A Sunday Drive in the Old Family War Wagon
by Kirk Eckstine
part 1
Dale Abel’s day was simply not going as he had envisioned it. For instance, he never expected a Martian heat ray to shear the back of his car off as he was driving down the road. He also never expected to come face to face with a Martian war machine as he climbed out of the rest of his vehicle, and he most certainly was not expecting to be running for his life through boggy forests in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota.
Dale was not sure if the Martian tripod was targeting him specifically or if it was just terrorizing the neighborhood in general, but he had no intention of finding out. The pudgy bald man in his white button-up work shirt and smart navy blue tie made admirable time as he jogged though ankle-deep water whilst moving around bog heads.
He stopped only when he was absolutely sure that the machine was not following him. He heard that familiar ‘tun tun tun’ noise as the ray charged up again with the grinding sound of the alien generator discharging enormous amounts of energy. Fortunately, it was much further away than the first time he had heard it.
So they finally came back, he thought as he pulled out his cell phone and tried to call headquarters.
If Dale was being honest with himself, he had felt pretty sure they were never coming back. However, Dale made a strict habit of never trying to be completely honest with anyone. Total honestly had a way of bringing about bruised egos, shouting matches, grudges, death threats, and eventually, the ever-popular restraining order. No, in his experience as a government bureaucrat, complete honesty was a very poor business practice.
He looked back down at his phone again. He had zero bars.
Of course I have no bars, he thought sarcastically. They never build reliable technology in areas sparsely populated almost exclusively with “yokels.” His sat-phone was in the trunk of his car when it evaporated. Dale sat on a semi-rotten log and took off his shoes and socks.
The phone may not have mattered, he thought dourly. His satellite radio had been really sketchy on his way out here before it cut out completely. He wrung out his socks into his shoe without noticing. “It’s entirely possible the Martians jammed the satellite signals before landing.”
After sliding his damp socks back onto his feet and sliding said feet into newly soaked shoes, Dale stood up and attempted to get his bearings. He looked at his watch and then up at the sky. He thought that was how they did it at his one-day survival seminar. The sky was entirely overcast. He then attempted to look for useful landmarks. He was in the woods, surrounded by thick brush, in fairly flat terrain.
He sat back down. Nope, he thought, Today is not going how I planned.
What he had planned was a leisurely Sunday drive out to the back woods of Minnesota. He was going to explain to a family of red-neck farmers that they could not, in fact, take the war wagon stored in a cellar beneath their house and drive it around for leisure. It was simply not permitted, even if the Martians were unlikely ever to come back. Then he was going to smile, lock them out of it, and call the National Guard to have it removed.
He wished he could have done this from his home office but, of course, nothing could be that simple in a government job. The war machine happened to be one of the oldest models made. It was, in fact, one of the very last models left in civilian hands. Everything on it was manual and analog. That meant every time there was an upgrade, a tech was required to drive out and service it. It had to be inspected, which was a task he loathed since first getting this position. It should have been a easy desk job. It was not.
Only the Strommes made that impossible. Reports regularly came across his desk concerning the family. Reports he had to investigate. He had to drive out to tell them they could not use the war machine’s generators to run their house power. Then he had to come back and explain that they could not charge visitors money to view or go inside the war machine. What was infuriating was that he had been forced to pay twenty dollars just to talk to the elder Stromme, non-refundable.
He was forced to admit that it would have been a good money-maker in light of the fact that family farms were doing so poorly these days.
People often drove out to see the farm that contained the oldest war machine ever built, It was rolled off the line in 1965 and sent to the Stromme farm and, through a series of spectacular bungles, the machine was never discontinued when the new models came out in 1985. It was actually erased from the official register for over ten years. By the time the mistake was discovered in the late 90’s, it was the only model of its kind left in existence.
Of course it made the national news. American sentimentality spared it from being destroyed. It was left on the Stromme farm even after all the other models were placed in the hands of the military and law enforcement. It was a largely ceremonial gesture, acknowledging the horrors of the Martian invasion in 1953. They had landed in mostly remote rural areas, and humankind was not prepared for them. The destruction that followed permanently changed the way humanity looked at the stars.
Dale Abel’s thoughts turned to the Strommes again. He shook his head involuntarily. Satellite tracking had captured the war machine moving early in the morning a couple of days ago. That was literally the one rule that was inviolable. It was never supposed to be driven out of its shelter. The shelters were designed to hide their energy signatures. A surprise for the aliens if they ever did come back.
Dale was going to enjoy getting that irritating machine away from the even more irritating family. Or at least he had been, until the Martians came back. Now he was stuck in the middle of nowhere hiding in a swamp while the second War of the Worlds played out around him.
He tried his phone one more time. It still had no bars. He held it as high as could searching for a signal and stepped into another pool of stagnant swamp water.
“Of course!” he said bitterly. He stepped out of the stagnant water and shook his shoe off. It didn’t help.
One of the machines was getting closer. Trees began crashing to the forest floor not too far away. Dale started moving in the exact opposite direction.
He jogged for longer than he ever had before, and he ran even harder when the woods started burning behind him. The trees ahead began to thin. He was amazed at how much carnage was caused by the Martian war machines. Several of them were observed together near the open fields. Their dark, delta-wing shaped bodies hovered fifteen feet off the ground. Their primary weapons was mounted on a flexible stalk that looked as if it ended with a glowing red eye.
As far as he could see, barns and homes were completely destroyed. Vehicles were melted into slag wherever they where found. As he watched, the one cell tower he could see from his position went crashing into the treeline, effectively cutting off communication in the area, Even the Stromme farm was a flaming hole in the ground.
Dale felt a small measure of disappointment. It would have been nice to know that the old war wagon at least belted out a few shots before it was destroyed. Ultimately, that was why they decided to pull the civilian war wagon program. Psychologically, it was believed that the average civilian would freeze in actual combat, making the civilian fleet of war wagons largely ineffective.
From the looks of things, the think tanks and strategists were right. The Stromme farm was proof of it. He turned to make his way back toward the road and noticed a war machine bearing quickly on his position. He turned to run back into the trees as another started to crash through the woods.
Dale Abel screamed and crouched down, trying to be as small as possible. If he was going to die, he did not want to see it coming, he heard the grinding of gears as the war machine from the woods rolled over trees as if they were of no consequence. He heard it pull up next to him. The engine idled; the machine honked at him. Dale closed his eyes tight, preparing to meet his maker.
After what felt like an interminably long ten seconds, it honked at him again. Dale yelped and twitched. Wait, he thought, tripods don’t have horns.
The sound of a thick metal door screeching open caught his attention. He looked up in time to see a small blonde-haired girl wearing a blue NATO helmet. It was far too large for her head,
The little girl stared at him intensely. “Come with me if you want to live!” she called down to the frightened man.
“I’m saved!” he yelled
He frantically climbed up and into the small doorway of the war wagon. The girl pulled the door shut behind him and spun the handle into its fully locked position. She turned and saluted toward the front of the cab.
“Hatch secured, captain,” she yelled.
“Return to gunner’s position!” another small voice called from the front.
Dale looked up just as the machine started lurching through the woods again. The beam of an alien ray struck a glancing blow to the side of the vehicle. A series of alarms went off in the front cabin. The driver seat looked empty. He was startled to see a tiny arm attached to a tiny hand reach out and flip a series of switches. The alarms were silenced.
The little girl called out, “Radar is red, we got no joy, captain.”
“Alright, back into the woods for evasive action,” the captain’s voice replied.
Dale pulled himself to the front of the cabin. The girl was staring at a gunner’s targeting screen. He turned his head to see a young boy at the controls. A ten-year old was driving the war wagon.
“Wait. What?” the man said out loud at the sight of two children.
The “captain” turned his head to consider Abel. The child was wearing an ill-fitted Air Force campaign hat and aviator glasses.
“Sit down, mister, this thing ain’t built for comfort!” the child shouted.
“I, uh, I don’t understand.” Dale babbled as his brain tried to comprehend how this could be happening.
The boy pushed the controls forward. The War Wagon responded to his commands and smashed back into the wall of trees. The jarring motion sent Abel crashing into the overhead compartment. He quickly climbed into the nearest seat and belted himself in.
The girl looked over at the “captain” in irritation. “Dad said not to drive through the woods.”
“He said we could if we had to, and this is a shortcut,” the boy responded.
“You’re just driving through the woods to knock stuff over.”
“Am not!” the captain responded defensively.
“Are too, Davey!”
“Am not, Becky!” the boy replied with a sneer.
“It’s Rebekah! You are, too, and I’m telling Dad when we find him.”
The surreal feeling that Dale had been experiencing finally wore off. It was apparent that an adult needed to take over.
Copyright © 2024 by Kirk Eckstine
