The government had immediately labeled all investigations “top-secret,” and Paul had heard no news since the initial speculations.
Indeed, the government might have explained the whole thing and proclaimed it to the country for all he knew.
One thing was certain: the country had not heard.
It no longer possessed channels of communication.
Paul thought that if any such invaders were coming, they would have already arrived—months ago.
Civilization was not truly wrecked; it had simply been discarded during the crazed flight of the individual away from the herd. Industry lay idle and unmanned, but still intact.
Man was fleeing from Man.
Fear had destroyed the integration of his society, and had left him powerless before any hypothetical invaders.
Earth was ripe for plucking, but it remained unplucked and withering.
Paul, therefore, discarded the invasion hypothesis, and searched for nothing new to replace it.
He accepted the fact of his own existence in the midst of chaos, and sought to protect that existence as best he could.
It proved to be a full-time job, with no spare time for theorizing.
Life was a rabbit scurrying over a hill.
Life was a warm blanket, and a secluded sleeping place.
Life was ditchwater, and an unbloated can of corned beef, and a suit of clothing looted from a deserted cottage.
Life, above all else, was an avoidance of other human beings. For no dermie had the grace to cry “unclean!” to the unsuspecting.
If the dermie’s discolorations were still in the concealable stage, then concealed they would be, while the lost creature deliberately sought to infect his wife, his children, his friends—whoever would not protest an idle touch of the hand.
When the grayness touched the face and the backs of the hands, the creature became a feverish night wanderer, subject to strange hallucinations and delusions and desires.
The fog began to part toward midmorning as Paul drove deeper into the outskirts of Houston.
The highway was becoming a commercial subcenter, lined with businesses and small shops.
The sidewalks were showered with broken glass from windows kicked in by looters.
Paul kept to the center of the deserted street, listening and watching cautiously for signs of life.
The distant barking of a dog was the only sound in the once-growling metropolis.
A flight of sparrows winged down the street, then darted in through a broken window to an inside nesting place.
He searched a small grocery store, looking for a snack, but the shelves were bare.
The thoroughfare had served as a main avenue of escape, and the fugitives had looted it thoroughly to obtain provisions.
He turned onto a side street, then after several blocks turned again to parallel the highway, moving through an old residential section.
Many houses had been left open, but few had been looted.
He entered one old frame mansion and found a can of tomatoes in the kitchen.
He opened it and sipped the tender delicacy from the container, while curiosity sent him prowling through the rooms.
He wandered up the first flight of stairs, then halted with one foot on the landing.
A body lay sprawled across the second flight—the body of a young man, dead quite a while.
A well-rusted pistol had fallen from his hand.
Paul dropped the tomatoes and bolted for the street.
Suicide was a common recourse, when a man learned that he had been touched.
After two blocks, Paul stopped running.
He sat panting on a fire hydrant and chided himself for being overly cautious.
The man had been dead for months; and infection was achieved only through contact.
Nevertheless, his scalp was still tingling.
When he had rested briefly, he continued his plodding course toward the heart of the city.
Toward noon, he saw another human being.
The man was standing on the loading dock of a warehouse, apparently enjoying the sunlight that came with the dissolving of the fog.
He was slowly and solemnly spooning the contents of a can into a red-lipped mouth while his beard bobbled with appreciative chewing.
Suddenly he saw Paul who had stopped in the center of the street with his hand on the butt of his pistol.
The man backed away, tossed the can aside, and sprinted the length of the platform.
He bounded off the end, snatched a bicycle away from the wall, and pedalled quickly out of sight while he bleated shrill blasts on a police whistle clenched between his teeth.
Paul trotted to the corner, but the man had made another turn.
His whistle continued bleating.
A signal?
A dermie summons to a touching orgy?