“They were intending to make for somewhere near Beaminster in Dorset. I can tell you no more than that.”
I went back and told Coker. He looked around him. Then he shook his head, though with a touch of regret.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll check out of this dump tomorrow.”
“Spoken like a pioneer,” I told him. “At least, more like a pioneer than an Englishman.”
Nine o’clock the next morning saw us already twelve miles or so on our road, and traveling as before in our two trucks. There had been a question whether we should not take a handier vehicle and leave the trucks for the benefit of the Tynsham people, but I was reluctant to abandon mine. I had personally collected the contents, and knew what was in it. Apart from the cases of anti-triffid gear which Michael Beadley had so disapproved, I had given myself slightly wider scope on the last load, and there was a selection of things made with consideration of what might be difficult to find outside a large town: such things as a small lighting set, some pumps, cases of good tools. All these things would be available later for the taking, but there was going to be an interlude when it would be advisable to keep away from towns of any size. The Tynsham people had the means to fetch supplies from towns where there was no sign yet of the disease that was in London. A couple of loads would not make a great deal of difference to them either way, so in the end we went as we had come.
The weather still held good. On the higher ground there was still little taint in the fresh air, though most villages had become unpleasant. Rarely we saw a still figure lying in a field or by the roadside, but, just as in London, the main instinct seemed to have been to hide away in shelter of some kind. Most of the villages showed empty streets, and the countryside around them was as deserted as if the whole human race and most of its animals had been spirited away. Until we came to Steeple Honey.
From our road we had a view of the whole of Steeple Honey as we descended the hill. It clustered at the farther end of a stone bridge which arched across a small, sparkling river. It was a quiet little place centered round a sleepy-looking church, and stippled off at its edges with whitewashed cottages. It did not look as if anything had occurred in a century or more to disturb the quiet life under its thatched roofs. But, like other villages, it was now without stir or smoke. And then, as we were halfway down the hill, a movement caught my eye.
On the left, at the far end of the bridge, one house stood slightly aslant from the road so that it faced obliquely toward us. An inn sign hung from a bracket on its wall, and from the window immediately above that something white was being waved. As we came closer I could see the man who was leaning out and frantically flagging us with a towel. I judged that he must be blind, otherwise he would have come out into the road to intercept us. He was waving too vigorously for a sick man.
I signaled back to Coker and pulled up as we cleared the bridge. The man at the window dropped his towel. He shouted something which I could not hear above the noise of the engines and disappeared. We both switched off. It was so quiet that we could hear the clumping of the man’s feet on the wooden stairs inside the house. The door opened, and he stepped out, holding both hands before him. Like lightning something whipped out of the hedge on his left and struck him. He gave a single high-pitched shout and dropped where he stood.
I picked up my shotgun and climbed out of the cab. I circled a little until I could make out the triffid skulking in the shadows of a bush. Then I blew the top off it.
Coker was out of his truck, too, and standing close beside me. He looked at the man on the ground and then at the shorn triffid.
“It was—no, damn it, it can’t have been waiting for him?” he said. “It must have just happened… It couldn’t have known he’d come out of that door… I mean, it couldn’t—could it?”
“Or could it? It was a remarkably neat piece of work,” I said.
Coker turned uneasy eyes on me.
“Too damn neat. You don’t really believe——”