The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories (57 page)

Stockton stopped halfway up.

“I forgot,” he said. “There’s a five-gallon can of gasoline in the garage. Paul, you run out and get that. We’ll need it for the generator.”

“Right, pop.”

Stockton looked briefly across the cellar toward the open door of the shelter. Grace sat on one of the bunk beds staring at nothing. He hesitated a moment, then hurried up to the kitchen, picked up two of the three remaining jugs of water, and went downstairs again.

Grace looked up as he entered the shelter. Her voice was a whisper. “Bill...Bill, this is so incredible. We must be dreaming. It can’t really be happening.”

Stockton knelt down in front of her and took both her hands.

“I just told Paul,” he said to her, “if it’s a bomb, there’s no certainty that it’ll land near us. And if it doesn’t—”

Grace pulled her hands away.

“But if it does,” she said. “If it hits New York, we’ll get it, too. All of it. The poison, the radiation—we’ll get it, too.”

“We’ll be in the shelter, Grace,” Stockton said, “And with any luck at all, we’ll survive. We’ve got enough food and water to last us at least two weeks...maybe even longer, if we use it wisely.”

Grace looked at him blankly. “And then what?” she asked, in a still voice. “Then what, Bill? We crawl out of here like gophers to tiptoe through all the rubble up above. The rubble and the ruins and the bodies of our friends...”

She stopped, and stared down at the floor. When she looked up at him again, there was a different expression on her face—deeper than panic, more enveloping than fear—resignation, abject surrender.

“Why is it so necessary that we survive?” she asked in a flat voice. “What’s the good of it, Bill?—wouldn’t it be quicker and easier if we just...” She let the word dangle.

Paul’s voice called, “I got the gasoline, pop. Is that all you need from out here?”

“Bring the can, Paul,” his father said. Then he turned to Grace. For the first time there was a tremor in his voice.

“That’s why we have to survive,” he said. “That’s the reason.”

They heard Paul’s steps.

“He may inherit just rubble, but he’s twelve years old. It isn’t just our survival, Grace. Sure, we can throw our lives away. Just deposit them on the curb like garbage cans.” His voice went higher. “
He’s twelve years old
. It’s too Goddamn early to think about a boy dying. . . when he hasn’t even had a chance to do any living.”

Paul appeared at the door with the gasoline can. “Put it there, next to the generator,” Stockton said as he walked out of the room. “I’ll go up and get the rest of the water.”

He climbed back up the stairs to the kitchen and picked up the last of the jugs. He was about to carry it back down when he heard a knock on the kitchen door. Jerry Harlowe’s face peered through the parted curtains.

Stockton unlocked the door. Harlowe stood outside, with a smile on his face that looked as if it had been painted on. His voice was strained.

“How ya doin’, Bill? he asked.

“I’m collecting water, which is what you should be doing.”

Harlowe looked painfully ill at ease.

“We got about thirty gallons and then the water stopped,” he said. His face twisted again. “Did yours stop too, Bill?”

Stockton nodded. “—You better get on home, Jerry. Get into your shel—” He wet his lips and corrected himself. “Into your basement. I’d board up the windows if I were you, and if you’ve got any wood putty or anything, I’d seal the corners.”

Harlowe fiddled with his tie.

“We don’t have a cellar, Bill,” he said, with a lopsided grin. “Remember? The benefits of modern architecture. We’ve got the one brand-new house on the street. Everything at your beck and call. Everything at your fingertips—” His voice shook. “Every wonder of modern science taken into account...except the one they forgot.” He put his eyes down and stared at his feet. “The one that’s heading for us now”

He looked up slowly and swallowed. “Bill,” he said, in a whisper, “Can I bring Martha and the kids over here?”

Stockton froze. He felt anger. “Over here?”

Harlowe nodded eagerly. “We’re sitting ducks there. Sitting ducks. We don’t have any protection at all.”

Stockton thought for a moment, then turned away. “You can use our basement.”

Harlowe grabbed his arm. “Your basement?” he asked incredulously. “What about your shelter? Goddamnit, Bill, that’s the only place anybody can survive. We’ve got to get into a shelter!”

Stockton looked at him, and the anger that had been just a dull resentment surged up inside. He held it down with effort, wondering to himself how the familiar face, once pleasing and boyish, could be so abhorrent to him now.

“I don’t have any room, Jerry,” he said. “I don’t have nearly enough room—or supplies, or anything. It’s designed for three people.”

“We’ll bring our own water,” Harlowe said, eagerly, “and our own food. We’ll sleep on top of one another if necessary.” His voice broke. “Please, Bill...”

He stared at Stockton’s impassive face. “Bill, we’ve got to use your shelter!” he cried. “I’ve got to keep my family alive! And we won’t use any of your stuff. Don’t you understand? We’ll bring our own.”

Stockton looked down at Harlowe’s hands, then into his face.

“What about your own air? Will you bring your own air? That’s a ten-by-ten room, Jerry.”

Harlowe let his hands drop. “Just let us stay in there the first forty-eight hours or so. Then we’ll get out. Honest to God, Bill. No matter what, we’ll get out.”

Stockton felt the water jug heavy in his hand. This could not be prolonged, he knew that. His voice cut through the air like a scalpel.

“When that door gets closed, Jerry, it stays closed. Closed and locked. There’ll be radiation—and God knows what else.” He felt an anguish rising deep inside him. “I’m sorry, Jerry. As God is my witness—I’m sorry But I built that for
my
family.”

He turned and started for the basement.

Jerry’s voice followed him. “What about
mine
? What do we do? Just rock on the front porch until we get burned to cinders!’’

Stockton kept his back to him. “That’s not my concern. Right at this moment, it’s my family I have to worry about.”

He started down the steps. Harlowe ran after him and grabbed his arm.

“I’m not going to sit by and watch my wife and my kids die in agony!” Tears rolled down Harlowe’s face. “Do you understand, Bill? I’m not going to do that!”

He shook Stockton, and started to cry uncontrollably “I’m not going to—”

Stockton pulled away. The jug slipped out of his hand and bounced down the basement steps, but it did not break. Stockton went slowly down the steps and picked it up.

“I’m sorry,” he heard Harlowe say. “Please forgive me, Bill.”

Stockton turned to look up. Oh, God, he thought. That’s my friend standing there. That’s my friend. But then his anger returned. He spoke to the figure standing above him.

“I kept telling you—all of you. Build a shelter. Get ready. Forget the card parties and the barbeques for maybe a couple of hours a week and admit to yourself that the worst is possible.”

He shook his head. “But you didn’t want to listen, Jerry. None of you wanted to listen. To build a shelter was admitting the kind of age we’re living in—and none of you had the guts to make that kind of an admission.”

He closed his eyes for a moment and then took a deep breath. “So now, Jerry, now you’ve got to face the reality.”

He took one last look at the white, stricken face on the stairs. “You want help now, Jerry? Now you get it from God.” He shook his head. “Not from me.”

He walked across the cellar toward the shelter.

The front door opened and the Weisses hurried through the hall into the living room. Rebecca carried their baby in her arms and stayed close to Marty.

“Bill!” Marty called. “Bill—where are you?”

“They’re already in the shelter!” Rebecca cried hysterically. “I told you they’d be in the shelter! They’ve locked themselves in.”

Jerry Harlowe appeared from the kitchen. “It’s no use,” he said. “He won’t let anyone in.”

Marty’s dark little face twisted with fear. “He’s got to let us in!” He pointed toward Rebecca and the baby. “We don’t even have any windows in half the basement. I don’t have anything to plug them up with either.”

He started to push his way past Harlowe. “Where is he? Is he downstairs? Is he in the shelter?”

He walked through the ding room into the kitchen, saw the open basement door, and called down.

“Bill? Bill—it’s Marty. We’ve got the baby with us.”

He stumbled down the cellar steps, calling, “Bill? Bill?”

The lights dimmed in the basement and Marty groped his way across the cellar floor until he reached the metal door of the shelter, now closed.

Behind him, in the darkness, his wife’s voice called out.

“Marty! Marty where are you? The lights are out! Marty—please...come back and get us.”

The baby started to cry, and then, from outside, came the sound of the siren.

Marty pounded on the door of the shelter. “Bill! Please...Bill... let us in!”

Stockton’s voice came back, muffled, from the other side of the door.

“Marty, I would if I could. Do you understand? If it didn’t mean endangering the lives of my own family, I would. I swear to you, I would.”

The last part of his words were drowned out by the siren, and then by the shrill wailing of the baby from the steps. Panic clawed at Many and he pounded on the door with both hands.

“Bill!” he shouted. “
You’ve got to let us in!
There isn’t any time. Please, Bill!”

On the other side of the door, the generator had begun to hum and the lights went on in the shelter—two big one-hundred watt bulbs, glaringly white.

Bill Stockton put his head against the steel door and closed his eyes. He shook his head.

“I can’t, Marty. Don’t stay there asking me. I can’t.”

His mouth went tight and his voice shook. “I can’t and I won’t!”

Marty Weiss knew then that the door was to remain locked. He turned and peered through the darkness at the figure of his wife standing on the steps. He felt a surge of tenderness. Of love. And, at this moment—of a loss, final and irrevocable. He turned and stared at the closed door.

“I feel sorry for you, Bill,” he said, quietly but clearly. “I really do. You’ll survive. You’ll live through it.” His voice went higher. “But you’re going to have blood on your hands. Do you hear me, Bill? You’ll have blood on your hands.”

Inside the shelter, Stockton stared at his wife. She tried to say something to him, but nothing came out.

Stockton could hear Marty Weiss’s footsteps retreating through the cellar and up the steps. His hands shook, and he had to clasp them together to keep them still.

“I can’t help it,” he whispered. “It’s us or it’s them. All my life...all my life I’ve only had one function. That was to end suffering. Relieve pain. To cure. But the rules are different now. The rules, the time, the place. Now there’s only one purpose, Grace—that’s to survive. Nothing else means anything. And we can’t afford to let it mean anything.” Suddenly he whirled to the door. “Marty! Jerry!” he screamed. “All of you—any of you! Get out of here! Stay out of here!”