Free Wyndham, John by The Day Of The Triffids (v2) [htm] Page A

always in fear of capture, or of gathering together a
selected group which we could rely on to protect us from other groups. We’d be
filling a kind of leadercum-prisoner role—and along with it went a nasty
picture of still uncomfortably elaborating these possibilities when Josella
bloody gang wars being fought for possession of us. I was recalled me to the
present by getting up.
    I must go,” she said. “Poor Father. It’s after four
o’clock.”
    Back in Regent Street again, a thought suddenly struck me.
    “Come across,” I said. “I fancy I remember a shop somewhere
here
    The shop was still there. We equipped ourselves with a
couple of useful-looking sheath knives, and belts to carry them.
    “Makes me feel like a pirate,” said Josella as she buckled
hers on.
    “Better, I imagine, to be a pirate than a pirate’s moll,” I
told her.
    A few yards up the street we came upon a large, shiny saloon
car. It looked the kind of craft that should simply have purred. But the noise
when I started it up sounded louder in our ears than all the normal traffic of
a busy street. We made our way northward, zigzagging to avoid derelicts and wanderers
stricken into immobility in the middle of the road by the sound of our
approach. All the way heads turned hopefully toward us as we came, and faces
fell as we went past. One building on our route was blazing fiercely, and a
cloud of smoke rose from another fire somewhere along Oxford Street. There were
more people about in Oxford Circus, but we got through them neatly, then passed
the B.B.C., and so north to the carriageway in Regent’s Park.
    It was a relief to get out of the streets and reach an open
space—and one where there were no unfortunate people wandering and groping. The
only moving things we could see on the broad stretches of grass were two or
three little groups of triffids lurching southward. Somehow or other they had
contrived to pull up their stakes and were dragging them along behind them on
their chains. I remembered that there were some undocked specimens, a few of
them tethered, but most of them double-fenced, in an enclosure beside the zoo,
and wondered how they had got out. Josella noticed them too.
    “It’s not going to make much difference to them,” she said.
    For the rest of the way there was little to delay us. Within
a few minutes I was pulling up at the house she showed me, We got out of the
car, and I pushed open the gate. A short drive curved round a bed of bushes
which hid most of the house front from the road. As we turned the corner,
Josella gave a cry and ran forward. A figure was lying on the gravel, chest
downward, but with the head turned to show one side of its face. The first
glance at it showed me the bright red streak across the cheek.
    “Stop!” I shouted at her.

    There was enough alarm in my voice to check her.
    I had spotted the triffid now. It was lurking among the
bushes, well within striking range of the sprawled figure.
    “Back! Quick!” I said.
    Still looking at the man on the ground, she hesitated.
    “But I must—” she began, turning toward me. Then she
stopped. Her eyes widened, and she screamed.
    I whipped round to find a triffid towering only a few feet
behind me.
    In one automatic movement I had my hands over my eyes. I
heard the sting whistle as it slashed out at me—but there was no knockout, no
agonizing burning, even. One’s mind can move like lightning at such a moment;
nevertheless, it was more instinct than reason which sent me leaping at it
before ii bad time to strike again. I collided with it, overturning it, and
even as I went down with it my hands were on the upper part of the stem, trying
to pull off the cup and the sting. Triffid stems do not snap—but they can he
mangled. This one was mangled thoroughly before I stood up.
    Josella was standing in the same spot, transfixed.
    “Come here,” I told her. There’s another in the bushes
behind you.”
    She glanced fearfully over her shoulder and came.
    “But it hit you t” she said