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

by Edited by Ian Edginton

  With no idea where Meg had gone, Will’s only option was to keep moving forward. Gripping the rod he crossed the lawn, scanning the ground for darker patches that might be further holes, his ears attuned to every scrape and rustle of foliage. On the edge of the lawn he found a path between bushes, which led to a stone courtyard. On the far side of the courtyard was the building he had seen, long and low, which he guessed was probably used to store supplies or shelter livestock. The instant he stepped on to the cracked, uneven courtyard, a high-pitched squeal of panic ripped through the darkness. He leaped out of his skin, thinking he had set off some kind of alarm.

  It only took him a second to recognise the sound for what it really was: the frenzied squealing of pigs. Heart beating wildly, gripping the electrical rod so tightly it felt as if it was bruising his hand, he crossed the courtyard in a half-crouch. By the time he reached the door of the building, the squealing had died down, to be replaced by an ominous silence. He twisted the heavy iron ring that served as the door’s handle, and when the lever inside released with a click, applied his shoulder to the door and slowly pushed it open.

  The darkness inside the building was so musty it seemed to flow over him, like warm mist. He smelled pig flesh and feces, rotting food and the sweet, grassy scent of hay. “Meg?” he said in a voice which, to him, sounded thin and weak. “Are you there?”

  He heard a snuffling and a wet sound, like the smacking of lips. Then a small, teary voice said, “Yes.”

  A blend of dread and relief washed over him. “Where are you? I can’t see you.”

  “Don’t come in.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m not...” She released a shuddering breath. “I’m not fit to be seen.”

  Unsure how to respond, he was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Are you... hurt?”

  “No. I was... hungry. The appetite overwhelmed me. I couldn’t... help myself.”

  Will pushed the door wider, edging a couple of steps further into the building. Peering into the swirling darkness, he said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s not your fault. I’ve come to help you. I want to help you.”

  “How?”

  “We should go back to the house, speak to Dr Fendlesham. Will you come?”

  He heard her sigh. “I’m ashamed.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what I’ve become. Of the stain of my sins.”

  He took two further steps into the building. Somewhere ahead of him he heard movement. Remembering the severed arm on the ground, he felt suddenly afraid, and without thinking he pressed the button of the electrical rod in his hand.

  The low-roofed building filled with flickering, icy light. Shadows fled like cockroaches into the darkest corners of the building, and there in front of him, not twelve feet away, stood Meg.

  She was swaying, as though on the verge of a faint, and she was covered in blood. The bright, slick redness of it coated her mouth and chin, and spilled down the front of her clothes like a shiny bib. Yet more blood gloved her hands, which were outstretched towards him, and drooled between her thin fingers to spatter on the floor. Behind her, in a wooden pen, Will could see the ruins of what must have been a piglet, ripped to shreds and half-devoured. The other pigs were huddled in a terrified, silent knot in the pen’s furthest corner.

  As soon as the light hit her, Meg let out a wail of distress and covered her face with her bloodied hands. Fighting down his revulsion, Will said, “It’s all right, Meg. It’s not your—”

  The door behind him crashed open.

  He spun round to see the doorway filled with a circular maw of spiraling teeth. The worm’s ‘head’ rose to tower over him as its thick, grey body slithered through the door. He backed away, holding the still-crackling rod in front of him. Behind him, Meg screamed and the pigs began to stamp and squeal in their pen.

  The parasite seemed fascinated by the crackling blue-white light. It swayed from side to side, like a cobra mesmerized by a fakir’s flute. It dipped its head towards the light, in a curious rather than aggressive manner. However, as soon as its flesh came in contact with the light, there was a sizzling snap of energy, and the parasite jerked back, a shudder passing through its body. For a few seconds it seemed disorientated, its ‘head’ thrashing from side to side, its body jerking and coiling as if gripped by a series of after-shocks. Will might have simply stared at it in fascination if Meg hadn’t appeared by his side and grabbed his sleeve with a gore-streaked hand.

  “We should make haste,” she said.

  He nodded, and the two of them dodged around the still-shuddering creature and out of the door. After the mustiness of the piggery, the fresh air hit Will like cold water, making him gasp. He and Meg ran back towards the house, Will propelled by the terror that the parasite, newly enraged, might recover and chase after them.

  After a few moments, though, the squealing of the pigs reached a new crescendo, suggesting that the monster had discovered an alternative feast.

  THEY ENTERED THE house—once again, via the French doors of the study—just as the lights came back on. Meg looked at her bloodied hands with dismay.

  “I am an animal,” she whispered.

  “You are ill,” said Will. “Let’s find the kitchen, so you can wash the blood away.”

  She shook her head, wiping her hands on her blood-spattered skirt. “There’s no time. Already I feel the appetite returning.”

  Will snatched an antimacassar from an armchair by the dwindling fire and handed it to her. “Use this to wipe your face. I’m sure Mr Roebuck won’t mind.”

  Meg did so, and the two of them went out into the hallway. “Dr Fendlesham must have repaired the electrical generator,” Will said. “We should find him and ask what can be done to help you.”

  Meg nodded, looking unconvinced. “Where would the generator be housed?”

  “The cellar perhaps? We should be able to—”

  “Will!”

  Her voice was harsh, and for an instant Will thought the appetite must be overwhelming her again. But then he saw she was looking beyond him, at the staircase. He turned.

  Mrs Roebuck, who he had last seen lying dead in her bed, was lurching down the stairs towards them. She was horribly emaciated, barefoot, and one of her hands was blackened and twisted. She should have been pitiable, but instead she was terrifying. Her deep-sunken eyes were shards of black flint; her face, hair, hands and the front of her nightgown were smeared and splashed with blood. She moved in a way that was wholly bestial—hunched over, her fingers hooked into claws, her teeth grinding together as her lips writhed in a snarl.

  “Mrs Roebuck,” Will said, hoping that hearing her name might bring her to her senses. All that happened, however, was that her head snapped round as her eyes fixed on him, blood flying from the ends of her hair to spatter the walls.

  “She’s beyond reason,” Meg warned—whereupon the scrawny woman let out a ragged screech and hurtled down the remaining stairs.

  Will brandished the electrical rod as she flew at him, his thumb depressing the button on the handle. Even when it buzzed into life, however, it didn’t deter her. Swinging out her blackened arm, she smashed the rod aside, the sizzling zap it made as it connected with her flesh barely slowing her down. Surprised by her strength, Will felt the rod wrenched from his grasp. It clattered away across the floor, leaving him defenceless. A wisp of smoke still rising from her charred arm, Mrs Roebuck launched herself at him.

  Will raised his hands to grapple with her—but before she could reach him, a heavy vase smashed into the side of her head, snapping her neck to one side and knocking her over. Her tiny frame sprawled across the floor like a jumble of sticks, leaving a bloody skid-mark across the polished tiles.

  Will looked to his left, where Meg, having hurled the vase, was now running towards him.

  “Quickly, before she recovers,” she said. She held out a hand, the fingernails of which were still encrusted with blood.

  The electrical rod was lying on the othe
r side of the hallway, beyond Mrs Roebuck’s body, and fleetingly Will debated whether to rush across and snatch it up. But already the semi-conscious woman, blood pouring from her forehead, was beginning to stir, and so instead he grabbed Meg’s hand and the two of them ran along the corridor to the left of the staircase that Will hoped would lead to the kitchens, where he hoped to find Fendlesham.

  As it happened, they ran into Fendlesham before reaching their destination—almost literally, in fact. They entered the kitchen just as he was leaving it. He jumped back as they burst in, looking at Meg’s bloodied clothes with alarm and distaste.

  “It isn’t human, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she said.

  Making a valiant attempt to recover his composure, Fendlesham said curtly, “I’m gratified to hear it.”

  He was about to push past them when, from the hallway beyond the end of the corridor, they heard a low, animal-like snarl. Fendlesham shot them a questioning glance.

  “Mrs Roebuck,” Will said. “She attacked us.”

  The scientist scowled. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s—”

  “She was dead, but she’s back now,” Will said bluntly.

  As if on cue, Mrs Roebuck lurched into sight at the end of the corridor. She moved awkwardly, her head tilted to one side. But she looked terrifying too, and not only because she was drenched in blood. There was a mad glitter to her eyes. A hungry glitter.

  “All that blood...” Fendlesham gasped.

  “Mr Roebuck’s, I’ll wager,” said Meg. “Or Hortense’s.”

  “Or both,” added Will.

  With Mrs Roebuck blocking the route back into the house, it was clear their options were limited. Suddenly Fendlesham seemed to take charge. He slammed the door in the advancing woman’s face and said, “Come with me.”

  He led them past the cellar door and across to a short flight of stone steps, at the top of which was a door that clearly led outside.

  “Where are we going?” asked Meg.

  “I have a plan,” Fendlesham replied, “but I will not delay our progress with needless explanations—particularly as your own appetite may soon engulf you as Mrs Roebuck’s has engulfed her. All I require for now is that you follow my instructions. Is that clear?”

  Will saw Meg bridle at the arrogance and disdain in the scientist’s voice, but before she could respond he nodded.

  “Clear,” he said.

  MINUTES LATER WILL and Fendlesham were loading sides of beef and pork on to a trolley, which Meg was holding steady. The meat store was in a stone building whose inner walls were lined with blocks of ice, on the far side of an enclosed stone yard opposite the kitchen. Although the interior of the building was cold enough for their breaths to emerge as vapour, both men were sweating. Meg, meanwhile, was panting shallowly, her eyes closed.

  “Are you all right?” Will asked.

  It was Fendlesham who answered. “The meat is reawakening the appetite inside her.” He grabbed a joint of ham from a shelf and thrust it towards her. “Take this and tame the beast inside you.”

  Meg grabbed the meat, looking both grateful and shame-faced. As she scuttled away to a dark corner, Will and Fendlesham finished loading up.

  Once Fendlesham was satisfied they had enough, he called for Meg—who had gnawed the ham joint almost down to the bone—to open the door, and then he and Will pushed the trolley up a short slope and out into the open air. The scientist directed them through a gate on the right hand side of the courtyard, and up past a paddock to what had once been a stable block. As the trolley rattled over the stones, all three looked around nervously for any sign of Mrs Roebuck or the parasite, but the night was quiet and still. Will felt he’d almost have been happier if the pigs had still been squealing in panic. At least then they’d have known where the parasite was.

  When they reached the stable block, Will noticed that all but one of the traditional half-and-half doors on the building had been replaced by metal shutters. The only exception was the entrance in the centre of the block, which had been replaced by a stout oak door with three locks. Fendlesham produced a set of keys and tackled the locks one after the other. Opening the door, he ushered them inside, tugging at the front of the meat trolley as Will and Meg pushed it from the rear.

  Once they were inside, he closed the door and pulled a lever on the wall. More than a dozen electrical lights suspended from the ceiling stuttered into life. As the interior of the building was illuminated, Will and Meg gasped. The place had been stripped of the equine trappings that the building must once have contained, and the open space had been filled with machinery more elaborate and complex than either of them had ever seen before.

  Will had visited Roebuck’s factory several times, but the cumbersome, grinding, dirty machinery that occupied the factory floor was archaic compared to this. The mass of pipes, tubes, wheels, cogs and oddly-shaped components, whose function Will couldn’t even begin to guess at, were rendered in a variety of materials—brass, glass, rubber, even wood—and were attached, one to another, in what appeared a vast, dazzling, three-dimensional jigsaw, that whirred and bubbled and spun and turned and slid and interacted with such seemingly perfect harmony that it put him in mind of a living organism, whose every component, no matter how small or apparently insignificant, was a vital part of the whole.

  The central focus of all the activity—the literal heart of the machine—was a transparent chamber, capped with a dome that was crammed with complex circuitry and crawling with a myriad of multi-coloured wires. From the dome sprouted four metal attachments, like vast, segmented legs, which in turn were linked to the rest of the machinery surrounding the central chamber via a mass of connections that put Will in mind of arteries and veins carrying blood to and from a human heart.

  “What is this?” Meg gasped, looking around with wonder. “What is it for?”

  “I call it my cell-splitter,” said Fendlesham proudly.

  “This is the machine you told us about?” said Will. “The one whose purpose is to extract illness from the body?”

  Fendlesham puffed out his chest. “It is.”

  Meg tore her eyes from the cornucopia of marvels in front of her. “But did Mr Roebuck not say that so far it has failed to fulfill its function?”

  Now Fendlesham frowned. “It needs some refinement, it’s true. But the cell-splitter has more than one function. And I am hopeful that it will more than suffice for our purposes.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Now leave me to my work.”

  Meg bridled, but Will placed a hand on her arm and drew her aside. Fendlesham was a rude man with a superior attitude, but there was nothing to be gained from telling him so.

  For the next ten minutes they watched him scuttle about, pulling levers here, making adjustments there. It reminded Will of the time his father had taken them to the music hall as a treat for his mother’s birthday—her last, as it turned out—and they had marvelled at a man who spun multiple plates on multiple sticks. Thinking of his father made Will realise he’d be home from work now, and no doubt wondering why the house was empty, and why there was no food on the table. He hoped beyond hope that even if it earned him a leathering for neglecting his duties, he would survive this night and get the opportunity to see his father’s face again.

  Eventually Fendlesham completed his modifications and gestured towards them. “Now,” he said, “place the trolley of meat in the chamber.”

  Again Meg scowled, but Will obediently went over to the trolley and took one of the handles, indicating she should do the same. After a moment she complied, and the two of them pushed the trolley through a metal door, into the centre of the chamber.

  “Now, boy,” Fendlesham said, “open the door and then retreat to the shelter of that panel over there.” He indicated a metal podium to the left of the chamber inset with levers and dials.

  “If you please,” muttered Meg, but Fendlesham turned away, oblivious to her sarcasm. Will squeezed her hand, then hurried across to the main door. He unlocke
d it and nervously pulled it open, bracing himself for what might be waiting on the other side. But there was nothing except a cool night breeze, which pushed past him and entered the building, ruffling his hair.

  When he had scurried across to join the others, Fendlesham said, “Now cover your ears.”

  Before either of them could ask why, the scientist threw a switch and plugged his own ears with his fingers. Immediately a high-pitched, ululating sound filled the room, which tore into Will’s head, causing his brain and the backs of his eyes to throb with pain. He clapped his hands to his ears, which reduced the agony at least enough to enable him to think and take an interest in his surroundings. Beside him, Meg was hunched over, her hands pressed to her ears, her teeth clenched, her eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  Noticing that Fendlesham’s attention was focused on the open doorway, Will turned his own gaze in that direction. For a minute or so the door framed nothing but darkness, and then Will glimpsed coiling movement, and the next moment the alien parasite oozed into the room. The yellowish frill around its circular maw rippled, as though it was tasting the air, and its ‘head’ weaved from left to right. For a moment Will thought the creature—which appeared unaffected by the hideous ululating wail—had sensed them and was preparing to attack. But then he saw it veer towards the open door of the central chamber, and the trolley of stacked meat.

  Fendlesham bared his teeth in satisfaction as the creature slid into the chamber, lowered its maw and began to feed. The instant it did so, he twisted a switch and the ululating sound mercifully ceased.

  For several seconds Will’s head and teeth continued to throb, and then thankfully the pulsing began to abate, and the pain along with it. Meg’s eyes opened and she uncurled from her hunched position, like an animal emerging from hibernation.

  Already Fendlesham’s hands were moving over the controls of the panel in front of him. Will saw him turn a row of dials up to maximum, which caused needles on the readout quadrants above to flip into the ‘red’ zone. He glanced at Will, a look of grim determination on his face, then moved to the right of the panel, and with an almost theatrical flourish, slammed a metal lever.