The quick brown fox jumped over.... _Paraphrase it._ The quick risen
body jumped over the tumbled Incinerator....
Lazarus, come forth from the tomb....
He knew the right words. He need only speak them as they had been
spoken over the centuries. He need only gesture with his hands and
speak the words, the dark words that would cause these bodies to
quiver, rise and walk!
And when they had risen he would take them through the town, they would
kill others and the others would rise and walk. By the end of the day
there would be thousands of good friends walking with him. And what of
the naive, living people of this year, this day, this hour? They would
be completely unprepared for it. They would go down to defeat because
they would not be expecting war of any sort. They wouldn't believe it
possible, it would all be over before they could convince themselves
that such an illogical thing could happen.
He lifted his hands. His lips moved. He said the words. He began in a
chanting whisper and then raised his voice, louder. He said the words
again and again. His eyes were closed tightly. His body swayed. He
spoke faster and faster. He began to move forward among the bodies.
The dark words flowed from his mouth. He was enchanted with his own
formulae. He stooped and made further blue symbols on the concrete, in
the fashion of long-dead sorcerers, smiling, confident. Any moment now
the first tremor of the still bodies, any moment now the rising, the
leaping up of the cold ones!
His hands lifted in the air. His head nodded. He spoke, he spoke, he
spoke. He gestured. He talked loudly over the bodies, his eyes flaring,
his body tensed. "Now!" he cried, violently. "Rise, _all_ of you!"
Nothing happened.
"Rise!" he screamed, with a terrible torment in his voice.
The sheets lay in white blue-shadow folds over the silent bodies.
"Hear me, and act!" he shouted.
Far away, on the street, a beetle hissed along.
Again, again, again he shouted, pleaded. He got down by each body and
asked of it his particular violent favor. No reply. He strode wildly
between the even white rows, flinging his arms up, stooping again and
again to make blue symbols!
Lantry was very pale. He licked his lips. "Come on, get up," he said.
"They have, they always have, for a thousand years. When you make a
mark--so! and speak a word--so! they always rise! Why not you now, why
not you! Come on, come _on_, before _they_ come back!"
The warehouse went up into shadow. There were steel beams across and
down. In it, under the roof, there was not a sound, except the raving
of a lonely man.
Lantry stopped.
Through the wide doors of the warehouse he caught a glimpse of the last
cold stars of morning.
This was the year 2349.
His eyes grew cold and his hands fell to his sides. He did not move.
* * * * *
Once upon a time people shuddered when they heard the wind about the
house, once people raised crucifixes and wolfbane, and believed in
walking dead and bats and loping white wolves. And as long as they
believed, then so long did the dead, the bats, the loping wolves exist.
The mind gave birth and reality to them.
But....
He looked at the white sheeted bodies.
_These_ people did not believe.
They had never believed. They would never believe. They had never
imagined that the dead might walk. The dead went up flues in flame.
They had never heard superstition, never trembled or shuddered or
doubted in the dark. Walking dead people could not exist, they were
illogical. This was the year 2349, man, after all!
Therefore, these people could not rise, could not walk again. They were
dead and flat and cold. Nothing, chalk, imprecation, superstition,
could wind them up and set them walking. They were dead and _knew_ they
were dead!
He was alone.
There were live people in the world who moved and drove beetles and
drank quiet drinks in little dimly illumined bars by country roads, and
kissed women and talked much good talk all day and every day.
But he was not alive.
Friction gave him what little warmth he possessed.
There were two hundred dead people here in this warehouse now,
cold upon the floor. The first dead people in a hundred years who
were allowed to be corpses for an extra hour or more. The first not
to be immediately trundled to the Incinerator and lit like so much
phosphorus.
He should be happy with them, among them.
He was not.
They were completely dead. They did not know nor believe in walking
once the heart had paused and stilled itself. They were deader than
dead ever was.
He was indeed alone, more alone than any man had ever been. He felt the
chill of his aloneness moving up into his chest, strangling him quietly.
William Lantry turned suddenly and gasped.
While he had stood there, someone had entered the warehouse. A tall man
with white hair, wearing a light-weight tan overcoat and no hat. How
long the man had been nearby there was no telling.
There was no reason to stay here. Lantry turned and started to walk
slowly out. He looked hastily at the man as he passed and the man
with the white hair looked back at him, curiously. Had he heard? The
imprecations, the pleadings, the shoutings? Did he suspect? Lantry
slowed his walk. Had this man seen him make the blue chalk marks? But
then, would he interpret them as symbols of an ancient superstition?
Probably not.
Reaching the door, Lantry paused. For a moment he did not want to do
anything but lie down and be coldly, really dead again and be carried
silently down the street to some distant burning flue and there
dispatched in ash and whispering fire. If he was indeed alone and there
was no chance to collect an army to his cause, what, then, existed as a
reason for going on? Killing? Yes, he'd kill a few thousand more. But
that wasn't enough. You can only do so much of that before they drag
you down.
He looked at the cold sky.
A rocket went across the black heaven, trailing fire.
Mars burned red among a million stars.
Mars. The library. The librarian. Talk. Returning rocket men. Tombs.
Lantry almost gave a shout. He restrained his hand, which wanted so
much to reach up into the sky and touch Mars. Lovely red star on the
sky. Good star that gave him sudden new hope. If he had a living heart
now it would be thrashing wildly, and sweat would be breaking out of
him and his pulses would be stammering, and tears would be in his eyes!
He would go down to where ever the rockets sprang up into space. He
would go to Mars, one way or another. He would go to the Martian tombs.
There, there, by God, were bodies, he would bet his last hatred on
it, that would rise and walk and work with him! Theirs was an ancient
culture, much different from that of Earth, patterned on the Egyptian,
if what the librarian had said was true. And the Egyptian--what a
crucible of dark superstition and midnight terror that culture had
been! Mars it _was_, then. Beautiful Mars!
But he must not attract attention to himself. He must move carefully.
He wanted to run, yes, to get away, but that would be the worst
possible move he could make. The man with the white hair was glancing
at Lantry from time to time, in the entranceway. There were too many
people about. If anything happened he would be outnumbered. So far he
had taken on only _one_ man at a time.
Lantry forced himself to stop and stand on the steps before the
warehouse. The man with the white hair came on onto the steps also and
stood, looking at the sky. He looked as if he was going to speak at any
moment. He fumbled in his pockets, took out a packet of cigarettes.
V
They stood outside the morgue together, the tall pink, white-haired
man, and Lantry, hands in their pockets. It was a cool night with a
white shell of a moon that washed a house here, a road there, and
further on, parts of a river.
"Cigarette?" The man offered Lantry one.
"Thanks."