Ben said, “A survivor!”
“Oh God, another one.”
Below, in the street, their object was making his way, slowly, cautiously, in and out the abandoned cars and trucks, walking in the half crouch men instinctively assume in combat, or in stalking prey. He was long unshaven, wore heavy denims and heavy work shoes and had on his back both a knapsack and a sporting rifle, complete with telescopic sight.
As they caught better glimpses of him, darting around this car, behind that they made out, as well, a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun in his hands and a holstered hand gun on each hip.
Donald winced. “Look at those bandoleers crisscrossed over his chest. He looks like a character in a Pancho Villa movie.”
Ben muttered dolefully, “I wonder how he got past the group up near the square.”
“Probably during the night. Look at the size of him.”
“He’s young, and obviously tough. I better go signal before he gets into something.”
Donald said, “I’ll watch.”
Ben went out the front door and to the stairway and Donald maintained his position at the window, periodically moistening his lips. He was a small man; had Thurber ever caricatured him, he would have brought out rabbitlike nuances.
In a few minutes, Donald heard the drum on the roof, beating out its simple rhythmic warning.
The one down in the street heard it, too, and swerved quickly, in immediate understanding and alarm. His eyes darted to the brownstone’s upper floors and roof, and he scurried behind a stalled delivery truck.
Donald sucked in air. For a moment, he had been afraid the stranger was going to rush the house.
But then came the answering thumping from down the street. It sounded like the drum the Londres had improvised from a galvanized washtub. And then from around the corner the beat from the Congo drum the Chapman couple had found in the antique shop.
Thum, thum, thum—from here, there, suddenly from everywhere.
The heavily armed man scooted up the street, zigzagging.
Ben Cotsell came back and whispered, “Where is he?”
“Over there. Near the delicatessen.”
“If he’d only stay there. They can get around to him through the tailor shop.”
Donald moistened his lips.
On the street below, the newcomer didn’t like the position he was in. He didn’t like it at all. His eyes darted. He almost wished someone would take a shot at him, just to give him direction on where the enemy was. He considered running for it, rejected that strategy. Once on the run, he’d be an easy target for any sniper at window or on rooftop. As it was now, sheltered in this confusion of vehicles, they’d have to root him out, and that would call pause to any but the most valiant.
He hadn’t liked those drums. They were the first sign of life he had come across this morning, and the significance was obvious. The neighborhood was alert to him.
He checked the safety on the shotgun unthinkingly with his thumb, flicked open the holster of the .38 Magnum on his right hip, for a quick draw. If they rushed him, he’d empty the shotgun, drop it and draw the revolver; he’d never have time to get the rifle into action, besides they would undoubtedly be too close for that. This street was comparatively narrow. They’d be out of some doorway and on him in split seconds; no, it was shotgun, then revolver. If he emptied the revolver, he had the .45 automatic on the other hip, but it was unlikely he’d live to use that—always assuming they would rush him.
He considered, and rejected, dashing into one of the stores, holing up inside a building. They’d have him trapped then. At least, out here, he had some choice of movement. If he could stick it out until dark...
But it was still morning, and these summer days were long.
His eyes darted around the windows again. Those windows behind which a score of men might be crouched, waiting an opportunity for a clear shot at him.
What were they waiting for? They had him pinned down. Were they saving ammunition? Given fire from several points at once, they could riddle this little group of cars that now semi-sheltered him. If nothing else, ricocheting slugs would seek him out, given heavy enough fire. They must be saving ammunition. His nerves were getting more taut by the moment. The drums had stopped now. First there had been one, then another. At the height of the signaling, there must have been ten or twelve of them in all.
Within thirty feet was the entry to a small branch bank. The windows had largely been shattered but the glass of the door was still unbroken, and opaque. From the corner of his eyes, he saw the handle of the door move.
His lips thinned back, he pressed against the heavy steel door of the street maintenance truck he was crouched behind. He held the shotgun at the ready, even began the trigger squeeze. Now this was it. This was the beginning.
The door opened slowly, and two stepped forth.
They were girls, at most in their mid-twenties. And they wore nothing save bikini bathing suits.
* * * *
When the broadcasts had become such that it was obvious that this was it, that the steps taken were irrevocable, that by no furthest stretch of possibility could it be halted now, Benjamin Cotsell switched off the TV set and stared down at it for an empty moment.
He turned and went to the little bar in the corner of his living room. He hunkered down on his heels before the cabinet and fetched out the bottles both opened and full. He considered for a moment, then brought forth one each of the type glasses he possessed.
He had a better array than he had thought. Some of the bottles had been pushed to the rear of the cabinet, those less often called upon, and now he found he had Cointreau, calvados, tequila and Cherry Herring, besides the more usual gin, whiskey, rum, brandy-vermouths and other wines.
He took the ice bucket and went out into the kitchenette for cubes. He mustn’t be too deliberately calm about this, he told himself wryly. There wasn’t as much time as all that.
Ben Cotsell emptied the ice trays and then automatically began filling them again with water from the tap, before catching himself. He grunted sourly, put down the tray and turned off the water. He strongly doubted there would be time to freeze more ice.
Back in the living room, he went over to his small library and sought out his bartender’s guide and returned with it to the bar.
The first item for which he possessed all the ingredients was an Admiral. He crushed some of the ice, half filled a cocktail shaker with it, poured in one half jigger of Cherry Herring, one jigger of lime juice and four of gin, then shook it up vigorously, exactly to direction.
He grunted. He had forgotten to chill the cocktail glass. Well, that would have to go by. There were a lot of things that were going to go by very shortly.
He held his glass up in a silent toast to nothing, then snorted self-contempt at his Walter Mitty braggadocio and took down half the mixed drink. He hadn’t remembered ever mixing an Admiral before. It was good, though his own bent was more to the dry side.
He carried his glass over to a window and looked down. There were an abnormal number of cars in the streets and a certain amount of the noise of horns, and occasional shots came up to him. He pulled down the shade, finished his drink, then went around the rest of the small apartment pulling down the rest of the shades. He was, he assured himself, being ridiculous. All glass would go immediately, anybody knew that. So would everything else, most likely. He lived in almost the exact center of Manhattan.
He went back to the bar, got the shaker, carried it to his favorite chair and sat there and drank up the rest of the Admiral.
The next item in his bartender’s guide was an Applecar. He had the stuff for that, too. Cointreau and calvados, or applejack they called it upstate; same thing if it came from Normandy or the Catskills, apple brandy.
By the time he got to a Clover Club, by the way of a Bacardi, a Between the Sheets, and a Bronx, the fog was beginning to roll in. There was more noise from down in the street, but he snarled contempt at that.
>
For a while he tried to read some of his life-long favorites, winding up with the Rubaiyat. But he had to hold one eye shut to focus and gave it up.
When the fog rolled out again, he was mildly surprised to see daylight. He went into the bathroom and vomited. The water wasn’t on. He went back to the bar and took inventory. The gin was all gone. He took up a half empty bottle of Irish and staggered back to the chair with it. He had finished it before the fog rolled in again.
When it rolled out, he found the liquor supply exhausted save for the Cointreau and some Italian vermouth, both of which had survived evidently as a result of having been taken into the kitchen somewhere along the line, and forgotten. He also found he had eaten the greater part of his small supply of canned groceries. The refrigerator door was open and what food had been there was largely spoiled. He was still half stoned and had no idea of how much time had lapsed.
The need was for more liquor.
He made his way to the door, tacking to starboard. The elevator wasn’t running. He got down the steps, narrowly missing serious falls twice, and struggled up the street toward the liquor store. Struggled was the only term. The sidewalk was littered with every conceivable article of domestic existence. He vaguely remembered having heard the sounds of exodus during his binge. Evidently, those fleeing had been in every mental state up to and including sheer hysteria. There was even a small iron bed that someone had brought this far before leaving. Clothes, canned food, fresh food, masses of bedding, broken bottles, largely liquor, books, paintings, a typewriter, but above all, clothes. Luggage ranging from trunks to handbags, an abandoned pushcart, baby carriages, baby things, swim suits, fur coats, cloth coats, raincoats.
Everything.
Even a few bodies.
The streets were filled with cars and trucks. Abandoned. Some were even up on the sidewalks, last bitter, futile attempts to get past the traffic jams.
The liquor store was only a small distance up the street. Ben Cotsell made it. From time to time he saw other figures, but he brushed them from his mind. What difference did anything make?
The liquor store had been sacked, but not totally. He scrambled among the broken bottles. He found a carton and began to load it. Whiskey and gin were all gone, but he found a windfall in several bottles of Metaxa, the Greek brandy. He also found odds and ends of liqueurs and several bottles of Pomerol. He closed one eye. 1955, a very good year.
He took up his cardboard carton and headed back for the apartment, mildly surprised that as yet the first attack had not come off.
* * * *
The stranger, shotgun at the ready, growled, “Stop, right there!”
“All right,” Bette said agreeably. The two girls came to a halt, stood quietly in their near nudity.
The heavily armed man shot his eyes up and down the street, up to the roofs, up to the windows. He didn’t drop his half crouch against the truck’s side. His eyes came back to the girls, dangerously.
Bette said, “My name’s Bette and this is Grace.”
He snarled, “If this is a trap you’ll get it first. Understand?”
Bette said reasonably, “That’s obvious, isn’t it? If it were a trap, we’d be shot first.”
Grace giggled, nervously. She hadn’t quite the self-possession Bette had. But she didn’t move.
The stranger rasped, “What’s this, a smart trick?”
Bette said, “Suppose the neighborhood wanted to welcome you, what would be the safest approach?”
He stared at her. For the first time he allowed himself to see her femininity, her youth. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five himself.
“Go on!” he snapped.
Bette shrugged shapely shoulders. “You came from across the river, didn’t you? Where all the killing is…or was.”
“Go on.” His eyes flashed around again, to doorways, rooftops, windows.
Grace managed to say, “We don’t want the killing here.”
He tried to put contempt into his voice, but weariness came through the stronger. “Who did want it, anywhere? You had to defend yourself.”
Bette said softly, “Two hundred million people defending themselves.”
“It was each man for himself.”
“The law of the jungle,” Bette said lowly.
“What’s this about the neighborhood wanting to welcome me? I came over here cause I had to. There’s still food here. There must be.”
“There’s a good deal of food here,” Bette nodded. “All you want. There are very few people left.”
“You think I’m crazy? The minute I put this gun down, your gang will try to take me. I heard those drums.”
Grace said, “We beat the drums whenever somebody new comes, so we can get ready to welcome him.”
He stood erect, but still at tension, which gave the setting a ludicrous quality of which he was conscious. There he was, a youth in physical prime, heavy with four firearms. And they stood before him in abbreviated swim suits. But it was he who was admitting fear.
“It’s a trap,” he said. “Why should you take me in?” Grace turned her back to him and called into the bank building. “Father!”
The gun came up to the immediate ready. “No you don’t! Anybody else comes out here and I let you all have it!”
The two girls faced him again, and held their arms wide, palms outward. They were obviously the ultimate in helplessness. And he was a male, and they the female of his species.
A man stepped from the doorway, an old man wearing a short-sleeved sport shirt, khaki walking shorts and slippers. On the face of it, he was weaponless.
“Stop!” the stranger barked.
The old man said, “What’s the matter, son? Have you got to the point where you shoot just anybody you see?”
The stranger’s eyes darted about again. “It’s a trap!”
The old man shook his head and called over his shoulder, “Mother! You and Johnny!”
From the doorway came a middle-aged woman, and a six-year-old, bug-eyed at the armed to the teeth newcomer. The woman smiled tremulously but said nothing.
The stranger’s eyes went wildly up and down the street, demanding of the rooftops, accusing the windows, daring the dark doorways. His hands trembled. His face was desperate.
Three more women walked out of the shambles of what had once been the delicatessen. All carried children in their arms. They stared at him, a certain fear there, but a resignation, too.
Bette winked at him.
* * * *
When the President’s voice ceased, Cass Davidsen turned to his wife and to the three children who sat there stunned. The TV set went abruptly still.
Davidsen was not a young man, but there was a wiry strength in his tall, slight body. And there was a cool strength in his light-blue eyes.
Esther said, her voice uneven, but trying for calm, “But what is there to do, Cass?” She was a good ten years younger than her husband.
“Nothing,” he said emptily. He walked over to the window and looked out, unseeing.
Dave shot suddenly to his feet, in all the energy of the teen-ager. “We gotta get out of here!”
Cass turned and looked at him. “Where would we go, Dave?”
“Anywhere! We got to get out of here. They’ll hit here first!”
The little one began to blubber, not knowing why, simply knowing that the adult world which sheltered him was in confusion.
Cass looked down on the streets which were rapidly filling to the point of resembling Times Square on a New Year’s Eve. The sound of vehicles, honking, motors racing, crashing—voices shouting, shrilling, raging—came faintly through the window.
“There’s no place to go, son.”
“We’ve got to go,” Dave yelled at him. “We’ve got to get out of the city.”
Cass looked at him strangely. “Ten million others are thinking the same thing, son.” He shook his head. “They’ll be ten million wild animals within hours”
Dave spu
n suddenly and darted for his room.
Esther said, “Cass. The subway...”
Cass Davidsen sank into his reading chair. “And prolong matters a few hours, living our last in the dark, amongst the rats? Why, Esther?”
Dave was back, a short carbine with a seemingly overlarge clip, in hand. It was a military weapon, converted into a deer gun. He had his old Boy Scout hatchet belted to his waist.
“Come on!” he said frantically. “We can make it to the bridge and get across into Jersey!”
Grace, who had been staring unbelievingly at the now dark screen, said, “But what then? Dad’s right. Ten million.” She was three years older than her brother.
“The government’ll have some kind of arrangement. We gotta get going. Don’t any of you realize, we got to get out of here? They might start dropping any minute.” Grace pointed at the screen. “You know why the TV went off? Because the technicians, the announcers, the actors, everybody—all took off. And you know what? I’ll bet every policeman in New York is trying to get himself and his family out, too. And you know what the mayor is doing right this minute? If he’s not already out of New York, he’s trying to get out. And the same in Washington, and Los Angeles, and Chicago and everywhere else. You know what I think, Dave? I don’t think there is any government.”
Cass looked at his daughter. Ordinarily, Grace was the highly keyed one, but now, though there was a tremor in her voice, there was none of Dave’s hysteria.
Dave snapped, waving the short-barreled carbine, “It’s everybody for himself. You got to look out for yourself. And the first thing is to get out of here and some way get to the mountains. We can get across the bridge.”
Esther looked at her husband, even as she picked up little Johnny and tried to soothe him.
Cass shook his head. “Perhaps you’re right, Dave. Perhaps those are the new rules, but, if so, I don’t wish to abide by them. I don’t wish to play the new game. I, for one, will remain here.”
The boy’s eyes bugged at him. “You’re crazy! You’ll be dead!” His eyes went desperately to his mother and sister. “Come on, I’ll take care of you.”
“I’ll remain with your father, Dave.”
The Second Mack Reynolds Megapack Page 12