[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction March 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _You're all alone in a deserted city. You walk down an empty
street, yearning for the sight of one living face--one moving figure.
Then you see a man on a corner and you know your terror has only
begun._]
He awoke slowly, like a man plodding knee-deep through the thick stuff
of nightmares. There was no definite line between the dream-state and
wakefulness. Only a dawning knowledge that he was finally conscious and
would have to do something about it.
He opened his eyes, but this made no difference. The blackness remained.
The pain in his head brightened and he reached up and found the big lump
they'd evidently put on his head for good measure--a margin of safety.
They must have been prudent people, because the bang on the head had
hardly been necessary. The spiked drink which they had given him would
have felled an ox. He remembered going down into the darkness after
drinking it, and of knowing what it was. He remembered the helpless
feeling.
It did not worry him now. He was a philosophical person, and the fact he
was still alive cancelled out the drink and its result. He thought, with
savor, of the chestnut-haired girl who had watched him take the drink.
She had worn a very low bodice, and that was where his eyes had been at
the last moment--on the beautiful, tanned breasts--until they'd wavered
and puddled into a blur and then into nothing.
The chestnut-haired girl had been nice, but now she was gone and there
were more pressing problems.
He sat up, his hands behind him at the ends of stiff arms clawing into
long-undisturbed dust and filth. His movement stirred the dust and it
rose into his nostrils.
He straightened and banged his head against a low ceiling. The pain made
him sick for a minute and he sat down to regain his senses. He cursed
the ceiling, as a matter of course, in an agonized whisper.
Ready to move again, he got onto his hands and knees and crawled
cautiously forward, exploring as he went. His hand pushed through
cobwebs and found a rough, cement wall. He went around and around. It
was all cement--all solid.
Hell! They hadn't sealed him up in this place! There had been a way in
so there had to be a way out. He went around again.
Then he tried the ceiling and found the opening--a wooden trap covering
a four-by-four hole--covering it snugly. He pushed the trap away and
daylight streamed in. He raised himself up until he was eye-level with a
discarded shaving cream jar lying on the bricks of an alley. He could
read the trade mark on the jar, and the slogan: "For the Meticulous
Man".
He pulled himself up into the alley. As a result of an orderly
childhood, he replaced the wooden trap and kicked the shaving cream jar
against a garbage can. He rubbed his chin and looked up and down the
alley.
It was high noon. An uncovered sun blazed down to tell him this.
And there was no one in sight.
* * * * *
He started walking toward the nearer mouth of the alley. He had been in
that hole a long time, he decided. This conviction came from his hunger
and the heavy growth of beard he'd sprouted. Twenty-four hours--maybe
longer. That mickey must have been a lulu.
He walked out into the cross street. It was empty. No people--no cars
parked at the curbs--only a cat washing its dirty face on a tenement
stoop across the street. He looked up at the tenement windows. They
stared back. There was an empty, deserted look about them.
The cat flowed down the front steps of the tenement and away toward the
rear and he was truly alone. He rubbed his harsh chin. Must be Sunday,
he thought. Then he knew it could not be Sunday. He'd gone into the
tavern on a Tuesday night. That would make it five days. Too long.
He had been walking and now he was at an intersection where he could
look up and down a new street. There were no cars--no people. Not even a
cat.
A sign overhanging the sidewalk said: Restaurant. He went in under the
sign and tried the door. It was locked. There were no lights inside. He
turned away--grinning to reassure himself. Everything was all right.
Just some kind of a holiday. In a big city like Chicago the people go
away on hot summer holidays. They go to the beaches and the parks and
sometimes you can't see a living soul on the streets. And of course you
can't find any cars because the people use them to drive to the beaches
and the parks and out into the country. He breathed a little easier and
started walking again.
Sure--that was it. Now what the hell holiday was it? He tried to
remember. He couldn't think of what holiday it could be. Maybe they'd
dreamed up a new one. He grinned at that, but the grin was a little
tight and he had to force it. He forced it carefully until his teeth
showed white.
Pretty soon he would come to a section where everybody hadn't gone to
the beaches and the parks and a restaurant would be open and he'd get a
good meal.
A meal? He fumbled toward his pockets. He dug into them and found a
handkerchief and a button from his cuff. He remembered that the button
had hung loose so he'd pulled it off to keep from losing it. He hadn't
lost the button, but everything else was gone. He scowled. The least
they could have done was to leave a man eating money.
He turned another corner--into another street--and it was like the one
before. No cars--no people--not even any cats.
Panic welled up. He stopped and whirled around to look behind him. No
one was there. He walked in a tight circle, looking in all directions.
Windows stared back at him--eyes that didn't care where everybody had
gone or when they would come back. The windows could wait. The windows
were not hungry. Their heads didn't ache. They weren't scared.
He began walking and his path veered outward from the sidewalk until he
was in the exact center of the silent street. He walked down the worn
white line. When he got to the next corner he noticed that the traffic
signals were not working. Black, empty eyes.
His pace quickened. He walked faster--ever faster until he was trotting
on the brittle pavement, his sharp steps echoing against the buildings.
Faster. Another corner. And he was running, filled with panic, down the
empty street.
* * * * *
The girl opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. The ceiling was a
blur but it began to clear as her mind cleared. The ceiling became a
surface of dirty, cracked plaster and there was a feeling of dirt and
squalor in her mind.
It was always like that at these times of awakening, but doubly bitter
now, because she had never expected to awaken again. She reached down
and pulled the wadded sheet from beneath her legs and spread it over
them. She looked at the bottle on the shabby bed-table. There were three
sleeping pills left in it. The girl's eyes clouded with resentment.
You'd think seven pills would have done it. She reached down and took
the sheet in both hands and drew it taut over her stomach. This was a
gesture of frustration. Seven hadn't been enough, and here she was
again--awake in the world she'd wanted to leave. Awake with the
necessary edge of determination gone.
She pulled the sheet into a wad and threw it at the wall. She got up and
walked to the window and looked out. Bright daylight. She wondered how
long she had slept. A long time, no doubt.
Her naked thigh pressed against the windowsill and her bare stomach
touched the dirty pane. Naked in the window, but it didn't matter,
because it gave onto an airshaft and other windows so caked with grime
as to be of no value as windows.
But even aside from that, it didn't matter. It didn't matter in the
least.
She went to the washstand, her bare feet making no sound on the worn
rug. She turned on the faucets, but no water came. No water, and she had
a terrible thirst. She went to the door and had thrown the bolt before
she remembered again that she was naked. She turned back and saw the
half-empty Pepsi-Cola bottle on the floor beside the bed table. Someone
else had left it there--how many nights ago?--but she drank it anyhow,
and even though it was flat and warm it soothed her throat.
She bent over to pick up garments from the floor and dizziness came,
forcing her to the edge of the bed. After a while it passed and she got
her legs into one of the garments and pulled it on.
Taking cosmetics from her bag, she went again to the washstand and tried
the taps. Still no water. She combed her hair, jerking the comb through
the mats and gnarls with a satisfying viciousness. When the hair fell
into its natural, blond curls, she applied powder and lip-stick. She
went back to the bed, picked up her brassiere and began putting it on as
she walked to the cracked, full-length mirror in the closet door. With
the brassiere in place, she stood looking at her slim image. She assayed
herself with complete impersonality.
She shouldn't look as good as she did--not after the beating she'd
taken. Not after the long nights and the days and the years, even though
the years did not add up to very many.
I could be someone's wife, she thought, with wry humor. I could be
sending kids to school and going out to argue with the grocer about the
tomatoes being too soft. I don't look bad at all.
She raised her eyes until they were staring into their own images in the
glass and she spoke aloud in a low, wondering voice. She said, "Who the
hell am I, anyway? Who am I? A body named Linda--that's who I am.
No--that's _what_ I am. A body's not a _who_--it's a _what_. One hundred
and fourteen pounds of well-built blond body called Linda--model
1931--no fender dents--nice paint job. Come in and drive me away. Price
tag--"
She bit into the lower lip she'd just finished reddening and turned
quickly to walk to the bed and wriggle into her dress--a gray and green
cotton--the only one she had. She picked up her bag and went to the
door. There she stopped to turn and thumb her nose at the three sleeping
pills in the bottle before she went out and closed the door after
herself.
The desk clerk was away from the cubbyhole from which he presided over
the lobby, and there were no loungers to undress her as she walked
toward the door.
Nor was there anyone out in the street. The girl looked north and south.
No cars in sight either. No buses waddling up to the curb to spew out
passengers.
The girl went five doors north and tried to enter a place called Tim's
Hamburger House. As the lock held and the door refused to open, she saw
that there were no lights on inside--no one behind the counter. The
place was closed.
She walked on down the street followed only by the lonesome sound of her
own clicking heels. All the stores were closed. All the lights were out.
_All the people were gone._
* * * * *
He was a huge man, and the place of concealment of the Chicago Avenue
police station was very small--merely an indentation low in the cement
wall behind two steam pipes. The big man had lain in this niche for
forty-eight hours. He had slugged a man over the turn of a card in a
poolroom pinochle game, had been arrested in due course, and was
awaiting the disposal of his case.
He was sorry he had slugged the man. He had not had any deep hatred for
him, but rather a rage of the moment that demanded violence as its
outlet. Although he did not consider it a matter of any great
importance, he did not look forward to the six month's jail sentence he
would doubtless be given.
His opportunity to hide in the niche had come as accidentally and as
suddenly as his opportunity to slug his card partner. It had come after
the prisoners had been advised of the crisis and were being herded into
vans for transportation elsewhere. He had snatched the opportunity
without giving any consideration whatever to the crisis. Probably
because he did not have enough imagination to fear anything--however
terrible--which might occur in the future. And because he treasured his
freedom above all else. Freedom for today, tomorrow could take care of
itself.
Now, after forty-eight hours, he writhed and twisted his huge body out
of the niche and onto the floor of the furnace room. His legs were numb
and he found that he could not stand. He managed to sit up and was able
to bend his back enough so his great hands could reach his legs and
begin to massage life back into them.
So elementally brutal was this man that he pounded his legs until they
were black and blue, before feeling returned to them. In a few minutes
he was walking out of the furnace room through a jail house which should
now be utterly deserted. But was it? He went slowly, gliding along close
to the walls to reach the front door unchallenged.
He walked out into the street. It was daylight and the street was
completely deserted. The man took a deep breath and grinned. "I'll be
damned," he muttered. "I'll be double and triple damned. They're all
gone. Every damn one of them run off like rats and I'm the only one
left. I'll be damned!"
A tremendous sense of exultation seized him. He clenched his fists and
laughed loud, his laugh echoing up the street. He was happier than he
had ever been in his quick, violent life. And his joy was that of a
child locked in a pantry with a huge chocolate cake.
He rubbed a hand across his mouth, looked up the street, began walking.
"I wonder if they took all the whisky with them," he said. Then he
grinned; he was sure they had not.
He began walking in long strides toward Clark Street. In toward the
still heart of the empty city.
* * * * *
He was a slim, pale-skinned little man, and very dangerous. He was also
very clever. Eventually they would have found out, but he had been
clever enough to deceive them and now they would never know. There was
great wealth in his family, and with the rest of them occupied with
leaving the city and taking what valuables they could on such short
notice, he had been put in charge of one of the chauffeurs.
The chauffeur had been given the responsibility of getting the
pale-skinned young man out of the city. But the young man had caused
several delays until all the rest were gone. Then, meekly enough, he had
accompanied the chauffeur to the garage. The chauffeur got behind the
wheel of the last remaining car--a Cadillac sedan--and the young man had
gotten into the rear seat.
But before the chauffeur could start the motor, the young man hit him on
the head with a tire bar he had taken from a shelf as they had entered
the garage.
The bar went deep into the chauffeur's skull with a solid sound, and
thus the chauffeur found the death he was in the very act of fleeing.
The young man pulled the dead chauffeur from the car and laid him on the
cement floor. He laid him down very carefully, so that he was in the
exact center of a large square of outlined cement with his feet pointing
straight north and his outstretched arms pointing south.
The young man placed the chauffeur's cap very carefully upon his chest,
because neatness pleased him. Then he got into the car, started it, and
headed east toward Lake Michigan and the downtown section.
After traveling three or four miles, he turned the car off the road and
drove it into a telephone post. Then he walked until he came to some
high weeds. He lay down in the weeds and waited.
He knew there would probably be a last vanguard of militia hunting for
stragglers. If they saw a moving car they would investigate. They would
take him into custody and force him to leave the city.
This, he felt, they had no right to do. All his life he had been ordered
about--told to do this and that and the other thing. Stupid orders from
stupid people. Idiots who went so far as to claim the whole city would
be destroyed, just to make people do as they said. God! The ends to
which stupid people would go in order to assert their wills over
brilliant people.
The young man lay in the weeds and dozed off, his mind occupied with the
pleasant memory of the tire iron settling into the skull of the
chauffeur.
After a while he awoke and heard the cars of the last vanguard passing
down the road. They stopped, inspected the Cadillac and found it
serviceable. They took it with them, but they did not search the weeds
along the road.
When they had disappeared toward the west, the young man came back to
the road and began walking east, in toward the city.
Complete destruction in two days?
Preposterous.
The young man smiled.
* * * * *
The girl was afraid. For hours she had walked the streets of the empty
city and the fear, strengthened by weariness, was now mounting toward
terror. "One face," she whispered. "Just one person coming out of a
house or walking across the street. That's all I ask. Somebody to tell
me what this is all about. If I can find one person, I won't be afraid
any more."
And the irony of it struck her. A few hours previously she had attempted
suicide. Sick of herself and of all people, she had tried to end her own
life. Therefore, by acknowledging death as the answer, she should now
have no fear whatever of anything. Reconciled to crossing the bridge
into death, no facet of life should have held terror for her.
But the empty city did hold terror. One face--one moving form was all
she asked for.
Then, a second irony. When she saw the man at the corner of Washington
and Wells, her terror increased. They saw each other at almost the same
moment. Both stopped and stared. Fingers of panic ran up the girl's
spine. The man raised a hand and the spell was broken. The girl turned
and ran, and there was more terror in her than there had been before.
[Illustration]
She knew how absurd this was, but still she ran blindly. What had she to
fear? She knew all about men; all the things men could do they had
already done to her. Murder was the ultimate, but she was fresh from a
suicide attempt. Death should hold no terrors for her.
She thought of these things as the man's footsteps sounded behind her
and she turned into a narrow alley seeking a hiding place. She found
none and the man turned in after her.
She found a passageway, entered with the same blindness which had
brought her into the alley. There was a steel door at the end and a
brick lying by the sill. The door was locked. She picked up the brick
and turned. The man skidded on the filthy alley surface as he turned
into the areaway.