The Day of the Triffids

by John Wyndham

  For some moments silence lay on the room. Then Dennis laughed unnaturally:

  “Great God almighty! We’ve lived through all this—and now the man proposes to start a war!”

  Torrence said shortly:

  “I don’t seem to have made myself clear. The word ‘war’ is an unjustifiable exaggeration. It will be simply a matter of pacifying and administering tribes that have reverted to primitive lawlessness.”

  “Unless, of course, the same benevolent idea happens to have occurred to them,” Dennis suggested.

  I became aware that both Josella and Susan were looking at me very hard. Josella pointed at Susan, and I perceived the reason.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You expect the three of us who can see to be entirely responsible for twenty blind adults and an unspecified number of children. It seems to me—”

  “Blind people aren’t quite incapable. They can do a lot, including caring for their own children in general and helping to prepare their own food. Properly arranged, a great deal can be reduced to supervision and direction. But it will be two of you, Mr. Masen—yourself and your wife—not three.”

  I looked at Susan, sitting up very straight in her blue overalls, with a red ribbon in her hair. There was an anxious appeal in her eyes as she looked from me to Josella.

  “Three,” I said.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Masen. The allocation is ten per unit. The girl can come to H.Q. We can find useful work for her there until she is old enough to take charge of a unit herself.”

  “My wife and I regard Susan as our own daughter,” I told him shortly.

  “I repeat, I am sorry. But those are the regulations.”

  I regarded him for some moments. He looked steadily back at me. At last:

  “We should, of course, require guarantees and undertakings regarding her, if this had to happen,” I said.

  I was aware of several quickly drawn breaths. Torrence’s manner relaxed slightly.

  “Naturally we shall give you all practicable assurances,” he said.

  I nodded. “I must have time to think it all over. It’s quite new to me, and rather startling. Some points come to my mind at once. Equipment here is wearing out. It is difficult to find more that has not deteriorated. I can see that before long I am going to need good strong working horses.”

  “Horses are difficult. There’s very little stock at present. You’ll probably have to use man-power teams for a time.”

  “Then,” I said, “there’s accommodations. The outbuildings are too small for our needs now—and I can’t put up even prefabricated quarters singlehanded.”

  “There we shall be able to help you, I think.”

  We went on discussing details for twenty minutes or more. By the end of it I had him showing something like affability; then I got rid of him by sending him off on a tour of the place, with Susan as his sulky guide.

  “Bill, what on earth—” Josella began as the door closed behind him and his companions.

  I told her what I knew of Torrence and his method of dealing with trouble by shooting it early.

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” remarked Dennis. “You know, what is surprising me is that I’m suddenly feeling quite kindly toward the triffids. Without their intervention, I suppose there would have been a whole lot more of this kind of thing by now. If they are the one factor that can stop serfdom coming back, then good luck to ’em.”

  “The whole thing’s clearly preposterous,” I said. “It doesn’t have a chance. How could Josella and I look after a crowd like that and keep the triffids out? But,” I added, “we’re scarcely in a position to give a flat ‘No’ to a proposition put up by four armed men.”

  “Then you’re not—”

  “Darling,” I said, “do you really see me in the position of a seigneur, driving my serfs and villeins before me with a whip—even if the triffids haven’t overrun me first?”

  “But you said—”

  “Listen,” I said. “It’s getting dark. Too late for them to leave now. They’ll have to stay the night. I imagine that tomorrow the idea will be to take Susan away with them—she’d make quite a good hostage for our behavior, you see. And they might leave one or two of their men to keep an eye on us. Well, I don’t think we’re taking that, are we?”

  “No, but—”

  “Well, I hope I’ve convinced him now that I’m coming round to his idea. Tonight we’ll have the sort of supper that might be taken to imply accord. Make it a good one. Everybody’s to eat plenty. Give the kids plenty too. Lay on our best drinks. See that Torrence and his chaps have plenty of that, but the rest of us go very easy. Toward the end of the meal I shall disappear for a bit. You keep the party going, to cover up. Play rowdy records at them, or something. And everybody help to whoop it up. Another thing—nobody is to mention Michael Beadley and his lot. Torrence must know about the Isle of Wight setup, but he doesn’t think we do. Now, what I’ll be wanting is a sack of sugar.”

  “Sugar?” said Josella blankly.

  “No? Well, a big can of honey, then. I should think that would do as well.”

  Everyone behaved very creditably at supper. The party not only thawed, it actually began to warm up. Josella brought out some of her own potent mead to supplement the more orthodox drinks, and it went down well. The visitors were in a state of happily comfortable relaxation when I made my unobtrusive exit.

  I caught up a bundle of blankets and clothes and a parcel of food that I had laid ready, and hurried with them across the yard to the shed where we kept the half-track. With a hose from the tanker which held our main gas supply I filled the half-track’s tanks to overflowing. Then I turned my attention to Torrence’s strange vehicle. By the light of a hand-dynamo torch I managed to locate the filler cap and poured a quart or more of honey into the tank.

  The rest of the large can of honey I disposed of into the tanker itself.

  I could hear the party singing and, seemingly, still going well. After I had added some anti-triffids gear and miscellaneous afterthoughts to the stuff already in the half-track, I went back and joined the party until it finally broke up in an atmosphere which even a close observer might have mistaken for almost maudlin good will.

  We gave them two hours to get well asleep.

  The moon had risen, and the yard was bathed in white light. I had forgotten to oil the shed doors, and gave them a curse for every creak. The rest came in procession toward me. The Brents and Joyce were familiar enough with the place not to need a guiding hand. Behind them followed Josella and Susan, carrying the children. David’s sleepy voice rose once, and was stopped quickly by Josella’s hand over his mouth. She got into the front, still holding him. I saw the others into the back, and closed it.

  Then I climbed into the driving seat, kissed Josella, and took a deep breath.

  Across the yard, the triffids were clustering closer to the gate, as they always did when they had been undisturbed for some hours.

  By the grace of heaven the half-track’s engine started at once. I slammed into low gear, swerved to avoid Torrence’s vehicle, and drove straight at the gate. The heavy fender took it with a crash. We plunged forward in a festoon of wire netting and broken timbers, knocking down a dozen triffids while the rest slashed furiously at us as we passed. Then we were on our way.

  Where a turn in the climbing track let us look down on Shirning, we paused, and cut the engine. Lights were on behind some of the windows, and as we watched, those on the vehicle blazed out, floodlighting the house. A starter began to grind.

  I had a twinge of uneasiness as the engine fired, though I knew we had several times the speed of that lumbering contraption. The machine began to jerk round on its tracks to face the gate.

  Before it completed the turn, the engine sputtered, and stopped.

  The starter began to whirr again. It went on whirring, irritably, and without result.

  The triffids had discovered that the gate was down. By a blend of moonlight
and reflected headlights we could see their dark, slender forms already swaying in ungainly procession into the yard while others came lurching down the banks of the lane to follow them….

  I looked at Josella.

  She was not crying at all. She looked from me down to David, asleep in her arms.

  “I’ve all I really need,” she said, “and someday you’re going to bring us back to the rest, Bill.”

  “Wifely confidence is a very nice trait, darling, but—No, damn it, no buts—I am going to bring you back,” I said.

  I got out to clear the debris from the front of the half-track and wipe the poison from the windshield so that I should be able to see to drive, on and away across the tops of the hills, toward the southwest.

  And there my personal story joins up with the rest. You will find it in Elspeth Cary’s excellent history of the colony.

  Our hopes all center here. It seems unlikely now that anything will come of Torrence’s neo-feudal plan, though a number of his seigneuries do still exist, with their inhabitants leading, so we hear, a life of squalid wretchedness behind their stockades. But there are not so many of them as there were. Every now and then Ivan reports that another has been overrun, and that the triffids which surrounded it have dispersed to join other sieges.

  So we must think of the task ahead as ours alone. We believe now that we can see our way, but there is still a lot of work and research to be done before the day when we, or our children, or their children, will cross the narrow straits on a great crusade to drive the triffids back and back with ceaseless destruction until we have wiped out the last one of them from the face of the land that they have usurped.