As we walked eastwards towards Euston I noticed that the red glow
before us was shot now and again with a tongue of flame. We passed
several isolated corpses, or rather skeletons, and suddenly I came upon
a group of them which covered most of the roadway. I noticed that all
the heads pointed in one direction and that the greater number of the
dead had accumulated on the steps of a looted public-house. Noticing my
astonishment, Glendyne condescended to explain.
“Crawled there at the last gasp looking for alcohol to brace them up
for another day, I expect. See the attitudes? All making for the door.
Hopeless, anyway. The stuff must have been looted long before they got
near it. Curious how one finds them like that, all clustered together,
either at the door of a pub or the porch of a church. A Martian would
think that drink and religion were the only things which attracted
humanity in the end.”
It was near Whitfield Street that I saw a relic of the exodus from
London. Two cars, a limousine and a big five-seater, had collided at
high speed; for both of them were badly wrecked, and the touring-car
had been driven right across the pavement and through a shop-front.
To judge from the skeletons in the limousine, its passengers had been
killed by the shock.
Leaving this scene of disaster, we walked eastward again. I glanced
up each side-street as I passed, but there were no signs of living
beings. In the stillness, our footsteps rang upon the pavements; but
the noise attracted no one to our neighbourhood. It was not until we
reached the corner of Tottenham Court Road that I was again reminded
of my fellow-men. A sound of distant singing reached my ears: fifty
or a hundred voices rising and falling in some simple air which had
a strangely familiar ring, though I could not recall exactly what it
reminded me of at the time. The singers were far off, however; for when
we halted at the street-corner I could see no one in Tottenham Court
Road; and we went on our way once more.
The notice-boards at the gate of Euston Station were covered with
recently-posted bills; and seeing the word PLAGUE in large letters
upon some of them I halted for a moment to read the inscriptions.
They were all of a kind: quack advertisements of nostrums to prevent
the infection or to cure the disease. I was somewhat grimly amused to
find that there was still a market for such trash even amid the final
convulsion of humanity. The only difference between them and their
fore-runners was that instead of money the vendors demanded food in
exchange for their cures. Flour, bread, or oatmeal seemed to be the
currency in vogue.
The station itself was dark; but here and there in the Hotel windows
glowed with lamp or candle-light. “Probably some select orgy or
other,” was Glendyne’s explanation; and he refused to investigate
further. “No use thrusting oneself in where one isn’t wanted. In these
times the light alone is a danger signal when you know your way about.”