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25 - Dead London - The War of the Worlds - H G Wells · Daily Classic Sci Fi Books

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Chapter eight, Dead London. After I had parted from the artilleryman, I
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went down the hill and by the high street, across the bridge to Fulham.
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The red weed was tumultuous at that time and nearly choked the bridge roadway,
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but its fronds were already whitening in patches by the spreading disease that presently
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removed it so swiftly. At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney
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Bridge station, I found a man lying. He was as black as a
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sweep with the black dust. Alive, but helplessly and speechlessly drunk. I
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could get nothing from him but curses and furious lunges at my head. I
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think I should have stayed by him, but for the brutal expression of his
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face. There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and
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it grew thicker. In Fulham, the streets were horribly quiet. I got
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food sour, hard and moldy, but quite eatable in a baker's shop.
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Here some way towards Wallam Green, the streets became clear of powder, and
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I passed a white terrace of houses on fire. The noise of the burning
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was an absolute relief. Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet again.
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Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets, and
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upon dead bodies. I saw altogether about a dozen in the length of the
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Fulham Road. They had been dead many days, so that I hurried quickly
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past them. The black powder covered them over and softened their outlines. One
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or two had been disturbed by dogs. Where there was no black powder.
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It was curiously like a Sunday in the city, with the closed shops,
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the houses locked up, and the blinds drawn, the desertion and the stillness.
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In some places plunderers had been at work, but rarely at other than
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the provision and wine shops. A jeweler's window had been broken open in one
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place, but apparently the thief had been disturbed, and a number of gold
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chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement. I did not trouble to
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touch them. Farther on was a tattered woman in a heap on a doorstep.
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The hand that hung over her knee was gashed and bled down. Her
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rusty brown dress and a smashed magnum of champagne formed a pool across the pavement.
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She seemed asleep, but she was dead. The father I penetrated into
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London, the profounder grew the stillness. But it was not so much the
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stillness of death. It was the stillness of suspense, of expectation. At
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any time, the destruction that had already singed the northwestern borders of the metropolis
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and had annihilated Ealing and Kilburn might strike among these houses and leave them smoking
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ruins. It was a city condemned and derelict. In South Kensington, the
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streets were clear of dead and of black powder. It was near South Kensington
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that I first heard the howling. It crept almost imperceptibly upon my senses.
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It was a sobbing alternation of two notes, Ulla, Ulla, Ulla,
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Ulla, keeping on perpetually. When I passed streets that ran northward, it
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grew in volume, and houses and buildings seemed to deaden and cut it off
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again. It came in a full tide down exhibition road. I stopped staring
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towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, remote wailing. It was as
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if that mighty desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and solitude.
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Oola Oo la oo la oola wailed that superhuman note great waves of sound,
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sweeping down the broad sunlit roadway between the tall buildings on each side.
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I turned northwards, marveling towards the iron gates of Hyde Park. I had
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half a mind to break into the Natural History Museum and find my way up
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to the summits of the towers in order to see across the park. But
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I decided to keep to the ground where quick hiding was possible, and so
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went on up the exhibition road. All the large mansions on each side of
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the road were empty and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of
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the houses. At the top, near the park gate, I came upon
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a strange site, thus overturned, and the skeleton of a horse picked clean.
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I puzzled over this for a time, and then went on to the
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bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew stronger and stronger, though I could
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see nothing above the housetops on the north side of the park save a haze
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of smoke to the northwest. Oolah Oollah oollah oollah, cried the voice,
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coming, as it seemed to me, from the district about Regent's Park.
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The desolating cry worked upon my mind the mood that had sustained me passed,
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the wailing took possession of me. I found I was intensely weary, footsore,
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and now again hungry and thirsty. It was already past noon. Why
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was I wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was I alone?
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When all London was lying in state and in its black shroud? I
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felt intolerably lonely. My mind ran on old friends that I had forgotten for
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years. I thought of the poisons in the chemist's shops, of the liquors
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the wine merchants stored. I recalled the two sodden creatures of despair, who,
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so far as I knew, shared the city with myself. I came
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into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and here again were black powder and
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several bodies, and an evil, ominous smell from the gratings of the cellars
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of some of the houses. I grew very thirsty after the heat of my
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long walk with infinite trouble. I managed to break into a public house and
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get food and drink. I was weary after eating, and went into the
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parlor behind the bar and slept on a black horse hair sofa I found there.
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I awoke to find that dismal howling still in my ears, oola oo
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la oo la oo la. It was now dusk, and after I had
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routed out some biscuits and the cheese in the bar, there was a meat
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safe, but it contained nothing but Maggot's. I wandered on through the silent
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residential squares to Baker Street. Portman Square is the only one I can name,
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and so came out at last upon Regent's Park. And as I emerged
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from the top of Baker Street, I saw, far away over the trees,
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in the clearness of the sunset, the hood of the Martian giant from
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which this howling proceeded. I was not terrified. I came upon him as
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if it were a matter of course. I watched him for some time,
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but he did not move. He appeared to be standing and yelling for no
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reason that I could discover. I tried to formulate a plan of action.
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That perpetual sound of oo la oo la oo la oo la confused my mind.
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Perhaps I was too tired to be very fearful. Certainly I was more
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curious to know the reason of this monotonous crying than afraid. I turned back
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away from the park and struck into park Road, intending to skirt the park,
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went along under the shelter of the terraces and got a view of this
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stationary howling martian. From the direction of Saint John's Wood, a couple of
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hundred yards out of Baker Street, I heard a yelping chorus, and saw
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first a dog with a piece of putresse and red meat in his jaws,
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coming headlong towards me, and then a pack of starving mongrels in pursuit of
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him. He made a wife curved to avoid me, as though he feared
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I might prove a fresh competitor. As the yelping died away down the silent
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road, the wailing sound of oolah oulla oulla ulla reasserted itself. I came
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upon the wrecked handling machine half way to Saint John's Woods station. At first
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I thought a house had fallen across the road. It was only as I
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clambered among the ruins that I saw with a start, this mechanical sampson,
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lying with its tentacles bent and smashed and twisted among the ruins it had made.
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The forepart was shattered. It seemed as if it had driven blindly straight
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at the house, and had been overwhelmed in its overthrow. It seemed to
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me then that this might have happened by a handling machine escaping from the guidance
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of its martian. I could not clamber among the ruins to see it,
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and the twilight was now so far advanced that the blood with which its seat
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was smeared, and the gnawed gristle of the martian that the dogs had left
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were invisible to me. Wondering still more at all that I had seen,
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I pushed on towards Primrose Hill. Far away, through a gap in the
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trees, I saw a second Martian, as motionless as the first, standing
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in the park, towards the zoological gardens, and silent. A little beyond
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the ruins about the smashed handling machine. I came upon the red weed again,
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and found the Regent's Canal a spongy mass of dark red vegetation. As
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I crossed the bridge, the sound of oo la oo la oo la oo
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la ceased. It was as it were cut off. The silence came like
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a thunderclap. The dusky houses about me stood faint and tall and dim.
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The trees towards the park were growing black. All about me. The red
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weed clambered among the ruins, writhing to get above me. In the dimness
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night, The mother of fear and mystery was coming upon me. But while
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that voice sounded, the solitude, the desolation had been endurable by virtue of
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it. London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life about me
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had upheld me. Then suddenly a change, the passing of something I knew
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not what, and then a stillness that could be felt. Nothing but this
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gaunt quiet London about me gazed at me spectrally. The windows in the white
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houses were like the eye sockets of skulls. About me, My imagination found
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a thousand noiseless enemies moving terror seized me, a horror of my temerity.
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In front of me. The road became pitchy, black, as though it
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was tarred, and I saw a contorted shape lying across the pathway. I
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could not bring myself to go on. I turned down Saint John's Wood Road
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and ran aheadlong from this unendurable stillness, towards Kilburn. I hid from the
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night and the silence until long after midnight in a cabman's shelter and harrow road.
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But before the dawn, my courage returned, and while the stars were
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still in the sky, I turned once more towards Regent's Park. I missed
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my way among the streets, and presently saw down a long avenue in the
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half light of the early dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill. On the
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summit, towering up to the fading stars, was a third Martian, erect
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and motionless like the others. An insane resolve possessed me. I would die
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and end it, and I would save myself, even the trouble of killing
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myself. I marched on recklessly towards this titan, and then as I drew
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nearer and the light grew, I saw that a multitude of black birds was
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circling and clustering about the hood. At that my heart gave a bound,
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and I began running along the road. I hurried through the red weed that
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choked Saint Edmund's Terrace. I waded breast high across a torrent of water that
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was rushing down from the water works towards the Albert Road, and emerged upon
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the grass. Before the rising of the sun, great mounds had been heaped
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about the crest of the hill, making a huge redoubt of it. It
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was the final and largest place the Martians had made. And from behind these
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heaps there rose a thin smoke against the sky. Against the skyline, an
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eager dog ran and disappeared. The thought that had flashed into my mind grew
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real, grew credible. I felt no fear, only a wild trembling exultation
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as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Out of the hood
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hung lank shreds of brown at which the hungry birds pecked and tore. In
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another moment, I had scrambled up the earth and rampart and stood upon its
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crest. And the interior of the redoubt was below me. A mighty space.
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It was, with gigantic machines here and there within it, huge mounds
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of material, and strange shelter places, and scattered about it, some in
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their overturned war machines, some in the now rigid handling machines, and a
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dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row with the Martians dead,
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slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared,
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slain as the red weed was being slain slain, after all man's devices had
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failed by the humblest things that God in his wisdom has put upon this earth.
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For so it had come about, as indeed I and many men might
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have foreseen, had not terror and disaster blinded our minds. These germs of
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disease have taken toll of humanity since the beginning of things, taken toll of
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our prehuman ancestors since life began here. But by virtue of this natural selection
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of our kind, we have developed resisting power. To no germs do we
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succumb without a struggle, and to many those that cause putrefaction in dead matter.
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For instance, our living frames are altogether immune, but there are no
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bacteria in Mars. And directly these invaders arrived. Directly, they drank and
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fed our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them,
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they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and
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fro It was inevitable by the toll of a billion deaths. Man has bought
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his birthright of the earth, and it is his against all comers. It
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would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are,
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for neither do men live nor die in vain. Here and there they were
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scattered, nearly fifty altogether in that great gulf. They had made overtaken by
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a death that must have seemed to them as incomprehensible as any death could be.
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To me. Also, at that time this death was incomprehensible. All
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I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men
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were dead. For a moment, I believed that the destruction of Snacharib had
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been repeated, that God had repented, that the angel of Death had slain
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them. In the night, I stood staring into the pit, and my
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heart lightened gloriously. Even as the rising sun struck the world to fire about
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me with his rays, the pit was still in darkness. The mighty machines,
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so great and wonderful in their power and complexity, so unearthly in their
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tortuous forms, rose weird and vague and strange out of the shadows towards the
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light. A multitude of dogs I could hear fought over the bodies that lay
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darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me. Across the pit,
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on its farther lip, flat and vast and strange lay the great flying
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machine with which they had been experimenting upon our denser atmosphere when decay and death
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arrested them. Death had come not a day too soon. At the sound
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of a quarring overhead, I looked up at the huge fighting machine that would
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fight no more forever, at the tattered, red shreds of flesh that dripped
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down upon the overturned seats on the summit of Primrose Hill. I turned and
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looked down the slope of the hill, to where, in haload now in
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birds, stood those other two martians that I had seen overnight, just as
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death had been overtaken them. The one had died even as it had been
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crying to its companions. Perhaps it was the last to die, and its
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voice had gone on perpetually until the force of its machinery was exhausted. They
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glittered now harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the brightness of the rising
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sun all about the pit, and saved, as by a miracle, from
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everlasting destruction, stretched the great Mother of cities. Those who have only seen
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London veiled in her somber robes of smoke can scarcely imagine the naked clearness and
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beauty of the silent wilderness of houses. Eastward, over the blackened ruins of
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the Albert Terrace and the splintered spire of the Church, the sun blazed dazzling
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in a clear sky. And here and there some facet in the great wilderness
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of roofs caught the light and glared with a white intensity. Northward were Kilburn
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and Hampstead, blue and crowded with houses. Westward, the great city was
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dimmed, and southward, beyond the Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park,
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the Langham Hotel, the dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute,
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and the giant mansions of the Brompton Road came out clear and little in
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the sunrise, the jagged ruins of Westminster rising hazily beyond. Far away and
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blue were the Surrey Hills, and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like
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two silver rods. The Dome of Saint Paul's was dark against the sunrise,
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and injured, I saw for the first time by a huge gaping cavity on
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its western side. And as I looked at this wide expanse of houses and
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factories, and churches, silent and abandoned. As I thought of the multitudinous
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hopes and efforts, the innumerable hosts of lives that had gone to build this
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human reef, and of all the swift and ruthless destruction that had hung over
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it all. When I realized that the shadow had been rolled back, and
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that men might still live in the streets, and this dear, vast,
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dead city of mine be once again alive and powerful, I felt a wave
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of emotion that was near akin to tears. The torment was over. Even
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that day. The healing would begin. The survivors of the people scattered over
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the country, leaderless, lawless, foodless, like sheep without a shepherd.
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The thousands who had fled by sea would begin to return. The pulse of
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life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and
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par across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction was done, the hand of the
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destroyer was stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses,
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of houses that stared so dismally at the sunlit grass of the hill would presently
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be echoing with the hammers of the restorers, and ringing with the tapping of
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their trowels. At the thought, I extended my hands towards the sky and
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began thanking God. In a year, thought I in a year. With
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overwhelming force, came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the
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old life of hope and tender helpfulness that had ceased forever. End of Section
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twenty five.