Earth Abides

They began to boil all drinking-water. They burned the old latrines and filled the old pits. They kept the new ones so well sprayed with DDT that no fly could alight and live. All such Precautions were obviously too late. Already every individual must have been exposed to infection. Those who had not yet succumbed must either by good luck possess natural immunity, or else the disease was still lying dormant in them, building up strength through its period of incubation.

Day by day, one or more took to bed. Bob, now in his second week, lay tossing in delirium, a grim indication of the long road all the others must follow before they could grow better. Already those still on their feet were being worn down by the strain of nursing.

They had scarcely time to give any thought to fear, and yet fear lay all around them, daily drawing its circle closer. There had been no deaths as yet, but neither had anyone passed the crisis of the fever. As in earlier years each birth had seemed to force back the circle of darkness, so now with each newly stricken one the darkness moved a step inward, bringing annihilation with it. Even if they did not all die in the epidemic, the loss of any large number might break, it seemed, the communal will to live.

George and Maurine and Molly had taken to prayer, and some of the younger ones had joined with them. They were afraid that God was exacting retribution upon them for the death of Charlie. Ralph was just on the point of taking his family, as yet not stricken, and fleeing off somewhere. Ish dissuaded him, for the moment at least, arguing that any of them might already be infected and that to be taken sick as a small and isolated group would be much more dangerous than to share with the whole community.

“We are close to panic!” thought Ish. and then the next morning he himself awoke—depressed, feverish, and half-prostrated. He forced himself to his feet, made light of Em’s inquiries, and avoided her glances. Bob was very bad, and took most of Em’s time. Ish tended Joey and Josey, who were both in the early stages. Walt, they had sent off to help in one of the other houses.

In the afternoon, leaning over Joey’s bed, Ish felt himself collapsing. With his last effort he managed to get to his own bed, and fall upon it.

Hours later, it seemed, he came to himself. Em was looking down at him. She had managed to undress him and get him into bed.

He looked up at her, feeling small. He gazed as a child might have gazed—above all, fearing that he would see fear. If she was afraid, all was lost!

But in her face he saw no fear.

The dark, wide-set eyes looked calmly at him. Oh, Mother of Nations! And then he slept.

In his days and nights of delirium, he knew little of what happened. Through his fever the great vague dream-shapes moved in and pressed upon him from the dark outside—horrible, inchoate as fog, not to be combatted. Then sometimes he called out for someone to bring him his hammer, and he called the name of Joey sometimes, and again (worst of all) the name of Charlie. But also in his terrors he called sometimes on the name of Em, and then it might be that he awoke at the pressure of her hand and looked up. Always he looked for fear, but there was no fear.

Then there was a week when he lay quieter but so prostrated that at times his life seemed to him to be fluttering weakly to take flight and go—and he cared little. Only, when he looked up and saw Em, he felt courage and strength move out from her, and he held his lips hard together, for he thought life itself pressed close behind his lips and that if he opened its mouth it would escape like a butterfly. But as long as he looked up at Em, he knew that he would have strength to hold that little, faintly struggling thing within him.

Only, when she had gone, he said to himself, now that he could think a little, “She will break! Some time she must break! She may not get the fever. We may hope for that good luck! But she cannot carry the burden for all of us.”

Now he realized more of what was happening. There had been deaths, he knew, but not who or how many. He dared not ask.

Once he heard Jeanie come, wailing hysterically at the death of a child, Em said little, but strangely the spirit moved out from her, and Jeanie went away with courage to fight on. George came, unwashed and filth-smeared, a terror-stricken old man—Maurine had suffered a relapse, and their grandchild lay gasping. Em said nothing about God, but again a spirit went out from her, and George walked away with head high, and saying the words, “Yea, though He slay me….” Thus even when the shadows drew in most closely and the little candle seemed flickering and smoky, she knew no despair and sustained them all.