They Came From Outer Space by Jim Wynorski

Author:Jim Wynorski [Wynorski, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Science Fiction; American, American fiction
ISBN: 9780385185028
Publisher: Doubleday
Published: 1980-10-15T21:27:36+00:00

He could hear a soft sobbing. He reached down and pulled back the covers and the sobbing came louder. Then he was down on the bed and she was in his arms.

She cried until the panic subsided, while he held her and said nothing.

After a while she got control of herself. “Don’t leave me, Frank,” she begged. “Please don’t leave me.”

He stroked her shoulder. “I won’t,” he whispered.

They lay for a long time in utter silence, each seeking strength in the other’s closeness. The silence was finally broken by Nora.

“Frank?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me?”

He did not answer.

“If you want me you can have me, Frank.”

Frank said nothing.

“I told you today that I tried to commit suicide. Remember?”

“I remember.”

“That was the truth. I did it because I was tired of everything.

Because I’ve made a terrible mess of things. I didn’t want to go on living.” He remained silent, holding her.

As she spoke again, her voice sharpened. “Can’t you understand what I’m telling you? I’m no good!

I’m just a bum! Other men have had me!

Why shouldn’t you? Why should you be cheated out of what other men have had?”

He remained silent. After a few moments, Nora said, “For God’s sake, talk!

Say something!”

“How do you feel about it now? Will you try again to kill yourself the next chance you get?”

“No—no, I don’t think I’ll ever try it again.”

“Then things must look better.”

“I don’t know anything about that. I just don’t want to do it now. “ She did not urge him this time and he

was slow in speaking. “It’s kind of funny. It really is. Don’t get the idea I’ve got morals. I haven’t.

I’ve had my share of women. I was working on one the night they slipped me the mickey—the night before I

woke up to this tomb of a city. But now—tonight—it’s kind of different. I feel like I want to protect you.

Is that strange?”

“No,” she said quietly. “I guess not.”

They lay there silently, their thoughts going off into the blackness of the sepulchral night. After a long while, Nora’s even breathing told him she was asleep. He got up quietly, covered her, and went to the other bed.

But before he slept, the weird wailings from out Evanston way came again—rose and fell in that strange conversational cadence-then died away into nothing.

Frank awoke to the first fingers of daylight. Nora still slept. He dressed and stood for some moments with his hand on the door knob.

Then he threw the bolt and cautiously opened the door.

The hallway was deserted. At this point it came to him forcibly that he was not a brave man. All his life, he realized, he had avoided physical danger and had refused to recognize the true reason for so doing.

He had classified himself as a man who dodged trouble through good sense; that the truly Page 109

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