“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”.
“
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.
At a whim, he crossed to the left side and drove unobstructed along the wrong lane. He passed through the tunnel, and the high towers and long curves of the suspension-bridge rose before his eyes in magnificent perspective. As usual, some painting had been in progress; to contrast with the prevailing silver gray, one cable was splotched with orange-red.
Then suddenly he saw a strange sight. One car, a little green coupe, was parked neatly at the railing, headed toward the East Bay.
Ish approached it, gazing curiously. He saw nobody, or nothing, inside. He passed it; then, yielding to curiosity, he swung his car around in a wide easy loop, and parked beside the coupe.
He opened the door and looked in. No, nothing! The driver, despairing, feeling the sickness upon him—had he parked there, and then leaped over the railing? Or had he, or she, merely suffered a breakdown, and flagged another car, or walked on? Some keys were still dangling from the dashboard; the certificate of registration was fastened to the steering-column—John S. Robertson, of some number on Fifty-fourth Street, Oakland. An undistinguished name and an undistinguished address! Now Mr. Robertson’s car had possession of the bridge!
Only after he was again entering the tunnel did Ish think that he might at least have settled the question as to a breakdown by seeing whether he could start the car. But it did not really matter—any more than it mattered that he was heading toward the East Bay again. Having swung around to park beside the coupe, he had merely continued on in the direction toward which he was pointed. He had already realized that there would be no utility in visiting San Francisco….
Soon afterward, as he had promised, Ish came again to the street where in the morning he had talked (if it could be called talking) with the drunk man.
He found the body lying on the sidewalk in front of the liquor store. “After all,” Ish reflected, “there is a limit to the amount of alcohol that any human can absorb.” Remembering the eyes, he could not be sorry.
No dogs were in the vicinity as yet, but Ish did not like to leave the body merely lying there. After all, he had known and talked to Mr. Barlow. He could not figure out just where or how he could perform a burial. So he found some blankets in a near-by dry-goods store, and wrapped the body carefully in these. Then he lifted Mr. Barlow into the seat of the car, and closed the windows carefully. It would make a tight and lasting mausoleum.
He said no words, for they seemed hardly in place. But he looked through the window at the neat roll of blankets, and thought of Mr. Barlow, who was probably a good guy, but couldn’t survive a world going to pieces around him. And then, because in some way it seemed a decent thing to do, Ish took off his hat, and stood uncovered a few seconds….
Toward the end of the day, swinging in a wide detour to avoid one of those noisome regions where the dead bodies lay thickly, Ish came back to the house on San Lupo Drive.
He had learned much. The Great Disaster—so he had begun to call it to himself—had not been complete.
Therefore he did not need immediately to commit his future to the first person he met. He would do better to pick and choose a little, particularly since everyone he had so far seen was obviously suffering from shock.
A new idea was shaping in his mind and a new phrase with it—Secondary Kill. Of those that the Great Disaster had spared, many would fall victim to some trouble from which civilization had previously protected them. With unlimited liquor they would drink themselves to death. There had been, he guessed, murder; almost certainly there had been suicide. Some, like the old man, who ordinarily would have lived normal enough lives, would be pushed over the line into insanity by shock and the need of readjustment; such ones would probably not survive long. Some would meet with accident; being alone, they would die. Others would die of disease which no one was left to treat. He knew that, biologically speaking, there was a critical point in the numbers of any species—if the numbers were reduced below this point, the species could not recover.
Was mankind going to survive? Well, that was one of those interesting points which gave him the will to live. But certainly the result of his day’s research gave him little confidence. In fact, if these survivors were typical, who would wish mankind to survive?
He had started out in the morning with a Robinson-Crusoe feeling that he would welcome any human companionship. He had ended with the certainty that he would rather be alone until he found someone more congenial than the day had offered. The sluttish woman had been the only one who had even seemed to want his company, and there had been treachery and death in her invitation. Even if he found a shot-gun and bushwhacked her boy-friend, she could offer only the grossest physical companionship, and at the thought of her he felt revulsion. As for that other girl—the young one—the only way to make her acquaintance would be by means of a lasso or a bear-trap. And like the old man she would probably turn out to be crazy.
No, the Great Disaster had shown no predilection toward sparing the nice people, and the survivors had not been rendered pleasanter as the result of the ordeal through which they had passed.
He prepared some supper, and ate, but without appetite. Afterwards he tried to read, but the words had as little savor as the food. He still thought of Mr. Barlow and the others; in one way or another, each in his own manner, everyone whom he had seen that day was going to pieces. He did not think that he himself was. But was he actually still sane? Was he too, perhaps, suffering from shock? In calm self-consciousness he thought about it. After a while he took pencil and paper, deciding to write down what qualifications he had, why he might be going to live, even with some degree of happiness, while the others were not.
