Read Online The Survivors by Tom Godwin - Free Book Online Page A

night; the blue sun rose in the east as the yellow sun set in the west. There was no life of any kind to be seen, not even an insect. Nothing moved across the burned land but the swirling dust devils and shimmering, distorted mirages. The death rate increased with appalling swiftness. The small supply of canned and dehydrated milk, fruit and vegetables was reserved exclusively for the children but it was far insufficient in quantity. The Ragnarok herbs prevented any recurrence of the fatal deficiency disease but they provided virtually no nourishment to help fight the heat and gravity. The stronger of the children lay wasted and listless on their pallets while the ones not so strong died each day.
    Each day thin and hollow-eyed mothers would come to plead with him to save their children. “ … it would take so little to save his life … Please—before it’s too late … ”
    But there was so little food left and the time was yet so long until fall would bring relief from the famine that he could only answer each of them with a grim and final “No.”
    And watch the last hope flicker and die in their eyes and watch them turn away, to go and sit for the last hours beside their children.
    Bemmon became increasingly irritable and complaining as the rationing and heat made existence a misery; insisting that Lake and the others were to blame for the food shortage, that their hunting efforts had been bungling and faint-hearted. And he implied, without actually saying so, that Lake and the others had forbidden him to go near the food chamber because they did not want a competent, honest man to check up on what they were doing. There were six hundred and three of them the blazing afternoon when the girl, Julia, could stand his constant, vindictive, fault-finding no longer. Lake heard about it shortly afterward, the way she had turned on Bemmon in a flare of temper she could control no longer and said:
    “Whenever your mouth is still you can hear the children who are dying today—but you don’t care. All you can think of is yourself. You claim Lake and the others were cowards—but you didn’t dare hunt with them. You keep insinuating that they’re cheating us and eating more than we are—but your belly is the only one that has any fat left on it—”
    She never completed the sentence. Bemmon’s face turned livid in sudden, wild fury and he struck her, knocking her against the rock wall so hard that she slumped unconscious to the ground.
    “She’s a liar!” he panted, glaring at the others. “She’s a rotten liar and anybody who repeats what she said will get what she got!”
    When Lake learned of what had happened he did not send for Bemmon at once. He wondered why Bemmon’s reaction had been so quick and violent and there seemed to be only one answer:
    Bemmon’s belly was still a little fat. There could be but one way he could have kept it so. He summoned Craig, Schroeder, Barber and Anders. They went to the chamber where Bemmon slept and there, almost at once, they found his cache. He had it buried under his pallet and hidden in cavities along the walls; dried meat, dried fruits and milk, canned vegetables. It was an amount amazingly large and many of the items had presumably been exhausted during the deficiency disease attack.
    “It looks,” Schroeder said, “like he didn’t waste any time feathering his nest when he made himself leader.”
    The others said nothing but stood with grim, frozen faces, waiting for Lake’s next action.
    “Bring Bemmon,” Lake said to Craig.
    Craig returned with him two minutes later. Bemmon stiffened at the sight of his unearthed cache and color drained away from his face.
    “Well?” Lake asked.
    “I didn’t”—Bemmon swallowed—“I didn’t know it was there.” And then quickly, “You can’t prove I put it there. You can’t prove you didn’t just now bring it in yourselves to frame me.”
    Lake stared at Bemmon, waiting. The others watched Bemmon as Lake was