The Night of the Triffids (6 page)

    'But can we beat them?'

    'Oh, indeed we're going to try. Try our damned hardest.' He gazed at the plants again before shooting a sideways glance at me. 'After all, I don't believe they should inherit the Earth, do you?'

    The plants replied for me. Until now they'd been silent, but suddenly they began to tap their sticks against their stems. It sounded like mischievous schoolboys deliberately trying to irritate their teacher by drumming their fingers quickly on the desks as soon as 'Sir' turned his back to chalk a homework assignment on the blackboard.

    My father looked at me with a smile.

    'And there they go again… my children of the soil. Talking.'

    I listened to the plants drumming their little sticks. I thought I could hear their rhythm and I sensed a tempo that communicated an urgency now, as if each triffid was passing on a secret message to its neighbour.

    At that moment I would have sworn that a sense of excitement had rippled through the twenty or so triffids shackled there in the greenhouse.

    My father recognized it, too. When he spoke this time he addressed the triffids themselves. 'What have you heard, then? Has one of your armies conquered another of our human communities? Is Triffid High Command planning to march once more? Are you eager to join them?'

    It might have been coincidence, or it might have been their response to my father's questions that he'd delivered in a manner half flippant, half serious, but the rap-rap-rap of stick against stem suddenly swelled into a wave of noise. There was a powerful clamouring; chains rattled as the plants tugged against them. Stems whipped from side to side like corn being blown this way and that by a sudden gale.

    I could well have believed at that moment that somehow those plants had just been stirred by a rousing call to arms from one of their kind across the sea. Now, in their own inscrutable way, they responded. The rattling of sticks was their ecstatic applause, their side-to-side swayings were waves of jubilation.

    They sensed impending battles. Imminent victories.

    I could believe this as easily as I believed that the sun would rise tomorrow.

    My father watched this display of triffid noise, movement and - maybe - even emotion. His grey hair caught the sunlight as he shook his head slowly. His face betrayed not one iota of what he himself might be feeling.

    After a moment's silence he began, 'David. At the centre of me there has always been this iron-hard core of optimism, but lately… I'm beginning to have doubts, you know?'

    'But surely we're safe, here on the island, from the triffids?'

    'We're holding our own, son. But every now and again I wonder. Perhaps we're really living in the eye of the storm. Secure for the moment, maybe.'

    'Then you think that this is some kind of fool's paradise?' I'd not heard my father express these kind of doubts before; it troubled me. 'That we can't make a go of this community after all?'

    'What I will say is this: by sheer good fortune we've been given a breathing space after escaping here from the mainland. A respite. The last twenty-five years have been a lull - a peaceful, even prosperous lull, I'll grant you. But I think we must face a harsher reality: that at some point in the future we shall encounter our greatest challenge yet.'

    'But we
are
succeeding here. We have order, commerce, transport, homes, a growing birth rate.'

    'Indeed we have - and that is a miracle in its own right. But we've grown complacent. Here we are, safe on our little island. However, we've largely turned our back on the outside world, with the exception of the other English Channel island communities.' He looked at me levelly for a moment. Then he began to speak to me in a low but grave voice. 'David, listen to me. We are a society that has become brilliant at the art of repair. Recycling, refurbishing, renewing. But we are not building from scratch. We don't dig ores out of the ground in order to smelt them into refined metals. If we're not doing that, how can we possibly even begin to build brand new tractors or cars - or even to cast so much as a humble teaspoon? These days, if we can't find a half-decent tractor that was built before the world went blind we cannibalize half a dozen clapped-out old tractors and cobble together just one that will do the job. Those aircraft you fly? The newest one is over thirty years old -
thirty years,
David: they should be museum pieces by now.' He made a slow chopping motion with his hand to emphasize his words. 'David. Whatever we are achieving isn't enough. We must move forward from scavenging on this - this carrion of a dead civilization. We must begin to invent once more, to develop new machines. And we should be able to do all that from scratch: by mining ore, by smelting, by casting new components - because one day there will be nothing left of the old world to scavenge. Then, without a shadow of a doubt, we shall decline into a new Dark Age. One from which we might never emerge.'

    It was suddenly clear to me, startlingly clear. My father foresaw a future devoid of the light of civilization; one engulfed by all the dark terrors such a time of chaos and anarchy would bring.

    Later that morning I drove in a carefully maintained forty-year-old boneshaker from the car pool through the sunlit Downs to Shanklin where my flying boat was moored, ready for the short hop across to the mainland. (A flight, you will recall, that would be cut short by the gull's suicide dive.) As I eased the car along the narrow country lanes I thought about what my father had told me. And I wondered what form that new Dark Age would take.

    As it was, my contemplation of an impending metaphorical nightfall was far off the mark. Because the black horrors to come were literal. The darkness actual.

    And absolute.

    

    

    

    I left the post office at a hell of a run. In my left hand I held the lit lamp. In my right, a cupboard door that I'd broken off its hinges, which would, I prayed, serve as a shield if I came within range of a triffid's lashing sting.

    The radio operator had told me to sit tight in the post office. But as triffid stings snapped against the panes, leaving spittle-like streaks of poison upon the glass, I realized that to hide myself there in a cowardly funk meant that I would be guilty of manslaughter by default.

    The triffids had invaded our island. That much was clear. They had already killed. They would kill again. And nearby must be dozens of unsuspecting islanders. I knew that I had a duty to warn them.

    Now I moved as quickly as I could, carrying my light and my shield.

    The day was still as black as - well, as night. I could see no more than a few paces in front of me. I realized only too clearly that I wouldn't even see the triffid that might kill me, striking as it could with its ten-foot sting from the darkness beyond the little circle of light cast by the lamp.

    An additional problem: I didn't know this area at all well. I did, however, recall that up the hill from Bytewater ran a narrow lane. And that lane ran up through open fields to one of the Mother Houses. There, triffids would find easy targets. Children playing in the grounds; the mothers, some of whom were blind, pushing babies in carriages, or going about their chores.

    So I ran through that all-encompassing darkness, my breath rasping in my throat, my heart beating thunderously. All I could see were my pounding feet and a few square feet of road surface beneath them.

    Every so often, lying there on the road would be a felled bird or cat that had been taken by the stingingly accurate poison tendril of a triffid. What was more, it became rapidly clear to me that the lethal plants' behavioural patterns had altered. Instead of making a kill and then taking root by its victim in order to feed as putrefaction set in, a triffid would now kill and move on straightaway in a relentless search for new victims. Just what had brought about this new response was anyone's guess but it did mean that they were now even more dangerous.

    I ran, straining my eyes to scan ahead, looking for the distinctive eight-foot-tall swaying shape of a killer plant as it sought new prey.

    With my nerves stretched taut, I was acutely sensitive to every sound, every movement, every shape glimpsed no matter how fleetingly from the corner of my eye. More than once I ducked, simultaneously raising the cupboard door across my face, only to lower it and discover that I was protecting myself from a road sign or a common hawthorn bush.

    I didn't allow myself much pause. In my mind's eye I could see with dreadful clarity those murderous plants moving on their jerky tripedal stumps into the grounds of the Mother House, the stingers whipping through the air to lash the faces of children and grown women alike.

    I dreaded reaching the house and standing there with the lamp raised, impotently looking about me at dozens of corpses lying with their arms thrown out, their faces frozen in postmortem expressions of agony.

    Something whistled through the air. Quickly I jerked the cupboard door up in front of my face. A split second later I felt the smack of the stinger strike the other side with enough force to rock me back on my heels.

    I heard sticks drumming against stems in the cold certainty that they had found another victim.

    But I wasn't going to fall victim to them so easily. Shielding myself with the door I ran on. Another stinger lashed out but missed me as I zigzagged away up the lane.

    I was panting hard. My foot ached abominably from when I had slipped down the stairs earlier in Mr Hartlow's house. More than once I nearly dropped the lamp.

    And the lamp - that tiny, fragile lamp with its rag wick - was my sole light source. If I should accidentally break it I would be left helplessly blind in those nightlands. I risked a glance at the sky. Even though it must be mid-morning there still wasn't so much as a glimmer of sunlight.

    Struggling for breath, grimly carrying the cupboard door that seemed to grow heavier with every step I took, I reached the top of the hill.

    The wall that surrounded the old manor house seemed to roll out of nowhere, so feeble was the light of the lamp.

    I heard a scraping sound. Heart pounding, I paused, trying to process that sound in my head, striving to match it with an image from memory.

    
Scrape-scrape…

    It had to be the movement of a triffid upon the gravel drive.

    I pressed my face to the cupboard door, waiting for the blow of the stinger.

    'Yes? What do you want?' came a no-nonsense female voice.

    I was so surprised at hearing human speech that I froze.

    'Hello? Oh, don't be silly. I know there's someone there.'

    Then it came again:
scrape-scrape
.

    I raised the lamp.

    There in the light stood one of the Blind Mothers, recognizable by the distinctive white headscarf they all wore. She was vigorously raking the gravel on the ground, flattening it where carts had formed ruts. Every so often she 'looked' in my direction with eyes that, although sightless, nonetheless revealed a keen intelligence. And while she may have been in her seventieth year she still had a robust energy; the white limestone chippings fair fizzed beneath the tines of that flashing rake.

    'Mother…' I panted, finding my voice at last and addressing her formally by her title. 'Mother, you must get back into the grounds and close the gates.'

    'I must, must I, young man?'

    'Yes. There are-'

    'And who is giving me such impudent orders?'

    'I'm sorry. My name is David Masen.'

    'Masen, uhm? Any relation to Mr Bill Masen?'

    'Yes, I'm his son.'

    'So, Mr Masen junior, why so much dash and breathlessness?'

    At that moment my lamp dimmed to a feeble glow. I'd been in such a rush to leave Mr Hartlow's cottage that I'd neglected to check now much oil - triffid oil, ironically enough - remained in its reservoir. Darkness instantly rushed in to within a yard of me, like air pouring in to fill a vacuum. All around me lurked the humped and monstrous shadows of bushes, trees and who knew what else.

    'Please, Mother.' I looked this way and that in alarm. I could see nothing now with that lamp. 'Mother. There are triffids coming this way.'

    'Triffids?' She sounded astonished and immediately stopped raking. 'This had better be no joke, young man!'

    'It isn't, Mother. Please… we need to close the gates. They will be here any moment.' I shot a look back the way I'd come. There was nothing behind me but darkness - dreadful darkness.

    'Quickly,' she said, realizing the danger. 'You take the left-hand gate. I'll take the right.'

    The light from the lamp was dying quickly as the oil became exhausted. I could barely make out the ornate iron gates that stood a good eight feet high. Nevertheless, when they were closed they sealed the gap in a brick wall of about the same height. I prayed that the wall ran round the entire property - and that there were no more open gates. Triffids, after all, were shrewd enough to follow a barrier until they found an opening. Then they would be inside: poisoning, blinding, killing.

    Somewhere in the distance I heard the high, excited voices of children.

    As the Mother snapped the padlock onto the gate I said, 'Mother, is there a way to get the children into the house right away? If they get too close to the walls they might still be within reach of the triffids' stings.'

    'I'll ring the bell for school,' she said as, with an unerring sense of direction, she hurried along the driveway. 'Come along, young man, you can help. The children are in high spirits; they say that it is still dark.'