He ignored her and turned up the volume:

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been handed a message that came in from Grover’s Mill by telephone. Just one moment, please. At least forty people, including six state troopers, lie dead in a field east of the village of Grover’s Mill, their bodies burned and distorted beyond all possible recognition.

“Jesus Christ,” Vivian said, pausing her clicking. “Six state troopers? Where is Grover’s Mill?”

Edward shushed her, waving his hand in a downward motion.

The announcement continued and Vivian and Edward stayed glued to the broadcast as several radio announcers described the horrifying attack unfolding at Grover’s Mill, which Edward finally whispered was “in New Jersey.”

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars. The battle which took place tonight at Grover’s Mill has ended in one of the most startling defeats ever suffered by any army in modern times; seven thousand men armed with rifles and machine guns pitted against a single fighting machine of the invaders from Mars. One hundred and twenty known survivors. The rest strewn over the battle area from Grover’s Mill to Plainsboro, crushed and trampled to death under the metal feet of the monster, or burned to cinders by its heat ray. The monster is now in control of the middle section of New Jersey and has effectively cut the state through its center. Communication lines are down from Pennsylvania to the Atlantic Ocean.

Edward and Vivian looked at each other. Edward hadn’t wanted to install a telephone in the house because of the expense, and the fact that he didn’t see the need.

“Well,” Vivian began slowly, trying to keep the panic from rising in her throat as she laid the knitting needles, yarn, and booties aside, “we can’t check the telephone to see if that is true because we don’t have a telephone. We won’t know if the lines are down.”

The threat suddenly seemed very real. They were just a couple of hours from New Jersey. Edward pushed up from his chair and swiftly made his way around the small house, locking the windows, yanking down the window shades, and then double-checking the locks on the front and back doors. Vivian had gone to the bedroom and gathered Charlotte up in her blanket, peeking at the tiny face to make sure nothing was wrong with her.

“Get to the cellar,” Edward ordered, before switching off the light in the living room, and following her down the steps. He went to the wall shelf of the chilly cellar where he kept some of his tools and the small portable radio. He switched the volume on and tuned the dial until the alert came in.

They spent the next twenty minutes silent and shivering in the dank cellar of the little house, listening to the developments of the Martian attack. Vivian sat rigidly on Edward’s wooden workbench, rocking Charlotte against her and anxiously bouncing a crossed leg while shooting hostile glares at Edward about the telephone.