Invasion! Earth vs. The Aliens

by Robert Reginald

  I was determined to reach Sausalito, though, and so an hour or two later I set out again by myself. I crept around some shrubs and stepped into a passageway beside a big house, emerging into the open on the road towards the Bay. The minister—I just couldn’t shake the bloody woman no matter what I did—suddenly came scurrying after me. I tried to outrun her.

  That was the stupidest damned thing that I ever did in my life. I should have known that the aliens were still there. Lesley had just caught up with me when we saw the fighting-machine we’d seen before, striding over a field not far from Tamalpais Valley. Four or five little black figures scurried before it like mice, and it soon became evident that the machine was actually herding them. In three strides it was among the fugitives, but instead of using its sting-ray to blast them out of existence, it systematically picked them up one by one, tossing them into the great metal carrier on its back, like some vineyard worker harvesting clusters of grapes.

  It was then, for the very first time, that I realized that the Martians might have some purpose in mind for us other than death. The two of us just stood there in the open, utterly appalled at the sight, and then turned and fled through the gate behind us into a walled garden, falling into, rather than deliberately finding, a ditch. We lay there, scarcely daring to whisper to each other, until the sun went down.

  Lesley just whimpered constantly, like a puppy crying for its dam.

  There were worse things than being alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BLOW THE MAN DOWN!

  Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down!

  To me way-aye, blow the man down.

  Oh, blow the man down, bullies, blow him right down!

  Give me some time to blow the man down!

  —Anonymous shanty

  Alex Smith, 29 December, Mars Year i

  Marin County, California, Planet Earth

  I suppose it was around four before we found enough courage to start again, sneaking out among the bushes and over the lawn, watching the near-darkness for any sign of the enemy. We saw evidence of the aliens all around us. In one place we blundered upon a scorched and blackened area, now ashen, littered with a number of dead bodies. They’d been horribly burned about their heads and trunks, but their legs and shoes remained mostly intact.

  Leland Heights had escaped destruction, but the place seemed silent and deserted. At first we saw no one there, living or dead, although it was really too dark for us to probe the side streets. Then my companion suddenly began complaining out loud of her hunger and thirst (for one so slim, she protested overmuch, I think). I suggested that we break into one of the houses. This time Lesley failed to protest our “transgression of God’s immutable laws.”

  The first place we tried was a small cottage. I found nothing there but moldy cheese and bread, but plenty of good water to drink; someone had already stripped the place of canned goods. I located a small hand ax out in the tool shed in the back yard.

  But the noise we’d generated had attracted the attention of a third party.

  As we started to cross the road again, we were suddenly confronted by the indistinct shadows of eight or ten men.

  “Freeze!” came the command—and we did!

  Lesley started to protest, and was told to shut up. She did.

  They took us to a large house several streets away, and led us into a lighted room inside. The doors and windows had all been carefully shrouded to prevent any of the candles from being detected by the aliens.

  For the first time we could see who’d captured us—and they could do the same. Most of the men (and one woman) wore soiled uniforms of one sort or another, and all carried weapons.

  “Identify yourselves!” their leader said.

  I gave them an abbreviated version of our story.

  “I’m Captain Stromwick,” the commander said. “We’re the Army in this area.”

  “Which unit?” I asked.

  “Various units,” the officer said. “We’re all survivors of engagements with the enemy. We’re the leftovers, you might say. And you’ve just been drafted, folks.”

  “I don’t have any military training,” I said. “I’m a college professor.”

  “And I’m a minister,” Lesley said.

  “You’re now both Privates in the United States Army,” Stromwick said. “For the duration, you might say. You’ll report to Sergeant Mayer.”

  It was the Guardsman whom I’d first encountered near Novato! Somehow he’d survived.

  “Smith,” he said, “is it really you!” He emerged from the shadow of a doorway.

  We embraced briefly. It’d had only been a few days, but it seemed like a lifetime.

  “How’d you escape?” we both asked simultaneously.

  “I just ducked and ran,” Mayer finally said. “I ran and ran until I could run no more, and then I hid in a shed until they went away.”

  I told him a bit more of my story, and how I’d encountered Lesley.

  “A woman, huh?” he said.

  “Sort of,” was the only response I could make.

  “I’m the representative on Earth of God’s holy word,” the minister said.

  “Sure you are,” I said, “and I’m the Ayatollah Khomeini.”

  “Blasphemer!”

  “Enough!” the officer said. “You’re all members of Uncle Sam’s Club now. And we’re still fighting this war.”

  “How!?” I just couldn’t help my remark. “How, sir? I’ve seen the enemy machines. They’ve smashed any opposition they’ve encountered. They’re harvesting our people now, for what purpose I haven’t the faintest idea. They don’t make the same mistake twice, Captain. What do you think you can do that men in tanks couldn’t do?”

  “Quit feeling sorry for myself, for one thing,” he said. Then he motioned with his hands. “Come on, gather ’round, all of you.

  “Look, men, these machines are operated by living creatures. I’ve seen them close up. I headed a team that examined a downed strider. The way it fell, its carapace had cracked open on impact, apparently after hitting a concrete wall. The cab was filled with a foul-smelling fluid. The creature inside looked like a cross between an octopus and a slug. It was breathing—barely—when we found it, but died shortly thereafter. God, what a stench!

  “We’ve been using the wrong tactics. The control modules in the machines are faced with a kind of glass—stronger than any earthly equivalent that I’ve seen—but breakable nonetheless. An RPG, or even an ordinary grenade, is powerful enough to penetrate the stuff. I know this because I tried several tests with the remnants we had. The problem is getting the explosives to the right place at the right time. We never had a chance to use our knowledge before the final attack up north wiped out our command-and-control center.

  “However, I see several possibilities. If we could topple one of the striders, we could use our grenades to penetrate the cab. Or we could find a location where we’d have a clear shot at the thing with our RPGs, giving us some real chance of hitting the thing’s porthole.”

  “But the machines usually travel in groups of three,” I said. “How do you separate one from the others? Without that separation, sir, it wouldn’t matter if we brought down a strider—the others would quickly rally to the aid of its comrade.”

  “We’ll have to use a decoy,” he said, nodding his head. “One of us will have to create a diversion.”

  We all looked at each other. Everyone there knew exactly what that meant.

  Just then one of the other companies of this makeshift command returned.

  “Report!” Stromwick ordered.

  “They’ve cleared out for now, sir, at least on the north side of town,” the noncom said. “We left a sentry there as ordered.”

  “Very well,” the captain said. “Fix yourself a cold meal, and be quick and quiet about it. Then get some sleep.” He looked at our not-so-eager faces. “Mayer!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Take two men and relieve
the guards outside. When the south patrol returns, I want to see Sergeant Raymar right away.”

  “Yes, sir.” He left immediately.

  “The rest of you are dismissed, except for Smith.”

  Then the officer turned to me: “How well do you know this area?”

  “I’ve driven the freeway many times, and I’ve taken a few jaunts through the countryside over the years. But, to answer your question: not very well, actually.”

  “You’ve had no military service?”

  “None at all, sir.”

  “Good,” the officer said. “Then you’ll create our diversion for us.”

  “Me?” I was aghast. “But….”

  “You’re not much good for anything else. Neither is Lesley. And I don’t have time to train you. So you’re going to have to help us in other ways. I can set the trap. Somebody has to bait it if we’re going to pull this off. Like I said, Smith, a diversion.”

  “But I could get killed!”

  “Yes, you could. So could we all. So what? We’re all expendable.”

  I could see that I wasn’t going to get along very well with Captain Stromwick, but I held my tongue. Arguing with him wouldn’t help my situation if I wanted to survive.

  “Get some rest,” the officer finally said. “We need to reconnoiter in the morning.”

  Lesley was in the kitchen of the house, complaining again about the cold and the bad food. Gad, I was tired of her unrelenting whining.

  “Shut up!” I said, pawing through the cache of canned goods.

  I found a container of chicken noodle soup that tasted good even unheated. I washed it down with some tepid diet cola—like drinking battery acid. Then I grabbed a sleeping bag in one of the other rooms, and curled up in a corner.

  I was shaken awake shortly after dawn. I went outside to take a crap and then ate again. The endless cycle, endlessly repeated—eat and shit, shit and eat. Seemed kind of futile when you thought about it much.

  About an hour later the Captain ordered a dozen of us to form up, and slowly led the way under a hazy sun. It was looking to rain, I thought, noting the dark clouds forming to the west.

  “Pay attention, Smith!” Stromwick hissed.

  We kept our eyes open after that for any of the Martian machines, but saw nothing. They appeared to have left the area completely.

  “What if they’re gone?” I asked.

  “They’ll be back,” the Captain said. He pointed to the freeway, less than a mile distant. “They follow the main roads, just like we do.”

  By this time we’d crept right to the edge of the village, and were facing a series of rolling hills and a few open fields, intermingled with houses and businesses.

  “Be careful, men,” Stromwick said.

  He led the way again through a weed patch that was sprouting new growth from the recent winter mist. Some of it, I noted, sported a distinctly reddish hue—I didn’t recognize the plants that were growing. They seemed, well, odd somehow, like they didn’t belong here. I wondered if they were inadvertent imports from the marine traffic that frequented the Bay.

  But I had no time to think about such things, when the officer suddenly hissed, “Cover!”

  We all hit the dirt right away—even Lesley. Now I could hear it—the thump, thump, thump of a Martian strider coming towards us from a great distance to the north. Soon there was another, and then another, all following in order, one down the middle of the freeway, crushing the cars that littered the road, and the other two flanking it about a quarter mile to either side. Suddenly I was very much afraid that we’d be spotted in our weedy environment, and I wanted to run—oh, so very fast—as far away as possible. Ironically, though, I was too scared to move.

  Thump, thump, thump.

  The ground itself was shaking with the weight of the things. I was surprised, really, that they seemed to maintain such a stable attitude with all that mass perched on high.

  Thump, thump, thump!

  Closer and closer they came. They had reached almost to our position when I dared a slight glance upwards. I could see what Captain Stromwick meant: each strider was topped with a swivel-head similar to that of a praying mantis. There was a clear panel evident right in the front of the cab, where the controller could see what was happening in front of it. It would have to turn its entire head, however, to get a feeling for the surrounding environment. This seemed to me a basic design flaw, but perhaps it was intended to keep the vulnerable part of the machine as small as possible. Surely there must have been other sensors available within the compartment, perhaps the Martian equivalent to our radar.

  But they didn’t spot us, and they continued on their trek to the Babylon by the Bay to the south, leaving us in temporary peace.

  I saw then how it could be done! Diversion, hell!

  * * * *

  I sketched the thing on the back side of a mortgage bill.

  “Look, sir,” I said, showing the Captain, “there’s a bridge about a mile up the freeway that crosses a four-lane road plus a railroad track.”

  “Yeah, I ’member that,” Mayer said.

  “The aliens think in just one dimension.”

  “What do you mean?” Stromwick asked.

  “Well, if something works for them, however poorly, they don’t try anything else unless they’re forced to. Look at their response to the clashes we’ve had with them. We destroy one of their machines, and they alter their plans accordingly. The same thing never works as well a second time: they adjust their tactics, and they seem to communicate with all of their forces simultaneously.

  “But…if we can somehow keep moving faster than they can, we might be able to destroy some of their assets before they can react.

  “Now, they’re using the freeway much like we did: as a main transportation route to and from their initial pit sites down to San Francisco, where they must be building their central base. With their mass and height, the machines have flattened much of the roadway back down to its original surface, creating a relatively unencumbered passageway.

  “This bridge I mentioned is the longest freestanding span on Highway 101 for about five miles. If we could somehow collapse the damned thing while one of the striders is crossing it, its two companions would immediate come to its aid, and be vulnerable to attack while bending down to help their stricken friend. We might get three for one.”

  I held up the sheet for everyone to see my drawing.

  “That might work,” the officer said, nodding his head. “How much ordnance have we got?” he asked Mayer.

  “Some plastic explosives, sir,” the noncom said, “some shells left over from that last artillery piece that was destroyed, a couple of tank shells and rockets, and quite a few grenades and RPGs.”

  “We’ll save the latter for the follow-up attack,” Stromwick said. “Can we blow the bridge?”

  “Maybe, sir. I’ll have to see what I can put together.”

  “Report back to me after you’ve taken an inventory. Meanwhile, the rest of you get some R&R. Maltz, you take your men out on the first patrol.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Smith!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  * * * *

  Later that afternoon we headed to the rendezvous point out near 101, each of us organized in groups of five or six. Even the explosives were distributed in different packs. We reached the bridge well before dark, and Maltz and Glasgow, our most experienced demolition men, began putting together the bombs. I don’t pretend to know what they did. They kept us civvies pretty well back from the action. I think they were afraid that people like Lesley and I might accidentally trip something—or screw it up, more to the point.

  Finally, everything was ready as the sun was starting to set. We found cover on either side of the overpass amid the wreckage. And still we saw no aliens. Had we missed the main event? Were the machines already gathered together in the Baghdad by the Bay? />
  We had to have light to conduct the attack, so Stromwick pulled us out before darkness descended. We spent the night huddled in a nearby business office. Outside a light rain began to fall, drip, drip, dripping on the asphalt parking lot. At least we were dry and relatively warm inside.

  We heard two sets of fighting-machines rumble down the freeway in the middle of the night, but we could do nothing to stop them. We got what sleep we could, and just waited for dawn.

  The next morning—it was the last day of the year, I think (I was starting to lose track of time)—we were roused before first light, and given our rations by the noncoms during roll call.

  “Bethancourt!” Mayer hissed, but Bethancourt didn’t respond. He must have snuck away during the night.

  “Shit!” somebody said.

  I wasn’t sure if he was the smart one or not. There were still too many hazards present to be wandering around by yourself out in the dark.

  Then we formed up into four different companies, each man with his own duties. I was given a pistol and some ammo, which is all I knew how to use.

  They placed me and Lesley in a bunker off to one side of the overpass. The minister was rattling off prayers under her breath, and was quite literally shaking with fear.

  Then we waited again, for at least two hours. I was almost to the point where I had to pee when I heard the familiar distant thumping of the Martian feet.

  No one had to tell us to get ready. We all knew what we had to do.

  Maltz blew the bridge when the central alien strider was halfway across. Everything worked to perfection. The machine fell fifty feet into the hole, its legs being severely mangled by the explosion and chunks of flying concrete. What we hadn’t anticipated was the collateral effect of the blast on its two companions, which were blown right over on their sides. Before they could recover, we’d lobbed several grenades at their cabs and blasted their coverings, killing the drivers inside almost instantaneously.

  We were standing around the destroyed fighters, screaming our bloody heads off in insane triumph and even shooting our guns into the sky, when we heard the wailing sound off in the distance.

  “Ooh-lah!” it shrieked, much like a bunch of cats howling in the middle of the night, only worse, far worse.