Z for Zachariah

Chapter Eleven

June 4th Morning.

This is a terrible day.

I do not know how high his fever has gone, because it has reached a hundred and six, and beyond that the thermometer does not show. I do not think he can live on very long with such a high temperature.

I remembered from my high-school course that alcohol reduces fever; I found a half bottle of rubbing alcohol liniment in the upstairs medicine cupboard. Every hour I soak one of my father’s handkerchiefs with that and rub his back, chest, arms, neck and forehead. He tries to draw away—I suppose it must feel like ice—but I think it does help him.

He still sleeps most of the time, and when he wakes up it is into a dream, a nightmare. Only for a few minutes now and then does he seem to be rational, and to recognize me or even see or hear me. The rest of the time he is delirious, and often he is terrified, always of the same thing—he thinks Edward is here, and is threatening him with something vague and dreadful. At least it is vague to me.

Still I am beginning to realize that something bad happened between Mr Loomis and Edward (I do not know his last name), and that they were not friends at all, but enemies, at least at the end.

Sometimes he acts as if he thinks I am Edward, but more often he stares beyond me, as if I am not there at all; he is looking at someone over my shoulder. It is so real that I turn and look myself, but of course there is no one there. At times he thinks Edward is here in the valley, in the house; other times Mr Loomis is back with him near Ithaca, in the laboratory under the mountain. And he says certain things over and over again.

It began this morning. I knocked and went into his room with a glass of the cold tea and a soft-boiled egg I had stirred up in a cup, hoping I could get him to eat a few bites. He was awake, but when he spoke it was not to me; it was to the doorway behind me. He said:

“Stay back, Edward, stay back. It’s no use.”

I said: “Mr Loomis, it’s me. I’ve brought you some breakfast.”

He rubbed his eyes, and they came into focus. But his voice, when he spoke again, was blurred and tired.

“No breakfast. Too sick.”

“Try,” I said. “I’ve brought you some iced tea.”

I held out the glass, and to my delight he took it and drank thirstily, finishing half of it without pausing. “Thank you,” he said. “That’s good.” He drank the rest, and closed his eyes. I thought it must be reasonably nourishing, with all the sugar.

“I’ll bring more later,” I said. “Now try the egg.”

But when he opened his eyes again he was staring at the door. He tried to call out, but his voice was weak:

“Edward?”

I said: “Mr Loomis, Edward is not here.”

“I know,” he said. “Where did he go?”

“You mustn’t worry about it.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “He’s a thief. He’ll steal—" He stopped, as if he had remembered something, and then to my dismay he gave a terrible groan and tried to get out of the bed.

I caught his shoulders and held him back. For a minute he fought quite hard; then he lay still, breathing fast and shallow.

“Poor Mr Loomis,” I said. “Try to understand. You’re dreaming. There is no Edward, and nothing to steal.”

“The suit,” he said, his voice hardly above a whisper. “He’ll steal the suit.”

The suit. That is what he was worried about, and still is. The safe-suit: for some reason he thinks Edward is trying to steal it.

I said: “Mr Loomis, the suit is in the wagon. You folded it up and put it there. Can’t you remember?”

“In the wagon,” he said. “Oh my God. That’s where he’s gone.”

It was obviously the wrong thing for me to have said, because now he tried again to get up. I held him down; it was not so hard, because he had used up most of his strength the first time. But I am in dread of his getting out of the bed. I am afraid he will fall and hurt himself; more important, I don’t know how I would ever get him back into it. I am sure he is too weak to walk, and I don’t know if I can lift and carry him. So I must now stay in the room with him, at least until he gets through this nightmare.

The dream is contagious. I suppose it is partly because there are only two of us, and his thoughts affect mine more than they would if I had others to talk to. I sit in the window to write, and I look out and see the wagon still there, next to the tent as it has always been, and I half expect to see someone—Edward? I don’t even know what he looks like!—prowling around it. But there is only Faro lying in the trampled grass by the tent near his dish, waiting to be fed. In a little while I will call him into the house and feed him in here.

No. I have a better idea. When Mr Loomis calms down a little, as he seems to be doing, I will run out, take Faro’s food with me, and get the safe-suit. I will bring it in and put it by the bed where he can see it. I will humour his dream to that extent. It will make him less worried.

Afternoon

I got the suit and brought it in, but a few minutes later that particular nightmare ended, and he was in another, even worse, perhaps brought on by the sight of the suit. He was back in Ithaca having a most desperate quarrel with Edward. I am glad it was only a dream, because it sounded as if one of them was going to murder the other. As he did before, Mr Loomis was carrying on a conversation, and I could hear only half of it, but he was hearing both sides. His voice was faint and mumbling, but even so it sounded cold and full of hate, and dangerous. I suppose when two men are shut up together in a confined area, the tensions between them grow terrible.

When he began talking I was sitting by the window and did not hear the first few words. Then it came clearer.

“… not for just twenty-four hours, Edward. Not even for twenty-four minutes. If you want to find your family go ahead. But the suit stays here, and the door stays locked. Don’t try to come back.”

A pause. He was listening to Edward’s reply.

Poor Edward. It was not hard to understand the situation. He and Mr Loomis were locked up in the underground laboratory, apparently alone. They must have been staying there, working late, perhaps getting some last-minute things done, expecting the people from Washington, when the bombing began. They had a radio—maybe even television—so they knew what was happening. I suppose they had a telephone, too, but that would not have done much good after the first hour.

Edward was married. He had a wife named Mary and a son named Billy, and he was frantic with worry about them.

I don’t wonder—I know how he felt. Apparently at first he was afraid to go out—they had real exploding H-bombs in that area, not just drifting fallout. But after the first few days, when things quietened down, he wanted to go and find them, and that is when the fight began.

They knew that the air was poisonous with radioactivity, and they had in their laboratory the only suit in the world that would protect against it. One suit, and two people. That was the situation. That is why, in his dream, Mr Loomis kept reminding Edward that his wife and son were dead; and I suppose Edward had a wild hope that some people might have survived, that they might be alive in a cellar or a shelter.

That was why he wanted to take the suit, even for twenty-four hours. To find them, if they were alive; and if they were dead, to settle the anguish once and for all. Perhaps to see them one more time, perhaps to bury them. I do not know.

Mr Loomis was not married; at least I do not think he was, though he has never said anything about it. And he did not want Edward to take the suit. What was the use, if they were dead? In the dream he said:

“How do I know you’ll bring it back? Suppose something goes wrong?”

And later:

“Of course they’re dead. You heard the radio. There isn’t any more Ithaca, Edward. And even if you found them alive—what then?”

A pause.

“You mean you would leave them to bring the suit back? You’re lying, Edward.”

And again:

“The suit, Edward, the suit. Think about it: it may be the last useful thing anybody ever made. You’re not going to waste it on a visit to your dead wife.”

Poor Edward. He kept pleading. I found I was wishing Mr Loomis might lend him the suit, though I could understand why he would not. And I wondered why Edward did not just take it, or at least try. For instance, I thought, Mr Loomis would have had to sleep some of the time.

And then I learned; that is just what he did do. And that led to the worst part of the nightmare, for Mr Loomis, weak as he was, was trying to shout in anger and in dread, and it came out as a horrible, thin whimper. He was also trying again to get up from the bed, to sit, to raise his arms. But he was so weak I did not have to hold him. He could not do it.

I understood now why Edward had been pleading. Because Mr Loomis was holding, or dreamed he was holding, a gun. I could understand most of what he was saying; he was cursing Edward in terrible language, profanity which I will not write down here.

And then he said;

“You’re a thief and a liar, Edward, but it’s no use. Stand back from the door.”

A pause.

“No. I warn you. I will shoot. The suit will stop radiation, but it won’t stop bullets.”

I remembered. That was the first thing he had said to me when I found him sick in the tent, when he saw my rifle. The sight of it had brought him back to this moment, and now he was in it again. He was threatening to shoot Edward, as he had in the laboratory, where he had been guarding the door.

In a few more seconds it was over. He gave a desperate groan, a deeper sound than before, and then a series of strangling noises. I thought he must be trying to cry. Then he closed his eyes and lay still, except for his breathing, which was very fast and light, like a small animal that has been running. I tried to take his pulse, but all I could feel was a fluttering, so faint I could not count it.

I wondered if he had really shot Edward, and if so how badly he had injured him. An idea came to me which I did not like, but I decided I must do it anyway. I went to where I had put his suit, folded up on a chair beside his bed. I unfolded it and took it to the window, into the light.

What I had feared was true. There were three holes, spaced about two inches apart, across the middle of the chest. They had been patched—that is, new plastic had been welded over them so that they were airtight—but from the inside you could see that they were bullet holes, round and quite large. If Edward was inside the suit when they were fired, then he had certainly been killed.

Night

It is about ten o’clock. I am in the bedroom, sitting by the window with the lamp. His dreams seem to be over; he is peaceful, but I do not know if he will live through the night. His hands and feet are ice-cold; his breathing is faint, almost undetectable. I have not tried taking his temperature again. It would only disturb him, and would do no good. There is nothing more I can do for him.

I realized that later this afternoon, an empty despairing feeling. There was not even any use in my staying with him continuously, since he could no longer get out of the bed, or even fall out. His hands were already turning cold, so I got another blanket and the hot water bottle. I lifted his head on my arm and tried to get him to drink more of the tea. He may have swallowed a little; I could not be sure. He did not open his eyes. His face was pale blue, his eyelids almost purple, and translucent.

Then I had a thought, something that might do him some good. I checked his bedroom one more time, and then I went out and closed the door, left the house and walked to the church, taking the Bible with me. I do not want to make it sound as if I am extremely religious, but I did not know what else to do, so I thought I might pray. I said it might do him some good; maybe what I really thought was that it might do me some good. I cannot be sure. But I knew he needed help, and so did I.

The sun was setting, and it was pretty again, but I could not admire it. I felt too bad. Faro came with me, and I was glad at least to see him. When I got to the church he wanted to come in with me, and I let him but made him lie still.

The inside of the church is painted white, though the paint has faded somewhat, and in the late evening light it looked pale grey. It is very small, a square single room; there are seven pews, but only two of them have backs; the others are really just benches. There are two narrow windows behind the altar (there is no pulpit, but just a high oblong stand to read from), and two more set in the side walls, also narrow, so that it is always dim inside, and quiet.

I sat in the front pew, where the light is best, and read the Bible for half an hour, and I prayed for Mr Loomis. I prayed just for him to live through the night. Even though he may be a murderer, I do not want him to die.