The Day of the Triffids

VIII. Frustration

I was walking through an unknown and deserted city where a bell rang dismally and a sepulchral, disembodied voice called in the emptiness: “The Beast is Loose! Beware! The Beast is Loose!” when I woke to find that a bell really was ringing. It was a handbell that jangled with a brassy double clatter so harsh and startling that for a moment I could not remember where I was. Then, as I sat up still bemused, there came a sound of voices calling “Fire!” I jumped just as I was from my blankets, and ran into the corridor. There was a smell of smoke there, a noise of hurried feet, doors banging. Most of the sound seemed to come from my right where the bell kept on clanging and the frightened voices were calling, so it was that way I turned and ran. A little moonlight filtered in through tall windows at the end of the passage, relieving the dimness just enough for me to keep to the middle of the way, and avoid the people who were feeling their way along the walls.

I reached the stairs. The bell was still clanging in the hail below. I made my way down as fast as I could through smoke that grew thicker. Near the bottom I tripped, and fell forward. The dimness became a sudden darkness in which a light burst like a cloud of needles, and that was all

The first thing was an ache in my head. The next was a glare when I opened my eyes. At the first blink it was as dazzling as a klieg light, but when I started again and edged the lids up more cautiously it turned out to be only an ordinary window, and grimy, at that. I knew I was lying on a bed, but I did not sit up to investigate further; there was a piston pounding away in my head that discouraged any kind of movement. So I lay there quietly and studied the ceiling— until I discovered that my wrists were tied together.

That snapped me out of my lethargy, in spite of the thumping head. I found it a very neat job. Not painfully tight, but perfectly efficient. Several turns of insulated wire on each wrist, and a complex knot on the far side where it was impossible for me to reach it with my teeth. I swore a bit and looked around. The room was small and, save for the bed on which I lay, empty.

“Hey!” I called. “Anybody around here?”

After half a minute or so there was a shuffle of feet outside. The door was opened, and a head appeared. It was a small head with a tweed cap on the top of it. It had a stringy-looking choker beneath and a dark unshaveness across its face. It was not turned straight at me, but in my general direction

“‘Ullo, cock,” it said, amiably enough. “So you’ve come to, ‘ave yer? ‘Ang on a bit, an’ I’ll get you a cup o’ char.” And it vanished again.

The instruction to hang on was superfluous, but I did not have to wait long. In a few minutes he returned, carrying a wire-handled can with some tea in it.

“Where are yer?” he said.

“Straight ahead of you, on the bed,” I told him.

He groped forward with his left hand until he found the foot of the bed, then he felt his way round it and held out the can.

“‘Ere y’are, chum. It’ll taste a bit funny-like, ‘cause ol’ Charlie put a shot of rum in it, but I reckon you’ll not mind that.”

I took it from him, holding it with some difficulty between my bound hands. It was strong and sweet, and the rum hadn’t been stinted. The taste might be queer, but it worked like the elixir of life itself.

“Thanks,” I said. “You’re a miracle worker. My name’s Bill.” His, it seemed, was All.

“What’s the line, Alf? What goes on here?” I asked him. He sat down on the side of the bed and held Out a packet of cigarettes with a box of matches. I took one, lit the first, then my own, and gave him back the box.

“It’s this way, mate,” he said. “You know there was a bit of a shindy up at the university yesterday morning—maybe you was there?”

I told him I’d seen it.

“Well, after that lark, Coker—he’s the chap what did the talking—he got kinda peeved. ‘Hokay,’ ‘e says, nasty-like. ‘The----s’ve asked for it. I put it to ‘em fair and square in the first place. Now they can take what’s comm’ to them.’ Well, we’d met up with a couple of other fellers and one old girl what can still see, an’ they fixed it all up between them. He’s a lad, that Coker.”

“You mean—he framed the whole business—there wasn’t any fire or anything?” I asked.

“Fire—my aunt Fanny! What they done was fix up a trip wire or two, light a lot of papers and sticks in the hail, an’ start in ringing the ol’ bell. We reckoned that them as could see ‘ud be the first along, on account of there bein’ a bit o’ light still from the moon. And sure enough they was. Coker an’ another chap was givi n’ them the k.o. as they tripped, an’ passin’ them along to some of us chaps to carry out to the truck. Simple as kiss your ‘and.”

“H’m,” I said ruefully. “Sounds efficient, that Coker. How many of us mugs fell into that little trap?”

“I’d say we got a couple of dozen—though it turned out as five or six of ‘em was blinded. When we’d loaded up about all we’d room for in the truck, we beat it an’ left the rest to sort theirselves out.”

Whatever view Coker took of us, it was clear that Alf bore us no animosity. He appeared to regard the whole affair as a bit of sport. I found it a little too painful to class it so, but I mentally raised my hat to All. I’d a pretty good idea that in his position I’d be lacking the spirit to think of anything as a bit of sport. I finished the tea and accepted another cigarette from him.

“And what’s the program now?” I asked him.

“Coker’s idea is to make us all up into parties, an’ put one of you with each party. You to look after the scrounging, and kind of act as the eyes of the rest, like. Your job’ll be to help us keep goin’ until somebody comes along to straighten this perishin’ lot out.”

“I see,” I said.

He cocked his head toward me. There weren’t any flies on Aif. He had caught more in my tone than I had realized was there.

“You reckon that’s goin’ to be a long time?” he said.

“I don’t know. What’s Coker say?”

Coker, it seemed, had not been committing himself to details. Alf had his own opinion, though.

“‘F you ask me, I reckon there ain’t nobody goin’ to come. If there was, they’d’ve been ‘ere before this. Different if we was in some little town in the country. But London! Stands to reason they’d come ‘ere afore anywhere else. No, the way I see it, they ain’t come yet—an’ that means they ain’t never Loin’ to come—an’ that means there ain’t nobody to come. Cor, blimy, ‘oo’d ever’ve thought it could ‘appen like this!”

I didn’t say anything. All wasn’t the sort to be jollied with facile encouragements.

“Reckon that’s the way you see it too?” he said after a bit. “It doesn’t look so good,” I admitted. “But there still is a chance, you know—people from somewhere abroad..

He shook his head.

“They’d’ve come before this. They’d’ve had loud-speaker cars round the streets tellin’ us what to do by now. No, chum, we’ve ‘ad it there ain’t nobody nowhere to come. That’s the fact of it.”

We were silent for a while, then:

“Ab well, ‘t weren’t a bad ol’ life while it lasted,” he said, We talked a little about the kind of life it had been for him.

He’d had various jobs, each of which seemed to have included some interesting undercover work. He summed it up:

“One way an’ another I didn’t do so bad. What was your racket?”

I told him. He wasn’t impressed.

“Triffids, huh! Nasty damn things, I reckon. Not natcheral, as you might say.”

We left it at that.

All went away, leaving me to my cogitations and a packet of his cigarettes. I surveyed the outlook and thought little of it. I wondered how the others would be taking it. Particularly what would be Josella’s view, When Alf reappeared with more food and the inevitable can of tea, he was accompanied by the man he had called Coker. He looked more tired now than when I had seen him before. Under his arm he carried a bundle of papers. He gave me a searching look.

“You know the idea?” he asked.

“What All’s told me,” I admitted.

“All right, then.” He dropped his papers on the bed, picked up the top one and unfolded it. It was a street plan of Greater London. He pointed to an area covering part of Hampstead and Swiss Cottage, heavily outlined in blue pencil.

“That’s your beat,” he said. “Your party works inside that area, and not in anyone else’s area. You can’t have each lot going after the same pickings. Your job is to find the food in that area and see that your party gets it—that, and anything else they need. Got that?”

“Or what?” I said, looking at him.

“Or they’ll get hungry. And if they do, it’ll be just too bad for you. Some of the boys are tough, and we’re not any of us doing this for fun, So watch your step. Tomorrow morning we’ll run you and your lot up there in trucks. After that it’ll be your job to keep ‘em going until somebody comes along to tidy things up.

“And if nobody does come?” I asked.

“Somebody’s got to come,” he said grimly. “Anyway, there’s your job—and mind you keep to your area.”

I stopped him as he was on the point of leaving.

“Have you got a Miss Playton here?” I asked.

“I don’t know any of your names,” he said.

“Fair-haired, about five foot six or seven, gray-blue eyes,” I persisted.

“There’s a girl about that size, and blond. But I haven’t looked at her eyes. Got something more important to do,” he said as he left.

I studied the map. I was not greatly taken with the district allotted to me. Some of it was a salubrious enough suburb, indeed, but in the circumstances a location that included docks and warehouses would have more to offer. It was doubtful whether there would be any sizable storage depots in this part. Still, “can’t all ‘ave a prize.” as Alf would doubtless express k—and, anyway, II had no intention of staying there any longer than was strictly necessary.

When Alf showed up again I asked him if he would take a note to Josella. He shook his head.

“Sorry, mate. Not allowed.”

I promised him it should be harmless, but he remained firm. I couldn’t altogether blame him. He had no reason to trust me, and would not be able to read the note to know that it was as harmless as I claimed. Anyway, I’d neither pencil nor paper, so I gave that up. After pressing, he did consent to let her know that I was here and to find out the district to which she was being sent. He was not keen on doing that much, but he bad to allow that if there were to be any straightening out of the mess it would be a lot easier for me to find her again if I knew where to start looking.

After that ii had simply my thoughts for company for a bit. I knew I ought to make my mind up once and for all on the right course, and stick to it. But I could not. I seesawed. Some hours later when I fell asleep I was still seesawing.

There was no means of knowing which way Josella had made up her mind. I’d had no personal message from her. But All had put his head in once during the evening. His communication had been brief.

“Westminster,” be said. “Cor! Don’t reckon that lot’s goin’ to find much grub in the ‘Ouses o’ Parliament”

I was woken by Alf coming in early the following morning. He was accompanied by a bigger, shifty-eyed man who fingered a butcher’s knife with unnecessary ostentation. Alf advanced and dropped in armful of clothes on the bed. His companion shut the door and leaned against it, watching with a crafty eye and toying with the knife.

“Give us yer mitts, mate,” said Alf.

I held my hands out toward him. He felt for the wires on my wrists and snipped them with a cutter.

“Now just you put on that there clobber, chum,” he said, stepping back.

I got myself dressed while the knife fancier followed every movement I made, like a hawk. When I’d finished, All produced a pair of handcuffs. “There’s just these,” he mentioned.

I hesitated. The man by the door ceased to lean on it and brought his knife forward a little. For him this was evidently the interesting moment. I decided maybe it was not the time to try anything, and held my wrists out. Alf felt around and clicked on the cuffs. After that he went and fetched me my breakfast.

Nearly two hours later the other man turned up again, his knife well in evidence. He waved it at the door.

With the consciousness of the knife producing an uncomfortable feeling in my back, we went down a number of flights of stairs and across a hail. In the street a couple of loaded trucks were waiting. Coker, with two companions, stood by the tailboard of one. He beckoned me over. Without saying anything, he passed a chain between my arms. At each end of it was a strap. One was fastened already round the left wrist of a burly blind man beside him; the other he attached to the right wrist of a similar tough vase, so that I was between them. They weren’t taking any avoidable chances.

“I’d not try any funny business, if I were you,” Coker advised me. “You do right by them, and they’ll do right by you.”

The three of us climbed awkwardly onto the tailboard, and the two trucks drove off.

We stopped somewhere near Swiss Cottage and piled out. There were perhaps twenty people in sight, prowling with apparent aimlessness along the gutters. At the sound of the engines every one of them had turned toward us with an incredulous expression on his face, and as if they were parts of a single mechanism they began to close hopefully toward us, calling out as they came. The drivers shouted to us to get clear. They backed, turned, and rumbled off by the way we had come. The converging people stopped. One or two of them shouted after the trucks; most turned hopelessly and silently back to their wandering. There was one woman about fifty yards away; she broke into hysterics and began to bang her head against a wall. I felt sick.

I turned toward my companions.

“Well, what do you want first?” I asked them.

“A billet,” said one. “We got to ‘ave a place to doss down.” II reckoned I’d have to find that at least for them. I couldn’t just dodge out and leave them stranded right where we were. Now we’d come this far, I couldn’t do less than find them a center, a kind of H.Q., and put them on their feet. What was wanted was a place where the receiving, storing, and feeding could be done, and the whole lot keep together. I counted them. There were fifty-two; fourteen of them women. The best course seemed to be to find a hotel. It would save the trouble of fitting out with beds and bedding.

The place we found was a kind of glorified boardinghouse made up of four Victorian terrace houses knocked together, giving more than the accommodation we needed. There were already half a dozen people in the place when we got there. Heaven knows what had happened to the rest. We found the remnant, huddled together and scared, in one of the lounges—an old man, and elderly woman (who turned out to have been the manageress), a middle-aged man, and three girls. The manageress had the spirit to pull herself together and hand out some quite high-sounding threats, but the ice, even of her most severe boardinghouse manner, was thin. The old man tried to back her up by blustering a bit. The rest did nothing but keep their faces turned nervously toward us.

I explained that we were moving in. If they did not like it, they could go: if, on the other hand, they preferred to stay and share equally what there was, they were free to do so. They were not pleased. The way they reacted suggested that somewhere in the place they had a cache of stores that they were not anxious to share. When they grasped that the intention was to build up bigger stores their attitude modified perceptibly, and they prepared to make the best of it.

I decided I’d have to stay on a day or two just to get the party set up. I guessed Josella would be feeling much the same about her lot. Ingenious man, Coker—the trick is called holding the baby. But after that I’d dodge out, and join her.

During the next couple of days we worked systematically, tackling the bigger stores near by—mostly chain stores, and not very big, at that. Nearly everywhere there had been others before us. The fronts of the shops were in a bad way. The windows were broken in, the floors were littered with half-opened cans and split packages which had disappointed the finders, and now lay in a sticky, stinking mass among the fragments of window glass. But as a rule the loss was small-and the damage superficial, and we’d find the larger cases in and behind the shop untouched.

It was far from easy for blind men to carry and maneuver heavy cases out of the place and load them on handcarts. Then there was the job of getting them back to the billet and stowing them. But practice began to give them a knack with it.

The most hampering factor was the necessity for my presence. Little or nothing could go on unless I was there to direct It was impossible to use more than one working party at a time, though we could have made up a dozen. Nor could much go on back at the hotel while I was out with the foraging squad. Moreover, such time as I had to spend investigating and prospecting the district was pretty much wasted for everyone else. Two sighted men could have got though a lot more than twice the work.

Once we had started, I was too busy during the day to spend much thought beyond the actual work in hand, and too tired at night to do anything but sleep the moment I lay down. Now and again I’d say to myself, “By tomorrow night I’ll have them pretty well fixed up—enough to keep them going for a bit, anyway. Then I’ll light out of this and find Josella.”

That sounded all right—but every day it was tomorrow that I’d be able to do it, and each day it became more difficult. Some of them had begun to learn a bit, but still practically nothing, from foraging to can-opening, could go on without my being around. It seemed, the way things were going, that I became less, instead of more, dispensable.

None of it was their fault. That was what made it difficult. Some of them were trying so damned hard. I just had to watch them making it more and more impossible for me to play the skunk and walk out on them. A dozen times a day I cursed the man Coker for contriving me into the situation— but that didn’t help to solve it: it just left me wondering how it could end.

I had my first inkling of that, though I scarcely recognized it as such, on the fourth morning—or maybe it was the fifth—just as we were setting out. A woman called down the stairs that there were two sick up there; pretty bad, she thought.

My two watchdogs did not like it.

“Listen,” I told them. “I’ve had about enough of this chain-gang stuff. We’d be doing a lot better than we are now without it , anyway.”

“An’ have you slinkin’ off to join your old mob?” said someone.

“Don’t fool yourself,” I said. “I could have slugged this pair of amateur gorillas any hour of the day or night. I’ve not done it because you’ve got nothing against them other than their being a pair of dim-witted nuisances

“‘Ere—” one of my attachments began to expostulate. “But,” I went on, “if they don’t let me see what’s wrong with these people, they can begin expecting to be slugged any minute from now.

The two saw reason, but when we reached the room they took good care to stand as far back as the chain allowed. The casualties turned out to be two men, one young, one middle-aged. Both had high temperatures and complained of agonizing pain in the bowels. I didn’t know much about such things then, but I did not need to know much to feel worried. I could think of nothing but to direct that they should be carried to an empty house near by, and to tell one of the women to look after them as best she could.

That was the beginning of a day of setbacks. The next of a very different kind, happened around noon.

We had cleared most of the food shops close to us, and I bad decided to extend our range a little. From my recollections of the neighborhood, I reckoned we ought to find another shopping street about a half mile to the north, so I led my party that way. We found the shops there, all right, but something else too.

As we turned the corner and came into view of them, L stopped. In front of a chain-store grocery a party of men was trundling out cases and loading them on to a truck. Save for the difference in the vehicle, I might have been watching my own party at work. I halted my group of twenty or so, wondering what line we should take. My inclination was to withdraw and avoid possible trouble by finding a clear field elsewhere; there was no sense in coming into conflict when there was plenty scattered in various stores for those who were organized enough to take it. But it did not fall to me to make the decision, Even while I hesitated a redheaded young man strode confidently out of the shop door. There was no doubt that he was able to see—or, a moment later, that he had seen us.

He did not share my indecision. He reached swiftly for his pocket. The next moment a bullet hit the wall beside me with a smack.

There was a brief tableau. His men and mine turning their sightless eyes toward one another in an effort to understand what was going on. Then he fired again. I supposed he had aimed at me, but the bullet found the man on my left. He gave a grunt as though he were surprised, and folded up with a kind of sigh. I dodged back round the corner, dragging the other watchdog with me.

“Quick,” I said. “Give me the key to these cuffs. I can’t do a thing like this.”

He didn’t do anything except give a knowing grin. He was a one-idea man.

“Huh,” he said. “Come off it. You don’t fool me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you damned clown,” I said, pulling on the chain to drag the body of watchdog number one nearer so that we could get better cover.

The goon started to argue. Heaven knows what subtleties his dim wits were crediting me with. There was enough slack on the chain now for me to raise my arms. I did, and hammered both fists at his head so that it went back against the wall with a crack. That disposed of his argument. I found the key in his side pocket.

“Listen,” I told the rest. “Turn round, all of you, and keep going straight ahead. Don’t separate, or you’ll have had it. Get moving now.”

I got one wristlet open, ridded myself of the chain, and scrambled over the wall into somebody’s garden. I crouched there while I got rid of the other cuff. Then I moved across to peer cautiously over the far angle of the wall. The young man with the pistol had not come rushing after us, as I had half expected. He was still with his party, giving them an instruction. And now I came to think of it, why should he hurry? Since we had not fired back at him, he could reckon we were unarmed and we wouldn’t be able to get away fast.

When he’d finished his directions he walked out confidently into the road to a point where he had a view of my retreating group. At the corner he stopped to look at the two prone watchdogs. Probably the chain suggested to him that one of them had been the eyes of our gang, for he put the pistol back in his pocket and began to follow the rest in a leisurely fashion.

That wasn’t what I had expected, and it took me a minute to see his scheme. Then it came to me that his most profitable course would be to follow them to our H.Q. and see what pickings he could hijack there. He was, I had to admit, either much quicker than I at spotting chances or bad previously given more thought to the possibilities that might arise than I had. I was glad that I had told my lot to keep straight on. Most likely they’d get tired of it after a bit, but I reckoned they’d none of them be able to find the way back to the hotel and so lead him to it. As long as they kept together, I’d be able to collect them all later on without much difficulty. The immediate question was what to do about a man who carried a pistol and didn’t mind using it.

In some parts of the world one might go into the first house in sight and pick up a convenient firearm. Hampstead was not like that; it was a highly respectable suburb, unfortunately. There might possibly be a sporting gun to be found somewhere, but I would have to hunt for it. The only thing I could think of was to keep him in sight and hope that some opportunity would offer a chance to deal with him. I broke a branch off a tree, scrambled back over the wall, and began to tap my way along the curb, looking, I hoped, indistinguishable from the hundreds of blind men one bad seen wandering the streets in the same way.

The road ran straight for some distance. The redheaded young man was perhaps fifty yards ahead of me, and my party another fifty ahead of him. We continued like that for something over half a mile. To my relief, none of the front party showed any tendency to turn into the road which led to our base. I was beginning to wonder how long it would be before they decided that they bad gone far enough, when an unexpected diversion occurred. One man who had been lagging behind the rest finally stopped. He dropped his stick and doubled up with his arms over his belly. Then be sagged to the ground and lay there, rolling with pain. The others did not stop for him. They must have heard his moans, but probably they had no idea he was one of themselves.

The young man looked toward him and hesitated. He altered his course and bore across toward the contorted figure. He stopped a few feet away from him and stood gazing down. For perhaps a quarter of a minute he regarded him carefully. Then slowly, but quite deliberately, he pulled his pistol out of his pocket and shot him through the bead.

The party ahead stopped at the sound of the shot. So did L The young man made no attempt to catch up with them—in fact, he seemed suddenly to lose interest in them altogether. He turned round and came walking back down the middle of the road. I remembered to play my part, and began to tap my way forward again. He paid me no attention as he passed, but I was able to see his face: it was worried, and there was a grim set to his jaw. I kept going as I wasuntil he was a decent distance behind me, then I hurried on to the rest. Brought up short by the Sound of the shot, they were arguing whether to go on farther or not.

I broke that up by telling them that now I was no longer encumbered with my two I.Q. -minus watchdogs we would be ordering things differently. I was going to get a truck, and I would be back in ten minutes or so to run them back to the billet in it.

The finding of another organized party at work produced a new anxiety, but we found the place intact when we got back. The only news they had for me there was that two more men and a woman had been taken with severe belly pains and removed to the other house.

We made what preparations we could for defense against any marauders arriving while I was away. Then I picked a new party and we set off in the truck, this time in a different direction.

I recalled that in former days when I had come up to Hampstead Heath it had often been by way of a bus terminus where a number of small shops and stores clustered. With the aid of the street plan I found the place again easily enough—not only found it, but discovered it to be marvelously intact. Save for three or four broken windows, the area looked simply as if it had been closed up for a weekend.

But there were differences. For one thing, no such silence had ever before hung over the locality, weekday or Sunday. And there were several bodies lying in the street. By this time one was becoming accustomed enough to that to pay them little attention. I had, in fact, wondered that there were not more to be seen, and had come to the conclusion that most people sought some kind of shelter, either out of fear or later when they became weak. It was one of the reasons that one felt a disinclination to enter any dwelling house.

I stopped the truck in front of a provision store and listened for a few seconds. The silence came down on us like a blanket. There was no sound of tapping sticks, not a wanderer in sight. Nothing moved.

“Okay,” I said. “Pile out, chaps.”

The locked door of the shop gave way easily. Inside there was a neat, unspoiled array of tubs of butter, cheeses, sides of bacon, cases of sugar, and all the rest of it. I got the party busy on it. They had developed tricks of working by now, and were more sure of their handling. I was able to leave them to get on with it for a bit while I examined the back storeroom and then the cellar.

It was while I was below, investigating the nature of the cases down there, that I heard a sound of shouts somewhere outside. Close upon it came a thunder of trampling boots on the floor above me. One man came down through the trap door and pitched on his head. He did not move or make another sound. I jumped to it that there must be a battle with a rival gang in progress up there. I stepped across the fallen man and climbed the ladderlike stair cautiously, holding up one arm to protect my head.

The first view was of numerous scuffling boots, unpleasantly close and backing toward the trap. I nipped up quickly and got clear before they were on me. I was up just in time to see the plate-glass window in the front give way. Three men from outside fell in with it. A long green lash whipped after them, striking one as he lay. The other two scrambled among the wreckage of the display and came stumbling farther into the shop. The pressed back against the rest, and two more men fell through the open trap door.

It did not need more than a glimpse of that lash to tell what had happened. During the work of the past few days I had all but forgotten the triffids. By standing on a box I could see over the heads of the men. There were three triffids in my field of view: one out in the road, and two closer, on the sidewalk. Four men lay on the ground out there, not moving. I understood right then why these shops had been untouched, and why there had been no one to be seen in the neighborhood of the Heath. At the same time I cursed myself for not having looked at the bodies in the road more closely. One glimpse of a sting mark would have been enough warning.

“Hold it!” I shouted. “Stand where you are.”

I jumped down from the box, pushed back the men who were standing on the folded-back lid of the trap, and got it closed.

“There’s a door hack here,” I told them. “Take it easy now.”

The first two took it easy. Then a triffid sent its sting whistling into the room through the broken window. One man gave a scream as he fell. The rest came on in panic and swept me before them. There was a jam in the doorway. Behind us stings swished twice again before we were clear.

In the back room I looked round, panting. There were seven of us there.

“Hold it,” I said again. “We’re all right in here.”

I went to the door again. The back part of the shop was out of the triffids’ range—so long as they stayed outside. I was able to reach the trap door in safety and raise it. The two men who had fallen down there since I left re-emerged. One nursed a broken arm; the other was merely bruised, and cursing.

Behind the back room lay a small yard, and across that a door in an eight-foot brick wall. I had grown cautious. Instead of going straight to the door, I climbed on the roof of an outhouse to prospect. The door, I could see, gave into a narrow alley running the full length of the block. It was empty. But beyond the wall, on the far side of it, which seemed to terminate the gardens of a row of private houses, I could make out the tops of two triffids motionless among the bushes. There might well be more. The wall on that side was lower, and their height would enable them to strike right across the alley with their stings. I explained to the others.

“Bloody unnatural brutes,” said one. “I always did hate them bastards.”

I investigated further. The building next but one to the north side turned out to be a car-hire service with three of its cars on the premises. It was an awkward job getting the party over the two intervening walls, particularly the man with the broken arm, but we managed it. Somehow, too, I got them all packed into a large Daimler. When we were all set I opened the outer doors of the place and ran back to the car.

The triffids weren’t slow to be interested. That uncanny sensitiveness to sounds told them something was happening. As we drove out, a couple of them were already lurching toward the entrance. Their stings whipped out at us and slapped harmlessly against the closed windows. I swung bard round, bumping one and toppling it over. Then we were away up the road, making for a healthier neighborhood.

The evening that followed was the worst I had spent since the calamity occurred. Freed of the two watchdogs, I took over a small room where I could be alone. I put six lighted candles in a row on the mantleshelf and sat a long while in an armchair, trying to think things out. We had come back to find that one of the men who had been taken sick the night before was dead; the other was obviously dying—and there were four new cases. By the time our evening meal was over, there were two more still. What the complaint was I had no idea. With the lack of services and the way things were going in general, it might have been a number of things. I thought of typhoid, but I’d a hazy idea that the incubation period ruled that out—not that it would have made much difference if I bad known. All I did know about it was that it was something nasty enough to make that red-haired young man use his pistol and change his mind about following my party.

It began to look to me as if I had been doing my group a questionable service from the first. I had succeeded in keeping them alive, placed between a rival gang on one side and triffids encrouching from the Heath on the other. Now there was this sickness, too. And, when all was said and done, I bad achieved only the postponement of starvation for a little while.

As things were now, I did not see my way.

And then there was Josella on my mind. The same sorts of things, maybe worse, were as likely to be happening in her district……

I found myself thinking of Michael Beadley and his lot again. I had known then that they were logical; now I began to think that maybe they had a truer humanity, too. They had seen that it was hopeless to try to save any but a very few. To give an empty hope to the rest was little better than cruelty.

Besides, there were ourselves. If there were purpose in anything at all, what had we been preserved for? Not simply to waste ourselves on a forlorn task, surely?

I decided that tomorrow I would go in search of Josella and we would settle it together.

The latch of the door moved with a click. The door itself opened slowly.

“Who’s that?” I said.

“Oh, it is you,” said a girl’s voice.

She came in, closing the door behind her.

“What do you want?” I asked.

She was tall and slim. Under twenty, I guessed. Her hair waved slightly. Chestnut-colored, it was. She was quiet, but one had to notice her—it was the texture of her as well as the line. She had placed my position by my movement and voice. Her gold-brown eyes were looking just over my left shoulder, otherwise I’d have been sure she was studying me.

She did not answer at once. It was an uncertainty which did not seem to suit the rest of her. I went on waiting for her to speak. A lump got into my throat somehow. You see, she was young and she was bcautiful. There should have been all life, maybe a wonderful life, before her. And isn’t there something a little sad about youth and beauty in any circumstances?

“You’re going away from here?” she said. It was half question, half statement, in a quiet voice, a little unsteadily.

“I’ve never said that,” I countered.

“No,” she admitted, “but that’s what the others are saying and they’re right, aren’t they?”

I did not say anything to that. She went on:

“You can’t. You can’t leave them like this. They need you.”

“I’m doing no good here,” I told her. “All the hopes are false.”

“But suppose they turned out not to be false?’

“They can’t—not now. We’d have known by this time.”

“But if they did after all—and you had simply walked out?”

“Do you think I haven’t thought of that? I’m not doing any good, I tell you. I’ve been like the drugs they inject to keep the patient going a little longer—no curative value, just putting it off.”

She did not reply for some seconds. Then she said unsteadily:

“Life is very precious—even like this.” Her control almost cracked.

I could not say anything. She recovered herself.

“You can keep us going. There’s always a chance—just a chance that something may happen, even now.”

I had already said what I thought about that. I did not repeat it.

“it’s so difficult,” she said, as though to herself. “If I could only see you… But then, of course, if I could… Are you young? You sound young.”

“I’m under thirty,” I told her. “And very ordinary.”

“I’m eighteen. It was my birthday—the day the comet came.”

I could not think of anything to say to that that would not seem cruel. The pause drew out. I saw that she was clenching her hands together. Then she dropped them to her sides, the knuckles quite white. She made as if to speak, but did not.

“What is it?” I asked. “What can I do except prolong this a little?”

She bit her lip, then:

“They—they said perhaps you were lonely,” she said. “I thought perhaps if”—her voice faltered, and her knuckles went a little whiter still—”perhaps if you had somebody

I mean, somebody here… you—you might not want to leave us. Perhaps you’d stay with us?”

“Oh God,” I said softly.

I looked at her, standing quite straight, her lips trembling slightly. There should have been suitors clamoring for her lightest smile. She should have been happy and uncaring for a while—then happy in caring. Life should have been enchanting to her, and love very sweet…

“You’d be kind to me, wouldn’t you?” she said. “You see, I haven’t

“Stop it! Stop it!” I told her. ‘You mustn’t say these things to me. Please go away now.”

But she did not go. She stood staring at me from eyes that could not see me.

“Go away!” I repeated.

I could not stand the reproach of her. She was not simply herself—she was thousands upon thousands of young lives destroyed…

She came closer.

“Why, I believe you’re crying!” she said.

“Go away. For God’s sake, go away!” I told her.

She hesitated, then she turned and felt her way back to the door. As she went out:

“You can tell them I’ll be staying,” I said.

The first thing I was aware of the next morning was the smell. There had been whiffs of it here and there before, but luckily the weather had been cool. Now I found that I had slept late into what was already a warmer day. I’m not going into details about that smell; those who knew it will never forget it; for the rest it is indescribable. It rose from every city and town for weeks, and traveled on every wind that blew. When I woke to it that morning it convinced me beyond doubt that the end had come. Death is just the shocking end of animation; it is dissolution that is final.

I lay for some minutes thinking. The only thing to do now would be to load my party into trucks and take them in relays into the country. And all the supplies we had collected? They would have to be loaded and taken too—and I the only one able to drive… It would take days—if we had days.

Upon that, I wondered what was happening in the building now. The place was oddly quiet. When I listened I could hear a voice groaning in another room, beyond that nothing. I got out of bed an hurried into my clothes with a feeling of alarm. Out on the landing, I listened again. There was no sound of feet about the house. I had a sudden nasty feeling as if history were repeating itself and I were back in the hospital again.

“Hey! Anybody here?” I called.

Several voices answered. I opened a nearby door. There was a man in there. He looked very bad, and he was delirious. There was nothing I could do. I closed the door again.

My footsteps sounded loud on the wooden stain. On the next floor a woman’s voice called: “Bill—Bill!”

She was in bed in a small room there, the girl who had come to see me the night before. She turned her bead as I came in. I saw that she had it too.

“Don’t come near,” she said. “It is you, Bill?

“I thought it must be. You can still walk; they have to creep. I’m glad, Bill. I told them you’d not go like that—but they said you had. Now they’ve all gone, all of them that could.”

“I was asleep,” I said. “What happened?’

“More and more of us like this. They were frightened.”

I said helplessly, “What can I do for you? Is there anything I can get you?”

Her face contorted; she clutched her arms round her and writhed. The spasm passed, and left her with sweat trickling down her forehead.

“Please, Bill. I’m not very brave. Could you get me something to—to finish it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I can do that for you.”

I was back from the drugstore in ten minutes. I gave her a glass of water and put the stuff into her other hand.

She held it there for a little, without speaking. Then:

“So futile to have lived at all—and it might all have been so different,” she said. “Good-by, Bill—and thank you for trying to help us.”

I looked down at her as she lay. I felt very angry with the stupidity of death. A thousand would have said: “Take me with you”; but she had said: “Stay with us.”

And I never even knew her name.