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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 they could convince themselves that such an illogical thing could happen.
He lifted his hands. His lips moved. He said the words. He began in a chanting whisper and then raised his voice, louder. He said the words again and again. His eyes were closed tightly. His body swayed. He spoke faster and faster. He began to move forward among the bodies. The dark words flowed from his mouth. He was enchanted with his own formulae. He stooped and made further blue symbols on the concrete, in the fashion of long-dead sorcerers, smiling, confident. Any moment now the first tremor of the still bodies, any moment now the rising, the leaping up of the cold ones!
His hands lifted in the air. His head nodded. He spoke, he spoke, he spoke. He gestured. He talked loudly over the bodies, his eyes flaring, his body tensed. “Now!” he cried, violently. “Rise, all of you!”
Nothing happened.
“Rise!” he screamed, with a terrible torment in his voice.
The sheets lay in white blue-shadow folds over the silent bodies.
“Hear me, and act!” he shouted.
Far away, on the street, a beetle hissed along.
Again, again, again he shouted, pleaded. He got down by each body and asked of it his particular violent favor. No reply. He strode wildly between the even white rows, flinging his arms up, stooping again and again to make blue symbols!
Lantry was very pale. He licked his lips. “Come on, get up,” he said. “They have, they always have, for a thousand years. When you make a mark—so! and speak a word—so! they always rise! Why not now, why not you! Come on, come on, before they come back!”
The warehouse went up into shadow. There were steel beams across and down. In it, under the roof, there was not a sound, except the raving of a lonely man.
Lantry stopped.
Through the wide doors of the warehouse he caught a glimpse of the last cold stars of morning.
