When the Sleepers Woke Read online

street bridges. Hepeered into vast rifts of tumbled, chaotic concrete and steel. Nothingmoved in all that spreading wonder that had housed twenty millions ofpeople.

  Allan drifted lower, and saw that from what had been gardenedroof-parks, now a welter of strewn earth, the green things had spreadtill they covered the heaped jetsam with a healing blanket of foliage.Not all the city had been laid waste, however. Here and there, greatexpanses of the cliff-like structures still stood, undamaged, and inthe midst of one of these areas he saw the high-piled edifice to whichhe had been directed. Its roof was lush with vegetation but bydextrous handling he set his helicopter down upon it.

  The engine roar diminished and died. Silence folded around him, ablack, thick blanket.

  * * * * *

  Dane got heavily from his seat, oppressed by the vast soundlessness,and pushed through curling plants that caught at his heels. The soundof his passage was like crackling thunder. A decaying door was marked,in faded, almost undecipherable letters, "Emergency Stairs." It washalf open, and Allan squeezed around its edge. Spiral steps curveddown into blackness. He hesitated a moment. He could _feel_ the awfulsilence, the emptiness below was a pit of death. Anthony's words cameback to him, echoed in his ears: "We seven are the only living humansleft on Earth."

  In that moment, out of the pitch-black well of soundlessness, a screamshrilled! No words, only a red, thin thread of sound, rising, andfalling, and rising again out of depths where not even a living mouseshould be! It came again, ripping the silence--a woman's scream,high-pitched, quivering with fear!

  Allan plunged down into the darkness, caroming from wall to wall as hehalf ran, half fell, down the twisting stairs. Another soundreverberated from unseen walls, and Dane realized that it was his ownvoice, shouting.

  His feet struck level floor. A pale rectangle of light showed beforehim, and he dived through it. He was in a corridor, dim-lit byphosphorescent fungi that cloaked the damp walls. He halted, atfault. The long hall stretched away to either side, cluttered withgrimed bones, slimy with mold. By the age-blistered name cards onclosed doors he knew himself to be on a residential level. But whichway should he turn? Whence had come that scream? He crouched againstthe wall, his heartbeats thudding loud in his ears, and listened for aclue.

  A muffled sound of scuffling came from his left. Allan whirled towardit and sped down the corridor. He was breathing in great gasps, andthe air he breathed was thick and musty. Too late to stop, he saw aslick of green slime on the floor. His foot struck it, flew out fromunder him, he fell and slid headlong.

  Something stopped him, something that crunched sickeningly as hissliding body crashed into it: two skeleton forms, clasped in eachothers' arms, moldering fabric hanging in rags from them. They layacross the threshold of a door, and just within Dane heard snarls,snufflings, bestial growls, the sounds of a struggle. Somethingthumped against the door and fell away. He heaved to his feet and hishand found the doorknob. But suddenly he was powerless to turn it.Panic tugged at him with almost palpable fingers, drove him to go backto his plane and safety. Almost he fled--but he remembered in timethat it was a _human_ scream he had heard.

  * * * * *

  The portal gave easily to his lunge. Bluish light flooded the chamber,dazzling after the fungous dimness. A bulking form, whether ape or manhe could not make out, so brutish the face, so hairy the dark bodyrevealed by its tattered rags bent over the sprawled shape of a girl.Dane saw her in a fleeting glimpse--the slim length of her, thetumbled, golden hair half hiding, half revealing white curves ofbeauty, a shoulder from which the tunic had been torn away. Then herattacker whirled toward the intruder. Allan leaped from the threshold,his fist arcing before him. The blow landed flush on the other's jaw.

  Yellow, rotted fangs showed in a jet-black face, and the huge Negrolunged for Dane, roaring his rage. Before the American could dodge orstrike again the other's long arms were around him. Allan was jerkedagainst a barrel chest, felt his bones cracking in a terrific hug.Eyes, tiny and red, stared into his. Dane drove knees and fists intothe Negro, but the awful pressure of those simian arms across his backincreased till he could no longer breathe. The American was almostgone, the black face blurred, and the continuous snarling of the brutewas dull in his ears.

  Suddenly Dane went limp. Victory flashed into the red eyes. Thesqueezing arms relaxed, and in that moment Allan's legs curled aroundthe black's, heels jerking into the hollows behind his captor's knees.At the same instant, levering from that heel hold, Dane butted sharplyup against the rocky jaw. All the strength that was left in him wentinto that trick, and it worked! The Negro crashed backward to thefloor. Allan twisted, and rolled free. He was up, looking desperatelyaround for some weapon. But it was not needed; the hulk on the floornever moved. The back of the Negro's head had smashed against thefloor, and he was out.

  Dane turned and bent to the girl. She, too, was motionless, but to hisrelief her breast rose and fell steadily. He glanced about looking forwater to revive her. Then he saw that this room was sheathed withnullite. Then this was one of the chambers prepared before the planswere changed. But the girl could not be of the fourth couple--themissing two that had never appeared. She was no more than eighteen.And whence had come the giant black who had attacked her?

  "Stick up your hands. Quick!"

  * * * * *

  Allan whirled to the sudden challenge. The man in the doorway waspointing a ray-gun steadily at him! Dane's hands went up, and hegasped inanely: "Who are you?"

  "What is going on here? Where did you come from?" The newcomer'sEnglish was precise, too precise. No hulking brute, this. A yellowman, slitted eyes slanted and malevolent; broad, flat nose above thinlips that were purple against the saffron skin. The uniform he woreshowed signs of some attempt to keep it in repair, and to itsthreadbare collar still clung a tarnished insignia: the seven-pointedstar, emblem of the enemy Allan had fought on a yesterday that was twodecades gone.

  "Well? Have you lost the power of speech?" The ray-gun jerked forwardimpatiently.

  An obscure impulse prompted Allan's reply. "Almost. I've spoken to noone for twenty years."

  "So-o,"--softly. The Oriental's eyes flicked past Dane, and a suddenlight glowed in them. "You have been alone for twenty years in thiscity we thought was empty, but you were on hand to fight with Ra-Jambafor this delightful creature." Something leered from his face thatsent the hot blood surging to Allan's temples. The Easterner steppedcatlike into the room, shutting the door behind him with his freehand.

  "That is true," the American said, with what calmness he couldmuster. Through the dizzy whirl of his mind he clung to one thought:he must conceal the existence of the little group on Sugar LoafMountain at all costs. "I had just discovered that it was safe toleave the room, similar to this, in which I had hidden from the gas,when I heard a scream. I reached here just in time to--"

  "To interfere with Ra-Jamba's pleasure, and save the little whitedove--for me. My thanks." The yellow man bowed mockingly. "Too bad,"he purred, "that you should be robbed of the spoils of your fight."Then he asked irrelevantly. "So some of you Americans found a way tocheat our gas. How many?"

  Allan temporized. There had been several similar refuges prepared, hesaid, but he did not know whether they had been used. This was thefirst he had visited beside his own. But how was it that thequestioner knew so little about what had happened here? Had his peoplesimply laid this country waste and never revisited it?

  * * * * *

  The Oriental shrugged. "My people are gone, wiped out by your gas asyours were wiped out by ours." He retold Anthony's story. "The crew ofmy own ship mutinied," he concluded. "We fled north, from that lastterrible fight, north, ever north, till at the top of the world wefound a little space that was not gas-covered. There was nothingthere, just the ice, and the snow, and the cold. We lived there,twelve of us, all men. There were a few bears and seals. We slew themfor food--and
we grew a little mad. We were men--all men--do youunderstand?"

  As he said this last, his thin voice rose to a shriek, and his eyesdarted to the girl's recumbent form. At length, he went on, the gasbegan to retreat, and they followed it down. They had searched townafter town, city after city, had found food in plenty, and all thetrappings of civilization. But there was never a living being. And thefever in their blood drove them on.

  That very morning the insane search had reached New York. They hadlanded on the roof of this very building. "We separated to hunt--andRa-Jamba was the lucky one. But I--Jung Sin--am still luckier." Hecrept nearer to Allan, and tapped him on the chest with his weapon."For look you--while those fools used all their ray-gun charges, eventhe charge of the big tube on our ship, to kill food, I