The Best of Robert Bloch

by Robert Bloch

  He skirted the road now and continued along the ditch until he came to the first sidewalks of the suburbs. Here the evidence of destruction was accentuated. Explosion and implosion had done their work. In the country paint had been peeled from the walls, but in the suburbs walls had been peeled from the buildings. Not every home was leveled. There were still plenty of ranch houses standing, though no sign of a rancher in a gray flannel suit. In some of the picturesquely modern white houses, with their light lines and heavy mortgages, the glass side walls remained unshattered, but there was no sign of happy, busy suburban life within—the television sets were dead.

  Now he found his progress impeded by an increasing litter. Apparently a blast had swept through this area; his way was blocked by a clutter of the miscellaneous debris of Exurbia.

  He waded through or stepped around:

  Boxes of Kleenex, artificial shrunken heads which had once dangled in the windows of station wagons, crumpled shopping lists, and scribbled notices of appointments with psychiatrists.

  He stepped on an Ivy League cap, nearly tripped over a twisted barbecue grill, got his feet tangled in the straps of foam-rubber falsies. The gutters were choked with the glut from a bombed-out drugstore: bobby pins, nylon bobby socks, a spate of pocketbooks, a carton of tranquilizers, a mass of sun-tan lotion, suppositories, deodorants, and a big cardboard cutout of Harry Belafonte obscured by a spilled can of hot fudge.

  He shuffled on, through a welter of women's electric shavers, Book-of-the-Month Club bonus selections, Presley records, false teeth, and treatises on Existentialism. Now he was actually approaching the city proper. Signs of devastation multiplied. Trudging past the campus of the university, he noted, with a start of horror, that the huge football stadium was no more. Nestled next to it was the tiny Fine Arts Building, and at first he thought that it, too, had been razed. Upon closer inspection, however, he realized it was untouched, save for the natural evidence of neglect and decay.

  He found it difficult to maintain a regular course now, for the streets were choked with wrecked vehicles and the sidewalks often blocked by beams or the entire toppled fronts of buildings. Whole structures had been ripped apart, and here and there were freakish variations where a roof had fallen in or a single room smashed to expose its contents. Apparently the blow had come instantly, and without forewarning, for there were few bodies on the streets and those he glimpsed inside the opened buildings gave indication that death had found them in the midst of their natural occupations.

  Here, in a gutted basement, a fat man sprawled over the table of his home workshop, his sightless eyes fixed upon the familiar calendar exhibiting entirely the charms of Marilyn Monroe. Two flights above him, through the empty frame of a bathroom window, one could see his wife, dead in the tub, her hand still clutching a movie magazine with a Rock Hudson portrait on the cover. And up in the attic, open to the sky, two young lovers stretched on a brass bed, locked naked in headless ecstasy.

  He turned away, and as his progress continued he deliberately avoided looking at the bodies. But he could not avoid seeing them now, and with familiarity the revulsion softened to the merest twinge. It then gave way to curiosity.

  Passing a school playground, he was pleased to see that the end had come without grotesque or unnatural violence. Probably a wave of paralyzing gas had swept through this area. Most of the figures were frozen upright in normal postures. Here were all the aspects of ordinary childhood—the big kid punching the little kid, both leaning up against a fence where the blast had found them; a group of six youngsters in uniform black leather jackets piled upon the body of a child wearing a white leather jacket.

  Beyond the playground loomed the center of the city. From a distance the mass of shattered masonry looked like a crazy garden patch turned by a mad plowman. Here and there were tiny blossoms of flame sprouting forth from the interstices of huge clods, and at intervals he could see lopped, stemlike formations, the lower stories of skyscrapers from which the tops had been sheared by the swish of a thermo-nuclear scythe.

  He hesitated, wondering if it was practical to venture into this weird welter. Then he caught sight of the hillside beyond and of the imposing structure which was the new Federal Building. It stood there, somehow miraculously untouched by the blast, and in the haze he could see the flag still fluttering from its roof. There would be life here, and he knew he would not be content until he reached it.

  But long before he attained his objective he found other evidences of continued existence. Moving delicately and deliberately through the debris, he became aware that he was not entirely alone here in the central chaos.

  Wherever the flames flared and flickered there were furtive figures moving against the fire. To his horror he realized that they were actually kindling the blazes, burning away barricades that could not otherwise be removed, as they entered shops and stores to loot. Some of the scavengers were silent and ashamed; others were boisterous and drunken; all were doomed.

  It was this knowledge which kept him from interfering. Let them plunder and pilfer at will; let them quarrel over the spoils in the shattered streets. In a few hours or a few days radiation and fallout would take inevitable toll.

  No one interfered with his passage; perhaps the helmet and protective garment resembled an official uniform. He went his way unhindered and saw:

  A barefooted man wearing a mink coat, dashing through the door of a cocktail lounge and passing bottles out to a bucket brigade of four small children—

  An old woman standing in a bombed-out bank vault, sweeping stacks of bills into the street with her broom. Over in one corner lay the body of a white-haired man, his futile arms outstretched to embrace a heap of coins. Impatiently the old woman nudged him with her broom. His head lolled, and a silver dollar popped out of his open mouth—

  A soldier and a woman wearing the arm band of the Red Cross, carrying a stretcher to the blocked entrance of a partially razed church. Unable to enter, they bore the stretcher around to the side, and the soldier kicked in one of the stained-glass windows—

  An artist's basement studio, open to the sky, its walls still intact and covered with abstract paintings. In the center of the room stood the easel, but the artist was gone. What was left of him was smeared across the canvas in a dripping mass, as though the artist had finally succeeded in putting something of himself into his picture—

  A welter of glassware that had once been a chemical laboratory, and in the center of it a smocked figure slumped over a microscope. On the slide was a single cell which the scientist had been intently observing when the world crashed about his ears—

  A woman with the face of a Vogue model, spread-eagled in the street. Apparently she had been struck down while answering the call of duty, for one slim, aristocratic hand still gripped the strap of her hatbox. Otherwise, due to some prank of explosion, the blast had stripped her quite naked; she lay there with all her expensive loveliness exposed, and a pigeon nested in her golden pelvis—

  A thin man emerging from a pawnshop and carrying an enormous tuba. He disappeared momentarily into a meat market next door, then came out again, the bell of his tuba stuffed with sausages—

  A broadcasting studio, completely demolished, its once immaculate sound stage littered with the crumpled cartons of fifteen different varieties of America's Favorite Cigarette and the broken bottles of twenty brands of America's Favorite Beer. Protruding from the wreckage was the head of America's Favorite Quizmaster, eyes staring glassily at a sealed booth in the corner which now served as the coffin for a nine-year-old boy who had known the batting averages of every team in the American and National leagues since 1882—

  A wild-eyed woman sitting in the street, crying and crooning over a kitten cradled in her arms—

  A broker caught at his desk, his body mummified in coils of ticker tape—

  A motorbus, smashed into a brick wall, its passengers still jamming the aisles, standees clutching straps even in rigor mortis—

 
The hindquarters of a stone lion before what had once been the Public Library; before it, on the steps, the corpse of an elderly lady whose shopping bag had spewed its contents over the street—two murder mysteries, a copy of Tropic of Cancer, and the latest issue of the Reader's Digest—

  A small boy wearing a cowboy hat, who leveled a toy pistol at his little sister and shouted, "Bang! You're dead!"

  (She was.)

  He walked slowly now, his pace impeded by obstacles both physical and of the spirit. He approached the building on the hillside by a circuitous route, avoiding repugnance, overcoming morbid curiosity, shunning pity, recoiling from horror, surmounting shock.

  He knew there were others about him here in the city's core, some bent on acts of mercy, some on heroic rescue. But he ignored them all, for they were dead. Mercy had no meaning in this mist, and there was no rescue from radiation. Some of those who passed called out to him, but he went his way, unheeding, knowing their words were mere death rattles.

  But suddenly, as he climbed the hillside, he was crying. The salty warmth ran down his cheeks and blurred the inner surface of his helmet so that he no longer saw anything clearly. And it was thus he emerged from the inner circle, the inner circle of the city, the inner circle of Dante's hell.

  His tears ceased to flow and his vision cleared. Ahead of him was the proud outline of the Federal Building, shining and intact—or almost so.

  As he neared the imposing steps and gazed up at the façade, he noted that there were a few hints of crumbling and corrosion on the surface of the structure. The freakish blast had done outright damage only to the sculptured figures surmounting the great arched doorway; the symbolic statuary had been partially shattered so that the frontal surface had fallen away. He blinked at the empty outlines of the three figures; somehow he never had realized that Faith, Hope, and Charity were hollow.

  Then he walked inside the building. There were tired soldiers guarding the doorway, but they made no move to stop him, probably because he wore a protective garment even more intricate and impressive than their own.

  Inside the structure a small army of low clerks and high brass moved antlike in the corridors, marching grim-faced up and down the stairs. There were no elevators, of course—they'd ceased functioning when the electricity gave out. But he could climb.

  He wanted to climb now, for that was why he had come here. He wanted to gaze out over the city. In his gray insulation he resembled an automaton, and like an automaton he plodded stiffly up the stairways until he reached the topmost floor.

  But there were no windows here, only walled-in offices. He walked down a long corridor until he came to the very end. Here a single large cubicle glowed with gray light from the glass wall beyond.

  A man sat at a desk, jiggling the receiver of a field telephone and cursing softly. He glanced curiously at the intruder, noted the insulating uniform, and returned to his abuse of the instrument in his hand.

  So it was possible to walk over to the big window and look down.

  It was possible to see the city, or the crater where the city had been.

  Night was mingling with the haze on the horizon, but there was no darkness. The little incendiary blazes had been spreading, apparently, as the wind moved in, and now he gazed down upon a growing sea of flame. The crumbling spires and gutted structures were drowning in red waves. As he watched, the tears came again, but he knew there would not be enough tears to put the fires out.

  So he turned back to the man at the desk, noting for the first time that he wore one of the very special uniforms reserved for generals.

  This must be the commander, then. Yes, he was certain of it now, because the floor around the desk was littered with scraps of paper. Maybe they were obsolete maps; maybe they were obsolete plans; maybe they were obsolete treaties. It didn't matter now.

  There was another map on the wall behind the desk, and this one mattered very much. It was studded with black and red pins, and it took but a moment to decipher their meaning. The red pins signified destruction, for there was one affixed to the name of this city. And there was one for New York, one for Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles—every important center had been pierced.

  He looked at the general, and finally the words came.

  "It must be awful," he said.

  "Yes, awful," the general echoed.

  "Millions upon millions dead."

  "Dead."

  "The cities destroyed, the air polluted, and no escape. No escape anywhere in the world."

  "No escape."

  He turned away and stared out the window once more, stared down at Inferno. Thinking, this is what it has come to, this is the way the world ends.

  He glanced at the general again and then sighed. "To think of our being beaten," he whispered.

  The red glare mounted, and in its light he saw the general's face, gleeful and exultant.

  "What do you mean, man?" the general said proudly, the flames rising. "We won!"

  Sleeping Beauty

  "NEW ORLEANS," SAID Morgan. "The land of dreams."

  "That's right," the bartender nodded. "That's the way the song goes."

  "I remember Connee Boswell singing it when I was just a kid," Morgan told him. "Made up my mind to hit this town someday and see for myself. But what I want to know is, where is it?"

  "It?"

  "The land of dreams," Morgan murmured. "Where'd it all disappear to?" He leaned forward and the bartender refilled his glass. "Take Basin Street, for instance. It's just a lousy railroad track. And the streetcar named Desire is a bus."

  "Used to be a streetcar, all right," the bartender assured him. "Then they took 'em out of the Quarter and made all the streets one way. That's progress, Mac."

  "Progress!" Morgan swallowed his drink. "When I got down here today I did the Quarter. Museum, Jackson Square, Pirate's Alley, Antoine's, Morning Call, the works. It's nothing but a tourist trap."

  "Now wait a minute," the bartender said. "What about all the old buildings with the balconies and grillwork, stuff like that?"

  "I saw them," Morgan admitted. "But you pass one of those fine old green-shuttered jobs and what do you see sitting right next door? A laundromat, that's what. Laundromats in the Vieux Carré. They've killed off your old Southern mammy and installed an automatic washer in her place. All the quaint, picturesque atmosphere that's left is hidden behind the walls of a private patio. What's left to see are the antique shops on Royal Street, filled with precious items imported from faraway Brooklyn."

  The bartender shrugged. "There's always Bourbon Street."

  Morgan made a face. "I hit Bourbon tonight, before I came here. A big neon nothing. Clipjoints and stripjoints. Imitation Dixieland played for visiting Swedes from Minnesota."

  "Careful, Mac," said the bartender. "I'm from Duluth myself."

  "You would be." Morgan tackled a fresh drink. "There isn't a genuine native or a genuine spot in the whole place. What's the song say about Creole babies with flashing eyes? All I saw was a bunch of B-girls out of exotic, mysterious old Cincinnati."

  The bartender tipped the bottle again without being asked, "Now I get the drift, Mac," he muttered. "Maybe you're looking for a little action, huh? Well, I know a place—"

  Morgan shook his head. "I'll bet you do. Everybody knows a place. Walking north, before I crossed Rampart, I was stopped three times. Cab drivers. They wanted to haul me to a place. And what was their big sales pitch? Air-conditioning, that's what! Man waits half his life, saves his dough for a trip down here, and the land of dreams turns out to be air-conditioned!"

  He stood up, knocking against the bar-stool.

  "Tell you a secret," Morgan said. "If Jean Lafitte was around today, he'd be a cab driver."

  He lurched out of the tavern and stood on the sidewalk outside, inhaling the damp air. It had turned quite foggy. Fog in the streets. Fog in his brain.

  He knew where he was, though—north of Rampart, east of Canal and the Jung Hotel. In spite of the fog, he wasn'
t lost.

  All at once Morgan wished he was lost. Lost on this crazy, winding little side street where the grass pushed up between the brick paving-stones and all the houses were shuttered against the night. There were no cars, no passersby, and if it wasn't for the street-lamps he could easily imagine himself to be in the old New Orleans. The real New Orleans of the songs and stories, the city of Bolden and Oliver and a kid named Satch.

  It had been that way once, he knew. Then World War I came along and they closed down Storeyville. And World War II came along and they turned Bourbon Street into a midway for servicemen and conventioneers. The tourists liked it fine; they came to the Mardi Gras parades and they ate at Arnaud's and then sampled a Sazerac at the Old Absinthe House and went home happy.

  But Morgan wasn't a tourist. He was a romantic, looking for the land of dreams.

  Forget it, he told himself.

  So he started to walk and he tried to forget it, but he couldn't. The fog grew thicker—both fogs. Out of the internal fog came phrases of the old songs and visions of the old legends. Out of the external fog loomed the crumbling walls of the St. Louis Cemetery. St. Louis Number One, the guidebooks called it.

  Well, to hell with the guidebooks. This was what Morgan had been looking for. The real New Orleans was inside these walls. Dead and buried, crumbling away in decayed glory.

  Morgan found the grilled gate. It was locked. He peered through the bars, squinting at foggy figures. There were ghosts inside, real ghosts. He could see them standing silently within—white, looming figures pointing and beckoning to him. They wanted Morgan to join them there, and that's where he belonged. Inside, with the other dead romantics—