The Man On Putney Hill
by Joseph Q. Publique

The Martian tripods stalked over London with a strangely elegant alien grace, the heat-rays igniting wood, metal and even stone, turning the city into an inferno. The entire population had fled, a mindless, terrified stampede from the massacre of humankind.

But one man watched, standing on the top of a nearby hill next to a blue box and a pile of empty viral canisters. His coat was colourful. His mood was black.

"I warned you." He said quietly, watching the tripods as they engaged in unconditional slaughter. "I told you to leave this planet and never return. I told you that I would use every power at my disposal to stop you if you didn't. You refused to listen."

One of the tripods suddenly froze, as if it could hear his voice.

"You promised to crush the little creatures of this world."

The tripod wobbled.

"Perhaps this will teach you."

Silently, watched by it's comrades, the Martian tripod crashed to the ground as the alien virus infected the unprotected creature within.

"The little things matter."

By the time the rest of the Martian invasion force had succumbed to the common cold, the multicoloured man and the box were long gone.

 

"the Martians - dead! - slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man's devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this Earth."

H.G Wells, "The War of the Worlds"

 

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