Isaac Asimov - Nightfall (novel)

“No,” Sheerin said. “You can’t go poking around those people. They’re all still stunned, but if you provoke them there’s no telling what they’ll do. The safest thing is to get out of here. I’m going to try to make it to the Sanctuary. If you’re smart, you’ll come with me.”

“But Faro—”

“Very well,” Sheerin said, with a sigh. “Let’s look for Faro. Or Beenay, or Athor, or Theremon, any of the others.”

But it was hopeless. For perhaps ten minutes they picked through the heaps of dead and unconscious and semi-conscious people in the hallway; but none of them were university people. Their faces were appalling, horribly distorted by fear and madness. Some stirred when they were disturbed, and began to froth and mutter in a horrifying way. One snatched at Sheerin’s hatchet, and Sheerin had to use the butt end to push him away. It was impossible to ascend the stairs to the upper levels of the building; the staircase was blocked by bodies, and there was broken plaster everywhere. Pools of muddy water had collected on the floor. The harsh, piercing smell of smoke was intolerable.

“You’re right,” Yimot said finally. “We’d better go.”

Sheerin led the way, stepping out into the sunlight. After the hours that had just passed, golden Onos was the most welcome sight in the universe, though the psychologist found his eyes unaccustomed to so much bright light after the long hours of Darkness. It hit him with almost tangible force. For a few moments after he emerged he stood blinking, waiting for his eyes to readapt. After a time he was able to see, and gasped at what he saw.

“How awful,” Yimot murmured.

More bodies. Madmen wandering in circles, singing to themselves. Burned-out vehicles by the side of the road. The shrubbery and trees hacked up as though by blind monstrous forces. And, off in the distance, a ghastly pall of brown smoke rising above the spires of Saro City.

Chaos, chaos, chaos.

“So this is what the end of the world looks like,” Sheerin said quietly. “And here we are, you and I. Survivors.” He laughed bitterly. “What a pair we are. I’m carrying a hundred pounds too many around my middle and you’ve got a hundred pounds too few. But we’re still here. I wonder if Theremon made it out of there alive. If anyone did, he would have. But I wouldn’t have bet very much on you or me.—The Sanctuary’s midway between Saro City and the Observatory. We ought to be able to walk it in half an hour or so, if we don’t get into any trouble. Here, take this.”

He scooped up a thick gray billy-club that was lying beside one of the fallen rioters and tossed it to Yimot, who caught it clumsily and stared at it as though he had no idea what it might be.

“What will I do with it?” he asked finally.

Sheerin said, “Pretend that you’ll use it to bash in the skull of anybody that bothers us. Just as I’m pretending that I’d use this hatchet if I needed to defend myself. And if necessary I will. It’s a new world out here, Yimot. Come on. And keep your wits about you as we go.”

The Darkness was still upon the world, the Stars still were flooding Kalgash with their diabolical rivers of light, when Siferra 89 came stumbling out of the gutted Observatory building. But the faint pink glow of dawn was showing on the eastern horizon, the first hopeful sign that the suns might be returning to the heavens.

She stood on the Observatory lawn, legs far apart, head thrown back, pulling breath deep down into her lungs.

Her mind was numb. She had no idea how many hours had passed since the sky had turned dark and the Stars had erupted into view like the blast of a million trumpets. All the night long she had wandered the corridors of the Observatory in a daze, unable to find her way out, struggling with the madmen who swarmed about her on all sides. That she had gone mad too was not something she stopped to think about. The only thing on her mind was survival: beating back the hands that clutched at her; parrying the swinging clubs with blows of the club that she herself had snatched up from a fallen man; avoiding the screaming, surging stampedes of maniacs who rumbled arm in arm in groups of six or eight through the hallways, trampling everyone in their way.

It seemed to her that there were a million townsfolk loose in the Observatory. Wherever she turned she saw distended faces, bulging eyes, gaping mouths, lolling tongues, fingers crooked into monstrous claws.

They were smashing everything. She had no idea where Beenay was, or Theremon. She vaguely remembered seeing Athor in the midst of ten or twenty bellowing hoodlums, his thick mane of white hair rising above them—and then seeing him go down, swept under and out of sight.

Beyond that Siferra remembered nothing very clearly. For the whole duration of the eclipse she had run back and forth, up one hallway and down the other like a rat caught in a maze. She had never really been familiar with the layout of the Observatory, but getting out of the building should not have been that difficult for her—if she had been sane. Now, though, with the Stars blazing relentlessly at her out of every window, it was as if an icepick had been driven through her brain. She could not think. She could not think. She could not think. All she could do was run this way and that, shoving leering gibbering fools aside, shouldering her way through clotted gangs of ragged strangers, searching desperately and ineffectually and futilely for one of the main exits. And so it went, for hour after hour, as though she were caught in a dream that would not end.

Now, at last, she was outside. She didn’t know how she had gotten there. Suddenly there had been a door in front of her, at the end of a corridor that she was sure she had traversed a thousand times before. She pushed and it yielded and a cool blast of fresh air struck her, and she staggered through.

The city was burning. She saw the flames far away, a bright furious red stain against the dark background of sky.

She heard screams, sobs, wild laughter from all sides.

Below her, a little way down the hillside, some men were mindlessly pulling down a tree—tugging at its branches, straining fiercely, ripping its roots loose from the ground by sheer force. She couldn’t guess why. Probably neither could they.

In the Observatory parking lot, other men were tipping cars over. Siferra wondered whether one of those cars might be hers. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember very much at all. Remembering her name was something of an effort.

“Siferra,” she said aloud. “Siferra 89. Siferra 89.”

She liked the sound of that. It was a good name. It had been her mother’s name—or her grandmother’s, perhaps. She wasn’t really sure.

“Siferra 89,” she said again. “I am Siferra 89.”

She tried to remember her address. No. A jumble of meaningless numbers.

“Look at the Stars!” a woman screamed, rushing past her. “Look at the Stars and die!”

“No,” Siferra replied calmly. “Why should I want to die?”

But she looked at the Stars all the same. She was almost getting used to the sight of them now. They were like very bright lights— very bright—so close together in the sky that they seemed to merge, to form a single mass of brilliance, like a kind of shining cloak that had been draped across the heavens. When she looked for more than a second or two at a time she thought she could make out individual points of light, brighter than those around them, pulsing with a bizarre vigor. But the best that she could manage was to look for five or six seconds; then the force of all that pulsating light would overwhelm her, making her scalp tingle and her face turn burning hot, and she would have to lower her head and rub her fingers against the fiery, throbbing, angry place of pain between her eyes.