by Rod Serling
He let out a sob and flung himself across to the door, squeezing through just before it closed. He hung on to it for a moment, then backed away from the cell to lean against the door on the opposite side, and stare across at the now closed and locked door as if it were a kind of poisonous animal.
Something told him to run. Run. Run like hell. Get out. Take off. Get away. It was a whispered command in his inner ear. It was a last ditch order from an embattled mind, assaulted by nightmarish fear that could at any moment lock him rooted to the earth. It was all his instincts screaming at him in the name of safety and salvation. Get the hell out of here. Run! Run! RUN!
He was outside in the sun racing across the street, stumbling over the curb, scratching himself on a hedge as he ploughed headfirst into it. Then over the hedge and into the park, running, running, running. He saw the school building loom up in front of him and there was a statue in front. His motion carried him up the steps to the statue until suddenly he found himself clutching a metal leg of a heroic looking educator who died in 1911 and whose metal visage loomed up in front of him silhouetted against the blue sky. Then he began to cry He looked up at the stillness, the stores, the movie theater, and finally the statue, and he cried. “Where is everybody? Please, for Christ’s sake tell me...where is everybody?”
The young man sat on the curb in the late afternoon staring down at his shadow and the other shadows that flanked him. A store awning, a bus-stop sign, a streetlight post—formless globs of shadow that stretched across the sidewalk in a line. He slowly rose to his feet, looked briefly at the bus-stop sign and then down the street as if in some halfhearted, half-hopeless expectation of seeing a big red and white bus approach, open its doors, let out a crowd of people. People. That’s what the young man wanted to see. His own kind.
The silence had been building all day. It had become an entity all of itself, a pressure on him, an oppressive, hot, itchy, wool-like thing that surrounded and covered him, that made him sweat and squirm and wish he could throw it off and crawl out.
He took a slow walk down the main street—his fortieth or fiftieth walk down that same street since morning. He passed the now familiar stores, looking into the now familiar doors, and it was the same. Counters, goods unattended.
He entered a bank for the fourth time that afternoon, and also for the fourth time, walked behind the tellers’ cages, picking up handfuls of money and throwing them aside. Once he lit his cigarette from a hundred-dollar bill and laughed uproariously at it until suddenly, after he’d thrown the half-burnt bill down on the ground, he found himself unable to laugh any longer. All right, so a guy can light a cigarette from a hundred-dollar bill, but so what?
He walked out of the bank and then crossed the street and headed for the drugstore. There was a two-for-one sale announced on signs plastered across the window. Church bells rang from down the street and this jarred him. For a moment he flattened himself against the side of the drugstore staring wildly toward the sound until he realized what it was.
He walked into the drugstore, a big, square room surrounded by high counters and shelves with many glass display cases running in lines across the room. A big, mirror-backed fountain was at the rear, with pictures of floats and frappes and sodas and malts. He stopped by the cigar counter, helped himself to an expensive one, took off its paper and sniffed.
“A good cigar, that’s what this country needs,” he said aloud as he walked toward the fountain. “A good cigar. A couple of good cigars. And some people to smoke them—”
He put the cigar carefully in a breast pocket and went in back of the fountain. From there he scanned the room, the empty booths, the juke box selectors over each one. And felt the stillness of the place that was totally incongruous with what was in it. It was a room poised for action; a room on the verge of coming alive, but never quite doing so. Behind the fountain were the ice-cream containers. He picked up an ice-cream scoop, took a glass dish from a shelf near the mirror and put two large scoops of ice cream in it. He covered this with syrup, then with nuts, added a cherry and some whipped cream.
He looked up and said, “—How about it, anybody? Anybody for a sundae?” He paused and listened to the silence. “Nobody, huh? Okay.”
He spooned up a large hunk of ice cream and cherry and whipped cream, put it in his mouth and liked the taste of it. For the first time he saw his reflection in the mirror and he was not surprised by what he saw. The face had a vaguely familiar look, not handsome, but not unpleasant. And young, he thought. It was quite young. It was the face of a man well under thirty. Maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, but no older. He studied the reflection. “You’ll forgive me, old pal,” he said to it, “but I don’t recollect the name. The face seems familiar, but the name escapes me.”
He took another bite of the ice cream, rolled it around in his mouth, melted it, and swallowed it, watching these actions in the mirror. He pointed the spoon very casually at the image.
“I’ll tell you what my problem is. I’m in the middle of a nightmare that I can’t wake up from. You’re part of it. You and the ice cream and the cigar. The police station and the phone booth—that little mannequin.” He looked down at the ice cream and then around at the drugstore, then back to his reflection.
“This whole bloody town—wherever it is—whatever it is—” He cocked his head to one side, suddenly remembering something and he grinned at the image.
“I just remembered something. Scrooge said it. You remember Scrooge, old buddy—Ebenezer Scrooge? It’s what he said to the ghost, Jacob Marley He said, ‘You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard. A crumb of cheese. A fragment of an undone potato. But there’s more of gravy about you than grave.’”
He put the spoon down now and pushed the ice cream away. “You see? That’s what you are. That’s what you all are. You’re what I had for dinner last night.” Now the smile faded. Something intense crept into the voice. “But I’ve had it now. I’ve had it. I want to wake up.” He turned from the mirror to the store and the empty booths. “If I can’t wake up I’ve got to find somebody to talk to. That much I’ve got to do. I’ve got to find somebody to talk to.”
For the first time he noticed a card standing on the counter. It was a basketball schedule of Carsville High School, announcing that on September 15th Carsville would play Corinth High. On September 21st, Carsville would play Leedsville. There’d be games on through December with six or seven other high schools—this was all announced matter-of-factly, quite officially, on the large poster.
“I must be a very imaginative guy!” the young man said at last. “Very, very imaginative. Everything right down to the last detail. The last little detail.”
He left the fountain and crossed the room to where there were several revolving pocket-book racks. Titles on the book covers flicked briefly across his consciousness, then disappeared. Murder stories, introduced on the covers by blondes in negligees, with titles like The Brothel Death Watch. Reprints of famous novels and gag books. Something called Utterly Mad, with a smiling half-wit face, captioned, “Alfred E. Neuman says, ‘What, me worry!’” Some of the books seemed familiar. Fragments of plots and characters made brief excursions into his mind. He absent-mindedly turned the racks as he walked by. They creaked around, sending titles, pictures and covers blurring in front of his eyes, until he saw one that made him reach forward, grab the rack to stop it.
The book’s cover depicted a kind of vast desert with a tiny, almost undistinguishable figure of a human being standing in the middle of it, arms akimbo, staring up toward the sky. There was a dim range of mountains beyond and, seemingly rising from the mountaintops, was a single line title, The Last Man On Earth.
The young man riveted his eyes to these words, feeling a fusion taking place between mind and sight. The Last Man On Earth. There was something especially meaningful—something of particular significance—something that suddenly made him gasp and whirl the rack around, sending the title off into a blurred orbit.
He backed away from the books, unable to take his eyes away from them, until he reached the front door and briefly saw his reflection in the mirror—a white-faced, youngish looking man who stood at the entrance to a drugstore, looking tired, lonely, desperate and—frightened.
He went out, assuming composure while both his body and his mind pulled and yanked at him. Halfway across the street, he stopped, turning round and round and round.
Suddenly he shouted, “Hey? Hey! Hey, anybody? Anybody see me? Anybody hear me? Hey!”
An answer came after a moment. The deep throated, melodic bells of the church pealed out the notice of the passing day. They rang five times and then stopped. The echo lingered, and then this too faded away. The young man went down the street past the now familiar stores, no longer seeing them. His eyes were open but he saw nothing. He kept thinking of the book titles—The Last Man On Earth, and it did something to his insides. It was as if a heavy glob of indigestible food had gone protesting down his throat to settle, leaden and heavy, in his gut. The Last Man On Earth. The picture and the words stuck with frightening clarity in his consciousness. The tiny figure of the lone man in the desert, hands outstretched. The indistinct, lonely little figure whose fate was spread across the sky, across the mountain ranges beyond it—the last man on earth. He couldn’t shake that picture, or the words, as he headed toward the park.
He was quite unaware that the afternoon sun now looked pale and distant as it moved across the sky. It was on its way out for that day.
It was night and the young man sat on a park bench close to the statue in front of the school. He played tic-tac-toe with a stick in the din, winning game after game and then wiping out each victory with the heel of his shoe to begin all over again. He’d made himself a sandwich in a small restaurant. He’d walked through the department store and then through a Woolworth five-and-dime. He’d gone into the school, through empty classrooms and had stifled an impulse to scrawl obscenities on a blackboard. Anything to shock or jar or to defy. Anything in the way of a gesture to rip away at the facade of reality that surrounded him. He was sure it was a facade. He was sure it must be just the real quality of the unreal dream and if only he could erase it and reveal what was underneath!—but he couldn’t.
A light shone on his hand. He looked up startled. Street lights were going on and lights in the park joined them. Light after light all over the town. Street lights. Store windows. And then the flickering of the marquee lights in front of the theater.
He rose from the bench and went to the theater and stopped by the tiny box office. A ticket was sticking out of the metal slot He put it in his breast pocket and was about to go inside when he saw a poster announcing the movie inside. On the poster was a large blowup of an air force pilot, profile to the sky, staring up at a flight of jet aircraft that streaked across and over him.
The young man took a step toward the poster. Slowly and unconsciously his hands touched the coveralls he was wearing and very gradually there was a bridge between himself and the man on the poster. And then it came to him. They were dressed alike. The coveralls were almost identical. The young man grew excited, and some of the fatigue washed away, leaving behind it an enthusiasm bordering on exultation. He reached out and touched the poster. Then he whirled around to look toward the empty streets and spoke aloud.
“I’m Air Force. That’s it. I’m Air Force. I’m in the Air Force. That’s right! I remember. I’m in the Air Force.” It was a tiny, insignificant skein to a crazy quilt blanket of unknowns—but it was something he could pick up and hold and analyze. It was a clue. And it was the first one. The only one. “I’m in the Air Force,” he shouted. He headed into the theater. “I’m in the Air Force!” His voice reverberated through the empty lobby. “Hey, anybody, everybody, somebody—I’m in the Air Force!” He yelled it into the theater, the words banging through the air, over the row after row of empty seats and hitting against the huge, white, motionless screen at the far end.
The young man sat down and found he was perspiring. He felt for a handkerchief, pulled it out, wiped his face. He felt the beard stubble, knowing that there were a thousand closed doors to his subconscious he was close to opening.
“Air Force,” he said softly now. “Air Force. But what does that mean? What does ‘Air Force’ mean?” His head jerked upward. “Was there a bomb? Is that it? That must have been it. A bomb—” He stopped, shaking his head. “But if there’d been a bomb, everything would have been destroyed. And nothing’s been destroyed. How could it have been a—”
The lights began to dim and a strong beam of light from a projectionist’s booth somewhere in the rear of the theater suddenly shone on the white screen. There was the sound of music, loud, blaring, martial music, and on the screen a B-52 bomber headed down a runway and suddenly screamed into the air over his head. There were more big B-52’s and now they were in the sky, a flight of them, heading up leaving lines of vapor trails. And always the music blaring out underneath it.
The young man rose to his feet, his eyes wide, disbelieving. The beam of light disappeared into a small, blinking hole high above a balcony.
“Hey!” he screamed. “Who’s showing the picture? Somebody must be showing the picture! Hey! Do you see me? I’m down here. Hey, whoever’s showing the picture—I’m down here!”
He ran up the aisle, through the lobby, and up the stairs to the balcony. He stumbled across the dark seats, falling several times and finally, not finding an aisle, he simply crawled and jumped and scrambled over the tops of seats toward the small bright hole in the wall at the far end. He threw his face against it, staring directly into the blinding, white light. It sent him reeling back in momentary blindness.
When he could see again he found another opening in the wall, higher than the first. He jumped up, and got a quick glimpse of an empty room, a giant projector and stacks of film cans. He was dimly aware of voices on the screen, loud, giant voices that filled the theater. Once again he jumped up to look in the projectionist’s booth and in the brief moment of one-sided combat with gravity, he again saw the empty room, the machine running smoothly, the hum of it heard dimly through the glass.
But when he landed back on his feet he knew there was no one up there. It was a machine running by itself. It was a picture showing itself. It was like the town and everything in it. Machines, items, things—all unattended. He backed away, banged against the back of the top row of seats and, losing his balance, sprawled head first.
The beam of light kept changing intensity as scenes altered on the screen. There was dialogue and music and it reverberated around the theater. Voices of giants. Music of a million-piece band. And something inside the young man cracked. The small compartment in the back of his mind, where man closets his fears, ties them up, controls and commands them, broke open and they surged across brain and nerves and muscles—a nightmare flood in open rebellion.
The young man scrambled to his feet, sobbing, choking, screaming. He raced down the stairs, through the door, down the steps toward the lobby.
It was when he reached the foot of the steps that he saw the other person. He was directly across the lobby and approaching from a flight of stairs the young man hadn’t noticed before. The young man didn’t see him clearly nor did he try. He just ran toward him, dimly aware that the other person was running toward him at the same time. In the fraction of a moment that it took him to cross the lobby he had only one thought and that was to reach the other person, to touch him, to hold him. To follow him out to wherever he was going. Out of the building, off the streets, out of the city, because now he knew that he must get away.
It was this thought that filled his mind just be
fore he hit the mirror—a full length mirror that hung on the opposite wall. And he hit it with the force of a hundred and seventy pounds, smashing into it at a dead run. The mirror seemed to explode into a thousand pieces. He found himself on the floor looking at little fragments of his reflection in the small and minute sections of mirror that remained on the wall. It was the picture of a hundred young men lying cut and dazed on the floor of a theater lobby, staring up at what was left of a mirror. And then he lurched to his feet and, like a drunken man in a tilting ship in a heavy sea, he stumbled out of the lobby and out into the street.
Outside it was dark and misty; the streets were wet. The street lights were enveloped in fog and each shone like a dim moon hanging in vapor. He began to run along sidewalks and across streets. He tripped over a bicycle stand and landed on his face, but was on his feet in a moment continuing the mad, headlong, thoughtless, desperate race to no place in particular. He tripped over a curb near the drugstore and again fell on his face, conscious for a moment that he could still feel pain—a jarring, wrenching pain. But only for a moment. He pushed his palms against the sidewalk, forcing himself up and then fell over on his back.
For a moment he lay there, eyes closed. And then he opened them. A nightmare knocked at his head and asked to come in and ice flowed over his body. He started to scream. An eye was looking at him. A giant eye, bigger than the upper trunk of a man. An unblinking, cold-looking eye was staring at him and his scream never let up, even after he had floundered again to his feet and started to run back toward the park. He was like a human siren disappearing into the dark. Behind him the big painted eye on the optometrist’s window stared after him—cold, inhuman and unblinking.
He fell, clutching against a street light. There was a panel with a button which his fingers touched, scrabbled at and finally kept pushing over and over again. A sign over it read, “Push to turn green.” He didn’t know the sign was there. He only knew he had to push the button and this he kept doing, while the light over the intersection turned red, then yellow, then green, over and over again, responding to the bleeding knuckles of the young man who kept pushing a button and moaning to himself in a soft, barely intelligible chant.