Wyndham, John (14 page)

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.”