Z for Zachariah
by
Robert C. O’Brien
Chapter One
I am afraid.
Someone is coming.
That is, I think someone is coming, though I am not sure, and I pray that I am wrong. I went into the church and prayed all this morning. I sprinkled water in front of the altar, and put some flowers on it, violets and dogwood.
But there is smoke. For three days there has been smoke, not like the time before. That time, last year, it rose in a great cloud a long way away, and stayed in the sky for two weeks. A forest fire in the dead woods, and then it rained and the smoke stopped. But this time it is a thin column, like a pole, not very high.
And the column has come three times, each time in the late afternoon. At night I cannot see it, and in the morning, it is gone. But each afternoon it comes again, and it is nearer. At first it was behind Claypole Ridge, and I could see only the top of it, the smallest smudge. I thought it was a cloud, except that it was too grey, the wrong colour, and then I thought: there are no clouds anywhere else. I got the binoculars and saw that it was narrow and straight; it was smoke from a small fire. When we used to go in the truck, Claypole Ridge was fifteen miles, though it looks closer, and the smoke was coming from behind that.
Beyond Claypole Ridge there is Ogdentown, about ten miles further. But there is no one left alive in Ogdentown.
I know, because after the war ended, and all the telephones went dead, my father, my brother Joseph and Cousin David went in the truck to find out what was happening, and the first place they went was Ogdentown. They went early in the morning; Joseph and David were really excited, but Father looked serious.
When they came back it was dark. Mother had been worrying—they—took so long—so we were glad to see the truck lights finally coming over Burden Hill, six miles away.
They looked like beacons. They were the only lights anywhere, except in the house—no other cars had come down all day. We knew it was the truck because one of the lights, the left one, always blinked when it went over a bump. It came up to the house and they got out; the boys weren’t excited any more. They looked scared, and my father looked sick. Maybe he was beginning to be sick, but mainly I think he was distressed.
My mother looked up at him as he climbed down.
“What did you find?”
He said, “Bodies. Just dead bodies. They’re all dead.”
“All?”
We went inside the house where the lamps were lit, the two boys following, not saying anything. My father sat down. “Terrible,” he said, and again, “terrible, terrible. We drove around, looking. We blew the horn. Then we went to the church and rang the bell. You can hear it five miles away. We waited for two hours, but nobody came. I went into a couple of houses—the Johnsons’, the Peters’—they were all in there, all dead. There were dead birds all over the streets.”
My brother Joseph began to cry. He was fourteen. I think I had not heard him cry for six years.
It is coming closer. Today it was almost on top of the ridge, though not quite, because when I looked with the binoculars I could not see the flame, but still only the smoke—rising very fast, not far above the fire. I know where it is: at the crossroads. Just on the other side of the ridge, the east-west highway, the Dean Town Road, crosses our road. It is Route number nine, a State highway, bigger than our road, which is County road 793. He has stopped there and is deciding whether to follow number nine or come over the ridge. I say
There are some things I need to explain. One is why I am afraid. Another is why I am writing in this composition book, which I got from Klein’s store a mile up the road.
I took the book and a supply of ballpoint pens back in February. By then the last radio station, a very faint one that I could hear only at night, had stopped broadcasting. It had been dead for about three or four months. I say
Sometimes I would put in what the weather was like, if there was a storm or something unusual. I put in when I planted the garden because I thought that would be useful to know next year. But most of the time I didn’t write, because one day was just like the day before, and sometimes I thought—what’s the use of writing anyway, when nobody is ever going to read it? Then I would remind myself: some time, years from now,
But now I have something to write about. I was wrong. I am not the only person left in the world. I am both excited and afraid.
At first when all the others went away I hated being alone; and I watched the road all day and most of the night hoping that a car,
Anyway, the man on the last radio station had said he was going to have to go off; there wasn’t any more power. He kept repeating his latitude and longitude, though he was not on a ship, he was on land—somewhere near Boston, Massachusetts. He said some other things, too, that I did not like to hear. And that started me thinking. Suppose a car came over the hill, and I ran out, and whoever was in it got out—suppose he was crazy? Or suppose it was someone mean, or even cruel, and brutal? A murderer? What could I do? The fact is, the man on the radio, towards the end, sounded crazy. He was afraid; there were only a few people left where he was and not much food. He said that men should act with dignity even in the face of death, that no one was better off than any other. He pleaded on the radio and I knew something terrible was happening there. Once he broke down and cried on the radio.
So I decided: if anyone does come, I want to see who it is before I show myself. It is one thing to hope for someone to come when things are civilized, when there are other people around, too. But when there is nobody else, then the whole idea changes. This is what I gradually realized. There are worse things than being alone. It was after I thought about that that I began moving my things to the cave.
The smoke came again this afternoon, still in the same place as yesterday. I know what he
