Pillar of Fire - 2

blocks themselves were only faintly illuminated. Could it be that these
remarkable people were not _afraid of the dark_? Incredible nonsense!
_Every one_ was afraid of the dark. _Even he_ himself had been afraid,
as a child. It was as natural as eating.
A little boy ran by on pelting feet, followed by six others. They
yelled and shouted and rolled on the dark cool October lawn, in the
leaves. Lantry looked on for several minutes before addressing himself
to one of the small boys who was for a moment taking a respite,
gathering his breath into his small lungs, as a boy might blow to
refill a punctured paper bag.
"Here, now," said Lantry. "You'll wear yourself out."
"Sure," said the boy.
"Could you tell me," said the man, "why there are no street lights in
the middle of the blocks?"
"Why?" asked the boy.
"I'm a teacher, I thought I'd test your knowledge," said Lantry.
"Well," said the boy, "you don't need lights in the middle of the
block, that's why."
"But it gets rather dark," said Lantry.
"So?" said the boy.
"Aren't you afraid?" asked Lantry.
"Of what?" asked the boy.
"The dark," said Lantry.
"Ho ho," said the boy. "Why should I be?"
"Well," said Lantry. "It's black, it's dark. And after all, street
lights were invented to take away the dark and take away fear."
"That's silly. Street lights were made so you could see where you were
walking. Outside of that there's nothing."
"You miss the whole point--" said Lantry. "Do you mean to say you would
sit in the middle of an empty lot all night and not be afraid?"
"Of what?"
"Of what, of what, of what, you little ninny! Of the dark!"
"Ho ho."
"Would you go out in the hills and stay all night in the dark?"
"Sure."
"Would you stay in a deserted house alone?"
"Sure."
"And not be afraid?"
"Sure."
"You're a liar!"
"Don't you call me nasty names!" shouted the boy. Liar was the improper
noun, indeed. It seemed to be the worst thing you could call a person.
Lantry was completely furious with the little monster. "Look," he
insisted. "Look into my eyes...."
The boy looked.
Lantry bared his teeth slightly. He put out his hands, making a
clawlike gesture. He leered and gesticulated and wrinkled his face into
a terrible mask of horror.
"Ho ho," said the boy. "You're funny."
"_What_ did you say?"
"You're funny. Do it again. Hey, gang, c'mere! This man does funny
things!"
"Never mind."
"Do it again, sir."
"Never mind, never mind. Good night!" Lantry ran off.
"Good night, sir. And mind the dark, sir!" called the little boy.
* * * * *
Of all the stupidity, of all the rank, gross, crawling, jelly-mouthed
stupidity! He had never seen the like of it in his life! Bringing the
children up without so much as an _ounce_ of imagination! Where was the
fun in being children if you didn't imagine things?
He stopped running. He slowed and for the first time began to
appraise himself. He ran his hand over his face and bit his finger
and found that he himself was standing midway in the block and he
felt uncomfortable. He moved up to the street corner where there was a
glowing lantern. "That's better," he said, holding his hands out like a
man to an open warm fire.
He listened. There was not a sound except the night breathing of the
crickets. Faintly there was a fire-hush as a rocket swept the sky. It
was the sound a torch might make brandished gently on the dark air.
He listened to himself and for the first time he realized what there
was so peculiar to himself. There was not a sound in him. The little
nostril and lung noises were absent. His lungs did not take nor give
oxygen or carbon-dioxide; they did not move. The hairs in his nostrils
did not quiver with warm combing air. That faint purring whisper of
breathing did not sound in his nose. Strange. Funny. A noise you never
heard when you were alive, the breath that fed your body, and yet, once
dead, oh how you missed it!
The only other time you ever heard it was on deep dreamless awake
nights when you wakened and listened and heard first your nose taking
and gently poking out the air, and then the dull deep dim red thunder
of the blood in your temples, in your eardrums, in your throat, in
your aching wrists, in your warm loins, in your chest. All of those
little rhythms, gone. The wrist beat gone, the throat pulse gone, the
chest vibration gone. The sound of the blood coming up down around and
through, up down around and through. Now it was like listening to a
statue.
And yet he _lived_. Or, rather, moved about. And how was this done,
over and above scientific explanations, theories, doubts?
By one thing, and one thing alone.
Hatred.
Hatred was a blood in him, it went up down around and through, up down
around and through. It was a heart in him, not beating, true, but warm.
He was--what? Resentment. Envy. They said he could not lie any longer
in his coffin in the cemetery. He had _wanted_ to. He had never had any
particular desire to get up and walk around. It had been enough, all
these centuries, to lie in the deep box and feel but _not feel_ the
ticking of the million insect watches in the earth around, the moves of
worms like so many deep thoughts in the soil.
But then they had come and said, "Out you go and into the furnace!" And
that is the worst thing you can say to any man. You cannot tell him
what to do. If you say you are dead, he will want not to be dead. If
you say there are no such things as vampires, by God, that man will try
to _be_ one just for spite. If you say a dead man cannot walk, he will
test his limbs. If you say murder is no longer occurring, he will make
it occur. He was, _in toto_, all the impossible things. They had given
birth to him with their damnable practices and ignorances. Oh, how
wrong they were. They needed to be shown. He would _show_ them! Sun is
_good_, so is _night_, there is nothing wrong with dark, _they_ said.
Dark is horror, he shouted, silently, facing the little houses. It is
_meant_ for contrast. You must fear, you hear! That has always been
the way of this world. You destroyers of Edgar Allan Poe and fine
big-worded Lovecraft, you burner of Hallowe'en masks and destroyer of
pumpkin jack-o-lanterns! I will make night what it _once_ was, the
thing against which man built all his lanterned cities and his many
children!
As if in answer to this, a rocket, flying low, trailing a long rakish
feather of flame. It made Lantry flinch and draw back.

IV
It was but ten miles to the little town of Science Port. He made it by
dawn, walking. But even this was not good. At four in the morning a
silver beetle pulled up on the road beside him.
"Hello," called the man inside.
"Hello," said Lantry, wearily.
"Why are you walking?" asked the man.
"I'm going to Science Port."
"Why don't you ride?"
"I _like_ to walk."
"_Nobody_ likes to walk. Are you sick? May I give you a ride?"
"Thanks, but I like to walk."
The man hesitated, then closed the beetle door. "Good night."
When the beetle was gone over the hill, Lantry retreated into a nearby
forest. A world full of bungling helping people. By God, you couldn't
even _walk_ without being accused of sickness. That meant only one
thing. He must not walk any longer, he had to ride. He should have
accepted that fellow's offer.
The rest of the night he walked far enough off the highway so that if
a beetle rushed by he had time to vanish in the underbrush. At dawn he
crept into an empty dry water-drain and closed his eyes.
* * * * *
_The dream was as perfect as a rimed snowflake._
_He saw the graveyard where he had lain deep and ripe over the
centuries. He heard the early morning footsteps of the laborers
returning to finish their work._
_"Would you mind passing me the shovel, Jim?"_
_"Here you go."_
_"Wait a minute, wait a minute!"_
_"What's up?"_
_"Look here. We didn't finish last night, did we?"_
_"No."_
_"There was one more coffin, wasn't there?"_
_"Yes."_
_"Well, here it is, and open!"_
_"You've got the wrong hole."_
_"What's the name say on the gravestone?"_
_"Lantry. William Lantry."_
_"That's him, that's the one! Gone!"_
_"What could have happened to it?"_
_"How do I know. The body was here last night."_
_"We can't be sure, we didn't look."_
_"God, man, people don't bury empty coffins. He was in his box. Now he
isn't."_
_"Maybe this box was empty."_
_"Nonsense. Smell that smell? He was here all right."_
_A pause._
_"Nobody would have taken the body, would they?"_
_"What for?"_
_"A curiosity, perhaps."_
_"Don't be ridiculous. People just don't steal. Nobody steals."_
_"Well, then, there's only one solution."_
_"And?"_
_"He got up and walked away."_
_A pause. In the dark dream, Lantry expected to hear laughter. There
was none. Instead, the voice of the gravedigger, after a thoughtful
pause, said, "Yes. That's it, indeed. He got up and walked away."_
_"That's interesting to think about," said the other._
_"Isn't it, though?"_
_Silence._
* * * * *
Lantry awoke. It had all been a dream, but God, how realistic. How
strangely the two men had carried on. But not unnaturally, oh, no. That
was exactly how you expected men of the future to talk. Men of the
future. Lantry grinned wryly. That was an anachronism for you. This
_was_ the future. This was happening _now_. It wasn't 300 years from
now, it was now, not then, or any other time. This wasn't the Twentieth
Century. Oh, how calmly those two men in the dream had said, "He got up
and walked away." "--interesting to think about." "_Isn't_ it, though?"
With never a quaver in their voices. With not so much as a glance over
their shoulders or a tremble of spade in hand. But, of course, with
their perfectly honest, logical minds, there was but one explanation;
certainly nobody had _stolen_ the corpse. "_Nobody_ steals." The corpse
had simply got up and walked off. The corpse was the only one who could
have _possibly_ moved the corpse. By the few casual slow words of the
gravediggers Lantry knew what they were thinking. Here was a man that
had lain in suspended animation, not really dead, for hundreds of
years. The jarring about, the activity, had brought him back.
Everyone had heard of those little green toads that are sealed for
centuries inside mud rocks or in ice patties, alive, alive oh! And how
when scientists chipped them out and warmed them like marbles in their
hands the little toads leapt about and frisked and blinked. Then it
was only logical that the gravediggers think of William Lantry in like
fashion.
But what if the various parts were fitted together in the next day or
so? If the vanished body and the shattered, exploded incinerator were
connected? What if this fellow named Burke, who had returned pale from
Mars, went to the library again and said to the young woman he wanted
some books and she said, "Oh, your friend Lantry was in the other day."
And he'd say, "Lantry who? Don't know anyone by that name." And she'd
say, "Oh, he _lied_." And people in this time didn't lie. So it would
all form and coalesce, item by item, bit by bit. A pale man who was
pale and shouldn't be pale had lied and people don't lie, and a walking
man on a lonely country road had walked and people don't walk anymore,
and a body was missing from a cemetery, and the Incinerator had blown
up and and and--
They would come after him. They would find him. He would be easy to
find. He walked. He lied. He was pale. They would find him and take him
and stick him through the open fire lock of the nearest Burner and that
would be your Mr. William Lantry, like a fourth of July set-piece!
[Illustration: _They would come after him. They would find him._]
There was only one thing to be done efficiently and completely. He
arose in violent moves. His lips were wide and his dark eyes were
flared and there was a trembling and burning all through him. He must
kill and kill and kill and kill and kill. He must make his enemies into
friends, into people like himself who walked but shouldn't walk, who
were pale in a land of pinks. He must kill and then kill and then kill
again. He must make bodies and dead people and corpses. He must destroy
Incinerator after Flue after Burner after Incinerator. Explosion on
explosion. Death on death. Then, when the Incinerators were all in
thrown ruin, and the hastily established morgues were jammed with the
bodies of people shattered by the explosion, then he would begin his
making of friends, his enrollment of the dead in his own cause.
Before they traced and found and killed him, they must be killed
themselves. So far he was safe. He could kill and they would not kill
back. People simply do not go around killing. That was his safety
margin. He climbed out of the abandoned drain, stood in the road.
He took the knife from his pocket and hailed the next beetle.
* * * * *
It was like the Fourth of July! The biggest damned firecracker of them
all. The Science Port Incinerator split down the middle and flew apart.
It made a thousand small explosions that ended with a greater one. It
fell upon the town and crushed houses and burned trees. It woke people
from sleep and then put them to sleep again, forever, an instant later.
William Lantry, sitting in a beetle that was not his own, tuned idly to
a station on the audio dial. The collapse of the Incinerator had killed
some four hundred people. Many had been caught in flattened houses,
others struck by flying metal. A temporary morgue was being set up at--
An address was given.
Lantry noted it with a pad and pencil.
He could go on this way, he thought, from town to town, from country to
country, destroying the Burners, the Pillars of Fire, until the whole
clean magnificent framework of flame and cauterization was tumbled. He
made a fair estimate--each explosion averaged five hundred dead. You
could work that up to a hundred thousand in no time.
He pressed the floor stud of the beetle. Smiling, he drove off through
the dark streets of the city.
* * * * *
The city coroner had requisitioned an old warehouse. From midnight
until four in the morning the grey beetles hissed down the rain-shiny
streets, turned in, and the bodies were laid out on the cold concrete
floors, with white sheets over them. It was a continuous flow until
about four-thirty, then it stopped. There were about two hundred bodies
there, white and cold.
The bodies were left alone; nobody stayed behind to tend them. There
was no use tending the dead; it was a useless procedure; the dead could
take care of themselves.
About five o'clock, with a touch of dawn in the east, the first trickle
of relatives arrived to identify their sons or their fathers or their
mothers or their uncles. The people moved quickly into the warehouse,
made the identification, moved quickly out again. By six o'clock, with
the sky still lighter in the east, this trickle had passed on, also.
William Lantry walked across the wide wet street and entered the
warehouse.
He held a piece of blue chalk in one hand.
He walked by the coroner who stood in the entranceway talking to two
others. "... drive the bodies to the Incinerator in Mellin Town,
tomorrow...." The voices faded.
Lantry moved, his feet echoing faintly on the cool concrete. A wave of
sourceless relief came to him as he walked among the shrouded figures.
He was among his own. And--better than that, by God! he had _created_
these! He had made them dead! He had procured for himself a vast number
of recumbent friends!
Was the coroner watching? Lantry turned his head. No. The warehouse
was calm and quiet and shadowed in the dark morning. The coroner was
walking away now, across the street, with his two attendants; a beetle
had drawn up on the other side of the street, and the coroner was going
over to talk with whoever was in the beetle.
William Lantry stood and made a blue chalk pentagram on the floor by
each of the bodies. He moved swiftly, swiftly, without a sound, without
blinking. In a few minutes, glancing up now and then to see if the
coroner was still busy, he had chalked the floor by a hundred bodies.
He straightened up and put the chalk in his pocket.
Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is
the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the
time....
Lying in the earth, over the centuries, the processes and thoughts
of passing peoples and passing times had seeped down to him, slowly,
as into a deep-buried sponge. From some death-memory in him now,
ironically, repeatedly, a black typewriter clacked out black even lines
of pertinent words:
Now is the time for all good men, for all good men, to come to the aid
of--
William Lantry.
_Other words_--
Arise my love, and come away--
The quick brown fox jumped over.... _Paraphrase it._ The quick risen
body jumped over the tumbled Incinerator....
Lazarus, come forth from the tomb....
He knew the right words. He need only speak them as they had been
spoken over the centuries. He need only gesture with his hands and
speak the words, the dark words that would cause these bodies to
quiver, rise and walk!
And when they had risen he would take them through the town, they would
kill others and the others would rise and walk. By the end of the day
there would be thousands of good friends walking with him. And what of
the naive, living people of this year, this day, this hour? They would
be completely unprepared for it. They would go down to defeat because
they would not be expecting war of any sort. They wouldn't believe it
possible, it would all be over before they could convince themselves
that such an illogical thing could happen.
He lifted his hands. His lips moved. He said the words. He began in a
chanting whisper and then raised his voice, louder. He said the words
again and again. His eyes were closed tightly. His body swayed. He
spoke faster and faster. He began to move forward among the bodies.
The dark words flowed from his mouth. He was enchanted with his own
formulae. He stooped and made further blue symbols on the concrete, in
the fashion of long-dead sorcerers, smiling, confident. Any moment now
the first tremor of the still bodies, any moment now the rising, the
leaping up of the cold ones!
His hands lifted in the air. His head nodded. He spoke, he spoke, he
spoke. He gestured. He talked loudly over the bodies, his eyes flaring,
his body tensed. "Now!" he cried, violently. "Rise, _all_ of you!"
Nothing happened.
"Rise!" he screamed, with a terrible torment in his voice.
The sheets lay in white blue-shadow folds over the silent bodies.
"Hear me, and act!" he shouted.
Far away, on the street, a beetle hissed along.
Again, again, again he shouted, pleaded. He got down by each body and
asked of it his particular violent favor. No reply. He strode wildly
between the even white rows, flinging his arms up, stooping again and
again to make blue symbols!
Lantry was very pale. He licked his lips. "Come on, get up," he said.
"They have, they always have, for a thousand years. When you make a
mark--so! and speak a word--so! they always rise! Why not you now, why
not you! Come on, come _on_, before _they_ come back!"
The warehouse went up into shadow. There were steel beams across and
down. In it, under the roof, there was not a sound, except the raving
of a lonely man.
Lantry stopped.
Through the wide doors of the warehouse he caught a glimpse of the last
cold stars of morning.
This was the year 2349.
His eyes grew cold and his hands fell to his sides. He did not move.
* * * * *
Once upon a time people shuddered when they heard the wind about the
house, once people raised crucifixes and wolfbane, and believed in
walking dead and bats and loping white wolves. And as long as they
believed, then so long did the dead, the bats, the loping wolves exist.
The mind gave birth and reality to them.
But....
He looked at the white sheeted bodies.
_These_ people did not believe.
They had never believed. They would never believe. They had never
imagined that the dead might walk. The dead went up flues in flame.
They had never heard superstition, never trembled or shuddered or
doubted in the dark. Walking dead people could not exist, they were
illogical. This was the year 2349, man, after all!
Therefore, these people could not rise, could not walk again. They were
dead and flat and cold. Nothing, chalk, imprecation, superstition,
could wind them up and set them walking. They were dead and _knew_ they
were dead!
He was alone.
There were live people in the world who moved and drove beetles and
drank quiet drinks in little dimly illumined bars by country roads, and
kissed women and talked much good talk all day and every day.
But he was not alive.
Friction gave him what little warmth he possessed.
There were two hundred dead people here in this warehouse now,
cold upon the floor. The first dead people in a hundred years who
were allowed to be corpses for an extra hour or more. The first not
to be immediately trundled to the Incinerator and lit like so much
phosphorous.
He should be happy with them, among them.
He was not.
They were completely dead. They did not know nor believe in walking
once the heart had paused and stilled itself. They were deader than
dead ever was.
He was indeed alone, more alone than any man had ever been. He felt the
chill of his aloneness moving up into his chest, strangling him quietly.
William Lantry turned suddenly and gasped.
While he had stood there, someone had entered the warehouse. A tall man
with white hair, wearing a light-weight tan overcoat and no hat. How
long the man had been nearby there was no telling.
There was no reason to stay here. Lantry turned and started to walk
slowly out. He looked hastily at the man as he passed and the man
with the white hair looked back at him, curiously. Had he heard? The
imprecations, the pleadings, the shoutings? Did he suspect? Lantry
slowed his walk. Had this man seen him make the blue chalk marks? But
then, would he interpret them as symbols of an ancient superstition?
Probably not.
Reaching the door, Lantry paused. For a moment he did not want to do
anything but lie down and be coldly, really dead again and be carried
silently down the street to some distant burning flue and there
dispatched in ash and whispering fire. If he was indeed alone and there
was no chance to collect an army to his cause, what, then, existed as a
reason for going on? Killing? Yes, he'd kill a few thousand more. But
that wasn't enough. You can only do so much of that before they drag
you down.
He looked at the cold sky.
A rocket went across the black heaven, trailing fire.
Mars burned red among a million stars.
Mars. The library. The librarian. Talk. Returning rocket men. Tombs.
Lantry almost gave a shout. He restrained his hand, which wanted so
much to reach up into the sky and touch Mars. Lovely red star on the
sky. Good star that gave him sudden new hope. If he had a living heart
now it would be thrashing wildly, and sweat would be breaking out of
him and his pulses would be stammering, and tears would be in his eyes!
He would go down to where ever the rockets sprang up into space. He
would go to Mars, one way or another. He would go to the Martian tombs.
There, there, by God, were bodies, he would bet his last hatred on
it, that would rise and walk and work with him! Theirs was an ancient
culture, much different from that of Earth, patterned on the Egyptian,
if what the librarian had said was true. And the Egyptian--what a
crucible of dark superstition and midnight terror that culture had
been! Mars it _was_, then. Beautiful Mars!
But he must not attract attention to himself. He must move carefully.
He wanted to run, yes, to get away, but that would be the worst
possible move he could make. The man with the white hair was glancing
at Lantry from time to time, in the entranceway. There were too many
people about. If anything happened he would be outnumbered. So far he
had taken on only _one_ man at a time.
Lantry forced himself to stop and stand on the steps before the
warehouse. The man with the white hair came on onto the steps also and
stood, looking at the sky. He looked as if he was going to speak at any
moment. He fumbled in his pockets, took out a packet of cigarettes.

V
They stood outside the morgue together, the tall pink, white-haired
man, and Lantry, hands in their pockets. It was a cool night with a
white shell of a moon that washed a house here, a road there, and
further on, parts of a river.
"Cigarette?" The man offered Lantry one.
"Thanks."
They lit up together. The man glanced at Lantry's mouth. "Cool night."
"Cool."
They shifted their feet. "Terrible accident."
"Terrible."
"So many dead."
"So many."
Lantry felt himself some sort of delicate weight upon a scale. The
other man did not seem to be looking at him, but rather listening
and feeling toward him. There was a feathery balance here that made
for vast discomfort. He wanted to move away and get out from under
this balancing, weighing. The tall white-haired man said, "My name's
McClure."
"Did you have any friends inside?" asked Lantry.
"No. A casual acquaintance. Awful accident."
"Awful."
They balanced each other. A beetle hissed by on the road with its
seventeen tires whirling quietly. The moon showed a little town further
over in the black hills.
"I say," said the man McClure.
"Yes."
"Could you answer me a question?"
"Be glad to." He loosened the knife in his coat pocket, ready.
"Is your name Lantry?" asked the man at last.
"Yes."
"_William_ Lantry?"
"Yes."
"Then you're the man who came out of the Salem graveyard day before
yesterday, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Good Lord, I'm glad to meet you, Lantry! We've been trying to find you
for the past twenty-four hours!"
The man seized his hand, pumped it, slapped him on the back.
"What, what?" said Lantry.
"Good Lord, man, why did you run off? Do you realize what an instance
this is? We want to talk to you!"
McClure was smiling, glowing. Another handshake, another slap. "I
_thought_ it was you!"
The man is mad, thought Lantry. Absolutely mad. Here I've toppled his
incinerators, killed people, and he's shaking my hand. Mad, mad!
"Will you come along to the Hall?" said the man, taking his elbow.
"Wh-what hall?" Lantry stepped back.
"The Science Hall, of course. It isn't every year we get a real case
of suspended animation. In small animals, yes, but in a man, hardly!
Will you come?"
"What's the act!" demanded Lantry, glaring. "What's all this talk."
"My dear fellow, what do you mean?" the man was stunned.
"Never mind. Is that the only reason you want to see me?"
"What other reason would there be, Mr. Lantry? You don't know how glad
I am to see you!" He almost did a little dance. "I suspected. When we
were in there together. You being so pale and all. And then the way you