



                            PILLAR OF FIRE

                            By RAY BRADBURY

             We cannot tell you what kind of a story this
             is. We simply cannot present it as we present
             other stories. It is too tremendous for that. We are very glad--and proud--to share it with you. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                      Planet Stories Summer 1948. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] He came out of the earth, hating. Hate was his father; hate was his
mother. It was good to walk again. It was good to leap up out of the earth, off
of your back, and stretch your cramped arms violently and try to take a
deep breath! He _tried_. He cried out. He couldn't breathe. He flung his arms over his face and tried to
breathe. It was impossible. He walked on the earth, he came out of the
earth. But he was dead. He couldn't breathe. He could take air into
his mouth and force it half down his throat, with withered moves of
long-dormant muscles, wildly, wildly! And with this little air he
could shout and cry! He wanted to have tears, but he couldn't make them
come, either. All he knew was that he was standing upright, he was
dead, he shouldn't be walking! He couldn't breathe and yet he stood. The smells of the world were all about him. Frustratedly, he tried to
smell the smells of autumn. Autumn was burning the land down into ruin. All across the country the ruins of summer lay; vast forests bloomed
with flame, tumbled down timber on empty, unleafed timber. The smoke of
the burning was rich, blue, and invisible. He stood in the graveyard, hating. He walked through the world and yet
could not taste nor smell of it. He heard, yes. The wind roared on
his newly opened ears. But he was dead. Even though he walked he knew
he was dead and should expect not too much of himself or this hateful
living world. He touched the tombstone over his own empty grave. He knew his own name
again. It was a good job of carving. WILLIAM LANTRY

That's what the grave stone said. His fingers trembled on the cool stone surface. BORN 1898--DIED 1933

Born _again_...? What year? He glared at the sky and the midnight autumnal stars moving
in slow illuminations across the windy black. He read the tiltings of
centuries in those stars. Orion thus and so, Aurega here! and where
Taurus? _There!_

His eyes narrowed. His lips spelled out the year:

"2349." An odd number. Like a school sum. They used to say a man couldn't
encompass any number over a hundred. After that it was all so damned
abstract there was no use counting. This was the year 2349! A numeral,
a sum. And here he was, a man who had lain in his hateful dark coffin,
hating to be buried, hating the living people above who lived and lived
and lived, hating them for all the centuries, until today, now, born
out of hatred, he stood by his own freshly excavated grave, the smell
of raw earth in the air, perhaps, but he could not smell it! "I," he said, addressing a poplar tree that was shaken by the wind, "am
an anachronism." He smiled faintly. *       *       *       *       *

He looked at the graveyard. It was cold and empty. All of the stones
had been ripped up and piled like so many flat bricks, one atop
another, in the far corner by the wrought iron fence. This had been
going on for two endless weeks. In his deep secret coffin he had heard
the heartless, wild stirring as the men jabbed the earth with cold
spades and tore out the coffins and carried away the withered ancient
bodies to be burned. Twisting with fear in his coffin, he had waited
for them to come to him. Today they had arrived at his coffin. But--late. They had dug down to
within an inch of the lid. Five o'clock bell, time for quitting. Home
to supper. The workers had gone off. Tomorrow they would finish the
job, they said, shrugging into their coats. Silence had come to the emptied tombyard. Carefully, quietly, with a soft rattling of sod, the coffin lid had
lifted. William Lantry stood trembling now, in the last cemetery on Earth. "Remember?" he asked himself, looking at the raw earth. "Remember those
stories of the last man on earth? Those stories of men wandering in
ruins, alone? Well, you, William Lantry, are a switch on the old story. Do you _know_ that? You are the last _dead_ man in the whole damned
world!" There were no more dead people. Nowhere in any land was there a dead
person. Impossible? Lantry did not smile at this. No, not impossible
at all in this foolish sterile, unimaginative, antiseptic age of
cleansings and scientific methods! People died, oh my god, yes. But--_dead_ people? Corpses? They didn't exist! What _happened_ to dead people? The graveyard was on a hill. William Lantry walked through the dark
burning night until he reached the edge of the graveyard and looked
down upon the new town of Salem. It was all illumination, all color. Rocket ships cut fire above it, crossing the sky to all the far ports
of earth. In his grave the new violence of this future world had driven down and
seeped into William Lantry. He had been bathed in it for years. He knew
all about it, with a hating dead man's knowledge of such things. Most important of all, he knew what these fools did with dead men. He lifted his eyes. In the center of the town a massive stone finger
pointed at the stars. It was three hundred feet high and fifty feet
across. There was a wide entrance and a drive in front of it. In the town, theoretically, thought William Lantry, say you have a
dying man. In a moment he will be dead. What happens? No sooner is his
pulse cold when a certificate is flourished, made out, his relatives
pack him into a car-beetle and drive him swiftly to--

The Incinerator! That functional finger, that Pillar of Fire pointing at the stars. Incinerator. A functional, terrible name. But truth is truth in this
future world. Like a stick of kindling your Mr. Dead Man is shot into the furnace. _Flume!_

William Lantry looked at the top of the gigantic pistol shoving at the
stars. A small pennant of smoke issued from the top. There's where your dead people go. "Take care of yourself, William Lantry," he murmured. "You're the last
one, the rare item, the last dead man. All the other graveyards of
earth have been blasted up. This is the last graveyard and you're the
last dead man from the centuries. These people don't believe in having
dead people about, much less walking dead people. Everything that can't
be used goes up like a matchstick. Superstitions right along with it!" He looked at the town. All right, he thought, quietly. I hate you. You
hate me, or you _would_ if you knew I existed. You don't believe in
such things as vampires or ghosts. Labels without referents, you cry! You snort. All right, snort! Frankly, I don't believe in _you_, either! I don't _like_ you! You and your Incinerators. He trembled. How very close it had been.