For a long while, no one spoke…
After a while Mary made a meal which none of us even pretended to eat. No shots had sounded for a long time. I looked out the window every few minutes but there was nothing to see. It was like a ghost town. A newspaper tumbled down the waterfront, starting to shred. A sea breeze had come up; it whined through the empty streets. From a wharf further down the front a door or shutter banged with a determined rhythm. The swordfish still hung from the scales, dry now; it looked like papier mâché. I felt sorry for the swordfish. It helped a bit to spread my sympathies. The others were looking out too, from time to time. We never looked out together, just took it in haphazard turns.
Jerry said, ‘There’s nobody… nobody at all. Maybe it’s tapering off. No patrols, either… funny…’
He came back from the window.
A little later, Mary looked out.
She saw the shore patrolman first.
He was alone and looked relaxed.
He was standing down by the dock, looking out towards the patrol gunboats, not even watching his back. I breathed a sigh of relief. It must be over… at least this particular patrolman believed it to be over, for he showed no signs of alertness or fear. He seemed interested in the boats, as if he were waiting for them to do something, perhaps for the blockade to disperse. Jerry opened the door and stepped out. He called to the man. The man didn’t seem to hear. Jerry called again, louder. The patrolman heard then. He seemed to shake himself around inside his crisp white uniform, like a dog shaking off water. Then he turned to face us.
Jerry’s breath went out in a rush.
I couldn’t breathe at all.
The ghoul in the white uniform made no move towards us; he stood, relaxed, watching us as he had watched the boats, with those blank, white eyes.
We went back in and barred the door.
We didn’t look out for a while.
When we did, later, he was gone…
After that, we avoided the window. We did not look out, not wanting to see what was in the streets, and we did not look at it, not wanting to see what might… be looking in. From time to time we heard… things… shuffling past the building; once something banged against the wall. But there was no real effort to get in. We sat at the desk in the centre of the room and looked at our hands. We drank a little rum. At one point, Mary raised the question that had been troubling me — and perhaps Jerry, as well.
‘What shall we do if someone… normal… wants to join us?’
She didn’t wait for a reply; said, ‘I mean, when Doctor Winston knocked on the door, I let him in as a matter of course… and then I found out… I mean, how will we know?’ She spoke the last words in a strained voice that rose towards hysteria. I had no answer. She said, ‘We can’t refuse to let someone in, if there’s a chance they might be all right…’ She gestured with both hands, vehemently, as if we were arguing with her… !We can’t leave them out there…’
Jerry said, ‘I guess what we’d do — will do, it happens — is lock ‘em up in the cell. Keep ‘em at gunpoint and explain that we’re sorry but can’t take any chances and get ‘em in the cell. If they’re still all right after… oh, say five hours, to be on the safe side… then we can let them out.’
Mary nodded. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘There is a flaw, Jerry,’ I said, shaking my head. When they both looked at me, I said, ‘It’s a good plan if only one person comes, but suppose two or three show up here? If they come separately — locking them up… would be like locking a man up with a time bomb, which might or might not explode… or a tiger, which might or might not be hungry. It would be torture.’
‘Hell,’ he said.
‘Elston told me they had tested the ferocity of the subjects by locking them up together,’ I added. ‘It was not a pretty sight, although, no doubt, of great scientific interest,’ I said, bitterly.
‘Well… if one of us kept a constant watch… the moment one of them showed any signs of going berserk, we could kill him before the other was attacked…’
‘Could we?’ I asked.
Jerry dropped his head. He had not been able to kill Doctor Winston and I had not even aimed my rifle at Mendoza and Mary… yet, who knows what one can do? ‘We might manage that,’ I said.
‘What else can we do?’
‘There’s one thing.’ I hesitated, wishing that Mary had been sleeping; not wanting to disturb her even more. But she was listening carefully; she had an interest in the matter, after all. I said, ‘We might need the cell for ourselves.’
‘How do you mean?’ Jerry asked.
‘They’re inhumanly strong. They could break in here, if they wanted to… no, not wanted to, they’re too mindless for that… but if the urge takes them. I thought… well, if they do try to break in, we can lock ourselves in the cell.’
Jerry grimaced. He said, ‘I don’t like that idea at all… locked in there, cowering back from the bars… with things maybe reaching in, trying to get at us…’ His great torso rippled; he shuddered like an earth tremor. ‘I’d rather be mobile… run… shoot if we have to… Yeah, I can shoot them… and hell, we don’t know how long we have to stay here.’
I hadn’t relished the thought myself; it was an option I thought I should mention. I said, ‘It may be a moot point. Maybe no one, normal or otherwise, will come. Let’s wait and see.’
And maybe it was a moot point.
But I was to be reminded, in a terrible way, of our agonising dilemma… the problem was not unique to us…
We spoke no more, with nothing to say. Time moved ponderously. And very slowly the light changed at the window.
The long night had begun…
We sat in the lighted cube of our sanctuary and things moved in the darkness without. The sounds they made were soft, as if they caressed the walls lovingly, longingly, yearning to enter. They sensed we were within; they gently stroked the walls around us. We knew we should turn the light out… that it was drawing them to the jail like a beacon… but knowing is one thing; we could not cherish darkness — by dawn we would have been inhuman.
Like a prisoner marking his passing sentence, Jerry drove his fist into his palm, not hard but as regular as a metronome; he winced with each soft blow, as if stung. Beside him, Mary sat with her face buried in her hands. From time to time she would shudder and look up, tearing her face from its shelter by main force… from the hooks of her hands came her tormented countenance, haggard, white, ghastly, the flesh drawn from her fingers. I looked past them, at the bars and, beyond, the shadow of the bars on the wall of the cell. My backbone was like a bar, riveting me to my chair… multiple bars, split by currents of fear and spreading like splintered bamboo through my torso — casting shadows on my soul. I was breathing heavily. We all were. And then something else was breathing heavily, at the door. Jerry looked up. His gun was on the table, but he did not touch it. The breath from without seemed to billow into the door; the door was solid, yet I felt as if it were fluttering like a sail, about to float open. A hand stroked the contours of the door, seeking, testing. Then it moved away; moving on, it drew with it shreds of my sanity…
Suddenly, I was back in Mendoza’s.
My mind out of time, I had just broken the glass case and the sound shattered in my ears. Mary’s face was writhing; Jerry was vibrating; my mind snapped back and I knew I had heard glass break behind me. There was glass in the window. I remembered seeing Mary at the window, through the pane… drawn against my will, I turned…
Sally the salad girl was reaching in…