Stephen Baxter - The Massacre of Mankind

In Hollywood, it had seemed like everybody had stayed up to listen to scratchy accounts of the initial fighting on the radio stations. Units of the National Guard and the regular army had met the Martians as they broke out of their cylinders, to no significant effect. Then, a few hours later, at around dawn – again, just as they’d done in New York – the fighting-machines had broken out of their cordon and begun their advance.

And now, on that fine early summer morning, high in the hills, just six hours after the first Martian cylinder had landed in California, there was a smell of burning above LA.

Homer led the way up the trail, panting and sweating, his words broken by breathlessness – even though it was Cherie, she wryly noted, who was having to carry the damn camera itself, while he merely lugged a batch of film cans.

‘I knew you’d come,’ he said now.

‘You did, did you?’

‘Come on,’ said Homer. ‘You’re the bravest guy I know. Figuratively speaking.’

‘Kind of you to say so.’

‘I mean it. It was you who kept filming on the Nero set when it caught fire for real, and everybody else had high-tailed it to the bar, and the footage you got was great. And I saw how you punched out the last actor who grabbed your butt.’

‘I almost got canned for that,’ she said ruefully, panting herself now as the trail steepened. ‘Lucky for me the make-up covered up his split lip.’

‘He deserved it. Listen, Cherie, we’re going to witness history today – hell, we’re making it. We’re the ones who are going to film the Martians as they come to LA. It will make a hell of a picture, and some day they’ll make a movie about us .’

‘I suppose we’ll be starstruck lovers, in the story.’

He had his back to her as he led the way up the trail, but she was pretty sure he blushed. Homer was a script editor with ambitions to make his own movies – hell, everybody around here had that ambition, if it wasn’t to appear in one – and she knew, too, that he had a crush on her. He said now, ‘Either way we’re going to make a pile of money.’

But Cherie was distracted, as that smell of burning from the east intensified. And she thought she heard something new now, carried on the rising morning air: a distant bellow, of triumph or rage, like a vast animal: ‘ Ulla… Ulla… ’

Five years back, in her home town of Madison, Wisconsin, she had watched Griffith’s Martian Summer , the tenthanniversary epic of the English war, over and over. Starring Charlie Chaplin as his trademark lovable Cockney gunner, with Mary Pickford playing the American girl he rescued and fell in love with, it had been one of the great spectacles that had drawn her to Hollywood in the first place. Somehow, now, she had the feeling that the scenes Griffith had shot of stiff, tottering fighting-machines downed by plucky Brit troops (led by even more heroic American volunteers) weren’t going to turn out much like the reality. And somehow the thought of the world coming out of this new crisis just like it had been before, with movies and money and young people in love, seemed unlikely too.

But she kept climbing. What else was there to do but see it through?

At last they reached a spot Homer thought was going to be suitable; he’d scouted it out in advance, he said. While Cherie fixed her camera on its tripod, Homer dumped his film cans and unloaded the lightweight radio receiver he’d carried in a rucksack, and began elaborately tuning around, looking for a signal. They both rummaged in the rucksack for bottled water.

And Cherie took a look at the view.

It was indeed a fine spot. Los Angeles sits in a bowl cradled by mountains to the north and east, and from up here, high in those mountains, Cherie’s lens would take it all in: she could see the brash glitter of Hollywood below, and the grey sprawl of downtown LA itself. Directly beneath her was a pretty green splash that was Pasadena, a suburb of lawns and roses and climbing geraniums – she’d long fostered a dream of moving there some day. And off to the west, beyond the cityscape and still grey with morning mist, was the calm immensity of the Pacific Ocean. But that morning the ocean was littered with ships, small boats, what looked like passenger liners, and sleek grey shapes that might be warships.

The roads out of the city seemed crowded too, though she was so far away that the grandest of automobiles looked like glittering ants. She thought she heard the screech of a train whistle, almost as eerie as those unearthly cries coming from the east. Overnight, as the precise location of the Martians’ midnight landing had at last become clear, most people she knew had announced their intentions to pack up and get away. If so, where would they go? Down into the city for sure, and then out of town – mostly north, probably, towards San Francisco using the better roads and the coastal rail tracks. She wondered if the newsreel companies would have cameras out in the train stations and along the roads to catch that great American exodus, a parallel of Long Island, indeed of London twice before.

Well, Cherie had a picture to shoot. She got her camera set up and loaded, and cranked a few frames, an establishing pan shot. And she turned to focus on Homer, squatting on the dirt ground, headphones on his ears, tinkering with his radio.

‘Shit,’ Homer said now.

She frowned. He wasn’t one to swear. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘The Martians… I’m listening to KDZF.’ He was a radio buff. She knew that was one of his favourite stations, and, run by the Automobile Club of Southern California, one of the more authoritative. ‘Also I got a couple of the police bands.’

‘What about the Martians?’

‘They cut the aqueduct. The Owens River… Once they broke out of their pit, they sent a party straight over.’

She knew about the aqueduct, a mighty canal that brought LA its water across a distance equivalent to the span between Washington, DC, and New York. A civic monument, gone, just like that. ‘They know what they’re doing, then,’ she mused. ‘They’ve cut our throats. So where are the Martians now?’

He listened again, and his eyes grew wide. He took off the ’phones, stood, looked around, and pointed east. ‘ There .’

The fighting-machines casually walked over the crest of the hills, and paused, looking down on Los Angeles.

‘Jesus,’ said Homer.

‘Help me.’

‘What?’

‘Help me get the camera turned around. Feed me film. Come on, Homer, damn it! This is why we’re up here…’

As she cranked the handle she watched the Martians through the camera’s small viewfinder. She saw five, six, seven of them, spreading out along the crest of the hills. She panned and zoomed, trying to catch the essence of their motion. She knew that the British soldiers who had faced the Martians back in ’07 had compared them to ‘boilers on stilts’. To an American eye they had more the look of water towers – and in fact when making his movie ten years later Griffith had draped rough mock-ups of cowls and tentacles over genuine water towers, for cheap establishing shots. But now, as the Martians moved, she saw how inappropriate those comparisons were. Huge as they were, the fighting-machines bowled gracefully along the ground, tilting, and those marvellous legs and their nests of tentacles twisted and flexed. Seen in the grey of distance they were less like machines than lithe animals, she thought now: tall, leggy animals like giraffes, passing each other as they sought good positions.

There was a crack of thunder, coming from the bay, that made her jump. She lost the shot, the camera wavering.

Homer grabbed her shoulder and pointed. ‘Look! The ships are firing their big guns!’