Authentic Science Fiction Monthly, No. 65 — page 152: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CREEP She lifted her head a frac- tion. ““Two?”’ “‘Harry’s dead. He must have had the knife close to his face when I hit him. Are you proud?” Her eyes met his. They were blank, and in a moment her gaze slid down to the table again. Not in shame, Sam guessed. She was doing all her repenting inside her- self. He wondered how many people were soul-searching at that instant. Unless he was mistaken, the events of the evening had followed pretty much the same pattern in every bar in the world, in every surface building which had not been flattened im- mediately, and perhaps even in the many underground dwellings. Some people would have been killed outright or nearly so, like Gibb the chauffeur, whose most fervent desire had been to get home to his frightened wife and family. Some would have died later in the animal struggle for survival or in pursuit of animal greed. And some, like the girl and himself, would be left to wait for death to come in its own relentless time. He hoped the end would come before the enemy did; whether the enemy was from the other side of the world or the other side of the galaxy. With a newsman’s curiosity, it annoyed him to think he might never know who was coming to pry open the secret hiding places of the dead and count the score and the spoils. With the fear of an ordinary man, he hoped it would be the enemy he knew. Their inhumanity and brutishness were great, yet at least he could imagine how far the¥ would go. But when human beings can be in- human, what could be ex- pected of a race which had spanned the gulf of space to scavenge a world? Sam felt the need of another drink to cure the sickness which was returning. His wound could be causing it. On the other hand, it could be the effects of the Creep, and he didn’t want to be sober when that started. He had difficulty in finding a whole bottle at the bar. 151 comiclooks.cormn