“You’d be kind to me, wouldn’t you?” she said. “You see, I haven’t——”
“Stop it! Stop it!” I told her. “You mustn’t say these things to me. Please go away now.”
But she did not go. She stood staring at me from eyes that could not see me.
“Go away!” I repeated.
I could not stand the reproach of her. She was not simply herself—she was thousands upon thousands of young lives destroyed…
She came closer.
“Why, I believe you’re crying!” she said.
“Go away. For God’s sake, go away!” I told her.
She hesitated, then she turned and felt her way back to the door. As she went out:
“You can tell them I’ll be staying,” I said.
The first thing I was aware of the next morning was the smell. There had been whiffs of it here and there before, but luckily the weather had been cool. Now I found that I had slept late into what was already a warmer day. I’m not going into details about that smell; those who knew it will never forget it; for the rest it is indescribable. It rose from every city and town for weeks, and traveled on every wind that blew. When I woke to it that morning it convinced me beyond doubt that the end had come. Death is just the shocking end of animation; it is dissolution that is final.
I lay for some minutes thinking. The only thing to do now would be to load my party into trucks and take them in relays into the country. And all the supplies we had collected? They would have to be loaded and taken too—and I the only one able to drive… It would take days—if we had days…
Upon that, I wondered what was happening in the building now. The place was oddly quiet. When I listened I could hear a voice groaning in another room, beyond that nothing. I got out of bed and hurried into my clothes with a feeling of alarm. Out on the landing, I listened again. There was no sound of feet about the house. I had a sudden nasty feeling as if history were repeating itself and I were back in the hospital again.
“Hey! Anybody here?” I called.
Several voices answered. I opened a nearby door. There was a man in there. He looked very bad, and he was delirious. There was nothing I could do. I closed the door again.
My footsteps sounded loud on the wooden stairs. On the next floor a woman’s voice called: “Bill—Bill!”
She was in bed in a small room there, the girl who had come to see me the night before. She turned her head as I came in. I saw that she had it too.
“Don’t come near,” she said. “It is you, Bill?
“I thought it must be. You can still walk; they have to creep. I’m glad, Bill. I told them you’d not go like that—but they said you had. Now they’ve all gone, all of them that could.”
“I was asleep,” I said. “What happened?”
“More and more of us like this. They were frightened.”
I said helplessly, “What can I do for you? Is there anything I can get you?”
Her face contorted; she clutched her arms round her and writhed. The spasm passed, and left her with sweat trickling down her forehead.
“Please, Bill. I’m not very brave. Could you get me something to—to finish it?”
“Yes,” I said. “I can do that for you.”
I was back from the drugstore in ten minutes. I gave her a glass of water and put the stuff into her other hand.
She held it there for a little, without speaking. Then:
“So futile to have lived at all—and it might all have been so different,” she said. “Good-by, Bill—and thank you for trying to help us.”