The Fighting Machines
We stepped hurriedly toward Byfleet, hoping to encounter… I wasn't quite certain. Help, of some sort, or safe refuge, before I had to press on to London. Michelangelo seemed to deal with the silence by filling it with upbeat, gregarious chatter, which he seemed to have quite a knack for. I had to admit, the normalcy of it lifted my spirits, at least enough to follow his prattle, rather than becoming mired on my own concerns and hopelessness over the situation. He listed, quite completely, each and every person in his division by name, rank, birthdate, and favorite type of dessert, for he seemed to have an immense capacity of memory for these smaller social details, even as he overlooked some of the larger ones, such as names of the places he'd been previously assigned to—or, at least, the correct ones. Some were close enough for me to guess at. He tended, rather, to remember the emotions and sensations of these places in vivid detail.
When I managed to get a word in, I asked if he'd happened to have encountered Donatello Ogilvy, whom, I explained, had stayed behind to advise the army when it arrived. He asked for a detailed description of the turtle in question, but sadly, none of it seemed to ring any bells for him. His expression saddened a little. "No," he said with a sigh. "But there's many divisions—or, there were… Perhaps some of them got out. And if he's as clever as you say, he probably came up with something, didn't he?"
I had to grant him that. If anyone could out-think this Martian menace, it was he. I did hope that was the case. I shuddered to think of my clever, learned friend burning to ash the same as any number of lesser minds around him.
We came upon an inn, but it was abandoned. As we took account of the inside, Michelangelo found his way to the kitchens, scavenging about for any sort of foods we could take with us. But it seemed that the innkeeper or any passers-by with the same idea had already picked the place clean. So we left it as we had found it, closing the door behind us.
The abandonment felt odd to us both, for the entire village was as empty as the inn, though it seemed to affect him more. With Byfleet already evacuated, presumably, the stillness and lack of everyday activity hung upon the young man like a shroud. I, too, felt the unnaturalness of it, for the birds and animals, in following their instincts, had also fled the area ahead of the imminent threat. Items in the roads indicated that people had been there, en masse; things that had been dropped or abandoned lay strewn about: a shawl, a silver spoon, a cart, lying askew on one busted wheel, the remaining one turning vaguely with the wind. But Michelangelo, so used to being happily in the center of a crowd, having so many others to greet and chat with, and having lost so many of his troop, was clearly feeling out of his element.
He looked around mournfully at the empty town. "Is everybody dead?"
I grabbed his shoulder to turn him toward what I had spotted. "Not everybody. Look!"
Across the river Wey from us stood six gunners, with cannons at the ready. Michelangelo snorted, the most cynical I'd heard him. "Bows and arrows against the lightning. They haven't seen the heat ray yet!"
We hurried along the road to Weybridge. Suddenly, a heavy explosion knocked us off our feet as the ground heaved, and every window in the street shattered. Plumes of smoke joined the dust that had been thrown into the air from the ground's shuddering.
"Look! Here they are! What did I tell you!" Michelangelo exclaimed, pointing upward at what should have been a patch of empty sky, terror in his eyes as the first of the fighting machines emerged. A monstrous tripod, striding over the crest of a hill and towering high above the tops of the trees and buildings, higher even than the tallest steeple. It was quickly joined by three more, smashing though the pines as if they were nothing but high grass, huge machines of glittering metal, each mounted with an inverted funnel, and I realized with horror that I had seen this awful thing before.
A fifth machine rose up over the hill, brandishing its funnel, and the heat ray struck the town, setting everything alight. We dashed for cover, each of us diving a different direction. As the beam blasted the town, all five machines exulted with the horrible, ringing cry of, "KRAANG! KRAANG! KRAANG!", echoing roars like thunder. This was not merely triumph; it was clear that they were reveling in their own cruelty and destructive capabilities.
The six guns we had seen now fired simultaneously, managing to decapitate one of the fighting machines. The Martian inside was slain, splashed to the four winds, and its body, now nothing more than an intricate device of metal, went whirling to destruction. As the other monsters advanced, people ran blindly, their refuges and hiding spots no longer tenable, Michelangelo the artilleryman among them. I was certain the heat ray would follow, picking them off like ants as they fled their disturbed mound. My eyes instead found the river's edge, and I dove in, hitting the pebbly bottom much sooner than I would have liked, and struggled, flailing, to the deeper water, using my inborn lung capacity to remain submerged for as long as I could, until I was finally forced up to take another breath and repeat the process.
Now the guns spoke again, but this time, the heat ray sent them to oblivion, the gunners quite gone, the molten metal of the cannons dribbling down the bank into the Wey. With a white flash, the ray swept across the river. Scalded, nearly boiled into turtle soup in my own shell and blinded with agony, I staggered though leaping, hissing waters back toward the shore, where I fell, helplessly, in full sight of the Martians save for the cloud of steam sent up by the heat ray. I expected nothing but death. The foot of a fighting machine crashed down inches from my head, then lifted again as it and the other four tripods, hardly concerned with the likes of one turtle, gathered up the pieces of their fallen comrade to take back to the pit at Horsell. And I realized that by a miracle, I had escaped!