Author: matt

“Forthwith the six guns which, unknown to anyone on the right bank, had been hidden behind the outskirts of that village, fired simultaneously. The sudden near concussion, the last close upon the first, made my heart jump. The monster was already raising the case generating the Heat-Ray as the first shell burst six yards above the hood. … Simultaneously two other shells burst in the air near the body as the hood twisted round in time to receive, but not in time to dodge, the fourth shell. The shell burst clean in the face of the Thing. The hood bulged, flashed, was whirled off in a dozen tattered fragments of red flesh and glittering metal.
“Hit!” shouted I, with something between a scream and a cheer.”

Of all our vaunted technology, only the efforts of the modern artillery seemed to give the invaders any pause. Even our mighty Navy, though effective, found itself helpless at sea while the marauders burned and poisoned their way through the countryside.

Even so, a battery of six guns was no match for more than two of the Martian Fighting Machines. We would always strike from surprise and the Martians, once alerted to our presence, would strike back with their terrifying heat ray and destroy the entire battery. We found we were outclassed in several areas. The Martian heat ray was deadly accurate, quick to re-orient and could fire multiple bursts of deadly invisible phlogiston in quick succession. In comparison, our artillery, field guns and cannon, was slow to reload, sluggish in movement and, perhaps worst of all, woefully inaccurate.

“The Heat-Ray is certainly capable of dealing death – melting lead, softening iron, incinerating wood and cloth and searing flesh to ashes. When used, it handles as a man might handle a searchlight – playing over it’s targets for a split second before moving on, ever in search of victims to blacken and twist.

With this tactic, we can effectively resist the invaders.”

This tactic, of course, was soon abandoned as quickly as the artillerymen abandoned their guns at the sound of the terrible howl of the Fighting Machines. England, and indeed the rest of the world, belonged to the Martians.

I don’t know if anyone is even reading this 🙂 Certainly doesn’t look like it in the comments.
I’ve got two more WotW articles on the back-burner. About the actual technology, machines of war, recovery of civilisation and what we were left with afterwards.

I’ve not written a jot on system yet. Will likely re-use one of the myriad systems I’ve already published in some form or another.

The tragic story of a face-eating fungus on Youtube and another about mind-controlling fungi has pushed me to write a little about the Red Men.

“The church bells were ringing for evensong, and a squad of Salvation Army lassies came singing down Waterloo Road. On the bridge a number of loafers were watching a curious brown scum that came drifting down the stream in patches.”

Of all things, a man’s home is his castle and such was our affrontery at being attacked by distant alien intelligences in our own homes. That they had travelled millions of miles in order to exterminate our way of life was taken by some to be a sign of extreme malevolence. I, on the other hand, presume their opinion of us to be quite different. Indifferent to our plight they came to destroy and plunder, treading roughly on the ant-hills of our civilisation.

In hearing the scope and magnitude of their plan, we must recognise they have come to disrupt everything – planning all but the most meticulous details and it is in those details that we eventually found our salvation. The plans they saw through to fruition go far beyond jets of black smoke, the unstoppable heat ray and the red weed which still stymies our agriculture.

If reports are to be believed, it was in Shepperton where the first of the Red Men appeared. He attacked two women who were walking along the canal and could only be subdued by two men from a passing barge who claimed his skin was dark and oily and he took “a lot of hammering” to break his grip on the women. When the civil defence militia arrived, there was a large crowd around what seemed to be a heavily waterlogged and extremely rotten corpse. Though there was much damage to the head, the body was identified as one Albert Hargreaves, a part-time labourer in the village who often operated Shepperton Lock when the Lock-keeper wasn’t about.

The body was shipped to London and reports were few and far between but one alleged witness reported that “even though old Bertie was dead, you could see things wriggling under his skin”.

Advanced examinations brought forth a dread warning for everyone to steer clear of any sign of brown scum upon the water and report it immediately. The scum was the spore clump of a fungal fruiting body which had infected poor Bertie. With their alien hyphae forcing themselves through his flesh and interfering with his mind, Bertie must have been driven insane. Weeks later, when the women who were attacked came forth with their story, one was adamant that the thng which had once been Bertie Hargreaves was pleading with them to help him and not attacking them as previously thought. One can only imagine his horror as his attempts to find help were met with violence, swift and deadly.

Shepperton spent weeks under quarantine but no other cases were reported there. What is known is that the Brown Fungus invades the human body and spreads quickly, attaching hyphae threads to nerves and through muscles. This process is extremely painful as the hyphae eat the protective myelin from the nerve sheaths causing jerking, threatening-looking spasms. Eventually the threads reach the torso where they start to build their fruiting body for spore production and the threads then travel north to the brain and drive the victim to water, for this is where the terrible spores will break free. The hyphal elongation of limbs is common, dissolving bone and leaving a flesh-wrapped fungal tentacle and as the fruiting body grows, the torse swells to enormous proportions, as does the skin surrounding the skull.

What I do know is that the Ministry of Science and War have samples of the fungus and they have been testing them on animals and humans to see what remedy can be found. The spores could be anywhere, or indeed everywhere by now.