The Artilleryman

I made a bee-line for my house, glancing around at all angles, certain I would be struck down at any moment, as if the sword of Damocles itself hovered just over my head. Mrs. Barstley stood in her front garden. She may have said something to me, but in my state of shock at seeing those people reduced to ash, I did not so much as acknowledge her presence, wild-eyed and scrambling for the relative safety of my home, as if a layer of brick and paste would do anything to stop the heat ray should its eye find me. I composed a cold meat sandwich for myself from the cold box. I may have slathered it with peanut butter without realizing I was doing so, as I certainly had peanut on my breath later, however, I ate so perfunctorily that I did not so much as taste any of it, made a cup of tea (of which I drank none of, for I found it with the tea still steeping in it when I woke), and collapsed into my favorite chair, holding the newspaper up before my face. It may as well have been blank pages for all the words that actually registered. Eventually, I clipped out entirely, my subconscious dropping so deeply, out of mental fatigue, that I lost time, though roused enough for waking nightmares and a sense of general unease.

The rustling of shrubbery in the garden and a shadow passing across the window jolted me fully awake at once. I was on my feet when the intruder tried the door and found it open—I hadn't thought to lock it, in my state.

"Is anyone here?" he called meekly into the gloom that shrouded my unlit home. He sounded out of breath, hunched out of apprehension and as desperate to get off the common as I myself had been, with blood and dirt streaked over his freckled beak, so I could naught but have sympathy for him. I hardly noticed at the time that he was another turtle, but it did not escape me that he wore the orange-sashed uniform of an artilleryman.

"Come in," I called back lowly, guiding him to the breakfast table. "What's happened?"

"What hasn't?" he replied, nearly too shaken from his own experience to put words together.

"Are you looking for a place to hide?" I supplied.

"That's it."

I went to the cupboard, and took out a decanter of whisky. I don't drink, myself, but keep it on hand to offer company. Given the circumstances, though, after I poured a glass for him, I had a shot for myself. "Here, drink this," I said. At that moment, we both needed a measure of something to forcibly settle our jangled nerves.

"Thank you," he said, downing it as I sought around, making sure all of the curtains on the lower level were drawn tight. We lit no lamp nor candle, fearful that the Martians would see and take aim. I caught a glimpse of the common as I looked out—a bright circle of light swept across the pit once, and then again, scanning back and forth for signs of human life to obliterate with the heat ray. I shuddered, tugging the material as tightly together as it would go. Then I joined him at the table, where I found him with his face buried in his arms and sobbing. He seemed so abjectly miserable, I could only offer some small measure of comfort, laying a hand on his carapace. "It will be all right," I said, though I believed quite the contrary. "My name's Leonardo, by the way. And yours is?" I asked, giving him a momentary distraction.

He looked up, sniffled, wiped his dripping beak with one hand, then offered the other to shake. "Michelangelo."

"Tell me what's happened," I insisted.

He sat up and shook his head, looking like he was going through a similar kind of shock as I had. "They wiped us out… Hundreds, maybe thousands!"

"The heat ray?"

"The Martians!" he explained. "They were inside the hoods of machines they'd made; massive metal things on legs… giant machines that walked! They attacked us… they wiped us out."

He had been with the mounted artillery division, he told me. He'd just arrived when his horse, whom he'd fondly named Lord Trottington Pranceyhooves, Esquire, trod directly into a deep rabbit hole, pitching its rider into the sand as it fell. Seconds later, the artillery shells—every last one of them—exploded, as a vast wave of heat seared over the area. When he looked up from his fall, his entire company had been burned to nothing. That's when he saw the first of the fighting machines, rising up and up until it was taller than the steeple of the local mosque. He watched as the hood of the machine turned, its attached funnel brought to bear. There was a shout, another explosion, then, only the sounds of the machine as it moved.

Terrified near witless, Michelangelo had lain beneath the smoldering remains of poor Lord Trottington, Esquire, until past dusk, when he saw the searchlight whisking back and forth, and when it was at the opposite end of the common, he managed to crawl away and into a ditch where he was shielded from the Martians' sight. Moving from ditch to ditch, he managed to make his way from Horsell to Maybury, stopping only to slake his thirst from a busted water main, which water poured forth from like a fresh spring. Exhausted and overwhelmed, he collapsed for a time against the berm, intending to nap there for while… But then the shadow of the tripod passed over him, and he knew he needed to get somewhere inside.

"Machines?" I said. Aside of the heat ray itself, I hadn't seen any machines. But some part of my subconscious recalled the repeated sound of hammering from the landing site, where, unknown to my exhausted mind and body, the Martians kept working, sleepless and indefatigable.

"Fighting machines, picking up people and bashing them against trees! Just hunks of metal! But they knew exactly what they were doing," he mourned, helpless to have done anything against such a threat. I could hardly blame him.

Standing fifty feet tall or more, and letting out a noise that sounded like, "Kraang!" as it went, horrible, long metal tentacles swung in the air from it. He described one reaching down and snaring a woman as it went, slamming her against an oak, killing her instantly.

I blinked at his tale. "Is there nothing to be done about them?"

"Maybe with larger numbers, more prepared… ways we could take them by surprise…" He shook his head. "Otherwise, we're done for…"

I was caught up in my own thoughts when he mentioned, "There was another one of those green cylinders that touched down in London last night," and a wave of dread swept over me.

I realized I had not checked for a response at the telegraph station, nor had I been alert had anyone tried to bring it to me. Had my father received the one I had sent? Perhaps I should send another, a more urgent warning for them to leave London at once. I relayed my intentions to the young soldier, that I must leave at the first crack of dawn to attempt again to contact my loved ones.

He shook his head. "That's no good… the lines are down. Those tripods ripped right through them, like they were bits of thread! Ker-snap!"

I gaped at him for a moment. "Then, I must go to London at once," I said, shouldering on my topcoat and donning my hat.

"And me," he said. "I've got to report to headquarters, if there's anything left of it."

I sliced up the rest of the bread and carved up the remains of a leg of mutton from the cold box, making sandwiches for the both of us to take with us, and packed a few necessities in a case, while Michelangelo made use of my bed for the last hour or so before dawn crept up the horizon.

As we got out the door, I stopped my companion. "Go on ahead, I'll catch you up."

I hurried up the path to Mrs. Barstley's door, knocking once, then again, more insistently when there was no immediate answer. But that was to be expected, as early as it was. Eventually, I did hear her words of, "I'm coming, I'm coming, lov…" She appeared at the door in a wrap, yawning. "Mister 'amato! What in blazes—"

"You need to leave!" I said abruptly, skipping the niceties. "As soon as you can. It's not safe here any longer."

"What?" the middle-aged woman huffed. "Why? Where am I to go?"

"Anywhere other than here," I said, and Michelangelo, having not gone further than the end of Mrs. Barstley's walk, called, "Not to London!"

"Somewhere far from here… Spain, America… Timbuktu! Somewhere remote where the Martians aren't!"

"Martians…" she scoffed, apparently having neither seen nor heard—or didn't believe, rather—about the impending danger. "I've heard quite enough about Martians, thenks… No, I'll be staying right here."

I tried once more to convince her of the danger, but she would not be budged.

"Dangerous or not, I can't just pick up and go, like you spry youngsters. No, I'll stay here, dig in. I'll be 'ere when you get beck."

In the end, I relented, more concerned about my own troubles; I did not have the time to debate her out of her home. "Stay inside, close the windows, and draw the curtains. Don't let them catch sight of you, or let them know that you're here, or they may attack."

"All right, Leonardo, all right…" she agreed vaguely. "D'you want me to water your plants for you while you're away, then?"

I blinked at her, stunned that everything I had tried to convey seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other, and I wondered if she was suffering a similar kind of shock as myself and Michelangelo had, with her mind diving for refuge in absolute and total denial. "No! Look, just… Stay in, lock the doors, keep out of sight, and you should stay safe."

She smiled, the apples of her cheeks quite rosy—as though she had also recently required some form of liquid sedation—reached out, and patted my cheek fondly. Then she stepped back inside and closed the door.

I could only shake my head as I joined Michelangelo at the road.

"She hasn't seen the kinds of things we've seen," he winced sympathetically. "If we was her, and us trying to make us leave our home, we wouldn't want to believe us either." The words came out as utter nonsense, but as they sank in a bit more, they began to make sense.

I kept looking back, to see if, by any scant possibility, she had changed her mind and decided to follow us. She hadn't, for which I was both grateful and remorseful, for I feared I was leaving her to certain doom while there was something I could do to prevent it.

My companion seemed to pick up on this from me, and added, "There's only so much you can help people if they don't want to be helped. Let's worry more about the ones we can, 'ey?"

I accepted this, and nodded, my determination to make sure Splinter and Karai made it to safety renewed, and I pushed myself forward. "Let's pick up our pace a bit, shall we?"