The Pulp Fiction Megapack

by Robert Leslie Bellem

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  “I’m thinkin’,” Tom groaned. “Hell! Imagine a story like this breakin’, and here I can’t print it or even put it on the wire. Just my luck! I’d like to file ten thousand words. The whole damn world is waitin’ an’ I’m burnin’ to tell ’em an’ I can’t even get a bulletin out.”

  “Come with me, Tom,” I suggested. “We’ll try to get out of the city and we’ll find a wire, somewhere.”

  “Naw!” He shook his head emphatically. “Got to stay here. Maybe some of the staff’ll show up. If they do, I’ll set ’em to work. I got one fellow in there now, writin’ the lead.” He jerked his thumb toward the interior of the building. “I’ll try to send the first story out by messenger, if I can find a boy. With a story like this breakin’,” he grumbled, “I ought to have a full staff.”

  “I’ll take your story with me, if you like. I’m going to get out of the city.”

  Tom’s face lighted.

  “Honest? Then wait a minute.” He ran inside, reappearing shortly with some ragged sheets of copy paper. “Here’s a lead an’ about two thousand. Mark it ‘follow’ and file it as soon as you can.”

  I stuffed the manuscript into my pocket. Tom slapped my back in hearty good nature.

  “Think of it, Alex! What a head you could put on a story like this. A two-line streamer of hundred-forty-six-point type:

  MILLIONS DIE IN MANHATTAN!

  You wouldn’t ask for anything nicer than settin’ up a page like that.”

  “Millions dead? Your praiseworthy desire for alliteration is getting the best of you, Tom.”

  “Sure. There must be.” Tom indignantly defended his own estimate of the casualties. “Why, everybody’s dead that lived below Bleecker Street and the last shock took all those that were left, up to Fourteenth.”

  “You don’t mean—”

  “Didn’t you know? The lower end of the island’s sunk. It went right down into the drink at the second shock. At the time of the third shock, it crumbled off clear up to Fourteenth. Think what that means. World’s greatest financial district and the most congested tenements in the world, all at the bottom of the harbor. I want to do parallel stories; one dealing with the human loss and one about the financial district. Biggest gold reserve in history is hundreds of feet under water. Huh! They’ll find a new kind of fish in the stock exchange.” His voice rose to a thin, treble whine. “I ask you! Is it right? I can’t send a word of it.”

  I could scarcely believe the news. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I am. I’ve talked with people who saw it. The fellow who’s writing this went to look for himself. He nearly got caught. By the way, where were you when it happened?”

  I told him how I had been trapped in the subway.

  “Then you better add a few hundred words of description to the story,” Tom directed. “Don’t forget. And send it off as soon as you can. Every press on the map is waitin’ for it. Good-by, Alex.”

  Before I was out of earshot he called after me. “Don’t forget to put on our copyright line.” I waved my arm to reassure him.

  Tom McKay cared little what the news might be. It was his job to collect and distribute it, impersonally as an archangel. A million dead was, to him, a mere matter of type, a hundred-and-forty-six-point streamer, in the same way as an automobile accident meant a short paragraph on an inside page.

  With comparatively little more trouble, I reached the luxurious apartment house on West Forty-fifth Street where Mary Hull and her mother lived. I was relieved to see that, relatively speaking, it was undamaged. I slipped in the wrecked doorway and, after lighting several matches, found the staircase. As I climbed to the sixth floor, I wondered if all my efforts had not been futile. Almost everyone had sought safety in the open air. Hours had passed since the shocks.

  But Mary Hull was calm, clearheaded and intensely practical. Moreover, she was responsible for the safety of her invalid mother. Except as a last resort, I was sure she would not have exposed the older woman to the excitement and the dangers of the street.

  I reached the door of their suite and rapped. There was no sound. My heart sank. After the spectacles I had witnessed upon the streets, I realized how little chance there was that I would ever see them again. I then attempted to force the door, thinking I would leave a note for them, in case they returned.

  “Who’s there?” came in a man’s voice which I recognized as Bob Wiston’s. “Alex—Alex Tennay.”

  “I knew he’d come. I knew he’d come!” Mary’s tone expressed infinite relief.

  The door swung open. The room behind it was as dark as the hall where I was standing. Wiston seized my arm and drew me inside, while Mary quickly closed the door.

  “I’ll light a candle. I brought one,” I told them. “We don’t dare,” Mary protested. “It isn’t safe.

  There are men about the building who are looting. We’ve heard terrible things and once they tried to come in here.”

  I struck a match and lighted the candle stub. Then I flipped back my coat and showed them the butt of my pistol. The lighted candle put everyone more at their ease. Wiston lighted a cigar and the atmosphere seemed less tense.

  “When did you come?” I asked Wiston. “Immediately after the second shock. I was at the club and I ran here, intending to get my car and drive them to a place of safety. But as soon as I saw the streets, I realized how little driving we would do.”

  “You’ve been sitting here in the dark ever since?”

  “We wouldn’t let him go out for a candle,” Mrs. Hull explained. “Those men are about.”

  There was no use of distressing the women by telling them that the lower end of Manhattan was under water and that another shock might submerge the very district where we were. I insisted, and Wiston agreed with me, that it would be wise for us to walk north, until we reached the high rock ridge near Riverside Drive, the highest part of the island. Mrs. Hull said she felt strong enough to attempt the walk and that she was sure she would feel happier in the open air.

  Although nothing was said about it, I sensed that both Mrs. Hull and Wiston had guessed Mary’s and my understanding. Wiston, poor fellow, shook hands with quite unnecessary fervor and assured me I was “damned lucky,” which I did not think applied solely to my escape from the perils of the flooded subway.

  I told Mary and her mother to put on warm clothing and to collect their valuables. While they went in the bedroom to dress, taking the candle stub with them, I told Wiston in low tones what had happened to lower New York.

  “It seems to me,” I concluded, “that our best plan is to get up to the higher part, in case there is another shock. Even if we cannot cross the Harlem River at One Hundred and Sixtieth Street, relief will eventually come from that direction.”

  He assented.

  “Anything’s better than waiting here like this. We would have gone before, but Mary insisted that you might come.” He hesitated, and then added, “It would have been pretty tragic if you hadn’t.”

  Just then we heard a voice in the hall, outside the door. Wiston whispered the one word: “Looters.”

  “Bring that ax,” a man called. “Here’s that door we couldn’t open.”

  “Did Mary lock it when she let you in?” queried Wiston, under his breath.

  Evidently she had not, for as I rose, drawing my pistol and slipping off the safety catch, the first man spoke again.

  “This door ain’t locked now.”

  The door opened, admitting two vague figures, both of them carrying electric torches which they turned full on me.

  “Put up them dukes, you,” growled the first. “We’re takin’ up a collection for them that’s rendered homeless by the quake.”

  I fired before he finished his sentence. Although I am no crack shot, I was only ten feet away and one cannot miss at that distance. The heavy pistol barked like a cannon in the small room. I heard Mrs. Hull scream.

  The man pitched forward, to
ward me, falling on his face. His electric torch, still burning, rolled across the floor, and under the table. The second man snapped off his light and the room was again plunged in darkness. I bent over to secure the flashlight.

  That movement saved my life. The second man fired and the bullet crashed into the wall near the spot where my head had been. I lost my balance and fell heavily upon the body of the man I had shot.

  Instantly the man in the doorway, believing he had killed me, turned his torch on Wiston.

  “Don’t you get fresh,” he warned Bob, covering him with his pistol.

  He made a perfect target for me, as he stood there, his light in his left hand. I rolled half-over, pointed my pistol at him, and pulled the trigger. I was so close that the powder flame burned his coat and vest. He stumbled, coughed and toppled over.

  “Alex! Alex!” Mary called from the bedroom.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No.”

  Then I saw the gleam of a moving bull’s-eye of light in the corridor. Evidently other members of the gang were outside. I rolled over the bodies to the door and fired at the source of the light. Two shots replied. I fired again and heard the sound of men running down the stairs.

  “It’s all right, Mary,” I shouted to reassure her. Then I secured the torches that had dropped from the intruders’ hands.

  Bob armed himself with one of the looters’ pistols, so that we would both be ready in case the gang returned. We dragged the bodies into the corridor, covering them with the blood-soaked rug from the living room, so that Mary and her mother would be spared the sight.

  I scouted ahead for looters, while the others followed me quickly down the stairs.

  It had been starlit night when I entered the building and when we emerged day was near. The stars were dimmed by a yellow flood in the east. A half twilight veiled the street. About ruined buildings hung a fog of plaster dust. Somewhere north and east, a great column of smoke was rising upward.

  But we found the street filled with water. I did not understand where it had come from but Bob Wiston was shrewder.

  “I wonder if there will be another?” he whispered.

  “Another what?”

  “Another tidal wave.”

  For the first time that night I really despaired.

  CHAPTER III

  Daylight came slowly, as if the sun were reluctant to disclose the havoc and ruin which the night had partially obscured. As we reached the higher ground, where the flood of the tidal wave had not inundated the streets, the district seemed less like a city of the dead. There are no words in the language to describe the homeless, bewildered persons we met.

  Our plans were vague enough. We knew that we hoped to reach the upper end of the island. There we thought we might find some way of crossing the Harlem River and reaching the mainland. But the people on the streets, moving about as they were in groups that varied in size from a dozen to a thousand persons, seemed to have no plan and, also, to have lost all sense of direction. By irregular routes they walked round and round the blocks where their homes had been.

  As the light increased, we observed more details, noted some of the vagaries of the quake’s action. Some blocks of stores and apartments were absolutely leveled. Nearby would be other sections, apparently built of the same material, which seemed to have escaped serious damage.

  Eventually we were forced toward Broadway.

  There, in spite of the holes in the pavement, we were able to make more rapid progress, for we were less hindered by the crowds of fugitives.

  We passed hundreds of abandoned perambulators and go-carts. Soon after the first shock parents had attempted to wheel their children and then, seized by a sudden terror, they had picked them up and carried them in their arms.

  Near Fiftieth Street we found four men hammering with iron sledges upon a safe which they had dragged from the wrecked box office of a motion-picture theater. I held my pistol ready for service, but they paid no attention to us as we passed them.

  * * * *

  I was impressed by the fact that almost every man we met needed a shave. I do not know why I should have observed it, but it stands out as one of the curious things I noticed. And I also noted that many women had clung to their vanity cases. Girls who were wearing only nightgowns, bathrobes and slippers—there were many such—seemed to have carried paint and powder in their hands as their only baggage.

  Near Columbus Circle we noticed a sheet stretched tent-fashion over the sidewalk, between two heaps of stone that had fallen from a building front. As we came close to it, we saw a young woman resting under this frail canopy. She was nursing a small baby and, at the same time, perfectly oblivious to our presence, was lining her eyebrows and lips with black and red pencils that she took from her wrist bag.

  On the crest of the hill, near Sixtieth Street, we halted and looked back.

  Strangely enough, the skyline of Manhattan had suffered little change, that we could see. Most of the big buildings stood intact, although some of the curtain walls and most of the ornamentation and fresco work had been shaken down. Generally speaking, the steel-frame buildings in which the weight of the side walls, floors and roof is carried by steel posts, had suffered little harm. Older and lower buildings belonging to the type known as “wall-bearing construction” because the walls carry the weight of floors and roof, had almost universally collapsed.

  Whenever the condition of the street permitted it, our little party walked four abreast. Bob Wiston and I walked on either side of Mrs. Hull, in order to help her as much as possible. Mary walked on my left. Through it all, she and her mother were perfectly composed. Mary, clear-eyed, her light hair scarcely disordered, her smile ready any time that I glanced at her, was wearing a tweed suit and square-toed walking shoes. In that costume she was chic enough to be bound for some pleasure excursion, instead of being in flight from a doomed city.

  Mrs. Hull was marvelous. Although she had been a semi-invalid for years, and had been sheltered from every exertion, every anxiety, every care, she rose magnificently to the crisis. Not once did she complain.

  Bob Wiston thought of breakfast. He turned us down a side street and made for a doorway. Over it was a delicatessen sign. Instantly I realized that I was ravenously hungry. We found the doorway half-blocked with loose brick that had tumbled down from the wall above. Bob entered, with some difficulty, and passed out what provisions he could find to me. Others had been there before, it seemed.

  The breakfast consisted of a jar of pickled lamb’s tongue, a tin of tea biscuits, a cake of pimento cheese and several bottles of mineral water.

  Mrs. Hull laughed at the assortment of food.

  “A perfect breakfast. Exactly what I would order for myself.”

  The mineral water, with a dash of whisky from Bob’s flask, was a godsend. We had all of us been more conscious of thirst than of hunger and I was saving my pint of drinking water for an emergency later in the day. After we had eaten, we gave the food and water that remained to a foreign woman and her twin sons who had watched us with wolfish eyes.

  To escape being involved in the mob near Central Park, we walked west. On a street corner, a uniformed policeman stopped us. His face was badly cut and there was a mass of congealed blood upon his tunic. In one hand he held his nightstick. In the other he carried an empty glass jug. At first, as he approached us, I thought he was insane.

  “Know where there’s any milk?” he demanded. “No.”

  “Or water?”

  I shook my head.

  “I got to get milk an’ water,” he explained. “I got about thirty kids in there.” He pointed to the ruined front of a store that had been an automobile salesroom. “I got to feed ’em somehow an’ they’re cryin’ thirsty now.”

  Mary solved the problem.

  “Did you try the soda fountain in the drugstore?”

  Across the street, behind a hole in the pavement that marked the route of the subway, was the caved-in entrance to a neighborhood pharmac
y. The policeman stared at it and then grinned.

  “We might find somethin’ there at that, miss.”

  “Let mother rest for a few minutes,” Mary told us. “We’ll try to find some food.”

  Mrs. Hull sat down upon the curb. The policeman and Bob dragged a plank from a wrecked scaffolding and used it to bridge the hole in the pavement. I crossed, making my entrance into the store through the shop window. The others followed.

  With a cry of delight, Mary unearthed several quarts of milk, a freezer of chocolate ice cream, a case of bottled water and soft drinks, a gallon of drinking water and added to this supply of rations the store’s stock of malted milk and chocolate. The policeman beamed as he surveyed the food.

  “Damn!” he remarked, with infinite satisfaction. “They’ll think I’m goin’ to throw a party for ’em.” He stepped to the window and bellowed: “Tim! C’m here, Tim.”

  In answer to the hail, a city fireman appeared, taking the provisions as the policeman passed them out and carrying them across the street to the “nursery.”

  “Tim’s my nurse girl,” the policeman confided to us. “I was lucky to find him. Them kids has to have a lot of things done for ’em an’ Tim’s a married man. I ain’t,” he added apologetically, blushing deeply out of respect to Mary. He confessed his bachelorhood as if he thought he had been remiss in his duty.

  Meanwhile Mary had rummaged through the stock shaken from the shelves behind the prescription desk and located a first-aid pack. In spite of his protests, “Don’t bother with me, miss,” she made the man sit down while she washed and dressed his wound. She must have tortured him when he applied the iodine, for the flesh had been literally stripped from his cheekbone. He sat there through it all, making no complaint.

  “If I ever catch me the bozo who gimme this,” he promised, when she had finished, “that lad’ll think he’s met up with another quake. It was right after them first two shocks. I seen him throw an old feller an’ a woman out of their auto. He pitched ’em out on the street an’ was goin’ to ride off by himself. I grabs him, but he up an’ clocks me with a monkey wrench an’ got away.”