



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 Struggle
XXXVIII.   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, to
which 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 face
buried and shielded in the hollow of her arm, a sigh welled from her
lips.

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

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

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

And, a moment later, Beatrice Kendrick was sitting up, dazed and
utterly uncomprehending, peering about her at the strangest vision
which since the world began had ever been the lot of any human
creature to behold--the vision of a place transformed beyond all power
of the intellect to understand.

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

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

Gone was every picture, chart, and map--which--but an hour since, it
seemed to her--had decked this office of Allan Stern, consulting
engineer, this aerie up in the forty-eighth story of the Metropolitan
Tower.

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

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

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

Beatrice rubbed her eyes.

"What?" she said, quite slowly. "Dreaming? How singular! I only wish I
could 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 could
swear I was awake--and yet--"

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

Something about this room, this weird awakening, bore upon her
consciousness 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 litter
and the rubbish of that uncanny room.

"Oh!" she cried in terror, as a huge scorpion, malevolent, and with
its tail raised to strike, scuttled away and vanished through a gaping
void 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 to
her breast, whereon her very clothing now had torn and crumbled, she
faced about.

To her it seemed as though some monstrous, evil thing were lurking in
the dim corner at her back. She tried to scream, but could utter no
sound, save a choked gasp.

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

And, confronted by a new problem, she stopped short. About her she
peered in vain for something to protect her disarray. There was
nothing.

"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 and
impalpable dust which thickly coated everything.

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

There before her lay a somewhat larger pile of dust mixed with soft
and punky splinters of rotten wood. Amid all this decay she saw some
bits 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 gloss
and beauty, her lustrous hair fell, as she stooped to see this
strange, incomprehensible phenomenon. She tried to pick up one of the
rubber caps. At her merest touch it crumbled to an impalpable white
powder.

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 cringing
amazement, 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 and
that, down the dismantled corridor, up the wreckage of the stairs all
cumbered, like the office itself, with dust and webs and vermin.

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

What? No noise of human life anywhere to be heard? None! No familiar
hum 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 the
musty, choking atmosphere--a silence that weighed down on Beatrice
like funeral-palls.

Dumfounded by all this, and by the universal crumbling of every
perishable 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, had
desolated 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 horror
racking her. All at once her teeth began to chatter, her body to shake
as with an ague.

Thus for a moment dazed and stunned she remained there, knowing not
which way to turn nor what to do. Then her terror-stricken gaze fell
on the doorway leading from her outer office to the inner one, the one
where Stern had had his laboratory and his consultation-room.

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

Toward it she staggered. About her she drew the sheltering masses of
her 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 hand
disintegrated it. Down in a crumbling mass it fell. Thick dust bellied
up in a cloud, through which a single sun-ray that entered the
cobwebbed 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 evil
possessed her at thought of what she might find there--yet more afraid
was she of what she knew lay behind her.

An instant she stood within the ruined doorway, her left hand resting
on the moldy jam. Then, with a cry, she started forward--a cry in
which 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 things
that had been and were now no more, her startled eyes beheld the
figure of a man--of Allan Stern!

He lived!

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

He lived!

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



CHAPTER II

REALIZATION


The joy in Beatrice's eyes gave way to poignant wonder as she
gazed on him. Could this be _he?_

Yes, well she knew it was. She recognized him even through the
grotesquery of his clinging rags, even behind the mask of a long, red,
dusty beard and formidable mustache, even despite the wild and staring
incoherence of his whole expression.

Yet how incredible the metamorphosis! To her flashed a memory of this
man, her other-time employer--keen and smooth-shaven, alert,
well-dressed, self-centered, dominant, the master of a hundred complex
problems, the directing mind of engineering works innumerable.

Faltering and uncertain now he stood there. Then, at the sound of the
girl's voice, he staggered toward her with outflung hands. He stopped,
and for a moment stared at her.

For he had had no time as yet to correlate his thoughts, to pull
himself together.

And while one's heart might throb ten times, Beatrice saw terror in
his blinking, bloodshot eyes.

But almost at once the engineer mastered himself. Even as Beatrice
watched him, breathlessly, from the door, she saw his fear die out,
she saw his courage well up fresh and strong.

It was almost as though something tangible were limning the man's soul
upon his face. She thrilled at sight of him.

And though for a long moment no word was spoken, while the man and
woman stood looking at each other like two children in some dread and
unfamiliar attic, an understanding leaped between them.

Then, womanlike, instinctively as she breathed, the girl ran to him.
Forgetful of every convention and of her disarray, she seized his
hand. And in a voice that trembled till it broke she cried:

"What is it? What does all this mean? Tell me!"

To him she clung.

"Tell me the truth--and save me! Is it _real?_"

Stern looked at her wonderingly. He smiled a strange, wan, mirthless
smile.

All about him he looked. Then his lips moved, but for the moment no
sound came.

He made another effort, this time successful.

"There, there," said he huskily, as though the dust and dryness of the
innumerable years had got into his very voice. "There, now, don't be
afraid!

"Something seems to have taken place here while--we've been asleep.
What? What is it? I don't know yet. I'll find out. There's nothing to
be alarmed about, at any rate."

"But--_look!_" She pointed at the hideous desolation.

"Yes, I see. But no matter. You're alive. I'm alive. That's two of us,
anyhow. Maybe there are a lot more. We'll soon see. Whatever it may
be, we'll win."

He turned and, trailing rags and streamers of rotten cloth that once
had been a business suit, he waded through the confusion of wreckage
on the floor to the window.

If you have seen a weather-beaten scarecrow flapping in the wind, you
have some notion of his outward guise. No tramp you ever laid eyes on
could have offered so preposterous an appearance.

Down over his shoulders fell the matted, dusty hair. His tangled beard
reached far below his waist. Even his eyebrows, naturally rather
light, had grown to a heavy thatch above his eyes.

Save that he was not gray or bent, and that he still seemed to have
kept the resilient force of vigorous manhood, you might have thought
him some incredibly ancient Rip Van Winkle come to life upon that
singular stage, there in the tower.

But little time gave he to introspection or the matter of his own
appearance. With one quick gesture he swept away the shrouding tangle
of webs, spiders, and dead flies that obscured the window. Out he
peered.

"Good Heavens!" cried he, and started back a pace.

She ran to him.

"What is it?" she breathlessly exclaimed.

"Why, I don't know--yet. But this is something big! Something
universal! It's--it's