to walk west along Novato Boulevard (it’d been closed to through traffic during the night), just to see what had burned. Clouds of gray-brown smoke indicated several active fire zones, and the police directed the people away from these areas. But the excitement of a disaster and the clear weather still brought the crowds out to watch, despite the holiday.
Few folks in Novato knew anything at all about the Martian ship. The stories in our newspaper were mostly dismissed as a hoax; and nothing further had happened in any case, save for the fires, which were thought to be the work of arsonists. Those missing had been reported to the local police, but they too were believed victims of the smoke and flames of the previous evening. As the authorities began recovering the bodies, all of which showed evidence of charring, the remains seemed to confirm these theories.
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
