The Day of the Triffids

by John Wyndham

  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 orf 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 had 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 had 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 had 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 he 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 head.

  The party ahead stopped at the sound of the shot. So did I. 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 was until 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 week end.

  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 wr
eckage 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 back 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 hard 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 mantelshelf 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 had 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 had 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 bad 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 beautiful. 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 l
ittle?”

  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.