passed their kitchen. Something made her pause, halting Brodie as she turned to stare at the kitchen table. There was a box on it. The box with rolled up paper inside. The paper that was not paper at all. She looked down at the toys she carried.

  Below, metallic banging started on the stair door.

  “Wha’s tha noise?” Brodie was shaking with terror.

  “It’s the Hussars, Brodie. They’ve come tae... they’ll get ye out. You go doonstairs and find them. Take this,” she said, thrusting the bear into his arms.

  “No. Ah stay wi’ Coiwa!” he insisted.

  Coira was already in the kitchen, picking up what she needed.

  “Ah have to go back, Brodie. Ah have to stop Pod.”

  “Is not a monster,” Brodie frowned at her, not so sure now.

  The door downstairs cracked open.

  “Who’s up there?” a man’s voice shouted, and then less certain, “Is that smoke..?”

  “There’s a wee boy here, get him out!” she shouted, already running into the heat again.

  “Fiya, Coiwa!” Brodie shouted.

  “Aye, that’s the idea,” she said, more to herself than him.

  A terrible idea is what she thought, when she got up there. If it needed fire, there was too much of it. But the Hussars were no match for Pod. She’d made it; she had to destroy it.

  Her fingers shook as she lifted it. ‘DYNAMITE’ was written on the side.

  She set down Claws and opened his little pincers, and placed the dynamite in its tight grasp.

  Spinning the creature, she placed it side on to the burned away door. Then she was running down the stairs. Five steps down, she pointed the switcher and Claws danced out of sight.

  Brodie was still there. She swept him up. One of the Hussars was crawling up the stairs.

  “Halt!” he raised his gloved hand.

  She didn’t even pause, ducking under his legs. She could see the door. Above, the blasts of fire started as Pod took the bait.

  “Get out!” she screamed back at the Hussar.

  “What is that?!” He was already too far up the stairs.

  She and Brodie were at the door.

  “Christ! Christ it’s one of them! James, it’s...”

  Outside now, Coira pulled Brodie into a run.

  She stopped behind the house on the corner opposite, peering around just in time to see the front of their tenement blast apart. Burning rubble, the Hussar and the Pod all fell. She could just see them through the smoke as they crashed into the bar. The last thing she saw, before the fire and stone engulfed them, was the whale bone as it impaled Pod through one of its huge eyes.

  Houses nearb
y started to empty.

  “Another explosion!”

  She knelt down and put her arms around Brodie as they watched their house burn.

  “Fiya,” whipered Brodie.

  “Fire,” she agreed.

  Hands grabbed her arms.

  “Coira! Brodie! They’re here, Francis!” She looked up at her Ma and Pa and flinched as another explosion rocked the street.

  Pa took off at a run. The pub door was still standing and someone stumbled out of it, coughing.

  “Dunk Duncan!” Brodie pointed.

  It was Duncan. He fell into Pa’s arms.

  “It wis a Martian, Francis! Big brute crashed intae the pub as I wis leavin...”

  “Duncan. This way.” Pa pulled at him.

  “Martians! Thought they were deid.”

  Pa led Duncan away.

  Coira clutched her mother, letting the tears come. Brodie held Coira’s hand.

  “Ahm so-sorry, Ma...”

  “It’s aw right, Coira. You got your brother out. Ahm sorry we werenae there.” Ma stroked her hair. The truth could wait, Coira thought.

  Brodie let go of Coira’s hand, bored. He sat Dunk Duncan on the ground. Then he reached down for something shiny he’d spotted there. He knew what to do with it. Pointing it at the bear he pressed it, just like he’d seen his sister do.

  The bear stood up and spun, before falling down. Brodie giggled and pulled at his Ma’s arm to get her attention. He pressed it again.

  Ma screamed.

  The Adventure of the Wheezing Man

  a mystery, by

  JAMES LOVEGROVE

  “Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.”

  —D’Israeli

  “I KNOW I have spoken many times about retirement,” said my friend Sherlock Holmes one February morning in 1904. “The notion of a rural smallholding and a life of tranquil beekeeping has not lost its appeal. Yet I am happy to postpone the day for now. London has become altogether too fascinating a place to abandon.”

  He gestured out of the window. Baker Street, for all the chilly inclemency of the weather, was busy. Hansoms scuttled to and fro on their cunningly articulated arachnid legs. An airship passed overhead, casting a shadow larger than any whale’s. The Westway viaduct, in its third year of construction, loomed above the rooftops, its immense unfinished arches encased in skeletal scaffolding over which workmen swarmed like aphids on a rose stem.

  “The capital, indeed Great Britain as a whole, is experiencing a period of scientific and social advancement unparalleled in history,” Holmes continued. “The Renaissance and the Enlightenment pale into insignificance by comparison. It is, simply put, an electrifying time to be alive, and only a fool would not wish to be here, at the very hub of it.”

  He seemed set to expand upon his theme, but then came a ringing on the doorbell, followed by footfalls ascending the seventeen steps which led to the first floor.

  “Unless I am very much mistaken, Watson, we have a client.” So saying, my companion sat back and steepled his fingers in anticipation.

  The man who entered our sitting-room was a wiry, flaxen-haired fellow in his late thirties. He wore a well-tailored sports jacket and cavalry twill trousers but had the pinched, somewhat withered look of one who has been accustomed to hardship and deprivation.

  He presented Holmes with his card, which my friend perused. “Major Robert Autumn. The rank and the ‘DSO’ after your name betoken a military background, of course, as does the handkerchief tucked inside your shirt cuff, a sartorial practice I have long deplored in Watson here. The length of your hair, a good half-inch over regulation, indicates that you are serving no more. Your regiment was the Coldstream Guards.”

  Autumn cocked an eyebrow. “All those inferences are true, and you have accounted for every one of them save the last.”

  “Oh, as for that, it is easy.” Holmes waved a dismissive hand. “Your cufflinks bear the George Cross encircled by a blue belt emblazoned with the legend ‘Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense’. Together those two elements constitute the regimental badge of the Coldstream Guards.”

  “I had forgotten I had them on,” said Autumn, eyeing the cufflinks with a self-deprecating laugh. “You know, Mr Holmes, he warned me you would ‘read’ me the way you have just done. He called it a parlour trick which you cannot help playing on those whom you meet for the first time.”

  “He?” I said. “Who is this he?”

  “Major Autumn can only be referring to my brother,” said Holmes. “No one is quite so contemptuous of my powers of deduction and logical analysis as the sainted Mycroft. That is not least because he possesses those same powers himself in greater degree and considers the uses to which I put mine as trifling and unworthy. I had you pegged for an adventurer, Major. Your burnished skin and weather-worn demeanour spoke to me of Africa and big game hunting, in the manner of an acquaintance of ours, the late Allan Quatermain. Furthermore, you walk with a very slight limp, an injury one might ascribe to attack by a predatory animal such as a lion.”

  “I have spent time on the dark continent.”

  “Yet now I perceive these physical aspects in a new, if shadier, light. The fact that you know Mycroft personally is suggestive of service to the Crown in some clandestine capacity. In short, pursuant to your soldiering you were a secret agent, until invalided out of the profession.”

  Autumn nodded. “The senior Mr Holmes advised me not to be impressed by your perspicacity, and yet I find myself doing just that. May I?” He indicated the chair opposite Holmes’s, the one customarily reserved for clients. “And the brandy in that decanter on the sideboard looks rather appetising. I don’t suppose...?”

  With tacit permission from Holmes, I poured Autumn a drink. He swallowed it thirstily.

  “That’s better,” he gasped. “Warms the cockles. Winter really does work its way into these bones of mine. Perhaps, given my dislike of the cold, I should change my surname to Summer. Another?”

  I recharged his glass, and the eagerness with which he drained this second helping suggested that his fondness for alcohol was in no way seasonal. He studied the empty tumbler, as though sorely tempted by the thought of asking for a third portion, but decorum won the day.

  “It was my erstwhile employer who pointed me in your direction, Mr Holmes,” said he. “I have a predicament, you see, which the other Mr Holmes reckoned you would be able to help me with. ‘Right up Sherlock’s street’, those were his very words.”

  “Pray go on. You have my interest.”

  “It involves a friend of mine, Nahum Throgmorton.”

  “The motorised vehicle magnate.”

  “None other.”

  “Did he not die just the day before yesterday?” I said. “I recall something in the newspaper about a tragic accident.”

  Autumn nodded rather stiffly. “A house fire. His place in Mayfair burned to the ground. Three of Nahum’s household staff perished in the blaze, along with his wife Kathleen. His valet managed to get him out in time. He was fortunate to escape with his life. Yet his injuries were terrible—fully half his body was badly burned—and he died in hospital a day later.”

  “My condolences.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. Nahum and I were at Harrow together and had kept up a cordial relationship since. I was at his bedside when he passed away.”

  “That is queer,” Holmes interjected. “By the sound of it you were not close friends, Major, yet you, rather than a relative or another intimate, were with Throgmorton during his final moments.”

  “That is because Nahum summoned me to see him. He told his doctors he wished to share something with me regarding the circumstances of the fatal fire—a piece of information which he felt I, above anyone else he knew, above even the police, might be able to act upon.”

  “He was aware of your former career.”

  “He knew that I moved in certain rarefied circles. He knew, too, that I have a modicum of skill in winkling out hidden truths, not unlike yourself, although
I do not profess to be nearly as proficient as you in that respect. Alas, by the time I reached him Nahum’s pain was so severe that he had lapsed into delirium and was barely cogent. He recognised me but I could not get any sense out of him. Clutching my arm with one bandaged hand, he merely repeated a single, just-intelligible phrase over and over. Such was the insistency with which he said it that I can only assume it was of vital importance. Uttering it took its toll upon him, however, and he sank into an unconsciousness from which he never awoke. He was pronounced dead shortly afterward.”

  “This phrase, what was it?”

  “‘The wheezing man’.”

  “That is all?”

  “That is all. ‘The wheezing man’.”

  “And you are sure those were the exact words?”

  “Quite sure, Mr Holmes, although I cannot make head or tail of them.”

  “You know of nobody who fits that description?”

  “I have racked my brains and failed to come up with an answer. I have consulted my manservant Currie, likewise to no avail.”

  “Would this Currie be the one-eyed, overcoat-less Scotsman presently standing on our doorstep?”

  “You have spied him from the window,” said Autumn. “But how did you know he is Scottish?”

  “Currie is Scots clan name, derived from the Gaelic ‘currach’, meaning ‘marsh’. That in tandem with his clear disregard for the low temperature outside suggests he hails from north of the border. He stands to attention like a soldier, so I would wager that he was previously your batman.”

  “The most loyal and courageous associate I could wish for.”

  “I have one of those myself,” Holmes said with a gracious bow towards me. “Such an individual is worth his weight in gold. But back to the matter of the ‘wheezing man’. It seems indicative of an asthmatic, or a person suffering from some other form of bronchial affliction.”