Empty World

by John Christopher

  Neil stretched his arms, yawning. The feeling of gloom lifted. His life was much less orderly than the other’s had been, but perhaps for that reason he had not come to the end of its resources—to the final loss of hope. The chemist’s shop, at any rate, had lost its attraction.

  He went out to wash, and found himself whistling. He stopped, thinking of Peter Cranbell; then shrugged and continued.

  • • •

  Neil settled back into his usual habits as the days passed. He had vague intentions of doing something constructive, such as sending out message-balloons of his own or fixing a banner in front of the house or at some salient point nearby. He thought, too, of keeping a beacon fire going in the street, or out in the park.

  In the end he did nothing. He told himself it was because they were all futile exercises—neither balloons nor banner had worked for Peter Cranbell, and as far as a beacon was concerned it would not be likely to attract attention, anyway. There was usually smoke rising somewhere on the horizon from some self-engendered fire.

  But the real reason, as he finally admitted, was that to do anything would be to set hope in motion again, and he could not bear the thought of disillusionment. It was not that he believed any longer that he was a sole survivor. If three had come through, why not thirty—or three hundred? But of the two he had found, one had been mad and the second dead. He had a strange feeling, a kind of fear of what might come of a third encounter.

  When he first settled in Princes Gate he had several times gone foraging in Harrods. Subsequently he had started going the other way, towards Kensington High Street, and as with other aspects of his life the tendency had fixed into a routine. He had not been near the huge department store for over a month when he decided, one brisk chilly morning, to revisit it.

  He had the Food department as his main objective, but did not go there right away. He went up the motionless escalator to the first floor, beaming a torch ahead of him, and headed south through Furnishings. Some of the furniture looked attractive: a leather sofa, in particular, would have made a useful addition to his sitting room. But he could not have lifted it single-handed, let alone transported it. A small armchair he did lift, and decided he could have carried it with some effort. He put it down again: not worth the trouble.

  He went through to Books, his torch picking out rows of volumes gathering dust. He propped the torch on a table and picked out one or two books at random. Politics for the Ordinary Citizen; Every Man His Own Lawyer. . . . Neil let them drop on the floor. The Can-Opener Cook was more to the point: he put that in his haversack.

  And then shelf after shelf of novels—people’s imaginings about other people, processed through elaborate systems of production for yet other people to read. A section was headed Science-Fiction: hundreds and hundreds of exciting futures for the human race. All boiled down to one. Or rather, none. But he supposed if one looked at it from a more detached viewpoint there were compensations. All those forests, for instance, which no longer needed to be destroyed to make paper.

  In the Pet Shop he saw displays of food, dog chews and catnips, baskets and rubber balls and vitamins, brushes and combs and shampoos, leads and chains and training whistles. The dogs, swept out by the rats, were beginning to come back: a pack of a dozen or so had run snarling past his house the previous day. They looked wilder than the ones he had seen immediately following the Plague. He doubted if a training whistle would have much effect on them.

  He entered a vast room in which the swinging beam flashed from screen to blank screen. Television sets. And elaborate and massive sound reproduction systems ranged along the sides. Neil went through to the pianos, solider and more friendly shapes, a score or more stretching away into the darkness. He remembered winter evenings, and the sound of Amanda’s practising floating up through the house while he did his prep. He found one open, and strummed the keys idly: the notes soared and died. He had started to learn, too, when he was younger, but he had been bored and his parents had not insisted on his continuing. He regretted that now. It would have been nice to be able to make music.

  He went downstairs and at last to the Food Hall. The smell of the rotted perishables was very faint, barely perceptible. He had kept on the whole to a fairly narrow range of diet, ringing the changes on things he liked, but today he felt adventurous and looked for more exotic items. Quails’ eggs in aspic, pressed boar’s head, haggis, venison steaks, occra, salsify, sauerkraut. . . . He picked up tins of kangaroo meat and rattlesnake, but put those back on the shelf. Cherries in brandy, on the other hand, struck him as worth taking.

  Tins of curry powder. . . . His grandfather had been fond of curries and that—curried lamb ­usually—had been their regular Tuesday supper. He hefted the tin, trying to remember the details of his grandmother’s preparations. He had a hazy recollection of sliced onions simmering golden-yellow in butter, and the curry powder being added to brown with them. How much, though? A tea-spoonful? Or a table spoon? And hadn’t there been flour, as well? He had no butter, but plenty of margarine in sealed packs. He decided to have a go, and added the tin of curry powder to the rest.

  That was enough for today, he decided. He made his way back but by an unfamiliar route. He found himself traversing Cosmetics, his beam lighting up names which had presumably once been significant: Coty, Elizabeth Arden, Rochas, Dior, Rubinstein. And little counters, piled high with jars and bottles and cases of lipsticks. The display on one of the counters had collapsed, and the contents were spilled across the aisle. Neil was making a detour of the mess when something on the fringe of the torch beam caught his eye. He stopped, and looked more closely. A bottle had broken, producing a pool of some white substance. But the whiteness was not complete. It was marred by something—the clear imprint of a shoe.

  Neil told himself it meant nothing. It could have happened months ago. At the height of the Plague, perhaps—with some woman searching the empty store for something to cure the wrinkling of her skin, pulling down the display, maybe, in her despair and anger. But examining it more closely he noticed something else. This—he put out a tentative ­finger—was tacky. If the substance had been spilled long, it would have dried out. And the surface was snowy white; it had not yet collected the dust which lay thickly everywhere else.

  He straightened up. Someone had been here, and recently. A girl: it was the mark of a girl’s shoe, several sizes smaller than his own. He felt his heart pounding and suddenly, involuntarily, heard himself crying out:

  “Hello! Hello?”

  He felt foolish, listening to the echoes, but called again and again, for several minutes.

  • • •

  Afterwards he was more rational, and planned things. He had always used the doors at the north-west corner, but there might be other ways in and out. He checked carefully, and found that the main door, in Brompton Road, had also been forced, but that the rest were locked. He returned to the Stationery department, found two white cards and a black fibre-tip marker, and wrote his message on each:

  “My name is Neil Miller. I am at 170 Princes Gate.”

  He thought for a moment, then added:

  “Opposite Hyde Park.”

  He placed a card in each entrance, conspicuously so that no-one coming in could avoid seeing it. For an hour or two afterwards he still hung about the store; it was improbable that she would come back again so soon, but he was reluctant to go away. Eventually hunger made him go.

  Neil thought about it as he prepared his meal. His general feeling had been that if he did find someone else it would be of his own sex. That probably stemmed from an ingrained belief that the female was the weaker—that with odds against survival so high, only males could be expected to have come through.

  But there was no rational ground for thinking it. There had been nothing to suggest that women were more susceptible to the Plague than men—the only forbearance it had shown, and that minimal, had been toward
s the young rather than the old. And subsequent conditions of life, though strange, had not been particularly hard or dangerous, requiring special strength. After the rat menace had flared and died, all that was needed was a reasonable ability to take care of oneself. A girl might even be better equipped from that point of view.

  Plus, he thought, remembering Peter Cranbell, the ability to sustain loneliness. He felt the crushing weight of that more than he had done for some time: the thought of another living person, within reach perhaps, sharpened the awareness of being on his own, not just in this room in this house, but with thousands of empty houses surrounding him.

  He wondered what she would be like. The small footprint made him picture a slim girl, quick in her movements. With fair hair, long but very neat—braided, perhaps. Not blue eyes, though: brown. And a quiet voice, with a lilt to it.

  Neil found himself smiling. Creating a girl, down to hair and eyes and voice, on the basis of a solitary footprint: how ridiculous! But ridiculous or not, the image was not easily dismissed. He thought of her as he went to sleep and saw her clearly. She was wearing a light blue dress, with white cuffs and collar.

  • • •

  For the next two days he went to Harrods both morning and afternoon. The cards were where he had left them but he still called out, with no response. On his second visit on the third day, though, the card he had left in the main entrance was gone.

  Neil stared at the place where it had been. The previous day he had gone again to the Cosmetics department, to reassure himself of the footprint’s reality, but even so the episode had begun to seem unreal. He found it hard to believe in the stranger’s existence. If she did exist, the visit had been a chance one, not to be repeated. But she had come back! As the fact penetrated, he found himself shouting again:

  “Hello! Where are you? Hello . . . hello. . . !”

  He stopped abruptly. Having discovered the card, obviously she had gone to Princes Gate, to look for him. He made for home, running most of the way. He called to her outside the house and went inside, racing through the rooms. There was no-one there, and no message. He could have outpaced her, he told himself, and stared out of the window. Birds fluttered through the air and he saw a scuttling rat: nothing else.

  He waited for an hour. He had another idea—that she might have come, found no-one at home, and gone back to the store. She might have left a message in replacement of his. He retraced his steps but found nothing—called out again, but knew it to be futile.

  That night he gave it a lot of thought. She had taken his message, but not responded. There could be a reason: frightening things might have happened to her. But he would not accept a refusal of contact. Whether or not she wanted it, there must be a meeting.

  Neil reviewed the shreds of information he had. Since she had come to the store a second time it was unlikely that she was a transient. He had heard no engine sound—and would have done this time because he had been on the alert—which meant she had travelled on foot. Almost certainly, in that case, she was living within a couple of miles’ radius of Harrods. He was confident he would find her.

  • • •

  He started the search early next morning, and spent the day driving around. All he achieved was a fuller awareness of what a warren London was; and the unhappy realization that in guessing her mode of transport he had overlooked a third possibility. It could have been a bicycle, which made the potential range much greater.

  It was with this in mind that he had what he thought was a brainwave. He remembered the dinging bells of burglar alarms, harshly calling attention to themselves. They had depended on electrical power, but there was something that didn’t, and would be heard over a far greater area.

  The first church he found was itself equipped with an electrical bell system, but the second had ropes. He heaved on one, and heard the bell clang out high above. He rang and rang, pulling until his arms were sore; then found a pew and sat down. Sparrows had found a way in before him and chattered up in the rafters. Hugging his aching shoulders he realized what a fool he had been—how absurd the brainwave. If she had not come in response to the card, why should she answer a peal of bells?

  Something else was also clear: the car had been a mistake. She would have heard him, streets away. If he was going to track her down, he must use stealth.

  Neil thought of the acres of interlocking streets, the vast area within easy cycling distance of the store. There must be a way of limiting the range. The thing to remember was that she had been facing the same problems as himself, and had very likely come to similar solutions. He had chosen Princes Gate for comfort, and for access to a good supply of fresh water. Was there an alternative location, offering the same possibilities?

  He did not have to think long: the answer was obvious. The best water supply possible—better than the Serpentine—was the Thames. And riverside Chelsea abounded in comfortable houses. That was where he should concentrate his search.

  • • •

  Neil took rations for several days, and spare batteries for his torch. He picked out his sturdiest pair of shoes, but on reflection abandoned them in favour of some with crepe soles. It was not too cold—grey but mild—but he crammed a jersey in. He wanted to be prepared for a long expedition.

  He passed through the museums area of South Kensington on his way and remembered Saturday afternoons, and ice-creams sold from barrows. The gutters were choked and the forecourt of the tube station, where the paper-boys had shouted, was thick with accumulated dirt and rubbish. He trudged on south, to Sloane Square and the King’s Road. Behind the grimy glass window of a boutique, models struck weird gymnastic poses, and a sign said: THIS YEAR THIS IS IT!

  The big private houses near the river were the best bet, and he headed that way. But there were so many of them, so many once-affluent tree-lined streets. He studied the houses he passed for signs of occupancy. If she were avoiding people she would probably try not to leave any, but something might give her away. He thought he was on to something when he saw a trail worn across what had been a small lawn, but it led him to a large hole under a wall—a fox’s earth, most likely.

  He took a break for a snack, and pushed on grimly. He kept at it until after dusk had fallen before finding a place to spend the night. He stayed in the big ground-floor sitting room where there was a comfortable settee. It was old-fashioned, well supplied with family photographs in silver frames. They did not interest him any longer.

  Three more days of fruitless tramping followed. He was discouraged, and wondered if he could have guessed wrong about the district. She might not have had his idea about a fresh water supply, or she might have picked a different stretch of the river bank. The south side, perhaps, even though the houses were smaller and less luxurious there.

  His luck changed unexpectedly. He had finished the provisions in his haversack; he thought of going back home, but decided it would be easier to forage near at hand. He went to the nearest supermarket in the King’s Road, and smashed a way in. There was plenty of food, but also sections of shelf which had been stripped. He looked more closely and saw the signs of a recent human presence: dust disturbed on the shelves and floor.

  Neil followed the track. It led not to the door he had broken, but out to the back. There was a yard, and a steel gate. The gate was padlocked, but the chain had been severed with metal cutters.

  From that point all he had to do was wait. He found an upper room across the street with a view of the gate, drew a chair up to the window, and settled down. He watched carefully all that day, and most of the next.

  Even so, he missed her; she had probably entered the store while he was in the bathroom. He looked out to see the gate opening, and at the same time realized he had not noticed an addition to the scene—an old-fashioned lady’s bicycle, with a basket in front of the handlebars, leaning against the wall further down.

  Neil ran for the stairs. She
was getting on the bicycle as he came out of the front door. He did not call, but raced towards her.

  She heard him; and without looking round started to pedal away. If she had had another second or two she would have outdistanced him, but he managed to get close enough to grab the carrier at the back. The metal cut into his fingers and a backward-­kicking foot bruised his arm, but he held on. The bicycle swerved, and she fell.

  9

  KEEPING HIS VOICE AS CASUAL as possible, Neil said:

  “I’m sorry, but. . . . Are you all right?”

  There was no reply from the figure on the ground. He did not think she was injured, but the fall might have winded her. He stooped and took an arm.

  “Let me help you.”

  She rejected his hand, but got up on her own. He could not see her properly until she was standing. Thick fair hair was pulled back under a cap from a pointed face. The figure, shapeless in a short padded coat and trousers, matched his own in height. He felt a shock of disappointment: it was not a girl, but a boy.

  He repeated: “Are you all right?” The face stared sullenly. “Sorry if I took you by surprise.”

  They looked at one another. There was a response at last, a brief shrug.

  “I’m all right.”

  The voice, low-pitched in a vaguely northern accent, was feminine. He could see now that it was a girl’s figure as well. But a bit of a far cry from the one he had imagined.

  At least, though, it was a fellow human being. He smiled, in an attempt at reassurance. She was wary and timid, possibly with good reason. Any approach would have alarmed her, let alone a full-blooded chase and tackle.

  He asked: “Where are you living?”

  She hesitated slightly. “In Chelsea.”

  Tins and packages had been spilt from the basket. Neil gathered them and righted the bicycle, while she watched. Holding the handlebars, he said: