CHAPTER 6

At the main street of some other town he stopped, and blew a long blast on

the horn. He had no real expectation that he would have any reply, but

there was something about the look of this street which seemed more normal

than those of other towns. Many cars were parked at the meters where each

one showed the red flag of a violation. It might have been some Sunday

morning with many cars parked overnight and the stores not yet open or

people beginning to circulate. But it was not early morning, for now the

sun was almost overhead. Then he saw what had made him pause, and what gave

the place an illusion of animation. In front Of a restaurant called *The

Derby* a neon sign was still in full activity-a little horse galloping

hard, its legs still going as actively as ever. In the full sunlight the

faint pink glow was scarcely visible except for its motion. He looked, and

as he looked, he caught the rhythm--*one, two, three.* (And at *three* the

feet of the little horse were close tucked up under its body as if it were

clear in the air.) Four-they came back to the half position, and the legs

stretched out as if the body were low along the ground. *One, two, three,

four,* it went. *One, two, three, four.* It galloped in a frenzy of

activity still, and yet in all its galloping it arrived nowhere, and now

even for most of its time it galloped with no eye to observe. As he looked,

it seemed to him a gallant little horse, though a futile and a foolish one.

The horse, suddenly he thought, was like that civilization of which man had

been so proud, galloping so hard and yet never arriving anywhere; and

sometime destined, when once the power failed, to grow still forever...

He saw smoke rising against the sky. His heart leaped up, and he turned

quickly off on a side road, and drove toward the smoke. But even before he

reached it, he knew that he would find no one there, and his spirit fell

again. He drove up to the smoke, and saw then that it was a small farmhouse

quietly beginning to burn up. There were many reasons, he decided, why a

fire might start thus without people. A pile of greasy rags might ignite

spontaneously, or some electric apparatus might have been left-on, or a

motor in a refrigerator might jam and begin to burn. The little house was

obviously doomed. There was nothing he could do, and no special reason why

he should do it if he could. He turned around, and headed back to the

highway ...

He did not drive fast, and he stopped often to investigate, rather

half-heartedly. Here and there he saw bodies, but in general he found only

emptiness. Apparently the onset of the disease had been slow enough so that

people were not usually struck down in the streets. Once he passed through

a town where the smell of corpses was thick in the air. He remembered what

he had read in the newspaper; apparently there had been concentrations at

the last upon certain areas, and in these the corpses were now to be found

most thickly. There was all too much evidence of death in that town and

none of rife. He saw no reason to stop to investigate. Surely no one would

linger there longer than necessary.

In the late afternoon he came across the crest of the hills, and saw the

Bay lie bright beneath the westering sun. Smokes rose here and there from

the vast expanse of city, but they did not look like smokes rising from

chimneys. He drove on toward the house where he had lived with his parents.

He had no hope. Miracle enough it was that he himself had survivedmiracle

upon miracle if the plague had also spared the others of his own family!

From the boulevard he turned into San Lupo Drive. Every thing looked much

the same, although the sidewalks were not as well swept as the standard of

San Lupo Drive required. It had always been a street, of eminent

respectability, and even yet, he reflected, it preserved decorum. No corpse

lay on the street; that would b e unthinkable in San Lupo Drive. He saw the

Hatfields' old gray cat sleeping on their porch-step in the sun, as he had

seen her -a hundred times before. Aroused by the sound of the car as he

drove by, she rose up and stretched luxuriously.

He let the car roll to a stop in front of the house where he had lived so

long. He blew two blasts on the horn, and waited. Nothing! He got out of

the car, and walked up the steps into the house. Only after he had entered

did he think it a little strange that the door was not even locked.

Inside, things were in good-enough order. He glanced about, apprehensively,

but there was nothing at which a man would hesitate to look. He searched

around the living-room for some note left behind to tell him where they had

gone. There was no note.

Upstairs also everything looked much as usual, but in his parents' bedroom

both the beds were unmade. Perhaps it was that which made him begin to feel

giddy and sick. He walked out of the room, feeling himself unsteady.

Holding by the rail, he made it downstairs again. "The kitchen!" he

thought, and his mind cleared a trifle at the thought of something definite

to do.

As he opened the swinging door, the fact of motion within the room struck

his senses. Then he saw that it was only the second hand of the electric

clock above the sink, steadily moving on past the vertical, beginning its

long swoop toward six again. At that moment also he started wildly at a

sudden noise, only to realize that the motor of the electric refrigerator,

as if disturbed by his coming, had begun to whir. In quick reaction he was

deathly ill, and found himself vomiting into the sink.

Recovered, he went out again, and sat in the car. He was no longer ill, but

he felt weak and utterly despondent. If he made a detective-like

investigation, searching in cupboards and drawers, he could probably

discover something. But of what use thus to torture himself?. The main part

of the story was clear. There were no bodies in the house; of that at least

lie could be thankful. Neither, he believed, would there be any

ghosts-although the faithful clock and refrigerator were rather too

ghost-like. Should he go back into the house, or go somewhere else? At first he thought

that he could not enter again. Then he realized that just as he had come

here, so his father and mother, if by any chance they still lived, would

also return here looking for him. After half an hour, overcoming

repugnance, he went back into the house.

Again he wandered through the empty rooms. They spoke with all the, pathos

of any dwelling-place left without people. Now and then some little thing

cried out to him more poipantly-his father's new encyclopedia (purchased

with qualms as to the expense), his mother's potted pelargoniums (now

needing water), the barometer that his father used to tap each morning when

he came down to breakfast. Yes, it was a simple house-what you would expect

of a man who had taught history in high school and liked books, and of a

woman who had made it into a home for him and served on the Y.W.C.A. board,

and of their only child--"He always does so well in his studies!"--for whom

they had cherished ambitions and for whose education they had made

sacrifices.

After a while he sat down in the living-room. Looking at the familiar

chairs and pictures and books, he gradually came to feel less despondent.

As twilight fell, he realized that he had not eaten since morning. He was

not hungry, but his weakness might be partly the result of lack of food. He

rummaged around a little, and opened a can of soup. He found only the stub

of a loaf of bread, and it was mouldy. The refrigerator supplied butter and

stale cheese. He located crackers in a cupboard. The gas-pressure at the

kitchen stove was very low, but he managed to warm up the soup.

Afterwards he sat on the porch in the dark. In spite of his meal he felt

unsteady, and he realized that he was suffering from shock.

San Lupo Drive was high enough on the slope of the hills to be proud of its

view. As he sat there looking out, everything seemed just about the same.

Apparently the processes behind the production of electricity must be

almost completely automatic. In the hydro-electric plants the flow of water

was still keeping the generators in motion. Moreover, when things had

started to go to pieces, someone must have ordered that the street-lights

be left turned on. Now he saw beneath him all the intricate pattern of the

lights in the East Bay cities, and beyond that the yellow chains of lights

on the Bay Bridge, and still farther through the faint evening mist, the

glow of the San Francisco lights and the fainter chains on the Golden Gate

Bridge. Even the trafficlights were still working, changing from green to

red. High upon the bridge-towers the flashes silently sent their warnings

to airplanes which would no longer ever be flying. (Far to the south,

however, somewhere in Oakland, there was one wholly black section. There,

some switch must have failed, or some fuse have burned out.) Even the

advertising signs, some of them at least, had been left burning.

Pathetically, they flashed out their call to buy, though no longer were

there any customers left or any salesmen. One great sign in particular, its

lower part hidden behind a near-by building, still sent out its message

*Drink* although he could not see what he was thus commanded to drink.

He watched it, half-fascinated. Drink-blackness. *Drink*--blackness.

*Drink.* "Well, why not?" he thought, and going in, he came out again with

a bottle of his father's brandy.

Yet the brandy had little bite, and brought no satisfaction.

in probably not the type," he thought, "to drink myself to death." He found

himself really more interested in watching the sign that still flashed

there. Drink-blackness. *Drink* blackness. *Drink. How* long would the lights burn? What would make them go out in the end? What else would

continue? What was going to happen to all that man had built up through the

centuries and now had left behind him?

I suppose," he thought again, "I ought to be considering suicide. No, too

soon. I am alive, and so others probably are alive. We are just like gas

molecules in a near-vacuum, circulating around, one unable to make contact

with the other."

Again a kind of dullness verging on despair slowly came settling upon him.

What if he did live on, eating as a scavenger at all those great supplies

of food which were piled up in every storeroom? What if he coul d live well

and even if he could draw together a few other survivors? What would it all

amount to? It would be different if one could pick half a dozen friends for

fellow-survivors, but this way they would probably be dull and stupid

people, or even vicious ones. He looked out and saw still the great sign

flashing far off. *Drink*--blackness. *Drink*--blackness. *Drink.* And again

he wondered how long it would keep flashing while there were no more

vending-machines or salesmen offering whatever it was one was to drink, and

from that he thought back to some of the other things he had seen that day,

wondering what would happen to the coyote that he had seen loping along the

highway, and what would happen to the cattle and horses standing by the

watering-trough beneath the slowly revolving spokes of the windmill. How

long indeed would the windmill still revolve and pump its water from the

depths of the earth?

Then suddenly he gave a quick start, and he realized that he had again a

will to five! At least, if he could be no more a participant, he would be a

spectator, and a spectator trained to observe what was happening. Even

though the curtain had been rung down on man, here was the opening of the

greatest of all dramas for a student such as he. During thousands of years

man had impressed himself upon the world. Now man was gone, certainly for a

while, perhaps forever. Even if some survivors were left, they would be a

long time in again obtaining supremacy. What would happen to the world and

its creatures without man? That he was left to see!