The pit had covered itself during the night, leaving no sign of the aliens.
As people wandered in twos and threes into the open fields west of town, they found little knots of survivors talking about the “spinning mirror” and the flashes of green lightning. But there was nothing left to prove these wild tales.
I returned to the site alone at midday, much to Becky’s chagrin. We’d opened our few presents that morning, and then shared a quiet breakfast together, before getting into another argument.
“I wouldn’t go back to that place for anything in the world,” she said. “Not even for you, Alex. We need to get some supplies together and evacuate.”
“Evacuate?” I said. “But we still don’t know….”
“We know enough! We’ve seen enough. What more do you want? Do you really think they’re going to stay up there? I don’t believe that and neither do you. They’ll move into town as soon as they can, and then we’re dead or worse. We need to go, Alex, while we still can.”
“I just want to see what’s happening. I’ll be back in time for dinner.”
She shook her head at my stubbornness, but she couldn’t stop me. No one could. She was putting together some clothes when I left.
* * * *
When I returned to the pit, the whole place had changed.
The trees were mostly gone, burned down or at least sheared of their leaves. The hole had become a mound, completely filled in, even covering the spaceship. The bodies of the dead had been removed by the authorities.
I saw Chief Conger directing operations.
“Did you find Mindon?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s you, Smith. God, what a mess!” He gestured out at the field. “No, didn’t see him. Owen was out there, what was left of him, and a number of others I recognized, but not Min. ’Course, some of the bodies will have to be ID’d through DNA. You here last night?”
“Yeah.”
“What happened?”
I told him what I’d seen.
“You’re shittin’ me, right?”
I shook my head.
“Well, where is it now?”
“Somewhere beneath that pile of sand,” I said. “I sure as hell wouldn’t go poking around in there, though.”
“We’re almost done here, I think.”
He ordered his men to cordon off the area with yellow police tape attached to the bare stumps of the remaining trees. While they were working, I felt rather than heard a rumbling somewhere underneath me, and I yelled as loud as I could, “Get to cover!” before running for the tree line and throwing myself into a hollow.
Conger, however, just stood his ground and pulled out his pistol, dropping into the classic shooting stance. The sand began to fall away in sheets as something very large and metallic poked its way up out of the mound.
“Down!” I shouted at the Chief, but he ignored me.
Instead, he fired one-two-three-four-five shots in a row. I could hear the slugs ricocheting off the carapace of the Martian machine, and something breaking, like the tinkle of shattered glass, and then a hooting sound (“Ooh-meh!”) from the alien.
“Got one of ’em!” the Chief screamed.
Six-seven-eight-nine-ten came the retorts. Then a long zzzttt as the sting-ray reached out its bright green tongue and licked the man away, leaving his upright shoes, with smoking feet and ankles still attached. The machine rose up higher, ten or twenty feet or more, and began seeking out the remaining cops, who returned fire with their primitive pea shooters and bows and arrows (which they might as well have been, for all the effect they had), until they too were obliterated.
“Hoo-teh!” bleated the Martian, in what I interpreted as a cry of victory, or maybe a call for assistance, I didn’t know which.
Then it levitated even higher, coming up right out of the hole to stand sentinel by the side of the ship, as several other machines began to join it, clickety-click, clickety-clack.
I crawled down the trace of the hollow, keeping my head really low, until it entered a ravine; and then carefully and quietly crept away from that hell-hole, hearing behind me the ratcheting of the Martian implements, as they began to assemble more of the tools with which they intended to smash mankind.
This was war, I now knew. People had to be warned. We had to fight back—while we still could!
CHAPTER SEVEN
HOME AGAIN, HOME AGAIN
To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.
—Anonymous
Alex Smith, 25 December, Mars Year i
Novato, California, Planet Earth
I remember very little of my escape except blundering through the trees and stumbling around the brush. I found the road again just outside of Novato, but I was so exhausted that I had to sit down for awhile.
I remained there for quite some time. Then I saw an ant tugging the dead carcass of a beetle three times its size, struggling to maneuver the body over the rough earth, taking the food to its nest. If I reached down my finger and crushed the insect, would it understand? Could I stop its frenetic activity by reasoning with it? Maybe convince it to become a vegetarian? In spite of everything, I chuckled out loud.
Then I stood up and began walking unsteadily towards town. Home again, home again!
I suffer from this strange sense of detachment, both from myself and from the world around me. I watch everything from the outside in, so to speak, from out of time, from out of space, from beyond the stress and the tragedy of it all. That’s why I’d gone back to the pit. I had to see it all for myself. That’s what Becky never really understood about me.
Yes, of course I was scared, just like everyone else. Yes, I understood the risks. But it just didn’t matter: I still had to eyeball everything first-hand.
But I suddenly understood the distant discontinuity between our local, small-town community and the death and destruction that had occurred just a few miles away. People were still having lunch in the local cafés, or strolling through the downtown section of Novato, enjoying the afternoon sunshine—and the Martian invasion was a non-event. It was something that happened to other people, not to them.
“What’s happening?” I asked one young couple.
“You mean the fire?” the man said.
“Have they got it under control?” the woman asked.
“You didn’t hear about the landing?” I said. “You know, the aliens?”
“Oh, yeah, sure!” The woman laughed out loud.
I was suddenly angry at my inability to communicate what I’d seen—but also for their blind stupidity.
“Get out while you can!” I yelled back at them.
The man was shaking his head at the old fart who’d gone crazy.
“Home again, home again, jiggety-jig.”
* * * *
My haggard appearance startled my wife. I squatted in my favorite chair, sipped some Pinot Noir that she brought me, and as soon as I could collect myself, told her what I’d seen. She’d just begun putting out dinner, which turned cold on the table while I related my story.
“The one thing in our favor,” I said, “is that they’re the slowest damned things I’ve ever seen. They’re so sluggish that they can barely get around on their own. Sure, they can hold onto that pit forever if they really want to, and kill anyone who comes near it, but I doubt they’re going to be able to move very far from their base. The army’ll stop them as soon as they get here. I sure wish Min had survived, though.”
“He’s in the guest room.”
“What?!”
“He came staggering in an hour after you left. I guess he’d spent the whole night wandering through the hills. I gave him some food, and he just collapsed into bed.”
I heard a noise in the hallway, and there he was, sans undershirt, but still as “raggedy a man as ever man can.”
“Gotta get out of here, man,” he said, belching. “They’ll be coming for us soon. Got any more of that wine, Becky?”
“But where do we go?” I asked, handing him the bottle.
He began chugging it straight down. Nothing refined about Min.
“Damn, that does taste good. North to Sonoma or Santa Rosa or even Willits. Eureka or Coos Bay or Medford or.…” His voice trailed off.
“But you said the Martians weren’t a threat.”
“I said a lot of things, Alex. I’ve always been so full of shit. You know that.”
“You told me that Earth’s gravity is three times that of Mars. And you could see for yourself how they struggled to get up, to breathe, to do anything at all.”
I was in fine academic form indeed.
“Yeah, and I also saw them take us out with that ray-thingie of theirs,” Mindon said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hairy hand. “Look, man, they’ve got machines, just like we do. There are a lot of animals out there who’re stronger than man, or bigger, or faster. We’ve beaten them all. That’s because we’ve got machines. And if the Martian machines are better than our machines—it sure looks that way to me—we’re dead ducks. So let’s get movin’ and groovin’.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” my dear wife said. “I’ve put some things together, Alex. We should leave immediately.”
“Wait a second,” I said, fingering my wineglass. “They just landed. We don’t know anything about them, really. Sure, they might be dangerous, but maybe they’re just as afraid of us as we are of them. Maybe they didn’t expect to find anybody here, certainly no one intelligent.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Mindon said. “They came for a reason. We may not understand that reason yet, but it’s there. Believe me, Alex, it’s there.”
“Yes, but the military’ll be here soon, certainly by tomorrow. They’ll force the aliens to negotiate—or they’ll wipe them out. The buggers’ve only had to face popguns so far. There’s no way they’ll be able to withstand our artillery shells and bombs.”
“You don’t think so?” Mindon shook his head. “You don’t know, my friend. You’re just guessing again. But I’ve seen enough. I’m leaving. My ancestors went through all this shit, and look what it got them: the Last Stand and Wounded Knee and all those other ‘victories’ of Indian manhood. Yeah, we won so damned many battles that there aren’t any of us left anymore. This Indian has had enough excitement for one lifetime. He’s going to keep his scalp intact. I’m leaving, folks. Take my advice, Alex: protect that pretty lady of yours and get the hell out of Dodge while you can.”
But I didn’t, of course. I couldn’t, not while things were still “happening” out there.
The events of the last day had scrambled my brains. All I could think about was that this was it!—the most historic moment in my life. I wanted to be there, to bear witness to the first encounter between man and an alien species.
Well, I encountered them, all right. I wish to God now that I hadn’t. I don’t know where my common sense went, and I sure as hell wouldn’t listen to anyone else.
“To market, to market, to buy a fat pig!”
But I do recall with some pleasure that small Christmas dinner, just the three of us eating cold, simple fare, washed down with plenty of Pinot Noir. I remember that evening with an extraordinary clarity even today. Becky’s beautiful anxious face, her dark hair gracefully framing her cheeks, gazed at me intently, while Mindon discoursed on the tragedy of mankind and the tragedy of the Martians. The white table cloth, the fine cups and silverware and good china, the crimson-purple wine swirling in my glass, all are distinctly etched in my memory. At the end of the meal I sat there sadly regretting Min’s perversity, and denouncing the cowardice of the Martian race.
“Why don’t they come out and fight us like men?”
“Because they’re not men, Alex,” Mindon said. “They’re not men, and we shouldn’t make the mistake of giving them human motivations.
“Look, my friend, I’ve really got to go. I’ve rented an SUV, and I’m going to walk over to the Boulevard now to pick it up. No, I don’t want a lift. You guys”—he shook his head again—“you guys take real good care of yourselves, and maybe we’ll see each other again in some other life.”
If only he’d known.
We were like the dodos, those nice, big, plump, juicy, stupid birds on the island of Mauritius, discussing the arrival of a ship full of pitiless sailors who were looking for fresh meat, and saying to each other, “Why, we’ll just go peck them to death tomorrow, my dears.”
I didn’t know it, but that was the last civilized meal that I would enjoy for many strange and terrible days.
I burped.
I farted.
I belched.
Merry Christmas, New Novato.
CHAPTER EIGHT
STURM UND DRANG
Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress)
—Friedrich von Klinger
Alex Smith, 25 December, Mars Year i
Novato, California, Planet Earth
Owen’s e-mail describing the ship’s arrival was initially judged a hoax, until the other alien vessels starting plopping down all over the California coastline. Even many of those living in Novato dismissed the rumors initially. Nothing could be confirmed on the web, so it just wasn’t real. They continued going about their lives on an ordinary Christmas Day, visiting church to celebrate the Prince of Peace, organizing family get-togethers, eating dinner, watching a few football games on TV. Fires were such a normal risk in California that no one gave them much thought.
After dinner, I scoured the news channels on cable, while Becky checked the Internet. It was all the same old holiday crap, recycled from last year. It’s a wonderful life, indeed!
“There’s nothing about the landing, nothing at all,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
“Well, it’s Christmas!” I said. “They never give Novato much coverage anyway.”
It was about that time, I later learned, that another capsule smashed into Nevada City, flattening a home business there.
The few survivors from the previous night’s escapade mostly weren’t believed. The local police had been decimated, but the appropriate reports had certainly been filed by next morning with the appropriate state and federal agencies. However, the sleepy-headed politicos in Sacramento and Washington were slow on the uptake, particularly in D.C., just dismissing the messages as “Kooky Kalifornia Krap.”
None of the other ships had received much attention yet. The Martians initially stayed very close to their landing sites. Buses were operating as usual across the Golden Gate Bridge, the ferry from San Francisco to Sausalito and Larkspur kept dropping batches of revelers on the docks of those towns, and Highway 101 was crammed with thousands of folks heading back home from their weekend gatherings somewhere else.
Gradually, though, the news began filtering out of Novato. Even though the fires were largely under control, the clouds of ash were still very noticeable that afternoon. Folks on the Tiburon Ferry could look northwest across the Bay as the light began to fail and spot several thick plumes of brown smoke.
Half a dozen homes had burned on the western edge of Novato. Communications had been seriously disrupted after the incident at the pit, and it took some time for the police to regroup. The Chief was missing and couldn’t be raised by pager or cell phone. All this activity kept the inhabitants of the west side of town awake through much of the night.
After the Chief had been killed, local firemen and police were ordered to avoid the pit entirely. Radiation, it was said, had spread from the wreckage of an experimental aircraft that had gone down in the hills. Dozens, even hundreds of people had died from exposure to the stuff, and until the appropriate hazmat teams could be mustered, all official personnel would maintain a respectful distance and establish a perimeter around the affected area. This had supposedly been ordered by the Mayor in consultation with the Board of Supervisors of Marin County. In fact, no one actually knew what was happening. As a precaution, Lieutenant Governor Willa Lambert
ordered the National Guard out to restore order, since Governor Jay Banisoff was visiting relatives in West Virginia.
The first troops arrived early the next day, on the feast of St. Stephen the First Martyr in the Catholic Church.
The crowds surrounding the pit had dispersed by then. There was nothing to be seen except the mound of sand covering the craft. Meanwhile, more officers, including a few state police, were busily scurrying about, setting up new barriers. One or two unlucky souls had snuck near the ship during the night, but they never returned and their bodies were never found. We didn’t learn why until much later.
Except for that, the fields were silent and desolate at first light. A few charred, “irradiated” bodies and pieces of bodies lay prostrate in front of the mound. A faint pounding noise emanated now and again from the direction of the pit, but the sound could only be heard by the nearby security personnel who were manning the roped-off perimeter fence.
At home, though, things seemed pretty normal, at least until Becky and I had our little discussion just after dawn.
“I’m leaving, Alex,” she said. “I’m taking the car, with or without you, and I’m going to stay with Aunt Anita. I already called her.”
“Not the bird lady! Jeez, Becky, she talks to her tweeties all the time! She’s crazy—I’d say as a loon, but you know what I mean. And that laugh of hers, it’s like a hyena’s. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I’m not kidding. It’s too dangerous to stay here any longer, and I’m going. I hope you’ll come with me, but if you don’t….”
“But we….”
“I’ve seen enough, Alex. I saw what they were like. They almost killed you. You’re just fooling yourself if you think those, those…things are going to stop coming. They’re evil. They’ll kill us all if they can.”
“Look, I’ve got to see this out, Becky, I’ve just got to,” I said. “Tell you what, though, I’ll drive you there myself this afternoon—that way I’ll have the car—and I’ll join you again in a day or two, when everything is over. I’ll be fine here for a few days. Nothing’s going to happen. Now that they have the army coming, that’ll be the end of it. You’ll see.”
Invasion! Earth vs. The Aliens Page 4