Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

They had bypassed Uxbridge, or the site of it, when, close to a sign for a place called Denham, they came to a flood. The Grand Union Canal, badly disrupted by the Martian assault, was drowning the countryside.

The sappers had put together a pontoon bridge over which the vehicles were driven or dragged. The foot-sloggers had to walk through thickening mud, though. Frank soon found it wasn’t the wetness that troubled him but the way the mud sank under every step and clung as he tried to lift out his feet, draining what little energy he had left. Around him, all the mudspattered individuals started to look alike, officers and men, volunteers and regular, women and men. Just lumps of clay and mud, struggling on.

Frank and his group of medics came to a group of soldiers, as mud-covered and unrecognisable as the rest. They were working on an overturned cart; a bored-looking horse stood idly by. One of them called for help, and Frank was surprised to recognise a German accent. ‘Can you help us?…’

As a nod from Fairfield, Frank went over with a couple of his junior doctors, and a handful of VADs. They all took a break for a smoke and a sip of water from their flasks, and, standing in the mud, inspected the damage. The cart was undamaged but it had tipped over in a hole hidden by the brown flood, and it had dumped its cargo, a large and impressive-looking machine gun, into the water.

‘Even when we get it out,’ said the German who had called, ‘it will take us an age to clean it – but we must get it done, for we have an appointment with the Martians.’ He stuck out his hand to Frank. ‘My name is Schwesig. Heiko Schwesig. My rank is Feldwebelleutnant; I am in charge of this weapon and this team – we are on detachment from the imperial army, as is this fine G8…’

Schwesig’s unit had been assigned to guard duty at the German consulate in London – in those times it was necessary for an embassy from that power to a friendly city like London to be heavily armed. When the Martian threat had been announced, as a gesture of friendship between two allies, this unit and others had volunteered to bring their weapon to the fight. ‘The Martians are not waging war on Britain after all,’ said Schwesig in his precisely accented English, ‘but on all mankind. Of course we must be here.’

Verity, with a dubious eye, was sizing up the challenge of the stranded gun. ‘Never mind cleaning it, it’s going to take an effort just to haul the thing out of the mud.’

Frank flexed muddy fingers and laughed. ‘A bit of exercise – just what we need today.’

‘Need a hand?’ This was a brisk female voice.

Frank turned to find himself facing a sturdy woman of perhaps fifty, evidently muscular, her face broad and weathered, her legs in what looked like fisherman’s waders, leather coat buttoned around her barrel of a body, greying black hair tied back in a scarf. Behind her, its engine turning over – unnoticed in the general din of the day – stood a hefty-looking tractor.

Schwesig grinned. ‘Madam, you are the least muddy person I have met all afternoon.’

‘I should hope so too, or my husband will never forgive my loan of his leggings. But he’s had no time for his precious fishing that since he was called up by the reserve, and left me to run the farm for him.’ She pointed with a thumb. ‘Said farm being a few miles back that way, near a place called Abbotsdale if you know it. And this sort of pickle is the precise reason I thought I should bring Bessie out to meet you fellows.’

‘And glad we are of it too,’ Schwesig said, and he shook the farmer’s hand. She introduced herself as Mildred Tritton.

With Mildred’s expert handling, it was the work of a moment for ‘Bessie’, the tractor, to free the gun from the mud, get it loaded in its horse-cart, and on the move again. Then Fairfield briskly commandeered the tractor and its willing driver for more pressing assignments.

Verity watched her go with a sigh. ‘And there was me hoping for a lift. Never mind. On we go, Captain Frank…’

It wasn’t far to their final position, as checked by Fairfield on the mud-spattered, hand-marked map he carried. The medics weren’t the first to arrive, in this farmer’s field; already troops were digging in, setting up trenches and latrine ditches, and building parapets of hastily-filled sand bags facing back the way they had come. They had come far enough behind the cordon for them to find themselves in what felt like unsullied British countryside, a place of green hills and hollows and hamlets. A heron skated low over open water nearby. Dairy cattle were being shooed from a field to make way for the soldiers; they lowed in apparent irritation. It was still early in the day, comparatively, only mid-afternoon – they had come only a few miles from their old position.

They were all exhausted to some degree, Frank thought. None had slept much, if at all, last night. But still they were put to work, straight away. Frank observed an awareness of time, a sense of urgency. ‘Midnight they’re coming,’ went the whisper, in the trenches, the hastily erected field kitchens, among Frank’s own staff, the doctors and orderlies, the nurses and VADs. ‘Midnight, coming again, the Martians. Got to be ready…’

They had all seen the sheer blind destructive power so casually wielded by the Martians just the night before. They had all been briefed on the Black Smoke and the Heat-Ray. And here they were, the first line of defence for England and all mankind. Frank heard Fairfield and other officers and the bristling NCOs uttering exhortations as they worked their way along the line, urging on the work, but Frank scarcely thought it was necessary. They all knew.

At six they were fed, but they kept working. By now, despite the ‘nineteen hours’ window of opportunity still anticipated after the landings, a fight was expected, and the medics were set to digging their own protective trenches. The field hospitals were well back from front-line troops and the expected landing site of ‘their’ cylinder – marked as ‘No. 12’ on Fairfield’s map – but the Heat-Ray was known from the last War to have a useful range of several miles. So, trenches it had to be.

They ate as they worked, taking breaks of only a few minutes from the digging and hauling. By seven thirty the sun was down. Frank and Verity made a final tour of their installation.

‘Looks rougher than the first set-up,’ Verity said. ‘But then everything’s been dragged a few miles through the mud – as have we all.’

‘It looks fit for purpose,’ Frank said, trying to project a confidence he did not truly feel.

‘So it did last night,’ Verity said bleakly, ‘and we were all but useless.’

‘We’ll do all we can.’

She laughed. ‘Now that is a doctor’s line! Comforting and meaningless. You’ve been in the job too long, Captain…’

Night fell. The clocks worked their way towards midnight. Later Frank could not decide if the time had crawled or flown.

Fairfield, on his last tour of inspection before the deadline, wasn’t terribly sympathetic over the medics’ anxiety. ‘Had a couple of operations in my time,’ he said. ‘Bullet in the shoulder, picked it up in the Sudan. When you’re waiting for your turn on the slab – that’s what this is like. Now it’s your turn to wait for the surgeon’s blade, Doctor!’

Frank used the latrines at ten, and again at eleven when they were getting more crowded. This routine reminded him uncomfortably of the night before, as if he were stuck in some over-scripted play that he must rehearse over and over.

A last cup of coffee, which he took to his position in the trench. He clambered down a short wooden ladder and settled behind a sandbag parapet, wondering if he would ever climb back up again. In fact he found it hard to imagine a time, any reality, beyond the midnight cut-off. In the dirt at his feet, gleaming in the light of the oil lamps strung along the trench, he saw a flint nodule, creamy white with a rich black interior.