FullReads

The topmost floor of this building was a residential level. Like the one where he had found Naomi, a green mold covered everything, and pallid fungi, emitting a pale-green phosphorescence, clung to the walls and ceiling of the long corridor. Apparently the dwellers here had rushed out at the first alarm, had died elsewhere. “This is luck,” Allan said. “We shall have a comfortable place to sleep, and food is not far away.”

“How is that?”

“Why, the stores level is not far below. Most of New York’s structures have a number of residential levels at the top, then a floor of retail stores, and below that amusement places, offices, and factories.”

“But whatever food there was must be decayed by this time.”

“The fresh food, yes. But there was a lot of canned stuff, and that is probably all right.” He pushed open a door. In the eery light a well-furnished living room was revealed. “You wait here, and I’ll see what I can rustle up.”

“But I want to go with you.”

Allan was inflexible. “Please do as I say. I have my reasons.”

The girl turned away. “Oh, very well,” she said flatly, “if you don’t want me with you.”

“That’s a good scout. I’ll be back just as quickly as I can. And, by the way, lock the door from the inside, and don’t open it till you hear my voice.”

The girl looked at him wonderingly. “But–” she began.

“Don’t ask me why. Do it.” There was a curious note in Allan’s voice, one that cut off Naomi’s question. The door shut, and Dane heard the bolt shoot home.

He stood in the corridor, listening intently, his face strained. There was no sound save that of Naomi’s movements behind the locked door. Allan turned to search for the auxiliary staircase that must be somewhere near the bank of ascendor doors.

Silence was again around him, almost tangible in its heaviness. His footsteps reverberated through dead halls, the echo curiously muffled by the coating of slime that spread dankly green. Allan found the staircase well, descended cautiously, pausing often to listen. Not even the faint scuttering of vermin rewarded him.

* * * * *

At last, three stories down, he reached the stores level. Here, in a great open hall, were the numerous alcoved recesses of the shops. Once thronged, and gaudy with the varicolored goods brought by plane and heavy-bellied rocket-freighter from both hemispheres, the vast space was a desert of moldering dust heaps, brooding. There was a faint odor in the stagnant air–of spices, and rustling silks, of rare perfumes, of all the luxury of the Golden Age that Man’s folly had ended.

Allan searched the long shelves feverishly, a nervous urge to complete his task and get back to Naomi tingling in his veins. Once he stopped suddenly, his body twisting to the stair landing. He seemed to have heard something, an indefinable thudding, the shadow of a sound. But it did not come again, and he dismissed it as the thumping of his own blood in his ears, audible in that stillness.

At the end of a long aisle, neat rows of cans greeted him, the labels rotted off, the metal rust-streaked, but apparently tight and whole. He found a metal basket, a roll of wire, twisted a handle for the basket and filled it, choosing the cans by their shape. He should have liked to explore further, but the urge to return tugged at him. He went up the stairs three at a time.

There was a dark, oblong break in the long glowing wall of the upper corridor! The door–it was the door of the apartment where he had left Naomi! He leaped down the hall, shouting. The portal hung open, shattered: the rooms were stark, staring empty. Allan reeled out again. There were the marks of footprints, of many footprints, in the green scum of the hall floor, their own among them, that had led the marauders straight to the girl!