I.

von H. G. Wells

**UNDER FOOT**

In the first part of my story, I spent so much time recounting my brother's experiences that I neglected to share my own. So, let me pick up where I left off. The curate and I had taken refuge in an empty house in Halliford, trying to escape the suffocating Black Smoke. We stayed there all through Sunday night and into the following day—the day of the panic—isolated in a small pocket of daylight, completely cut off from the outside world. All we could do was wait, trapped in a state of restless inactivity during those long, exhausting days.

My thoughts were consumed with worry for my wife. I imagined her in Leatherhead, terrified and in danger, already mourning me as if I were dead. I paced the rooms, calling out in despair at the thought of being separated from her and all the potential dangers she faced in my absence. My cousin was brave enough to handle emergencies, but he wasn’t the type to recognize danger quickly or act decisively. What we needed now wasn’t just courage, but careful thought. My only comfort was the belief that the Martians were moving toward London, away from her. Such vague fears gnawed at my mind, making me feel sensitive and restless. I grew weary and irritable with the curate’s constant exclamations; his selfish despair began to wear on me. After trying unsuccessfully to talk to him, I distanced myself, retreating to a room that seemed to be a children’s classroom, filled with globes, desks, and copybooks. When he followed me there, I escaped to a small room at the top of the house and locked myself in, desperate to be alone with my aching thoughts.

We were hopelessly trapped by the Black Smoke throughout that day and into the next morning. On Sunday evening, I noticed signs of life in the neighboring house—a face at a window, moving lights, and later the sound of a door slamming. But I never learned who those people were or what happened to them. They were gone by the next day. The Black Smoke drifted slowly toward the river all through Monday morning, creeping closer and closer, finally advancing along the road outside the house that sheltered us.

Around midday, a Martian crossed the fields, unleashing a jet of superheated steam that hissed against the walls, shattering every window it touched and scalding the curate’s hand as he fled from the front room. When we finally mustered the courage to move through the soaked rooms and peek outside again, the landscape to the north looked as if a black snowstorm had swept through. But when we turned our gaze toward the river, we were shocked to see a strange redness mingling with the blackened meadows.

At first, we didn’t grasp how this change affected our situation, other than feeling relieved of our fear of the Black Smoke. But soon I realized we were no longer trapped; we could escape. As soon as I understood that our way out was clear, my desire for action surged back. But the curate remained sluggish and unreasonable.

“We’re safe here,” he kept insisting. “Safe here.”

I made up my mind to leave him—how I wish I had! Having learned from the artilleryman’s advice, I set out to find food and water. I found some oil and rags for my burns, and I also took a hat and a flannel shirt from one of the bedrooms. When it became clear to him that I intended to go on my own—had accepted that I would go alone—he suddenly found the energy to join me. With the afternoon quiet around us, we set off around five o’clock, making our way along the blackened road to Sunbury.

In Sunbury, and at intervals along the road, we encountered dead bodies lying in twisted positions—both horses and men—along with overturned carts and scattered belongings, all coated in thick black dust. The sight of that cindery powder reminded me of what I had read about the destruction of Pompeii. We made it to Hampton Court without incident, our minds filled with strange and unsettling images. To our relief, we found a patch of green at Hampton Court that had escaped the suffocating drift. We walked through Bushey Park, where deer wandered beneath the chestnut trees, and we spotted some men and women hurrying in the distance toward Hampton. Finally, we arrived in Twickenham. These were the first people we had seen.

Across the road, the woods beyond Ham and Petersham were still ablaze. Twickenham had escaped the devastation of the Heat-Ray and Black Smoke, and more people were milling about, though none had any news to share. They were mostly like us, taking advantage of a brief lull to relocate. I had the impression that many of the houses were still occupied by terrified residents, too frightened to flee. Evidence of a hasty escape was everywhere along the road. I vividly recalled three mangled bicycles piled together, crushed into the pavement by the wheels of passing carts.

We crossed Richmond Bridge around eight-thirty, hurrying across the exposed span. As we did, I noticed red shapes floating down the stream, some of them quite large. I had no time to examine them closely, and I imagined the worst. On the Surrey side, remnants of black dust that had once been smoke lingered, along with dead bodies—a pile near the station approach. We didn’t catch sight of the Martians until we were further along toward Barnes.

In the distance, we spotted three people sprinting down a side street toward the river, but otherwise, the area seemed deserted. Richmond was burning fiercely up the hill, but outside the town, there was no sign of the Black Smoke.

Then, as we neared Kew, a group of people came running toward us, and the upper structure of a Martian fighting machine loomed over the rooftops, not far from where we stood. We froze in fear, realizing how close we were to danger. If the Martian had looked down, we would have been finished. Terrified, we dared not move forward and instead ducked into a shed in a nearby garden. There, the curate crouched, silently weeping and refusing to budge.

But my determination to reach Leatherhead wouldn’t let me rest. As twilight fell, I ventured out again. I slipped through a shrubbery and along a passage beside a large house set in its own grounds, emerging onto the road toward Kew. I thought I had left the curate behind, but he hurried after me.

That second attempt was the most reckless thing I ever did. It was clear the Martians were close. No sooner had the curate caught up with me than we spotted either the same fighting machine or another one far across the meadows toward Kew Lodge. Four or five small black figures dashed across the green-gray field ahead, and it quickly became apparent that the Martian was pursuing them. In three strides, it was among them, and they scattered in all directions. It didn’t use the Heat-Ray to destroy them; instead, it picked them up one by one, tossing them into the large metallic carrier that hung behind it, much like a workman’s basket slung over a shoulder.

For the first time, I realized that the Martians might have purposes beyond mere destruction of humanity. We stood frozen for a moment, then turned and fled through a gate into a walled garden, tumbling into a fortunate ditch where we lay, scarcely daring to whisper to each other until the stars appeared.

It must have been nearly eleven o’clock before we found the courage to move again. No longer venturing onto the road, we crept along hedgerows and through plantations, keeping a sharp lookout for the Martians, who seemed to be everywhere around us. At one point, we stumbled upon a scorched and blackened area, now cooling and ashen, littered with the bodies of men, their heads and torsos horrifically burned but their legs and boots mostly intact, along with the remains of dead horses, fifty feet behind a line of four torn guns and shattered gun carriages.

Sheen appeared to have escaped destruction, but the place was eerily silent and deserted. We didn’t encounter any bodies here, though the darkness made it impossible to see into the side streets. In Sheen, my companion suddenly complained of faintness and thirst, and we decided to try one of the houses.

The first house we entered, after some difficulty with the window, was a small semi-detached villa. I found nothing edible except some moldy cheese. However, there was water to drink, and I took a hatchet, which I thought might be useful for our next break-in.

We made our way to a spot where the road curved toward Mortlake. There, we found a white house surrounded by a walled garden. Inside the pantry, we discovered a small stash of food: two loaves of bread resting in a pan, an uncooked steak, and half a ham. I mention this inventory because, as fate would have it, we were going to rely on this food for the next two weeks. Beneath a shelf, we found bottled beer, along with two bags of haricot beans and some wilted lettuces. The pantry led into a small wash-up kitchen, where we spotted firewood and a cupboard filled with nearly a dozen tins of Burgundy, soups, salmon, and two tins of biscuits.

We settled in the adjacent kitchen, cloaked in darkness since we dared not light a fire. We ate bread and ham, sharing a bottle of beer. The curate, still anxious and restless, surprisingly urged me to keep moving forward, while I encouraged him to eat and regain his strength. That’s when the event occurred that would trap us.

“It can’t be midnight yet,” I said, when suddenly a blinding flash of vivid green light illuminated everything in the kitchen, making it all starkly visible in shades of green and black before plunging us back into darkness. Almost immediately, a deafening explosion rocked the house. A thud echoed behind me, followed by the sound of shattering glass and the crash of falling debris all around us. The ceiling plaster rained down, hitting us like a hailstorm. I was thrown across the floor, slamming against the oven handle, and everything went black.

I was unconscious for what felt like an eternity, as the curate later told me. When I finally regained consciousness, I found myself in darkness again, with the curate beside me, his face smeared with blood from a cut on his forehead. He was splashing water on me.

For a moment, I couldn’t remember what had happened. Slowly, memories began to return, and I felt a painful bruise on my temple.

“Are you okay?” the curate whispered.

After a moment, I managed to respond and sat up.

“Don’t move,” he cautioned. “The floor is covered with broken dishes. You can’t move without making noise, and I think they’re outside.”

We sat in silence, barely able to hear each other breathe. The stillness was eerie, but then something nearby—a piece of plaster or broken brick—slid down with a rumble. Outside, we heard a metallic rattling sound.

“That!” the curate said when it happened again.

“Yes,” I replied. “But what is it?”

“A Martian!” he exclaimed.

I listened intently.

“It doesn’t sound like the Heat-Ray,” I said, and for a moment, I wondered if one of the massive fighting machines had stumbled against the house, like I had seen one collide with the tower of Shepperton Church.

Our situation felt so bizarre and incomprehensible that we hardly moved for three or four hours, until dawn began to break. Light filtered in, not through the window—which remained dark—but through a triangular gap between a beam and a pile of broken bricks in the wall behind us. For the first time, we saw the kitchen in a dull grey light.

The window had been shattered by a mass of garden soil that flowed over the table where we had been sitting and piled around our feet. Outside, the earth was banked high against the house. At the top of the window frame, we could see an uprooted drainpipe. The floor was littered with debris; the end of the kitchen facing the house had collapsed, and daylight streamed in from there, making it clear that most of the house had fallen apart. In stark contrast to the destruction was the neat dresser, stained a pale green, with copper and tin vessels below it, wallpaper designed to mimic blue and white tiles, and a couple of colorful supplements fluttering from the walls above the kitchen range.

As dawn brightened, we caught sight of a Martian standing guard, I assumed, over the still-glowing cylinder. At that sight, we crawled as quietly as we could from the dimness of the kitchen into the shadows of the scullery.

Suddenly, the realization hit me.

“The fifth cylinder,” I whispered, “the fifth shot from Mars has struck this house and buried us under the ruins!”

For a moment, the curate was silent, and then he whispered, “God have mercy upon us!”

I could hear him softly sobbing to himself.

We lay in the scullery, barely making a sound. I hardly dared to breathe, my eyes locked on the faint light spilling from the kitchen door. I could just make out the curate’s face, a shadowy oval, along with his collar and cuffs. Outside, a metallic clanging began, followed by a loud hooting, and then, after a brief silence, a hissing sound like that of a steam engine. These strange noises continued to echo around us, growing more frequent as time dragged on.

Soon, a steady thudding started, accompanied by a vibration that made everything around us tremble, causing the dishes in the pantry to rattle and shift. At one point, the light flickered and the kitchen doorway plunged into darkness. We must have huddled there for hours, silent and shivering, until our exhaustion finally took over.

When I finally woke up, I was very hungry. I suspected we had spent most of the day in that state. The hunger was so intense it pushed me into action. I told the curate I was going to look for food and carefully made my way toward the pantry. He didn’t respond, but as soon as I started eating, the faint noise I made roused him, and I could hear him crawling after me.