CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Artillery Man

I am not sure how long I sat there. Judging by the pools of water gathered around me, it must have been at least an hour. I got up and immediately got myself a glass of whiskey, then I headed upstairs to my office. I was still a little out of my mind at the moment and was doing things without being aware of any purpose.

When I got to the office, I found that the window had been left open. Outside, I could see that the storm had died down, and, beyond the remains of the college that once stood across from my home, I could make out large, black, Martian figures moving about the red glow of the sandpits, making further preparations of some sort. The air that came through my window had the sharp smell of burning wood.

From this window, I had a view of the area from Woking train station to the Northwestern woods that had been bombed earlier and was now still smoking from the devastation. At the station, I noticed a train had been destroyed. The yellow engine lay on its side, surrounded by flames. The whole countryside looked to be on fire as well.

I could not believe that this was my home! A place I had thought to be the safest in the world. I sat down in my office chair and studied the scene out the window, especially the sandpits.

The machine-like Martians appeared to be working incredibly hard. I wondered if they were actual living things, or if they were just machines driven about by Martians inside?

As I sat there, thinking, a sound came from my garden area. I jumped up from my chair and carefully stuck my head out the window. Down below, I caught sight of an Army soldier. Another human being! I made a hissing sound to try and get his attention. The sound frightened him for a moment, but he calmed down when I whispered, "Where are you going?"

"I'm looking for a place to hide," he whispered back.

"Wait there. I'll come let you in," I told him.

I ran downstairs, unlocked the door and pulled him quickly inside. I immediately took him to the dining area and gave him a drink of whiskey.

"They killed everyone! The whole Army!" he cried softly.

It took a while for him to calm down; when he finally did, he explained that he was a gunman in the military. He said that the fighting started as soon as his artillery had arrived. The Martians were moving toward their second fallen ship under a metal covering, which protected them from the Army's bullets. Then, a short time later, the metal cover stood up on its three legs and showed itself to be a Martian fighting machine. It began to fire upon everything around it. He had been lucky, for his horse accidentally stepped into a hole in the field and fell. Just then, the gun behind him exploded and all kinds of metal and body parts came crashing down around him.

He laid, caught underneath his horse, for hours, too afraid to move. He watched the Martian machine as it walked about the fields killing every living thing it could find. He noticed that the heat ray came from a long box with flashing green lights that it carried in one of its arms.

He said that he was sure he was the only survivor. As soon as it had finished with the military, the machine walked over to the town of Woking and used its heat ray to destroy homes and, finally, the train station. Then, as it walked off toward the northwestern woods, a second machine came walking out from the trees.

"The two machines walked away from Woking, and I slowly crawled away from the field and made my way into the town to look for anyone who might be alive. Sadly, all that I found were burned bodies or part of bodies. The only time I did see a living man, he was running from one of the machines that had returned to the village. The machine caught him in one of its arms and smashed his head into a tree. I hid within the ruins of one of the homes. When night came, I ran for Maybury, hoping to slowly make my way to London."

He said that he had found some survivors hiding in Maybury. Many of them were waiting for a good opportunity to escape further away from Woking and the glowing sandpits.

I then went into the kitchen and got some food for the soldier and me to eat. He was very hungry and thirsty. We both ate in the darkness for fear that a light might attract the Martians' attention. Outside we heard the sounds of people quietly running away.

After we had finished eating, we both went up to my study and looked out the window. The sun was just starting to rise. At the pits, three huge machines stood looking about the destruction they had brought to the area. All around them, the land laid blackened and smoking from the dying fires.

(end of section)