VIII.

von H. G. Wells

**DEAD LONDON**

After I said goodbye to the artilleryman, I made my way down the hill, crossing the bridge into Fulham along the High Street. The red weed was rampant, nearly choking the road, but patches of it were already turning white from a spreading disease that would soon wipe it out completely.

At the corner of the lane leading to Putney Bridge station, I stumbled upon a man lying on the ground. He was covered in black dust, looking like a chimney sweep, alive but utterly helpless and drunken. All I could get from him were curses and wild swings aimed at my head. I might have stayed with him, but the brutal look on his face made me uneasy.

The black dust thickened as I moved away from the bridge and deeper into Fulham. The streets were eerily quiet. I managed to find some food—sour, hard, and moldy, but still edible—in a bakery. As I continued toward Walham Green, the streets cleared of the powder, and I passed a row of white houses engulfed in flames; the crackling of the fire was a welcome sound. But as I approached Brompton, the silence returned.

Once again, I encountered the black powder in the streets, alongside the bodies of the dead. I counted about a dozen along Fulham Road. They had been there for days, and I hurried past, the powder covering them and softening their outlines. A couple had been disturbed by dogs.

Where the black powder was absent, the scene resembled a quiet Sunday in the city, with closed shops, locked houses, and drawn blinds—a ghost town. In some areas, looters had been at work, mostly targeting food and wine shops. I noticed a jeweler’s window had been smashed, but it seemed the thief had been interrupted, leaving gold chains and a watch scattered on the pavement. I didn’t bother to touch them. Further along, a tattered woman lay slumped on a doorstep; her hand, hanging limply over her knee, was gashed and stained her rusty brown dress with blood. A shattered bottle of champagne formed a pool at her feet. She looked like she was sleeping, but I knew she was dead.

The deeper I went into London, the heavier the silence became. It wasn’t just the stillness of death; it felt like a tense pause, an expectation hanging in the air. At any moment, the destruction that had already scorched the northwestern outskirts of the city, obliterating Ealing and Kilburn, could sweep through these streets, leaving nothing but smoking ruins. It was a city abandoned and doomed.

In South Kensington, the streets were free of both bodies and black powder. It was here that I first heard the howling. It crept into my awareness, a sobbing alternation of two notes, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” that seemed to go on endlessly. As I passed streets heading north, the sound grew louder, only to be muffled by the buildings. It surged down Exhibition Road, and I paused, staring towards Kensington Gardens, captivated by this strange, distant wailing. It felt as if the vast expanse of houses had found a voice for its fear and loneliness.

“Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” echoed that haunting sound—great waves of noise sweeping down the broad, sunlit road between the tall buildings. I turned north, intrigued, toward the iron gates of Hyde Park. I briefly considered breaking into the Natural History Museum to climb up to the towers for a better view of the park, but I decided it was safer to stay on the ground, where I could hide quickly. So, I continued up Exhibition Road. All the grand mansions lining the street were empty and silent, and my footsteps echoed against their walls.

At the top, near the park gate, I came across an unsettling sight—an overturned bus and the skeleton of a horse, its bones picked clean. I pondered this for a moment before moving on to the bridge over the Serpentine. The voice grew louder, though I could see nothing above the rooftops on the north side of the park except a haze of smoke to the northwest.

“Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla,” cried the voice, which seemed to be coming from the direction of Regent’s Park. The desolate cry began to weigh on my mind. The mood that had kept me going faded away, and the wailing consumed me. I realized I was exhausted, my feet sore, and once again hungry and thirsty.

It was already past noon. Why was I wandering alone in this city of the dead? Why was I the only one left when all of London lay in mourning, wrapped in its dark shroud? I felt unbearably lonely. My thoughts drifted to old friends I hadn’t thought about in years. I recalled the poisons in the chemists’ shops, the bottles of liquor in the wine merchants’ stores; I remembered the two lost souls who, as far as I knew, shared this desolate city with me.

I entered Oxford Street by the Marble Arch, and once again, I was greeted by the smell of burnt powder and the sight of several bodies scattered about. The air was thick with an unsettling odor wafting up from the cellar gratings of nearby houses. After the heat of my long walk, I felt parched. With great effort, I managed to break into a pub where I found some food and drink. Exhausted after eating, I made my way to the parlor behind the bar and collapsed onto a worn black horsehair sofa.

I woke to the sound of a mournful howling echoing in my ears, “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla.” It was dusk now, and after rummaging through the bar for some biscuits and a piece of cheese—finding only maggots in the meat safe—I wandered through the quiet residential squares toward Baker Street. Portman Square was the only one I could name, and eventually, I found myself at Regent’s Park. As I emerged from the top of Baker Street, I spotted the hood of the Martian giant in the distance, silhouetted against the clear sunset sky. I wasn’t scared; it felt oddly normal. I watched him for a while, but he remained still, standing and howling for reasons I couldn’t understand.

I tried to come up with a plan. The constant sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” muddled my thoughts. Maybe I was too tired to feel real fear. In fact, I was more curious about the source of that monotonous cry than anything else. I turned away from the park and headed down Park Road, planning to skirt the edge of the park. As I walked beneath the shelter of the terraces, I caught another glimpse of the stationary Martian from the direction of St. John’s Wood. A couple of hundred yards from Baker Street, I heard a chorus of yelping and saw a dog sprinting toward me, a piece of rotten meat clamped in its jaws, with a pack of starving mutts hot on its heels. The dog veered wide to avoid me, as if it thought I might be a rival for its prize. As the yelping faded into the stillness of the road, the wailing of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” returned.

I stumbled upon the wreckage of a handling machine halfway to St. John’s Wood station. At first, I thought a house had collapsed across the road. It wasn’t until I climbed among the debris that I realized, with a jolt, that this mechanical giant lay there, its tentacles bent and twisted among the ruins it had caused. The front was shattered, as if it had charged blindly into the house and met its downfall. I wondered if this had happened because the handling machine had broken free from its Martian operator. I couldn’t climb through the wreckage to investigate further, and the twilight had advanced so much that I could no longer see the blood smeared on its seat or the remnants of the Martian that the dogs had left behind.

Still pondering everything I had witnessed, I pressed on toward Primrose Hill. Through a gap in the trees, I spotted a second Martian, just as motionless as the first, standing in the park near the Zoological Gardens. Beyond the ruins of the shattered handling machine, I encountered the red weed again, a spongy mass of dark-red vegetation overtaking the Regent’s Canal.

As I crossed the bridge, the sound of “Ulla, ulla, ulla, ulla” abruptly stopped. It was as if someone had pressed a mute button. The silence crashed down around me like thunder.

The shadowy houses loomed around me, tall and dim; the trees leading to the park were turning black. The red weed twisted and climbed among the ruins, reaching for me in the growing darkness. Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was descending. While that voice had filled the solitude, making the desolation bearable, it had given London a sense of life. But then, suddenly, something changed—I couldn’t quite grasp what—and a stillness settled in that was almost tangible. All that remained was this haunting quiet.

London stared back at me, ghostly. The windows of the white houses resembled the hollow eye sockets of skulls. My imagination conjured up a thousand silent enemies lurking in the shadows. Terror gripped me, a horror at my own boldness. Ahead, the road turned pitch black, as if coated in tar, and I saw a twisted shape sprawled across the path. I couldn’t bring myself to move forward. Instead, I turned onto St. John’s Wood Road and ran from that unbearable stillness toward Kilburn. I sought refuge from the night and silence, hiding in a cabmen’s shelter on Harrow Road until long after midnight. But before dawn, my courage returned. With the stars still twinkling above, I set out once more toward Regent’s Park. I lost my way among the streets but eventually caught sight of Primrose Hill in the early dawn light. At the summit, towering against the fading stars, stood a third Martian, erect and motionless like the others.

A wild determination surged through me. I was ready to end it all, to die, and I wouldn’t even bother with the act of taking my own life. I charged recklessly toward the looming figure ahead, and as I got closer, the light began to reveal a swarm of black birds circling around it. My heart raced at the sight, and I broke into a run along the road.

I pushed through the thick red weeds that choked St. Edmund’s Terrace, wading through a torrent of water rushing down from the waterworks toward Albert Road. I emerged onto the grass just as the sun began to rise. Massive mounds had been piled up at the top of the hill, forming a huge fortification—the largest the Martians had constructed. From behind these heaps, thin wisps of smoke curled into the sky. An eager dog dashed across the skyline and vanished. The thought that had flickered in my mind became real, tangible. I felt no fear, only a wild, trembling exhilaration as I sprinted up the hill toward the still monster. Brown, ragged shreds hung from the hood, and the hungry birds pecked and tore at them.

In moments, I scrambled up the earthen rampart and stood at its crest, gazing down into the interior of the fortification. It was a vast space, filled with gigantic machines scattered throughout, enormous piles of materials, and strange shelters. Among the wreckage, some Martians lay in their overturned war machines, others in rigid handling machines, and a dozen more lay stark and silent in a row—dead. They had been slain by the bacteria of decay and disease, against which their systems had no defense; they fell just as the red weed was being destroyed. After all of humanity's efforts had failed, it was the simplest things that God had placed on this earth that had brought them down.

It had come to this, a fate I and many others might have predicted if fear and disaster hadn’t clouded our minds. Disease germs have claimed lives since the dawn of time—taking their toll on our pre-human ancestors since life began here. But through natural selection, we developed a resistance; we don’t succumb to germs without a fight, and to many—like those that cause decay in dead matter—we are entirely immune. But Mars had no bacteria, and as soon as these invaders arrived and began to feed, our microscopic allies began to work against them. Even as I watched, they were doomed, dying and rotting as they moved about. It was inevitable. Humanity had paid the price of a billion deaths to claim its right to this earth, and it would remain ours against all challengers; it would still be ours even if the Martians were ten times as powerful. For neither life nor death is in vain.

Scattered throughout the pit were nearly fifty Martians, overtaken by a death that must have seemed as incomprehensible to them as any death could be. To me, too, this death was unfathomable. All I knew was that these beings, once alive and terrifying to humanity, were now dead. For a moment, I believed I was witnessing a repeat of the destruction of Sennacherib, that God had changed His mind, that the Angel of Death had struck them down in the night.

I stood there, staring into the pit, and my heart soared as the rising sun ignited the world around me with its rays. The pit remained shrouded in darkness; the mighty engines, so grand and complex, so alien in their twisted forms, loomed eerily out of the shadows toward the light. I could hear a multitude of dogs fighting over the bodies lying deep in the pit, far below me. Across the pit, on the far edge, lay the great flying machine they had been experimenting with when decay and death halted their efforts. Death had come just in time. At the sound of cawing above, I looked up at the massive fighting machine that would never fight again, at the tattered red remnants that dripped down onto the overturned seats at the top of Primrose Hill.

Turning, I looked down the slope of the hill to where the other two Martians stood, now surrounded by birds, just as death had claimed them. One had died while calling out to its companions; perhaps it was the last to fall, its voice echoing on until its machinery finally fell silent. They now gleamed harmlessly, tripod towers of shining metal, in the bright morning light.

All around the pit, saved by a miracle from utter destruction, sprawled the great Mother of Cities. Those who have only seen London shrouded in her gloomy smoke can hardly imagine the stark clarity and beauty of the silent expanse of houses.

Eastward, over the charred remains of Albert Terrace and the shattered spire of the church, the sun blazed brilliantly in a clear sky. Here and there, a surface in the vast expanse of rooftops caught the light, glaring with an intense white.

To the north lay Kilburn and Hampstead, a sea of blue and tightly packed houses. Westward, the great city appeared hazy, while to the south, beyond the Martians, the lush green of Regent’s Park, the Langham Hotel, the dome of the Albert Hall, the Imperial Institute, and the grand mansions of Brompton Road emerged clearly in the sunrise, with the jagged ruins of Westminster looming faintly in the background. The Surrey hills stood far away, a soft blue, and the towers of the Crystal Palace sparkled like silver rods. The dome of St. Paul’s was dark against the dawn, marred for the first time by a massive gaping hole on its western side.

As I gazed at this vast landscape of houses, factories, and churches—silent and deserted—I thought of the countless hopes and dreams, the innumerable lives that had contributed to this human reef, and of the swift, merciless destruction that had swept over it all. When I realized that the shadow had lifted, and that people could once again walk the streets, that this beloved, vast, lifeless city of mine could be vibrant and powerful once more, I felt a surge of emotion that nearly brought me to tears.

The torment was over. Healing would begin that very day. The survivors scattered across the country—leaderless, lawless, and foodless, like sheep without a shepherd—would start to return. The pulse of life, growing stronger and stronger, would once again beat in the empty streets and flow across the vacant squares. Whatever destruction had occurred, the hand of the destroyer had been stayed. All the gaunt wrecks, the blackened skeletons of houses that stared so bleakly at the sunlit grass of the hill, would soon echo with the sounds of restoration and ring with the tapping of trowels. At the thought, I raised my hands to the sky and began to thank God. In a year, I thought—in a year...

But then, a wave of realization hit me with overwhelming force: I thought of myself, of my wife, and of the old life filled with hope and gentle support that had vanished forever.