When I got back from the
barn, I saw Ma down at the road. The
mailbox is open, but she is
kneeling in the
gravel with her back turned to me. I don't have to see her face to know she's
crying. Some things a son can
sense.
It’s been a few months since it all went to
hell.
October 30, 1938 to be exact. With the
winter just around the corner, work on the farm had been eating up the
hours. Me and
Pa finally got to sit for a few hours after dinner, and we always tuned the
Detrola Model 4-J Cathedral to the clearest signal. On a clear night, you could almost get
Kansas City.
CBS was Pa's
favorite. Hell, any
clear station was Pa's favorite. He
fiddled and
fiddled with his new toy until Ma chased him back to his seat.
He always told me that
radio would
change the world. The day he brought that
wood box home was a "
step into the future". Ma figured it was a
waste of money, but she listened all the same. I didn't really care either way. As we all sat on the day before
Halloween, we had a good laugh at the players of the
Mercury Theatre on the Air trying to
spook people with tales of
Martian invaders. I mean, who would believe that kinda
hooey, especially on Halloween? The gravelly voiced producer, some
Welles fella, came
on the air three or four times to say it wasn't a
play. Sounded
desperate to
sell the story, and it ruined the
illusion for me. We turned off the radio about an hour into the
production, amused but disbelieving.
Turns out nobody really figured on the
Martians coming like they did. Even the
Army was slow to respond to the
monsters that dropped out of the sky with their
death rays and
poison gas. Everybody thought it was a big Halloween
prank. Pa even laughed at the
paper the next morning, with its
end of the world sized "
MARTIAN ATTACK!" headline. Only after we seen the streaking
meteors in the
autumn sky and turned on the radio after lunch did the
ball of ice form in the
pit of my stomach. A bunch of the radio stations were
off the air, and all the others had the voices of scared men telling
impossible stories of horror. Pa made me turn it off before heading to town. "Don't
upset your Mother." he said. It was the last time I saw him.
Pa had been in the
Great War but he didn't talk about it. When he left for town and didn't come back the next day, Ma was in a
state. "Damn fools run off to war again!" she cursed, wailing and carrying on. I gave her a drink of Pa's
whiskey to
calm her nerves and helped her to bed. When I came back down from the barn at dinner, she was still sobbing in her room. Even had to make my own food.
I took up the chores that had to be done to keep the farm from
going to pieces, sneaking the radio at night when Ma went to bed to keep her nerves from any more
shock. About a week after Pa left, she went back to her
housework. Routine comfort I guess. We didn't talk about the
end of the world. At the beginning I had to hide the paper and its tales of
invasion and
alien monsters destroying the
United States,
Great Britain, hell, the whole damned
globe. After a month, the paper stopped coming. Every night, fewer and fewer stations filled the
static on the
dial.
Earth was losing to Mars.
Ole Doc Jimmy from town came around a week ago and caught Ma in the kitchen while I was
tending to the
chickens. She asked him all the questions she never talked to me about. Turns out Pa went down to the
Legion and marched out of town that first night, to
defend his
country. Doc told her why he came round just after I came in. Turns out some
scientist eggheads figured out a way to kill the
Martians. Doc asked Ma if she had caught the
Spanish Influenza that killed so many in round here in
1918. Neither of us had. He said that the Army had been working on making it a
weapon, and it turns out that the
bastards from Mars died in the hundreds in the first test. They saved
Detroit before the figured out the problem.
It killed people just as
efficiently.
In fact, because they had been
messing with it, anyone who didn't get
vaccinated was pretty much
guaranteed to
die. If you survived the first outbreak years back, you had a better
chance. The
lieutenant who directed the city under
martial law had sent the old man out to share a
secret. Vaccinations where going to be done, but a
lottery for
doses was gonna be held. Nobody ever figured we would use the
germ bombs, so nobody made much of the
vaccine. Now it was far
too late. Doc said we would get a
card in the mail if we got chosen.
Sunday would be the
deadline. After that, all you could do was hope for the best. Doc says we have a
50/50 chance, but think he's telling everybody that to keep people from
panic. I thanked him for telling us the
truth, and Ma showed him the door. We
resolved ourselves to wait.
The radio that night spoke in
hushed tones about human victories, and of a
turning tide. Tales of those
giant walking machines falling to
Earth and of people dying from a mystery
bug filled me with
dread and
pride. We were winning, but at
what price victory? That was the last night I turned it on. All we could do was wait.
There's nothing more depressing than an empty mailbox, especially today.
Sunday.