Read the chapter
The War of the Worlds
Chapter 26. DEAD LONDON
After I had parted from the artilleryman, I went down the hill, and by the High Street across the bridge to Fulham.
The red weed was very thick at that time, and it nearly blocked the bridge roadway.
But its leaves were already turning white in patches because of the spreading disease that would soon destroy it so quickly.
At the corner of the lane that runs to Putney Bridge station I found a man lying there.
He was as black as a chimney sweep with the black dust.
He was alive, but he was helpless and speechlessly drunk.
I could get nothing from him except curses and wild swings at my head.
I think I'd have stayed with him if it hadn't been for the cruel expression on his face.
There was black dust along the roadway from the bridge onwards, and it grew thicker in Fulham.
The streets were terribly quiet, I got some food in a baker's shop here.
It was sour, hard, and mouldy, but it was still quite eatable.
Some way towards Walham Green the streets became clear of the powder, and I passed a white row of houses on fire.
The noise of the burning was a real relief.
Going on towards Brompton, the streets were quiet again.
Here I came once more upon the black powder in the streets and upon dead bodies.
I saw about twelve in total along the Fulham Road.
They had been dead for many days, so I hurried quickly past them.
The black powder covered them and softened their shapes.
One or two had been disturbed by dogs.
Where there was no black powder, it was strangely like a Sunday in the City.
The shops were closed, the houses were locked up, the blinds were drawn, and there was emptiness and stillness.
In some places, thieves had been at work, but usually only at the food and wine shops.
A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but it seemed the thief had been disturbed.
A number of gold chains and a watch lay scattered on the pavement.
I didn't bother to touch them, Further on, a torn woman lay in a heap on a doorstep.
The hand that hung over her knee was cut, and blood ran down her rusty brown dress.
A smashed bottle of champagne formed a pool across the pavement.
She looked asleep, but she was dead.
The further I went into London, the deeper the stillness became.
But it wasn't so much the stillness of death.
It was the stillness of suspense, of expectation.
At any moment the destruction that had burned the city's northwestern edges and destroyed Ealing and Kilburn might strike these houses.
It could leave them as smoking ruins.
It was a city that was condemned and abandoned.
In South Kensington the streets were clear of dead bodies and black powder.
It was near South Kensington that I first heard the howling.
It crept almost unnoticed into my senses.
It was a crying sound that went back and forth between two notes, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla." It kept on without stopping.
When I passed streets that ran northward, it grew louder, and houses and buildings seemed to block it and cut it off again.
It came in a full wave down Exhibition Road.
I stopped, staring towards Kensington Gardens, wondering at this strange, distant wailing.
It was as if that great empty area of houses had found a voice for its fear and loneliness.
"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," wailed that superhuman sound.
Great waves of sound swept down the broad, sunlit roadway between the tall buildings on each side.
I turned northwards, full of wonder, towards the iron gates of Hyde Park.
I almost decided to break into the Natural History Museum and climb up to the tops of the towers so I could see across the park.
But I decided to stay on the ground, where I could hide quickly, and so I went on up Exhibition Road.
All the large houses on each side of the road were empty and still, and my footsteps echoed against the sides of the buildings.
At the top, near the park gate, I came upon a strange sight.
There was a bus turned over, and the skeleton of a horse, picked clean.
I wondered about this for a while, and then I went on to the bridge over the Serpentine.
The voice grew louder, yet I saw nothing above the park's north rooftops, only a haze of smoke to the northwest.
"Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla," cried the voice, coming, it seemed to me, from the area around Regent's Park.
This terrible cry worked on my mind.
The mood that had kept me going passed away, the wailing took hold of me.
I found that I was extremely tired, my feet hurt, and now I was hungry and thirsty again.
It was already past noon, Why was I wandering alone in this city of the dead?
Why was I alone when all London was lying in state, wrapped in its black shroud?
I felt unbearably lonely, My mind turned to old friends that I had forgotten for years.
I thought of the poisons in the chemists' shops, of the drinks that the wine merchants had stored.
I remembered the two hopeless, drunken creatures who, as far as I knew, shared the city with me.
I came into Oxford Street by the Marble Arch.
Here again there was black powder and several bodies, and a bad, threatening smell from the openings of the cellars of some of the houses.
I grew very thirsty after the heat of my long walk.
With great difficulty, I managed to break into a pub and get food and drink, I was tired after eating.
So I went into the room behind the bar and slept on a black horsehair sofa that I found there.
I woke up to find that terrible howling still in my ears, "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla." It was now dusk.
After I had found some biscuits and a cheese in the bar, there was a meat safe.
But it contained nothing except maggots, I wandered on through the silent residential squares to Baker Street.
Portman Square is the only one I can name.
And so I came out at last upon Regent's Park.
I came out from the top of Baker Street.
Far over the trees, in the clear sunset, I saw the hood of the Martian giant that made the howling.
I wasn't terrified, I came upon him as if it were a normal thing.
I watched him for some time, but he didn't move.
He seemed to be standing and yelling for no reason that I could discover.
I tried to form a plan of action.
That constant sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla" confused my mind.
Maybe I was too tired to be very afraid.
Certainly I was more curious to know the reason for this endless crying than I was afraid.
I turned back away from the park and went into Park Road.
I planned to go around the park.
I walked along under the shelter of the houses and got a view of this still, howling Martian from the direction of St. John's Wood.
A couple of hundred yards from Baker Street, I heard a yelping chorus.
I saw a dog with a piece of rotten meat running toward me, followed by a pack of hungry mongrels.
He made a wide curve to avoid me, as if he feared I might be a new competitor.
As the yelping died away down the silent road, the wailing sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla" started again.
I came upon the wrecked handling-machine halfway to St. John's Wood station.
At first I thought a house had fallen across the road.
It was only as I climbed among the ruins that I saw, with a shock, this mechanical giant lying there.
Its tentacles were bent and smashed and twisted among the ruins it had made, the front part was shattered.
It seemed as if it had driven blindly straight at the house and had been crushed when the house fell.
It seemed to me then that this might have happened because a handling-machine had escaped from the control of its Martian.
I couldn't climb among the ruins to see it.
The twilight was now so far advanced that the blood on its seat was invisible to me.
The chewed remains of the Martian that the dogs had left were also hidden.
Still wondering more at all that I had seen, I pushed on towards Primrose Hill.
Far away, through a gap in the trees, I saw a second Martian.
It was as motionless as the first, standing in the park towards the Zoological Gardens, and silent.
A little beyond the ruins around the smashed handling-machine, I came upon the red weed again.
I found the Regent's Canal, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation.
As I crossed the bridge, the sound of "Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla" stopped.
It was as if it had been cut off, the silence came like a thunderclap.
The dark houses around me stood faint and tall and dim.
The trees towards the park were growing black.
All around me, the red weed climbed among the ruins, twisting to get above me in the dimness.
Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.
But while that voice had sounded, the loneliness and desolation had been bearable.
Because of it, London had still seemed alive, and the sense of life around me had kept me going.
Then suddenly a change came, Something passed by, I didn't know what.
And then there was a stillness that you could feel, Nothing but this thin, harsh quiet.
London around me stared at me like a ghost.
The windows in the white houses looked like the eye sockets of skulls.
Around me, my imagination found a thousand silent enemies moving.
Terror seized me, a horror of my own boldness.
In front of me, the road became pitch black as if it had been covered with tar.
And I saw a twisted shape lying across the path.
I couldn't make myself go on, I turned down St. John's Wood Road and ran headlong 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 the dawn, my courage returned.
While the stars were still in the sky, I turned once more towards Regent's Park.
I lost my way among the streets.
Then I saw down a long avenue, in the half-light of the early dawn, the curve of Primrose Hill.
On the top, rising up to the fading stars, was a third Martian, standing straight and motionless like the others.
A crazy decision took hold of me.
I'd die and end it, and I'd save myself even the trouble of killing myself.
I marched on recklessly towards this giant.
Then, as I drew nearer and the light grew, I saw that a large number of black birds were circling and gathering around the hood.
At that, my heart jumped, and I began running along the road.
I hurried through the red weed that blocked St. Edmund's Terrace.
I waded chest-deep through a stream of water that was rushing down from the waterworks towards the Albert Road.
I came out onto the grass before the sun rose.
Great piles of earth had been heaped around the top of the hill, making a huge fort of it.
It was the final and largest place the Martians had made.
From behind these piles, a thin smoke rose against the sky.
Against the skyline, an eager dog ran and disappeared.
The thought that had flashed into my mind became real, became believable.
I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling joy, as I ran up the hill towards the motionless monster.
Out of the hood hung long, thin pieces of brown flesh, which the hungry birds pecked and tore.
In another moment, I had climbed up the earthen wall and stood on its top.
The inside of the fort was below me.
It was a huge space, with giant machines here and there inside it, large piles of material, and strange shelters.
Scattered around it were the Martians, some in overturned war-machines, some in stiff handling-machines, a dozen lying still and silent in a row.
Dead! Killed by the bacteria of rot and disease, which their bodies weren't prepared for.
Killed just as the red weed was being killed.
Killed, after all of man's plans had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put on this earth.
For that's how it happened, Indeed, I and many men might have seen it coming if terror and disaster hadn't blinded our minds.
These germs of disease have taken their toll from humanity since the beginning of things.
They have taken their toll from our prehuman ancestors since life began here.
But because of natural selection, we have developed resistance.
We don't give in to any germs without a fight.
And to many germs, like those that cause rot in dead matter, our living bodies are completely immune.
But there are no bacteria on Mars.
And as soon as these invaders arrived, as soon as they drank and ate, our microscopic allies began to work for their destruction.
Already when I watched them, they were completely doomed.
They were dying and rotting even as they moved around.
It was unavoidable, Through the cost of a billion deaths, man has bought his right to the earth.
And it's his against all who come.
It would still be his even if the Martians were ten times as powerful as they're.
For men neither live nor die in vain.
Here and there they were scattered, nearly fifty in total, in that great pit they had made.
They had been overtaken by a death that must have seemed to them as impossible to understand as any death could be.
To me also at that time, this death was impossible to understand.
All I knew was that these things that had been alive and so terrible to men were dead.
For a moment, I believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated.
I believed that God had changed his mind, that the Angel of Death had killed them in the night.
I stood staring into the pit, my heart grew light with joy as the rising sun set the world on fire around me.
The pit was still in darkness, its depths hidden from the rising sun.
The mighty engines rose out of the shadows towards the light.
They were great and wonderful in power and complexity, with unearthly twisted forms, looking weird, vague, and strange.
I could hear a crowd of dogs fighting over the bodies that lay darkly in the depth of the pit, far below me.
Across the pit on its far edge, flat and vast and strange, lay the great flying-machine.
They had been testing it on our thicker atmosphere when decay and death stopped them.
Death hadn't come a day too soon.
At the sound of a crow above me, I looked up at the huge fighting-machine that would fight no more forever.
I looked at the torn red pieces of flesh that dripped down onto the overturned seats on the top of Primrose Hill.
I turned and looked down the hill to where, surrounded by birds, stood the two Martians I had seen the night before.
Death had overtaken them just as they were.
The one had died even as it had been crying to its companions.
Maybe it was the last to die, and its voice had gone on without stopping until the power of its machinery ran out.
They glittered now, harmless tripod towers of shining metal, in the brightness of the rising sun.
All around the pit, saved as if by a miracle from everlasting destruction, stretched the great Mother of Cities.
Those who have seen London covered in smoke can hardly imagine the naked beauty of the silent wilderness of houses.
Eastward, over the blackened ruins of the Albert Terrace and the broken spire of the church, the sun blazed dazzling in a clear sky.
Here and there, some surface in the great wilderness of roofs caught the light and shone with a white brightness.
Northward were Kilburn and Hampstead, blue and crowded with houses, Westward, the great city was dim.
Southward, beyond the Martians, the green waves of Regent's Park came out clear and small in the sunrise.
The Langham Hotel, the dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the giant houses of the Brompton Road also appeared.
The broken 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 I saw for the first time that it was damaged by a huge hole on its western side.
I looked at this wide spread of houses, factories, and churches.
They were silent and abandoned, I thought of the countless hopes and efforts that built this human reef.
I thought of the huge number of lives lost.
I realized the shadow had been pushed back.
Men might still live in these streets.
My dear, vast, dead city might once more be alive and powerful.
I felt a wave of emotion almost like tears.
The suffering was over, Even that day, the healing would begin.
Survivors scattered across the country, leaderless, lawless, foodless, 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 pour across the empty squares.
Whatever destruction had been done, the hand of the destroyer had been stopped.
All the thin wrecks were blackened skeletons of houses.
They stared sadly at the sunlit grass of the hill.
Soon, they'd echo with the hammers of the restorers and ring with the tapping of their tools.
At the thought, I stretched my hands towards the sky and began thanking God.
In a year, I thought, in a year.
With overwhelming force came the thought of myself, of my wife, and the old life of hope and gentle helpfulness that had ended forever.