Darkness and Dawn (19 page)

"Give it to 'em!" shouted the engineer, as though he had a regiment
behind him. "
Give
it to 'em!" And again he pulled the trigger.

The revolver was empty.

With a cry he threw it down, and, running to where the shotgun stood,
snatched it up. He scooped into his pocket a handful of shells from
the box where they were stored; and as he darted back to the window,
he cocked both hammers.

"Poom!
Poom!
"

The deep baying of the revolver roared out in twin jets of flame.

Stern broke the gun and jacked in two more shells.

Again he fired.

"Good Heaven! How many of 'em
are
there in the trees?" shouted he.

"Try the Pulverite!" cried Beatrice. "Maybe you might hit a branch!"

Stern flung down the gun. To the corner where the vials were standing
he ran.

Up he caught one—he dared not take two lest they should by some
accident strike together.

"Here—here, now, take
this!
" he bellowed.

And from the window, aiming at a pine that stood seventy-five feet
away—a pine whose branches seemed to hang thick with the Horde's
blowgun-men—he slung it with all the strength of his uninjured arm.

Into the gloom it vanished, the little meteorite of latent death, of
potential horror and destruction.

"If it hits 'em, they'll think we
are
gods, after all, what?" cried
the engineer, peering eagerly. But for a moment, nothing happened.

"Missed it!" he groaned. "If I only had my right arm to use now, I
might—"

Far below, down there a hundred feet beneath them and out a long way
from the tower base, night yawned wide in a burst of hellish glare.

A vast conical hole of flame was gouged in the dark. For a fraction of
a second every tree, limb, twig stood out in vivid detail, as that
blue-white glory shot aloft.

All up through the forest the girl and Stern got a momentary glimpse
of little, clinging Things, crouching misshapen, hideous.

Then, as a riven and distorted whirl burst upward in a huge geyser of
annihilation, came a detonation that ripped, stunned, shattered; that
sent both the defenders staggering backward from the window.

Darkness closed again, like a gaping mouth that shuts. And all about
the building, through the trees, and down again in a titanic, slashing
rain fell the wreckage of things that had been stone, and earth, and
root, and tree, and living creatures—that had been—that now were but
one indistinguishable mass of ruin and of death.

After that, here and there, small dark objects came dropping,
thudding, crashing down. You might have thought some cosmic gardener
had shaken his orchard, his orchard where the plums and pears were
rotten-ripe.

"
One!
" cried the engineer, in a strange, wild, exultant voice.

Almost like the echo of his shout, a faint snarling cry rose
from the corridor, outside. They heard a clicking, sliding, ominous
sound; and, with instant comprehension, knew the truth.

"They've got up, some of them—somehow!" Stern cried. "They'll be at
our throats, here, in a moment! Load!
Load!
You shoot—
I'll
give
'em Pulverite!"

No time, now, for caution. While the girl hastily threw in more
cartridges, Stern gathered up all the remaining vials of the
explosive.

These, garnered along his wounded arm which clasped them to his body,
made a little bristling row of death. His left hand remained free, to
fling the little glass bombs.

"Come! Come, meet 'em—they mustn't trap us, here!"

And together they crept noiselessly into the other room and thence to
the corridor-door.

Out they peered.

"Look! Torches!" whispered he.

There at the far end of the hallway, a red glare already flickered on
the wall around the turn by the elevator-shaft. Already the confused
sounds of the attackers were drawing near.

"They've managed to dig away the barricade, somehow," said Stern. "And
now they're out for business—clubs, poisoned darts and all—and
fangs, and claws! How many of 'em? God knows! A swarm, that's all!"

His mouth felt hot and dry, with fever, and the mad excitement of the
impending battle. His skin seemed tense and drawn, especially upon the
forehead. As he stood there, waiting, he heard the girl's quick
breathing. Though he could hardly see her in the gloom, he felt her
presence and he loved it.

"Beatrice," said he, and for a moment his hand sought hers, "Beatrice,
little girl o' mine, if this is the big finish, if we both go down
together and there's no to-morrow, I want to tell you now—"

A yapping outcry interrupted him. The girl seized his arm. Brighter
the torchlight grew.

"Allan!" she whispered. "Come back, back, away from here. We've got to
get up those stairs, there, at the other end of the hall.
This
is no
kind of place to meet them—we're exposed, here. There's no
protection!"

"You're right." he answered. "Come!"

Like ghosts they slid away, noiselessly, through the enshrouding
gloom.

Even as they gained the shelter of the winding stairway, the scouts of
the Horde, flaring their torches into each room they passed, came into
view around the corner at the distant end.

Shuffling, hideous beyond all words by the fire-gleam, bent, wizened,
blue, the Things swarmed toward them in a vague and shifting mass, a
ruck of horror.

The defenders, peering from behind the broken balustrade, could hear
the guttural jabber of their beast-talk, the clicking play of their
fangs; could see the craning necks, the talons that held spears,
bludgeons, blow-guns, even jagged rocks.

Over all, the smoky gleams wavered in a ghastly interplay of light and
darkness. Uncanny shadows leaped along the walls. From every corner
and recess and black, empty door, ghoulish shapes seemed creeping.

Tense, now, the moment hung.

Suddenly the engineer bent forward, staring.

"The chief!" he whispered. And as he spoke, Beatrice aimed.

There, shambling among the drove of things, they saw him clearly for a
moment: Uglier, more incredibly brutal than ever he looked, now, by
that uncanny light.

Stern saw—and rejoiced in the sight—that the obeah's jaw hung surely
broken, all awry. The quick-blinking, narrow-ridded eyes shuttled
here, there, as the creature sought to spy out his enemies. The
nostrils dilated, to catch the spoor of man. Man, no longer god, but
mortal.

One hand held a crackling pine-knot. The other gripped the heft of a
stone ax, one blow of which would dash to pulp the stoutest skull.

This much Stern noted, as in a flash; when at his side the girl's
revolver spat.

The report roared heavily in that constricted space. For a moment the
obeah stopped short. A look of brute pain, of wonder, then of
quintupled rage passed over his face. A twitching grin of passion
distorted the huge, wounded gash of the mouth. He screamed. Up came
the stone ax.

"Again!" shouted Stern. "Give it to him again!"

She fired on the instant. But already, with a chattering howl, the
obeah was running forward. And after him, screaming, snarling, foaming
till their lips were all a slaver, the pack swept toward them.

Stern dragged the girl away, back to the landing.

"Up!
Up!
" he yelled.

Then, turning, he hurled the second bomb.

A blinding glare dazzled him. A shock, as of a suddenly unleashed
volcano, all but flung him headlong.

Dazed, choked by the gush of fumes that burst in a billowing cloud out
along the hall and up the stairs, he staggered forward. Tightly to his
body he clutched the remaining vials. Where was Beatrice? He knew not.
Everything boomed and echoed in his stunned ears. Below there, he
heard thunderous crashes as wrecked walls and floors went reeling
down. And ever, all about him, eddied the strangling smoke.

Then, how long after he knew not, he found himself gasping for air
beside a window.

"Beatrice!" he shouted with his first breath. Everything seemed
strangely still. No sound of pursuit, no howling now. Dead calm. Not
even the drum-beat in the forest, far below.

"
Beatrice!
Where are you?
Beatrice!
"

His heart leaped gladly as he heard her answer.

"Oh! Are you safe? Thank God! I—I was afraid—I didn't know—"

To him she ran along the dark passageway.

"No more!" she panted. "No more Pulverite here in the building!"
pleaded she. "Or the whole tower will fall—and bury us! No more!"

Stern laughed. Beatrice was unharmed; he had found her.

"I'll sow it broadcast outside," he answered, in a kind of exaltation,
almost a madness from the strain and horror of that night, the
weakness of his fever and his loss of blood. "Maybe the others, down
there still, may need it. Here goes!"

And, one by one, all seven of the bombs he hurled far out and away, to
right, to left, straight ahead, slinging them in vast parabolas from
the height.

And as they struck one by one, night blazed like noonday; and even to
the Palisades the crashing echoes roared.

The forest, swept as by a giant broom, became a jackstraw tangle of
destruction.

Thus it perished.

When the last vial of wrath had been out-poured, when silence had once
more dropped its soothing mantle and the great brooding dark had come
again, "girdled with gracious watchings of the stars," Stern spoke.

"Gods!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Gods we are now to them—to such of
them as may still live. Gods we are—gods we shall be forever!

"Whatever happens now,
they
know us. The Great White Gods of Terror!
They'll flee before our very look! Unarmed, if we meet a thousand,
we'll be safe.
Gods!
"

Another silence.

Then suddenly he knew that Beatrice was weeping.

And forgetful of all save that, forgetful of his weakness and his
wounds, he comforted her—as only a man can comfort the woman he
loves, the woman who, in turn, loves him.

After a while, both calmer grown, they looked again from the
high window.

"See!" exclaimed the engineer, and pointed.

There, far away to westward, a few straggling lights—only a very
few—slowly and uncertainly were making their way across the broad
black breast of the river.

Even as the man and woman watched, one vanished. Then another winked
out, and did not reappear. No more than fifteen seemed to reach the
Jersey shore, there to creep vaguely, slowly away and vanish in the
dense primeval woods.

"Come," said Stern at last. "We must be going, too. The night's half
spent. By morning we must be very far away."

"What? We've got to leave the city?"

"Yes. There's no such thing as staying here now. The tower's quite
untenable. Racked and shaken as it is, it's liable to fall at any
time. But, even if it should stand, we can't live here any more."

"But—where now?"

"I don't just know. Somewhere else, that's certain. Everything in this
whole vicinity is ruined. The spring's gone. Nothing remains of the
forest, nothing but horror and death. Pestilence is bound to sweep
this place in the wake of such a—such an affair.

"The sights all about here aren't such as you should see. Neither
should I. We mustn't even think of them. Some way or other we can find
a path down out of here, away—away—"

"But," she cried anxiously, "but all our treasures? All the tools and
dishes, all the food and clothing, and everything? All our precious,
hard-won things?"

"Nothing left of them now. Down on the fifth floor, at that end of the
building, I'm positive there's nothing but a vast hole blown out of
the side of the tower. So there's nothing left to salvage. Nothing at
all."

"Can you replace the things?"

"Why not? Wherever we settle down we can get along for a few days on
what game I can snare or shoot with the few remaining cartridges. And
after that—"

"Yes?"

"After that, once we get established a little, I can come into the
city and go to raiding again. What we've lost is a mere trifle
compared to what's left in New York. Why, the latent resources of this
vast ruin haven't been even touched yet! We've got our lives. That's
the only vital factor. With those everything else is possible. It all
looks dark and hard to you now, Beatrice. But in a few days—wait and
see!"

"Allan!"

"What, Beatrice?"

"I trust you in everything. I'm in your hands. Lead me."

"Come, then, for the way is long before us. Come!"

Two hours later, undaunted by the far howling of a wolfpack, as the
wan crescent of the moon came up the untroubled sky, they reached the
brink of the river, almost due west of where the southern end of
Central Park hall been.

This course, they felt, would avoid any possible encounter with
stragglers of the Horde. Through Madison Forest—or what remained of
it—they had not gone; but had struck eastward from the building, then
northward, and so in a wide detour had avoided all the horrors that
they knew lay near the wreck of the tower.

The river, flowing onward to the sea as calmly as though pain and
death and ruin and all the dark tragedy of the past night, the past
centuries, had never been, filled their tired souls and bodies with a
grateful peace. Slowly, gently it lapped the wooded shore, where docks
and slips had all gone back to nature; the moonlit ripples spoke of
beauty, life, hope, love.

Though they could not drink the brackish waters, yet they laved their
faces, arms and hands, and felt refreshed. Then for some time in
silence they skirted the flood, ever northward, away from the dead
city's heart. And the moon rose even higher, higher still, and great
thoughts welled within their hearts. The cool night breeze, freshening
in from the vast salt wastes of the sea—unsailed forever now—cooled
their cheeks and soothed the fever of their thoughts.