Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(48)

We shook with hate and fear and many were sick with it. But it was Dr. Cowan that saw the mark on the creatures and knew it for what it was. There on the bare grey skin he saw it. He rolled his shirt and showed us one to match it. An inoculation scar. He was obsessed with it and talked of nothing else. While others cheered our victory and set about to burn the horrid creatures, he took me aside and told me a secret I cannot set here. But it gave me hope. He bade I write a letter, setting down what I had seen and have a volunteer take it to Montreal. Graham Turner, bless him, vowed to do just that when we two, the Doctor and I, told him what we knew.

Excerpt from letter of Alexander Ross of Lower Fort Garry to the Reverend William R. Seaver of Montreal, June 1846.

Dr. Cowan is dead now, a tragic casualty of events. But as he was sure and made me promise to get word to you, so I entreat you to make some use of this information that was bought at so costly a price.

Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: September 1846.

It is bad here. Many colonials have joined with the Invaders. Once they fought us to shake off tyranny. Now they embrace it to destroy their own people. As people lose their lands and loves, so too their allegiances now suffer.

Yet the world I fear is at war with these creatures. The red weed has stopped up the rivers and closed the trails. It gets thicker and taller each day. Our oxen have eaten the red weed and died of it. Now none will eat any food that has come from soil mingled with those tangled roots. We must work tirelessly to keep our wells clear of it too, it seems to seek water not to draw from but to trap it. A strange plant that wishes the landscape was a barren desert. Those who lay still near the red weed, to rest or sleep sometimes, grow tangled in it after only an hour’s time, as if it seeks them out and grows toward them.

In the thickest areas of the red weed, great stocks as tall as pine trees grow with pods like tulip bulbs the size of ox carts atop them. The Colonials that have turned have begun a sort of harvest of pods for their new masters. They hew them down and sheer away the bulbs’ husks with axes to expose a pulpy fruit. Our Muskegon scouts have observed that the Colonials then bring the harvested fruit into the smokelands where the braves do not dare to travel. I have arranged a troop of volunteers to seek answers beyond the scorched boundaries of the Invaders’ territory.

We have begun a careful collection of munitions from allies and scavengers. Few heavy guns, but many small arms and kegs of powder. A Hudson’s Bay Company man has come into the fold and secured a large number of supplies meant for the garrison at Two Rivers. Word is they are gone now, reduced to a cinder. Somehow, for some reason, the creatures have not returned here.

Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: October 1846.

Fort Riley is in flames. A handful of survivors have made the journey across 700 miles to bring news that the tripods roam the Americas far and wide. I once envied the American cavalrymen and their fleet horses. But a scarred man from the south told me of a detachment of American cavalry moving to reinforce Pembina that were caught out in the open. Men and horses lit like candles and charging, burning, across the fields. To die smouldering and screaming from the fearsome Martian ray.

Decoded Letter. November 19, 1846: Sent from Alexander Ross of Lower Fort Garry to ________ of Montreal.

Your people have made it here. They are safe. But they have told me their appointed duty and I see now that you, sir, must be mad. Either by hunger or grief or drink. But you are surely mad. Bless you. By the time you read this your plan will already be concluded. In victory or failure.

The red weed chokes the river nearly to death. We huddle in this, the first stone fort built in Rupert’s Land, and wonder if it is not better to dig a place to live beneath the earth. For surely no hope remains for those that live above it. One man jokes and laughs in the grip of fear that we could build a new world of men underground. Tunnel our way to a safe land. The others took to his ideas as jests. But some feel he believes it. A madman is no good to me.

Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: January 1847.

I understand now why the things leave us be. We live in the looming shadow of a dead machine. It stands vigilant there day and night and for a year we struck on ways to tip it over. Thank God no such invention equal to the task occurred to us.

The machine provides for us a sort of camouflage from the other machines that stalk the land with increasing frequency. Perhaps they are territorial? Once they see another here, with the trapped human slaves at its feet, they move on. Perhaps they are fearful of it. Maybe the ghosts of their dead ward them off. I cannot judge now.

Letter from Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: February 1847 to W.R. Seaver of the Montreal Resistance.

As you thought, the black smoke is a protective screen. Your plan to send a small group in quickly with no thought to attack has succeeded. They have returned with a device. None of your men are fit to travel after the deed you bade them perform. Sick with symptoms of the black smoke that hangs over the territory of Assiniboia. I fear I must concur with our doctor and medicine men: your brave men will not last out the moon.

With this note are three volumes of the work of Edward Anthony Jenner whom your own man called the father of immunology. I don’t claim to understand what you are working at. But as always I remain one willing to get what needs accomplishing settled to the last.

Should these pages reach you, then they are carried by my servant still. You can trust this man. He is a loyalist and a humanist. You can verify his identity with the phrase I spoke to you on the deck of the Countess of Darlington on our crossing of the Atlantic. He has been running missives for me since the river garrison at Fort William fell. He has with him the device your men procured. I understand a little of what I am told. The device bears closer scrutiny. May God be with you in your endeavour. Please do so with all haste.