Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(47)

Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: January 1845.

What was left of the Council of Assiniboia has gathered here in a pile of stones that is more of a storage depot filled with pelts and sundry items than a garrison. It seems that the defence of this bend in Red River falls to us. It is strange to me how quickly our own riflemen had thrown open the gates to the Muskegon. Once we called these people by different names. We would judge them separate and make their women our country wives. Now we embrace them as we are, natives to this world, facing an invader that sees us not as tribes or monarchies, not parliaments, nor assemblies nor confederacies, but as commodities. Word has come from Foss, the Invaders mean to enslave us. We are all one people now.

Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: February 1845.

Lady Simpson’s piano has lifted the spirit of this terrible place. I think sometimes of the journey it took to reach here unscathed. I see in the faces of the people here who have never seen a piano the awe of the machine that makes music for them at the hands of Dr. Cowan. William learned to play in medical school in Glasgow and is a skilled hand at the keys. It was the first piano in Rupert’s Land, they say. Which may be true. Fitting, maybe, that the first may be the last to be played. We have found the music to be a simple but effective comfort in the long dark nights. If those that carried it here by ship, York boat, and canoe, had known the value to these few here in the dark, they would have brought 100 more without thought to the burden. What strength may come from a song. What comfort from a tune that stays in your whistle. Perhaps it is the forgotten purpose of music. To keep the monsters at bay during long nights.

Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: February 1845.

I think it was Lady Simpson’s piano that brought the creatures from inside their strange conveyances. For we know now that the three-legged beasts that glare fire are machines, not creatures. They are clockwork crab shells with bits of science crammed inside. Like steam engines without steam, with legs rather than wheels. How do I know? I have seen their riders. I have seen the flesh of the horror that prey on us. They came here. By God and country they came here, and I saw them, touched them.

John Ballenden thinks it was the fault of a young blacksmith’s apprentice. Baptiste Kennedy had bought a scrap of tripod shell from a trader. The man said he had found it past the rapids near Mackenzie Rock. He had thought to heat it as to ascertain if it was in fact a sort of metal as was a topic of debate. Day and night outside the wall, at the forge, he heated and struck at the thing. In the morning on the follow ing day, thick snow across the prairie grass and our breath in the air, we saw the monument to our horror. A tripod standing motionless across the river.

I tried my best to calm the people. We had all heard of them. Some had seen them at a distance, all had met someone who had. It was part of life here. But even as I said it, I knew. This was not an animal as some predicted. I felt what the Indians called its spirit eye, looking deeply at us. A cold intellect. I felt a sort of envy in it, though I cannot say why.

When the ray reached out and set the blacksmith’s shop alight it set up our powder store too and the calamity threw the stones of our wall into a tumbled heap. More of those cursed beams stabbed into the fort. From the Men’s House I could see the barracks burst into flames which roared to hungry life. Men charged from within, fire across their limbs and backs. The old man from the Sixth Regiment believed that powder was the target. A reduction in our defences before the rest occurred.

Which was to say that all who tried to venture out, to forage, to hunt, to go for water or flee for their lives, were burned down to ash out there in the open ground beyond our fort. They had laid us to siege, though for what purpose then, none could say.

I think now I understand what they waited for. It was six days later, when we were huddled and fearful in the mess hall, that Dr. Cowan thought to strike a tune on that piano. He played and, by God, he lifted us up to sing. He played a long piece full of joy and wit and mirth. We went to sleep that night with the lightest of hearts and a hope we had not known. That night they came.

We had slept together in the Big House as was now the custom. Watchful of each other. John Black had a cough which kept him up. Maybe that’s why they took him. To quiet the night, because we never saw him again.

First it was the spirit eye that came. I had been awakened by it. Suspended there on its long stock. It moved along as if in water, suspended in the air. A strange serpent with a lantern for a head. It had a pale red glow. When it withdrew, they came. Three of them. Of course, three. Rounded bodies with great dark eyes and curved beaks. They moved along, lifted by corded tendrils in great bunches, eight on each side which connected to the body, anchored to the side of their mouths. There seemed a great endeavour to be had in each motion. A strain to lift up and move forward.

Some others woke and, with voices caught and terror full, we shook the others awake.

The creatures heaved themselves along slowly and made their way to the piano. One watched us closely and we knew fear and silence. The other two set to examine the musical instrument with some interest. Maybe it was the magic of the thing. To them it was our strange object of worship and it brought us strength when the keys were pushed. To them it must have been very alien indeed.

I must have been trembling fiercely for Miss McLeod reached to take my hands and pulled them to her bosom. That simple act awoke in me a sort of madness for life. I would have it out. I would survive. I would not hide in the dark from monsters. I stood suddenly and found I was not alone. Mary, Captain Foss’ country wife, too had stood. She had in hand a knife, from the kitchen I think. We were at them then. Not in any unison or coordinate action. We simply entered the fray. For my part I am ashamed to set down that my fists and fury were nothing on the cold flesh I pounded. I gave everything and those tendrils laid me to the floor. While the beak snapped and took a slice of my leg, the grey cords as thick as my arms beat me down. The Muskegon woman, though, struck another beneath the eye and the knife opened a wound that sent her blow up to the wrist into the creature. The writhing explosion of motion and hot terror tore the room asunder and the creature’s death throes sent those 16 tendrils flailing. Then the rifles took the rest. Out of their skyward wagons these hateful things died as men do, with blood and pain and screams.