Book 2 · Chapter 5

My first move before heading into the pantry was to lock the door between the kitchen and the scullery. But the pantry was totally empty; every last bit of food was gone. Apparently, the Martian had taken it all the day before. That’s when I really started to lose it.

I didn't eat or drink anything on the eleventh or twelfth day. At first, my mouth and throat were incredibly dry, and I felt my strength fading fast. I just sat around in the dark of the scullery, feeling totally bummed out. I couldn’t stop thinking about food.

I thought I'd gone deaf, because the usual sounds I heard coming from the pit had stopped completely. I didn’t feel strong enough to sneak quietly to the peephole, and I really wished I would have.

On the twelfth day, my throat was so sore that, risking alarming the Martians, I went for the creaky rainwater pump by the sink and managed to get a couple of glasses of blackened, gross rain water. It really refreshed me, and I felt a little braver that no tentacle followed the noise of my pumping.

During those days, I kept thinking a lot about the curate and how he’d died. On the thirteenth day, I drank some more water, dozed off, and kept thinking about eating and some crazy, impossible plans to get away.

Whenever I dozed, I had awful dreams - about the curate's death or huge, amazing dinners. But, whether I was asleep or awake, I felt this constant, sharp pain that made me want to drink again and again. The light coming into the scullery wasn’t grey anymore; it was red.

To my messed-up imagination, it looked like the color of blood. On the fourteenth day, I went into the kitchen, and I was shocked to see that the red weed’s fronds had grown right across the hole in the wall, turning the dim light of the place into a deep red shadow.

It was early on the fifteenth day that I heard this weird, familiar sound in the kitchen, and, listening closely, realized it was a dog sniffing and scratching. Going into the kitchen, I saw a dog’s nose peeking in through a break in the red fronds. This totally surprised me.

He barked sharply when he caught my scent. I thought if I could get him to come into the place quietly, I could maybe kill and eat him. And even if I couldn't, it would be smart to take him out, just in case his actions attracted the Martians' attention.

I crept forward, saying "Good dog!" really softly, but he suddenly pulled his head back and disappeared. I listened - I wasn't deaf - but the pit was still quiet. I heard a sound like the flutter of bird wings and a hoarse croaking, but that was it.

For a long time, I stayed close to the peephole, but I didn’t dare move the red plants that blocked my view. A couple of times, I heard a faint patter, like the dog’s feet moving around on the sand far below, and there were more bird-like sounds, but that was all.

Finally, encouraged by the silence, I looked out. Except in the corner, where a bunch of crows were hopping and fighting over the skeletons of the dead that the Martians had eaten, there wasn't a living thing in the pit. I stared around, hardly believing my eyes. All the machinery was gone.

Besides a big pile of greyish-blue powder in one corner, a few bars of aluminum in another, the black birds, and the skeletons of the killed, the place was just an empty circle of sand. Slowly, I pushed myself out through the red weed and stood on the pile of rubble.

I could see in every direction except behind me, to the north, and there weren't any Martians or signs of Martians. The pit dropped straight down from my feet, but a little ways along the rubble gave a decent slope to the top of the ruins. My chance to escape had come. I started to tremble.

I paused for a while, then, with a sudden burst of determination and a heart pounding out of my chest, I climbed to the top of the mound where I’d been buried for so long. I looked around again. Still no Martians to the north.

When I’d last seen this part of Sheen in the daylight, it had been a nice, normal street with comfortable white and red houses, and lots of shady trees. Now, I was standing on a pile of broken brick, dirt, and gravel, covered in tons of red, cactus-shaped plants, about as tall as my knees.

Nothing else was growing there. The trees nearby were dead and brown, but further away, I saw a network of red thread climbing up the still-living stems.

The houses around me were all wrecked, but none had been burned; their walls were still standing, sometimes up to the second floor, with broken windows and shattered doors. The red weed was growing wild in their empty rooms. Below me was this huge pit, with crows fighting over the trash.

A bunch of other birds were hopping around the ruins. Way off in the distance, I saw a skinny cat slinking along a wall, but there were no signs of people. The day felt so bright compared to being stuck in the dark, the sky a brilliant blue.

A gentle breeze made the red weed covering every inch of open ground sway softly. And oh, the sweetness of the air!