Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse(49)
Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: April 1847.
We found a great pit and in it were, I think, the great majority of the Muskegon who had lived anywhere within 100 miles of the fort. They had been drained to husks. I am sick with the sight of it. Yet I am also sick with guilt. I was glad they were not my people. The thought rose in me unbidden and I was ashamed of it. How hot must a fire be to re-forge a man? I cannot bear the thought.
Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: June 1847.
You are right to have me inspect the device. It appears to be a type of inoculator. I believe the Invaders have set a curative against earthly illness. Perhaps that is why they attacked the hospitals and quarantines first. When first I saw the tripod over the triage tent of Fort William, I feared they simply had no mercy. But I see now a terrible design. I have spoken to Dr. Trent who himself witnessed a similar attack and spoke to two others who did as well.
The Muskegon here arranged a meeting with their elders. A tripod took many captives in the early days. But they added that they took only those who had encountered us. When “the white sickness” had laid many of their fellows low. They say Three Legs get stronger with each battle. They say that each sickness is a battle. Just as we saw our illnesses sweep the ranks of the noble savages, so too I think these creatures observed and learned.
Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: December 1, 1847.
We have it. There is the weakness. They fear our coughs and ills more than our cannonades. That is why they waited so long and took so many native lives first. We had infected these poor people with our ills and these horrid creatures used that to build immunity.
I have sent our man back to you with more devices. My people have not been idle in the interim. They have gathered tales of the Martian. Two accounts I am certain have the ring of truth. The Martian flesh, marred just as your Doctor saw. Bearing the scars of inoculation.
From the ledger of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: Summer 1848.
A portion of the Sixth Regiment, along with artillery and engineering detachments consisting of 17 officers and 364 non-commissioned officers and men accompanied by 17 women and 19 children left Ireland for Fort Garry via Hudson Bay. The tripods caught them in shallow water. Fourteen people made it to us. Three soldiers, seven women, four children. Less than 100 members of the Royal Canadian Rifles are with us, plus the Muskegon and the Métis men who say they will fight.
Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: Summer 1848.
The majority of men and women are set to work under the Colonial whips. Turncoat lackeys of the Invaders. I would shoot them but I need the shot. These men have traded our freedom for their salvation. The red weed has taken to the forests and begun to choke them as they do our rivers and farms. But the prairie grass resists. The Muskegon tell me it is because there are too many types. Too many seeds. They say the red weed needs time to study its prey. That the weed is like those who brought it, like the tick that hangs on deer and dog and people if we are not vigilant. The shaman says the weed and the Martians will drain our strength slowly.
Netley Creek still gives us rice aplenty; the red weed does not seem to spread there. None can say why. Cuthbert Grant tells me from his sickbed that it is because we need it. He says the earth itself is trying to aide us as best she may.
Diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: Fall 1848.
I have received a letter from Seaver in Montreal.
The small area of Lachine has become their whole Canada. The alien conveyances run the length of the city proper. From there to Mount Royal is reduced to a charcoal cimitière. Even as I write this they could be gone. Ashes. Or worse.
Last entry of the diary of Alexander Ross: Lower Fort Garry: Fall 1848
The fort is preparing for what may prove our final act. For months now we have been digging beneath the walls under the leadership of a madman. Every gun taken, every bullet scrounged, will be hurled at the Invaders to draw them here. We will fight them to the last.
But a final stand is not our plan but our means. First we will lay our trap. And then they will come.
Jesuits have helped us prepare a final offering. Every sick man and woman in Rupert’s Land we have brought here. Every malady and illness we can move has been brought here. The physicians and thinkers in Montreal will put their theories to the test. A reversal of the infernal technologies and theories that have made these creatures at home here. By right the earth is ours. Men do not die in vain, I am certain now. We have won our right to this world by a thousand poxes, by a hundred thousand bloody fluxes. The Invaders think they can adapt a population at a time. They think they can bleed up and inoculate a few at a time. No. We have 100 volunteers. I myself have been administered 19 injections.
The children are leaving with the Muskegon that have promised to take them into the great wide lands where the tripods do not yet stride. Where, if we are lucky or right or favoured by God, they shall outlive these horrid things by simple virtue of being born human and of the earth.
Our last group is moving off now. I can see them going from my place at the wall. When they are gone our engineer will knock loose the final strut and down our three-legged watchdog will fall. We will be open for conquest again. Our din shall give cover to those who leave.
They are already calling this place by its new name. They say it is the narrow place were the Great Spirit stood. They call this place Manitou-Wapow in Muskegon and M nanidoobaa in Anishinabe, both meaning the straits of Manitou, the Great Spirit.