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 untouched 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 might be heard. Therefore, with the full strength of his left arm, he hurled a heavy can at the dogs 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, low-ceilinged 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 stonewalls pressed in upon him as he moved. He had been walking for several hours; sometimes he would run, because he knew his leg muscles must be kept strong, but he was walking now, following the thin yellow beam of his hooded flash. 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 which threaded their way under the skin of Los Angeles like the veins in a giants 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 twelve 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 continually swirled and billowed 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 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 never 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. Since he had been unable to make his daily runs, he had been reading more than usual. Short stories by Oates, Gordimer, Aiken, Irwin Shaw, Hemingway; poems by Frost, Lorca, Sandburg, Millay, Dylan Thomas. Strange, how unreal the 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, chitterings, reedy whisperings above his head. They were dragging something along the street, something they’d killed, no doubt. 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, doubled 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 themselves. In a cold surge of terror, Lewis Stillman felt himself tipping, falling towards 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 pent-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 had 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 K tunnel. He could still hear the 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 no
t 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 dare not risk himself above the drains by day When the rain ceased, he crouched beneath the street gratings to absorb as much as possible of the filtered sunlight. 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 it, 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 eyes, their animal ferocity, and he would realize that the idea was impossible. If one of their kind disappeared, suddenly and without trace, others would certainly become suspicious, begin to search—and it would all be over.
Lewis Stillman settled back into his pillow; he closed his eyes and tried not to listen to the distant screams, pipings, and reedy cries filtering down from the 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 glitter and swirled cloth. He touched their images with gentle fingers, stroking 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 lived at all, that they were simply painted, in microscopic detail, by sly artists 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. “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 single-handed. 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 killer fish? Can he win over them all? One man, alone? Of course he can’t. Nosir. Damn well right he can’t!”
Stillman moved unsteadily to a shelf in one corner of the small wooden room and took down a slim book.
“Here she is, Mr. H. Your greatest. The one you wrote cleanest and best—The Old Man and the Sea. You showed how one man could fight the whole damn ocean.” He paused, voice strained and rising. “Well, by God, show me, now, how to fight this ocean! My ocean is full of killer fish, and I’m one man and I’m alone in it. I’m ready to listen.”
The seated figure remained silent.
“Got you now, haven’t I, Papa? No answer to this one, eh? Courage isn’t enough. Man was not meant to live alone or fight alone—or drink alone. Even with courage, he can only do so much alone—and then it’s useless. Well, I say it’s useless. I say the hell with your book, and the hell with you!”
Lewis Stillman flung the book straight at the head of the motionless figure. The victim spilled back in the chair; his arms slipped off the table, hung swinging. They were lumpy and handless.
More and more, Lewis Stillman found his thoughts turning to the memory of his father and of long hikes through the moonlit Missouri countryside, of hunting trips and warm campfires, of the deep woods, rich and green in summer. He thought of his father’s hopes for his future, and the words of that tall, gray-haired figure often came back to him.
“You’ll be a fine doctor, Lewis. Study and work hard, and you’ll succeed. I know you will.”
He remembered the long winter evenings of study at his father’s great mahogany desk, poring over medical books and journals, taking notes, sifting and resifting facts. He remembered one set of books in particular—Erickson’s monumental three-volume text on surgery, richly bound and stamped in gold. He had always loved those books, above all others.
What had gone wrong along the way? Somehow, the dream had faded; the bright goal vanished and was lost. After a year of pre-med at the University of California, he had given up medicine; he had become discouraged and quit college to take a laborer’s job with a construction company How ironic that this move should have saved his life! He’d wanted to work with his hands, to sweat and labor with the muscles of his body. He’d wanted to earn enough to marry Joan and then, later perhaps, he would have returned to finish his courses. It seemed so far away now, his reason for quitting, for letting his father down.
Now, at this moment, an overwhelming desire gripped him, a desire to pour over Erickson’s pages once again, to recreate, even for a brief moment, the comfort and happiness of his childhood.
He’d once seen a duplicate set on the second floor of Pickwick’s bookstore in Hollywood, in their used book department, and now he knew he must go after it, bring the books back with him to the drains. It was a dangerous and foolish desire, but he knew he would obey it. Despite the risk of death, he would go after the books tonight. Tonight.
One corner of Lewis Stillman’s room was reserved for weapons. His prize, a Thompson submachine gun, had been procured from the Los Angeles police arsenal. Supplementing the Thompson were two automatic rifles, a Lüger, a Colt .45, and a .22 calibre Hornet pistol equipped with a silencer. He always kept the smallest gun in a spring-clip holster beneath his armpit, but it was not his habit to carry any of the larger weapons with him into the city. On this night, however, things were different.
The drains ended two miles short of Hollywood—which meant he would be forced to cover a long and particularly hazardous stretch of ground in order to reach the bookstore. He therefore decided to take along the .30 calibre Savage rifle in addition to the small hand weapon.
You’re a fool, Lewis, he told himself as he slid the oiled Savage from its leather case, risking your life for a set of books. Are they that important? Yes, a part of him replied, they are that important. You want these books, then go after what you want. If fear
keeps you from seeking that which you truly want, if fear holds you like a rat in the dark, then you are worse than a coward. You are a traitor, betraying yourself and the civilization you represent. If a man wants a thing and the thing is good, he must go after it, no matter what the cost, or relinquish the right to be called a man. It is better to die with courage than to live with cowardice.
Ah, Papa Hemingway, breathed Stillman, smiling at his own thoughts. I see that you are back with me. I see that your words have rubbed off after all. Well, then, all right—let us go after our fish, let us seek him out. Perhaps the ocean will be calm.
Slinging the heavy rifle over one shoulder, Lewis Stillman set off down the tunnels.
Running in the chill night wind. Grass, now pavement, now grass beneath his feet. Ducking into shadows, moving stealthily past shops and theatres, rushing under the cold, high moon. Santa Monica Boulevard, then Highland, then Hollywood Boulevard, and finally—after an eternity of heartbeats—Pickwick’s.
Lewis Stillman, his rifle over one shoulder, the small automatic gleaming in his hand, edged silently into the store.
A paper battleground met his eyes.
In filtered moonlight, a white blanket of broken-backed volumes spilled across the entire lower floor. Stillman shuddered; he could envision them, shrieking, scrabbling at the shelves, throwing books wildly across the room at one another. Screaming, ripping, destroying.
What of the other floors? What of the medical section?
He crossed to the stairs, spilled pages crackling like a fall of dry autumn leaves under his step, and sprinted up to the second floor, stumbling, terribly afraid of what he might find. Reaching the top, heart thudding, he squinted into the dimness.
The books were undisturbed. Apparently they had tired of their game before reaching these.
Things Beyond Midnight Page 14
