George Stewart - Earth Abides

Next came the high mountains, and then the desert again and the sagebrush. Then he was pressing his foot hard and steering round the curves of U.S. 40 toward the summit of Donner Pass.

On the other side of the Pass he suddenly sensed that the country all ahead was palled in smoke. “What month is it, anyway?” he thought, “August? Early September, more likely. Bad forest-fire season.” And he remembered that now there would be no one to battle against the fires which lightning would still start.

By Yuba Gap he suddenly came to the fire. It was burning low on both sides of the road, and he chanced running through it. The highway was wide, and things were not too hot, until on rounding a curve he came squarely upon a snag, fallen and blocking the way completely, blazing along its whole length, fierce with heat. Suddenly he again felt the old fear which he had shaken off (years ago, it seemed) that morning in the desert—the utter loneliness to face an emergency or recover from any accident.

There was nothing for it but to turn the car around on the highway. He shuttled back and forth twice, killing the engine in his panicky haste. It started again, and he swung on the back trail out of the flames.

Once more in safety, he recovered his calm. He drove back to the junction with California 20, and decided to make another try. There was some fire along this road, too, but generally it had swept past already. He drove carefully, avoiding a few chunks of fallen tree on the road, and managed to get through. He was appalled, however, as he gained the ridge beyond, and saw fire seemingly everywhere. He was lucky to make it.

He had planned to camp that night in the cool of the mountains; instead, to escape being further blocked by fire, he drove on, and unrolled his sleeping-bag in the little park of a foothill town. No lights were burning. He was disappointed, for he had hoped to find lights in California. The forest-fire, however, would undoubtedly have burned out the power lines, at least locally.

As he lay, trying to sleep, hot and uncomfortable, the dryness of smoke in his nostrils, he had the feeling that now he was trapped. Even though the fires would burn themselves out, the roads across the Sierra would be permanently blocked by many fallen trees and by landslides and washouts upon the denuded slopes.

In the morning, as usual, he felt more cheerful. If he was trapped, California was a comfortably large place to be trapped in, and even though the Sierra would be impassable, the southern road through the desert might remain open for a long time. He was just ready to start, but Princess, with her usual perverseness, suddenly gave tongue, and disappeared on a trail. Irritated, he waited for her, and when she did not return, he changed his plans, and spent most of the day lolling, half naked, in the shade of some trees. In the late afternoon, he started.

At twilight he came to the crest of the hill, and looked out again over the broad expanse of all—the Bay cities. With a sudden start of pleasure he saw that most of the street-lights were still burning. There had been no electric lights for such a long time that he could really not remember where he had last seen them. All the steam-driven power-plants must have failed almost immediately, and even the smaller hydro-electric systems had not lasted long. He felt a curious local pride mingling with his pleasure; perhaps these were the last electric lights left burning in the whole world.

At the moment he could almost think that it had all been some wild vagary of the imagination, and that he had now returned to a normally functioning city.

The long empty highway ahead of him gave the lie to such thoughts. He looked more carefully. A few sections, he decided, had blacked out through local failure of power since he had been away. The lights on the Golden Gate Bridge were either extinguished, or else he could not see them because of the smoke drift upon the Bay.

He turned into San Lupo Drive. As far as he could see from the street-lights and the headlight glare, everything looked just the same as when he had last left it. “There’ll always be a San Lupo Drive!” he thought, and then he realized that at least he was enough like all the other survivors to pick out some particular familiar spot, and though he went away, to return to it again like the homing pigeon.

He opened the front door, snapped the lights on and looked. Nothing was changed. He had known that it in be so, and yet there had always been hope. He felt no active sorrow, but only dullness.

“The sere and yellow leaf,” he thought, saying a line he had heard on the stage, but not knowing what play. “There would have been a time….”

Princess made a sudden dash into the kitchen, slipped on the linoleum, skidded, yelped comically, and recovered. Thankful to her again for breaking the tension, he followed her. She was sniffing along the baseboard, but he failed to discover what had excited her.

“Well,” he thought, walking back to the living-room, “if I have no feelings left, that is perhaps strange, but at least there is no one now to whom I can pretend. It is probably all part of what I am passing through.”

The note which he had left posted on the desk was still there, undisturbed, looking remarkably fresh. He took it, crumpled it, threw it into the fireplace, scratched a match. He hesitated a moment. Then he touched the match to the paper, and watched the flame blaze up. That was finished!

In that generation there will be neither father nor mother, nor wife, nor child, nor friend. But it will be as in the ancient tales when the gods reared up a new people from stones or dragons’ teeth, and they were all strangers with strange faces, and no man knew his fellow’s face.

The next morning he settled down to establish his life. Food, he knew already, was no problem at all. In the nearest business district he began looking into store-windows. Rats and mice were making a mess of everything, and the floors were littered with gnawed cartons and spilled food. Through one window, however, he was startled to see the gaily colored piles of fruit and vegetables as fresh and lovely as ever. He stared incredulously, peering through the dust-coated glass. Then, first with irritation and then with amusement, he realized that the bright colors were merely from the papier mâché oranges, apples, tomatoes, and avocados which the store in the old days had used for a permanent front-window display.

After a while he saw through the windows a grocery which was unlittered. Apparently it must be rodent-proof. Carefully jimmying a window, he got into the store.

The bread was inedible, and weevils were at work even in some of the carefully sealed boxes of crackers. But the dried fruit and everything inside of tin and glass was as good as ever. As he was picking out some cans of olives, he heard an electric motor start. Curiously, he opened the refrigerator, and found that the butter was still perfectly preserved. Next he investigated the deep-freeze units, and found fresh meat, frozen vegetables, ice-cream, and even materials for a green salad. When he left with his loot, he closed the window carefully behind him, to keep at least that one store free of rats.

After he had returned to the house, he reflected upon his position again, and decided that as yet the mere maintenance of life would be easy, indefinitely. Food, clothing—the shops were full, and he had only to help himself! Water still gushed from the faucets at full pressure. Gas had failed, and if it had been a country of bitterly cold winters, he might have had to consider laying in some kind of fuel supply. But his gasoline stove served excellently for cooking; if the fireplace was not sufficient in the winter, he could round up a battery of such stoves and supply himself with all the heat he needed. In fact, he soon began to feel so pleasantly self-sufficient that he feared he was turning into a hermit like the old man he had once seen.