There were no lights burning in the Euston Road, either in the streets or at house-windows. Coming in the car, I had given little heed to the lack of passersby; but here, in a district which swarmed with population in the old days, I could not help being struck by the change of atmosphere. All inhabitants seemed to have vanished, leaving not a trace. I asked Glendyne if this region was entirely deserted; but he explained to me that in all probability there were still a number of survivors.
“No one shows a light after dark in a house if they can help it,” he said. “It simply invites looters.”
“The full moon stood well above the housetops, lighting up the streets far ahead of us. Wheeled traffic seemed nonexistent; nor could I see a single human being. Just beyond the Tube Station, however, I observed what I took to be a bundle of clothes lying by the roadside. Closer inspection proved it to be a complete skeleton dressed in a shabby suit of serge. While I was puzzling over this, Glendyne, seeing my perplexity, gave me the explanation.”
“Looking for the flesh, I suppose? Gone long ago. B. diazotans takes care of that, or we should have had a real Plague instead of a fake one, considering the number of deaths there have been. As soon as life goes out, all flesh is attacked by bacteria, but B. diazotans beats the putrefying bacteria in quick action. You’ll find no decaying corpses about. Quite a clean affair.”
Leaving the skeleton behind us, we continued our way. I suppose if I had been a novelist’s hero I should have examined the pockets of the man and discovered some document of priceless value in them. I must confess the idea of searching the clothes never occurred to me till long afterwards; and I doubt if there was anything useful in them anyway.
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 shopfront. 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 forerunners 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 candlelight. “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.”
It was in Endsleigh Gardens that we came across another living creature. Halfway along, I caught sight of a figure crouching in a doorway. At first I took it for a skeleton; but as we drew near it rose to its feet and I found that it was a man, indescribably filthy and with a matted beard. When he spoke to us, I detected a Semitic tinge in his speech.
“Give me some food, kind gentlemen! Jahveh will reward you. A sparrow, or even some biscuit crumbs? Be merciful, kind gentlemen.”
“Got none to spare,” said Glendyne roughly.
“Ah, kind gentlemen, kind gentlemen, surely you have food for a starving man? See, I will pay you for it. A sovereign for a sparrow? Two sovereigns for a sparrow? Listen, kind gentlemen, five pounds for a rat—eight pounds if it is a
