Z for Zachariah

by Роберт C. О Брайен

  May 28th

  I am back in the house, in my own room.

  The man is in the tent. He is asleep, most of the time at least, and so sick he cannot get up. He scarcely knows I am here.

  Yesterday afternoon at four o’clock, as I had decided, I took my gun and went down the hill to the house. I came up behind it and walked, slowly and quietly, listening, round to the front. If I had heard any activity I was going to duck back and try to get away again without being seen. When I reached the front garden the dog came rushing up to meet me—I was afraid he was going to bark but he did not, he just sniffed my knee, wagged his tail and watched. I crept to the tent and looked in. It has a flap to close it, but that was hanging loose, partly open. Still it was dark inside. I could see only his legs at first. I crept closer, put my head inside, and my eyes adjusted to the dark. He lay on a sleeping bag, partly covered, his eyes closed, his head in a mess where he had been sick. He was breathing, quite fast and shallow. Beside him lay a water bottle, a green plastic thing, knocked over and spilled; beside that lay a bottle of pills, large white ones, with the top off, also knocked over and partly spilled out.

  The tent roof was only about four feet high. I knelt down and went in, just a little, so that I could reach his hand where it lay on top of the bag. The smell was terrible. I touched his hand: it was dry and hot with fever. Just as I touched it Faro, his nose in the entrance, whined, and at the combination of the noise and the touch he opened his eyes.

  “Edward,” he said. “Edward?”

  He was not looking at me, or if he was, he was not seeing me; but I think he was looking at my gun, which I was still holding, because the next thing he said was:

  “Bullets. It won’t stop…” He did not finish the sentence, but sighed and closed his eyes again. He was dreaming; he was delirious, and his voice sounded thick, as if his throat and mouth were swollen.

  “You’re sick,” I said. “You have a fever.”

  He moaned, and spoke without opening his eyes again.

  “Water. Please give me water.”

  I could see what had happened: before he collapsed he had opened a bottle of water and some pills. In his confusion he had knocked them over. The bottle was empty and he was too weak to get more.

  “All right,” I said, “I’ll get you some water. It will take a few minutes.”

  I got a pail from the kitchen, and ran to the stream where it flowed into the pond, where the water is clearest. When I got back I was hot and out of breath; I had filled it nearly full and it was heavy. I got a cup from the house and dipped it half full.

  He was asleep again, so I touched his shoulder.

  “Here,” I said, “drink this.”

  He tried to rise but could not, not even on his elbow, and when he tried to take the cup he dropped it. I half filled it again from the pail; this time I held it, and lifted his head a little with my other hand. He gulped it down; he was really thirsty.

  “More,” he said.

  “Not now,” I said. “It will make you sick again.” I did not know much about medicine, but I knew that much. He fell back and went to sleep again instantly.

  The truth is, I did not know enough to take care of him. I had helped my mother sometimes taking care of David or Joseph when they got sick (grippe, chicken-pox, things like that), but never anyone this sick. Still, there was no one else, so I had to try.

  I got a rag from the house and using some of the water I cleaned as well as I could around his head; I got him a fresh pillow and a clean blanket. I put the pills—those that were still clean—back in the bottle, capped it, and looked at the label: Cysteamine, whatever that is. The only medicine I had in the house (and the store) was aspirin and some cold tablets. But how could I know what medicine to give him anyway?

  I thought that since drinking the water had not made him sick again perhaps he should eat something. But what? I decided on soup—chicken soup, since that is what my mother usually gave us when we were sick. I had left some tinned food in the house (it would have looked odd not to) when I moved to the cave, but there was no soup, so I had to walk to the store. I got some other stuff while I was there; I had already decided to move back to the house, but to leave the cave stocked for the time being, just in case. So I had quite a load to carry, and by the time I got back and got a fire going it was nearly dark.

  When I took the soup in to him I found, to my surprise, that he seemed somewhat improved. He was awake, and when I entered he stared, quite bewildered, and with some effort managed to raise himself on one elbow. Then he spoke to me consciously for the first time. His voice was still very weak.

  “I don’t know where I am,” he said. “Who are you?”

  “You’re in the valley,” I said. “You’ve been sick.”

  I put the soup down beside him. I had thought I would have to feed it to him.

  “The valley,” he said. “I remember now. All the green trees. But there was no one there.” He lay back on the pillow again.

  “I was here,” I said. “I stayed in the woods.” (I thought it better not to mention the cave.) “Then I saw you were sick, and I thought you needed help.”

  “Sick,” he said. “Yes, very sick.”

  “I made you some soup,” I said. “Try to eat it.”

  He did try, but his hand was so weak he spilled it from the spoon, so in the end I did feed it to him. He ate seven spoonfuls, and then said, “No more. Too sick.” He fell asleep again. However, I think even that bit of soup did him some good; he seemed to sleep more naturally, and was not breathing so fast. I had brought a thermometer from the house to take his temperature, but I decided it could wait until morning. I touched his forehead. It was hot all right. From close up, in the dimness of the tent, he looked extremely frail.

  I went back up to the cave, got my alarm clock, a lamp, this note book and some other things, and came back to the house. I set the alarm for midnight; when it went off I reset it for two o’clock, then for four o’clock. Each time it rang I went out with a torch and looked into the tent to see how he was. Once he woke and asked again for water; I gave him a cupful. The rest of the time he slept steadily.

  This morning I crumbled some of the remaining corn bread in some milk and took it to him for breakfast. (I had to use powdered milk because the cows are still out. I will have to catch them now and bring them back in. Also the chickens.)

  This time he seemed very much better. His eyes had lost the dazed look they had had earlier. He thanked me for the bread and milk and was able to spoon it out himself. After he finished eating it he actually sat up for a moment; then he lay back again and said:

  “I need to find out what made me sick.”

  “I think it is because you swam in Burden Creek,” I said.

  “Burden Creek?”

  “The stream across the road.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I was watching—from a distance away.”

  “You know about the water.”

  “Nothing lives in it. I don’t know why.”

  “I discovered that. But not until the day after I took a bath in it. So stupid to be careless, after all this time. I had not been in water for a year. I was too eager. Still I should have tested. But that other water, in the pond, was all right. So I thought…” He stopped and lay quietly for a time. Then he said:

  “I might as well know. Could you—"

  “Could I what?”

  “Do you know what a Geiger counter is?”

  “Those glass tubes you have.”

  “Yes. Can you read one?”

  “No. That is, I never have.”

  I got the smaller of the tubes out of his wagon, and he showed me a gauge on one end of it, a small needle that wavered a bit when you moved it, like a compass. The dial was numbered from zero to two hundred. As he asked me, I took it across the road to Burden Creek. In the tent and crossing the road, the needle stayed at about five. But when I got near the water it began to go up. Standing back
as far as I could, I held it a foot above the stream. The needle shot over—up to about one hundred and eighty, almost as high as it could go. And he had been in the water. No wonder he got sick. I did not stay there, but got back across the road.

  When I told him what the needle showed he groaned and covered his eyes with his hand.

  “A hundred and eighty,” he said. “And I was in the water at least ten minutes. My God. I must have got three hundred r’s. Maybe more.”

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  “It means I have radiation poisoning. Very bad.”

  “But you’re getting better.”

  “It comes in stages.”

  He knew a great deal about radiation sickness; apparently he had studied it even before the war. The first part, being sick, lasts only a day or so, then goes away. Then the radiation caused what he called intracellular ionization, and that was the real damage. It means that some of the molecules in your cells are destroyed, so that the cells no longer work normally and cannot grow and divide. It meant that in a short time—a day or two, maybe longer—he was going to get much sicker. He would get a very high fever, and since his blood cells were damaged and could not reproduce, he would also get anaemic. Worst of all he would have no resistance to germs and infection; he would be very susceptible to pneumonia or even the mildest impurities in his food and water.

  “How bad will it get?” I asked. What I meant, but did not want to say, was, are you likely to die? He understood.

  “Do you know what an “r” means? It’s a roentgen, a way of measuring radiation. If I absorbed three hundred r’s in that stream I may live through it. If I got four or five hundred, well, then it’s hopeless.”

  He said all this in a very matter-of-fact way; he was calm about it. I think I would have been hysterical. However, I tried to stay calm, too, and be practical.

  So I said, “While you are feeling better, you should tell me all you can about what I should do. Do you have medicine to take? What should you eat?”

  He looked at the bottle of pills, still on the floor where I had put it. “Those won’t help, not now. No, there’s no medicine. In a hospital they give transfusions and intravenous nutrients.”

  I can’t do that, of course, so what it amounts to is that there won’t be much I can do, not until I see how the sickness develops. The only thing he seems sure of at this point is that he will have a very high fever and anaemia. It is likely, but not certain, that he will develop some kind of infection like pneumonia or dysentery. One thing I can do will be to try to prevent that. I can boil and sterilize everything he eats and eats from—just like a baby. When I get the cows and chickens back in I can give him fresh milk and eggs to eat; they are nourishing and easy to digest.

  And if he is strong enough to walk a little tomorrow I will try to help him into the house. He can sleep in Joseph and David’s room, on a bed. It will be dryer and warmer in the house and easier for me to take care of him.

  I’ve just realized that after all this I still do not even know his name.

  Chapter Six

  May 29th

  His name is John R. Loomis; he is a chemist from Ithaca, New York, where Cornell University is, or used to be.

  He was much better this morning—so much that I began to doubt whether he was really going to get sick again at all. But he said that is normal for radiation poisoning. And it turns out he is a real expert on the subject. In fact, that is, in a way, how he happens to be alive at all, and how he was able to make his way here.

  I woke up early, feeling very cheerful, thinking that there was someone to talk to even if he was sick. I brought some more water, heated it over the fire and took a bath, something I haven’t been able to do for a while. (I do it by carrying the warm water into the tub in the bathroom. You can wash quite well with just two bucketfuls once you get used to it.) Then I put on my good slacks. After all, he is “company” in a way, and I thought I should dress up a bit. I felt a little embarrassed at first when I looked in the mirror; but it was just because I am so used to the men’s blue jeans.

  Last night before I went to bed (in my own room again) I went out to the chicken yard, opened the gate, and scattered some chicken corn on the ground. So this morning, after I was dressed, I went out and looked. Sure enough, they had come back in, and there were three fresh eggs in the henhouse. I boiled them, toasted the last of the cornbread, made some coffee, and opened a tin of tomato juice. It made a respectable looking breakfast. I put it on a tray—also a jar of raspberry jam—and carried it out to the tent. The sun had just come over the ridge on the east, which meant it was about eight-thirty. Down the valley a couple of crows were calling. I felt happy and excited.

  And to my surprise he was sitting up in the doorway of the tent.

  “You’re better,” I said.

  “For the moment,” he said. “At least I think I can eat something.”

  I put the tray down in front of him and he stared at it.

  “Amazing,” he said. He just whispered it.

  “What?”

  “This. Fresh eggs. Toast. Coffee. This valley. You, all by yourself. You are all by yourself?”

  It was sort of a key question and he looked a little suspicious as he asked it, as if I, or someone, might be playing a trick on him. Still, there wasn’t any use pretending anything else.

  “Yes.”

  “And you managed to stay alive, and raise chickens and eggs and cows?”

  “It hasn’t been so hard.”

  “And the valley. How did it escape?”

  “I don’t really understand that. Except that people always used to say the valley had its own weather.”

  “A meteorological enclave. Some kind of an inversion. I suppose that’s a theoretical possibility. But the odds—"

  I said: “You’d better eat. It will all get cold.”

  If he was going to be too sick to eat later, he had better eat now, and build up his strength. As for the valley, I had wondered enough about it, especially in the first few months, when I was still expecting the deadness to creep in from outside. But it did not, and there was not much sense calling it a theoretical possibility when we were in it. At that point I did not know yet that he was a chemist, a scientist. And scientists won’t just accept things—they always have to try to figure them out.

  He ate his breakfast. Then, still sitting up, he told me his name. And, of course, I told him mine.

  “Ann Burden,” he said. “But weren’t there other people living in the valley?”

  “My family,” I said. “And the people who owned the store, Mr and Mrs Klein.”

  And I told him about how they drove away and never came back. Also about the Amish, and what my father had seen in Ogdentown.

  “I suppose they kept going too long,” he said. “It’s hard not to, especially at first. I know. You keep hoping. And of course, so soon after the war there was still the nerve gas.”

  “Nerve gas?”

  “That’s what killed most of the people. In a way it’s better. They just went to sleep and never woke up.”

  It had taken him ten weeks to get from Ithaca to the valley, and all that way, all that time, he had seen no living thing—no people, no animals, no birds, no trees, not even insects—only grey wasteland, empty highways and dead cities and towns. He had been ready to give up and turn back when he finally came over the ridge and saw, in the late evening, the haze of blue-green. At first he thought it was a lake, and, like all the other lakes he had come upon, dead. But the next morning by better light he saw that this green was different, a colour he had almost forgotten. As I had suspected, he still did not believe it, but came on to investigate anyway. Not until he came over Burden Hill did he know that he had finally found life. I had seen that for myself; that was when I first saw him.

  He finished eating his breakfast; he ate it all and drank the coffee. But he was still weak, and started back into the tent to lie down on his sleeping bag.

  “W
hy do you sleep in the tent?” I said. “If you are going to be sick again, the house would be better.”

  He said: “The tent is radiation-proof.”

  “But there is no radiation in the valley,” I said. “You have learned that.”

  “I have,” he said. “But at first I didn’t trust it.”

  “But you know now.”

  “I do,” he said. “But now you have come back, and the house is yours.”

  “If you are sick, and I am to take care of you, I can do it better in the house.”

  He did not argue any longer, but got up, very shaky on his legs, and walked a few steps towards the house. He stopped. “I’m quite dizzy,” he said. “I’ll have to rest.”

  “You can lean on me,” I said.

  He put his hand on my shoulder, leaning quite heavily, and after a few minutes we went on. It took about ten minutes of this to get him to the house, up the porch steps, and into Joseph and David’s room, which fortunately is on the ground floor next to the living room. He lay on David’s bed and went to sleep. I got him a blanket.

  He slept until about noon, and during that time I went down to the far field, past the pond, to get the two cows and the calf and put them back into the pasture. They had grown used to their new freedom, however, and did not want to go; they would not come when I called, so in the end I had to cut a stick and drive them in. Of course the calf kept running off in every direction but the right one, but I got the cows in and shut the gate. A few minutes later the calf was bawling to get in. I got the fresh cow (its mother) into the barn and milked her—she is still giving almost a gallon at each milking. Just the same, she is bound to go dry within a year, and then we will have a milkless, creamless, butterless period for a while, until the bull calf grows up. I’m not even sure how long that will take.

  When I came back to the house Mr Loomis was just waking, but he stayed in bed. I made lunch, and then he told me some more of his story.