Warbirds of Mars: Stories of the Fight! Read online

  “I wonder what’s happened in Europe,” John’s voice broke the reverie.

  “My God,” was all the general said.

  Robert started when he spied the fuel gage. “We had better figure out where we are soon. We’re running outta gas.”

  “Then what?” John asked.

  Robert shrugged. “We put down in the easiest spot, hide the plane, and try to figure out where we are and whether we should continue on foot, find a car, or get fuel somehow back to the plane.”

  They left the plane hidden among the tree line off the road they used to set down, once the fuel ran out. They were far enough from a major city that they figured they would be stuck trying to find a car. The air was quiet, though there was none of the usual bird sounds that such a green patch of America should have. The invasion felt as far away as every last bit of life on Earth.

  “Damnit, Grover,” MacArthur hissed. John pulled the Martian prosthetic leg off the general’s wrapped stump, and the old man snatched it away. “What kind of an aide are you?”

  “One with burned hands, sir,” John said, holding up his gloves. “Let’s try it again, see what we can fix, so we can get you on the road.” He took a look at the open side of the leg. “Where does it hurt, sir?”

  Robert let their conversation fade away.

  Nothing; not a car, a bus, or even a tractor passed them in the hours since they had touched down. Robert tried to fix their position based on his charts, keeping one eye open in the hopes of flagging down help. Finally he sighed in defeat on both fronts. “No luck. Not only do I not know where we are, but I think we’re going to have to hoof it.”

  It took them a while, but they found a way to get the prosthetic onto the general’s leg and get him hobbling along. They took their supplies and findings, and followed the road eastward.

  The group found a farmhouse within an hour, abandoned of all hope down to the last piece of livestock, after a downed Martian saucer had slammed into one side of the old place. There were some disturbing signs of a struggle, but no bodies of any kind, and the Martian ship was sealed off from prying eyes by some sort of alien lock.

  As night fell, they took turns sleeping inside the children’s’ bedroom that had survived the crash, each one thankful for the uncomfortable old bed and woolen blankets.

  “We’re in potentially enemy-held territory,” MacArthur reminded them at dawn.

  Robert stuffed a piece of egg into his face and handed the first food any of them had eaten in a day to each of his compatriots. “Why don’t we look around what’s left of the house and make some disguises, so we just look like refugees instead of escaped Army men?”

  “Say, that’s a swell idea, actually.” John grasped a fork in his gloved hand and gobbled up his first egg. “There’s a gauze wrap in the bathroom. We can use some of that and a pair of pants to hide the General’s leg, explaining the limp.”

  Once breakfast was out of the way, Robert navigated the wrecked farmhouse to the master bedroom’s remains. In one corner, the lady of the house’s vanity and mirror rested undamaged. Robert sat down, looking at the undestroyed portion of the room and at himself in the mirror. He ran a hand through his short, dark hair and along the whiskers darkening his ashen face. Alone, exhausted despite the sleep he’d had, and still in shock after the events of the past twenty-four hours, his thoughts turned once more to home. He wondered if he would ever see his family again, if ever he would hold Gina in his arms and kiss her sweet face, or smell her hair. Desperation overcame him at the thought of their deaths, and Robert turned away from the vanity before he might see himself weep.

  I must keep hope, he thought. It’s all I have.

  Robert’s vision rested on a toppled stack of pulp magazines, and he almost smiled. The Shadow, The Spider, and a few Spicies had been exposed when the pile of pulps had spilled and spread across the hard wood floor. He had been a reader of those rags himself during the 1930s—The Shadow in particular.

  The master closet was still full of clothes, coats, suits and more. Robert changed out of his own beaten military shirt and tie, and tried on a white shirt and black double-breasted suit. He chose the farmhand’s best and loudest yellow and red tie, and he found to his delight that the black fedora fit decidedly well. Next he pulled down a dusty knit scarf of green and wrapped it around his face to conceal everything but the eyes. Too obvious, he thought. “Too Shadow,” Robert said aloud. He took off the scarf.

  Robert hurried into the master bathroom and grabbed the roll of medical gauze John had mentioned. He tried several variations before deciding on a head wound that covered the left side of his face, leaving only the eye visible. Back in the master bedroom, he wrapped part of the scarf around his neck and began secreting items within a long, black overcoat. He hid his pistol, a pocketknife, his dog tags, another knife he found in a drawer, and another pistol that had been left on the top shelf of the closet.

  Back in the kitchen, John was applying gauze bandages to MacArthur’s shoe and ankle area to keep the trousers he’d taken from the farmhouse from riding up and exposing the alien prosthetic. “We’re going to need aliases,” the general was explaining.

  “How about ‘Patton,’ sir?”

  “That’s not very damn funny.”

  They both looked up when Robert entered the room. “I’ve already thought of mine.”

  He stood before them, all in black, the fedora concealing his reddened eyes and the bandages covering half of his face. He held both pistols up, and the scarf trailed over one arm.

  “Where’d you get the other sidearm, soldier?” John asked.

  “Trust a farmer to be well armed.” Robert answered.

  MacArthur nodded slightly. “Your name, sir?”

  “Hunter Noir.”

  The family truck was gone, but the group of disguised soldiers found a tractor that was running and hitched a trailer to it, putting the general in the back. Hunter, as he was now being called, stood on the hitch as they slowly bumped along the road heading east.

  Within a few hours, they knew they were nearing a town or city by the burned out homes and toppled cars. Soon the tractor was passing bodies as well.

  “What are they doing here, General?” Hunter asked. “What are they doing to us?”

  MacArthur set his teeth into his magnificent pipe and looked up at the sky through shaded eyes. “Who knows? Precious metals? A tactical position? Perhaps their own world is dying?”

  “In any case, what can we do against their power?” John asked.

  The general’s voice turned hard. “We fight. Whether we face them now with every man we can muster, or we form a resistance and learn new ways to face them in the air or on the ground. It’s our duty to rally against them, not fall to our own timidity.”

  Hunter smiled almost imperceptibly. “You’ve found your voice again, at least, General.”

  “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

  “Oh, its about time,” John exclaimed. “Look!” He pointed at the oncoming convoy of green US Army jeeps and troop transports. As the tractor’s road converged with the jeeps, they all came to a halt. Two soldiers quickly got down and covered the disguised group as they stopped.

  MacArthur got down and hurriedly hobbled over, grinning around his signature corncob pipe while replacing his civilian cap with the general’s. “Who is your C.O.?” he asked with authority. The guards stood stunned, but lowered their Thompsons.

  “I am,” said a third man, getting down from a jeep.

  “Reports of my death, I’m happy to say, have been greatly exaggerated,” the general extended a hand. “General Douglas MacArthur.”

  “Commander Rosenberg, sir. I’m sure as hell glad to see you. We thought you were in the Pacific.”

  “The Captain and I were captured, Commander. If it wasn’t for Hunter Noir,” he gestured toward Robert, “we might really be up the creek.”

  “Can you tell us where we are, Commander?” Hunter hiked a thumb over his shoulde
r. “The compass in our plane was on the blink when we went down.”

  Rosenberg nodded. “Just north of the Florida border. We’re headed to a temporary base we’ve set up just out of range of the lines. General, we’d be grateful for any help.”

  John said, “We’re just pleased to find you, sir. You’re the first live and free people we’ve seen in twenty-four hours.”

  MacArthur motioned that he needed assistance getting into the jeep. “What reports have you heard thus far, Commander?” Hunter sat next to him and John was forced into another seat.

  Rosenberg’s face was grim. “Everything is half-garbled so far, sir. Some think Texas and parts of the Midwest have been wiped out.”

  Hunter’s heart sank at the words.

  “Word is that Washington, D.C. is under Martian rule,” Rosenberg continued. “New York and LA have held their lines. We’ve got an invasion force bottlenecked and held on the Florida peninsula. That’s where we’re headed now.”

  MacArthur’s voice held a new edge. “What about Omaha? What of the Germans?”

  “Nothing is confirmed…” Rosenberg averted his eyes, “but there have been reports that the invasion fleet at Omaha beach was wiped out. Europe is in total blackout, sir. I’m sorry.”

  Hunter watched and nearly reached out physically to MacArthur as the man sagged visibly, almost to the point of collapse. He was an injured man, whose pride and hope had taken more of a brunt than he had let on.

  There was a silence that fell over them all for what felt like hours.

  Explosions thudded in the distance like the sound of thunder, and the sky glowed an eerie orange, with green lining the low clouds. There was a war going on here.

  A squad of Warhawks passed over, followed by Mitchell bombers heading south for the peninsula. Flashes of light met them as they disappeared over the lush green trees. The jeep convoy came to a halt near a row of tanks.

  Rosenberg’s mobile operator took the phone from him, and the commander reported to MacArthur’s trio. “Our ground and air forces are fighting an army of Martian walkers that has advanced to a point just a few miles from here. We have them trapped at the peninsula’s bottleneck, but we haven’t been able to push them back and liberate Florida. Their line has held for six hours, and we keep throwing men at them.”

  MacArthur was silent. John just stared at the old general.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Hunter asked.

  Rosenberg nodded. “We don’t understand it. Their flyers seem to have pulled back, but their walkers and ground troops just hold the line. There’s a small gathering of some of those walkers just beyond our range that are sitting there, back to back, in groups of three. Those groups have begun to glow, actually, so some of our boys think that maybe they’re powering up for something.”

  John stood up from his seat. “Sir, I can’t take this anymore, and neither can you. I request that we leave this area and find a place of safety with command.”

  “Command?” MacArthur intoned. “And just where is command, Captain?”

  “We need to leave!”

  “That will be enough.”

  John had jumped from the jeep. The man was practically hysterical. “Sir, we need to go, now!”

  Hunter stepped forward and punched him out. John fell to the ground with a thud, moaning.

  “Hunter!” MacArthur had finally reacted, standing uneasily. “What’s the meaning of this?”

  Hunter knelt down, ignoring the guns trained on him. He grasped John’s collar and tore the cap from the man’s head. Beneath it was a small third eye. “I had my suspicions, General, but I’d hoped I was imagining things.” He tugged on the fingers of one of John’s gloves. The glove came off, revealing only two fingers and a thumb on the hand—the others had been fake digits slipped inside of the mitt. “He’s one of them.”

  MacArthur stared. “Secure that thing!” Soldiers rushed to complete his order, binding the still dazed creature that had masqueraded as a human. MacArthur slumped back in his seat. “My God.”

  “What is he?” Rosenberg asked. “What happened to the Captain?”

  “If there ever really was a Captain John Grover,” Hunter said. “More importantly, why did he suddenly want to leave so badly when he heard about the glowing walkers?” Hunter got his binoculars from his coat. “Commander,” he said with authority.

  Rosenberg responded accordingly. “Yes, sir.” No one had said this man’s full name or rank, but he had come with the general and unmasked a traitor.

  “I need someone to get me closer to the lines. We need to know what they’re up to, before we’re all dead.”

  Silent though he was, Hunter was surprised to find the limping General MacArthur among the group of men working their way to the first line of tanks and artillery on the line.

  “What do we know so far?” Hunter asked.

  “Only what we’ve observed,” the commander said. “There’ve been three types of ships, and the smallest are those disks or saucer things, which can attach to those legs and become walkers. Their death rays are incredible, and their armor plating is strong but not impervious. Then there’s their maneuverability, which is beyond our own. Somehow those engine pod things on either side do the trick. And those are exactly what’s glowing on the walkers that have gathered just out of our gunnery range.”

  Hunter stood atop a tank alongside Rosenberg and raised his binoculars. He could see what the commander was talking about—a line of six sets of Martian walkers in groups of three each stood back to back, their under and over side engine ‘pods’ pulsing an eerie green. “I see it.”

  “The glow has gotten stronger,” Rosenberg said.

  “It’s a count-down,” Hunter said loud enough between artillery firings. “I think they’re going to explode.”

  “What! Why?”

  MacArthur was on the ground, watching with his own spyglasses. “They can’t get off of the peninsula. We’ve got them trapped in a vice, picking off each wave as they try to advance. But if they explode a big enough bomb, they’ll take the engaging army with them when it all goes up.”

  “If you’re right, sir,” Rosenberg said, “then they’ll destroy all the forces we’ve managed to mass in the south so far!”

  “Pull your men back,” Hunter told them. “They’re building to some sort of explosion, for sure. That’s why John was so afraid.”

  Rosenberg looked at the general, who said, “He’s right. Leave some volunteers behind with a few tanks or mortars to make it look like we’ve fallen for it. When they see the Martians get airborne, tell them to run for it. Everything else needs to start moving north yesterday, Commander.”

  A ray blast from a Martian walker streaked close by. Everyone ducked except MacArthur.

  “Move out,” he commanded.

  Rosenberg nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “General,” Hunter addressed the man and climbed down from the tank, “you and I will be in the last troop transport, with the prisoner.”

  MacArthur hesitated only a moment before accepting the vague idea. “I see,” he nodded.

  The convoy was set to roll out within five minutes. A line of tanks, artillery, jeeps, trucks, and more filed out of the battle zone and headed for safe ground. Hunter assisted the general as they climbed into the covered back of the final troop transport to make ready. Lying on the floor was John Grover, his three-fingered hands cuffed behind his back.

  Minutes passed. Hunter and MacArthur sat with their backs to the cab, watching as Florida fell away behind them. The glow was already getting bigger; a giant orange blotch against the gray sky.

  “Welcome back, John,” Hunter said to the bound traitor, when the man began to stir. “Thanks to you, the Army lives to fight another day.”

  John looked over his shoulder at the receding glow of the Martian bomb, and his shoulders slumped. “I see.” With speed and agility that surprised Hunter, the traitor’s hands slipped from the bindings cuffed around them. He reache
d into his jacket and pulled out a small pistol. “How did you know?”

  Hunter smiled. “You mean after your convenient posting as the General’s aide, merely a day before the invasion, before what should have been D-day? I noticed your gloves; you never took them or your cap off and two fingers on each hand never moved independently.” He barely glanced at the gun, and smiled again, this time with an air of malice. “Then there was how easily we escaped from Wichita. I deduced that you were a plant, intended to bring a broken and beaten MacArthur to his superiors to help spread the word that humanity has no chance, or perhaps you wanted to assassinate them all. That was after your kind failed to turn the General into a puppet—some sort of propaganda machine-man with a destroyed will.”

  John nodded, “Well done. You have the instincts of a hunter.”

  “What I don’t understand, is what you are.”

  “I am the future,” John announced. “The result of a mating between my kind and a human female—only I am much more. The half-breeds born without enough traits of my people are cast off, killed before they can further contaminate the line. But some are born with abilities unforeseen, and they can infiltrate human society.”

  “But that would mean that you have been here for years,” MacArthur said.

  John laughed. “We’ve been sending reconnaissance here for decades, and I am the offspring of those missions.” His laughter was mocking. “You are self-deluding fools. You think the people within your government didn’t know? Children! Ants before the might of our race to be swept aside for Earth’s new masters.”

  He pulled the trigger.

  Click.

  Hunter pulled the magazine for the weapon from within his own coat. “You should not underestimate your enemy.”