The Day of the Triffids(46)

“Hullo! Hullo, there!” I called. “Is there anyone here?”

My voice echoed away down corridors and up wells, diminishing to the parody of a whisper and then to silence. I went to the doors of the other wing and called again. Once more the echoes died away unbroken, settling softly as dust. Only then, as I turned back, did I notice that an inscription had been chalked on the wall inside the outer door. In large letters it gave simply an address:

TYNSHAM MANOR

TYNSHAM

NR DEVIZES

WILTS.



That was something, at least.

I looked at it, and thought. In another hour or less it would be dusk. Devizes I guessed at a hundred miles distant, probably more. I went outside again and examined the trucks. One of them was the last that I had driven in—the one in which I had stowed my despised anti-triffid gear. I recalled that the rest of its load was a useful assortment of food, supplies, and tools. It would be much better to arrive with that than empty-handed in a car. Nevertheless, if there were no urgent reason for it, I did not fancy driving anything, much less a large, heavily loaded truck, by night along roads which might reasonably be expected to produce a number of hazards. If I were to pile it up, and the odds were that I should, I would lose a lot more time in finding another and transferring the load than I would by spending the night here. An early start in the morning offered much better prospects. I moved my boxes of cartridges from the car to the cab of the truck in readiness. The gun I kept with me.

I found the room from which I had rushed to the fake fire alarm exactly as I had left it: my clothes on a chair, even the cigarette case and lighter where I had placed them beside my improvised bed.

It was still too early to think of sleep. I lit a cigarette, put the case in my pocket, and decided to go out.

Before I went into the Russell Square garden I looked it over carefully. I had already begun to become suspicious of open spaces. Sure enough, I spotted one triffid. It was in the northwest corner, standing perfectly still, but considerably taller than the bushes that surrounded it. I went closer, and blew the top of it to bits with a single shot. The noise in the silent square could scarcely have been more alarming if I had let off a howitzer. When I was sure that there were no others lurking I went into the garden and sat down with my back against a tree.

I stayed there perhaps twenty minutes. The sun was low, and half the square thrown into shadow. Soon I would have to go in. While there was light I could sustain myself; in the dark, things could steal quietly upon me. Already I was on my way back to the primitive. Before long, perhaps, I should be spending the hours of darkness in fear as my remote ancestors must have done, watching, ever distrustfully, the night outside their cave. I delayed to take one more look around the square, as if it were a page of history I would learn before it was turned. And as I stood there I heard the gritting of footsteps on the road—a slight sound but as loud in the silence as a grinding millstone.

I turned, with my gun ready. Crusoe was no more startled at the sight of a footprint than I at the sound of a footfall, for it had not the hesitancy of a blind man’s. I caught a glimpse in the dim light of the moving figure. As it left the road and entered the garden I saw that it was a man. Evidently he had seen me before I heard him, for he was coming straight toward me.

“You don’t need to shoot,” he said, holding empty hands wide apart.

I did not know him until he came within a few yards. Simultaneously, he recognized me.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” he said.

I kept the gun raised.

“Hullo, Coker. What are you after? Wanting me to go on another of your little parties?” I asked him.

“No. You can put that thing down. Makes too much noise, anyway. That’s how I found you. No,” he repeated, “I’ve had enough. I’m getting to hell out of here.”

“So am I,” I said, and lowered the gun.

“What happened to your bunch?” he asked.

I told him. He nodded.

“Same with mine. Same with the rest, I expect. Still, we tried….”

“The wrong way,” I said.

He nodded again.

“Yes,” he admitted. “I reckon your lot did have the right idea from the start—only it didn’t look right and it didn’t sound right a week ago.”

“Six days ago,” I corrected him.

“A week,” said he.

“No, I’m sure——Oh well, what the hell’s it matter, anyway?” I said. “In the circumstances,” I went on, “what do you say to declaring an amnesty and starting over again?”

He agreed.

“I’d got it wrong,” he repeated. “I thought I was the one who was taking it seriously—but I wasn’t taking it seriously enough. I couldn’t believe that it would last, or that some kind of help wouldn’t show up. But now look at it! And it must be like this everywhere. Europe, Asia, America—think of America smitten like this! But they must be. If they weren’t, they’d have been over here, helping out and getting the place straight—that’s the way it’d take them. No, I reckon your lot understood it better from the start.”

We ruminated for some moments, then I asked:

“This disease, plague—what do you reckon it is?”

“Search me, chum. I thought it must be typhoid, but someone said typhoid takes longer to develop—so I don’t know. I don’t know why I’ve not caught it myself—except that I’ve been able to keep away from those that have and to see that what I was eating was clean. I’ve been keeping to cans I’ve opened myself, and I’ve drunk bottle beer. Anyway, though I’ve been lucky so far, I don’t fancy hanging around here much longer. Where do you go now?”