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Title: Survivor
Author: Jr. Irving E. Cox
Illustrator: John Giunta
Leo Manso
Release date: June 21, 2026 [eBook #78911]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Stratford Novels Inc., 1953
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78911
Credits: Tom Trussel (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SURVIVOR ***
Survivor
by Irving E. Cox, Jr.
_The gray men had come from an unknown place to overrun the earth.
They killed without passion, in much the same manner as the
earthlings would exterminate ants to reclaim a hill for planting._
_And amid the slaughter a small boy looked to his father for
guidance. But the man knew that in the face of motorized legions
there was only one legacy a parent could leave--so he gave his son a
gun...._
[Illustration: Illustrator: John Giunta]
He stood still listening. In the distance he heard the unmistakable
shrill whine of high-speed motors. He looked wildly for a way of
escape, and saw none. The highway at that point wound under the bare
overhang of brown cliffs, sheer and naked in the pale sunlight.
He might have climbed the sharp face of rock if he had not been so
exhausted. But his body was tortured with fatigue and pain. His clothes
were in tatters. His feet and arms were latticed with a livid network
of wounds. The long cut in his cheek had stopped bleeding, but the
caking scab pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
The roaring motors swept closer, so near that the earth shook. Choked
with panic, he began to run. He sprawled over a jagged rock, and the
gravel sandpapered the skin from his kneecaps.
The sudden pain cleared his head. He realized that it was a mere animal
instinct to try to outrun the caravan; but he had a slim chance for
safety if he hid in the tangled shrubs that choked the swamp on the
other side of the road.
He darted across the ribbon of cement and plunged into the thicket.
Hard twigs and thorns tore at his skin. His feet splashed into the
fetid, black slime, and muddy water oozed reluctantly over his legs.
His head was in a nest of tall grass. To his right the swamp curved
along the road for a quarter of a mile. Above it two huge, black birds
swept the sky in a solemn circle. Much closer, a dozen small marshbirds
danced and chattered on the edge of a decaying log.
The roar of motors was deafening as the caravan rounded the bend. Only
a thin whisper of rationality kept him from running. As he had once
before, he clenched his fists until the tattered nails broke the skin;
and over and over he whispered a kind of litany of sanity:
“I am Vernon Randall Hume. V. R. Hume, corporation lawyer. V. R. Hume;
age, thirty-five; happily married; the father of three children. I am
Vernon Randall Hume. I have not lost my mind. Yesterday I had lunch
at the Athletic Club. Only yesterday!” The word was a symbol, rather
than an accurate measure of time. It stood for another life, another
reality. Hume was not sure whether it had been two days or a year ago.
Yesterday was simply then; this was now--this clanking column of gray
death moving over a dead landscape.
He could not look at the clattering vehicles; and it was impossible to
turn his eyes away. They were not thirty feet from him, the roaring
black machines and the glittering guns that saluted the empty sky. In
every vehicle were crowded rows of gray-faced men in gray uniforms.
They sat erect and motionless, obedient automatons.
Suddenly Hume heard a splashing in the swamp behind him. He turned his
head and saw a white-robed figure fighting free of the slime--a woman
who had been hiding in the thick brush. Apparently her reason had been
shattered by terror, and she could not control her lashing instinct to
run.
A driver signaled. The caravan stopped. The gray men stood up.
Languidly their guns were lowered, shimmering like silver lances in the
sunlight. Screaming, the woman floundered in the mud, her long hair
pulled free in the wind.
The guns jumped and the blue smoke hung for a moment over the caravan.
The woman clawed at the air in agony before slumping back into the
slime. The gray men turned in unison, shouldered their arms, and sat
down. The motors roared and the caravan moved on.
Slowly the noise died and the air was quiet again.
Hume stood up. His wet clothing clung to his skin, and in the sharp air
each tiny laceration felt like a fresh wound. His feet were numb chunks
of flesh, slithering in the mud as he walked.
He stopped beside the woman. She lay face up in the black mud, her
frayed dress billowed by the shallow water, her hands clutching at the
gaping wound torn in her breast.
Without knowing quite why he did, Hume knelt and kissed her lips. They
were still warm. Then he understood. She was like Beth, another symbol
of yesterday. Even this much of a parting had been denied him in that
first blazing destruction.
His soul screaming with the pain of remembering, he turned and fled,
plunging awkwardly through the swamp. When he reached dry ground on the
other side, he collapsed, retching emptily. The nausea swept up around
him. He lost consciousness.
* * * * *
_The boy and his father came to the cliff overlooking the road.
Cautiously they inspected the empty landscape. The father pointed
toward the ragged chain of mountains, hazy blue on the horizon. “The
river is on the other side of the ridge,” he said. “We can hide in the
swamp until it’s dark again.” They slid down the bank and ran across
the highway._
* * * * *
It was dusk when Hume regained consciousness. The rim of the distant
mountains was pink against a purple sky and the floor of the valley
was dark, streaked here and there with mist. How much farther was it?
Ten miles? He had no way of knowing. Yesterday, in his own car, he
could have reached the pass in less than an hour; it was a magnificent
highway. He had never understood distances except in terms of time.
He knew it was dangerous to follow the road, and yet he was still
afraid to strike out across the desert. He hadn’t the slightest
conception of the distance a man might walk in twenty-four hours, and
he knew he had to forage for both food and water. There might be small
animals of a sort on the desert. A clever man might trap one and kill
it, but Hume’s cleverness was limited to the manipulation of words in
legal controversy.
He was sustained by no hope except the sight of the chain of hills, and
his consuming determination to reach them alive. Once Hume had defended
a client by utilizing the logic of self-defense. “Take away all that a
man possesses,” he had said; “throw out all the comforts and gadgets
of civilization, and face an individual with the one issue of personal
survival--a choice between life and death--and he cannot choose the
latter. His choice is neither heroic nor romantic; it is simply
instinctive.”
Now, for the first time in his life, Hume understood what he had been
talking about.
The motorized caravans could not have penetrated the mountains yet;
and Hume’s own people were on the other side, beyond the river. It was
the only solid reality he had to cling to; it had the inevitability of
tomorrow’s sunrise.
After nightfall, Hume moved closer to the highway and plodded ahead
more rapidly, less afraid in the dark. Pangs of hunger gnawed at his
stomach, but it was a subordinate sensation, hard-ridden by the more
intensive will to survive. He even took a certain wry comfort in his
feeling of lightheadedness, for it diminished the constant pain crying
against his nerves.
A pale half-moon rose. Close to the road Hume saw a frame farmhouse.
There was a chance he could find food there, and possibly fresh water
and clothing. Even though he knew the house would be deserted, he
approached it cautiously. For almost a quarter of an hour he huddled
in the shelter of a lilac bush at the corner of the yard before he
mustered up enough courage to go inside.
He walked across the manicured path, his battered shoes crunching
softly on the white gravel. The house had not been untenanted long
enough for the neglect to be obvious. The grass was still clipped
short, and the sharply defined borders around the row of tree roses
might have been made only an hour ago. But there were little signs of
desertion: occasional blades of fast-growing weeds, a bush or two bowed
with dead blooms that should have been pruned away, and a semicircular
crescent torn in the earth by heavy metal treads.
Close to the porch the twisted body of a woman lay on the ground,
cradled in a bed of white-faced pansies. The body was seared black,
almost unrecognizable as anything once human. Beyond her, frozen fast
to a pillar of the porch, was the charred corpse of a man.
The paint on the front of the house was blistered, still smelling
faintly of fire. The gray men had used their flame guns here, Hume
realized, caressing the face of the house with a terrifying white heat,
like the kiss of a naked sun.
Hume went up the steps and entered the house. In the front room were
trunks and boxes, partly filled, which the man and woman had obviously
been packing when the caravan of gray men came. Hume pawed through
the stacks of things, but found no clothing that he could use. The
farmer had tried to escape with possessions which had yesterday’s
values--silverware, good china, books, silks, and fancy linens.
The practical clothing that Hume needed would still be somewhere
upstairs; but before he explored for it, Hume went to the kitchen
seeking food.
He found canned goods stacked in a cabinet. With trembling fingers
he ground two cans open under the wall opener. He gulped a pint of
condensed soup and a can of peaches; and he became promptly sick. When
his weakness had subsided, he tried again, eating more slowly. There
was no water running through the faucet. He had hardly expected it
to be, and he would have been afraid to drink any if it had. But he
managed to slake his thirst by draining the juice from another can of
fruit.
Something faintly reminiscent of well-being filled his body. He leaned
back in a kitchen chair and propped his tired feet on the white-topped
table, scraping away the black mud with the point of a knife.
He heard the hum of an approaching motor and was seized again with
terror. He pulled himself up to the narrow kitchen window and peered
out.
A treaded vehicle clanked to a stop and three searchlights pinpointed
the house in the darkness. Hume crouched back against the cold wall,
his breath icing his throat. Squads of gray men lined up on either side
of the lights, and a leader bellowed a volley of orders at the face
of the building. They waited. The command was repeated. After another
pause, the gray men began to fire their weapons into the house.
Hume slid inside the narrow cubicle beneath the sink, where the
porcelain gave him some protection from the falling glass and the
crumbling plaster. The darkness glowed with the scarlet plumes of
deadly explosives; but, in two minutes, it was over. The searchlights
went off; the truck crunched on into silence.
The house was a riddled shambles, tottering with unexpected senility.
Yet it had not caught fire. Hume picked his way carefully through the
debris and up the swaying stairway to the second floor.
A section of the wall at the head of the stairway gaped open and Hume
looked out into the valley. The mountains were clearly detailed in
the cold moonlight. He traced the curve of the highway as it wound
over the desert toward the pass, and he saw the sprawling oval of the
single valley town, which yesterday had cast the pleasant reflection of
lighted streets against the night sky. Now the rows of homes and stores
were a dead, bleak cancer rising on the desert. On the outskirts of
the village was a blaze of intermingled searchlights marking the place
where the gray men had set up an outpost camp.
The town was at the point of a triangle. The entrance to the mountain
pass, Hume saw, was directly across the desert. If he went that way,
using the peaks as a guide, he would reach safety much sooner, and he
would avoid the danger of passing close to the camp of the gray men.
His fear of crossing the desert on foot suddenly vanished before the
security it offered.
The two bedrooms at the front of the farmhouse were shot away, but at
the rear of the hall Hume found a storage closet. He pried the door
open. Inside were long racks of clothing. Ecstatically Hume fingered
the solid comfort of a woolen coat.
But his pleasure was fleeting. He heard footsteps on the gravel
outside. Looking down through the torn wall, he saw a tall figure
moving boldly toward the house. The gray men had come back! He was
trapped!
Hume shrank back into the closet, stealthily shutting the door. He
threw a pile of clothing into a dark corner and slithered beneath it.
The warmth gradually veneered his terror. He heard no more footsteps.
For the moment, he was safe. Slowly he gave way to the drowsiness he
could no longer control.
* * * * *
_The boy and his father found a dry island of land in the swamp.
Curling into the thicket, they slept four hours and awoke after dark.
They moved ahead quietly. When they saw the battered farmhouse, the
father left the child in a nearby ditch, where a film of ice was
beginning to form on the stagnant water, and went to see if he could
find any food in the house. He came back with an armload of canned
goods; they ate well before they went on._
* * * * *
Hume awoke violently, the wraith of the nightmare still clinging to his
brain. It was the old dream of the beginning, of the catastrophe that
had rung the knell of yesterday. And of Beth: of shrieking desolation
and of a city turned in an instant into flaming dust.
Yet the sleep had done him good. The worst of his fatigue was gone;
his head was clear again. Judiciously he picked over the clothing in
the closet, dressing himself as warmly as he could. He found a pair of
discarded riding boots, cracked and in need of soling, but nonetheless
better than the shoes he had on.
He descended the stairway and went back to the kitchen, intending to
fill the pockets of the coat with canned goods. Oddly, the cupboard was
empty. He was sure he had left several cans unopened, and without food
he was afraid to try the desert crossing. Then he found the carving
knife in a kitchen drawer. He rationalized comfort and security from
it. There would be animals of some sort on the desert. If necessary, he
could kill one to ease his hunger, though the clinging crust of culture
made even the idea faintly nauseating.
It was dawn when he set out. He plodded on for hours, without stopping
and without taking his eyes from the mountains. The sun rose high, but
Hume felt neither the heat nor his own weariness, for he walked in
freedom, unafraid. There were no gray men here; there would be none.
This desert was an unwanted waste, claimed only by the sun and wind,
inhabited only by the small, frightened animals that fled as Hume
approached.
The ground was a rolling carpet of colored stones, worn smooth by the
patient erosion of time. Here and there were scattered clumps of hardy
brush and an occasional brilliantly flowered plant clinging close to
the earth. Frequent hills of stone three or four feet high cast narrow
shadows on the desert. From the semi-darkness terrified animal eyes
peered out at Hume, like glowing, yellow gems.
Hume’s stride gradually lengthened with his returning self-confidence.
He squared his shoulders. Since yesterday he had not spoken, fearing
that even the sound of his voice would betray him. Now he talked aloud
to the emptiness, for the pure joy of hearing his own voice. He shouted
into the wind; he roared defiance at the invaders.
As he walked along, he picked up stones and hurled them at the hiding
animals. His blood pounded with a strange excitement when they ran from
him; and leaped with joy when he hit a toad and killed it.
Year ago, in college, Hume had been a baseball star. He needed only a
little practice to restore the accuracy of his pitching technique. By
midday he was able to hit any animal he saw on the desert.
It became a game with him to slaughter them, a pleasure that restored
his sense of superiority, of dominion over all things of the earth.
He was its master, not the hordes of gray men. He felt the familiar
security of yesterday, the comfortable luxury of planetary ownership.
He killed rabbits by the score, neither for sustenance nor for safety,
but to feed the flame of his possessiveness, so long stifled by his
fear of the gray men. When he had perfected the technique of throwing
the stones, he multiplied the pleasure by transforming it into an
art. First he would frighten the animal, make it run; then, when it
had nearly escaped his range, he would hurl the rock, watching with a
savage delight while the victim leaped into the air, screaming in agony
as it died.
Only once did the pattern change. He cornered a rabbit and, unable to
flee, the terrified animal attacked him, slapping him viciously with
its feet before he cut its throat with his kitchen knife. As the warm
blood washed over his hand, he thought he might make a meal of the
rabbit, but his hunger was not sufficiently acute for him to eat the
uncooked flesh. He regretted that he had not brought any matches with
him. But it was a minor annoyance. The mountains were very close; in
another ten or twelve hours he would be on the other side, among his
own people. He threw the carcass aside and went on.
In the afternoon he abandoned the coat he had taken from the farm and,
shortly after, two of the sweaters. He knew he would want them again
after dark, but the heat of the afternoon sun was unbearable and he
was sure he could make better time if he were not impeded by the heavy
clothing.
At sunset he reached the foothills. Red in the setting sun, the
mountains towered above him, a snow-capped wall. His nerves tingled
with triumph. He had nearly reached his goal. The pass was a half mile
farther south. He could see the highway curving gracefully toward it.
He would have to move more cautiously again, now that he was once more
close to the road. But it would be for the last time. The gray men had
not passed the mountains; he was confident of that; and he would be
safe on the other side. It even seemed unlikely, when he considered the
matter, that the gray men would be at the pass with any kind of force.
They would still be consolidating the enormous territory they had taken
close to the city. Probably they would have an outpost here, but he
would be able to bypass that easily enough.
Hume came to the top of a hill higher than the rest and looked down
upon the highway. In that instant his mounting confidence collapsed.
For he saw a long, black, motorized column approaching from the valley,
and at the foot of the pass a city-size camp of the gray men.
Terrified again, he crept down the face of the hill to a small gully,
where he hid himself in a thicket of shrubs. Like the desert animals,
he felt safe in the cold shadows. For an instant the analogy was clear
to him. To the gray men he was of no greater value than the rabbits
Hume had slain for the pure delight of expressing his own proprietary
superiority. But the comparison was a disastrous hypothesis. It led his
mind to the madness of despair. His conscious rationality reared back,
rejecting the data, wiping his mind clear of the inevitable conclusion.
Slowly the motorized column clanged past Hume’s hiding place; and
slowly Hume reasoned away his fear. The pass was not the only way
through the mountains. A man on foot could force a passage almost
anywhere. Hume was vaguely familiar with the terrain, since he had
occasionally vacationed at the mountain resorts. He convinced himself
that, even if the gray men had occupied the pass itself, they would not
have strayed from the highway because they were helpless without their
motorized caravans of weapons.
At nightfall the batteries of searchlights encircling the invader’s
camp were turned on; as darkness deepened, the camp blazed like a
fallen star. Hume saw a small vehicle move out from the camp, stopping
at intervals along the road. When it passed beneath his gully, he
understood why, for one of the gray men got out and began to pace the
cement. The enemy was putting out a network of sentries along the base
of the mountains. Obviously, then, other refugees had slipped into the
safety of the hills at night, and the gray men intended to stop them.
Momentarily Hume was breathless with panic. He was cornered and he had
no way of escape. Before this his safety had been bought by hiding from
the gray men and running when he could. Now he must either wait quietly
for them to find him, or fight his way free. Once again the analogy
of the rabbit played dangerously on the fringe of his mind. Even the
rabbit Hume had cornered could not meekly resign itself to death; it
was driven instinctively to fight its way out.
Hume had no alternative. As the moon rose, he crept out of his gully
noiselessly. When he stood up, his feet felt like dead clods; his
teeth chattered and his body shook in the icy wind sweeping out of the
mountains. His hands searched the level of the earth until he found a
suitable stone of the right weight. When the sentry was directly below
him, he hurled the rock with all his strength. The gray man dropped and
lay still, a huddled shadow on the white road.
Exultant, Hume slid down the hill and stood over his enemy--a thin,
frail, underfed creature, as powerless as Hume himself when he was
taken by surprise and stripped of the power of his weapons. Shivering,
Hume ripped off the long, swirling, high-collared, gray coat which the
sentry was wearing. It was woven of a material much like wool; Hume
felt warmer as soon as he drew it on.
The gray man began to twist and groan. Sneering, Hume watched the agony
for a moment. Then he picked up the stone again and hammered it into
the colorless, gray face. The bones crunched and he felt the warm blood
spurting over his hands. An ecstatic madness, a purity of joy he had
never experienced before, seized him, and he beat the quivering pulp
until he was breathless.
When he paused, he heard footsteps on the road behind him. Another
sentry, perhaps--coming to relieve his friend! Hume turned and fled
toward the mountains, running frantically up the steep inclines,
stumbling through the ragged gulches. He was pursued by a fear that
rode him until his pulse banged in his temples, his breath came in
gasps, and a taste of blood tainted the back of his throat. He paused
and looked back.
A tall figure was bending over the gray man Hume had killed.
Hume turned to run again, but his head swam with exhaustion. His knees
began to buckle. He saw the narrow ravine ahead, but he hadn’t the
strength to resist his own momentum. He slid helplessly down the rocky
bank and lay still, bent unnaturally over a heap of boulders.
* * * * *
_Cautiously rounding a bend, the boy and his father saw two gray men
fighting in the middle of the highway. They sprang into the roadside
ditch, the man shielding his son’s body with his own. Gradually,
the father understood that they had not been seen. He crept out and
examined the body on the road. The assailant had fled, taking his
victim’s coat, but leaving the gun. The father picked it up and called
his son. They turned of the highway and began the steep climb toward
the peaks._
* * * * *
The wound in Hume’s cheek was bleeding again, and one foot was
grotesquely bent beneath him. Slowly he pulled himself to his feet,
dizzy with pain.
He saw the crest of the hills above him and he began to climb, moving
uncertainly, pulling himself forward with his clawing hands. Hour by
hour he inched upward, pausing at intervals for rest, shivering with
cold, wracked by pain, leaving a thin trail of freezing blood on the
rocks below him.
His rational consciousness narrowed to a single awareness. He must pass
the ridge; he would be safe, then. The pain, the tearing hunger, the
agonizing memories were the torments of another body, somehow remotely
related to his own. He set his eyes on the crest and moved toward it.
At dawn he was above the snow line. The ridge was only a few feet
farther on. He looked up at the crevices of snow, long crystal folds
streaked with golden light. The wind screamed and a mist of snow bit
into his face, but he did not notice it. He was safe! He had reached
the top!
An energy and warmth from outside himself gradually flowed into Hume’s
body, a joy that lifted him up in spite of his pain. He stood erect and
felt nothing. Proudly, the joy of achievement singing in his soul, he
began to walk toward the crest....
* * * * *
...Obediently, the boy waited in the cave where his father had left him
while he went to find the shortest way down to the river on the other
side. The father had given his son the gray man’s gun, showing him how
to use it. “But don’t fire unless it’s absolutely necessary. Even if
the gray men reach the top of the pass, they probably won’t find your
hiding place. Use the gun only if you see one of them coming toward
you.”
The boy looked out. He saw the tall, gray figure climbing up the hill
of the snow at the mouth of the cave. Calmly he aimed the gun, as his
father had instructed him, and fired. The man fell, rolled a short
distance through the brittle snow, and lay still.
For a long time the boy crouched in the cave, but as the hours passed,
hunger eventually drove him out. He slid down the snow past the body
of the man he had killed, ignoring it. Among the pines he found traces
of his father’s footprints and followed them down out of the snow to
the bank of the river. He sat by the muddy water, staring across at the
opposite bank. His people were over there; his father had said so; but
where? Why had no one come out to meet him, bringing a little boat that
would ferry him across the river?
Hopefully, the boy followed the bank, wondering if there might be a
bridge farther on. Just beyond a thicket of brambles he found his
father, sprawled in the damp earth, his body crushed in the tracks made
by a treaded vehicle.
The boy then heard a sound on the other side of the river and, looking
up, he saw a black, motorized column moving triumphantly on the
opposite bank.
The boy turned to run, and discovered that he had been quietly
surrounded by a corps of gray men, who were pointing their short,
vicious weapons at him. When they saw that the boy was powerless,
they threw a net over him and bound him securely with it. Later they
carried him back to their camp and put him in a square, black box,
heavily barred on one side, so that they could study his habits at
their leisure. In a sense, some of them were even kind toward the boy,
treating him the way he had his own pet terrier when he still lived
back in the city.
Transcriber’s note:
This etext was produced from Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader,
April 1953 (Vol. 1, no. 2).
Obvious errors have been silently corrected in this version, but
minor inconsistencies have been retained as printed.
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