Z For Zachariah

The man tells her that his name is John Loomis. He spent the last 10 weeks traveling from Ithaca, where he was a chemist developing the radiation-resistant material from which his suit is made. She cooks him breakfast, and he seems better, but he assures her that his sickness will come in stages.

Ann convinces Loomis to come into the house so that she can care for him better when he gets sick again. He struggles to walk, so he leans on her as she helps him to David’s bed. While he sleeps, Ann collects the cows that she let loose to hide her presence from Loomis.

That night, Loomis tells her about his life before coming to the valley. He worked for the military developing the radiation-resistant suit. However, before his team could finish, the war broke out, leaving them with only one suit and a handful of material that he used to cover his wagon and supplies. On his way to the valley, he checked an Air Force base in Chicago but found that everyone was dead. He assumes that the situation will be the same in bunkers everywhere, as they only have enough air and supplies for a limited time.

After he finishes talking, Ann asks him about Edward. Shocked, he drops the glass of water he is holding. He asks how she knows about Edward, and she explains that she heard him say the name while he was sick. He tells her that Edward worked in the laboratory with him and Dr. Kylmer.

Over the next four days, Loomis’s condition remains about the same. He occasionally runs a fever, but he insists that he is still in the early stages of his radiation sickness. Ann replants her garden twice as large as before, realizing that she will need to feed both herself and Loomis.

Loomis asks Ann why she is doing all her work by hand, and she explains that the gasoline pumps at the store use electricity. Loomis tells her that the gasoline can be retrieved manually. Although he smiles at her when he says it, he makes her feel “stupid” for not realizing that she could do that.

That night, as Ann and Loomis sit by the fire, she becomes uncomfortably aware that there is nothing for them to do. She offers to play the piano, even though she was only just learning before the war. She plays several beginner songs and a few hymns and then stops when Loomis falls asleep. After he wakes up, he thanks her and tells her that this is the best night he has ever had. Ann corrects him, suggesting that he means his best night since the war started, but he assures her that he meant what he said. He sounds angry when he responds, but Ann attributes this strange behavior to his illness. 

When Ann goes to her bedroom, she feels sad after playing the hymns. She remembers how much she used to love Sunday school. In particular, she remembers a book called The Bible Letter Book from which she learned the alphabet as a child. Because the first letter was “A [] for Adam”—the first man—and the last letter was “Z for Zachariah,” she had always “assumed that Zachariah must be the last man” (75).

In the sadness she feels thinking about her past and the uncomfortableness of Loomis’s anger toward her after playing the piano, she decides that she wants to sleep in the cave, which somehow felt “cozier” than her room. She leaves her bedroom, and when she passes Loomis’s door, she hears him talking. She hears his side of an argument with Edward and realizes that he is dreaming. She decides not to go to the cave, nervous that he may be becoming feverish and delirious again.

Ann wakes up the following morning after having a dream about her mother collecting watercress. She realizes that she can do the same and make a salad, something she has been longing for since destroying her garden.

When Ann gets to the pond, she sees a crabapple tree in full bloom and notes how beautiful it is. It makes her think of a wedding, and she decides that she will talk to Mr. Loomis about the two of them getting married. She imagines a wedding the following spring, when she turns 17 in June, which makes her think of having children of her own.

Ann gets back to the house and is immediately worried when Loomis is not in bed. She finds him sitting out by Burden Creek, measuring the water. He tells her that he had hoped that her reading had been wrong when he did not get sick, but he confirms that she was right. He also tells her that he had been thinking about building a wheel in the water with a small engine and generator that could potentially produce electricity.

After breakfast, Ann tells Loomis that she is going fishing. He asks to go with her, but she is nervous about his fever and the walk; however, he insists that he feels fine. Ann also discovers that he knows nothing about fishing, so she promises to teach him. However, on their walk there, Loomis immediately begins to stumble and turn pale. He tells her that the anemia is affecting him, so they rest, and then Ann helps him back to the house. He insists that she still go fishing without him.

Ann manages to catch three bass, but she is distracted and worried about Loomis’s condition, feeling as though this may be the beginning of him getting significantly worse. However, he seems better during dinner, and they eat at the table with her family’s good plateware; she regrets having taken her candles to the cave, noting how they would have made the dinner look more “romantic” (88).

Loomis and Ann sit by the fire in the living room again. She finds several books, including the World Almanac, which she thinks might interest him. He studies them for hours, looking up information to help him build the generator in the creek.

The next morning, Mr. Loomis shows Ann a diagram of an underground gasoline tank. He explains to her how to remove the belt and then crank the wheel by hand to draw gasoline from the well. She goes to the two tanks at the general store and follows Loomis’s instructions. On the first turn of the handle, gasoline comes out. She fills a canister and then goes to the barn. The tractor initially won’t start, but Ann remembers how to start the motor by hand when the battery is dead. She manages to start the tractor and excitedly drives it to the house for Loomis to see.

Ann immediately makes plans for her family’s land and begins plowing. She wants to take their acre-and-a-half field and plant corn there, which can be used to feed her and Loomis as well as the animals. She thinks of how happy she is to have the ability to grow her own food. While the store has a lot, she also realizes that it is just an “illusion.” Within a few years, the food she needs will begin to go bad, as will the seeds; now, she has the opportunity to become self-sustaining. As she plows, she sees crows in the sky. Although her father considered them “pests” to their fields, she is “glad to see them,” imagining that they are “the only wild birds left anywhere” (97).

She manages to plow the entire field that afternoon, with plans to plant seeds the next day. However, when she returns to the house, Loomis’s fever has spiked.