They were moving west now, their shadows behind them-at first as squat as frogs, beginning to lengthen out as the afternoon progressed. They passed the Avenue of the Americas, Seventh Avenue, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth. The streets were crammed and silent, frozen rivers of automobiles in every color, predominated by the yellow of the taxicabs. Many of the cars had become hearses, their decaying drivers still leaning behind the wheels, their passengers slumped as if, weary of the traffic jam, they had fallen asleep. Larry started to think that maybe they'd want to pick up a couple of motorcycles once they got out of the city. That would give them both mobility and a fighting chance to skirt the worst of the clots of dead vehicles which must litter the highways everywhere.

Always assuming she can run a bike, he thought. And the way things were going, it would turn out she couldn't. Life with Rita was turning out to be a real pain in the butt, at least in some of its aspects. But if push came down to shove, he supposed she could ride pillion behind him.

At the intersection of Thirty-ninth and Seventh, they saw a young man wearing cutoff denim shorts and nothing else lying atop a Ding-Dong Taxi.

"Is he dead?" Rita asked, and at the sound of her voice the young man sat up, looked around, saw them, and waved. They waved back. The young man lay placidly back down.

It was just after two o'clock when they crossed Eleventh Avenue. Larry heard a muffled cry of pain behind him and realized Rita was no longer walking on his left.

She was down on one knee, holding her foot. With something like horror, Larry noticed for the first time that she was wearing expensive open-toed sandals, probably in the eighty-dollar range, just the thing for a four-block stroll along Fifth Avenue while window-shopping, but for a long walk-a hike, really-like the one they had been making ...

The ankle-straps had chafed through her skin. Blood was trickling down her ankles.

"Larry, I'm s-"

He jerked her abruptly to her feet. "What were you thinking about?" he shouted into her face. He felt a moment's shame at the miserable way she recoiled, but also a mean sort of pleasure. "Did you think you could cab back to your apartment if your feet got tired?"

"I never thought-"

"Well, Christ!" He ran his hands through his hair. "I guess you didn't. You're bleeding, bleeding, Rita. How long has it been hurting?" Rita. How long has it been hurting?"

Her voice was so low and husky that he had trouble hearing her even in the preternatural silence. "Since ... well, since about Fifth and Forty-ninth, I guess."

"Your feet have been hurting you for twenty fucking blocks and you didn't say anything?"

"I thought ... it might ... go away ... not hurt anymore ... I didn't want to ... we were making such good time ... getting out of the city ... I just thought ..."

"You didn't think at all," he said angrily. "How much good time are we going to make with you like this? Your fucking feet look like you got fucking crucified."

"Don't swear at me, Larry," she said, beginning to sob. "Please don't ... it makes me feel so bad when you ... please don't swear at me."

He was in an ecstasy of rage now, and later he would not be able to understand why the sight of her bleeding feet had blown all his circuits that way. For the moment it didn't matter. He screamed into her face: "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" The word echoed back from the high-rise apartment buildings, dim and meaningless. The word echoed back from the high-rise apartment buildings, dim and meaningless.

She put her hands over her face and leaned forward, crying. It made him even angrier, and he supposed that part of it was that she really didn't want want to see: she would just as soon put her hands over her face and let him lead her, why not, there had always been someone around to take good care of Our Heroine, Little Rita. Someone to drive the car, do the marketing, wash out the toilet bowl, do the taxes. So let's put on some of that gagging-sweet Debussy and put our well-manicured hands over our eyes and leave it all up to Larry. Take care of me, Larry, after seeing what happened to the monster-shouter, I've decided I don't want to see anymore. It's all rawther sordid for one of my breeding and background. to see: she would just as soon put her hands over her face and let him lead her, why not, there had always been someone around to take good care of Our Heroine, Little Rita. Someone to drive the car, do the marketing, wash out the toilet bowl, do the taxes. So let's put on some of that gagging-sweet Debussy and put our well-manicured hands over our eyes and leave it all up to Larry. Take care of me, Larry, after seeing what happened to the monster-shouter, I've decided I don't want to see anymore. It's all rawther sordid for one of my breeding and background.

He yanked her hands away. She cringed and tried to put them over her eyes again.

"Look at me."

She shook her head.

"Goddammit, you look at me, Rita."

She finally did in a strange, flinching way, as if thinking he would now go to work on her with his fists as well as his tongue. The way a part of him felt now, that would be just fine.

"I want to tell you the facts of life because you don't seem to understand them. The fact is, we may have to walk another twenty or thirty miles. The fact is, if you get infected from those scrapes, you could get blood poisoning and die. The fact is, you've got to get your thumb out of your ass and start helping me."

He had been holding her by the upper arms, and he saw that his thumbs had almost disappeared into her flesh. His anger broke when he saw the red marks that appeared when he let her go. He stepped away, feeling uncertain again, knowing with sick certainty that he had overreacted. Larry Underwood strikes again. If he was so goddam smart, why hadn't he checked out her footgear before they started out?

Because that's her problem, part of him said with surly defensiveness. part of him said with surly defensiveness.

No, that wasn't true. It had been his his problem. Because she didn't know. If he was going to take her with him (and it was only today that he had begun to think how much simpler life would be if he hadn't), he was just going to have to be responsible for her. problem. Because she didn't know. If he was going to take her with him (and it was only today that he had begun to think how much simpler life would be if he hadn't), he was just going to have to be responsible for her.

Be damned if I will, the surly voice said. the surly voice said.

His mother: You're a taker, Larry. You're a taker, Larry.

The oral hygienist from Fordham, crying out her window after him: I thought you were a nice guy! You ain't no nice guy! I thought you were a nice guy! You ain't no nice guy!

There's something left out of you, Larry. You're a taker.

That's a lie! That is a goddamned LIE!

"Rita," he said, "I'm sorry."

She sat down on the pavement in her sleeveless blouse and her white deckpants, her hair looking gray and old. She bowed her head and held her hurt feet. She wouldn't look at him.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "I ... look, I had no right to say those things." He did, but never mind. If you apologized, things got smoothed over. It was how the world worked.

"Go on, Larry," she said, "don't let me slow you down."

"I said said I was sorry," he told her, his voice a trifle petulant. "We'll get you some new shoes and some white socks. We'll ..." I was sorry," he told her, his voice a trifle petulant. "We'll get you some new shoes and some white socks. We'll ..."

"We'll nothing. Go on."

"Rita, I'm sorry-"

"If you say that one more time, I'll scream. You're a shit and your apology is not not accepted. Now go on." accepted. Now go on."

"I said I was-"

She threw back her head and shrieked. He took a step backward, looking around to see if anyone had heard her, to see if maybe a policeman was running over to see what kind of awful thing that young fellow was doing to the old lady who was sitting on the sidewalk with her shoes off. Culture lag, he thought distractedly, what fun it all is.

She stopped screaming and looked at him. She made a flicking gesture with her hand, as if he was a bothersome fly.

"You better stop," he said, "or I really will leave you."

She only looked at him. He couldn't meet her eyes and so dropped his gaze, hating her for making him do that.

"All right," he said, "have a good time getting raped and murdered."

He shouldered the rifle and started off again, now angling left toward the car-packed 495 entrance ramp, sloping down toward the tunnel's mouth. At the foot of the ramp he saw there had been one hell of a crash; a man driving a Mayflower moving van had tried to butt his way into the main traffic flow and cars were scattered around the van like bowling pins. A burned-out Pinto lay almost beneath the van's body. The van's driver hung halfway out of the cab window, head down, arms dangling. There was a fan of dried blood and puke sprayed out below him on the door.

Larry looked around, sure he would see her walking toward him or standing and accusing him with her eyes. But Rita was gone.

"Fuck you," he said with nervous resentment. "I tried to apologize."

For a moment he couldn't go on; he felt impaled by hundreds of angry dead eyes, staring out at him from all these cars. A snatch of Dylan occurred to him: "I waited for you inside the frozen traffic ... when you knew I had some other place to be ... but where are you tonight, sweet Marie?" "I waited for you inside the frozen traffic ... when you knew I had some other place to be ... but where are you tonight, sweet Marie?"

Ahead, he could see four lanes of westbound traffic disappearing into the black arch of the tunnel, and with something like real dread he saw that the overhead fluorescent bars inside the Lincoln were out. It would be like going into an automobile graveyard. They would let him get halfway and then they would all begin to stir ... to come alive ... he would hear car doors clicking open and then softly chunking closed ... their shuffling footsteps ... They would let him get halfway and then they would all begin to stir ... to come alive ... he would hear car doors clicking open and then softly chunking closed ... their shuffling footsteps ...

A light sweat broke on his body. Overhead a bird called raucously and he jumped. You're being stupid, he told himself. Kid's stuff, that's what this is. All you have to do is stay on the pedestrian catwalk and in no time at all you'll be- - strangled by the walking dead. strangled by the walking dead.

He licked his lips and tried to laugh. It came out badly. He walked five paces toward the place where the ramp joined the highway and then stopped again. To his left was a Caddy, an El Dorado, and a woman with a blackened troll face was staring out at him. Her nose was pressed into a bulb against the glass. Blood and snot had trickled out onto the window. The man who had been driving the Caddy was slumped over the wheel as if looking for something on the floor. All the Caddy's windows were rolled up; it would be like a greenhouse in there. If he opened the door the woman would spill out and break open on the pavement like a sack of rotten melons and the smell would be warm and steamy, wet and crawling with decay.

The way it would smell in the tunnel.

Abruptly Larry turned around and trotted back the way he had come, feeling the breeze he was making cool the sweat on his forehead.

"Rita! Rita, listen! I want to-"

The words died as he reached the top of the ramp. Rita was still gone. Thirty-ninth Street dwindled away to a point. He ran from the south sidewalk to the north, squeezing between bumpers and scrambling over hoods almost hot enough to blister his skin. But the north sidewalk was also empty.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and cried: "Rita! Rita!"

His only answer a dead echo: "Rita "Rita ... ... ita ita ... ... ita ita ... ... ita ita ..." ..."

By four o'clock dark clouds had begun to build over Manhattan and the sound of thunder rolled back and forth between the city's cliffs. Lightning forked down at the buildings. It was as if God were trying to frighten the few remaining people out of hiding. The light had become yellow and strange, and Larry didn't like it. His belly was cramped and when he lit a cigarette it trembled in his hand the way the coffee cup had trembled in Rita's this morning.

He was sitting at the street end of the access ramp, leaning his back against the lowest bar of the railing. His pack was on his lap, and the .30-.30 was leaning against the railing beside him. He had thought she would get scared and come back before long, but she hadn't. Fifteen minutes ago he had given up calling her name. The echoes freaked him out.

Thunder rolled again, close this time. A chilly breeze ran its hand over the back of his shirt, which was pasted to his skin with sweat. He was going to have to get inside somewhere or else stop shitting around and go through the tunnel. If he couldn't work up the guts to go through, he'd have to spend another night in the city and go over the George Washington Bridge in the morning, and that was 140 blocks north.

He tried to think rationally about the tunnel. There was nothing in there that was going to bite him. He'd forgotten to pick up a good big flashlight-Christ, you never remembered everything everything-but he did have his butane Bic, and there was a guardrail between the catwalk and the road. Anything else ... thinking about all those dead people in their cars, for instance ... that was just panic talking, comic-book stuff, about as sensible as worrying about the boogeyman in the closet. If that's all you can think about, Larry [he lectured himself], then you're not going to get along in this brave new world. Not at all. You're- A stroke of lightning split the sky almost directly overhead, making him wince. It was followed by a heavy caisson of thunder. He thought randomly, July 1, this is the day you're supposed to take your sweetie to Coney Island and eat hotdogs by the score. Knock down the three wooden milk-bottles with one ball and win the Kewpie doll. The fireworks at night- A cold splash of rain struck the side of his face and then another hit the back of his neck and trickled inside the collar of his shirt. Dime-sized drops began to hit around him. He stood up, slung the pack over his shoulders, and hoisted the rifle. He was still not sure which way to go- back to Thirty-ninth or into the Lincoln Tunnel. But he had to get undercover somewhere because it was starting to pour.

Thunder broke overhead with a gigantic roar, making him squeal in terror-a sound no different than those made by Cro-Magnon men two million years before.

"You fucking coward," he said, and trotted down the ramp toward the maw of the tunnel, his head bent forward as the rain began to come harder. It dripped from his hair. He passed the woman with her nose against the El Dorado's passenger window, trying not to look but catching her out of the tail of his eye just the same. The rain drummed on the car roofs like jazz percussion. It was coming down so hard it bounced back up again, causing a light mist-haze.

Larry stopped for moment just outside the tunnel, undecided and frightened again. Then it began to hail, and that decided him. The hailstones were big, stinging. Thunder bellowed again.

Okay, he thought. he thought. Okay, okay, okay, I'm convinced. Okay, okay, okay, I'm convinced. He stepped into the Lincoln Tunnel. He stepped into the Lincoln Tunnel.

It was much blacker inside than he had imagined it would be. At first the opening behind him cast dim white light ahead and he could see yet more cars, jammed in bumper to bumper (it must have been bad, dying in here, he thought, as claustrophobia wrapped its stealthy banana fingers lovingly around his head and began to first caress and then to squeeze his temples, it must have been really bad, it must have been fucking horrible), horrible), and the greenish-white tiles that dressed the upward-curving walls. He could see the pedestrian railing to his right, stretching dimly ahead. On his left, at thirty- or forty-foot intervals, were big support pillars. A sign advised him and the greenish-white tiles that dressed the upward-curving walls. He could see the pedestrian railing to his right, stretching dimly ahead. On his left, at thirty- or forty-foot intervals, were big support pillars. A sign advised him DO NOT CHANGE LANES DO NOT CHANGE LANES. There were dark fluorescents embedded in the tunnel's roof, and the blank glass eyes of closed-circuit TV cameras. And as he negotiated the first slow, banked curve, bearing gently to the right, the light grew dimmer until all he could see were muted flashes of chrome. After that the light simply ceased to exist at all.

He fumbled out his Bic, held it up, and spun the wheel. The light it provided was pitifully small, feeding his unease rather than assuaging it. Even with the flame turned up all the way it only gave him a circle of visibility about six feet in diameter.

He put it back in his pocket and kept walking, trailing his hand lightly along the railing. There was an echo in here, too, one he liked even less than the one outside. The echo made it sound like someone was behind him ... stalking him. He stopped several times, head cocked, eyes wide (but blind), listening until the echo had died off. After a bit he began to shuffle along, not lifting his heels from the concrete, so the echo wouldn't recur.

Sometime after that he stopped again and flicked the lighter close to his wristwatch. It was four-twenty, but he wasn't sure what to make of that. In this blackness time seemed to have no objective meaning. Neither did distance, for that matter; how long was the Lincoln Tunnel, anyway? A mile? Two? Surely it couldn't be two miles under the Hudson River. Let's say a mile. But if a mile was all it was, he should have been at the other end already. If the average man walks four miles an hour, he can walk one mile in fifteen minutes and he'd already been in this stinking hole five minutes longer than that.

"I'm walking a lot slower," he said, and jumped at the sound of his own voice. The lighter dropped from his hand and clicked onto the catwalk. The echo spoke back, changed into the dangerously jocular voice of an approaching lunatic: "... lot slower ... lower ... lower ..."

"Jesus," Larry muttered, and the echo whispered back: "zuss "zuss ... ... zuss zuss ... ... zuss zuss ..." ..."

He wiped a hand across his face, fighting panic and the urge to give up thought and just run blindly forward. Instead he knelt (his knees popped like pistol shots, frightening him again) and walked his fingers over the miniature topography of the pedestrian catwalk-the chipped valleys in the cement, the ridge of an old cigarette butt, the hill of a tiny tinfoil ball-until at last he happened on his Bic. With an inner sigh he squeezed it tightly in his hand, stood up, and walked on.

Larry was beginning to get himself under control again when his foot struck something stiff and barely yielding. He uttered an inhalatory sort of scream and took two staggering steps backward. He made himself hold steady as he pulled the Bic lighter from his pocket and flicked it. The flame wavered crazily in his trembling grasp.

He had stepped on a soldier's hand. He was sitting with his back against the tunnel wall, his legs splayed across the walkway, a horrible sentinel left here to bar passage. His glazed eyes stared up at Larry. His lips had fallen away from his teeth and he seemed to be grinning. A switchblade knife jutted jauntily from his throat.

The lighter was growing warm in his hand. Larry let it go out. Licking his lips, holding the railing in a deathgrip, he forced himself forward until the toe of his shoe struck the soldier's hand again. Then he stepped over, making a comically large stride, and a kind of nightmarish certainty came over him. He would hear the scrape of the soldier's boots as he shifted, and then the soldier would reach out and clasp his leg in a loose cold grip.

In a shuffling sort of run, Larry went another ten paces and then made himself stop, knowing that if he didn't stop, the panic would win and he would bolt blindly, chased by a terrible regiment of echoes.

When he felt he had himself under some sort of control, he began to walk again. But now it was worse; his toes shrank inside his shoes, afraid that at any second they might come in contact with another body sprawled on the catwalk ... and soon enough, it happened.

He groaned and fumbled the lighter out again. This time it was much worse. The body his foot had struck was that of an old man in a blue suit. A black silk skullcap had fallen from his balding head into his lap. There was a six-pointed star of beaten silver in his lapel. Beyond him were another half a dozen corpses: two woman, a man of middle age, a woman who might have been in her late seventies, two teenage boys.

The lighter was growing too hot to hold any longer. He snapped it off and slipped it back into his pants pocket, where it glowed like a warm coal against his leg. Captain Trips hadn't taken this group off any more than it had taken the soldier back there. He had seen the blood, the torn clothes, the chipped tiles, the bullet holes. They had been gunned down. Larry remembered the rumors that soldiers had blocked off the points of exit from Island Manhattan. He hadn't know whether to believe them or not; he had heard so many rumors last week as things were breaking down.

The situation here was easy enough to reconstruct. They had been caught in the tunnel, but they hadn't been too sick to walk. They got out of their car and began to make their way toward the Jersey side, using the catwalk just as he was doing. There had been a command post, machine-gun emplacement, something.

Had been? Or was now?

Larry stood sweating, trying to make up his mind. The solid darkness provided the perfect theater screen on which the mind could play out its fantasies. He saw: grim-eyed soldiers in germproof suits crouched behind a machine gun equipped with an infrared peeper-scope, their job to cut down any stragglers who tried to come through the tunnel; one single soldier left behind, a suicide volunteer, wearing infrared goggles and creeping toward him with a knife in his teeth; two soldiers quietly loading a mortar with a single poison gas canister.

Yet he couldn't bring himself to go back. He was quite sure that these imaginings were only vapors, and the thought of retracing his steps was insupportable. Surely the soldiers were now gone. The dead one he'd stepped over seemed to support that. But ...

But what was really troubling him, he supposed, were the bodies directly ahead. They were sprawled all over each other for eight or nine feet. He couldn't just step over them as he had stepped over the soldier. And if he went off the catwalk to go around them, he risked breaking his leg or his ankle. If he was to go on, he would have to ... well ... he would have to walk over them.

Behind him, in the darkness, something moved.

Larry wheeled around, instantly engulfed with fear at that single gritting sound ... a footstep.

"Who's there?" he shouted, unslinging his rifle.

No answer but the echo. When it faded he heard-or thought he did - the quiet sound of breathing. He stood bug-eyed in the dark, the hairs along the nape of his neck turning into hackles. He held his breath. There was no sound. He was beginning to dismiss it as imagination when the sound came again ... a sliding, quiet footstep.

He fumbled madly for his lighter. The thought that it would make him a target never occurred to him. As he pulled it from his pocket the striker wheel caught on the lining momentarily and the lighter tumbled from his hand. He heard a clink as it struck the railing, and then there was a soft bonk bonk as it struck the hood or trunk of a car below. as it struck the hood or trunk of a car below.

The sliding footstep came again, a little closer now, impossible to tell how close. Someone coming to kill him and his terror-locked mind gave him a picture of the soldier with the switchblade in his neck, moving slowly toward him in the dark- The soft, gritting step again.

Larry remembered the rifle. He threw the butt against his shoulder, and began to fire. The explosions were shatteringly loud in the closed space; he screamed at the sound of them but the scream was lost in the roar. Flashbulb images of tile and frozen lanes of traffic exploded one after another like a string of black and white snapshots as fire licked from the muzzle of the .30-.30. Ricochets whined like banshees. The gun whacked his shoulder again and again until it was numb, until he knew that the force of the recoils had turned him on his feet and he was shooting out over the roadway instead of back along the catwalk. He was still unable to stop. His finger had taken over the function of the brain, and it spasmed mindlessly until the hammer began to fall with a dry and impotent clicking sound.

The echoes rolled back. Bright afterimages hung before his eyes in triple exposures. He was faintly aware of the stench of cordite and of the whining sound he was making deep in his chest.

Still clutching the gun he whirled around again, and now it was not the soldiers in their sterile Andromeda Strain Andromeda Strain suits that he saw on the screen of his interior theater but the Morlocks from the Classic Comics version of H. G. Wells's suits that he saw on the screen of his interior theater but the Morlocks from the Classic Comics version of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, The Time Machine, humped and blind creatures coming out of their holes in the ground where engines ran on and on in the bowels of the earth. humped and blind creatures coming out of their holes in the ground where engines ran on and on in the bowels of the earth.

He began to struggle across the soft yet stiff barricade of bodies, stumbling, almost falling, clutching the railing, going on. His foot punched through into some dreadful sliminess and there was a gassy, putrid smell that he barely noticed. He went on, gasping.

Then, from behind him, a scream rose in the darkness, freezing him on the spot. It was a desperate, wretched sound, close to the limits of sanity: "Larry! Oh, Larry, for God's sake "Larry! Oh, Larry, for God's sake-"

It was Rita Blakemoor.