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

by Edited by Ian Edginton

  “And so the illness must be identified and extracted before it can fully take hold?” said Will.

  “Precisely.”

  “Unfortunately, in poor Patricia’s case, her consumption is too far advanced.”

  “But we shall defeat it, Mr Roebuck,” said Fendlesham evenly. “And we shall continue to hold the illness at bay until we can.”

  “And what of Meg?” asked Will, who he could see was clutching her stomach once again, eyes narrowed as if suppressing some inner turmoil. “Can she be—”

  Before he could finish his question, the lights went out.

  Will hadn’t realised how dark it had become until that moment. Suddenly they were plunged into a gloom which left them with nothing but flickering firelight for illumination. He didn’t feel overly alarmed—electricity was a notoriously fickle beast—but Roebuck sat up straight in his chair, alarm on his face.

  “The electrical barrier,” he said, and Will thought of the crackling fence around the compound in which the vast worm had been contained.

  Fendlesham was already out of his seat. “Fear not, Mr Roebuck. Soames and his men will contain the beast, if needs be. I shall check the generator. For the time being I suggest you sit tight.”

  He crossed the room swiftly, his face an orange smear in the light from the fire, and slipped through the door into the darkness beyond.

  Meg groaned and bent over double in her seat.

  “Are you ill, my dear?” asked Roebuck.

  Her voice was thick, strained. “I’m hungry.”

  Before either Will or Roebuck could respond, there came the rapid thud of descending footsteps and a high-pitched cry. “Mr Roebuck! Mr Roebuck, sir!”

  Roebuck jumped up and rushed to the door. Will glanced again at Meg, who was still bent double, then stood up and hurried after their host.

  Stepping into the hallway, he saw Roebuck, carrying a hastily lit candle, striding towards the wide staircase. A middle-aged woman, clearly a housekeeper or a lady’s maid, was descending the final flight, her face stricken. Seeing her employer, she cried out, “Oh, sir!”

  “What is it, Hortense? Whatever’s the matter?” Roebuck said.

  Will saw tears on Hortense’s cheeks, shining in the candlelight.

  “Oh, sir!” she wailed. “It’s the mistress! I’m so terribly sorry!”

  UNCERTAIN WHAT ELSE to do, Will followed Roebuck upstairs. Driven by panic, the older man drew ahead of him, and Will was just entering the corridor that led to Mrs Roebuck’s bedroom when he heard a wail of distress coming from behind the door at the far end. He paused, unsure whether to intrude, but then heard Hortense puffing up the stairs behind him. Rather than face the awkwardness of making her think he was turning tail like a coward, he pressed on, bracing himself as he stepped into the room.

  The warmth swept over him as before, but now there was another smell overriding the previous fragrances—a charred, unpleasantly meaty odour that turned his stomach. He saw Mr Roebuck on his knees beside the bed, sobbingly exhorting his wife to wake up. His broad back obscured most of the bed’s occupant from view, but in the flickering candlelight Will caught enough of a glimpse to be thankful that the dimness prevented him from seeing more. Previously supine, Mrs Roebuck’s body now appeared to be twisted, as though she had died whilst writhing in pain, and smoke was rising from her in wisps that hazed the air. One outflung arm seemed to have toppled a table lamp, which lay on its side, its glass shade shattered. The flesh of that arm was blackened and withered, as was the hand on the end of it, whose fingers had curled in on themselves like the talons of a dead bird’s claw.

  Will stood just inside the door, horrified and sickened. When Hortense bustled past him and fell heavily to her knees beside her employer, he decided to make a strategic withdrawal. He sidled from the room and scurried away along the corridor, trying to tread lightly for fear he might be called back. He groped his way down the darkened stairs, and when he reached the ground floor followed the glow of firelight back to the library.

  Entering the room, he expected to find Meg still huddled by the fire, but her chair was empty. A creak on the far side of the room made him spin round. By the moonlight sifting down through the clots of dusky clouds he saw that one of the French doors was once again hanging open.

  He crossed the room quickly and stepped out on to the patio. On the far side of the path that led up the side of the house, the line of bushes was a mass of rustling black. Hurrying to the edge of the patio, Will looked to his left, and made out a hunched shape, a little darker than the shadows around it, moving away from him.

  “Meg!” he shouted. “Meg!”

  The shape paused a moment, then stumbled on.

  “Meg, wait! Come back!” he called again, but the figure ignored him.

  Resisting the urge to go back inside, close the door and huddle by the fire, Will jumped off the patio onto the path, and hurried after her.

  DRAYTON, WHO HAD laid aside his cane in favour of one of Dr Fendlesham’s electrical rods, held up his lantern. “What the devil is wrong with you, boy?”

  The object of his attention, the youngest of three uniformed guards ordered to stand sentinel around the covered well inside the compound, was so startled he almost dropped his electrical rod.

  “Nothing, sir.”

  “You’re shaking like a frightened child.”

  The man opened his mouth—but apparently could think of nothing to say in his defence. “I’m sorry, sir,” he finally mumbled. “I’ll be fine.”

  Resembling a belligerent troll from a fairy tale, Drayton marched forward and rapped the well cover with his rod. It made a dull clong sound.

  “Do you know what this is?” he said.

  The guard looked at him as if unsure whether his superior was trying to catch him out.

  “This is six-inch iron,” Drayton said, answering his own question. “It responds only to an electrical opening device devised by Dr Fendlesham. While the power is out this cover will therefore remain shut. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So you have nothing to worry about, do you, boy?”

  “No, sir.”

  Another guard piped up—older, thickly set, sporting a fine set of whiskers. “Mr Drayton, sir?”

  “Yes?”

  “If there’s nothing to worry about... why are we here?”

  Drayton glared at him, and was about to reply when they all heard a rumbling beneath their feet. The men looked at one another in alarm. The youngest said, “Mr Drayton, I can feel the ground shaking.”

  Drayton pressed a button on the handle of his rod. Immediately there was a crackle, and jagged blue-white threads of electricity began to flicker around its tip.

  Following his lead, the three guards activated their own rods, their faces instantly bathed in jittering, icy light.

  The rumbling grew louder. Drayton looked grimly at the iron well cover around which they stood. “It will hold,” he muttered. “That monstrosity will never break through.”

  Suddenly, however, the ground surged and rippled, causing all four men to stagger. The man with the whiskers went down on one knee, dropping his rod, which went out with a sizzle.

  “How is the creature beneath us contained?” asked the third guard, once the ground had settled and he had recovered his balance.

  “It is confined to a series of tunnels and chambers,” Drayton said.

  “But how is it confined?” the guard persisted, fear making him insolent. When Drayton’s stare grew unfocused, he said, “Is it not by electricity? Are the tunnels not lined with an electrical charge, to prevent the creature from burrowing through them?”

  In horrified realisation the youngest guard staggered back from the well cover. Throwing his rod to the ground, he turned and ran.

  Before Drayton could bellow at him to come back, the ground erupted beneath the man’s feet, and the huge alien parasite burst out of the earth in a shower of rocks and dirt. It rose straight into the
air, like a tree growing at tremendous speed, the young man rising with it, his arms and limbs pinwheeling, his mouth gaping to let loose a hideous shriek of primal terror. The men on the ground watched, transfixed, as the creature’s funnel-like mouth widened and the young guard dropped into it. For a second his shriek seemed to shred the air—and then it stopped abruptly. Now all the men could hear was the dull patter of rocks and dirt hitting the ground.

  As quickly as it had emerged, the parasite retreated back into its hole. It left nothing of the young guard behind, not a shred of clothing, nor a drop of blood. Drayton waited a few seconds, then approached the hole it had made and peered down it. He could see nothing but blackness. He wondered about dropping something flammable into its lair, burning the monstrosity underground.

  He turned to speak to the two remaining guards, but they were no longer there. They had clambered over the fence surrounding the compound and were now running towards the gatehouse.

  “Come back here!” Drayton bellowed. “Come back, I say!”

  He heard a slithering behind him. He whirled to find that the parasite was emerging again, more slowly this time, perhaps attracted by his voice. Still rising, it cricked its ‘neck’ into a question mark shape, tilting its circular maw towards him.

  Drayton snarled and pressed the button on his electrical rod, which burst to life. Before he could raise it in defence, however, the funnel-like mouth suddenly flared open and the creature attacked, its body flexing, its ‘head’ snapping forward like a striking cobra.

  The last thing Drayton saw before he was engulfed was a gaping red maw lined with spirals of razor-sharp teeth.

  “MY LOVE,” ROEBUCK said softly, his head bowed, Patricia’s limp right hand held tenderly between both of his, “my poor, dear love.”

  She had been nineteen when Roebuck had met her, and they had been married a year later. Although they had tried, they had never had children, a fact which had saddened both of them, though their devotion to one another had been such that their mutual disappointment had strengthened rather than weakened the bond between them. The time and energy Patricia would have given to her offspring, she had instead diverted to the needs of the poor. A vibrant and compassionate woman, she had been on the boards of various charitable organisations, and had been instrumental in founding two hospitals and an orphanage in the area.

  She had helped, too, in securing accommodation for those fleeing the Martian invasion in the south ten years earlier. For a while their part of the country had been awash with refugees, and the strain upon local resources had been great. Illness had been rife, and Roebuck believed it was during this time that Patricia, who was mixing daily with vast numbers of the impoverished and homeless, may have contracted the disease that would lurk within her for the next few years before eventually rising up and claiming her. The fact that her illness—and now death—may have been a direct result of her philanthropic nature was a bitter pill to swallow, but even before today Roebuck had been determined that, should the worst happen, he would not allow bitterness to consume him. He felt sure that Patricia’s Earthly misfortune would guarantee a just reward in Heaven.

  Even so, he would have given anything to have her back with him now, hale and hearty, and full of laughter. If only, he thought. If only she had hung on a little longer. He knew how hard her illness had been for her to endure, but if she had been thinking straight, if the disease, or Fendlesham’s experimental serum, had not befuddled her brain, he felt sure she would have retained the presence of mind to give Fendlesham the extra time needed to find a cure.

  Not that he was certain her death had been suicide. She had electrocuted herself, yes, but it may have been an accident. She may have flailed out unthinkingly, or been gripped by a sudden mania, and torn the wires from the bedside lamp without realising what she was doing.

  But whatever her thinking—and the truth is, he would never know—it did not alter the outcome. Self-murder or not, Patricia was dead, and Roebuck would have to live with the anguish of that for the rest of his life.

  Guilt too, because it was he who had insisted that Fendlesham administer his serum. Extracted from the parasite, it had seemed at the time a miracle cure, and although the scientist had advised caution, pending further investigation into its full effects, Roebuck had been desperate to reverse his wife’s decline, and so had urged Fendlesham to administer it, arguing that without it she would surely die anyway.

  “What do either of us have to lose?” had been his fateful words. With hindsight, the answer had been: a great deal. Because although the serum had seemingly arrested Patricia’s illness in its tracks, Roebuck had watched his wife change in a matter of weeks from a gentle, intelligent woman into a slavering creature, driven by little more than her voracious appetite. It was only after Hortense had narrowly avoided being savaged by Patricia (she had come within a hair’s breadth of losing several fingers to Patricia’s snapping teeth), that Fendlesham had advised putting her into a state of unconsciousness while he redoubled his efforts to find a cure. Roebuck had agreed, as a result of which Patricia had spent the last few weeks in a laudanum-derived stupor, while machines satisfied her appetite by feeding her a diet of animal blood. During this time, Roebuck had remained stoic, visiting his wife daily, and assuring her unconscious form that soon she would be well and they would be together again.

  “God will not let us down,” he had told her. But God had let them down—although as soon as this thought crept into his head, Roebuck stifled it. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” he whispered, as if to cleanse himself of blasphemous thoughts, “his wonders to perform.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he felt Patricia’s tiny hand twitch in his.

  His head jerked up and he looked at her face.

  Her eyes were open.

  Wonder filled him. No, more than wonder. A kind of disbelieving rapture. Could it be true? Had the Lord heard him? Roebuck couldn’t speak, could barely even think. He could only stare at Patricia as she stared back at him, her eyes as wide and blank and uncomprehending as a newborn’s.

  He wanted to cry out to Hortense, to Fendlesham. He wanted to acclaim the miracle. Wanted to mark this moment in case it slipped away from him again.

  Patricia, he tried to say, but the words simply wouldn’t come. He felt tears forming in his eyes; one spilled over on to his cheek. Patricia’s wide eyes flickered as she watched it in seeming fascination.

  She sat up slowly, but without apparent effort, as if her recent weakness had left her. Still staring at the tear on her husband’s cheek, she reached out with her left hand as if to tenderly brush it away.

  His lips moved. Patricia, Patricia. He had never felt such happiness.

  Her hand hovered in the air for a moment.

  Then her fingers hooked into claws, and with a snarl she tore out his throat.

  IT WAS TOO dark to see the hole in the ground until it was directly in front of him. Another step and Will would have plunged right into it. He saw it at the last second and jerked back so suddenly that his weight shifted from his front to his back leg, causing him to topple onto his backside.

  He sat on the damp grass as his heartbeat slowed. How far would he have fallen? It was impossible to say, because the near total darkness made the hole look like a black pool. Groping around him, he found a stone and tossed it into the centre of the dark circle. After ten seconds he still hadn’t heard the stone land. It was as though it had been swallowed by silence.

  Scrambling to his feet, he circled the hole slowly, one eye on the darkening landscape ahead. Because he was looking for Meg—he had lost sight of her for the time being, but he knew she had come this way—he tripped over something lying in the grass on the far side of the hole. Down he went again, on to his knees this time. He glanced back irritably, fully expecting to see a tree branch or a rock—and so let out a cry of shock when he saw that what he had tripped over was, in fact, a human arm.

  It was clad in a dark sleeve
, the hand palm upwards, fingers slightly curled, like that of a beggar hoping for a coin. The arm had been severed just beneath the shoulder, and the end looked mangled and wet. Will dug his heels into the earth and propelled himself away from it, as if afraid it might suddenly flip over and come scuttling towards him. As his hands pawed the ground, trying to find purchase, they came down on something hard.

  His head whipped round. Another arm? But no, this object was thinner, straighter, and cold like metal. He peered at it a moment before recognising it as one of the electrical rods he had seen the guards carrying. He felt uncomfortable at the prospect of touching something that had been clutched, if only briefly, in a dead hand attached to a severed arm. But as soon as he had seen the arm he’d realised whatmust have attacked the man, and ultimately self-preservation won out over squeamishness and he snatched up the rod.

  His thumb found a button on the handle, and as soon as he pressed it the rod crackled, and blue-white energy, like trapped lightning, began to flicker around its tip. He watched it a moment, then lifted his thumb from the button. The last thing he wanted was to draw attention to himself. He looked around nervously.

  All was quiet, the separate elements of the landscape now losing definition as darkness filled in the gaps. Will had followed Meg up the side of the house, across the wide gravel forecourt in front of it, and was now floundering through a more informal garden to the right of the building, her small form having been swallowed up by the gloom a few minutes earlier. Ahead of him, across an expanse of lawn, he could see trees and bushes, with some sort of outhouse nestled in their midst. Although lamps burned at the front of the house behind him, and in several of the side windows, the range of their illumination was limited, and made little impression out here.