Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight! Read online

  Joe led Linc into the alley and directed him to hunker down behind a rank of overstuffed garbage cans. The smell was almost overpowering, a fact Linc was quick to note.

  “Lordy, that’s a foul stench,” the young man observed, wrinkling his nose. “You brought me halfway across the city to smell this?”

  Linc’s annoyance was an oddly welcome change of attitude. They’d been in the city for nearly a week, and for all that time, the sharecropper’s son had thought of little else aside from the fate of his family. Each day he had, with Joe reluctantly in tow, made a circuit of the tunnels and bridges leading into the city, questioning the soldiers who guarded those approaches, and each night, he had alternated between states of inconsolable grief and unrealistic hope.

  They had crossed the George Washington Bridge on the second day following the ill-fated encounter with the alien patrol, and made their way south to Central Park, where the Hoovervilles of the pre-war era had sprung up once again, and now served as transient housing for refugees like Joe and Linc. Joe hadn’t minded Linc’s obsession with finding his family because it gave him a chance to explore the utterly foreign urban landscape, but after a few days, he was ready for something different. He had known from the outset that Linc’s vigilance would not bear fruit; Linc’s family was surely dead, atomized by the heat ray. It was a bitter pill and one he wasn’t keen on forcing Linc to swallow, but he had no doubt that was the truth of the matter.

  That morning, Joe had begged off from Linc’s errand and ventured out on his own. Away from the run-down environs of Central Park and the well-trod paths walked by the refugees, he found a city clinging to its pre-invasion identity, and nowhere was this more apparent than in a busy intersection Joe heard identified as Times Square. He spent hours there, peering in the windows of shops that, while sparsely stocked, were nonetheless open for business, or lurking about in front of restaurants and theatres—strange places he had heard about in his insular life back on the farm, but never imagined he would see for himself.

  Then he had seen a poster, tacked to a light post, and he had known immediately what he had to do. He’d torn the flyer down. Gripping it like a map to buried treasure, he’d made his way back to Central Park to wait for Linc. Later, with Linc following him, he’d led the way back to Times Square and located the rear entrance to the Double R nightclub.

  “What we doin’ here, Joe?” Linc’s voice was weary, as if his unresolved grief had aged him well beyond his years.

  “We’re going to catch the show,” Joe replied, thrusting the flyer at the young man.

  Linc regarded it suspiciously. “They ain’t goin’ to let us in there. ‘Specially not me. And it won’t take ‘em more than a look to know you ain’t got two pennies to rub together.”

  “We’ll sneak in, stay hidden. Come on, it has to be easier than hiding from the big heads, right?”

  His quip evidently struck the wrong note, because Linc ducked his head but then straightened. “I suppose the worst can happen is they toss us out with the rest of the trash.”

  Joe nodded and then turned his attention back to the door. They waited there quietly for nearly half an hour, until a man in grubby kitchen whites stepped out, manhandling a trash can heaped with refuse. The man’s attention was focused on his task, and he didn’t notice Joe and Linc slipping from their hiding place to dart through the open door.

  The sound of music, a low, haunting melody, guided Joe through the maze of prep tables to a set of swinging doors that led into the smoky interior of the club. As soon as they were through the doors, Joe drew his companion into a dark corner away from the dining area.

  They weren’t exactly hidden from view, but no one in the establishment paid them the slightest heed; all eyes were fixed on the vision that occupied the center stage, the most beautiful woman Joe had ever seen.

  “I’m head over heels,” the woman crooned, her dark eyes seeming to somehow return every enamored gaze. “Over heart…over the moon…for…you.”

  She held the last note for what seemed like forever as the accompanying quartet built to a frenetic crescendo, and then both the singer and strings went silent. The bright stage lights winked out, plunging the performers into total darkness.

  Joe gave a sigh of appreciation then turned to Linc. He couldn’t make out his companion’s expression in the low light. “Now, wasn’t that worth it?”

  Linc’s only answer was an unexpected yelp. A moment later, Joe understood why when he felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder.

  “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a pest problem,” growled a voice at the other end of the strong arm that now held Joe immobile. A giant, with a shaved head, the battered countenance of a prize-fighter and muscles that strained the fabric of his ill-fitting dinner jacket, lifted both boys into the air and began hauling them toward the swinging kitchen doors.

  “Whatcha got there, Billy?” inquired a laconic voice behind them.

  The giant stopped and turned to face the questioner. When he spoke, his voice was unexpectedly calm and deferential. “Nothing to be concerned about, Mr. Black. Just showing these rascals to the door.”

  “Aw, Bill…that’s harsh. Can you blame the lads for wanting to hear Josie sing?”

  “We can’t very well have ‘em stinkin’ up the place. Gotta think of the payin’ customers, first, am I right?”

  “Well, I’m sure these boys would be happy to work off their debt to us. Wouldn’t you boys?”

  Joe craned his head around to get a look at the man who had interceded. The man—Mr. Black—was tall, though not nearly as tall as the giant, dressed in a stylish pin-striped suit, with a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He moved and spoke with sophisticated languor that seemed almost arrogant. He did not seem like the kind of person who would normally lift a finger to help two wretched refugees, but Joe sensed that his haughtiness was just a façade.

  “Tell Cook to find some dishes for ‘em to wash,” Black continued, meeting Joe’s appraising stare. “Give ‘em a broom and have ‘em sweep the walk. I reckon they could probably use a decent meal, too.”

  Joe nodded dumbly, but it was Linc that spoke first. “Mistah, you givin’ us a job?”

  Black chuckled and swirled the contents of his cocktail glass thoughtfully. “Good help is hard to find. But Billy’s right; you two need a bath and some fresh duds. Tell you what: you do a good job tonight, and you’re hired. Room and board, and I’ll even advance you a couple bits for some new clothes.”

  The giant grudgingly lowered his captives to their feet. As soon as he was standing on his own, Linc immediately clasped his hands in front of him and lowered his head, avoiding any eye contact with their benefactor. “Thank you, Mistah Black.”

  “You’re the boss, boss,” muttered the giant, “But mark my words, when this gets out, we’ll have ‘em swarming like cockroaches, asking for a handout.”

  Black smiled at Joe. “Oh, I think these boys know how to keep a secret.” And then, as if the encounter had grown tedious, the club owner abruptly turned on his heel and strolled away.

  Joe winced as Billy’s hand again clapped down on his shoulders. “You heard the man. There’s work to be done.”

  The giant said it like he was handing down a prison sentence, but Joe was secretly pleased. Hard work didn’t bother him; he’d done more than his share of that on the farm. More importantly, he was now at last moving forward, toward his goal. After a week of hanging at the fringes, he was finally beginning to insinuate himself into the flow of city life.

  And if he was lucky, he’d get to see the magnificent Josie Taylor again.

  He did see Josie again, later that night, but not on the Double R’s center stage.

  Half an hour after Josie concluded her set, the night club was all but deserted. Joe was hauling a load of kitchen refuse to the dump pile in the alley and realized, as he hefted the garbage can and shook its contents out, that he had come full circle; the evening had begun here, surrounded by t
rash, and now here he was again. As he contemplated how events had unfolded, he heard the click of heels on the pavement behind him and turned to see someone leaving the club by the back door.

  Not just someone…Josie Taylor.

  Joe felt an almost overwhelming urge to approach her, but caught himself. He decided instead to indulge a lesser temptation. As the buxom singer headed away from the alley, Joe lowered the trash can to the ground and went after her.

  He kept a discreet distance, intending only to follow for a few minutes before turning back, but the seductive sway of her hips entranced him. His new job momentarily forgotten, he soon found himself several blocks from the club, navigating a maze of streets and alleys, and the longer he walked, the more emboldened he felt. He quickened his pace as she ducked into an alley, mentally rehearsing what he would say and do when he caught up to her, but before he could turn into the narrow lane, a heavy figure brushed past him, nearly knocking him to the ground, and dashed into the alley after the singer.

  Someone else, it seemed, shared his interest in Josie Taylor.

  His amorous fantasies were quickly extinguished, replaced by curiosity about this new arrival. He straightened and resumed walking, cautious once more as he turned into the dark passage.

  Josie stood still halfway down the alley, faintly lit by the last whispers of a streetlights glow and otherwise cloaked in shadow. Her head was cocked sideways as if straining to hear something. “What was that noise?”

  Her question echoed from the high brick walls, her voice as resonant and melodic as it had been in the club. Joe didn’t know why she had stopped or what had possessed her to start making rhetorical inquiries, but fearful of discovery, he ducked behind a row of garbage cans, and then just as quickly peeked out. Joe didn’t see the man that had brushed past him and intuitively recognized that Josie’s stalker was also hidden.

  Then the shadows moved.

  Something slithered from the darkness, moving as swiftly and silently as a viper’s strike. Joe started, whether from the suddenness of the attack or from Josie’s ear-splitting shriek, he could not say, but he remained frozen in place.

  Dark limbs, thickly muscled, materialized from the shadows. Hands that curled like the claws of a demon slashed at Josie’s figure, rending her dress to tatters and exposing her garters and stockings. The singer’s milky white skin gleamed pale and ghostly in the diffused glare of the distant streetlights.

  Though its back was to him, Joe instantly recognized the hulking shape of Josie’s assailant, but if there’d been any doubt, Josie’s next words would have confirmed his suspicions.

  “A Martian,” she said, defiance quickly supplanting terror. “Keep away from me. What do you want?”

  The answering voice was strange, at once both the sibilant hissing of a snake and the throaty rumble of a lion’s roar, but the words were in perfectly comprehensible English. “YOU WILL SERVE THE OCCUPATION BATTALION. YOU WILL BE A BREEDING RECEPTACLE FOR THE WAR EFFORT.”

  Joe knew all about this. Part of the reason for the “Martian”—a misnomer, since the invading forces had come from a planet far beyond the reaches of the solar system—invasion was to engage in hybridization with human females. There had been a dangerous decline in fecundity among Martian females, such that the survival of the species was in doubt. It was believed that cross-breeding with humans might not only solve the problem in the long term, but address the more urgent need for replacement troops in the ongoing war effort. And it was no secret that, despite dramatic physical differences between the two species, Martian and human males shared a common ideal when it came to sexual attraction. Joe couldn’t imagine a world where Josie Taylor would be undesirable.

  He knew he should do something, take action, but just as before, during the attack in the wilderness outside the city, he felt paralyzed, partly by fear of what would happen if his presence were revealed, and partly by a morbid curiosity about what would happen next.

  What actually did happen was nothing like what he expected. To his amazement, Josie’s expression of fear fell away like a discarded mask. “Why don’t you be a receptacle?”

  The Martian was as confused as Joe was by the statement. “A RECEPTACLE FOR WHAT?”

  Her eyes grew hard and when she spoke—a single word only—her tone was full of confidence and determination. “Bullets.”

  The lid on a nearby trash can suddenly burst into the air, a human figure springing out like a child’s jack-in-the-box toy. Each hand held a pistol, and each pistol spat a tongue of fire, unleashing a torrent of bullets that tore into the Martian’s exposed flesh. Despite the intensity of the assault, the bullets seemed to have no more effect on the target than might a swarm of gnats. Shrugging off the wounds, the creature started forward, but then a bullet pierced its upper eye, releasing a gush of fluid, and the Martian staggered back.

  Josie shrank back behind the gunman. “I thought you said you had to chop off their heads.”

  Joe raised his eyes to get a look at the gunman. The man wore a long black coat over his fashionable suit, along with a fedora and a long scarf. His strong jaw was partly obscured by a neatly trimmed goatee, but his eyes, his most commanding feature, burned with a singular violent purpose. He might have been considered handsome, but half his face was wrapped in a swath of bandages that could not quite hide a twisted mass of scar tissue. Something terrible had happened to this man, and Joe had no doubt that the Martians were the cause of his injuries.

  The gunman passed over one of his pistols. “You can shoot them in the eye, too.”

  Josie aimed the handgun at the head of the fallen Martian. Like all members of its species, it had three large black eyes, clustered together in a triangle in the center of its face. “Which one?”

  The smoldering eyes narrowed. “All of them.”

  The gunman fired off a volley that ravaged the creature’s orbs. Josie continued to point her gun uncertainly at the fallen Martian. “How many bullets should I use?”

  The gunman answered in the same cold whisper, a voice that sent an icy chill down Joe’s spine. “All of them.”

  The guns thundered again, and bullets punched into the Martian’s head, blasting away huge chunks of flesh until nothing recognizable remained.

  Joe shuddered in revulsion, but remained in hiding, even more fearful now of what might happen if Josie and the gunmen noticed him. Would they, in the grip of what seemed like bloodlust, shoot at anything that moved?

  Fortunately, the shooting seemed to have left them sated. The gunman shrugged out of his overcoat and draped it over Josie’s shoulders as they walked away. “So am I in?” she asked.

  “You’re in.”

  In a flash of intuition, Joe realized that this entire scene had been orchestrated by the gunman. Josie had lured the Martian into the alley—lured him with her beauty—where her accomplice was waiting to spring the trap. The final act, Josie unloading the magazine of the semi-automatic into the Martian’s head, had been a test—an initiation. But into what?

  Joe knew the answer. Josie had just joined the resistance.

  He waited until they were gone before creeping forward, into the alley. The air was acrid with the smell of gunpowder and the rank stink of death and garbage, but Joe barely noticed.

  The resistance! This was why he had come to the city.

  Identifying two members of humanity’s organized response to the Martian invasion was not the same as finding his way into their midst, but it was a place to start.

  The nightclub was the key. Josie’s public performance had been part of the plan; it had drawn the Martian out, put him in their crosshairs…

  But how had they known there was an alien in the audience? For that matter, how had the Martian made his way so deep into enemy territory?

  Joe crept forward to where the Martian corpse lay, its head nothing but a shapeless mass of sludge. Careful, as if touching the remains might somehow infect him with a fatal disease, Joe opened a pouch on the alien’s belt.
Inside was a small black metal control box adorned with a crystal stud. Joe held his breath as he ran a fingertip over the stud.

  There was a faint green flash deep in the heart of the crystal, and then something remarkable happened. A strange aura, like a cloud of iridescent mist, spread out over the Martian’s corpse and coalesced into a solid shape that looked more like a melting wax statue of a man than an invader from another world.

  Joe tapped the crystal again and the illusion vanished.

  He thought about what Mr. Black said back at the club. I think these boys know how to keep a secret.

  Keeping a secret was the easy part. The trick was in knowing how to use it to his advantage.

  He stuffed the control box into his pocket, and then hastened back the way he had come, leaving the Martian to rot with the rest of the garbage.

  The farmboy shouldered his M-1 carbine and stared out across the treetops.

  All was quiet, but then that was nothing new. He had been on patrol duty for a week now, marching from the barracks out to this sentry tower every day to stare at the woods and then back again every evening. He had seen nothing at all. It wasn’t exactly the adventure he had envisioned when first setting out on this road, but he was patient if nothing else, and his patience had paid a handsome dividend already. Only a few short weeks ago, he had been wandering as a refugee out in this very forest, and now he was a soldier in the resistance, keeping watch over it.

  In the week following the incident in the alley, he had confirmed his growing suspicion that the Double R nightclub was a hub of resistance activity. Josie had been absent—curiously, so had Mr. Black—but there were rumors, half-overheard snatches of conversation, indicating that she had gone off on some secret mission to Europe. Joe remained discreetly attentive, taking note of who asked questions and who supplied answers.

  The resistance was, of necessity, a very close-knit affair. There were, it seemed, more than a few humans who were willing to sell out their species to curry favor with the invaders—but he was soon able to ingratiate himself with a recruiting officer, and shortly thereafter, he and Linc took the oath of enlistment. After a hasty block of training in basic soldiery, he was given his first assignment: sentry duty.