able thudding, the shadow of a sound. But
it did not come again, and he dismissed it as the thumping of his own
blood in his ears, audible in that stillness.

At the end of a long aisle, neat rows of cans greeted him, the labels
rotted off, the metal rust-streaked, but apparently tight and whole.
He found a metal basket, a roll of wire, twisted a handle for the
basket and filled it, choosing the cans by their shape. He should have
liked to explore further, but the urge to return tugged at him. He
went up the stairs three at a time.

There was a dark, oblong break in the long glowing wall of the upper
corridor! The door--it was the door of the apartment where he had left
Naomi! He leaped down the hall, shouting. The portal hung open,
shattered: the rooms were stark, staring empty. Allan reeled out
again. There were the marks of footprints, of many footprints, in the
green scum of the hall floor, their own among them, that had led the
marauders straight to the girl!

Fool that he had been! He had thought she would be safer behind a
bolted door! Allan berated himself. He had thought not to worry her.
There had been only four bodies in the wreckage of the black
plane--but how had the rest gotten here so soon?

There was a humming whine from above. Dane hurtled toward the roof
stairs. He burst from the upper landing, fists clenched, face a
furious mask. A helicopter was just rising. Allan jumped for it, his
fingers caught and clung to the undercarriage. But the down-swing of
his body broke his hold, and Dane crashed to the roof.

* * * * *

He watched the plane, saw it zoom up, turn east, saw it sink and land
a half mile away, atop the building where he had found her. In the
moonlight he marked the direction of the place, its distance. Then he
was descending stairs, innumerable stairs. He could not hope to reach
it in time to save Naomi. But--his eyes grew stony--he could avenge
her.

Afterwards that nightmare journey through the murdered city was a
detailless blur to Allan. He clambered over heaped rubble, forced
himself through windrows of piled bones that crumbled to dust at his
touch. Vines, and whipping creepers of triumphant vegetation
everywhere halted him; he tore them away with bleeding hands and
stumbled on. He fell, and scrambled up again, and plodded on the
interminable path till he had reached his goal.

Here, at last, some modicum of reason penetrated into the numbed
bl