Land of the Triffids

Part One: Reign of the Triffids

Sounds strange if you don’t know what it is, but as part of Year Nine in my High School we had to read John Wyndham’s “Day of the Triffids”, I loved it completely! I got to see the film of it then and about a couple of months ago I got to see most of the old Television series save the very last episode. I have always wanted to write a fan-fiction to it, so I’m going to try my best and write a Sci-Fi fan fiction. Please enjoy, it’s written from the point of view of a woman during the time of the evil plants.

It seems to me all too long ago when just saying the word “Triffid” would merit nothing but a few curious glances from people that wanted to verify that you were correct, but now it panics people. Its been a long time since I’ve ever sat down for a moment or two to consider what had happened, life has to move so fast here just so we can all keep alive and in turn destroy them. I would never consider that someone these days would not understand what is meant when someone says such a word, but for the benefit of the future and indeed for hope, I will explain in brief, for I have not the knowledge in plant biology, let alone human to know the terminology.

A Triffid is a plant, at least it looks like a plant, only massive with fern-like leaves and a long stem that opens into a funnel with sticky mucous within its centre, behind which rise three almost-ear like instruments, and within which comes a whip-like vine with a venomous stamen, or whatever they’re called. No one really knew where they came from except that they were everywhere when I was a very young child, in zoos and Garden Centres, caged up with warning signs and rattling curiously at the sound of different voices. There have always been theories about them being some experiment made by the Soviets, but there’s almost no communications in the world now to know if such things were true, either way, I do not think they were created by the same person that man all other life, whoever that may be.

Things a really different from the times of childhood and teenage-hood for us all now, everyone has to work, everyone has to breed, everyone has to have produced at least one child in their lifetime, everyone lives for each other or themselves alone, and in general, everyone has to live. It’s hard when you have come from such a tight up bringing to find the world changed beyond belief and all morals and indeed some ethics forgotten, here monogamy doesn’t exist in the way it used to, and when it comes to breeding the men act as close to their primitive ape-like ancestors as is possible, at least, the higher ranked ones do.

I’m in one of only four or five colonies still surviving in the Triffid’s world that I at least know of, my ranking is not what it once was and so I don’t have the knowledge anymore, and age is slowly eating away my mind as the earth will soon. I know I sound grim as I tell this tale, but do not hold it against me, the world is both dark and light and my story’s mood will shift constantly, it is the way of memories. But I will tell you as much as I can about the early days and the beginning of the Reign of the Triffids.

The plants had been at large for a long time, barely noticed except when I foolish drunkard tried to get one to move and was stung, but there were always cures. I was only about sixteen or seventeen when all hell broke loose, but I was mature enough, short, big-breasted and looking like a twenty-five year old so I always got into trouble with my Catholic parents, I always had men trying to tempt me out to drink with them. But I was a working girl; dealing with dogs mainly because it was the only place I could find work. There weren’t many animal places I could go to other then begging my parents to let me be a vet when they felt I was old enough for it, but that never happened, and when everything went bad I had been working all day cleaning up after some very annoying Afghan Hounds that had messed up their sleeping quarters, these dogs were all the range thanks to some American celebrities and prizes being won at Crufts, I had gone home in a foul mood a little time before it had gotten dark, and I had been hearing all about the strange light displays that were supposed to occur that night. But I had no interest, my family did not care for astrology and though my father had sat down to listen to the tales of some authors from the century that had past and their views on men reaching the moon, he had listened in the sort of pose that a spider holds when it is eyeing up a fly, patient and yet outraged.

That day I had returned home too late to merit dinner and so I had gone straight upstairs to my room and settled down in my room. My father had turned down all the curtains and threatened any of us that dared to look out of the window at the lights, and so we did not and I spent most of the night reading books to my younger sister and brother whilst my parents settled down to listen to the radio. None of us dared to look out because on previous occasion when the fireworks had been going off, our father would suddenly appear and see and punish us, it was a harsh up bringing. But that morning we all woke ready for work as usual and I went outside on the Wednesday and felt like my father did about it being like a Sunday. I made my way to work as usual by bicycle and ignored the people that stumbled and wobbled around me like they were drunk, I supposed they probably were.

I did not stop till someone fell in my path and I had to stop, they did not seem to realise where they were and I had seen them tumbling along the walls and assumed they had been a blind person that someone had stolen the stick from. So I got off my bike and took them by the shoulders, lifting them gently onto their feet. The person I can’t describe because my memory fades from such a long time ago, and all I can remember was their panic about being blind and I had at first assumed they had been in an incident. Straight away I led them home to my house so that my mother could tell me what she thought, but on arrival I found my mother trying to keep the door closed as most of the neighbourhood battered at the door like zombies begging for assistance and help. My siblings were trying to close to windows and one of them got grabbed and was being pulled out.

I only remember that it was a scene that I had always been afraid of my whole life and even now it still terrifies me, thinking that there was a disease or something going around. So I left the person to lean by a wall, though they wandered off in search of me, and I went and pulled the old woman off my little brother and climbed in with them, slamming the window on any fingers that were foolish enough to try and bar the way. I can remember the screams of the old woman as she had got her long fingers in the way. I then ran to the front door and slammed it on the people, though some were fingering rocks and trying to break our poor pathetic windows. I had panicked and begged my mother to explain what had happened, only to find that she did not understand and that nothing was working properly. I had then needed to comfort my terrified siblings and we quickly grabbed whatever was available and made toward the back garden, which was a typical suburban kind with concrete and mud and a wooden fence at the back. We made it out and as much as I knew my father would kill me for, I stole my neighbours car, or at least I had put my family in it after breaking the window and unlocking the door.

To my surprise and indeed my delight, my neighbour, an old friend of mine from high school came charging out with a pale face and leapt onto my mother for comfort. We had all hurried into the car with our most prized belongings and had then gone to fetch my father. But we were panicking quite a bit and wanted to get away from the city of blind people and though any other time I would have helped, there were other things on our minds at the time. When we got to my father’s place, we found that the shop had been on fire; someone who had been blind had been fiddling with a lighter or something and torched the place by accident or something similar. I never saw my dad from then and I was glad I never did. We then drove to a large shopping centre where there were still delivery trucks and no one was around. My neighbour worked at the building and so he had the keys to a lot of things.

From there we packed out supplies and moved from a small cheap car to a lorry, which we filled with goods and anything, we could live off. Then we moved out with my neighbour to see if we could find his folks in the country and check if they were all right. We never got that chance and all I remembered of most of what happened in those early days was the plague that spread around, and then when we got stuck because it took us a while to navigate away from people and then there were other lorries and we ended up being drafted into the colonies of other non-blind people. I can barely remember most if it, except when our first colony was almost wiped out by the Triffid plants that stung ferociously and marched into the camp one afternoon like the Gestapo must have in the previous years of the world from then. But I cannot remember much of the early days except I was afraid of blind people and these walking plants, and that I got separated from my old colony along with my neighbour, siblings, and mother when we drove from the plants and followed the lead of other wiser people out toward Writtle in Essex where we hoped to be safe, and indeed were for a long while at least.

But I forget to tell you the names of my fellows; so much needs to be written that I forget some of the basic introductions in life. I am Deborah Gregory, though I was Deborah Tanton until the rules of the colonies came in, my last name changed a lot but Gregory was my most favoured surname. My mother’s name was Monica, my sister was Rozella, and my brother was Kane. My neighbour was Anthony Linton and we were under the orders of Roman Gruffydd when we were all at Writtle. In Writtle we had a little bit of an advantage around the Cow Watering area near Sturgeons Farm because the animals were still living normally and we had enough people with knowledge of the land that were not blind or at least could explain things to us properly for us to follow. We were all quite nervous in the early days but I noticed when Roman had collected us all when the plants had attacked, he’d made sure not to get the highly religious or the morally up-tight characters that had started the colony, and Roman was full of dangerous ideas. Thinking back over it, I’m surprised we ever let him be our commander, especially when he offered little help to any of us in the Reign of the Triffids, which was the period I’m going to tell you about….