The Last New Yorkers

George Allan England
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
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