Robert Silverberg - The Road to Nightfall

The dog snarled, and ran on. Katterson watched the two lean, fiery-eyed men speeding in pursuit, while a mounting horror grew in him and rooted him to the spot. The dog suddenly bounded over a heap of rubble and was gone; its pursuers sank limply down, leaning on their clubs, and tried to catch their breath.

“It’s going to get much worse than this,” said a small, grubby-looking man who appeared from nowhere next to Katterson. “I’ve heard the official announcement’s coming today, but the rumor’s been around for a long time.”

“So they say,” answered Katterson slowly. The chase he had just witnessed still held him paralyzed. “We’re all pretty hungry.”

The two men who had chased the dog got up, still winded, and wandered off. Katterson and the little man watched their slow retreat.

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen people doing that,” said Katterson. “Out in the open like that—”

“It won’t be the last time,” said the grubby man. “Better get used to it, now that the food’s gone.”

Katterson’s stomach twinged. It was empty, and would stay that way till the evening’s food dole. Without the doles, he would have no idea of where his next bite of food would come from. He and the small man walked on through the quiet street, stepping over the rubble, walking aimlessly with no particular goal in mind.

“My name’s Paul Katterson,” he said finally. “I live on 47th Street. I was discharged from the Army last year.”

“Oh, one of those,” said the little man. They turned down 15th Street. It was a street of complete desolation; not one pre-war house was standing, and a few shabby tents were pitched at the far end of the street. “Have you had any work since your discharge?”

Katterson laughed. “Good joke. Try another.”

“I know. Things are tough. My name is Malory; I’m a merchandiser.”

“What do you merchandise?”

“Oh… useful products.”

Katterson nodded. Obviously Malory didn’t want him to pursue the topic, and he dropped it. They walked on silently, the big man and the little one, and Katterson could think of nothing but the emptiness in his stomach. Then his thoughts drifted to the scene of a few minutes before, the two hungry men chasing a dog. Had it come to that so soon? Katterson asked himself. What was going to happen, he wondered, as food became scarcer and scarcer and finally there was none at all?

But the little man was pointing ahead. “Look,” he said. “Meeting at Union Square.”

Katterson squinted and saw a crowd starting to form around the platform reserved for public announcements. He quickened his pace, forcing Malory to struggle to keep up with him.

A young man in military uniform had mounted the platform and was impassively facing the crowd. Katterson looked at the jeep nearby, automatically noting it was the 2036 model, the most recent one, eighteen years old. After a minute or so the soldier raised his hand for silence, and spoke in a quiet, restrained voice.

“Fellow New Yorkers, I have an official announcement from the Government. Word has just been received from Trenton Oasis—”

The crowd began to murmur. They seemed to know what was coming.

“Word has just been received from Trenton Oasis that, due to recent emergency conditions there, all food supplies for New York City and environs will be temporarily cut off. Repeat: due to recent emergency in the Trenton Oasis, all food supplies for New York and environs will temporarily be cut off.”

The murmuring in the crowd grew to an angry, biting whisper as each man discussed this latest turn of events with the man next to him. This was hardly unexpected news; Trenton had long protested the burden of feeding helpless, bombed-out New York, and the recent flood there had given them ample opportunity to squirm out of their responsibility. Katterson stood silent, towering over the people around him, finding himself unable to believe what he was hearing. He seemed aloof, almost detached, objectively criticizing the posture of the soldier on the platform, counting his insignia, thinking of everything but the implications of the announcement, and trying to fight back the growing hunger.

The uniformed man was speaking again. “I also have this message from the Governor of New York, General Holloway: he says that attempts at restoring New York’s food supply are being made, and that messengers have been dispatched to the Baltimore Oasis to request food supplies. In the meantime the Government food doles are to be discontinued effective tonight, until further notice. That is all.”

The soldier gingerly dismounted from the platform and made his way through the crowd to his jeep. He climbed quickly in and drove off. Obviously he was an important man, Katterson decided, because jeeps and fuel were scarce items -, not used lightly by anyone and everyone.

Katterson remained where he was and turned his head slowly, looking at the people round him—thin, half-starved little skeletons, most of them, who secretly begrudged him his giant frame. An emaciated man with burning eyes and a beak of a nose had gathered a small group around himself and was shouting some sort of harangue. Katterson knew of him—his name was Emerich, and he was the leader of the colony living in the abandoned subway at 14th Street. Katterson instinctively moved closer to hear him, and Malory followed.

“It’s all a plot!” the emaciated man was shouting. “They talk of an emergency in Trenton. What emergency? I ask you, what emergency? That flood didn’t hurt them. They just want to get us off their necks by starving us out, that’s all. And what can we do about it? Nothing. Trenton knows we’ll never be able to rebuild New York, and they want to get rid of us, so they cut off our food.”

By now the crowd had gathered round him. Emerich was popular; people were shouting their agreement, punctuating his speech with applause.

“But will we starve to death? We will not!”

“That’s right, Emerich!” yelled a burly man with a beard.

“No,” Emerich continued, “we’ll show them what we can do. We’ll scrape up every bit of food we can find, every blade of grass, every wild animal, every bit of shoe-leather. And we’ll survive, just the way we survived the blockade and the famine of ’47 and everything else. And one of these days we’ll go out to Trenton and—and—roast them alive!”

Roars of approval filled the air. Katterson turned and shouldered his way through the crowd, thinking of the two men and the dog, and walked away with out looking back. He headed down Fourth Avenue, until he could no longer hear the sounds of the meeting at Union Square, and sat down wearily on a pile of crushed girders that had once been the Carden Monument.

He put his head in his hands and sat there. The afternoon’s events had numbed him. Food had been scarce as far back as he could remember—the twenty-four years of war with the Spherists had just about used up every resource of the country. The war had dragged on and on. After the first rash of preliminary bombing, it had become a war of attrition, slowly grinding the opposing spheres to rubble.

Somehow Katterson had grown big and powerful on hardly any food, and he stood out wherever he went. The generation of Americans to which he belonged was not one of size or strength—the children were born under-nourished old men, weak and wrinkled. But he had been big, and he had been one of the lucky ones chosen for the Army. At least there he had been fed regularly.

Katterson kicked away a twisted bit of slag, and saw little Malory coming down Fourth Avenue in his direction. Katterson laughed to himself, remembering his Army days. His whole adult life had been spent in a uniform, with soldier’s privileges. But it had been too good to last; two years before, in 2052, the war had finally dragged to a complete standstill, with the competing hemispheres both worn to shreds, and almost the entire Army had suddenly been mustered out into the cold civilian world. He had been dumped into New York, lost and alone.