He got up and started to walk back through the lonely street. It was dark now, and the few gaslights cast a ghostly light, like little eclipsed moons. The fields were dead, and what was left of mankind huddled in the blasted cities, except for the lucky ones in the few Oases scattered by chance through the country. New York was a city of skeletons, each one scrabbling for food, cutting corners and hoping for tomorrow’s bread.
A small man bumped into Katterson as he wandered unseeing. Katterson looked down at him and caught him by the arm. A family man, he guessed, hurrying home to his hungry children.
“Excuse me, sir,” the little man said, nervously, straining to break Katterson’s grip. The fear was obvious on his face; Katterson wondered if the worried little man thought this giant was going to roast him on the spot.
“I won’t hurt you,” Katterson said. “I’m just looking for food, Citizen.”
“I have none.”
“But I’m starving,” Katterson said. “You look like you have a job, some money. Give me some food and I’ll be your bodyguard, your slave, anything you want.”
“Look, fellow, I have no food to spare. Ouch! Let go of my arm!”
Katterson let go, and watched the little man go dashing away down the street. People always ran away from other people these days, he thought. Malory had made a similar escape.
The streets were dark and empty. Katterson wondered if he would be someone’s steak by morning, and he didn’t really care. His chest itched suddenly, and he thrust a grimy hand inside his shirt to scratch. The flesh over his pectoral muscles had almost completely been absorbed, and his chest was bony to the touch. He felt his stubbly cheeks, noting how tight they were over his jaws.
He turned and headed uptown, skirting around the craters, climbing over the piles of rubble. At 50th Street a Government jeep came coasting by and drew to a stop. Two soldiers with guns got out.
“Pretty late for you to be strolling, Citizen,” one soldier said.
“Looking for some fresh air.”
“That all?”
“What’s it to you?” Katterson said.
“Not hunting some game too, maybe?”
Katterson lunged at the soldier. “Why, you little punk—”
“Easy, big boy,” the other soldier said, pulling him back. “We were just joking.”
“Fine joke,” Katterson said. “You can afford to joke—all you have to do to get food is wear a monkey suit. I know how it is with you Army guys.”
“Not any more,” the second soldier said.
“Who are you kidding?” Katterson said. “I was a Regular Army man for seven years until they broke up our outfit in ’52. I know what’s happening.”
“Hey—what regiment?”
“306th Exploratory, soldier.”
“You’re not Katterson, Paul Katterson?”
“Maybe I am,” Katterson said slowly. He moved closer to the two soldiers. “What of it?”
“You know Mark Leswick?”
“Damned well I do,” Katterson said. “But how do you know him?”
“My brother. Used to talk of you all the time—Katterson’s the biggest man alive, he’d say. Appetite like an ox.”
Katterson smiled. “What’s he doing now?”
The other coughed. “Nothing. He and some friends built a raft and tried to float to South America. They were sunk by the Shore Patrol just outside the New York Harbor.”
“Oh. Too bad. Fine man, Mark. But he was right about the appetite. I’m hungry.”
“So are we, fellow,” the soldier said. “They cut off the soldiers’ dole yesterday.”
Katterson laughed, and the echoes rang in the silent street. “Damn them anyway! Good thing they didn’t pull that when I was in the service; I’d have told them off.”
“You can come with us, if you’d like. We’ll be off-duty when this patrol is over, and we’ll be heading downtown.”
“Pretty late, isn’t it? What time is it? Where are you going?”
“It’s quarter to three,” the soldier said, looking at his chronometer. “We’re looking for a fellow named Malory; there’s a story he has some food for sale, and we just got paid yesterday.” He patted his pocket smugly.
Katterson blinked. “You know what kind of stuff Malory’s selling?”
“Yeah,” the other said. “So what? When you’re hungry, you’re hungry, and it’s better to eat than starve. I’ve seen some guys like you—too stubborn to go that low for a meal. But you’ll give in, sooner or later, I suppose. I don’t know—you look stubborn.”
“Yeah,” Katterson said, breathing a little harder than usual. “I guess I am stubborn. Or maybe I’m not hungry enough yet. Thanks for the lift, but I’m afraid I’m going uptown.”
And he turned and trudged off into the darkness.
There was only one friendly place to go.
Hal North was a quiet, bookish man who had come in contact with Katterson fairly often, even though North lived almost four miles uptown, on 114th Street.
Katterson had a standing invitation to come to North at any time of day or night, and, having no place else to go, he headed there. North was one of the few scholars who still tried to pursue knowledge at Columbia, once a citadel of learning. They huddled together in the crumbling wreck of one of the halls, treasuring moldering books and exchanging ideas. North had a tiny apartment in an undamaged building on 114th Street, and he lived surrounded by books and a tiny circle of acquaintances.
Quarter to three, the soldier said. Katterson walked swiftly and easily, hardly noticing the blocks as they flew past. He reached North’s apartment just as the sun was beginning to come up, and he knocked cautiously on the door. One knock, two, then another a little harder.
Footsteps within. “Who’s there?” in a tired, high-pitched voice.
“Paul Katterson,” Katterson whispered. “You awake?”
North slid the door open. “Katterson! Come on in. What brings you up here?”
“You said I could come whenever I needed to. I need to.” Katterson sat down on the edge of North’s bed. “I haven’t eaten in two days, pretty near.”
North chuckled. “You came to the right place, then. Wait—I’ll fix you some bread and oleo. We still have some left.”
“You sure you can spare it, Hal?”
North opened a cupboard and took out a loaf of bread, and Katterson’s mouth began to water. “Of course, Paul. I don’t eat much anyway, and I’ve been storing most of my food doles. You’re welcome to whatever’s here.”
A sudden feeling of love swept through Katterson, a strange, consuming emotion which seemed to enfold all mankind for a moment, then withered and died away. “Thanks, Hal. Thanks.”
He turned and looked at the tattered, thumb-stained book lying open on North’s bed. Katterson let his eye wander down the tiny print and read softly aloud.
“The emperor of the sorrowful realm was there,
Out of the girding ice he stood breast-high
And to his arm alone the giants were
Less comparable than to a giant I.”
North brought a little plate of food over to where Katterson was sitting. “I was reading that all night,” he said. “Somehow I thought of browsing through it again, and I started it last night and read ’till you came.”
“Dante’s Inferno,” Katterson said. “Very appropriate. Someday I’d like to look through it again too. I’ve read so little, you know; soldiers don’t get much education.”
“Whenever you want to read, Paul, the books are still here.” North smiled, a pale smile on his wan face. He pointed to the bookcase where grubby, frayed books leaned at all angles. “Look, Paul: Rabelais, Joyce, Dante, Enright, Voltaire, Aeschylus, Homer, Shakespeare. They’re all here, Paul, the most precious things of all. They’re my old friends; those books have been my breakfasts and my lunches and my suppers many times when no food was to be had for any price.”
“We may be depending on them alone, Hal. Have you
been out much these days?”
“No,” North said. “I haven’t been outdoors in over a week. Henriks has been picking up my food doles and bringing them here, and borrowing books. He came by yesterday—no, two days ago—to get my volume of Greek tragedies. He’s writing a new opera, based on a play of Aeschylus.”
“Poor crazy Henriks,” Katterson said. “Why does he keep on writing music when there’s no orchestras, no records, no concerts? He can’t even hear the stuff he writes.”
North opened the window and the morning air edged in. “Oh, but he does, Paul. He hears the music in his mind, and that satisfies him. It doesn’t really matter; he’ll never live to hear it played.”
“The doles have been cut off,” Katterson said.
“I know.”
“The people out there are eating each other. I saw a woman killed for food yesterday—butchered just like a cow.”
North shook his head and straightened a tangled, whitened lock. “So soon? I thought it would take longer than that, once the food ran out.”
“They’re hungry, Hal.”
“Yes, they’re hungry. So are you. In a day or so my supply up here will be gone, and I’ll be hungry too. But it takes more than hunger to break down the taboo against eating flesh. Those people out there have given up their last shred of humanity now; they’ve suffered every degradation there is, and they can’t sink any lower. Sooner or later we’ll come to realize that, you and I, and then we’ll be out there hunting for meat too.”
“Hal!”
“Don’t look so shocked, Paul.” North smiled patiently. “Wait a couple of days, till we’ve eaten the bindings of my books, till we’re finished chewing our shoes. The thought turns my stomach, too, but it’s inevitable. Society’s doomed; the last restraints are breaking now. We’re more stubborn than the rest, or maybe we’re just fussier about our meals. But our day will come too.”
“I don’t believe it,” Katterson said, rising.
“Sit down. You’re tired, and you’re just a skeleton yourself now. What happened to my big, muscular friend Katterson? Where are his muscles now?” North reached up and squeezed the big man’s biceps. “Skin, bones, what else? You’re burning down, Paul, and when the spark is finally out you’ll give in too.”
“Maybe you’re right, Hal. As soon as I stop thinking of myself as human, as soon as I get hungry enough and dead enough, I’ll be out there hunting like the rest. But I’ll hold out as long as I can.”
He sank back on the bed and slowly turned the yellowing pages of Dante.
Henriks came back the next day, wild-eyed and haggard, to return the book of Greek plays, saying the times were not ripe for Aeschylus. He borrowed a slim volume of poems by Ezra Pound. North forced some food on Henriks, who took it gratefully and without any show of diffidence. Then he left, staring oddly at Katterson.
Others came during the day—Komar, Goldman, de Metz—all men who, like Henriks and North, remembered the old days before the long war. They were pitiful skeletons, but the flame of knowledge burned brightly in each of them. North introduced Katterson to them, and they looked wonderingly at his still-powerful frame before pouncing avidly on the books.
But soon they stopped coming. Katterson would stand at the window and watch below for hours, and the empty streets remained empty. It was now four days since the last food had arrived from Trenton Oasis. Time was running out.
A light snowfall began the next day, and continued throughout the long afternoon. At the evening meal North pulled his chair over to the cupboard, balanced precariously on its arm, and searched around in the cupboard for a few moments. Then he turned to Katterson.
“I’m even worse off than Mother Hubbard,” he said. “At least she had a dog.”
“Huh?”
“I was referring to an incident in a children’s book,” North said. “What I meant was we have no more food.”
“None?” Katterson asked dully.
“Nothing at all.” North smiled faintly. Katterson felt the emptiness stirring in his stomach, and leaned back, closing his eyes.
Neither of them ate at all the next day. The snow continued to filter lightly down. Katterson spent most of the time staring out the little window, and he saw a light, clean blanket of snow covering everything in sight. The snow was unbroken.
The next morning Katterson arose and found North busily tearing the binding from his copy of the Greek plays. With a sort of amazement Katterson watched North put the soiled red binding into a pot of boiling water.
“Oh, you’re up? I’m just preparing breakfast.”
The binding was hardly palatable, but they chewed it to a soft pulp anyway, and swallowed the pulp just to give their tortured stomachs something to work on. Katterson retched as he swallowed his final mouthful.
One day of eating bookbindings.
“The city is dead,” Katterson said from the window without turning around. “I haven’t seen anyone come down this street yet. The snow is everywhere.”
North said nothing.
“This is crazy, Hal,” Katterson said suddenly. “I’m going out to get some food.”
“Where?”
“I’ll walk down Broadway and see what I can find. Maybe there’ll be a stray dog. I’ll look. We can’t hold out forever up here.”
“Don’t go, Paul.”
Katterson turned savagely. “Why? Is it better to starve up here without trying than to go down and hunt? You’re a little man; you don’t need food as much as I do. I’ll go down to Broadway; maybe there’ll be something. At least we can’t be any worse off than now.”
North smiled. “Go ahead, then.”
“I’m going.”
He buckled on his knife, put on all the warm clothes he could find, and made his way down the stairs. He seemed to float down, so lightheaded was he from hunger. His stomach was a tight hard knot.
The streets were deserted. A light blanket of snow lay everywhere, mantling the twisted ruins of the city. Katterson headed for Broadway, leaving tracks in the unbroken snow, and began to walk downtown.
At 96th Street and Broadway he saw his first sign of life, some people at the following corner. With mounting excitement he headed for 95th Street, but pulled up short.
There was a body sprawled over the snow, newly dead. And two boys of about twelve were having a duel to the death for its possession, while a third circled warily around them. Katterson watched them for a moment, and then crossed the street and walked on.
He no longer minded the snow and the solitude of the empty city. He maintained a steady, even pace, almost the tread of a machine. The world was crumbling fast around him, and his recourse lay in his solitary trek.
He turned back for a moment and looked behind him. There were his footsteps, the long trail stretching back and out of sight, the only marks breaking the even whiteness. He ticked off the empty blocks.
90th. 87th. 85th. At 84th he saw a blotch of color on the next block, and quickened his pace. When he got to close range, he saw it was a man lying on the snow. Katterson trotted lightly to him and stood over him.
He was lying face-down. Katterson bent and carefully rolled him over. His cheeks were still red; evidently he had rounded the corner and died just a few minutes before. Katterson stood up and looked around. In the window of the house nearest him, two pale faces were pressed against the pane, watching greedily.
He whirled suddenly to face a small, swarthy man standing on the other side of the corpse. They stared for a moment, the little man and the giant. Katterson noted dimly the other’s burning eyes and set expression. Two more people appeared, a ragged woman and a boy of eight or nine. Katterson moved closer to the corpse and made a show of examining it for identification, keeping a wary eye on the little tableau facing him.
Another man joined the group, and another. Now there were five, all standing silently in a semi-circle. The first man beckoned, and from the nearest house came two women and still another man. Katterson frowned; somethi
ng unpleasant was going to happen.
A trickle of snow fluttered down. The hunger bit into Katterson like a red-hot knife as he stood there uneasily waiting for something to happen. The body lay fence-like between them.
The tableau dissolved into action in an instant. The small swarthy man made a gesture and reached for the corpse; Katterson quickly bent and scooped the dead man up. Then they were all around him, screaming and pulling at the body.
The swarthy man grabbed the corpse’s arm and started to tug, and a woman reached up for Katterson’s hair. Katterson drew up his arm and swung as hard as he could, and the small man left the ground and flew a few feet, collapsing into a huddled heap in the snow.
All of them were around him now, snatching at the corpse and at Katterson. He fought them off with his one free hand, with his feet, with his shoulders. Weak as he was and outnumbered, his size remained as a powerful factor. His fist connected with someone’s jaw and there was a rewarding crack; at the same time he lashed back with his foot and felt contact with breaking ribs.
“Get away!” he shouted. “Get away! This is mine! Away!” the first woman leaped at him, and he kicked at her and sent her reeling into the snowdrifts. “Mine! This is mine!”
They were even more weakened by hunger than he was. In a few moments all of them were scattered in the snow except the little boy, who came at Katterson determinedly, made a sudden dash, and leaped on Katterson’s back.
He hung there, unable to do anything more than cling. Katterson ignored him and took a few steps, carrying both the corpse and the boy, while the heat of battle slowly cooled inside him. He would take the corpse back uptown to North; they could cut it in pieces without much trouble. They would live on it for days, he thought. They would—
He realized what had happened. He dropped the corpse and staggered a few steps away, and sank down into the snow, bowing his head. The boy slipped off his back, and the little knot of people timidly converged on the corpse and bore it off triumphantly, leaving Katterson alone.
To Be Continued: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume One Page 5