The Martian Chronicles

Several young boys hike out to the ruins of a Martian city, goading each other further into the ruins. They bring packed lunches of ham and mayo sandwiches with pickles, and their outing recalls those they undertook on Earth, particularly during autumn; the boys imagine “scuttering through autumn leaves” (117).

As they arrive at the town the boys’ exuberance is dampened as they recall the warnings of their parents about venturing into the abandoned towns. Inside the abandoned homes, they boys hear a crackling, like autumn leaves. They proceed forward slowly, sticks held like weapons, daring each other deeper into the fallen city.

When one of the boys bolts toward the Martian homes, the others run as well, under the agreement that the “first boy there would be the Musician” (117). The boy who assumes the role of the Musician takes up the bones of the dead Martians and uses them as percussive instruments, while the others kick and thrash their feet, sending into the air “black leaves […] thin as tissue cut from midnight sky” (117). The “black leaves” are the remains of the Martian carcasses, death having “turned the dead to flakes and dryness” (118), but the boys are unbothered by the gruesomeness of their game.

The boys are careful to stay ahead of the Firemen, “antiseptic warriors with shovels and bins” (118), who are sanitizing the Martian towns by burning the remains and purging the structures of the traces of death’ “separating the horrible from the normal” (118). When the boys return home, their mothers check their shoes and, finding evidence of the “black flakelets” of the Martian carcasses, punish them and beat them.

By the end of the year, the Firemen have purged all the surrounding Martian ruins, and the boys are denied their fun.