by Jerry
It was as black as a pocket—there were no, windows. He began to get the rhythm—twenty-eight steps; turn—three steps—twenty-eight steps, turn—three steps—twenty-eight steps, turn. He began to count the floors. Finally, at about the fiftieth he ran into trouble with a door that was stuck. This took a great deal of time. Joe’s shirt was soaked through, his head pounded, and he was scared!
WHAT seemed like hours later, exhausted, he walked into the lobby. Sun shone through the windows, and he walked into the street.
Broad daylight! It must have been later than he thought when he started down, or else it had taken him longer than he thought. He crossed the street and walked over and looked down at the skating rink. There were no skaters. There were a couple of cars parked over by the American Airlines office, and he walked over toward Forty-ninth Street and then east toward Fifth Avenue.
Standing in the middle of Fifth Avenue at Forty-ninth Street, for the first time he noticed that there was quite a grade down to Forty-second Street.
The sun was hot. It must have been around eleven o’clock. He took off his coat and started to walk slowly uptown, along the white line that divided Fifth Avenue in the middle.
As Joe walked along he wondered. “Where did everybody go? Maybe this is the end of the world. Maybe that guy over in Berry Meadows was right.”
Joe, for the moment, couldn’t remember his name.
He looked at the statue of Atlas opposite the Cathedral. He was a little surprised that Atlas hadn’t set the world down to stretch his arms.
“He’ll never have a better chance,” muttered Joe.
At Fifty-second Street he turned east. At Madison he felt for cigarettes, turned and walked into a drugstore, and took two packages of a popular brand.
He noticed again the stillness, the bright sunshine, the cloudless sky, the lack of human beings. But not a breath of air stirred. Joe walked across Park, east past Lexington, under the Elevated, across Second Avenue and down the block to his house.
He got out his key and discovered the downstairs door was open. He noticed a wrong-side-out umbrella on the fire escape on the first floor. He ran up the stairs to his fourth floor apartment.
Bill Nolan, the chap he lived with, had shut the window, but the rain had seeped in somehow and soaked the floor in front of the window. Bill, of course, had gone. Joe looked around for a note—in the typewriter—on the mantle over the fire-place. He looked at himself in the mirror.
Somehow it gave him a start. For a moment Joe had the funny feeling that he didn’t look as he had always believed he did. That bang on the head had certainly knocked him lopsided. He turned his head in an effort to inspect the bump in the mirror. It was right over his right ear and he touched it gingerly. A good bump, but no blood. Joe rubbed his chin. He needed a shave.
He went out and opened the icebox. The light didn’t go on. He got out a bottle of milk and started to pour some, but discovered immediately that it was sour, very sour.
“That’s funny,” thought Joe. “It shouldn’t be sour.”
He looked at the date on the cap. “Bottled Wednesday, October 8th,” it said.
“That was yesterday,” muttered Joe. An odd expression came over Joe’s face. He wondered if it was only yesterday. “I couldn’t be a Twentieth-Century Rip Van Winkle. No, I’d be hungrier.”
A can of beer was okay. Some crackers that were kind of soggy gave Joe some sustenance. He put down the beer glass and walked out of the apartment. By the time he got to the second floor he was going down three steps at a time. Joe Dunn was scared again—good and scared!
Joe slowly walked over toward the river where he sat down on a bench in a little park which was actually the end of the street right at the river’s edge. He was beginning to realize that apparently he was the last person in New York—maybe the last man in the whole world, and through some fault in the Universe Master’s bookkeeping he had been overlooked.
“What does a fellow do who is the last man in New York. Where does he live? What does he do and whom does he see? I can live anywhere. There are hundreds of apartments and hotels. I can live in a different one every day, so far as that goes. There’s probably enough canned goods in New York to keep me going for a thousand years. That’s a nice idea—a thousand years all alone!”
He had to find somebody else—somebody to talk to—Joe Dunn was lonesome!
He lighted another cigarette and walked over to the railing and started to flip the match into the East River, then stared.
There were no whirlpools, no rushing water. The East River was stagnant, just dirty, still water. Already pieces of wood that floated above the water were drying in the sun. There was something strange about the sun, now that he looked at it. The sun didn’t appear to have changed its position since early morning. It was in the same spot it had occupied at forenoon.
“This must be my imagination,” muttered Joe.
He took out a handkerchief, wiped his forehead and walked rapidly away.
CHAPTER III
Desert of Loneliness
AFTER a while, Joe Dunn decided to go down to his office and see what happened down there. It took him two hours, and by the time he got to South Street the curbstones seemed to be two feet high, he was that tired. When he sat down at his desk his shirt was wet. In the top drawer was a little notebook with telephone numbers.
He took out a folding checkbook, looked at the balance which was two-hundred sixty-six dollars, but noticed there were two stubs which he neglected to fill out. He stuck the checkbook in his pocket and walked; down the hall to the publisher’s office.
He had never been in this inner sanctum, and it looked pretty much the way he imagined it would. It was paneled. There was a big leather over-stuffed chair in which, as you swiveled around, you could look out over the East River. There was a freighter tied up at the Pier, right across the street, silent, deserted—motionless.
Joe walked back to his own desk, rummaged around in the bottom drawer and found an old pipe he had forgotten about. He walked over to Julie’s desk and opened the top drawer. There was a small broken mirror, a ten-cent tube of cold cream, a U. S. Camera book dated nineteen forty-nine, some miscellaneous papers and one of those plastic hair curlers which was clipped around some bills. The top one was from Bloomingdale’s. Joe took down her address. It was Twenty-two Grove Street.
On his way out of the building he went down into the basement where the presses were. The room was still and dark and damp. The presses looked big and black and oily. He went over to where the papers feed out, and climbed upon the roller to see what edition had been running when they stopped. It was the City Edition. As he leaned over sideways to look at the headline, which Was in twenty-four-point type, he read:
ELECTRICAL STORM PARALYZES CITY
All Communications To New York
Go Dead As Odd Disturbance
Moves In From Southeast
As Dunn started to climb down he noticed a little story in the lower left hand corner of Page One. It looked strangely familiar. He started to read it.
It had a Berry Meadows, New Jersey, October 8th, dateline. The story was intended to be an amusing account of the goings-on of a Fletcher B. Fletcher, an odd Evangelist who predicted the end of the world Wednesday night at twelve o’clock.
It concluded: “However, up until a late hour tonight everything was going on in customary fashion throughout the world, in spite of Mr. Fletcher. Taxes are too high, helicopters are still too expensive and synthetic foods still lack natural flavor. Apparently Fletcher has been too busy ending the world to attend to minor details.”
Joe read it again and climbed down off the roller. He brushed himself off.
“Very funny,” he muttered, and left the office. The sun was still bright. “By Jupiter!” he marveled. “The rivers are stagnant, the sun doesn’t move.”
Joe began walking back uptown along Fourth Avenue. Through Grand Central and on up Park to the Waldorf. He went in through the Park
Avenue entrance and up the broad steps and into the main lobby. Complete exhaustion had finally caught up with him. He looked around one of the lower floors and found a room that was open, and there prepared to spend the night. It was a comfortable room, with a double four-poster bed. A “Do Not Disturb” sign hung on the doorknob. Before he got into bed, with a pencil he marked out the word “not,” so the sign read “Do Disturb,” and hung it outside of his door. He was tired, but the strange daylight kept him awake. Finally he got up and pulled down all the shades.
WHEN he awoke in the morning he got a start before he remembered where he was. He needed some shaving equipment as he now had a two-day’s beard. He could also do with a clean shirt.
On his way downstairs he decided he might as well get a suite. There must have been at least 1200 rooms in this hotel, and no need of his having only one room.
“Gosh, I can have a floor if I want it,” said Dunn.
In the big kitchens he collected a five-gallon jug of Bear Spring Water, a chafing dish, some canned goods, knives and forks, and took them up to a two-room suite on the third floor.
Later that day he began systematically to explore this strange New York without people. It needed strenuous leg work, and the next day Joe stayed in bed until late. He wasn’t sure what time it was, because of the odd breakdown in mechanics. His watch didn’t appear to be broken, but it wouldn’t run. He wound it, but it didn’t tick, and the hands wouldn’t move. He smoked a couple of cigarettes and thought about things.
Later, when he did get up, he decided to walk across town. As he passed Abercrombie and Fitch’s window he decided he ought to have a gun—why, he had no idea. He wasn’t even sure that a gun would work. He was sure there was some kind of a general mechanical mixup. His watch wouldn’t work, and a taxicab, with the key in the switch never moved a gear tooth when he stepped on the starter. For some reason wheels just wouldn’t go around. He borrowed a monkey wrench from the car and smashed the door glass of the store. The crash seemed loud but was quickly stifled in the aching silence.
Entering, Joe walked through the archery department of Abercrombie’s looking for the gun counter. On his way, he took down a bow and solemnly aimed an arrow at a clothes dummy which was standing near the doorway in a hunting costume. He missed the dummy, and the arrow shot through the shattered door into Madison Avenue and clattered across the street to stop against the opposite curb. Gloomily, he went on and found a gun he liked. It was a thirty-eight Colt automatic.
Late that afternoon, back in his room, he put the gun and the box of shells on the dresser. He never did try to fire it. As a matter of fact, he never carried it again. He didn’t want to find out that it wouldn’t work.
A couple of days passed. With his exploring Joe had pretty well covered the midtown section of Manhattan. He went into apartment houses along Park Avenue, and shops on the Avenue, breaking his way in whenever necessary, and never once setting off a burglar alarm. One day he stopped in the University Club and sat in an overstuffed chair, looking out over Fifth Avenue, and pretending; But it was no fun alone. Nothing was. He wanted to talk to somebody beside himself. His voice seemed to have a funny sound in his ears.
He began to lose track of time, of course, in this city of changelessness’ with the sun frozen in one spot in the morning sky. But the equivalent of a week must have gone by, during which time he had walked across Queens Bridge to Long Island City, had gone aboard one of the big ships tied up in the North River, and otherwise sought occupation as well as an answer to this ghastly enigma.
That the end of the world had come was ridiculous. For here the world was, and he with it. But something had happened to people and animals and insects—and time! Time? Time hadn’t been completely frozen, or else there had been a slip of cogs in the machinery of the Universe Master. For it had changed from night to midmorning while Joe had descended from the R.C.A. tower.
Which reminded Joe of something. He hadn’t been back to the top of the R.C.A. Building. There might be something he had missed or overlooked up on the balcony. Maybe Julie was still there. She had been with him at the moment he fell. She had fallen, too. Where the devil was Julie? Why wasn’t she trapped in this terrible nightmare with him?
It took more than three hours to climb to the top of Radio City’s tallest building. Many times Joe had to stop and rest. When he finally walked out on to the parapet he was exhausted and trembling. He had to sit down on a bench and get his wind back before he felt up to doing any exploring.
For a long time he sat there, glancing now and then up at the sun. It hung like a picture. He reached out his foot and placed the toe of his shoe on the exact edge of the shadow. He waited for an interminable period, but the shadow never moved. This only told him what he already knew. The world was dead and time had simply ceased to exist. Only Joe Dunn was still alive.
RESTLESSLY he got up and walked around the parapet, looking over the city for some sign of life, of smoke—even a moving cloud in the sky. There was nothing.
Returning inside, he walked in back of the bar, picked out a fresh bottle of Scotch, turned to put it on the bar—and nearly dropped in his tracks. There, standing in the middle of the bar was another bottle. Someone had pulled the heavy lead foil off the top, and apparently had taken one drink out of it.
Joe, without taking his eyes off the bottle, walked slowly around the bar, carrying his bottle of Scotch by the neck, and climbed up on a stool. He continued to stare; at the bottle on the bar. It was a brandy bottle. While Joe looked at it, he automatically opened his bottle of Scotch and poured himself a drink. Someone had opened a bottle of brandy after he had left. He was sure there had been no bottle on the bar when he had come in off the platform that night.
Maybe it was Julie! Maybe Julie had been out there on that platform after all. Maybe he hadn’t walked all the way around. Maybe he just thought he had. Joe poured himself another drink, and for the first time since the storm, he felt right. There was somebody else in town. Now all he had to do was find that somebody.
Joe carefully examined everything; in the room, went slowly around every foot of the parapet, but there wasn’t any other sign or clue. There was nothing more to do up there. He’d better start to find out, who it was.
Before long he was using the old rhythm—twenty-eight steps down, turn, three steps, and so on. Only this time he was! going faster.
Joe Dunn was out to find another human being!
CHAPTER IV
Message in Soap
SUDDENLY, on the count of twenty-six Joe stepped on something that turned under him. He grabbed for the railing, missed and fell the last two steps to land on his hands and knees. He got up, gingerly rubbed his knees and thought about what might have happened.
“A fine time for a broken leg!” he growled. Lighting a match to see what had thrown him, he got a surprise. There on the bottom step was a heel off a gal’s slipper. “By glory, somebody else is living here in New York—and it’s a dame! A girl who has a heel off her slipper.”
Joe put the heel in his pocket and proceeded more carefully down the rest of the way, and out on the street.
Standing in front of the building in the bright sunshine, Joe examined the heel carefully. “It must be Julie’s, yet this can’t be off Julie’s shoe because she always wears those tug-boat type. Perhaps she’s changed her style, but I can’t be sure. Maybe she did have this kind of shoe on that night. She went home after it happened. Twenty-two Grove Street.”
Grimly Joe Dunn started walking downtown toward Grove Street with the heel of the slipper in his hand.
“Maybe that bottle of brandy was on the bar the night I took the bottle of Scotch,” thought Joe. “No, I’m sure it wasn’t. Anyway, what about the heel? Maybe it wasn’t Julie’s. Maybe it was some other gal’s. Anyway, it was somebody’s.”
If it wasn’t Julie’s whose was it? Dunn began to wonder what she might look like. He studied the heel to try and get some idea. It wasn’t scuffed and it w
asn’t run over. It looked as if it came off a good shoe, a slim, narrow shoe. There was still the mark of a little sticker that had been pasted on the inside. Someone had carefully pulled it off with a long, manicured nail, Joe hoped.
So far as that went, Julie had long, well-shaped nails. Joe was walking faster. As a matter of fact, Julie Wasn’t bad looking. Nope, as a matter of fact, Julie was quite attractive. Yes, indeed!
Twenty-two Grove Street was a made-over brownstone. Inside the door was a brass mailbox, with the names of the tenants alongside little black push buttons. Kraft, Michaelson, Jessie Brandix—Julie A. Crosby! Joe pushed the button and then, without waiting, pushed open the front door and walked into a little hall. As soon as he did he knew that Julie wasn’t home.
In Julie’s apartment was the hat she had worn the morning they drove out to New Jersey. The reversible coat she had worn that same morning was tossed over a chair. Joe looked in a clothes closet, hoping to find a slipper with a heel off. There were lots of shoes, but none there with a heel off. Joe picked up a black slipper and examined it. It had a heel like the one he held in his hand.
“Wonder why she wore those other shoes when she had all these little slippers in her closet?” Disconsolately he walked out, down the stairs and into the street. He was at a new low.
On his way uptown he had trouble keeping his hopes up about the possibility of someone else being in town, and tried to sell himself on the idea that he mustn’t get discouraged.
“You’ve got to keep trying,” he said to himself. But he was depressed.
Late that night, exhausted, he partially convinced himself that there might be someone. else besides Julie. He would have a look around tomorrow.
In the morning, as he was shaving, he accidentally rubbed some soap on the mirror. He snapped his fingers, and hurried through his dressing. He took the bar of soap from his bathroom and put it in his pocket. Everywhere he went that day he wrote on the windows with the soap, “Did you lose your heel?”