Earth Abides

Avoiding the larger cities, he drove westward—Indiana, Illinois, Iowa—through the fields of tall corn and all the empty little towns, sun-flooded and empty by day, dark and empty by night. Still he looked for the small things that showed how the wilderness was moving in to take charge the tiny sprout of a poplar tree standing up in the shaggy grass of a lawn, a telephone wire dangling on the road, the tracks of dried mud where a coon had paused to dip its food in the water of the fountain beneath the statue of the Civil War soldier in front of the court-house.

He came upon people now generally by twos or threes (The isolated molecules were beginning to find one another.) Usually these people were clinging to some little spot that they had known previous to the disaster. As before, not one of them showed any desire to go away with him, but sometimes they invited him to stay. He found the offer no temptation. These people were physically alive, but more and more he realized that they walked about in a kind of emotional death. He had studied enough anthropology to realize that the same phenomenon had been observed on a smaller scale before. Destroy the culture-pattern in which people lived, and often the shock was too great for the individuals. Take away family and job, friends and church, all customary amusements and routines, hope too-and life became walking death.

The Secondary Kill was still at work. Once he saw a woman whose mind had failed. The clothes indicated an original prosperity, but now she was scarcely able to care for herself and could certainly not last through a winter. Several survivors told him of others who had committed suicide.

As yet, though sometimes he wondered, he himself was conscious of no great strain either of shock or of loneliness. He attributed this to his maintenance of interest in the whole progress of events, and to his own peculiar temperament. He thought many times of his qualifications for the new life, as he had once listed them.

Sometimes, while he drove or sat by his fire, erotic images rose to his mind. He thought of Ann on Riverside Drive, crisp and well-groomed in her blondness. But she was an exception. The usual women were ill-kempt and even dirty, their faces blank with mental apathy, except when they laughed hysterically or giggled. Some of them were obviously approachable, but always he felt desire wither away within him. This, he realized, might be the particular form that shock took with him. But there was no need to force matters; in the end he might change.

All across the blazing plains of Nebraska the wheat had not been harvested. Now it stood, losing its golden color, turning brown. The grains were already dropping from the heads. Next year there would be a volunteer crop, but all around the edges other kinds of grass would also sprout up, grass that could grow more readily when the sod was not disturbed. Soon, he knew these native grasses would form a sod and crowd out the wheat.

Estes Park was restful after the heat of the plains. He stayed there for a week. The trout had not struck at a hook all summer, and the fishing was excellent.

Next came the high mountains, and then the desert again and the sagebrush. Then he was pressing his foot hard and steering round the curves of U.S. 40 toward the summit of Donner Pass.

On the other side of the Pass he suddenly sensed that the country all ahead was palled in smoke. “What month is it, anyway?” he thought, “August? Early September, more likely. Bad forest-fire season.” And he remembered that now there would be no one to battle against the fires which lightning would still start.

By Yuba Gap he suddenly came to the fire. It was burning low on both sides of the road, and he chanced running through it. The highway was wide, and things were not too hot, until on rounding a curve he came squarely upon a snag, fallen and blocking the way completely, blazing along its whole length, fierce with heat. Suddenly he again felt the old fear which he had shaken off (years ago, it seemed) that morning in the desert—the utter loneliness to face an emergency or recover from any accident.

There was nothing for it but to turn the car around on the highway. He shuttled back and forth twice, killing the engine in his panicky haste. It started again, and he swung on the back trail out of the flames.

Once more in safety, he recovered his calm. He drove back to the junction with California 20, and decided to make another try. There was some fire along this road, too, but generally it had swept past already. He drove carefully, avoiding a few chunks of fallen tree on the road, and managed to get through. He was appalled, however, as he gained the ridge beyond, and saw fire seemingly everywhere. He was lucky to make it.