The Day of the Triffids

1. THE END BEGINS-3

‘It’s useless—dead. You are still here?’ he added.

‘Yes,’ I told him.

His fingers felt along the edge of the desk.

‘Which way am I facing? Where’s the damned window?’ he demanded, with a return of irritability.

‘It’s right behind you,’ I said.

He turned, and stepped towards it, both hands extended. He felt the sill and the sides carefully, and stepped back a pace. Before I had realized what he was doing he had launched himself full at it, and crashed through…

I didn’t look to see. After all, it was the fifth floor.

When I moved, it was to sit down heavily in the chair. I took a cigarette from a box on the desk, and lit it shakily. I sat here for some minutes while I steadied up, and let the sick feeling subside. After a while it did. I left the room, and went back to the place where I had first found him. I still wasn’t feeling too good when I got there.

At the far end of the wide corridor were the doors of a ward. The panels were frosted save for ovals of clear glass at face level. I reckoned there ought to be someone on duty there that I could report to about the doctor.

I opened the door. It was pretty dark in there. The curtains had evidently been drawn after the previous night’s display was over—and they were still drawn.

‘Sister?’ I inquired.

‘She ain’t ’ere,’ a man’s voice said. ‘What’s more,’ it went on, ‘she ain’t been ’ere for ruddy hours, neither. Can’t you pull them ruddy curtains, mate, and let’s ’ave some flippin’ light? Don’t know what’s come over the bloody place this morning.’

‘Okay,’ I agreed.

Even if the whole place were disorganized, it didn’t seem to be any good reason why the unfortunate patients should have to lie in the dark.

I pulled back the curtains on the nearest window, and let in a shaft of bright sunlight. It was a surgical ward with about twenty patients, all bedridden. Leg injuries mostly, several amputations, by the look of it.

‘Stop fooling about with ’em, mate, and pull ’em back,’ said the same voice.

I turned and looked at the man who spoke. He was a dark, burly fellow with a weather-beaten skin. He was sitting up in bed, facing directly at me—and at the light. His eyes seemed to be gazing into my own, so did his neighbour’s, and the next man’s…

For a few moments I stared back at them. It took that long to register. Then:

‘I—they—they seem to be stuck,’ I said. ‘I’ll find someone to see to them.’

And with that I fled the ward.

* * * *

I was shaky again, and I could have done with a stiff drink. The thing was beginning to sink in. But I found it difficult to believe that all the men in that ward could be blind, just like the doctor, and yet…

The lift wasn’t working, so I started down the stairs. On the next floor I pulled myself together, and plucked up the courage to look into another ward. The beds there were all disarranged. At first I thought the place was empty, but it wasn’t—not quite. Two men in nightclothes lay on the floor. One was soaked in blood from an unhealed incision, the other looked as if some kind of congestion had seized him. They were both quite dead. The rest had gone.

Back on the stairs once more, I realized that most of the background voices I had been hearing all the time were coming up from below, and that they were louder and closer now. I hesitated a moment, but there seemed to be nothing for it but to go on making my way down.

On the next turn I nearly tripped over a man who lay across my way in the shadow. At the bottom of the flight lay somebody who actually had tripped over him—and cracked his head on the stone steps as he landed.

At last I reached the final turn where I could stand and look down into the main hall. Seemingly everyone in the place who was able to move must have made instinctively for that spot either with the idea of finding help or of getting outside. Perhaps some of them had got out. One of the main entrance doors was wide open, but most of them couldn’t find it. There was a tight-packed mob of men and women, nearly all of them in their hospital nightclothes, milling slowly and helplessly around. The motion pressed those on the outskirts cruelly against marble corners or ornamental projections. Some of them were crushed breathlessly against the walls. Now and then one would trip. If the press of bodies allowed him to fall, there was little chance that it would let him come up again.

The place looked—well, you’ll have seen some of Doré’s pictures of sinners in hell. But Doré couldn’t include the sounds: the sobbing, the murmurous moaning, and occasionally a forlorn cry.

A minute or two of it was all I could stand. I fled back up the stairs.

There was the feeling that I ought to do something about it. Lead them out into the street, perhaps, and at least put an end to that dreadful slow milling. But a glance had been enough to show that I could not hope to make my way to the door to guide them there. Besides, if I were to, if I did get them outside—what then?

I sat down on a step for a while to get over it, with my head in my hands and that awful conglomerate sound in my ears all the time. Then I searched for, and found, another staircase. It was a narrow service flight which led me out by a back way into the yard.

Maybe I’m not telling this part too well. The whole thing was so unexpected and shocking that for a time I deliberately tried not to remember the details. Just then I was feeling much as though it were a nightmare from which I was desperately but vainly seeking the relief of waking myself. As I stepped out into the yard I still half-refused to believe what I had seen.

But one thing I was perfectly certain about. Reality or nightmare, I needed a drink as I had seldom needed one before.

There was nobody in sight in the little side street outside the yard gates, but almost opposite stood a pub. I can recall its name now—‘The Alamein Arms’. There was a board bearing a reputed likeness of Viscount Montgomery hanging from an iron bracket, and below, one of the doors stood open.

I made straight for it.

Stepping into the public bar gave me for the moment a comforting sense of normality. It was prosaically and familiarly like dozens of others.

But although there was no one in that part, there was certainly something going on in the saloon bar, round the corner. I heard heavy breathing. A cork left its bottle with a pop. A pause. Then a voice remarked:

‘Gin, blast it! T’hell with gin!’

There followed a shattering crash. The voice gave a sozzled chuckle.

‘Thash the mirror. Wash good of mirrors, anyway?’

Another cork popped.

‘’S’ damned gin again,’ complained the voice, offended. ‘T’hell with gin.’

This time the bottle hit something soft, thudded to the floor, and lay there gurgling away its contents.

‘Hey!’ I called. ‘I want a drink.’

There was a silence. Then:

‘Who’re you?’ the voice inquired, cautiously.

‘I’m from the hospital,’ I said. ‘I want a drink.’

‘Don’ ’member y’r voice. Can you see?’

‘Yes,’ I told him.

‘Well then, for God’s sake get over the bar, Doc, and find me a bottle of whisky.’

‘I’m doctor enough for that,’ I said.

I climbed across, and went round the corner. A large-bellied, red-faced man with a greying walrus moustache stood there clad only in trousers and a collarless shirt. He was fairly drunk. He seemed undecided whether to open the bottle he held in his hand, or to use it as a weapon.

‘’F you’re not a doctor, what are you?’ he demanded, suspiciously.

‘I was a patient—but I need a drink as much as any doctor,’ I said. ‘That’s gin again you’ve got there,’ I added.

‘Oh, is it! B— gin,’ he said, and slung it away. It went through the window with a lively crash.

‘Give me that corkscrew,’ I told him.

I took down a bottle of whisky from the shelf, opened it, and handed it to him with a glass. For myself I chose a stiff brandy with very little soda, and then another. After that my hand wasn’t shaking so much.

I looked at my companion. He was taking his whisky neat, out of the bottle.

‘You’ll get drunk,’ I said.

He paused and turned his head towards me. I could have sworn that his eyes really saw me.

‘Get drunk! Damn it, I am drunk,’ he said, scornfully.

He was so perfectly right that I didn’t comment. He brooded a moment before he announced:

‘Gotta get drunker. Gotta get mush drunker.’ He leaned closer. ‘D’you know what?—I’m blind. Thash what I am—blind’s a bat. Everybody’s blind’s a bat. ’Cept you. Why aren’t you blind’s a bat?’

‘I don’t know,’ I told him.

‘’S that bloody comet, b— it! Thash what done it. Green shootin’ shtarsh—an’ now everyone’s blind’s a bat. D’ju shee green shootin’ shtarsh?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘There you are. Proves it. You didn’t see ’em: you aren’t blind. Everyone else saw ’em’—he waved an expressive arm—‘all’s blind’s bats. B— comets, I say.’

I poured myself a third brandy, wondering whether there might not be something in what he was saying.

‘Everyone blind?’ I repeated.

‘Thash it. All of ’em. Prob’ly everyone in th’ world—’cept you,’ he added, as an afterthought.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘’S’easy. Listen!’ he said.

We stood side by side leaning on the bar of the dingy pub, and listened. There was nothing to be heard—nothing but the rustle of a dirty newspaper blown down the empty street. Such a quietness held everything as cannot have been known in those parts for a thousand years and more.

‘See what I mean? ’S’obvious,’ said the man.

‘Yes,’ I said slowly. ‘Yes—I see what you mean.’

I decided that I must get along. I did not know where to. But I must find out more about what was happening.

‘Are you the landlord?’ I asked him.

‘Wha’ ’f I am?’ he demanded, defensively.

‘Only that I’ve got to pay someone for three double brandies.’

‘Ah—forget it.’

‘But, look here—’

‘Forget it, I tell you. D’ju know why? ’Cause what’s the good ’f money to a dead man? An’ thash what I am—’s good as. Jus’ a few more drinks.’

He looked a pretty robust specimen for his age, and I said so.

‘Wha’s good of living blind’s a bat?’ he demanded, aggressively. ‘Thash what my wife said. An’ she was right—only she’s more guts than I have. When she found as the kids was blind too, what did she do? Took ’em into our bed with her, and turned on the gas. Thash what she done. An’ I hadn’t the guts to stick with ’em. She’s got pluck, my wife, more’n I have. But I will have soon. I’m goin’ back up there soon—when I’m drunk enough.’

What was there to say? What I did say served no purpose save to spoil his temper. In the end he groped his way to the stairs and disappeared up them, bottle in hand. I didn’t try to stop him, or follow him. I watched him go. Then I knocked back the last of my brandy, and went out into the silent street.