Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

Some, that morning, had already been called to training. I saw one group busily burrowing into what had once been a croquet lawn, I think, disappearing into a tunnel like human moles. Others, in full kit, faced a row of targets dangling from a line, like big leathery sacks. At a snapped command from the NCO they charged en masse at the targets, yelling; they did not fire their rifles but stabbed at the sacks with their bayonets, like men taking on bears. With their big eyes and beak-like mouths and dangling tentacles, the sacks were scarecrow Martians. I learned later that, although it seemed unlikely any soldier would get to face a Martian outside its protective machines, the very physicality of bayonetting was thought to be good for a soldier’s morale. Do it often enough, make yourself muscle-weary with it, and you grow into a kind of blood lust, an unhesitating willingness to kill – and that was a good mental state for a fighting man to reach for.

As I watched there was a sudden clatter of rattles, a cry of ‘Smoke, Black Smoke!’ Everyone in hearing range dropped their gear, and fixed hooded masks over their heads, and pulled down sleeves and trouser cuffs to leave no flesh exposed. But it was only a drill.

Before the day was much older we were driven from the house and back into town to the rail station, and loaded up on a train filled with anxious troopers, novices and veterans alike, returning to their duties. We three, Lane, Gray and I, shared a compartment with a dozen of them, who crowded the seats and sat on the floor – one fellow even stretched out on the flimsylooking luggage rack overhead – and they filled the little cabin with their cigarette smoke.

We slowed as we passed another train, coming down from London, and I peered curiously. The train was splashed with paint, black and brown and green – camouflage colours. I saw troops in there, grimy and exhausted, many sleeping. Cars marked with red crosses were like mobile hospitals, and there were cars crammed with civilians too, men, women, and children, many of them as grimy as the troops, blinking in the light – and in the case of the children, staring in wonder at the green countryside, which perhaps they had never seen before.

Ted Lane, by the window, amused himself by pulling faces at the little Londoners and trying to make them smile.

I touched his arm. ‘Is it always like this?’

‘Oh, yes, Miss,’ he murmured. ‘Seven million or so trapped on the day the Martians came, I believe, and you don’t shift them in a hurry.’

Gray said, on my other side, ‘The Londoners do what they can for themselves – backyard allotments and the like. But there are whole populations left behind, some in hiding in tube tunnels and the like – and every so often they have to be shifted as the flood waters rise.’

At that time I knew nothing of London’s floods – I would see enough later.

Ted Lane was still pulling faces and waving. ‘Seven million,’ he muttered. ‘And every one of them a life to be saved.’

I felt obscurely proud of him.

Later we had a pause in our journey. The train simply stopped in open country, somewhere near Alton I think. The locomotive was shut down, and workers in khaki – they may have been military swarmed along the carriages dragging tarpaulins loosely over the roofs, and our view from the window was obscured.

Lane touched my shoulder. ‘Martian about – or so some spotter will have called in, and the message sent on to the signalmen.’

‘Probably a flying-machine,’ Gray said. ‘They come out for the odd raid, as if testing our defences. And they cut the rail links if they see them. So you conceal the tracks by splashing them with camouflage-colour paint, though that has to be renewed as it gets rubbed off by passing stock. And the trains too, the roofs of the carriages painted, a bit of tarpaulin to blur the outlines. Wouldn’t fool a human spotter, but might a Martian. And we have to be still. A moving train—’

‘Why are we whispering? The Martians might see us, but they can’t hear us.’

He grinned. ‘Natural reaction, ain’t it? Anyhow you started it.’

Of course he was right.

We were held for hours before at last we moved. In the interval we had none of us spotted a flying-machine.

The train journey ended south of London, at Clapham Junction. Here our train-load of troops was exchanged with another lot, evidently fresh from the front and ready for their bit of leave, the men mostly in khaki uniforms and greatcoats, and women in the uniforms of nurses or VADs. The relieved troops were all grimy and damp-looking, their clothes and kit shapeless and well-worn, even mouldy in some cases. The dominant impression was of exhaustion. Nevertheless these hollow-eyed troops had greetings ready for their replacements . ‘Hello! Nice haircut, mate, but the Heat-Ray will give you a trim for nothing. Got a fag to spare?’

‘Look at that one, Fred. Ruddy like a raspberry and as full of juice. Them Martians will have a fine time sucking you dry, you mark my words, suck and suck and slurp!…’

I suppose it has been the way of soldiers to goad each other this way, back to the days when Caesar came with his legions, perhaps to this very spot. But I saw that while this badinage was continuing, the nurses and MOs stood with men and a few women in a worse condition: walking wounded, festooned with bandages, on crutches – there was a line of men who seemed to have lost their sight, all standing with one hand on the shoulder of the fellow in front. All looked exhausted, bewildered, shocked , and those who could see were blinking in the light. It was not a promising welcome committee. And still I was far from the Martian centre, the cause of all this.

We filtered through the station, hundreds of us, to the gulllike cries of the NCOs and MPs.

Once we were out of the station we joined a unit of troops, laden with kit, already formed up. And then we set off on foot. We walked out to St John’s Hill and turned right, towards the river. It was my first return to London since I and Alice had fled from the first advance of the Martians from Uxbridge, more than two years earlier. Falling back on my journalistic experience, I tried to keep my mind open, my reactions fresh.

To begin with, I had oddly positive impressions. I heard little but a lapping of water somewhere nearby – that puzzled me – and the singing of birds, and the quiet voices of the men as they walked along. The air smelled clear if a little stale – like a blocked drain, I thought. I saw a stretch of blue sky above. Many of the buildings had a peculiarly streaked effect on their grimy surfaces, pale stone showing under the black. The coming of the Martians had extinguished London’s smoking chimneys, and the rain had weathered away some of the grime, centuries thick, from the faces of the buildings. I wondered what was going on in the parks – if the trees and birds were flourishing, if wildlife had come in from the country. It was a Wednesday in May; I felt a burst of absurd springtime optimism.

And then – too soon! – we came to the river. But not to its old bank.

Where the water lapped, I saw from the signs, was the York Road. To our right was a small park area, sodden and flooded. And before us was the river itself, evidently spread up from its course and over the feet of the buildings. I looked out across a stretch of grey water, to the silhouettes of buildings on the far shore, their foundations drowned as on our side.

Where the cobbled road surface ducked under the water there was an improvised jetty. Here a series of rowing boats waited for us, with more standing out on the river. The NCOs spoke their orders, and we shuffled down towards the water. Once in my boat I sat cautiously at the prow, beside Gray, while Lane sorted out men to take the oars, and a rough type in a heavy waterproof leather coat sat at a tiller in the stern and glowered at us.