Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

He came upon a kind of command post: a lot of senior officers, and map tables and field telephones and wireless units and telegraphs, and a coffee urn. It took some moments before a young officer called Fairfield, a lieutenant-colonel, took pity on him. ‘Sorry about this, Doctor – Captain. The trouble is we are running around a bit to get organised, and you MO types don’t fit easily into the command structure.’ He was perhaps a decade younger than Frank, with a clipped public school accent and an air of wry amusement. ‘Coffee?’

‘No, thank you, sir.’

‘I know what you’re thinking.’

‘You do?’

‘Good job it’s not raining, what? Although it will be raining Martians soon enough.’

‘Where, sir? Where is the cylinder coming down? I know the telescopic spotters have been tracking them.’

Fairfield raised an eyebrow. ‘Not so much “cylinder” as “cylinders”, Doctor. But the one that interests us seems to be heading slap bang for the middle of Uxbridge, which is bad luck for that unlovely town. Population’s already been evacuated, by the way, off to the north, so you don’t need to worry about them.’ He glanced up. ‘Closer to the hour we’ll have planes up there, even a Zeppelin I’m told, courtesy of the Kaiser. They might give us a better fix.’ He eyed Frank. ‘To be honest I’m not sure how well you’ve been briefed.’

‘Hardly at all.’

‘Well, that’s typical. What you do need to know is that a regular arrangement for treating the wounded has already been established. You have aid posts at the front itself – that is, the site where we have our best guess about where the cylinder will come down – and behind that, within stretcher-bearer distance, you have casualty clearing stations, and behind that it’s ambulances back to the field hospitals, which is where you come in. You haven’t drawn the short straw, you see, Doctor – the forward staff, the MOs and the rest, are already at the front-line clearing stations.’

Frank nodded. ‘Thank you. That’s clear enough. The MP said a couple of other things. Nineteen hours ’

‘He has been talkative, hasn’t he? I’m told that after the first cylinder fell last time, near Woking—’

‘At Horsell Common.’

‘It took that long, you see, for the Martians to unscrew the bally thing, and for the Heat-Ray gun and other nasties to start poking out, and for those fighting-machines to climb out and stretch their legs and get to work. So this time we should have that window of opportunity, to shell the thing while they’re helpless.’

Frank felt suspicious of his confident tone. ‘ If all goes as it did last time—’

‘Of course I would hope we will finish the thing off in two hours, not nearly twenty.’ He asked blandly, ‘Is there anything else, Doctor?’

‘You said “cylinders”. There was only one at a time before.’

‘Ah. Well, that is something new. The astronomers have been definite about this, if a little late in the day. Can’t blame them for that, I suppose.’ He faced Frank. ‘There are more than fifty of ’em coming in, all across this part of the country.’

Fifty. Frank remembered his brother’s talk of the array of cannons spread across Mars, firing night after night, and the fleets of cylinders perhaps forming up in space. And now that deadly barrage had crossed interplanetary space and was about to fall here. Fifty together! And from what Walter had said there would be another fifty following after…

The Lieutenant-Colonel clapped his shoulder. ‘Anyhow, we only have one to worry about.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Now look, if there’s nothing else urgent…’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Carry on, Captain Jenkins.’

Once the sun had gone down, it felt like a long wait until midnight.

Frank’s staff had got the field hospital organised as well as it could be, and he was relieved there had been no significant balls-up with the supplies. But there was only so often he could check and recheck it all. At about seven, he gratefully accepted Verity’s idea of mounting a few exercises, with volunteers playing the roles of incoming wounded. The VADs especially went at this with a will, if inexpertly. Frank knew that there could be gruesome accidents at munitions plants, but he had the impression that most of the VADs had little experience much beyond their training.

At nine he encouraged those who felt like it to use the hospital beds to nap. Few could sleep, though several lay down.

At ten he ordered his people to eat, have coffee or water. He caught one of the junior doctors with a hip flask, which he confiscated and locked away in a chest, promising to hand it back after the ‘battle’, as they were calling it – unless some wounded had a greater need of the rather good brandy it contained.

At eleven he ordered his staff to use the latrines, in a rota. He murmured to Verity, ‘But of course I’m expecting rather a few loose bladders before the night is out, come what may.’

As midnight approached, the two of them tucked in behind a barricade of sand bags, looking north-west. They both had medical bags at their sides, and they wore regulation steel helmets. The sky was clear that Sunday night, with only a light mist obscuring the stars.

They spoke little. Verity seemed too nervous to say much of herself. He did gather she was single, and had only just moved out of her parents’ home into an apartment near Woolwich with some of the other workers when the call-up came. He tried to distract her with talk of himself – or rather of his brother, whose book, he glumly suspected, had enjoyed a spike in sales that day.

Of course she had heard of Walter. ‘I was only twelve,’ she said. ‘We had been visiting family in the Midlands when the news started coming out of London. My father got us on a boat to Ireland, out of Liverpool. I missed the whole show.’

‘You were lucky. And now here you are in the opening overs of the rematch.’

‘But your brother’s book – it made it so real. I met him once. There was an illustrated edition. He came to Foyles on the Charing Cross Road to give a talk. I remember he complained about the drawings, though. I got him to sign a copy for me.’

‘Of course you did,’ Frank said, gritting his teeth.

‘Captain, you saw one fall, didn’t you? A cylinder. Last time.’

‘Yes. The sixth, that came down at Wimbledon. That was at midnight too. We were sleeping out in the open, myself and my future wife and her sister-in-law. Long story.’ He glanced at his watch; it wanted five minutes of midnight.

‘What did it look like?’

‘The cylinder? Like a falling star, sliding across the sky. Green flashes.’

‘Green? Then that’s what we must look out for, I suppose.’ She raised small binoculars and scanned the sky.

For a time neither of them spoke. Frank imagined a great circle drawn around Uxbridge, the quiet, deserted town at the centre, with its electric street lights pointlessly glowing, and a ring of troops like themselves with their guns and field hospitals and binoculars, all waiting, waiting.

‘Captain, it’s gone midnight. My watch has a luminous dial… Midnight plus ten seconds. Fifteen now.’

From somewhere a Cockney voice floated, singing to a carol tune: ‘ Why are we waiting? Why-y are we waiting? ’ Chuckles of laughter, a soft command to be still.

‘I don’t see any green flashes—’

There was a crack, a detonation high in the air above them. Then a searing light that smashed down from the sky, coming from directly above them. White light – not green at all.

Plunging at the dark earth.

‘ Down! ’ Frank lay flat,and pressed the back of Verity’s neck to force down her head.