George Stewart - Earth Abides

The sound of the next horn was more lively. Toot, toot, toot, it went, toot-ta-toot, toot, toot, toot! No drunk man was handling that one. When he came close to the sound of it, he saw a man and a woman standing there together. They laughed, and waved at him. He drove up, and got out of the car. The man was a big fellow, dressed flamboyantly in a loud sport-coat. The woman was young enough and good-looking, in a blowsy way. Her mouth was a red blob of lipstick. Her fingers glittered with many rings.

Ish took two steps forward, and then stopped, suddenly. “Two is company and three is a crowd.” The man’s look was definitely hostile. And now Ish noticed that the right hand was in the bulging side-pocket of the sport-coat.

“How are you?” said Ish, halting.

“Oh, we’re doing fine,” said the man. The woman merely giggled, but Ish noticed that there was invitation in her smile, and suddenly, more than ever, he sensed danger. “Yes,” the man went on, “yes, we’re doing fine. Plenty to eat, plenty to drink, and lots of—” He made an obscene gesture, and grinned at the woman. She giggled again, and again Ish saw invitation and sensed danger.

He wondered what the woman could have been in the old life. Now she looked merely like a well-to-do prostitute. There were enough diamonds on her fingers to stock a jewelry store.

“Is anybody else left alive?”

They looked at each other. The woman giggled again; it seemed to be her only answer.

“No,” said the man. “Nobody around here, I guess.” He paused, and glanced at the woman again. “Not now, anyway.”

Ish looked at the hand which the man still kept in the sidepocket of the coat. He saw the woman move her hips provocatively, and her eyes narrowed a little, as if she said that she would take the victor. The eyes of this couple were not suffering like the eyes of the drunk man. They did not seem to have sensitive minds, and yet perhaps they too had suffered more than men and women could stand, and in their own way had gone bad. Suddenly, Ish realized that he was closer to death, perhaps, than he had ever been before.

“Which way are you going?” said the man, and the import of his words was clear.

“Oh, just wandering around,” said Ish, and the woman giggled.

Ish turned and walked toward the car, more than half expecting to be shot in the back. He made it, got into the car, and drove away….

He had heard no sounds this time, but as he turned the corner, there she was, standing in the middle of the street, a long-legged teen-age girl with stringy blond hair. She stood, suddenly stopped, as a deer stands surprised in a glade. With a quick movement of a shrewd and hunted thing, she leaned forward, squinting against the sun into the windshield, trying to see who was there. Then she turned and ran swiftly, again like a deer. She dodged through a hole in a board fence and was gone.

He walked down to the hole in the fence, and looked through it, and called, and called again. He had no reply. He half expected there would be at least a mocking laugh from some window, or the flip of a skirt around a corner, and if he had even as much encouragement as that, he would have continued the pursuit. But there was nothing flirtatious about this one. Perhaps she had experiences already, and knew that in such times the only safety for a young girl was in quick and final flights. He waited around some minutes, but nothing happened, and so he went on….

Again there had been horn-signals, but they had stopped before Ish could get to them. He drove around in the vicinity for some minutes, and at last saw an old man coming out of a grocery store, pushing a baby-carriage piled high with canned goods and cartons. When Ish came closer, he saw that the old man was perhaps not so very old. If his scraggly white beard had been shaved away, he might have appeared a vigorous sixty. As it was, he was unkempt and dirty, and his clothes looked as if he had been sleeping in them.

Of the few whom he had met that day, Ish found the old man most communicative, and yet he too stood off by himself. He took Ish to his house near by, which he was stocking of all manner of things-some useful, some quite useless. The mere mania of possession had taken command, and the old man was well on the way, without restraints, toward being the typical hermit and miser. In the former life, Ish learned, the old man had actually been married. He had been a clerk in a hardware store. Yet probably he had always been unhappy and lonely, restricted in his contacts with other people. Now, apparently, he was happier than he had been before, because there was no one to interfere with him and he could merely withdraw and store up around himself all these material goods. He had canned food, sometimes in neat boxes, sometimes in mere piles and heaps of cans. But he also had a dozen crates of oranges, more than he could possibly eat before they spoiled. He had beans in cellophane bags, and one of the bags had broken already, spilling the beans across the floor.

In addition to food he had boxes and boxes of electric-light bulbs and radio-tubes, a cello (though he could not play), a high pile of one issue of the same magazine, a dozen alarm clocks, and a host of other miscellaneous materials which he had collected, not with any definite idea of use, but merely for the comfortable feeling of security which came to him from surrounding himself with all kinds of possessions. The old man was pleasant enough, but he was already, Ish reflected, essentially dead. The shock, reacting upon his already withdrawn character, had sent him close to insanity. He would merely go on piling up things around himself, living to himself, withdrawing farther and farther.

Yet, when Ish started to leave, the old man seized his arm in panic.

“Why did it happen?” he asked wildly. “Why am I spared?”

Ish looked in disgust at the suddenly terror-stricken face. The mouth was open; it seemed drooling.

“Yes,” he snapped back, angry, and glad to express his anger, “yes—why were you spared and so many better men taken?”

The old man glanced involuntarily about him. His fear was now abject, inhuman.

“That’s what I was afraid of!” he half-whispered.

Ish reacted into pity.

“Oh, come on!” he said. “There’s nothing to be afraid of! Nobody knows why you survived. You were never bitten by a rattlesnake, were you?”

“No—”

“Well, no matter. This business of natural immunity, I believe—nobody understands it. But even in the worst pestilences not everybody gets sick.”

But the other shook his head. “I must have been a great sinner,” he said.

“Well, in that case, you should have been taken”.

“ He—” the old man paused and looked around, “ He may be reserving me for something special.” And he shivered….

Approaching the toll-gates, Ish felt himself automatically begin to wonder whether he had a quarter handy for toll. During a wild second he imagined himself playing an insane scene in which he slowed the car down and held out an imaginary coin to an imaginary hand stretched out to take it. But, though he had to slow the car a little to go through the narrow passageway, he did not stretch out his hand.

He had told himself that he would cross to San Francisco, and see what things were like there. Once on the bridge, however, he realized that the bridge itself had drawn him. It was the largest and boldest work of man in the whole area; like all bridges, it was a symbol of unity and security. The thought of going to San Francisco had been an excuse. He had really wished to renew some kind of communion with the symbol of the bridge itself.

Now it lay empty. Where six lines of cars had speeded east and west, now the white lines on the pavement stretched off unbroken toward their meeting at infinity. A seagull that was perched on the railing flapped lazily as the sound of the car drew close, and slid off on a downward plane.