Book 2 · Chapter 8

After I parted ways with the artilleryman, I headed down the hill and onto the High Street, crossing the bridge to Fulham. The red weed was crazy at that time, practically choking the bridge roadway. But patches of it were already turning white from the spreading disease that quickly wiped it out.

At the corner of the lane leading to Putney Bridge station, I found a guy lying there. He was as black as a chimney sweep covered in soot, alive, but totally helpless and speechless from being drunk. I couldn’t get anything from him but curses and wild lunges at my head.

I probably should have stayed with him, but his face had such a nasty look. There was black dust all along the road from the bridge, and it got thicker in Fulham. The streets were eerily quiet. I grabbed some food - sour, hard, and moldy, but still okay to eat - at a bakery.

Further towards Walham Green, the streets cleared of the powder, and I passed a row of white houses on fire; the sound of the burning was a total relief. Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet again. Here, I came across the black powder and dead bodies again.

I saw about a dozen in total along the Fulham Road. They’s been dead for days, so I hurried past them. The black powder covered them, blurring their shapes. A couple had been messed with by dogs.

Where there wasn't any black powder, it was kinda like a Sunday in the City - closed shops, locked-up houses with blinds drawn, deserted and still. In some places, people had been looting, but mostly from food and wine shops.

A jeweler’s window had been smashed in one spot, but it looked like the thief got scared off, and a bunch of gold chains and a watch were scattered on the sidewalk. I didn't even bother to pick them up.

Further down, there was a woman in rags slumped on a doorstep; the hand hanging over her knee was cut, and blood stained her faded brown dress, and a smashed bottle of champagne made a puddle on the pavement. She looked like she was asleep, but she was dead.

The farther I got into London, the deeper the silence became. But it wasn't the silence of death - it was the silence of waiting, of expecting something.

At any moment, the destruction that had already scorched the northwestern edge of the city, and had completely destroyed Ealing and Kilburn, could strike these houses and turn them into smoking ruins. It was a city marked for destruction, abandoned. . . .

In South Kensington, the streets were clear of dead and black powder. It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling. It crept up on me almost without me noticing. It was a sad, wavering pattern of two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," going on forever.

When I passed streets heading north, it got louder, and buildings seemed to muffle and cut it off again. It came rushing down Exhibition Road in a wave. I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering about this strange, distant wailing.

It was like that huge desert of houses had found a voice for its fear and loneliness.

"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that super-loud voice - huge waves of sound washing down the wide, sunny street, between the tall buildings on either side. I turned north, amazed, towards the iron gates of Hyde Park.

I almost wanted to break into the Natural History Museum and climb up to the towers to see across the park. But I decided to stay on the ground, where I could hide quickly, and kept walking up Exhibition Road.

All the big houses on either side of the road were empty and quiet, and my footsteps echoed against the walls. At the top, near the park gate, I saw something really weird - a bus flipped over, and the skeleton of a horse, picked clean.

I stared at it for a while, then kept going to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice got louder and louder, but I couldn’t see anything above the rooftops on the north side of the park, except for a haze of smoke to the northwest.

"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, seeming to come from the area around Regent’s Park. That creepy wail messed with my head. The feeling that had kept me going vanished. The wailing took over. I felt totally exhausted, aching in my feet, and now hungry and thirsty again.

It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this dead city? Why was I alone when all of London was basically in mourning, wrapped in a black shroud? I felt incredibly lonely. My mind drifted to old friends I’d forgotten about for years.

I thought about the drugs in the pharmacies, the drinks the liquor stores stocked; I remembered those two desperate people, who, as far as I knew, shared the city with me...

I got to Oxford Street through Marble Arch, and there were more black powder and several bodies, and a nasty, heavy smell coming from the cellar vents of some of the houses. I got really thirsty after the heat of my long walk.

With a lot of effort, I managed to break into a pub and get something to eat and drink. I was worn out after eating, and went into the room behind the bar, and slept on a black horsehair sofa I found there. I woke up to that same creepy howling still ringing in my ears, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla."

It was now dusk, and after I’d found some biscuits and cheese in the bar - there was a meat safe, but it was full of maggots - I wandered through the quiet residential squares to Baker Street - Portman Square is the only one I can remember - and finally came out onto Regent’s Park.

And as I stepped out from the top of Baker Street, I saw far away over the trees in the clear sunset light the hood of the Martian giant, the one making that howling noise. I wasn’t terrified. I came across him like it was no big deal. I watched him for a while, but he didn’t move.

He just seemed to be standing there, yelling, for no reason I could figure out. I tried to come up with a plan. That constant sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla" was messing with my head. Maybe I was too tired to be really scared. Definitely, I was more curious to know why he was crying than afraid.

I turned back away from the park and headed into Park Road, intending to skirt the park, walking along under the shelter of the terraces, and got a view of that stationary, howling Martian from the direction of St. John’s Wood.

A couple of hundred yards from Baker Street, I heard a yelping chorus, and saw, first a dog with a piece of rotting red meat in his mouth running towards me, and then a pack of starving mutts chasing after him. He made a wide curve to avoid me, like he thought I might be a fresh competitor.

As the yelping faded down the quiet road, the wailing sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla" came back.

I stumbled upon the wrecked machine about halfway to St. John’s Wood station. At first, I thought a house had collapsed across the road.

It wasn't until I climbed through the rubble that I saw it - this mechanical giant, like a broken Samson, lying there with its arms twisted and smashed, surrounded by the mess it had made. The front was totally wrecked.

It looked like it had just plowed straight into the house and been crushed in the process. I figured maybe it had been a machine that broke free from its Martian controller.

I couldn’t see much more in the wreckage, and the twilight was getting pretty dark, so the blood smeared on the seat and the gnawed bits of the Martian that the dogs had left were invisible to me. Still trying to wrap my head around everything I'd seen, I headed towards Primrose Hill.

Far off, through the trees, I spotted another Martian, just as still and silent as the first, standing in the park near the zoo. A little past the ruins of the wrecked machine, I saw the red weed again and found the Regent’s Canal, completely covered in a spongy mass of dark-red plants.

As I crossed the bridge, the sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla" just... stopped. It was like it got cut off. The silence hit me like a thunderclap. The houses around me looked faint and tall and dim; the trees towards the park were turning black.

Everywhere I looked, the red weed was climbing over the ruins, twisting and writhing to get above me in the dimness. Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was creeping in.

But while that voice was still sounding, the loneliness and destruction had been bearable; because of it, London still felt alive, and that feeling kept me going. Then suddenly, things changed - something passed, I didn't know what - and there was this stillness that you could actually feel.

Just this quiet, spooky stillness. London around me seemed to be staring at me like a ghost. The windows in the white houses looked like empty eye sockets. My imagination started finding a thousand silent enemies all around me. I was seized with terror, a real horror of my own boldness.

The road in front of me became pitch black, like it had been tarred, and I saw a twisted shape lying across the path. I couldn't bring myself to go on. I turned down St. John’s Wood Road and ran as fast as I could away from this unbearable stillness towards Kilburn.

I hid from the night and the silence, until long after midnight, in a cabmen’s shelter in Harrow Road. But before dawn, my courage came back, and while the stars were still out, I turned back towards Regent’s Park.

I got lost in the streets and finally saw, down a long avenue in the dim light of early morning, the curve of Primrose Hill. On the top, towering up towards the fading stars, was a third Martian, standing straight and motionless like the others . A crazy feeling took over me.

I was going to die and end it all. And I wasn't even going to bother killing myself. I marched recklessly towards this giant, and then, as I got closer and the light grew stronger, I saw a whole flock of black birds circling and gathering around the hood.

My heart jumped, and I started running down the road. I hurried through the red weed that was choking St. Edmund’s Terrace (I waded through chest-high water rushing down from the waterworks towards Albert Road), and came out onto the grass before the sun rose.

Huge mounds had been piled up around the top of the hill, making a massive redoubt - it was the final and biggest place the Martians had built - and from behind these mounds, a thin plume of smoke rose into the sky. Against the skyline, a dog ran and disappeared.

The thought that had flashed into my mind felt real, believable. I felt no fear, just a wild, shaky excitement, as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster. Hanging from the hood were long, ragged strips of brown stuff, which the hungry birds were pecking and tearing at.

In another moment, I’d scrambled up the dirt wall and stood on top, looking down into the redoubt. It was a huge space, with massive machines scattered around, giant piles of stuff, and weird shelters.

And all over the place, some in their wrecked war-machines, some in the now-useless handling-machines, and a dozen of them lined up, stiff and silent - the Martians - dead! They’d been killed by disease bacteria, the kind that rot things, and their bodies weren’t ready for it.

Just like the red weed was dying. After all our weapons had failed, it was the tiniest things on Earth that defeated them. That’s how it turned out, and honestly, a lot of us could have seen it coming if we hadn't been so scared and overwhelmed.

These germs have been taking down humanity since the beginning - even our ancestors before us. We’re survivors; we fight back against germs, and our bodies are immune to a lot of them, like the ones that cause rot.

But there are no bacteria on Mars, so as soon as they arrived and started drinking and eating, our microscopic allies went to work destroying them. Even when I watched, they were already doomed, dying and rotting as they moved around. It was inevitable.

We’re here because billions of people have died fighting for this planet, and it's ours, no matter what. Even if the Martians were ten times stronger, it would still be ours. People don't live or die for nothing.

They were scattered everywhere, almost fifty in total, in that huge hole they’d created, caught by a death that must have seemed as confusing to them as any death could be. It was confusing to me too, at the time.

All I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrifying to humans were now dead. For a moment, I thought it was like the story of Sennacherib - God had changed his mind, and an Angel of Death had wiped them out in the night.

I stood staring into the pit, and I felt a surge of hope, as the rising sun lit up the world around me. The pit was still dark, but the massive engines, so powerful and complicated, and so alien in their twisted shapes, rose from the shadows toward the light.

I could hear dogs fighting over the bodies far below. Across the pit, on the other side, lay the huge flying-machine they’d been testing in our atmosphere when decay and death stopped them. They’d died just in time.

A cawing sound made me look up at the huge fighting-machine that would never fight again, at the tattered red scraps of flesh dripping down onto the overturned seats on top of Primrose Hill.

I turned and looked down the hill to where, now surrounded by birds, stood those other two Martians I’d seen the night before. One had died while still calling out to its companions - maybe it was the last to die, and its voice kept going until its machinery ran out of power.

They shimmered now, harmless metal towers, shining in the sunlight. All around the pit, and somehow saved from total destruction, stretched the great city. People who’s only seen London hidden in a blanket of smoke can’t imagine how clear and beautiful the silent neighborhood of houses really is.

Eastward, over the wrecked remains of Albert Terrace and the shattered spire of the church, the sun blazed intensely in a clear sky. Here and there, a surface on the sprawling roofs caught the light and glared with a bright, white intensity.

Northward were Kilburn and Hampsted, a blue haze of crowded houses.

Westward, the huge city was muted; southward, beyond the Martians, the green waves of Regent’s Park, the Langham Hotel, the dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the massive mansions of the Brompton Road stood out clearly in the sunrise.

The jagged ruins of Westminster rose hazily beyond. Far away and blue were the Surrey hills, and the towers of the Crystal Palace glittered like two silver rods.

The dome of St. Paul’s was dark against the sunrise, and damaged - I noticed for the first time - by a huge, gaping hole on its western side.

As I looked at this wide stretch of houses, factories, and churches, silent and abandoned, I thought about all the hopes and efforts, the countless lives that had built this human haven. I realized how quickly and brutally it had all been destroyed.

But then I realized the danger had passed, and people could live in the streets again. My dear, vast, dead city could be alive and powerful once more. I felt a wave of emotion that was almost like crying. The nightmare was over. Even that day, healing would start.

The survivors of the people scattered across the country - leaderless, without laws, and without food, like sheep without a shepherd - the thousands who had fled by sea, would begin to return.

The pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would beat again in the empty streets and flow across the vacant squares. Whatever damage was done, the destroyer had stopped.

All those gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so sadly at the sunlit grass of the hill, would soon be echoing with the sounds of hammers and ringing with the tapping of trowels. At the thought, I stretched my hands towards the sky and started thanking God.

In a year, I thought - in a year... Then, with overwhelming force, the thought of myself, of my wife, and the old life of hope and gentle support that had ended forever hit me.