Suddenly the newsroom was like a tomb, a burial of all mankind's accomplishments and frustrations, his good-doings and evil-doings. Here into this room had flowed, ceaseless as a river, the stories of man's love, hate, struggle, fear, grasping, success, and disappointment. Side by side they lay in the labyrinth of files, the stories of Mrs. Smith's divorce and a dictator's defeat, the sagas of a child losing a pet and a scientist discovering a star. All equal now, as skeletons of great men and little men are equal, all buried in steel drawers and sealed by silence.
Martin looked at the stiffened figure of the reporter. "I wonder why you stayed," he mused. "I wonder why you didn't flee like the others. Maybe, maybe you wanted to write the last news story ever written—and the most important one. Yes, I reckon that was it."
Slowly, Martin walked out of the building and slid into the car. Sandy welcomed him with a joy-filled barking and tail-wagging and tried to lick his face, and the pup attempted to waddle across his legs.
"No, Sandy, don't." He stared unseeingly through the windshield. "Everybody's gone, Sandy, everybody on Earth, except me." His eyes widened slightly. "Course, there might be somebody else, somewhere. The gas never got to us in the cave. Maybe somebody else escaped, somehow."
He shook his head. "Nope, no use hoping for that. Odds'd be a thousand to one 'gainst my finding 'em. No, we just got to make up our minds that we're the last ones alive."
The last ones alive. The thought was like flame in his mind. The numbness was gone now, as coldness thaws from a warmed body, but there came to him a second thought, a horrible, fear-born thought which he dared not say aloud, even to Sandy.
A man can't live alone, without hearing another human voice, without seeing another human form. A man isn't made that way. You've got two choices now, just two: Suicide or madness. Which will it be? Suicide or madness, suicide or madness....
He sat for a long, long time, his mind a jumble of indecision. Then at last he thought, I don't want to go mad, the other way is best. We'll make it easy. Carbon monoxide would be the easiest way.
But suddenly there was a churning and a twisting in his stomach, as though it were being squeezed by a giant hand.