On the table, a book was dropped casually, and there was a sheet of paper propped against it, with what looked like a girl's rough handwriting on it. Curiosity carried him closer until he could make it out through the dust that clung even after he shook it.
Dad:
Charley Summers found a wrecked ship of those things, and came for me. We'll be living high on 13. Come on over, if your jets will make it, and meet your son-in-law.
There was no date, nothing to indicate whether “Dad” had returned, or what had happened to them. But Danny dropped it reverently back on the table, looking out across the landing strip as if to see a worn old ship crawl in through the brief twilight that was falling over the tiny world. “Those things” could only be the new race, after the war; and that meantthat here was the final outpost of his people. The note might be ten years or half a dozen centuries old—but his people had been here, fighting on and managing to live, after Earth had been lost to them. If they could, so could he!
And unlikely though it seemed, there might possibly be more of them out there somewhere. Perhaps the race was still surviving in spite of time and trouble and even homo intelligens.
Danny's eyes were moist as he stepped back from the door and the darkness outside to begin cleaning his new home. If any were there, he'd find them. And if not—
Well, he was still a member of a great and daring race that could never know defeat so long as a single man might live. He would never forget that.
Back on Earth, Bryant Kenning nodded slowly to the small group as he put the communicator back, and his eyes were a bit sad in spite of the smile that lighted his face. “The direc tor's scout is back, and he did choose ‘The Dane's.’ Poor kid. I'd begun to think we waited too long, and that he never would make it. Another six months—and he'd have died like a flower out of the sun! Yet I was sure it would work when Miss Larsen showed me that story, with its mythical plane toid-paradises. A rather clever story, if you like pseudohis tory. I hope the one I prepared was its equal.”
“For historical inaccuracy, fully its equal.” But the amuse ment in old Professor Kirk's voice did not reach his lips.
“Well, he swallowed our lies and ran off with the ship we built him. I hope he's happy, for a while at least.”
Miss Larsen folded her things together and prepared to leave. “Poor kid! He was sweet, in a pathetic sort of way. I wish that girl we were working on had turned out better; maybe this wouldn't have been necessary then. See me home, Jack?”
The two older men watched Larsen and Thorpe leave, and silence and tobacco smoke filled the room. Finally, Kenning shrugged and turned to face the professor.
“By now he's found the note. I wonder if it was a good idea, after all. When I first came across it in that old story, I was thinking of Jack's preliminary report on Number 67, but now I don't know; she's an unknown quantity, at best. Any how, I meant it for kindness.”
“Kindness! Kindness to repay with a few million credits and a few thousands of hours of work—plus a lie here and there—for all that we owe the boy's race!” The professor's voice was tired as he dumped the contents of his pipe into a snuffer and strode over slowly toward the great window that looked out on the night sky. “I wonder sometimes, Bryant, what kindness Neanderthaler found when the last one came to die. Or whether the race that will follow us when the darkness falls on us will have something better than such kindness.”
The novelist shook his head doubtfully, and there was silence again as they looked out across the world and toward the stars.
THE UNDERDWELLER
William F. Nolan
IN THE WAITING, windless dark, Lewis Stillman pressed into the building-front shadows along Wilshire Boulevard. Breathing softly, the automatic poised, ready in his hand, he advanced with animal stealth toward Western Avenue, gliding over the night-cool concrete past ravaged clothing shops, drug- and ten-cent stores, their windows shattered, their doors ajar and swinging. The city of Los Angeles, painted in cold moonlight, was an im mense graveyard; the tall, white, tombstone buildings thrust up from the silent pavement, shadow-carved and lonely. Overturned metal corpses of trucks, buses, and automobiles littered the streets.
He paused under the wide marquee of the Fox Wiltern. Above his head, rows of splintered display bulbs gaped—sharp glass teeth in wooden jaws. Lewis Stillman felt as though they might drop at any moment to pierce his body.
Four more blocks to cover. His destination: a small corner delicatessen four blocks south of Wilshire, on Western. Tonight he intended on bypassing the larger stores such as Safeway or Thriftimart, with their available supplies of exotic foods; a smaller grocery was far more likely to have what he needed. He was finding it more and more difficult to locate basic foodstuff. In the big supermarkets, only the more exotic and highly spiced canned and bottled goods remained—and he was sick of caviar and oysters!
Crossing Western, he had almost reached the far curb when he saw some of them. He dropped immediately to his knees behind the rusting bulk of an Oldsmobile. The rear door on his side was open, and he cautiously eased himself into the back seat of the deserted car. Releasing the safety catch on the automatic, he peered through the cracked window at six or seven of them, as they moved toward him along the street. God! Had he been seen? He couldn't be sure. Perhaps they were aware of his position! He should have remained on the open street where he'd have a running chance. Perhaps, if his aim were true, he could kill most of them; but even with its silencer the gun might be heard and more of them would come. He dared not fire until he was certain they had discovered him.
They came closer, their small dark bodies crowding the walk, six of them, chattering, leaping, cruel mouths open, eyes glittering under the moon. Closer. Their shrill pipings increased, rose in volume. Closer. Now he could make out their sharp teeth and matted hair. Only a few feet from the car … His hand was moist on the handle of the automatic; his heart thundered against his chest. Seconds away …
Now!
Lewis Stillman fell heavily back against the dusty seat cushion, the gun loose in his trembling hand. They had passed by; they had missed him. Their thin pipings diminished, grew faint with distance.
The tomb silence of late night settled around him.
The delicatessen proved a real windfall. The shelves were relatively un touched and he had a wide choice of tinned goods. He found an empty cardboard box and hastily began to transfer the cans from the shelf nearest him.
A noise from behind—a padding, scraping sound.
Lewis Stillman whirled about, the automatic ready.
A huge mongrel dog faced him, growling deep in its throat, four legs braced for assault. The blunt ears were laid flat along the short-haired skull and a thin trickle of saliva seeped from the killing jaws. The beast's powerful chest-muscles were bunched for the spring when Stillman acted.
His gun, he knew, was useless; the shots would be heard. Therefore, with the full strength of his left arm he hurled a heavy can at the dog's head. The stunned animal staggered under the blow, legs buckling. Hurriedly, Stillman gathered his supplies and made his way back to the street.
How much longer can my luck hold? Lewis Stillman wondered as he bolted the door. He placed the box of tinned goods on a wooden table and lit the tall lamp nearby. Its flickering orange glow illumined the narrow, lowceilinged room.
Twice tonight, his mind told him, twice you've escaped them—and they could have seen you easily on both occasions if they had been watching for you. They don't know you're alive. But when they find out …
He forced his thoughts away from the scene in his mind, away from the horror; quickly he began to unload the box, placing the cans on a long shelf along the far side of the room.
He began to think of women, of a girl named Joan, and of how much he had loved her …
The world of Lewis Stillman was damp and lightless; it was narrow and its cold stone walls pressed in upon him as he moved. He had been walking for several hours; sometimes he wo
uld run, because he knew his leg muscles must be kept strong, but he was walking now, following the thin yellow beam of his hooded lantern. He was searching.
Tonight, he thought, I might find another like myself. Surely, someone is down here; I'll find someone if I keep searching. I must find someone!
But he knew he would not. He knew he would find only chill emptiness ahead of him in the long tunnels.
For three years he had been searching for another man or woman down here in this world under the city. For three years he had prowled the seven hundred miles of storm drains that threaded their way under the skin of Los Angeles like the veins in a giant's body—and he had found nothing. Nothing.
Even now, after all the days and nights of search, he could not really accept the fact that he was alone, that he was the last man alive in a city of seven million …
The beautiful woman stood silently above him. Her eyes burned softly in the darkness; her fine red lips were smiling. The foam-white gown she wore swirled and billowed continually around her motionless figure.
“Who are you?” he asked, his voice far off, unreal.
“Does it matter, Lewis?”
Her words, like four dropped stones in a quiet pool, stirred him, rippled down the length of his body.
“No,” he said. “Nothing matters now except that we've found each other. God, after all these lonely months and years of waiting! I thought I was the last, that I'd never live to see—”
“Hush, my darling.” She leaned to kiss him. Her lips were moist and yielding. “I'm here now.”
He reached up to touch her cheek, but already she was fading, blending into darkness. Crying out, he clawed desperately for her extended hand. But she was gone, and his fingers rested on a rough wall of damp concrete.
A swirl of milk-fog drifted away in slow rollings down the tunnel.
Rain. Days of rain. The drains had been designed to handle floods, so Lewis Stillman was not particularly worried. He had built high, a good three feet above the tunnel floor and the water had not yet risen to this level. But he didn't like the sound of the rain down here: an orchestrated thunder through the tunnels, a trap-drumming amplified and continuous. And since he had been unable to make his daily runs he had been reading more than usual. Short stories by Welty, Gordimer, Aiken, Irwin Shaw, and Hemingway; poems by Frost, Lorca, Sandburg, Millay, Dylan Thomas. Strange, how unreal this present-day world seemed when he read their words. Unreality, however, was fleeting, and the moment he closed a book the loneliness and the fears pressed back. He hoped the rain would stop soon.
Dampness. Surrounding him, the cold walls and the chill and the dampness. The unending gurgle and drip of water, the hollow, tapping splash of the falling drops. Even in his cot, wrapped in thick blankets, the dampness seemed to permeate his body. Sounds … Thin screams, pipings, chatterings, reedy whisperings above his head. They were dragging something along the street, something they'd no doubt killed: an animal—a cat or a dog perhaps … Lewis Stillman shifted, pulling the blankets closer about his body. He kept his eyes tightly shut, listening to the sharp, scuffling sounds on the pavement and swore bitterly.
“Damn you,” he said. “Damn all of you!”
Lewis Stillman was running, running down the long tunnels. Behind him a tide of midget shadows washed from wall to wall; high, keening cries, dou bled and tripled by echoes, rang in his ears. Claws reached for him; he felt panting breath, like hot smoke, on the back of his neck; his lungs were bursting, his entire body aflame.
He looked down at his fast-pumping legs, doing their job with pistoned precision. He listened to the sharp slap of his heels against the floor of the tunnel—and he thought: I might die at any moment, but my legs will escape! They will run on down the endless drains and never be caught. They move so fast while my heavy, awkward upper body rocks and sways above them, slowing them down, tiring them—making them angry. How my legs must hate me! I must be clever and humor them, beg them to take me along to safety. How well they run, how sleek and fine!
Then he felt himself coming apart. His legs were detaching themselves from his upper body. He cried out in horror, flailing the air, beseeching them not to leave him behind. But the legs cruelly continued to unfasten them selves. In a cold surge of terror, Lewis Stillman felt himself tipping, falling toward the damp floor—while his legs raced on with a wild animal life of their own. He opened his mouth, high above those insane legs, and screamed.
Ending the nightmare.
He sat up stiffly in his cot, gasping, drenched in sweat. He drew in a long shuddering breath and reached for a cigarette, lighting it with a trembling hand.
The nightmares were getting worse. He realized that his mind was rebelling as he slept, spilling forth the bottled-up fears of the day during the night hours.
He thought once more about the beginning six years ago, about why he was still alive. The alien ships had struck Earth suddenly, without warning. Their attack had been thorough and deadly. In a matter of hours the aliens had accomplished their clever mission—and the men and women of Earth were destroyed. A few survived, he was certain. He had never seen any of them, but he was convinced they existed. Los Angeles was not the world, after all, and since he escaped so must have others around the globe. He'd been working alone in the drains when the aliens struck, finishing a special job for the construction company on B tunnel. He could still hear the weird sound of the mammoth ships and feel the intense heat of their passage.
Hunger had forced him out, and overnight he had become a curiosity. The last man alive. For three years he was not harmed. He worked with them, taught them many things, and tried to win their confidence. But, eventually, certain ones came to hate him, to be jealous of his relationship with the others. Luckily he had been able to escape to the drains. That was three years ago and now they had forgotten him.
His subsequent excursions to the upper level of the city had been made under cover of darkness—and he never ventured out unless his food supply dwindled. He had built his one-room structure directly to the side of an overhead grating—not close enough to risk their seeing it, but close enough for light to seep in during the sunlight hours. He missed the warm feel of open sun on his body almost as much as he missed human companionship, but he dared not risk himself above the drains by day.
When the rain ceased, he crouched beneath the street gratings to absorb as much of the filtered sunlight as possible. But the rays were weak and their small warmth only served to heighten his desire to feel direct sunlight upon his naked shoulders.
The dreams … always the dreams. “Are you cold, Lewis?”
“Yes, yes, cold.”
“Then go out, dearest. Into the sun.”
“I can't. Can't go out.”
“But Los Angeles is your world, Lewis! You are the last man in it. The last man in the world.”
“Yes, but they own it all. Every street belongs to them, every building. They wouldn't let me come out. I'd die. They'd kill me.”
“Go out, Lewis.” The liquid dream-voice faded, faded. “Out into the sun, my darling. Don't be afraid.”
That night he watched the moon through the street gratings for almost an hour. It was round and full, like a huge yellow floodlamp in the dark sky, and he thought, for the first time in years, of night baseball at Blues Stadium in Kansas City. He used to love watching the games with his father under the mammoth stadium lights when the field was like a pond, frosted with white illumination, and the players dream-spawned and unreal. Night baseball was always a magic game to him when he was a boy.
Sometimes he got insane thoughts. Sometimes, on a night like this, when the loneliness closed in like a crushing fist and he could no longer stand, he would think of bringing one of them down with him, into the drains. One at a time, they might be handled. Then he'd remember their sharp savage yes, their animal ferocity, and he would realize that the idea was impossible. One of their kind disappeared, suddenly and without trace, others would certainly become suspic
ious, begin to search for him—and it would all be over.
Lewis Stillman settled back into his pillow; he closed his eyes and tried not listen to the distant screams, pipings, and reedy cries filtering down from to street above his head.
Finally he slept.
He spent the afternoon with paper women. He lingered over the pages of some yellowed fashion magazines, looking at all the beautifully photographed models in their fine clothes. Slim and enchanting, these page-women, with their cool enticing eyes and perfect smiles, all grace and softness and litter and swirled cloth. He touched their images with gentle fingers, strokin g the tawny paper hair, as though, by some magic formula, he might imbue them with life. Yet, it was easy to imagine that these women had never really existed at all, that they were simply painted, in microscopic detail, by sly lists to give the illusion of photos.
He didn't like to think about these women and how they died.
“A toast to courage,” smiled Lewis Stillman, raising his wine glass high. It sparkled deep crimson in the lamplit room. “To courage and to the man who truly possesses it!” He drained the glass and hastily refilled it from a tall bottle on the table beside his cot.
“Aren't you going to join me, Mr. H.?” he asked the seated figure slouched over the table, head on folded arms. “Or must I drink alone?”
The figure did not reply.
“Well, then—” He emptied the glass, set it down. “Oh, I know all about what one man is supposed to be able to do. Win out alone. Whip the damn world singlehanded. If a fish as big as a mountain and as mean as all sin is out there then this one man is supposed to go get him, isn't that it? Well, Papa H., what if the world is full of big fish? Can he win over them all? One man. Alone. Of course he can't. Nossir. Damn well right he can't!”
The End Of The World Page 10
