My Dear Professor,
Though you are a famous and busy man I do hope you will take time to read a few words of grateful tribute
from an old lady (eight-four). I have just finished your magnificent and inspirational book How to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account: an Introduction to Functional Epistemology. x^
Professor, I believe. I know every splendid word in your book is true. If there is one chapter finer than the others it is No. 9, “How to Be In Utter Harmony With Your Environment.” The Twelve Rules in that chapter shall from this minute be my guiding light, and I shall practice them faithfully forever.
Your grateful friend, (Miss) Phoebe Bancroft
That flattering letter reached us on Friday, one day after the papers reported with amusement or dismay the “blackout” of La Plume, Pennsylvania. The term “Plague Area” came later.
“I suppose she might,” said the professor.
“Well, think about it.”
The train slowed for a turn. I noticed that the track was lined with men and women. And some of them, by God, were leaping for the moving train! Brakes went on with a squeal and jolt; my nose bashed against the seat in front of us.
“Aggression,” the professor said, astonished. “But that is not in the pattern!”
We saw the trainman in the vestibule opening the door to yell at the trackside people. He was trampled as they swarmed aboard, filling, jamming the car in a twinkling.
“Got to Scranton,” we heard them saying. “Zombies—”
“I get it,” I shouted at the professor over their hubbub. “These are refugees from Scranton. They must have blocked the track. Right now they’re probably bullying the engineer into backing up all the way to Wilkes-Barre. We’ve got to get off!”
“Ja,” he said. We were in an end seat. By elbowing, crowding and a little slugging we got to the vestibule and dropped to the tracks. The professor lost all his lug-
gage in the brief, fierce struggle. I saved only my briefcase. The powers of Hell itself were not going to separate me from that briefcase.
Hundreds of yelling, milling people were trying to climb aboard. Some made it to the roofs of the cars after it was physically impossible for one more body to be fitted inside. The locomotive uttered a despairing toot and the train began to back up.
“Well,” I said, “we head north.”
We found U. S. 6 after a short overland hike and trudged along the concrete. There was no traffic. Everybody with a car had left Scranton days ago, and nobody was going into Scranton. Except us.
We saw our first zombie where a signpost told us it was three miles to the city. She was a woman in a Mother Hubbard and sunbonnet. I couldn’t tell whether she was young or old, beautiful or a hag. She gave us a sweet, empty smile and asked if we had any food. I said no. She said she wasn’t complaining about her lot but she was hungry, and of course the vegetables and things were so much better now that they weren’t poisoning the soil with those dreadful chemical fertilizers. Then she said maybe there might be something to eat down the road, wished us a pleasant good-day and went on.
“Dreadful chemical fertilizers?” I asked.
The professor said: “I believe that is a contribution by the Duchess of Carbondale to Miss Phoebe’s reign. Several interviews mention it.” We walked on. I could read his mind like a book. He hasn’t even read the interviews. He is a foolish, an impossible young man. And yet he is here, he has undergone a rigorous course of training, he is after all risking a sort of death. Why? I let him go on wondering. The answer was hi my briefcase.
“When do you think we’ll be in range?” I asked.
“Heaven knows,” he said testily. “Too many variables. Maybe it’s different when she sleeps, maybe it grows at different rates varying as the number of people affected. I feel nothing yet.”
“Neither do I.”
And when we felt something—specifically, when we felt Miss Phoebe Bancroft practicing the Twelve Rules of “How to be in Utter Harmony\ with Your Environment” —we would do something completely idiotic, something that had got us thrown—literally thrown—out of the office of the Secretary of Defense.