The Long Loud Silence

by Wilson Tucker

  “Holy Mother of Moses! Gas!” And then he paused. No, not gas. Gas would have found him in his third floor room unless it were some strange new kind that clung to the surface, did not rise. He stooped and sniffed the street, the grass growing on the lawns. There was no odor of gas. And that dog was still alive. Not gas then. What?

  Atomic radiation? Bacterial bombs? He didn't know; he knew nothing about them. He knew as much about them as any other G.I. did, which was next to nothing. But those craters could have been made by special, hellish bombs that killed without steel splinters, without shrapnel. It could account for those lifeless bodies lying far from the craters, could account for the dead and deserted city. How did you go about looking for radiation? Oh yes — Geiger counters.

  Gary didn't have a counter, wouldn't know where they could be found, wouldn't know how to use one if he had it. Bacteria? Germs of some kind. You can't fight germs. If his induction shots didn't protect him, to hell with it.

  He was still alive. So he was immune to whatever hit the city, or the stuff didn't reach to the third floor. He was still alive in a city of the dead.

  The jarring crash of a plate glass window brought him to his feet. Someone else was alive.

  The sound had come from somewhere off to his left, surprisingly near, and after a moment of frozen surprise and indecision, he leaped for the car. A following thought stopped him. The sound of the motor might scare them away, might scare them — whoever they were — into hiding. He turned from the car and ran lightly up the street, swinging his eyes from side to side. Broken glass lay everywhere and it was impossible to determine which window had been breached. He slowed, trotting cautiously, eyes and ears alert.

  He came to a cross street, peered up and down its length without seeing anything, and crossed over to continue his route. The darkness of evening was closing in. Slowly now he paced along the street, avoiding the glass that might crunch underfoot and betray him, sidestepping the rubble that barred his way. He hurried along to the next cross street, and the next after that, until he felt that he had come too far. It was like the house-to-house searches in those bombed-out French towns — you sometimes sensed the presence of humans and again you knew beforehand that a house was empty. He realized now, with a surprising return of that old sense, that he had passed the person who smashed the window.

  Gary turned and retraced his route, cautiously.

  He spotted the brief flicker of a flashlight ahead of him and dropped to the street, studying the building as he approached it. Quite apparently a jewelry shop. Looters then — but the whole city lay open for the taking. What was the especial crime of this one act? In a sense he had looted a grocery and a clothing store himself. Somebody wanted the valuable stuff.

  The light flicked on again, scanning a row of display cases along one wall. He caught a faint silhouette created by the small light. He crept nearer, was rising to his feet when he heard the joyous exclamation.

  The looter was a woman.

  Gary sank back to the pavement, thinking better of rushing her. The woman on the hotel's third floor had been murdered by a thief; this feminine looter could be well armed. She might misinterpret his approach and shoot him. He had no desire to stop her, to prevent her from taking what she wanted. He was interested only in her, not in what she was doing. She was the only living thing he had found in the town except for the dog, and the dog wouldn't make good company. He stayed in the street, waiting.

  The woman in the shop took her time, picking over the stock, obviously enjoying herself. Once or twice she flicked off the light and stepped to the broken window, searching the street for people. Gary was only another shapeless bundle of nothing on the black street. She did not see him. He heard the tinkle of gems and rings as she gathered them up in a bundle.

  When she had satisfied herself and at last came out of the shop she was carrying a brown paper sack stuffed with loot. She briefly switched on the light to find her footing and left the store as she had entered, through the gaping hole knocked in the heavy window. Gary tensed his muscles and waited. She turned toward him. Holding the sack clutched tightly in one hand and the flash in the other, she made her way along the street as he had done, avoiding the rubble. Accepting his flattened body as just another obstacle, she was steering a course around him when he leaped.

  The woman screamed in terror and struck out with the flashlight. He knocked it from her hand and shoved her backward, crooking one foot behind her legs as she stumbled. She fell back, sprawling and screaming, the paper sack bursting as it hit the pavement.

  He was on her in an instant, pinning her down, trying vainly to clamp a hand over her month to throttle the screams.

  “Shut up!” he shouted. He got a palm over her mouth and she bit it. “Shut up — I won't hurt you!”

  “You're a cop…” Her voice was girlish and shrill with terror. “You're a cop!”

  “I'm not a cop. Dammit, shut up. Shut up!”

  He caught a piece of cloth from her dress collar and stuffed it in her mouth, holding it down with his hand. The screams were cut short. She tried to kick but he threw his legs over hers, holding her to the ground. A hand came up and pointed fingernails raked his cheek agonizingly. He slapped her then, slapped her sharply and with force across the face. She went limp. He didn't relax his grip but cautiously kept her pinned down, alert for any trick. In the uncertain darkness her body seemed small and frail.

  When he saw she was choking, he pulled the gag from her mouth to discover she was crying.

  “Oh hell, shut that up! That's worse than screaming.”

  “Take it, take it,” she shrilled at him. “I can't stop you. Take it and leave me alone!”

  “Stop it, will you? Listen to me. I'm not going to hurt you.”

  The crying continued. “You're a cop.”

  “I'm not a cop but if you don't stop that damned blubbering I'll make you wish I was.” He balled a fist and pushed it into her face, shoved it so close to her eyes that she couldn't mistake it even in the darkness. “Stop it — now.”

  She stopped. The stopping was drawn out like a motor choked off with a fouled feed line, but she stopped. He rolled off her body and sat up to watch her.

  She made no move, simply lay there in the street staring up at his dark shape against the sky. The silence of the street and the city fell around them.

  “What do you want?” she asked finally.

  “You.”

  “I can't stop you,” she threw back sarcastically.

  “Don't act stupid. You.” He thrust a pointed finger at her shoulder. “You're alive — you're the only one left alive in this man's town. You're alive and I'm alive. Does that make sense to you?”

  “I suppose so.” Her voice was small, faraway.

  Acting on a sudden suspicion, he groped around in the street for the flashlight, found it and put the beam on her face. The face was white with the last lingering traces of her fright, her eyes wide and brilliant blue in the darkness. She flinched under the probing beam.

  “Mother of Moses — you're just a kid!”

  “I'm not,” she snapped. “I'm nineteen.”

  “You're a liar. You're just a kid, fifteen or sixteen maybe.”

  “I'm nineteen,” she insisted. “I can prove it.”

  “How?” he asked skeptically, dousing the flash.

  “I'm in college — a junior.”

  “That doesn't mean a thing to me.” He stared along the street, alert for any movement in the night. Turning over her answer, he admitted grudgingly: “Well, maybe seventeen.”

  “Nineteen,” she still insisted.

  “Skip it.” He got to his knees. “Are you going to behave? What's your name?”

  “Irma. Irma Sloane. What's yours?”

  “Call me Gary. Are you going to behave now?”

  “Gary what?”

  “Russell Gary. Answer me.”

  “All right, don't get mad.” She sat up, felt around on the pavement for the scattered
jewelry. “Look what you made me do!” Abruptly she was on her knees and frantically searching the street. “Help me find them. I want them, I want them all. Help me!”

  He held the light for her, contemptuously watching and sweeping it around in ever widening circles as she scrabbled over the street gathering up the spilled loot. When she had recovered all that could be found in the light's dim beam, she brought the double handful of gems over to dump them in his trouser pockets.

  “We'll have to come back here tomorrow. I know I've missed some.”

  “To hell with that,” he told her. “There's other stores around here.”

  “Yes!” She paused in pleased surprise. “That's right. There are many of them; I know where they all are. We'll find them tomorrow, you and I.”

  He contradicted her. “We'll get the devil out of here tomorrow, and fast. Don't you know what this city will be like this time tomorrow night?”

  “But Russell, my jewelry — What will it be like?”

  “What do you think, with those bodies under two or three days of baking sun?”

  “Oh…” She was silent, and took the flashlight from his hand to direct the beam up into his face. He squinted against the sudden light and heard her indrawn breath.

  “What's the matter?”

  “Nothing, Russell. But you need a shave.”

  He took the light from her hand and shut it off. “Let's get away from here.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He hesitated. Where were they going?

  They stood like silent sentinels in the middle of a dead, deserted city, an odorous city lying lifeless under a black night sky — the victim of some enemy's bombs. They alone, for all he knew, among uncounted dead. They and a stray dog. Where to go? Certainly not back to that place where he had spent the previous nights. Were it not for the girl he knew what he would have preferred, what he would have done. A pair of blankets from the first shop offering such merchandise, and a bunk in the fields outside of town, out of reach of the smell and reminder of death. Or a vacant farmhouse whose occupants had left before disaster struck.

  She put a small hand in his, anxiously waiting.

  “Do you live here?” he asked. “Do you know the town?”

  “I've lived here all my life. I know it all.”

  “Find us a hotel,” he directed then, “a big one.”

  She hesitated only a moment and he could guess what she might be thinking. “Where are we now?” she asked him.

  They picked their way to the nearest intersection and he turned the light on the street sign.

  “Oh, yes,” she said then. “This way.”

  * * *

  The lobby seemed empty. He searched it carefully in the beam of the flashlight before advancing across it. The desk clerk was slumped on the floor behind his desk.

  “This bombing,” Gary said, “did it come at night?”

  “The bom — oh, yes. In the early evening. The radio said some planes had been shot down, and something about long-range rockets. It wasn't very clear.”

  He went behind the clerk's desk and scanned the key rack, finally taking several of them from their slots. “How did you escape? Where were you?”

  “Oh, I wasn't here. I was with my class in Havana. Do you know where that is?”

  “No.”

  “A small town south of here; my class was on an archeological field trip. There are Indian mounds at Havana.”

  “Still sticking to your story?”

  “I am nineteen!” she declared with anger.

  “I won't argue about it; I don't give a damn how old you are. Come on.” He walked to the stairs. “What happened to the rest of the class?”

  “I don't know. When we heard the news on the radio, I came home. Home was… home was…”

  “Bombed out?” He led her up the stairway.

  “No. It hadn't been touched. But inside, Mother was… dead. Her body had turned color, sort of purple.”

  “Purple?”

  “Bluish-purple. I can't describe it. It was ugly.”

  “I can't figure that one out. Some disease? It worked fast, damned fast. Say — when did this happen, this bombing? Wednesday night?”

  “I think so. Yes, Wednesday evening.”

  “And this is Friday.” He shook his head.

  They continued to climb the carpeted stairs. At the second floor landing he paused only long enough to send the light flashing down the corridor, to assure himself that it was empty, and started upward again, pulling the girl along. He believed the third or the fourth floor would be the safest, away from the street. The silent city might contain other prowlers besides themselves.

  “What have you been doing since Wednesday night?”

  “I don't know. Honestly I don't.” She shuddered. “I came home and found — It was unpleasant. I cried a lot, and I was sick. Every time I attempted to eat I was sick. I guess I've lived on canned juices, and soup. There was no electricity, no running water.”

  “Power station must be out,” he explained. “Either a bomb struck it or something went wrong and the machinery shut itself off. Automatic cutouts, things like that. Nobody was around to start it again. That explains the water, too. The pumping stations are run by electricity. I'm surprised the whole damned town isn't burning down.” He thought about her remarks on food. “Soup?” he asked.

  “The gas stove worked, after a fashion. The flame was very low.”

  “Pressure giving out. It'll be gone in a day or so.”

  “What will we do then?”

  “We won't be here,” he assured her. “We're getting out of this town tomorrow.”

  “There's no place to go.”

  When they reached the fourth floor he paused to examine the keys he carried in his hand, and then flicked the light along the door numbers. The keys directed them away from the stairway toward the rear of the building. The first room he unlocked and kicked open proved to be a narrow one, holding but a single bed; the following two were replicas of the first. On the next try a large room having a double bed stood revealed in the gleam, and adjoining that a similarly large room with twin beds. He pulled her inside, locked the hall door, unlocked the connecting door between the rooms and locked the remaining outside doorway of the other bedroom.

  “This is where we bunk,” he told her.

  She watched him, saying nothing.

  He waggled his thumb at the connecting door. “Which room do you want?”

  Irma shook her head, not answering.

  “Come on, kid, pick your room. I'm not robbing the cradle!” He put the flash down on the bureau top, still lit, and emptied his pockets of the stolen jewels. They made dim fires in the weak light. Belatedly he remembered to pull down the shades to prevent the light from betraying them. When he turned away from the windows she was still standing in the center of the room, watching him. “Which room?” he asked sharply.

  “I'm frightened.”

  “Not that frightened.”

  “I'm afraid to sleep in another room.”

  “To hell with that. I locked the doors.”

  “I will not sleep in a separate room,” Irma declared. Her voice climbed with an hysterical note. “This place is… is… dead!”

  Russell Gary studied her youthful face briefly in the light of the torch, wondering what he was to do with her. He'd like to leave her, walk off and pretend he'd never found her, be rid of her… but he couldn't just abandon a child. In sudden decision he snapped off the light. “Suit yourself. I'm taking the bed by the window.” And he sat down on it.

  He undressed, taking off everything but the twin dog tags hanging around his neck. It was the way he usually slept; he hadn't even considered adding pajamas to his wardrobe when he had helped himself in that clothing store during the afternoon. After long minutes spent in relaxing on the hotel sheets, he reached out to raise the shade and pry open the window a few inches.

  There was the quiet sound of the girl moving on the opposite bed. />
  * * *

  His mouth was dry with a consuming thirst and he got up in the darkness for water, only to remember there was none. Swearing, he climbed back into bed.

  Irma laughed at him with unconcealed satisfaction.

  “Now,” she said boastfully, “am I nineteen?”

  3

  HE AWOKE with the sun shining on his face, spilling through the open window he had raised the night before. The room was quiet and unmoving, a large and clean room in sharp contrast to that other squalid cell in which he had awakened the previous day. After a few moments the quiet and unmoving street below the window came to his attention, and he remembered where he was and what had happened to him. Nothing had happened to him — that was the surprising thing. He lived. He didn't move, didn't get up and rush to the window to see if the city had changed itself overnight, to see if the dead had returned to life and were moving about the streets in normal fashion. There would be no magical change, no overnight erasing of the nightmare that had killed a city. Yesterday and last night were too real, too much like those towns in Italy and France. This city was gone. His immediate concern was to find out how many others had died with it, how many others had fallen under enemy bombs.

  That, and get back to the army.

  Meanwhile, what would he do with the girl? Take her along and turn her over to the Red Cross — or walk out on her, leave her here in the city where she lived? He turned his inquiring eyes toward the other bed and found it empty.

  Gary sat up, startled. Had she left him?

  He stepped out of bed and padded across the rug in his bare feet, to pause before the bureau. The flashlight was still there but the stolen jewelry was gone. Turning, he quickly crossed the room to the outer door, tugged at the knob and found it locked. The key was not there. The girl had left him and locked the door from the outside, taking her loot with her. He stood at the door, thinking of her.