Everything of any value, everything portable, had long since been looted. The jungle had crept indoors, transforming the public bars and restaurants, the gaming rooms, the lobbies and passages into dank sweltering caves. By flashlight they explored the labyrinth, hacking through festoons of creepers and climbing stairs where the carpets squelched underfoot like thick moss. They came upon a swimming pool half-filled with green slime, the crusty surface broken here and there by snouts and unblinking eyes reflected in the beams of light. In other rooms the silence was intimidating. Tapestries of foliage clung to the walls, the leaves a dark mottled brown giving off an acrid scent that bit at the throat like ammonia. This vegetation was feeding off the poisoned air and becoming itself poisoned in the process, adding to the toxic fumes that formed the new atmosphere. The spiral of decay was winding tighter and tighter--each malfunction in the biosphere contributing to the next perverted link in the crooked chain. It was evolution but in the wrong direction.
Dan, along with Art Hegler and two of the other younger men, went on ahead, leaving the main party in the corner of what had been an electronic amusements room on the third floor of the Stardust Hotel. The twin-seater booths , with their controls and curved video screens were more or less intact, resembling the top halves of large colored eggs stuck to the floor. A section of the side was hinged, which the players pulled shut, sealing themselves inside a flickering green womb. Now the doors hung open, the insides inky black.
Two floors above the advance group had battered down a fire door to find themselves in a corridor stretching the full depth of the building. The jungle hadn't penetrated this far, although the humidity had rotted the carpets and the velvety embossed wallpaper made a perfect breeding ground for white bell-shaped fungi.
Tentatively pushing open each door and standing well back, they investigated every room, some of which were untouched, the beds made up, the TV blank-faced in the corner, towels in the bathroom hanging flaccidly from chromium-steel rails. And in one room, which showed signs of occupation, Hegler slid back a closet door and goggled in amazement. The closet was crammed solid from floor to ceiling with cartons of tinned food--somebody's secret hoard, which they hadn't had time to eat.
"Strike starvation off the list," said Dan gleefully, ripping open a carton and spilling two-pound tins of smoked ham over the floor. "At least for the time being. This guy was all set for the millennium by the look of it."
Wayne Daventry, the twenty-year-old son of a biologist who had died of a heart attack two years ago, started to cry. The other three said nothing, averting their eyes, but they understood his emotion well enough. It was one thing to put up a stoic front in the face of adversity, yet impossible not to betray real inner feeling when Providence offers a small gift of kindness, the briefest glimmer of hope.
"Now, if we can get a good movie on TV," Dan said to divert attention and began punching buttons with a conjurer's flourish, "I reckon the Stardust deserves a five-star rating!"
As the set began to hum, Art Hegler yelped as if stung, staggered back, and tripped over his own feet.
The others stood with hearts pounding as the concave screen lit up and a fuzzy picture appeared, which at first nobody could make any sense of. It was like a surgeon's view of a pumping heart, stark eye-searing red, being pierced by an enormous black veined torpedo.
Dan smiled bleakly in the artificial flickering twilight thrown by the screen. "Just what we need, the in-house pom movie. The circuit must be still wired up to the generator." He shook his head sadly. "It's true what they say: 'The world will end not with a whimper but with a bang.'"
One of the others gave a hollow laugh.
Not really believing it would work, Dan tried to get another channel. Why bother transmitting pictures when there was nobody to receive them? Yet there were--dammit,
As he expected, nothing came through, and he switched it off. Hegler said, "If there's power on maybe we can tap it. Get some light in this place if nothing else--"
"I don't think that's wise, Art." Dan crossed to the window. "Turn your flashlights off for a minute."
The four of them stood looking out at the jungle below, just about discernible in the fading light. It stretched away into the murky dusk, an unbroken canopy covering the low-level buildings with the multistory hotels and casinos poking through like concrete piles in an inland sargasso sea. Nearest to them was Circus-Circus, then the Sahara, farther yet the Hyatt, and in the distance the Union Plaza.
