CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A New Martian Weapon Is Introduced

At the same moment that I met the curate, my brother joined the escaping crowd of Londoners. The Martians had come from out of their pit in Woking to renew their attacks on our civilization. Three of them emerged at eight o'clock, while the others continued their work. The whole day they had apparently been working on something inside the pit, sending large billows of green smoke mysteriously into the air. Finally, at about nine o'clock, they finished their work and began to follow the earlier line of attackers in their horrible killing machines.

They attacked in a wide line, maybe a mile and a half from one another. And their means of communication was a loud cry that often changed pitch. This was the strange sound that the curate and I had heard earlier in the day.

The first defensive line that the machines met was made up of inexperienced volunteers, who should not have been placed at the front of the battle. None of the men in the unit had ever fired a gun under the threat of also being fired upon. Seeing the approaching machines, they became terribly frightened and began to shoot at them too early, missing them completely. The Martians now knew exactly where the unit had been hiding and turned their weapons in their direction. The entire unit began running away. However, the Martians moved quickly and crushed every man under their feet. This easy win allowed the Martians to surprise the next line of defense and quickly defeat them in battle as well.

The soldiers at Saint George's Hill had a bit more success. They took one Martian by surprise and blew off one of its legs, causing the machine to fall hard to the ground. From the victim came a long, loud cry; this brought two other machines into the area to help. The soldiers tried to take them down, as well, but missed. This, of course, gave away their hiding place and the two Martian machines attacked with incredible violence. They fired their heat rays upon the poor unit and killed most of them within just a few seconds. Only two men were able to make it over the hillside and survive the attack. It was reported that the two fighting machines then returned to the injured one and stood on either side of it, standing guard. Moments later, the Martian which had been operating the fallen machine came out slowly and painfully from the head. It carried in its arms several tools that it then used to repair the damaged leg. Within a half-an-hour the fallen machine was back on its feet, walking onward with its two companions.

Not long after, they met up with four other Martian machines that were carrying long, black tubes. Soon, all seven Martian machines had tubes and they then spread out in a twelve-mile long half-circle.

Two of the machines came very near to the place where the curate and I were hiding. My companion made a small, frightened sound in his throat and then began to run. I, however, knowing the uselessness of running from the Martians, ran into the tall grass at the side of the road and hid in a ditch. The curate noticed this and decided that my idea might be the better one. He ran back and joined me in the ditch.

The two machines stood there silently, one facing Staines, one facing Sunbury, for what seemed like hours. The Martians were no longer communicating with their strange musical cries. Now everything was quiet as the Martians stared toward London, and the military sat hiding somewhere out there with their guns at the ready.

Looking at the Martians standing there, it seemed that they had already won and that everything under the moon and sun was theirs. They looked unbeatable in their giant metal machines. I began to feel no bigger or stronger than an insect.

Then the sound of a large army gun broke the silence. The Martian facing Staines had been shot at, but was missed. It then raised its long tube-like gun and fired an incredibly loud shot into the distance. The one facing Staines then did the same. Each time they shot their guns, the ground shook violently, but no smoke or fire came from the tube. We sat waiting for the military to respond, but all that we heard was some shouting followed by dead silence. The machine then began walking east along the river, without being fired at once, it soon disappeared into the distance.

"What's going on?" asked the curate.

"I have no idea," I responded.

We both climbed up out of our ditch to have a look around. Over the trees and to the north and east, mysterious black clouds seemed to have formed. Not a single human sound came from any direction. The only thing we could hear were the cries of the Martians in the southeast as they communicated with one another.

I learned, later on, that what had happened was that the Martians fired their guns into every possible hiding place in the surrounding area: groups of trees, hilly land, and closely built buildings. Their guns shot large containers that broke open when they hit the ground and released a thick, black gas, which then spread quickly through the air and immediately killed anything that breathed it in.

Fortunately, the gas was very heavy and could only rise to a certain height before starting to fall slowly to the ground where it would lay in thick dusty clumps. I say "fortunately," because there were some who had hidden high up in the tops of trees or on the highest floor of their home where the gas could not climb. They waited there for days until the gas fell completely to the ground and the Martians came through and cleaned it up by shooting steam upon the ground with a special machine. I suppose that I should not call it "cleaning up," for the black dust remained; it, however, lost its poisonous effect. The curate and I watched them do this from the window of an empty house in Upper Halliford.

For the rest of the night, the Martians continued to move forward toward London in their ever widening half-circle, shooting their containers into every possible hiding place in their path. Not a single soldier or citizen that had sat waiting for the Martians between St. George's Hill and London survived that night.

Before sunrise, the black gas had already arrived in Richmond. The leaders in London responded by ordering its citizens to leave the city as quickly as they could, for the Martians would soon be there.

(end of section)