“I am a medical. Was an asylum doctor before Nordenholt picked me out for this job. Medical cars can go anywhere even now; but we can do better on foot for the particular work you want to-night.”
He seemed to be a man of few words; but I had been struck by the empty state of the garage and wished to know where the usual multitude of cars had gone.
“Most owners took their machines away in the rush out of London. Any cars left were looted long ago. Have to leave a guard now on any car, otherwise we’d have the petrol stolen before we were back. You’ll see later.”
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 passers-by; 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 house-tops, lighting up the streets far ahead of us. Wheeled traffic seemed non-existent; 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.”