The Soldiers' Refuge

Don finished bandaging the young soldier who had taken the shrapnel to the leg, instructing him and his compatriots on how to care for the wound so it wouldn't infect, while Casey Jones kept an eye out for any sign of the Martians coming after them. So far, all was quiet.

"Where will you be going from here?" the scientist asked.

Jones rolled a shoulder. "Oy s'pase we 'ead beck to'ad London, meet ap with the commenders there, git some 'elp fer Irvoine. Ken't foight these Maa'shins with wot we still got, thet's foh sure…"

"Not sure we c'n fight 'em much at all," another of the group, Yates, voiced. A couple of the others nodded that they thought similarly.

"Wot 'bout you, Mister Scoience? Want tae cam 'long?" Casey invited, a grudging sign of respect for the turtle who had saved them.

Donatello thought for a moment. "I may as well. I've been of no use here… Perhaps my knowledge of the Martians and their devices will be more appreciated with your higher-ups. But you should all head up to my home with me first, so I can provision you. We can set out in the morning, after a night's rest. It's not far."

"Mighty kind of ye, sor," said Irvine, still being crutched along by his two fellows. Indeed, none of the soldiers seemed keen on getting back to soldiering, and a meal and sleep after their ordeal and a chance to get the sand out of their clothes appealed to them across the board.

The seven of them had made it to the halfway mark, mostly uphill from the common, when a great tremor shook the ground, knocking one or both feet out from under all of them.

"What was that?!"

"Is it an earthquake?"

A sinking feeling overcame Donatello. His olive-green face paled. "No… that was no earthquake… An earthquake's movement would have been more—"

The tremor came again, this time closer, harder.

"Maybe one of the other batteries survived and they're firing again…"

"Wouldn't we 'a heard th' guns?"

Still looking back toward the common, Jones' jaw dropped. Not a sound issued from his open mouth, but he grabbed hold of Donatello's shell and turned him, pointing at the sleek metal hood as it rose and rose above them. Don dragged him back to the others and quickly hissed at them to get behind the scrub as best as they could. Moments later, the third foot of the first tripod to emerge from the pit came down on the spot where Casey had been keeping watch, and strode forward with a triumphant "KRAANG!"

"Is… is that a Martian?!" whispered Yates, awed at the hundred-foot metal structure as it whipped a metal tentacle through a nearby house, for no apparent purpose than its own amusement. Another of the men began sobbing. As Don glanced over them, he realized that none of them could have been more than twenty. They'd sent green recruits to the Horsell cordon! Well, when they reached the boys' headquarters in London, Donatello was certainly going to be giving their generals a piece of his mind!

In the meantime, once the Martian had disappeared over the horizon, for with its giant stride, it proceeded quite quickly away from them, Donatello led the cluster of recruits to his house near Ottershaw. He happily allowed them to clean out his pantry, taking anything they might need or could use, though Casey made sure when things were divvied up that Donatello also received a share back, to take with him. When night fell, he allowed the boys to use the telescope, where they were able to track the motion of the green mist of another cylinder as it sped toward the Earth, after which Casey snapped at them all to get back in the house and go to sleep; he reminded them sharply that they were to leave at first light, and this was no slumber party! Despite that, Donatello distributed all the bedding he could find to them, as they spread out on the divans, easy chairs, and floor in the parlor, with the turtle moving stacks of books and notes out of the way and begging everyone's pardon for the dire state of the visiting room.

"They listen to you… I must say, I'm impressed," Don spoke quietly with Casey as they oversaw the rest of the troop bedding down.

Jones shrugged nonchalantly. "They needs a laedah. 't may 's well be Casey Jones. Foh the toime bein', ennyhow. Somebady's gotta do it." Then he seized Don by the rim of his carapace, spun him face-about, and gave him a shove toward the stairs. "That gaes feh you too, civvy! If yeh ganna maach with us, ye'd best get some z's in ye 'fore mornin'!"

"Yes, mother," he conceded, though not without a little barb, as he climbed the steps to his own bedroom. In truth, he would have gladly given just a quick look at the journal he was putting together for publishing regarding the furthering development of mold-based medicines, but given the Martians' new movements, it was best that no lanterns were lit in the house, lest they alert the aliens to their presence. He had no choice but to sleep, though his mind's continued workings did not allow him to nod off for quite some while.

Thus when Casey shook him awake a mere couple of hours later, he remained quite drowsy, cranky, and functionally less than optimal, even after downing the cup of tea that was placed into his hands. He hastily crammed some clothing and a few essentials into a travel case, but in his haze, he wasn't certain of what he had deemed essential, and what actual essentials he was leaving behind.

One of the boys saw him with the small handbag and snatched a neighbor's clothesline, looping it through the handle and around the case, knotting it such that Donatello could pull it on over his shoulders like a pack, and have it rest comfortably against his shell, which he found quite clever of the young man.

They marched on a northeast heading at as brisk a pace as wounded Irvine could stand, that Don was not used to maintaining for so long, much of his focus being intellectual rather than athletic. He was glad for the bit of training his friend Leonardo had insisted upon him doing, or he doubted he would have been able to keep up at all. Casey noticed the turtle panting along at the end of the file and slowed the pace a bit more to accommodate the civilian. Eventually they came to the train tracks, and followed them toward the station… until they reached the train.

All seven simply stared in shock at it for a long while, jaws hanging. The boy who had started sobbing the previous day did so again at the sight, not ready for the sight of more destruction. The engine had jumped track and was partly dug into the earth beside the trackway. Hunks of coal lay strewn about on the ground, the majority of the coal carriage's contents burning away in the remains of the upended car, sending up a great cloud of black soot. Several freight cars as well as two passenger cars had followed the engine off the track to the ground, lying shattered, twisted and bent out of shape. All of these, as well as the passenger carriages remaining on the track were on fire, and as the light wind shifted toward the group, it brought with it the scent of burnt flesh, of passengers who had been killed on impact or caught in the blaze, rather than stricken with the heat ray. It got to a point where they had to back away from the ruin, pressing ahead on quickly to escape the stench, for there was nothing about it they could do.

The group stopped twice for long rests during the day, and had some enforced down-time as another of the Martian tripods passed near their location. When it became too dark to see what they were walking into, they sheltered for the night in a barn. A couple of the boys had grabbed a lamb, with intent of making it into dinner for them all, but Casey shouted at them sharply to drop it.

"We daesn't tike wot's not ouhs! 'speshally iff'n it's sambahdy's loivleyhood! So'jers staahts thet, ain't nobady wull trust ahs!"

The young soldiers begrudgingly let go of their mutton dinner, grumbling as they dug into the bread and cheese and a can of beans they had brought from Donatello's house, and one of the others thought to raid the henhouse, scoring a few eggs for them to add to their meal, which their new leader did not object to.

The group made their beds by throwing their bedrolls across the piles of straw, and a couple of them climbed up to the hayloft to sleep directly in the sweet-smelling hay.

Donatello lay back with his shell in the straw and covered himself up with a blanket he was sure he hasn't packed himself… one of the young soldiers must have grabbed and packed it for him, knowing he would need it. He was settling in to sleep when there was a muffled thump in the straw pile beside him, and he glanced over to see Casey Jones beside him, with his hands stretched behind his head.

"So, yeh s'pased tae be smaat, yeah?"

Don sighed. "At the age of twenty, I have achieved two Master's degrees, and a further two Bachelauriates'. By next year, I should be able to achieve my first Doctorate's. I'm fluent in seven languages, and am well-versed in nearly every branch of scientific study imaginable."

"Roight, so yer smaat on paper," Jones summed up. Don couldn't see it, but could hear the smirk in his voice. He sighed in irritation.

"Is there a purpose to this line of inquiry?"

" 'Course! Ye din't let me git tae me nixt question! So if yer so smaat, what do we do?"

Don blinked. "About what?"

Casey sounded aggravated himself as he said, "About the Maa-shins!" as though he couldn't believe the topic wasn't completely obvious.

"What, you and I?"

"…And the lads. How d'we tike 'em dahwn?"

"Just us? Against one of those giant machines?" He shook his head. "I rather don't think it can be done."

Casey turned over to glare at him directly. "Ye can't poss'bly be givin' ap thet aeasy!"

The turtle growled back, "There are seven of us, one injured! We have no large-scale weapons, no contact with allies, and only what provisions I had on hand. The Martians have machinery evolved ages ahead of us, weapons that can obliterate us and anything in their path in a heartbeat, and, as far as I can estimate, a very cruel nature. Had you planned to run up and whack one in the foot with a stick?"

"Dan't be daft! They anly got three legs… Sapposin' we trip it up, with rope o' the loike…"

Don shook his head. "Did you see the telegraph lines near the train? They were snapped with such force, they curled back around the poles! It may as well have been walking through wet tissue paper! Even if we could surprise it with half a dozen wires, the tension we could exert wouldn't be enough to make it catch its toe."

"Moines, 'en! Blow 'is feet roight off!"

"What mines?! We don't have any mines!"

"Wull, 'at's whire you comes in, innit? Yew c'd maeke 'em!"

"Out of what? You want I should weave them out of the straw?" He illustrated his point by throwing a handful of the stuff at Casey, who laughed.

"Nae, nae… But ef we got ye the stuff for 'em, ye c'd dae it, roight?"

He paused, tapping a finger to his beak as he thought it over, mumbling to himself. "…need something with tensile strength… bedsprings... blasting powder, in some small jars… copper wires, of course, and solder…. Would need somethin for casings… perhaps tea saucers… putty… You know, if we could procure all the materials, I suppose I might—might—be able to fashion some. Getting that thing to step on one, now there's the rub…"

"Laeave thet paaht te Casey Jones!" the boy declared, cocking a thumb at himself. "Fah naow, lit's git some shut-oye."