Earth Abides

above the city, he sent the flashes into the night—short-short-short, long-long-long, short-short- short—the old call of the SOS, which had gone out so often from despairing men. But there was no reply from all the expanse of the city. After a while he realized that with all the street-lights still burning there was too much illumination; his own petty flashing would hardly be noticeable.

So he went into the house again. The foggy night sent a chill into him. He turned on the thermostat, and in a moment he heard the whir of the oil-burner. With electricity still working and a full tank of fuel-oil there was no trouble. He sat, and after a while turned out the lights in the house, feeling in some strange way that they were too conspicuous. He let the fog and the darkness wrap him round and conceal him. Still he felt the fear of loneliness, and as he sat there, he laid the hammer close at hand, ready for grasping if there should be need.

A horrible cry broke the darkness! He trembled violently, and then realized that it was only the call of a mating cat, the sort of sound which in any night one might have heard now and then, even on decorous San Lupo Drive. The caterwauling rose to a climax, and then the growl of a charging dog cut across it, and the night was silent again.

For them the world of twenty thousand years was overthrown. In the kennels, swollen-tongued, they lay dead of thirst—pointers, collies, poodles, toy pekinese, tall hounds. The luckier ones, not confined, wandered loose through city and countryside; drinking at the streams, at the fountains, at the gold-fish ponds; hunting here and there for what they might find for eating—scurrying after a hen, picking up a squirrel in the park. And gradually, the pangs of hunger breaking down the long centuries of civilization, they drew closer to where the unburied corpses lay.

Now no longer would Best-of-Breed go for stance, and shape of head, and markings. Now Champion Golden Lad of Piedmont IV no longer outranked the worst mongrel of the alley. The prize, which was life itself, would go to the one of keenest brain, staunchest limb, and strongest jaw, who could best shape himself to meet the new ways and who in the old competition of the wilderness could win the means of life.

Peaches, the honey-colored spaniel, sat disconsolate, growing weaker with hunger, too stupid to live by craft, too short-legged to live by pursuit of prey… Spot, the children’s mongrel pet, had the luck to find a liner of kittens and kill them, not for fun but for food…. Ned, the wire-haired terrier, who had always enjoyed being on his own and was by nature a tramp, managed to get along fairly well…. Bridget, the red setter, shivered and trembled, and now and then howled faintly with a howl that was scarcely more than a moan; her gentle spirit found no will to live in a world without master or mistress to love.

That morning he worked out a plan. He felt sure that in an urban district of two million people others must be left alive. The solution was obvious; he must find someone, anyone. The problem was how to make contact.

First he set out to walk around the neighborhood, in the hope of discovering someone he knew. But around the well-known houses he saw no sign of people. The lawns were parched, the flowers wilting.

Returning home, he passed through the little park where he had often played as a boy, climbing the tall rocks. Two of them leaned together at the top to form a kind of little cave, high and narrow. Ish had often played at hiding there. It seemed a natural primitive refuge-place, and he looked into it. There was no one.

He walked on across a broad surface of smooth rock that sloped with the hillside. It was pitted with small round holes marking the places where squaws had once pounded with stone pestles.

“The world of those Indians passed away,” he thought. “And now our world that followed theirs has passed too. And am I the only one?”

After reaching the house again, he got into his car, mapping out in his head a route to cover the city so that few areas would be left out of the sound of the horn. He drove along, hooting the horn about every minute and then waiting, listening for some reply. As he drove, he looked about curiously, appraising what had happened.

The streets had an early-morning look. Many cars were parked, and there was little disorder. Fires were burning here and there, as he could see by smoke-columns. An occasional body lay where the man had finally been overcome, and near one of them he saw two dogs. At one street-comer, the body of a man was hanging from the cross-arm of a telephone pole, conspicuously labeled with a placard Looter. After he had passed this pole, he came to a good-sized business district, and then he noticed indeed that there must have been a certain amount of disorder. The big window of a liquor-store was broken.

As he came to the end of the business district, he blew his horn again in his regular routine, and half a minute later he started to hear a faint honk from far away. For a moment he thought that his ears might merely be tricking him.

He honked again quickly, and immediately this time he had a reply. His heart sank—“Echo!” he thought. But then he honked again, a long and a short, and as he listened carefully the reply came merely one long.

He turned, and drove in the direction of the sound, which he estimated must be half a mile away. Having driven three blocks, he honked again and waited. More to the right this time! He turned. Twisting through the streets, he came to a blind end, turned around, and sought another way. He honked, and the reply was closer. Straight ahead this time he went on, overshot, and heard the next reply to the right and behind him. He took another turn, and came to a small business district. Cars were parked along the street, but he saw no one. He thought it strange that whoever was signaling back to him did not stand in the street somewhere and wave. He honked, and suddenly the reply was almost at his elbow. He stopped the car, jumped out, and hurried along the sidewalk. In the front seat of a car parked at the curb, he saw a man. Even as he looked, the man collapsed and fell forward on the wheel. The horn, pressed down, emitted a long squawk as the body slipped sideways to the seat. Coming closer, Ish smelled a reek of whiskey. He saw the man with a long, straggly beard, his face bloated and red, obviously in the last stages of passing-out. Ish looked around, and saw that the liquor-store close by was wide open.

In sudden anger, Ish shook the yielding body. The man revived a little, opened his eyes, and emitted a kind of grunt which might have meant, “What is it?” Ish shoved the inert body to a sitting position; as he did so, the man’s hand fumbled for the half-empty bottle of whiskey which was propped in the comer of the seat. Ish grabbed it, threw it out, and heard it splinter on the curbing. He was filled only with a deep bitter anger and a sense of horrible irony. Of all the survivors whom he might have found, here was only a poor old drunk, good for nothing more in this world, or any other. Then as the man’s eyes opened and Ish looked into them, he felt suddenly no more anger, but only a great deep pity.

Those eyes had seen too much. There was a fear in them and a horror that could never be told. However gross the bloated body of the drunkard might seem—somewhere, behind it all, lay a sensitive mind, and that mind had seen more than it could endure. Escape and oblivion were all that could remain.

They sat there together on the seat. The eyes of the drunken man glanced here and there, hardly under control. Their tragedy seemed to grow only deeper. The breath came raspingly. On sudden impulse, Ish took the inert wrist and felt for the pulse. It was weak and irregular. The man had been drinking, doubtless, for a week. Whether he could last much longer was questionable.

“This, then is it!” thought Ish. The survivor might have been a beautiful girl, or a fine intelligent man, but it was only this drunkard, too far gone for any help.

After a while Ish got out of the car. He went into the liquor store for curiosity. A dead cat, it seemed, lay on the counter, but as he looked, it stirred to life and he realized that it had merely been lying, after the habit of cats, in such a position that it looked dead. The cat looked at him with a kind of cold effrontery, as the duchess at the chambermaid. Ish felt uncomfortable, and had to remind himself that this was the way cats had always behaved. The cat seemed contented and looked well fed.

Glancing around the shelves, Ish saw what he had been curious about. The man had not even bothered to pick out the better whiskey. Rot-gut had been good enough for his purposes.

Coming out, Ish saw that the man had now managed to find another bottle somewhere, and was taking a long drink. Ish realized that there was nothing much he could do about it. Still, he wanted to make a last try.

He leaned in at the window of the car. The man, revived perhaps by his last drink, was a trifle more alert. He looked at Ish, seeming able to focus his eyes, and he smiled, rather pathetically.

“Hi-ah!” he said in a thick drawl.

“How are you?” said Ish.

“Ah-bar-el-low!” said the man.