Book 2 · Chapter 1

In the first book, I’d wandered so much into my brother’s adventures that for the last couple of chapters, the curate and I were basically hiding out in an empty house at Halliford - we’d run there to escape the Black Smoke. Let me pick up the story from there.

We stayed there all Sunday night and all the next day - the day everyone was freaking out - in a little bubble of daylight, cut off from the rest of the world by the Black Smoke. We basically had to wait, just stuck and doing nothing for those two long days.

My mind was totally consumed with worry about my wife. I pictured her at Leatherhead, terrified and in danger, already grieving for me, thinking I was dead.

I paced around the rooms and yelled out loud when I thought about being cut off from her, about everything that could happen to her while I was gone. My cousin, I knew, was brave, but he wasn’t the type to quickly realize danger or react fast.

What we needed right then wasn’t bravery, it was being cautious. My only comfort was hoping the Martians were moving toward London and away from her. Those kinds of vague worries just make your mind jumpy and painful.

I got super tired and cranky with the curate’s constant, dramatic outbursts; I was sick of seeing his selfish despair. After trying to talk some sense into him, I just stayed away, hanging out in a room - looked like a kids’ schoolroom - with globes, desks, and notebooks.

When he followed me there, I went up to a tiny room at the top of the house and locked myself in to be alone with my awful feelings. We were totally trapped by the Black Smoke all that day and the morning after.

On Sunday evening, we saw signs of people in the house next door - a face at a window and moving lights, and later the sound of a door slamming. But I don’t know who those people were, or what happened to them. We didn’t see them again the next day.

The Black Smoke drifted slowly toward the river all that Monday morning, getting closer and closer, finally pushing along the road right outside the house where we were hiding.

Around noon, a Martian showed up across the fields, spraying superheated steam that hissed against the walls, smashing every window it touched, and even scalding the curate’s hand when he ran out of the front room.

When we finally crept across the soaked rooms and looked out again, the land to the north looked like a black snowstorm had passed through it. Looking towards the river, we were shocked to see a strange redness mixed in with the black of the scorched meadows.

For a while, we didn’t see how this change affected where we were, except that we weren’t scared of the Black Smoke anymore. But later, I realized we weren’t trapped anymore - we could actually get away. As soon as I figured out there was a way out, I started thinking about taking action.

But the curate was totally drained and being unreasonable. "We’re safe here," he kept repeating; "safe here." I decided to leave him - I wish I had! Remembering what the artilleryman taught me, I looked for food and drinks.

I’d found oil and rags for my burns, and I also grabbed a hat and a flannel shirt from one of the bedrooms. When he realized I was leaving alone - I’d made peace with going alone - he suddenly perked up and wanted to come.

And since everything was quiet throughout the afternoon, we started out around five o’clock, heading down the blackened road towards Sunbury.

In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, were dead bodies lying in twisted positions, horses as well as people, overturned carts and luggage, all covered thickly with black dust. That layer of cindery powder made me think of what I’s read about the destruction of Pompeii.

We got to Hampton Court without any trouble, our minds full of weird and unfamiliar sights, and at Hampton Court our eyes were relieved to find a patch of green that had escaped the suffocating dust.

We went through Bushey Park, with its deer wandering around under the chestnut trees, and some people and women hurrying in the distance towards Hampton, and so we came to Twickenham. These were the first people we saw. Away across the road, the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still burning.

Twickenham was unharmed by either Heat-Ray or Black Smoke, and there were more people around here, though none could give us any news. For the most part, they were like us, taking advantage of a break to move their stuff.

I have a feeling that many of the houses here were still occupied by scared people, too frightened even to run. Here too, there was plenty of evidence of a hasty retreat along the road. I remember most vividly three smashed bikes in a heap, pounded into the road by the wheels of subsequent carts.

We crossed Richmond Bridge around eight-thirty. We hurried across the exposed bridge, of course, but I noticed floating down the river a number of red masses, some many feet across.

I didnn't know what these were - there was no time to look closely - and I jumped to a more horrible conclusion than they deserved.

Here again on the Surrey side were black dust that had once been smoke, and dead bodies - a pile near the approach to the station; but we didn’t see the Martians until we were a ways towards Barnes.

We saw in the blackened distance a group of three people running down a side street towards the river, but otherwise it seemed deserted. Up the hill, Richmond town was burning quickly; outside the town of Richmond, there was no trace of the Black Smoke.

Then suddenly, as we approached Kew, came a bunch of people running, and the top part of a Martian fighting-machine appeared over the rooftops, not a hundred yards away from us. We stood there, stunned by the danger, and if the Martian had looked down, we would have been done for immediately.

We were so terrified that we dared not go on, but turned aside and hid in a shed in a garden. There, the curate crouched, quietly crying, and refusing to move again. But my strong desire to reach Leatherhead wouldn’t let me rest, and in the twilight, I ventured out again.

I went through a hedge, and along a path beside a big house standing in its own grounds, and so emerged onto the road towards Kew. I left the curate in the shed, but he hurried after me. That second start was the most reckless thing I ever did. Because it was clear the Martians were all around us.

No sooner had the curate caught up with me than we saw either the fighting-machine we had seen before or another, far away across the fields in the direction of Kew Lodge.

Four or five little black figures hurried before it across the grey-green of the field, and in a moment it was obvious this Martian was chasing them. In three strides, he was among them, and they scattered from his feet in all directions.

He didn’t use a Heat-Ray to destroy them, but picked them up one by one. Apparently, he tossed them into the big metallic carrier which projected behind him, much like a worker’s basket hangs over his shoulder.

It was the first time I realized that the Martians might have any other purpose than destroying defeated humans.

We stood for a moment frozen, then turned and ran through a gate behind us into a walled garden, fell into, rather than found, a lucky ditch, and lay there, barely daring to whisper to each other until the stars came out.

It was probably close to eleven before we finally got the nerve to move again, but we ditched the road and started sneaking along hedges and through gardens, keeping a super close eye on the darkness. He watched on the right, and I watched on the left, because the Martians seemed to be everywhere.

We stumbled into this totally scorched and blackened area - now cooling and gray - and a bunch of scattered bodies of guys, burned horribly around their heads and chests, but their legs and boots were mostly still on.

There were also dead horses, maybe fifty feet behind a line of four wrecked guns and smashed carriages. Sheen, it looked like, had somehow missed destruction, but the place was totally silent and deserted. We didn’t see any bodies there, though it was too dark to see down the side streets.

In Sheen, my friend suddenly felt faint and thirsty, so we decided to try one of the houses. The first house we got into - it took a little work with the window - was a small semi-detached house. I didn’t find anything to eat except some moldy cheese.

But there was water to drink, and I grabbed a hatchet, which seemed like it would be useful for breaking into the next place. We then crossed over to where the road turns toward Mortlake.

There was a white house with a walled garden, and in the pantry of that place, we found a ton of food - two loaves of bread in a pan, an uncooked steak, and half a ham. I’m giving you all the details because, as it turned out, we ended up living off this food for the next couple of weeks.

There were bottles of beer under a shelf, and two bags of haricot beans and some wilted lettuces. The pantry opened into a little kitchen, and there was firewood in there. There was also a cupboard with almost a dozen bottles of burgundy, tinned soups and salmon, and two tins of biscuits.

We sat in the kitchen in the dark - we were too scared to light a lamp - and ate bread and ham, and drank beer from the same bottle.

The curate, who was still nervous and jumpy, was now, oddly enough, pushing to move on, and I was trying to get him to eat to keep up his strength when something happened that trapped us. "It can’t be midnight yet," I said, and then there was this crazy, blinding flash of bright green light.

Everything in the kitchen popped into view, super clear in green and black, and then vanished. And then there was this massive shake, like nothing I’d ever heard before or since.

Right after that, there was a thump behind me, glass shattering, a crash and rumble of falling bricks all around us, and the ceiling plaster came down on us, smashing into a bunch of fragments on our heads.

I was knocked head over heels across the floor and slammed against the oven handle, and I was stunned. I was out cold for a long time, the curate told me, and when I came to, we were in the dark again, and he - I later found out - had a cut on his forehead and was dabbing water over me.

For a while, I couldn’t remember what had happened. Then things started coming back to me slowly. A bruise on my temple started throbbing. Are you okay? the curate whispered. Finally, I answered him. I sat up. Don’t move, he said. The floor is covered with smashed dishes from the dresser.

"You can’t possibly move without making a noise, and I think they’re outside. We both sat completely silent, so we could barely hear each other breathing. Everything seemed totally still, but then something near us - some plaster or broken brickwork - slid down with a rumbling sound.

There was an intermittent, metallic rattle just outside and really close. "That!" the curate said, when it happened again. "Yeah," I said. "But what is it?" "A Martian!" the curate said. I listened again.

"It wasn’t like the Heat-Ray," I said, and for a while I thought one of those huge fighting machines had just crashed into the house, like I’d seen one do to the church tower in Shepperton. Our situation was so weird and confusing that for three or four hours, until morning, we barely moved.

Then the light started filtering in, not through the window - which was still black - but through a triangle of space between a beam and a pile of broken bricks in the wall behind us. We finally saw the kitchen clearly, all gray.

The window had been smashed open by a wave of garden soil, which flowed over the table where we’d been sitting and piled up around our feet. Outside, the ground was piled high against the house. At the top of the window frame, we could see a drainpipe that had been ripped out.

The floor was covered in broken bits of metal; the end of the kitchen, closest to the house, was totally wrecked, and since sunlight was streaming in there, it was obvious that a lot of the house had collapsed.

But standing out against all that destruction was the neat pantry, stained a pale green, with lots of copper and tin pots underneath. The wallpaper looked like blue and white tiles, and a couple of old magazine inserts were fluttering from the walls above the stove.

As daylight got brighter, we saw through the gap in the wall a Martian, standing guard, I guess, over the still-glowing cylinder. At the sight of that, we crawled out of the dim kitchen and into the dark scullery as carefully as possible. Suddenly, it all clicked.

"The fifth cylinder," I whispered, "the fifth shot from Mars has hit this house and buried us under the rubble! The curate was silent for a bit, then he whispered, "God help us! I heard him whimpering to himself a little later. Except for that sound, we stayed completely still in the scullery.

I barely dared to breathe, and sat with my eyes fixed on the faint light coming from the kitchen door. I could just make out the curate’s face, a blurry oval shape, and his collar and cuffs.

Outside, there started a metallic hammering, then a loud hooting, and then, after a quiet moment, a hissing like an engine. These strange noises kept happening, and seemed to get more frequent as time went on.

Then there was a steady thumping and a shaking that made everything around us quiver and the pots in the pantry rattle. Once, the light disappeared, and the ghostly kitchen doorway went completely dark.

We must have crouched there, silent and shivering, for hours until we were just too tired to pay attention. . . . Finally, I woke up and was starving. I think we must have spent most of a day before that. My hunger was so intense that it made me move.

I told the curate I was going to look for food, and felt my way towards the pantry. He didn’t answer, but as soon as I started eating, the little noise I made woke him up, and I heard him crawling after me.