Lost on Mars

by Paul Magrs

  After Hannah ate her fill of the fake-looking meat she dozed off and I picked her up. It was time to find some shelter out of the sun. Toaster helped with Ma (who was starting to flip out, clutching her new toiletries case, staring wildly about) and we went to find somewhere to rest.

  ‘They’ve all Disappeared, haven’t they?’ I asked Toaster. ‘The people here didn’t wander off or leave to find somewhere new. They were all taken away and Disappeared.’

  The sunbed nodded curtly, as if he had been thinking that exact same thing.

  ‘I don’t like it here,’ Ma grumbled.

  The problem was that she had run out of the tablets that she took every day. As soon as we found somewhere indoors to sit, I checked her purse and found the bottle was empty. I couldn’t make sense of the label. All I knew was that they came from Adams’ Emporium. They were purple and she got them in jars of one hundred at a time. She had been getting them for as long as I had been alive. Foolishly, I’d always imagined they were some kind of lady’s thing for keeping your breath nice and sweet.

  ‘They’re for my nerves,’ Ma confided, looking panicky. ‘They keep my nerves in check. They are nerve medicine.’

  We were sitting just inside an opened doorway. A dark hallway led into the main body of someone’s home. We perched there, Ma staring fixedly at the storefront across the street. McAndrews. It looked very like the Adams’ place.

  ‘I thought I could do without them, Lora,’ she said, thickly, as if she was dying of thirst.

  Across the street our friends were ransacking the McAndrew’s Emporium. The doors hung open and there was a flurry of activity within. I left Hannah sitting with Ma and went to see.

  Shelves and drawers had been emptied. Boxes, packets and jars had been opened and there were spillages all over the wooden floors. Mrs Adams was behind the till, just as she would be in her own shop, glaring at ledgers with an expert eye.

  It seemed that not all of this damage was caused by our party. There had been other refugees who’d been through this way. Some of the damage was old. There were dried, sticky stains on the counters and a nasty smell from rotted supplies.

  Al was filling his pockets with confectionary. ‘How long do you suppose it is, since the original people cleared out?’ Gobstoppers and lollipops were dropping out of his clothes.

  I shrugged at him. It was impossible to know how long Dead Town had been as dead as this. There were no calendars up. Mrs Adams was hogging the ledgers and papers, so maybe she’d uncover some details. The wooden clock was smashed and frozen at just after midday.

  I went into the store cupboards and found the pharmacy supplies. There were little drawers and ranks of colourful jars. Mercifully, they were mostly untouched.

  ‘The purple ones,’ Al said, peering over my shoulder. I sighed and pointed out at least four types that looked similar to Ma’s favourites. ‘What do you think all these are for?’ he asked, whispering. ‘I didn’t know folk could have so much wrong with them…’

  ‘Ailments and diseases,’ I said. Both my brother and I had always been really healthy. No childhood illnesses to speak of. Much the same for Hannah. We were advertisements for prairie living. Ruby and Grandma had both lived to ripe old ages, too. (I reckon they must both have been over sixty, at least!) In many ways life on Mars was really good for human beings.

  In other ways, not so much.

  Al took up a large, clean, empty jar. He picked up dozens of all four kinds of purple pills and dumped them in the jar.

  ‘They’ll do,’ he said. Then he looked at me. Suddenly he seemed much younger. ‘Did they all Disappear, Lora? Everyone in town?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.

  ‘They did, I think,’ he said, very sure of himself. ‘They were taken away one at a time by the Martians and then they were eaten,’ he added.

  I thought about those bits of sardines and tomato stuck in Madame Lucille’s beard.

  We were interrupted by an electronic shout from Toaster, outside the shop. There was a big disturbance in the road. A survivor had been found in Dead Town. An older woman, she was dishevelled and frightened. She had come crawling out of one of the cellars when she heard all our noise. Now she was blinking in the unaccustomed daylight, staring all about like she recognised nothing.

  She was as pale as the lobster meat in those old cans. It was obvious she was really scared of us. Toaster shielded her away from the others with his body. I didn’t understand. Did they want to harm her?

  Madame Lucille spoke up. ‘We only wanted to know who she was, and what happened here. But she went all peculiar on us.’

  They must have panicked her with a barrage of questions. This wild-haired woman must have been hiding away for some time. She was wearing something like farmer’s overalls and they were filthy.

  In the end it took several hours to calm her down. I sent everyone away to carry on with the exploring and scavenging. I fetched out some food for the woman – some concentrated cubes from the McAndrews shop. She stuffed them ravenously into her mouth.

  I saw that under the tangled hair and ingrained muck she probably wasn’t as old as all that. Maybe about Ma’s age. As she ate and made lip-smacking, gnashing noises, it struck me that I didn’t even know if she’d speak our language. But she did. Her words came in halting, broken sentences.

  ‘Am I – the only one?’ she asked me. By then we were sitting on a bench on the veranda outside the store. The shop was quiet now, having been stripped of anything edible. My fellow refugees were all foraging elsewhere, along with my family. Only Toaster remained behind, in case the survivor turned nasty.

  ‘You’re the only human being we have seen since leaving our own town,’ I told her, speaking loudly and clearly.

  Her face crumpled. It started to look like one of the hand-drawn maps Grandma had kept hidden away. ‘They came here again and again. They returned a hundred times, night after night. They used to sneak-sneak about. Heeee heee heeeee. And only one or two people would vanish. But then they got … heeee heeee … then they got bolder and soon … heeheehee … soon…’

  The woman burst into tears. Horrid, jagged tears. Toaster and I stared at each other over her head. After a while she said, ‘They are devils. Coming up from underground. Like in the Good Book … heeee heee heee … they are come to punish us. We were a lawless town. We had liquor and gambling and dancing and fornicating. We didn’t think there was anyone who could tell us what to do. Heeeheeeheee … and then the devils came and started taking us away. One at a time and then … then rounding us up in great numbers. By the tens and twenties and thirties … they cracked whips and they tied everyone together. Heeheeee heee and they giggled as they did it. They all were going heee heeeee heeeeeee…’

  She was rocking where she sat now. Suddenly it was obvious that her ordeal had driven her completely insane.

  Toaster asked her, ‘If they were coming to take everyone away, then how did you escape, madam?’

  His courteous phrase rang hollow when I looked at her wretched, desolate face. She spat at him, ‘Well, I’m clever, aren’t I? I let them take everyone. Every single soul. I let them take them all, one by one ahead of me. All the little children. The plump little children. And my neighbours. Heeee heeee. And my family. My husband. My kids. I’m a good survivor, I am. I am quite ruthless, really. I have learned I have to be. Would you think I was ruthless to look at me?’

  I swallowed. ‘You gave them your kids?’

  She sneered. ‘Horrible kids anyway. I gave them life and I gave them everything they had. Me and their dad – the sacrifices we made for them! Hee heeee heeee! And how ungrateful they were. Yes, of course I gave them away when the devils asked for them. Heee heeee! They needed punishing. They were bad kids. I couldn’t cope with them. The devils – the Martian devils – they were going to teach them a lesson. Heee heee heee.’ She was overcome by her weird laughter for a while. ‘Oh … heee heee… the Martians were glad because I had all the registers in my des
k. Heee heeee heee… Oh, they were glad to get their hands on those.’

  ‘Registers?’ asked Toaster.

  ‘The name and address of every kid in this town,’ she said. ‘Heeee heeee heee! It made the Martians’ job so much easier when they were foraging for food! Of course they enjoy eating children the most! Heee heee! And I could help them easily, couldn’t I? Hee heee hee! What with me being the school’s headmistress? Hee heeee heeeee!’

  23

  I had to get away from the terrible woman. I needed some air. I left the supposed headmistress with Toaster and went to the dusty, abandoned saloon bar across the street, where a temporary camp had been set up. It was shadowy in the large, wooden room, and it was comfortable, even if it did still smell of smoke and booze. Bedding had been rolled out and there was orchestral music playing thinly out of somebody’s speakers. It was cosy in there, with pink candles glowing in glass tankards and the aroma of good food. Vernon Adams had got the gas supply to the kitchen working and he was frying kidneys and strips of bacon. It smelled really good.

  In one quiet corner of the saloon, Ma was sitting with Hannah. I gave her the jumbo-sized bottle of pills that Al and I had filled. I prayed that they were the right kind, some of them, at least.

  Then Ma blurted out something that I’d been thinking the whole time we’d been in Dead Town. ‘This is what will become of Our Town, isn’t it?’

  I nodded. ‘Yeah. We got out in time.’

  ‘The Martian Ghosts were here first, picking it clean. That means they must be moving east. We might avoid them…’

  I was surprised to hear her thinking rationally like this. I wasn’t sure she was right, but it was good to hear her being lucid.

  She went on, ‘But if that’s so, does it mean that all we’ll ever see is one empty town after another? Each place we come to is going to be dead, isn’t it?’

  Her voice rose as she considered this hopeless picture. But she couldn’t be right. I didn’t think the Martians actually worked like that. I didn’t think they progressed across the face of the planet systematically, like a swarm or a storm. I think they mostly just pleased themselves…

  I hated the idea that, as we moved west, everything we were heading into was already dead.

  I encouraged Ma to take her pills and to wash them down with the delicious, foaming hot chocolate that Mrs Adams was heating up.

  Then Aunt Ruby tried to get everyone involved in a singsong. Soon voices were raised, mumbling and crooning along with ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’. The singing became rowdier when some dusty bottles of rum were found, stowed away under the bar.

  Evening was dropping down over the wooden rooftops and I wondered if they shouldn’t be trying to be a little more quiet and inconspicuous…

  Just in case.

  Toaster brought the survivor woman – the only human in Dead Town – into the saloon. Now she looked calmer and less wild. She had cleaned herself up some in a bathroom. She was wearing someone else’s clothes and she was standing straight. You could see how she’d once been a school headmistress, just like she said. Her back was so straight and she’d put her hair up in a knot. I could picture her standing at the front of the school in Dead Town, addressing all the boys and girls in assembly. Telling them how they ought to behave and how they ought to grow up.

  Except she’d have a school hall with an assembly of no kids at all, because she’d given them away to the Martians. If she had a school hall full of children to talk to, then they’d be dead, ghost children with grey faces and no eyes. With holes bitten in them by the hungry Martians. And she’d still be standing there at the front, telling them all how nice folk behave.

  I shook my head, clearing it of these terrible imaginings. I was way too tired. I wondered if Toaster had taken the headmistress to the McAndrew’s Emporium and found her a sedative. She was so different from how she’d been earlier.

  Toaster brought her over.

  ‘My name is Cassandra,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry about my earlier behaviour. It’s been so long since I’ve seen another living being. I do hope you understand.’

  Ma and Mrs Adams and the others all broke off from singing and nodded politely. As if, yes, they all quite understood. They all knew how easy it was for a grown-up adult to turn the way she had. They all knew the dangers of being left alone in Dead Town.

  Cassandra sat down beside Ma and Hannah, gratefully accepting the mug of chocolate she was offered. She seemed charmed by my little sister. I swallowed down the impulse to burst out, ‘Get her away from my sister!’

  I kept all of that in. She had just been babbling earlier. Of course the Martians never came into town, asking to see school registers and suchlike. It was just nonsense from the troubled fever dreams she’d been having. Who really knew the truth of what had happened here in Dead Town?

  The music went on, with Ruby leading everyone through every single song we knew. The old woman’s face was shining with excited sweat. As she capered about, dancing on the wooden bar in her stained and patched safari suit, I realised I’d never seen her so pleased and happy. For some of the songs she only remembered a few lines, but we sang them round and round again, even when they made no sense to us. Aunt Ruby kicked up her legs and acted the clown, making us laugh harder and harder.

  We all bedded down at last, when it was pitch dark outside and we were exhausted.

  Much later I woke in the blackness. Everyone was sleeping contentedly. I had woken up because there had been a noise.

  A rustling, fumbling noise.

  I was instantly on the alert. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and stared around me, frozen like a hunter in a crouching position.

  There it was again. Rustle, rustle, clink, clink.

  It was someone rootling through a bag, and through pockets. A thief in the night.

  Almost at once I found her.

  Across the other side of the room, beside the barricaded saloon door, Cassandra was hunkered down. She was rifling through Mrs Adams’ knapsack, who was sleeping in the arms of her family, just a couple of yards away. Mrs Adams was doing her horrible snoring, that we’d all become so used to in recent weeks, and there was no way the thief’s subtle noises would get through to her.

  Cassandra had amassed quite a stash of trinkets and nibbles, I saw, as she had worked her way around the room. When she realised she’d been rumbled by me, she looked up sharply. Our eyes met. Her lined face twisted up at the sight of me. The headmistress snarled.

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing that,’ I told her, trying to keep my voice level. ‘We have been kind to you. Everyone has been very welcoming to you, Cassandra.’

  She straightened up. ‘How dare you talk to me with such familiarity, girl? Have you never been taught to address your Elders correctly?’

  ‘I guess I haven’t,’ I said. ‘And I’m glad we never had a school ma’am like you to teach us.’

  Her eyes flashed with fire. She whispered something I couldn’t hear.

  ‘What was that?’

  She spoke up. ‘I said, it’s dog eat dog eat dog eat dog eat dog…’ She was looking wilder by the second. It was like she was turning into a Martian Ghost before my very eyes. ‘Heeee heee heeeeee.’

  Then, in an instant, she whipped around and ran out of the saloon bar on a pair of high heels, with her tweedy cape flaring out behind her. She burst through the double doors and hurtled out onto the street. Without even thinking about it I gave chase.

  What on earth was I thinking of? I had no idea how dangerous this woman could be. All I knew was that I was furious. We had tried to look after her and, against my better judgement, we had trusted her. This was how she repaid us.

  I tore off into the dark of Dead Town after the headmistress. I was surprised to find that the Earth light was bright on the bare streets, once my eyes were accustomed. So it was easy to keep the fleeing woman in my sights. She was a stick-thin figure in borrowed clothes, running awkwardly in those shoes. Her hair had fallen raggedly out of
its bun and was streaming silver behind her.

  I called to her, ‘Cassandra!’

  She flew to the very edge of town, where the worn-down buildings were seedier and grimmer. I got the feeling that they’d been like this, even before everyone in town Disappeared. This place was dead before the rest of Dead Town. The scrubby bush and rocky terrain started again at the end of one particular street. This was where the headmistress stopped running, right where the desert resumed. She tottered to a standstill and turned to look back at me.

  ‘You think you’re so clever, girl,’ she snarled. ‘You think you can survive all of this … but you can’t! You’ve all been trying so hard, but you needn’t bother! This world is going to be the death of us all!’

  I realised her eyes had changed colour. It wasn’t just starlight catching them and making them flash. Her eyes were actually silver now.

  Something alien had got into her. She really was turning Martian.

  But I didn’t have much time to think about that. Next thing, several slender forms came out of the desert to surround her. They were rushing soundlessly, and appeared in a second. I yelped out loud, I couldn’t help it. It looked as if they were crowding around Cassandra to embrace her.

  But then I saw that they were smothering her.

  ‘Heee heeee heeeee…’

  The light breeze from the desert brought their giggling to me. They were skinny-limbed Martians, with burnt and blistered skins. They worked together as a team, squeezing and tethering their prize. And then they carried the headmistress away.

  ‘No!’ I shouted, thinking too late that I shouldn’t draw their attention.

  They looked at me.

  I swore.

  There was nothing I could do for Cassandra. She had invited this. She had called out to them. She clearly wanted to be with her Martian Ghosts, and go the same way as the rest of Dead Town. But I didn’t. I left her to their embraces and I turned back and ran. I didn’t dare look behind me and I didn’t run back to the saloon. I didn’t want to lead the Martians to my family and friends.