He must have continued silently for another eight or ten hours.
He was caught up completely on his back work.
“Well, to some extent I can work into the future. I can head up and carry over. I can put in everything but the figures of the field reports.”
And he did so.
“It will be hard to bury me in work again. I could almost coast for a day. I don’t even know what day it is, but I must have worked twenty hours straight through and nobody has arrived. Perhaps nobody ever will arrive. If they are moving with the speed of the people in the nightmare outside, it is no wonder they have not arrived.”
He put his head down on his arms on the desk. The last thing he saw before he closed his eyes was the misshapen left thumb that he had always tried to conceal a little by the way he handled his hands.
“At least I know that I am still myself. I’d know myself anywhere by that.”
Then he went to sleep at his desk.
Jenny came in with a quick click-click-click of high heels, and he wakened to the noise.
“What are you doing dozing at your desk, Mr. Vincent? Have you been here all night?”