"Naw," Wilson said with a kind of affectionate contempt. "She don't know
anything about it. She lived in some attic dump and was down with a sore
throat. She took some pills or something and when she woke up they were
gone."
"I went to work and--" Minna began, but Wilson cut her off.
"She swabs out some joints on Chicago Avenue for a living and that was
how she happened to be sitting in that tavern. It's payday, and Minna
was waiting for her dough!" He exploded into laughter and slapped the
table with a huge hand. "Can you beat that? Waiting for her pay at a
time like this."
Frank Brooks set down his beer bottle. The beer was cold and it tasted
good. "Have you met anybody else? There must be some other people
around."
"Uh-uh. Haven't met anybody but Minna." He turned his eyes on the woman
again, then got to his feet. "Come on, Minna. You and I got to have a
little conference. We got things to talk about." Grinning, he walked
toward the rear of the restaurant. Minna got up more slowly. She
followed him behind the counter and into the rear of the place.
Alone with Nora, Frank said, "You aren't eating. Want me to look for
something else?"
"No--I'm not very hungry. I was just wondering--"
"Wondering about what?"
"When it will happen. When whatever is going to happen--you know what I
mean."
"I'd rather know _what's_ going to happen. I hate puzzles. It's hell to
have to get killed and not know what killed you."
"We aren't being very sensible, are we?"
"How do you mean?"
"We should at least act normal."
"I don't get it."
Nora frowned in slight annoyance. "Normal people would be trying to
reach safety. They wouldn't be sitting in a restaurant drinking beer. We
should be trying to get away. Even if it does mean walking. Normal
people would be trying to get away."
Frank stared at his bottle for a moment. "We should be scared stiff,
shouldn't we?"
It was Nora's turn to ponder. "I'm not sure. Maybe not. I know I'm not
fighting anything inside--fear, I mean. I just don't seem to care one
way or another."
"I care," Frank replied. "I care. I don't want to die. But we're faced
with a situation, and either way it's a gamble. We might be dead before
I finish this bottle of beer. If that's true, why not sit here and be
comfortable? Or we might have time to walk far enough to get out of
range of whatever it is that chased everybody."
"Which way do you think it is?"
"I don't think we have time to get out of town. They cleaned it out too
fast. We'd need at least four or five hours to get away. If we had that
much time the army, or whoever did it, would still be around."
"Maybe they didn't know themselves when it's going to happen."
He made an impatient gesture. "What difference does it make? We're in a
situation we didn't ask to get in. Our luck put us here and I'm damned
if I'm going to kick a hole in the ceiling and yell for help."
Nora was going to reply, but at that moment Jim Wilson came striding out
front. He wore his big grin and he carried another half-dozen bottles of
beer. "Minna'll be out in a minute," he said. "Women are always slower
than hell."
He dropped into a chair and snapped the cap off a beer bottle with his
thumb. He held the bottle up and squinted through it, sighing gustily.
"Man! I ain't never had it so good." He tilted the bottle in salute, and
drank.
* * * * *
The sun was lowering in the west now, and when Minna reappeared it
seemed that she materialized from the shadows, so quietly did she move.
Jim Wilson opened another bottle and put it before her. "Here--have a
drink, baby."
Obediently, she tilted the bottle and drank.
"What do you plan to do?" Frank asked.
"It'll be dark soon," Wilson said. "We ought to go out and try to
scrounge some flashlights. I bet the power plants are dead. Probably
aren't any flashlights either."
"Are you going to stay here?" Nora asked. "Here in the Loop?"
He seemed surprised. "Why not? A man'd be a fool to walk out on all
this. All he wants to eat and drink. No goddam cops around. The life of
Reilly and I should walk out?"
"Aren't you afraid of what's going to happen?"
"I don't give a good goddam what's going to happen. What the hell!
Something's always going to happen."
"They didn't evacuate the city for nothing," Frank said.
"You mean we can all get killed?" Jim Wilson laughed. "Sure we can. We
could have got killed last week too. We could of got batted in the can
by a truck anytime we crossed the street." He emptied his bottle, threw
it accurately at a mirror over the cash register. The crash was
thunderous. "Trouble with you people, you're worry warts," he said with
an expansive grin. "Let's go get us some flashlights so we can find our
way to bed in one of those fancy hotels."
He got to his feet and Minna arose also, a little tired, a little
apprehensive, but entirely submissive. Jim Wilson said, "Come on, baby.
I sure won't want to lose _you_." He grinned at the others. "You guys
coming?"
Frank's eyes met Nora's. He shrugged. "Why not?" he said. "Unless you
want to start walking."
"I'm too tired," Nora said.
As they stepped out through the smashed window, both Nora and Frank
half-expected to see other forms moving up and down Madison Street. But
there was no one. Only the unreal desolation of the lonely pavement and
the dark-windowed buildings.
"The biggest ghost town on earth," Frank muttered.
Nora's hand had slipped into Frank's. He squeezed it and neither of them
seemed conscious of the contact.
"I wonder," Nora said. "Maybe this is only one of them. Maybe all the
other big cities are evacuated too."
Jim Wilson and Minna were walking ahead. He turned. "If you two can't
sleep without finding out what's up, it's plenty easy to do."
"You think we could find a battery radio in some store?" Frank asked.
"Hell no! They'll all be gone. But all you'd have to do is snoop around
in some newspaper office. If you can read you can find out what
happened."
It seemed strange to Frank that he had not thought of this. Then he
realized he hadn't tried very hard to think of anything at all. He was
surprised, also, at his lack of fear. He's gone through life pretty much
taking things as they came--as big a sucker as the next man--making more
than his quota of mistakes and blunders. Finding himself completely
alone in a deserted city for the first time in his life, he had
naturally fallen prey to sudden fright. But that had gradually passed,
and now he was able to accept the new reality fairly passively. He
wondered if that wasn't pretty much the way of all people. New
situations brought a surge of whatever emotion fitted the picture. Then
the emotion subsided and the new thing became the ordinary.
This, he decided, was the manner in which humanity survived. Humanity
took things as they came. Pile on enough of anything and it becomes the
ordinary.
Jim Wilson had picked up a garbage box and hurled it through the window
of an electric shop. The glass came down with a crash that shuddered up
the empty darkening street and grumbled off into silence. Jim Wilson
went inside. "I'll see what I can find. You stay out here and watch for
cops." His laughter echoed out as he disappeared.
Minna stood waiting silently, unmoving, and somehow she reminded Frank
of a dumb animal; an unreasoning creature with no mind of her own,
waiting for a signal from her master. Strangely, he resented this, but
at the same time could find no reason for his resentment, except the
feeling that no one should appear as much a slave as Minna.
Jim Wilson reappeared in the window. He motioned to Minna. "Come on in,
baby. You and me's got to have a little conference." His exaggerated
wink was barely perceptible in the gloom as Minna stepped over the low
sill into the store. "Won't be long, folks," Wilson said in high good
humor, and the two of them vanished into the darkness beyond.
Frank Brooks glanced at Nora, but her face was turned away. He cursed
softy under his breath. He said, "Wait a minute," and went into the
store through the huge, jagged opening.
Inside, he could barely make out the counters. The place was larger than
it had appeared from the outside. Wilson and Minna were nowhere about.
Frank found the counter he was looking for and pawed out several
flashlights. They were only empty tubes, but he found a case of
batteries in a panel compartment against the wall.
"Who's there?"
"Me. I came in for some flashlights."
"Couldn't you wait?"
"It's getting dark."
"You don't have to be so damn impatient." Jim Wilson's voice was hostile
and surly.
Frank stifled his quick anger. "We'll be outside," he said. He found
Nora waiting where he'd left her. He loaded batteries into four
flashlights before Jim Wilson and Minna reappeared.
Wilson's good humor was back. "How about the Morrison or the Sherman,"
he said. "Or do you want to get real ritzy and walk up to the Drake?"
"My feet hurt," Minna said. The woman spoke so rarely, Frank Brooks was
startled by her words.
"Morrison's the closest," Jim Wilson said. "Let's go." He took Minna by
the arm and swung off up the street. Frank and Nora fell in behind.