Darkness and Dawn Read online

  Produced by Andrew Sly

  DARKNESS AND DAWN

  BY

  GEORGE ALLAN ENGLAND

  To Robert H. Davis Unique inspirer of plots Do I dedicate This my trilogy G.A.E.

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I The Vacant World

  I. The Awakening II. Realization III. On the Tower Platform IV. The City of Death V. Exploration VI. Treasure-Trove VII. The Outer World VIII. A Sign of Peril IX. Headway Against Odds X. Terror XI. A Thousand Years! XII. Drawing Together XIII. The Great Experiment XIV. The Moving Lights XV. Portents of War XVI. The Gathering of the Hordes XVII. Stern's Resolve XVIII. The Supreme Question XIX. The Unknown Race XX. The Curiosity of Eve XXI. Eve Becomes an Amazon XXII. Gods! XXIII. The Obeah XXIV. The Fight in the Forest XXV. The Goal, and Through It XXVI. Beatrice Dares XXVII. To Work! XXVIII. The Pulverite XXIX. The Battle on the Stairs XXX. Consummation

  BOOK II Beyond The Great Oblivion

  I. Beginnings II. Settling Down III. The Maskalonge IV. The Golden Age V. Deadly Peril VI. Trapped! VII. A Night of Toil VIII. The Rebirth of Civilization IX. Planning the Great Migration X. Toward the Great Cataract XI. The Plunge! XII. Trapped on the Ledge XIII. On the Crest of the Maelstrom XIV. A Fresh Start XV. Labor and Comradeship XVI. Finding the Biplane XVII. All Aboard for Boston! XVIII. The Hurricane XIX. Westward Ho! XX. On the Lip of the Chasm XXI. Lost in the Great Abyss XXII. Lights! XXIII. The White Barbarians XXIV. The Land of the Merucaans XXV. The Dungeon of the Skeletons XXVI. "You Speak English!" XXVII. Doomed! XXVIII. The Battle in the Dark XXIX. Shadows of War XXX. Exploration XXXI. Escape? XXXII. Preparations XXXIII. The Patriarch's Tale XXXIV. The Coming of Kamrou XXXV. Face to Face with Death XXXVI. Gage of Battle XXXVII. The Final StruggleXXXVIII. The Sun of Spring

  BOOK III The Afterglow

  I. Death, Life, and Love II. Eastward Ho! III. Catastrophe! IV. "To-Morrow is Our Wedding-Day" V. The Search for the Records VI. Trapped! VII. The Leaden Chest VIII. "Till Death Us Do Part" IX. At Settlement Cliffs X. Separation XI. "Hail to the Master!" XII. Challenged! XIII. The Ravished Nest XIV. On the Trail of the Monster XV. In the Grip of Terror XVI. A Respite from Toil XVII. The Distant Menace XVIII. The Annunciation XIX. The Master of His Race XX. Disaster! XXI. Allan Returns Not XXII. The Treason of H'yemba XXIII. The Return of the Master XXIV. "The Boy Is Gone!" XXV. The Fall of H'yemba XXVI. The Coming of the Horde XXVII. War! XXVIII. The Besom of Flame XXIX. Allan's Narrative XXX. Into the Fire-Swept Wilderness XXXI. A Strange Apparition XXXII. The Meeting of the Bands XXXIII. Five Years Later XXXIV. History and Roses XXXV. The Afterglow

  BOOK I

  THE VACANT WORLD

  CHAPTER I

  THE AWAKENING

  Dimly, like the daybreak glimmer of a sky long wrapped in fogs,a sign of consciousness began to dawn in the face of the tranced girl.

  Once more the breath of life began to stir in that full bosom, towhich again a vital warmth had on this day of days crept slowly back.

  And as she lay there, prone upon the dusty floor, her beautiful faceburied and shielded in the hollow of her arm, a sigh welled from herlips.

  Life--life was flowing back again! The miracle of miracles was growingto reality.

  Faintly now she breathed; vaguely her heart began to throb once more.She stirred. She moaned, still for the moment powerless to cast offwholly the enshrouding incubus of that tremendous, dreamless sleep.

  Then her hands closed. The finely tapered fingers tangled themselvesin the masses of thick, luxuriant hair which lay outspread all overand about her. The eyelids trembled.

  And, a moment later, Beatrice Kendrick was sitting up, dazed andutterly uncomprehending, peering about her at the strangest visionwhich since the world began had ever been the lot of any humancreature to behold--the vision of a place transformed beyond all powerof the intellect to understand.

  For of the room which she remembered, which had been her last sightwhen (so long, so very long, ago) her eyes had closed with that suddenand unconquerable drowsiness, of that room, I say, remained onlywalls, ceiling, floor of rust-red steel and crumbling cement.

  Quite gone was all the plaster, as by magic. Here or there a heap ofwhitish dust betrayed where some of its detritus still lay.

  Gone was every picture, chart, and map--which--but an hour since, itseemed to her--had decked this office of Allan Stern, consultingengineer, this aerie up in the forty-eighth story of the MetropolitanTower.

  Furniture, there now was none. Over the still-intact glass of thewindows cobwebs were draped so thickly as almost to exclude the lightof day--a strange, fly-infested curtain where once neat greenshade-rollers had hung.

  Even as the bewildered girl sat there, lips parted, eyes wide withamaze, a spider seized his buzzing prey and scampered back into a holein the wall.

  A huge, leathery bat, suspended upside down in the far corner, cheepedwith dry, crepitant sounds of irritation.

  Beatrice rubbed her eyes.

  "What?" she said, quite slowly. "Dreaming? How singular! I only wish Icould remember this when I wake up. Of all the dreams I've ever had,this one's certainly the strangest. So real, so vivid! Why, I couldswear I was awake--and yet--"

  All at once a sudden doubt flashed into her mind. An uneasy expressiondawned across her face. Her eyes grew wild with a great fear; the fearof utter and absolute incomprehension.

  Something about this room, this weird awakening, bore upon herconsciousness the dread tidings this was not a dream.

  Something drove home to her the fact that it was real, objective,positive! And with a gasp of fright she struggled up amid the litterand the rubbish of that uncanny room.

  "Oh!" she cried in terror, as a huge scorpion, malevolent, and withits tail raised to strike, scuttled away and vanished through a gapingvoid where once the corridor-door had swung. "Oh, oh! Where _am_ I?What--_what has--happened?_"

  Horrified beyond all words, pale and staring, both hands clutched toher breast, whereon her very clothing now had torn and crumbled, shefaced about.

  To her it seemed as though some monstrous, evil thing were lurking inthe dim corner at her back. She tried to scream, but could utter nosound, save a choked gasp.

  Then she started toward the doorway. Even as she took the first fewsteps her gown--a mere tattered mockery of garment--fell away fromher.

  And, confronted by a new problem, she stopped short. About her shepeered in vain for something to protect her disarray. There wasnothing.

  "Why--where's--where's my chair? My desk?" she exclaimed thickly,starting toward the place by the window where they should have been,and were not. Her shapely feet fell soundlessly in that strange andimpalpable dust which thickly coated everything.

  "My typewriter? Is--can _that_ be my typewriter? Great Heavens! What'sthe matter here, with everything? Am I mad?"

  There before her lay a somewhat larger pile of dust mixed with softand punky splinters of rotten wood. Amid all this decay she saw somebits of rust, a corroded type-bar or two--even a few rubber key-caps,still recognizable, though with the letters quite obliterated.

  All about her, veiling her completely in a mantle of wondrous glossand beauty, her lustrous hair fell, as she stooped to see thisstrange, incomprehensible phenomenon. She tried to pick up one of therubber caps. At her merest touch it crumbled to an impalpable whitep
owder.

  Back with a shuddering cry the girl sprang, terrified.

  "Merciful Heavens!" she supplicated. "What--what does all this mean?"

  For a moment she stood there, her every power of thought, of motion,numbed. Breathing not, she only stared in a wild kind of cringingamazement, as perhaps you might do if you should see a dead man move.

  Then to the door she ran. Out into the hall she peered, this way andthat, down the dismantled corridor, up the wreckage of the stairs allcumbered, like the office itself, with dust and webs and vermin.

  Aloud she hailed: "Oh! Help, help, _help!_" No answer. Even the echoesflung back only dull, vacuous sounds that deepened her sense of awfuland incredible isolation.

  What? No noise of human life anywhere to be heard? None! No familiarhum of the metropolis now rose from what, when she had fallen asleep,had been swarming streets and miles on miles of habitations.

  Instead, a blank, unbroken leaden silence, that seemed part of themusty, choking atmosphere--a silence that weighed down on Beatricelike funeral-palls.

  Dumfounded by all this, and by the universal crumbling of everyperishable thing, the girl ran, shuddering, back into the office.There in the dust her foot struck something hard.

  She stooped; she caught it up and stared at it.

  "My glass ink-well! What? Only such things remain?"

  No dream, then, but reality! She knew at length that some catastrophe,incredibly vast, some disaster cosmic in the tragedy of its sweep, haddesolated the world.

  "Oh, my mother!" cried she. "My mother--_dead?_ Dead, now, how long?"

  She did not weep, but just stood cowering, a chill of anguished horrorracking her. All at once her teeth began to chatter, her body to shakeas with an ague.

  Thus for a moment dazed and stunned she remained there, knowing notwhich way to turn nor what to do. Then her terror-stricken gaze fellon the doorway leading from her outer office to the inner one, the onewhere Stern had had his laboratory and his consultation-room.

  This door now hung, a few worm-eaten planks and splintered bits ofwood, barely supported by the rusty hinges.

  Toward it she staggered. About her she drew the sheltering masses ofher hair, like a Godiva of another age; and to her eyes, womanlike,the hot tears mounted. As she went, she cried in a voice of horror.

  "Mr. Stern! Oh--Mr. Stern! Are--are _you_ dead, too? You _can't_be--it's too frightful!"

  She reached the door. The mere touch of her outstretched handdisintegrated it. Down in a crumbling mass it fell. Thick dust belliedup in a cloud, through which a single sun-ray that entered thecobwebbed pane shot a radiant arrow.

  Peering, hesitant, fearful of even greater terrors in that other room,Beatrice peered through this dust-haze. A sick foreboding of evilpossessed her at thought of what she might find there--yet more afraidwas she of what she knew lay behind her.

  An instant she stood within the ruined doorway, her left hand restingon the moldy jam. Then, with a cry, she started forward--a cry inwhich terror had given place to joy, despair to hope.

  Forgotten now the fact that, save for the shrouding of her messy hair,she stood naked. Forgotten the wreck, the desolation everywhere.

  "Oh--thank Heaven!" gasped she.

  There, in that inner office, half-rising from the wrack of many thingsthat had been and were now no more, her startled eyes beheld thefigure of a man--of Allan Stern!

  He lived!

  At her he peered with eyes that saw not, yet; toward her he groped avague, unsteady hand.

  He lived!

  Not quite alone in this world-ruin, not all alone was she!