CHAPTER FOURTEEN

BROTHER STEPHEN

Am I not a man and a brother?

—Josiah Wedgwood

Stephen Smith, 26 December, Mars Year i

San Bernardino County, California, Planet Earth

My younger brother Stephen was living in Loma Linda, a suburb of Los Angeles, when the Martians first landed. He’d completed his medical studies the year before, and was now serving as an intern at a university there, working long, grueling shifts. Consequently, he heard very little about the Martians until he went off duty early Christmas morning.

For whatever reason, and we have no idea why, most of the original complement of Martian spaceships fell either in the San Francisco Bay Area or the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region. The first of them to impact the Southland smacked into an old inn and resort near La Quinta, southwest of Palm Springs, on noon of Christmas Day; and the rest soon followed, day after day, striking mostly the inland communities of Southern California. Perhaps the Martians had some idea of driving the population together in the great urban centers, although as things worked out, the aliens actually moved too slowly to capture many of the refugees. We really don’t know why.

That night a capsule fell on the Inland Empire, and suddenly my brother’s plight became more serious. The news reports were now showing the danger posed by the Martian fighting-machines. Everywhere the alien ships were unfolding themselves, with the usual deadly consequences. With an enemy vessel located less than a dozen miles away in San Bernardino, Steve knew that he had to evacuate right away.

Of course, the power stayed on longer in the Southland, which enabled the folks there to follow the news for one or two days more, depending on where they lived. Also, there were a number of military bases located in Southern California, and the response by the authorities was somewhat quicker, given the fact that the news regarding the events up north had already been disseminated to the media.

On St. Stephen’s Day (ironically enough) an evacuation of the area was ordered by Major General John Edgar Smuts. The population was told to retreat west to the coast, northeast to the San Joaquin Valley, or south to San Diego, whichever was easiest. Stephen could already see a column of smoke rising from northeastern San Bernardino. The fire caused by the landing had ignited the brush when the Santa Ana winds blew in around noon, and so the authorities were facing two major problems. Southern California had had very little rain that season. Sometime later that day the San Bernardino ship finally unfolded, and the first casualties occurred on a university campus there.

My brother felt no anxiety about us, because I’d talked with him briefly after the first ship had landed in Novato, and he figured we’d long since evacuated. The news from the Bay Area became spotty, though, after communications and power lines were cut. Steve wasn’t married, had had no time, really, to pursue a social life. He lived in a walk-up apartment off the end of Mountain View. But he suffered from the same incessant curiosity that I did, and so he immediately headed to the area where the Martians had established their pit in San Bernardino.

He knew from news reports that the San Bernardino capsule had landed near Park Avenue and College Parkway. Interstate 215 had been blocked by the police at its junction with Highway 210, but he used the city streets to sneak within a mile of the landing site, and then ran his motorbike up a hill behind the campus, not far from the San Andreas Fault, where he had a bird’s-eye view of the proceedings. Only the bulk of the library building blocked a portion of his vision. He told me afterwards that he’d just wanted to see the aliens for himself before they were all killed. He also tried calling me again on his cell phone, but of course by then the towers were down all over the Bay Area, and remained so until long after the crisis had passed.

At first Steve could only see a line of black smoke. As I mentioned already, the Santa Ana winds were blowing about 30-40 mph, generally to the west or northwest, pushing the brush fire away from the campus towards the housing communities and businesses that lined I-215, and crossing the tracks of the main rail line that ran on the other side of the freeway up to Cajon Pass. This posed a major problem for the authorities, because it effectively blocked one of the few exit points out of Southern California. They were trying to stop the fire from spreading any further west. The military convoys that had been sent from Camp Pendleton and Fort Irwin had to fight through dense smoke even to establish a perimeter around the Martian pit. The number of very large campus buildings made their task even more difficult.

Steve watched while several of the structures were occupied by the troops, who established machine-gun emplacements on top of the library building (which directly overlooked the pit), and also on the roof of an adjoining faculty office structure.

As soon as the Martian “egg” began to crack, our boys unleashed everything they had, forcing the aliens to bottle up again immediately. Already several of their vessels had been destroyed around the country through aggressive artillery and missile attacks at the first sign of activity in the pits. Nothing else happened in San Bernardino for another hour, until late afternoon.

Then the Martians unslipped their ship very quickly, thrusting through the opening a protective canopy that would become the carapace of a fighting-machine. Our concentrated fire proved ineffective, and Steve was soon witnessing the destructive power of the alien sting-rays, as they zapped our emplacements into oblivion. Edwards Air Force Base had sent a squad of fighters to strafe the Martians, but this too had minimal effect. The aliens had already adjusted their strategy to account for the best we had to offer.

Finally, Smuts ordered his remaining forces to retreat. This was cunning of him, because he had used the initial occupation period to lace the surrounding grounds with very large land mines and other explosives, and to wire several of the larger buildings with munitions designed to implode them.

As the soldiers pulled back, the Martians emerged from their pit in force, quickly erecting several of the great striders, and knocking out any opposition they encountered. Then they began aggressively moving forward against our army, destroying everything they encountered. But as they stepped onto the open stretches of the campus lawn, several mines blew up, overturning one of the fighting-machines. This stopped them for awhile, because they had to set their fallen comrade to rights; they also used the time to mount a third strider.

Smuts had left some guerrilla forces in place to taunt the Martians with hand-held missiles and bazookas and similar kinds of “stingers,” and this prompted the alien machines to move forward perhaps more quickly than they’d intended, without first assessing the situation. Smuts had placed his men within the concrete buildings fronting the quad on the south side of where the Administrative Center had once stood. Of course, the tripods attacked these facilities aggressively, moving ever closer to pick off the little irritants that were “stinging” them incessantly. When the striders reached the faculty office building, the remaining soldiers withdrew and blew the structure, collapsing it onto a fighting-machine. The tons of concrete completely buried one of the Martians, destroying it.

Thereafter the striders remained at a respectful distance while they systematically demolished all of the other buildings on campus. Smuts’s men had put up a good fight, but it wasn’t enough. The Martians had prevailed once again.

Steve left the scene not long thereafter, and headed straight home. He packed his few belongings into a carryall, and attached it the back of his motorcycle. Since Interstate 10 was blocked near Palm Springs and I-215 was cut off in San Bernardino, he decided to head west.

First, though, he checked with his hospital to see if his services were required, but they were already evacuating their patients to the coast. At this point Steve had had very little sleep during the previous two days, and was beginning to feel extreme fatigue. Also about this time the power went out in the Inland Empire, and although it came on again briefly later, it was gone for good by nightfall.

Everywhere the roads were packed by people trying to escape the Martian invaders. Steve took the back roads to the Moreno Valley. The Santa Anas were still blowing steadily from the high desert down to the ocean, acting like a natural heater to bake everything between the inland areas and the coastline.

Steve stopped for dinner at a café just the other side of Riverside. The power was still on there.

“There’s fighting near Indio,” one of the patrons said.

Everyone was discussing the war.

“What’ll it be?” the waitress asked my brother.

“Aren’t you going to evacuate?” he asked.

“Nah,” she said, “they’ll put this right in a day or two.”

“Coffee,” he said, “lots of coffee. What’s your special?”

“Pork chops, but they’re kinda greasy. Try the New Yorker instead.”

“New Yorker it is, medium rare, baked, and salad with vinegar and oil on the side. Aren’t you afraid?”

“Come on, who’d want anything in Moreno Valley?”

“You’ve got a point,” he said.

The place seemed busy enough, and nobody appeared worried about the day’s developments.

In fact, as the hour progressed, more and more customers kept crowding through the door, until the restaurant ran out of booths.

“Mind if we sit here?” said a woman with her ten-year-old daughter in tow, as she slipped into the booth opposite him. She was short and dark-haired and slightly overweight. Her child was a thinner version of herself, armed with braces and eyeglasses.

“Go ahead.” Steve waved his fork while munching steadily on his lettuce.

“The freeway’s just terrible,” she said. “It’s taken me two hours to get here from Redlands.”

“Bumper to bumper, eh?” he said.

She shook her head in frustration. “I’m Cassie, by the way.” She held out her hand.

“Steve,” he said.

“And I’m Erie,” the girl said very emphatically. “That’s short for Erin.”

His two companions ordered their dinners. Their first choice was already gone: the café was running short of food.

“We’re heading to Laguna,” Cassie said. “My sister lives there.”

“A bit out of your way, isn’t it?”

“We’ll try cutting across on the Ortega Highway, if it’s open,” she said. “What about you?”

“They’re evacuating people from the coast any way they can, using ships from the Naval Base in San Diego, as well as freighters, pleasure craft, and sailboats. So I guess I’ll head there.”

His New Yorker plopped down in front of him. It actually looked fairly good.

“Ketchup or steak sauce?” the waitress asked.

“No thanks,” he said, waving her off. “I’m just trying to get to San Pedro or Newport Beach, and then we’ll see what’s possible.”

“You look tired,” the woman said.

“Yeah, too many late nights, too much of everything.”

The waitress brought halibut for Cassie and a hamburger for her daughter.

They ate in silence for a few moments.

“I’ve…,” they both started to say at the same time—and then laughed.

“I’ve got plenty of room in my SUV,” Cassie suddenly said. “We could use some help.”

“Already got a motorbike,” he said, and then paid an inordinate amount of attention to his food.

“I mean, I’m not trying to….” She swallowed heavily and sipped her iced tea. “It’s just that…. Oh, shit, I always do this. Look, Steve, you seem like a nice enough guy. I’m just worried, that’s all. I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

“None of us do,” he said.

He finished his meal, and then watched silently while his companions ate theirs.

“Dessert, anyone?” their waitress asked.

“Not for me,” he said.

“Not for me, either.” Cassie patted her stomach and groaned.

“I want some pie.” Her daughter, like so many children, favored sweets.

“We’ll take it with us.” Her mother reached for the bill.

“OK.” Steve looked directly into her eyes.

“OK?” Her face was a puzzle.

“Yeah, people have to help each other out these days.”

She obviously hadn’t expected his reply.

“Uh, what do you do, Steve?”

“I’m a doctor, an internist actually, specializing in cardiology.”

She nodded her head. It was good enough for her.

“I’m a dental hygienist.”

“And I go to school,” Erin said. “But Mom says we’re on vacation now.”

“Yes, we’re all on vacation.” Steve smiled at the thought. “A very long vacation.”

He paid the bill for all of them, putting it on his MasterCard, which was still good as long as the power was working. Outside, it was almost dark. He loaded his bike into the rear of the SUV, making room by shifting around their clothes and baggage.

“Good, you’ve got plenty of food and water back here.”

“I tried to think of everything,” she said. “I don’t know if I planned right, but….”

“You did the best you could,” he said. “That’s all you can do. You drive, Cassie: it’s your car and I’m just dog-tired.”

It took them more than an hour to inch their way the ten miles down to Perris, and another hour to get to Lake Elsinore, and he slept the whole way, snoring gently in the back seat while Cassie drove on.

“Steve!” The cry jolted him wide awake.

They’d followed State Route 74, the so-called Ortega Highway, around the northern end of the lake, and there, where it turned away from the lake to start up the mountains, was a barricade that hadn’t been present before.

A group of armed men had parked several large trucks right across the highway, blocking all access.

“Pull over to the side,” Steve said, “and I’ll talk to them.”

He wandered up the highway from the perimeter road fronting Lake Elsinore.

“Hey, guys!” he said. “What’s up?”

Route 74 was vacant behind them.

“We’re the tax collectors,” one man said, stepping in front of the truck line. He carried a hunting rifle slung under his right arm.

“Tax collectors, huh? What kind of tax are we talking about?”

“Three hundred dollars per car, cash on the line.”

“Yeah, we don’t take plastic!” one of his companions said.

They all laughed.

“Isn’t that a bit illegal?” Steve asked.

“Well, maybe it is and maybe it ain’t, but you don’t pay us the money, sonny, you ain’t goin’ nowhere up that there mountain.”

“Haven’t got it,” Steve said, and began walking away.

“Hey!” one of the men said. “We also take trade.”

My brother stopped and turned around. “What kind of trade?”

“Well, that little filly you got over there. She’ll do just fine for an hour or two.”

“I’ll think about it,” Steve said, turning and continuing to amble back to the SUV.

“You do that,” the first man said, “and remember when you come crawling back here tomorrow. Right now the price’s three hundred bucks; tomorrow it’ll be higher, I friggin’ guarantee you.”

Just as Steve reached the SUV, a Highway Patrol car came slewing around the corner, and ran up the short stretch of Highway 74 to the barricade.

“You men there, what are you doing?” echoed the voice from the official vehicle’s loudspeaker.

The “tax collectors” dodged behind their trucks, and abruptly and without warning opened fire. Multiple shots hit the police car, killing the officer inside, stray bullets whizzing by Steve’s head. He jumped into the SUV, slammed the door, and yelled “Floor it!”

They continued down the perimeter road along the lake. A few miles away, another traffic jam slowed them down.

“We’ve got to find shelter for the night,” Steve said.

“Where?” Cassie asked.

He pointed to an unlit house set back from the street.

“Try there.”

When he pounded on the front door, no one answered, so they drove around the place, and hid the SUV from the sight of the road. Then they prepared to camp.

“I’ve just got the two sleeping bags,” Cassie said.

“Keep ’em for yourselves. I have a pillow and a blanket in my pack. That’s enough.”

“We could break into the place,” she said.

He shook his head. “That wouldn’t be right.”

And that was Monday night.

They awoke the next morning to the sound of repeated gunfire off to the north.

“The ‘tax collectors’,” Steve said, groaning as he tried to sit up. He was stiff from sleeping on the ground.

“You think they finally caught up with them?” Cassie asked.

“Had to. The authorities wouldn’t allow something like that to continue.”

They started loading their things back into the SUV.

“Crap!” Steve said, pointing to a hole in the side of the vehicle.

He started going through everything, closely examining the contents, and then shook his head.

“What’s the matter?” Cassie wanted to know.

He grunted and frowned: “Bike’s ruined.”

He hauled it out and showed her the damage to the engine.

“Can’t do anything about it,” he said, tossing the cycle to one side.

Then he indicated a nearby faucet.

“Best fill up every container you’ve got,” he said.

Afterwards they drove into the little town of Lake Elsinore, and found a small, family-run restaurant that was still open.

“Don’t know how long the eggs will last,” the proprietress said, “but you’re welcome to them while we’ve got ’em. Coffee, honey?”

“Please,” Steve said, and they had a quiet breakfast together.

“Any papers?” he asked.

“The Valley Chronicle published a one-sheeter this morning, but most of the news is on TV.” She used her remote to turn up the sound.

“Fighting is reported throughout the San Bernardino area, in Palm Springs, and near Palmdale and Victorville,” the Channel 14 newscaster said. “We’ve got reliable reports that the Martians are on the move again, and that the military is deploying its forces to meet the threat. People are being encouraged to evacuate to the coast, where a massive operation is underway to transport the population to safer areas, particularly San Diego and Mexico.

“The southern freeways remain open, but are heavily crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic; the same is true of the Pacific Coast Highway. Average speed on these roads is less than ten miles per hour. Several of our newscopters have been shot down, and the rest of the fleet has been confiscated by the Air Force, so we can’t give you our usual live coverage. Power has been lost in most of the outlying communities of the L.A. Basin. The Mayor continues to urge calm, and the Governor has issued a statement from his hotel in Austria, telling everyone to be brave and ‘kick some Martian butt’. That’s a direct quote.”

“Calm and brave, right,” Steve said, “just like him. Say, any service stations still open?” he asked the owner.

“Try Ben’s Den over on Water Street,” she said. “If anyone’s got gas, he does. Tell him JoAnn sent you.”

After finishing their meal, they topped off their tank, and then headed back to the Ortega Highway, which was finally open, but completely filled with traffic.

“You really want to do this?” Steve asked.

He was driving now.

“My sister’s in Laguna,” she said.

“But is she even there?”

Cassie tried calling on her cell phone.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Here’re our choices: we can go north to Orange County, where the roads will be terribly impacted; we can take I-15 south, with the same result; or we can chance the Ortega Highway over the hump. It’s about thirty miles through the Elsinore Mountains to San Juan Capistrano, but once we start, there’s no way out: we either come or we go. If we run into some guys like the ones we met last night, we’ll be completely at their mercy.”

She sighed. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “Let’s try it, Steve. I don’t know why, but I trust you.”

“I trust you too,” Erie’s voice said from the back seat.

“OK, then,” he said, and turned onto the highway, forcing his way into the line of vehicles.

The Ortega Highway swings back and forth across the flank of the mountains just north of Elsinore Peak, a 3,500-foot expanse of dry scrub and bushes and trees. Spread along the top of the plateau is the Cleveland National Forest, which includes live-oaks and pine trees as well as scrub and chaparral. As the automobile crawled up the side of the mountain, they had a splendid view of the entire Moreno and Temescal Valleys.

Suddenly they could hear the rumble of heavy firing somewhere in the east.

“Look,” Erie yelled, “over there!”

She pointed out the window.

Far off in the distance they could make out the spindly skeletons of three of the Martian fighting-machines, slowly but inevitably working their way down the Moreno Valley.

“They must have destroyed March Air Reserve Base,” Steve said, pointing to the huge clouds of smoke reaching into the heavens above 2,500-foot-high Steele Peak, which blocked their direct view of the old military facility.

Their SUV continued to inch its way up the flank of the mountain at a stately five miles per hour.

“They’re coming!” Erie suddenly screamed.

“They’re still a long way off,” Steve said. “It’s OK, really.”

But they could see that the striders were moving visibly closer, even as they watched. Cassie and her daughter both had their heads hanging out of the windows on the right-hand side of the car.

“What’s that?” Cassie asked.

Steve glanced over. The Martian machines were coming down the slope from Perris, spraying some kind of black cloud towards the town of Lake Elsinore.

“What are they doing, Steve?”

“I have absolutely no idea,” he said, “but it doesn’t look good. This isn’t their usual weapon.”

“Please go faster,” Erie said.

“I’m going as fast as I can, Little One,” he said.

“Mommy, I’m scared.”

“Me too, Erin,” her mother said, “but we need to be brave now. Steve will get us through.”

But that journey, my brother later told me, was the longest of his life, and he prayed to God all through that interminable trip, not for his own salvation, but to spare the lives of Cassie and her daughter. It took them two hours to reach the top, while the Temescal Valley and Lake Elsinore and surrounding communities all became completely enshrouded in the oily fog. He had no idea what was going on down there, but he knew it couldn’t be good.

He felt an exultation of spirit when they reached the plateau of the Elsinore Mountains. It was around noon, so they broke out some simple fare for lunch, passing it around in the car, even as they continued to inch forward towards Orange County.

No one said anything, not even Erie. It wasn’t necessary. Just their companionship was enough.

If I get no more than this, Steve remembered thinking to himself, I’ll be well satisfied. He looked at his fellow travelers and smiled.

“I think we made it,” he said. “I really do.”

Cassie smiled back at him.

“I know I have,” she said.