“You’ve eaten?” he asked his neighbor.
“Yes,” his neighbor said. “Don’t you think we’d better be going?”
“I suppose so,” he said.
They left all the dishes on the table. His wife went upstairs and got garments for the family.
He and his wife stayed on the porch a moment while the rest went out to the ground car.
“Should we lock the door?” he asked.
She smiled helplessly and ran a hand through her hair. She shrugged. “Does it matter?” she said and turned away.
He locked the door and followed her down the walk. She turned as he came up to her.
“It’s a nice house,” she murmured.
“Don’t think about it,” he said.
They turned their backs on their home and got in the ground car.
“Did you lock it?” asked the neighbor.
“Yes.”
The neighbor smiled wryly. “So did we,” he said. “I tried not to, but then I had to go back.”
They moved through the quiet streets. The edges of the sky were beginning to redden. The neighbor’s wife and the four children were in back. His wife and the neighbor were in front with him.
“Going to be a nice day,” said the neighbor.
“I suppose so,” he said.
“Have you told your children?” the neighbor asked softly.
“Of course not.”
“I haven’t, I haven’t,” insisted his neighbor. “I was just asking.”
“Oh.”
They rode in silence a while.
“Do you ever get the feeling that we’re . . . running out?” asked the neighbor.
He tightened. “No,” he said. His lips pressed together. “No.”
“I guess it’s better not to talk about it,” his neighbor said hastily.
“Much better,” he said.
As they drove up to the guardhouse at the gate, he turned to the back.
“Remember,” he said. “Not a word from any of you.”
The guard was sleepy and didn’t care. The guard recognized him right away as the chief test pilot for the new ship. That was enough. The family was coming down to watch him off, he told the guard. That was all right. The guard let them drive to the ship’s platform.
The car stopped under the huge columns. They all got out and stared up.
Far above them, its nose pointed toward the sky, the great metal ship was beginning to reflect the early morning glow.
“Let’s go,” he said. “Quickly.”
As they hurried toward the ship’s elevator, he stopped for a moment to look back. The guardhouse looked deserted. He looked around at everything and tried to fix it all in his memory.
He bent over and picked up some dirt. He put it in his pocket.
“Goodbye,” he whispered.
He ran to the elevator.
The doors shut in front of them. There was no sound in the rising cubicle but the hum of the motor and a few self-conscious coughs from the children. He looked at them. To be taken so young, he thought, without a chance to help.
He closed his eyes. His wife’s arm rested on his arm. He looked at her. Their eyes met and she smiled at him.
“It’s all right,” she whispered.
The elevator shuddered to a stop. The doors slid open and they went out. It was getting lighter. He hurried them along the enclosed platform.
They all climbed through the narrow doorway in the ship’s side. He hesitated before following them. He wanted to say something fitting the moment. It burned in him to say something fitting the moment.
He couldn’t. He swung in and grunted as he pulled the door shut and turned the wheel tight.
“That’s it,” he said. “Come on, everybody.”
Their footsteps echoed on the metal decks and ladders as they went up to the control room.
The children ran to the ports and looked out. They gasped when they saw how high they were. Their mothers stood behind them, looking down at the ground with frightened eyes.
He went up to them.
“So high,” said his daughter.
He patted her head gently. “So high,” he repeated.
Then he turned abruptly and went over to the instrument panel. He stood there hesitantly. He heard someone come up behind him.
“Shouldn’t we tell the children?” asked his wife. “Shouldn’t we let them know it’s their last look?”
“Go ahead,” he said. “Tell them.”
He waited to hear her footsteps. There were none. He turned. She kissed him on the cheek. Then she went to tell the children.
He threw over the switch. Deep in the belly of the ship, a spark ignited the fuel. A concentrated rush of gas flooded from the vents. The bulkheads began to shake.
He heard his daughter crying. He tried not to listen. He extended a trembling hand toward the lever, then glanced back suddenly. They were all staring at him. He put his hand on the lever and threw it over.
The ship quivered a brief second and then they felt it rush along the smooth incline. It flashed up into the air, faster and faster. They all heard the wind rushing past.
He watched the children turn to the ports and look out again.
“Goodbye,” they said. “Goodbye.”
He sank down wearily at the control panel. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw his neighbor sit down next to him.
“You know just where we’re going?” his neighbor asked.
“On that chart there.”
His neighbor looked at the chart. His eyebrows raised.
“In another solar system,” he said.
“That’s right. It has an atmosphere like ours. We’ll be safe there.”
“The race will be safe,” said his neighbor.
He nodded once and looked back at his and his neighbor’s family. They were still looking out the ports.
“What?” he asked.
“I said,” the neighbor repeated, “which one of these planets is it?”
He leaned over the chart, pointed.
“That small one over there,” he said. “Near that moon.”
“This one, third from the sun?”
“That’s right,” he said. “That one. Third from the sun.”
THE LAST DAY
He woke up and the first thing he thought was—the last night is gone.
He had slept through half of it.
He lay there on the floor and looked up at the ceiling. The walls still glowed reddish from the outside light. There was no sound in the living room but that of snoring.
He looked around.
There were bodies sprawled out all over the room. They were on the couch, slumped on chairs, curled up on the floor. Some were covered with rugs. Two of them were naked.
He raised up on one elbow and winced at the shooting pains in his head. He closed his eyes and held them tightly shut for a moment. Then he opened them again. He ran his tongue over the inside of his dry mouth. There was still a stale taste of liquor and food in his mouth.
He rested on his elbow as he looked around the room again, his mind slowly registering the scene.
Nancy and Bill lying in each other’s arms, both naked. Norman curled up in an arm chair, his thin face taut as he slept. Mort and Mel lying on the floor, covered with dirty throw rugs. Both snoring. Others on the floor.
Outside the red glow.
He looked at the window and his throat moved. He blinked. He looked down over his long body. He swallowed again.
I’m alive, he thought, and it’s all true.
He rubbed his eyes. He took a deep breath of the dead air in the apartment.
He knocked over a glass as he struggled to his feet. The liquor and soda sloshed over the rug and soaked into the dark blue weav
e.
He looked around at the other glasses, broken, kicked over, hurled against the wall. He looked at the bottles all over, all empty.
He stood staring around the room. He looked at the record player overturned, the albums all strewn around, jagged pieces of records in crazy patterns on the rug.
He remembered.
It was Mort who had started it the night before. He had suddenly rushed to the playing record machine and shouted drunkenly.
“What the hell is music anymore! Just a lot of noise!”
And he had driven the point of his shoe against the front of the record player and knocked it against the wall. He had lurched over and down on his knees. He had struggled up with the player in his beefy arms and heaved the entire thing over on its back and kicked it again.
“The hell with music!” he had yelled. “I hate the crap anyway!”
Then he’d started to drag records out of their jackets and snap them over his kneecap.
“Come on!” he’d yelled to everybody. “Come on!”
And it had caught on. The way all crazy ideas had caught on in those last few days.
Mel had jumped up from making love to a girl. He had flung records out the windows, scaling them far across the street. And Charlie had put aside his gun for a moment to stand at the windows too and try to hit people in the street with thrown records.
Richard had watched the dark saucers bounce and shatter on the sidewalks below. He’d even thrown one himself. Then he’d just turned away and let the others rage. He’d taken Mel’s girl into the bedroom and had sex with her.
He thought about that as he stood waveringly in the reddish light of the room.
He closed his eyes a moment.
Then he looked at Nancy and remembered taking her too sometime in the jumble of wild hours that had been yesterday and last night.
She looked vile now, he thought. She’d always been an animal. Before, though, she’d had to veil it. Now, in the final twilight of everything she could revel in the only thing she’d ever really cared about.
He wondered if there were any people left in the world with real dignity. The kind that was still there when it no longer was necessary to impress people with it.
He stepped over the body of a sleeping girl. She had on only a slip. He looked down at her tangled hair, at her red lips smeared, the tight unhappy frown printed on her face.
He glanced into the bedroom as he passed it. There were three girls and two men in the bed.
He found the body in the bathroom.
It was thrown carelessly in the tub and the shower curtain torn down to cover it. Only the legs showed, dangling ridiculously over the front rim of the tub.
He drew back the curtain and looked at the blood-soaked shirt, at the white, still face.
Charlie.
He shook his head, then turned away and washed his face and hands at the sink. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. As a matter of fact, Charlie was one of the lucky ones now. A member of the legion who had put their heads into ovens, or cut their wrists or taken pills or done away with themselves in the accepted fashions of suicide.
As he looked at his tired face in the mirror he thought of cutting his wrists. But he knew he couldn’t. Because it took more than just despair to incite self-destruction.
He took a drink of water. Lucky, he thought, there’s still water running. He didn’t suppose there was a soul left to run the water system. Or the electric system or the gas system or the telephone system or any system for that matter.
What fool would work on the last day of the world?
—
Spencer was in the kitchen when Richard went in.
He was sitting in his shorts at the table looking at his hands. On the stove some eggs were frying. The gas was working then too, Richard thought.
“Hello,” he said to Spencer.
Spencer grunted without looking up. He stared at his hands. Richard let it go. He turned the gas down a little. He took bread out of the cupboard and put it in the electric toaster. But the toaster didn’t work. He shrugged and forgot about it.
“What time is it?”
Spencer was looking at him with the question.
Richard looked at his watch.
“It stopped,” he said.
They looked at each other.
“Oh,” Spencer said. Then he asked, “What day is it?”
Richard thought. “Sunday, I think,” he said.
“I wonder if people are at church,” Spencer said.
“Who cares?”
Richard opened the refrigerator.
“There aren’t any more eggs,” Spencer said.
Richard shut the door.
“No more eggs,” he said dully. “No more chickens. No more anything.”
He leaned against the wall with a shuddering breath and looked out the window at the red sky.
Mary, he thought. Mary, who I should have married. Who I let go. He wondered where she was. He wondered if she were thinking about him at all.
Norman came trudging in, groggy with sleep and hangover. His mouth hung open. He looked dazed.
“Morning,” he slurred.
“Good morning, merry sunshine,” Richard said, without mirth.
Norman looked at him blankly. Then he went over to the sink and washed out his mouth. He spit the water down the drain.
“Charlie’s dead,” he said.
“I know,” Richard said.
“Oh. When did it happen?”
“Last night,” Richard told him. “You were unconscious. You remember how he kept saying he was going to shoot us all? Put us out of our misery?”
“Yeah,” Norman said. “He put the muzzle against my head. He said feel how cool it is.”
“Well he got in a fight with Mort,” Richard said. “The gun went off.” He shrugged. “That was it.”
They looked at each other without expression.
Then Norman turned his head and looked out the window.
“It’s still up there,” he muttered.
They looked up at the great flaming ball in the sky that crowded out the sun, the moon, the stars.
Norman turned away, his throat moving. His lips trembled and he clamped them together.
“Jesus,” he said. “It’s today.”
He looked up at the sky again.
“Today,” he repeated. “Everything.”
“Everything,” said Richard.
Spencer got up and turned off the gas. He looked down at the eggs for a moment. Then he said, “What the hell did I fry these for?”
He dumped them into the sink and they slid greasily over the white surface. The yolks burst and spurted smoking, yellow fluid over the enamel.
Spencer bit his lips. His face grew hard.
“I’m taking her again,” he said, suddenly.
He pushed past Richard and dropped his shorts off as he turned the corner into the hallways.
“There goes Spencer,” Richard said.
Norman sat down at the table. Richard stayed at the wall.
In the living room they heard Nancy suddenly call out at the top of her strident voice.
“Hey, wake up everybody! Watch me do it! Watch me everybody, watch me!”
Norman looked at the kitchen doorway for a moment. Then something gave inside of him and he slumped his head forward on his arms on the table. His thin shoulders shook.
“I did it too,” he said brokenly. “I did it too. Oh God, what did I come here for?”
“Sex,” Richard said. “Like all the rest of us. You thought you could end your life in carnal, drunken bliss.”
Norman’s voice was muffled.
“I can’t die like that,” he sobbed. “I can’t.”
“A couple of billion people are
doing it,” Richard said. “When the sun hits us, they’ll still be at it. What a sight.”
The thought of a world’s people indulging themselves in one last orgy of animalism made him shudder. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the wall and tried to forget.
But the wall was warm.
Norman looked up from the table.
“Let’s go home,” he said.
Richard looked at him. “Home?” he said.
“To our parents. My mother and father. Your mother.”
Richard shook his head.
“I don’t want to,” he said.
“But I can’t go alone.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . I can’t. You know how the streets are full of guys just killing everybody they meet.”
Richard shrugged.
“Why don’t you?” Norman asked.
“I don’t want to see her.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy,” Norman said. “Who else is there to . . .”
“No.”
He thought of his mother at home waiting for him. Waiting for him on the last day. And it made him ill to think of him dallying, of maybe never seeing her again.
But he kept thinking—How can I go home and have her try to make me pray? Try to make me read from the Bible, spend these last hours in a muddle of religious absorption?
He said it again for himself.
“No.”
Norman looked lost. His chest shook with a swallowed sob.
“I want to see my mother,” he said.
“Go ahead,” Richard said, casually.
But his insides were twisting themselves into knots. To never see her again. Or his sister and her husband and her daughter.
Never to see any of them again.
He sighed. It was no use fighting it. In spite of everything, Norman was right. Who else was there in the world to turn to? In a wide world, about to be burned, was there any other person who loved him above all others?
“Oh . . . all right,” he said. “Come on. Anything to get out of this place.”
—
The apartment house hall smelled of vomit. They found the janitor dead drunk on the stairs. They found a dog in the foyer with its head kicked in.
They stopped as they came out of the entrance of the building.