Free Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 by S is for Space (v2.1) Page A

in
the morning the gray beetles hissed down the rain-shiny streets, turned in, and
the bodies were laid out on the cold concrete floors, with white sheets over
them. It was a continuous flow until about four-thirty, then it stopped. There
were about two hundred bodies there, white and cold.
                 The
bodies were left alone; nobody stayed behind to tend them. There was no use
tending the dead; it was a useless procedure; the dead could take care of
themselves.
                 About
five o’clock, with a touch of dawn in the east, the first trickle of relatives
arrived to identify their sons or their fathers or their mothers or their
uncles. The people moved quickly into the warehouse, made the identification,
moved quickly out again. By six o’clock, with the sky still lighter in the
east, this trickle had passed on, also.
                 William
Lantry walked across the wide wet street and entered the warehouse.
                 He
held a piece of blue chalk in one hand.
                 He
walked by the coroner who stood in the entranceway talking to two others. “…
drive the bodies to the Incinerator in Mellin Town, tomorrow …” The voices
faded.
                 Lantry
moved, his feet echoing faintly on the cool concrete. A wave of sourceless
relief came to him as he walked among the shrouded figures. He was among his
own. And—better than that! He had created these! He had made them dead! He had procured for himself a vast number of
recumbent friends!
                 Was
the coroner watching? Lantry turned his head. No. The warehouse was calm and
quiet and shadowed in the dark morning. The coroner was walking away now;
across the street, with his two attendants; a beetle had drawn up on the other
side of the street, and the coroner was going over to talk with whoever was in
the beetle.
                 William
Lantry stood and made a blue chalk pentagram on the floor by each of the
bodies. He moved swiftly, swiftly, without a sound, without blinking. In a few
minutes, glancing up now and then to see if the coroner was still busy, he had
chalked the floor by a hundred bodies. He straightened up and put the chalk in
his pocket.
                 Now
is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the time
for all good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the time for all
good men to come to the aid of their party, now is the time …
                 Lying
in the earth, over the centuries, the processes and thoughts of passing peoples
and passing times had seeped down to him, slowly, as into a deep-buried sponge.
From some death-memory in him now, ironically, repeatedly, a black typewriter
clacked out black even lines of pertinent words:
                 Now
is the time for all good men, for all good men, to come to the aid of—
                 William
Lantry.
                 Other words —
                 Arise
my love, and come away—
                 The
quick brown fox jumped over … Paraphrase
it . The quick risen body jumped over the tumbled Incinerator…
                 Lazarus,
come forth from the tomb …
                 He
knew the right words. He need only speak them as they had been spoken over the
centuries. He need only gesture with his hands and speak the words, the dark
words that would cause these bodies to quiver, rise and walk!
                 And
when they had risen he would take them through the town, they would kill others,
and the others would rise and walk. By the end of the day there would be
thousands of good friends, walking with him. And what of the naïve, living
people of this year, this day, this hour? They would be completely unprepared
for it. They would go down to defeat because they would not be expecting war of
any sort. They wouldn’t believe it possible, it would all be over before