The Big Eye Read Online Free

a stop in front of the air-line terminal. And as he
opened the door he growled:
     
     
"Those goddamn fools back there. Those diplomats. They should have kept
trying. They should have sat down on their striped pants and m,ade it
work! The goddamn stupid fools!"
     
     
David left the car and went into the terminal to check his return
reservations. One look was enough to discourage him. What he saw was a
repeat performance of the terminal at Idlewild. The same milling crowd,
the same weary clerks, the same babel of frightened voices:
     
     
"But I've got to get out! I've got to! You've got to get me a reservation,
clerk!"
     
     
"I've got Priority One. Right here. Doesn't that mean something?"
     
     
"Try the trains? What trains? Look through the window, clerk. They've
closed the gates across the street at Grand Central and shut down the
ticket windows!"
     
     
"Look, I've been down here two days, waiting for a cancellation. You can't
tell me no cancellation has come through! One must have come through!"
     
     
"Listen, clerk, I've got a wife and daughter. I've got to get them out,
I've got to! I'll take three seats on any plane, going anywhere, as long
as it's out of town!"
     
     
Yes, thought David, I've seen it before, heard it before.
     
     
The same voices, the same people with the same pale and frightened faces,
surging forward toward the counters until they were checked and pushed
back by grim, white-helmeted military police.
     
     
This was where the Fear was the most paralyzing, its hand the clammiest,
its clutch the tightest.
     
     
This was the city.
     
     
David hung onto his bag and brief case, elbowed his way through the crowd,
and rode down the escalator. He pushed the glass doors open and stepped
out into the dark, wind-blown night.
     
     
For a moment he stood irresolute and stared west, up Forty-second
Street. His skin prickled at what he saw. It was a sight that no man
could ever forget, a memory that could never really fade.
     
     
The towering buildings rose on either side, their dark windows, like
sightless eyes, looking down at the dimly lit canyon below. It was
quiet here -- strangely quiet -- a place brooding, barely whispering with
life, waiting to die. Not a vehicle was in sight, and the only sign of
movement in the street itself was a few old newspapers which the wind
had snatched from the gutter and propelled along the road. David could
hear them rustle as they drifted along.
     
     
Finally one or two civilians and soldiers came along, huddled deep into
their coats against the wind. The sharp click-clack of their heels on
the sidewalk echoed and re-echoed dismally.
     
     
David turned up his own coat collar and walked west, toward Times Square.
     
     
He passed the darkened Fifth Avenue Library and suddenly became
conscious that on his left there was a single dull red light hanging
high in the sky, like a displaced moon. It was the glowing top of the
Empire State Building. Finally, between Sixth and Broadway, he began to
see signs of life. A taxicab and then two Army cars, their headlights
slashing through the darkness. A few more people, a bar and grill open,
a restaurant. They were dimly illuminated inside, and what patrons there
were within seemed to be soldiers. Outside, the neon and electric signs,
the great spectaculars, were dark -- dead.
     
     
It's the biggest and the weirdest graveyard in the world, thought David.
     
     
David turned right at Times Square and walked up Broadway. He looked
for a cab but saw none. Carol lived up on Cathedral Parkway, West llOth
Street. And, as she had said, not even the subways were running.
     
     
There was nothing to do but walk.
     
     
This was the theater district. He could make out some of the darkened
marquee signs -- the hits that had been playing here not much longer than
a month ago. Stepping Along -- the big musical down the street on one
side of the deserted Astor Hotel. F.D.R. -- the biographical drama of a
President whom many