Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman

by Alan Edward Nourse

  And tonight—Yes, tonight. The same old story. But then again, maybe not. Maybe tonight is the time to split it open like a rotten melon. Everybody else in town must already know— why not just bring it all out in the open? Before, the thought of doing that had been repugnant, better just not to look, but now the pain was getting to be too much to take. Why not tonight? Why not just leave old Bud safe and sound at the Tavfor half an hour in the middle of things this evening and drive up to the house about midnight? He figured Hal would probably park his big blue Chrysler wagon in that half-hidden slot between the big tree and the fence, invisible from the street, he'd have to nose into the driveway to see it—and also block it. And then— well, he had a screamer in his car, too, that would bring all the lights on and the neighbors out in a hurry. . . . That was what this watch system was supposed to be all about, wasn't it? To drive thieves out into the open—wasn't it?

  That, of course, had been exactly the point when Jack himself had first suggested the watch system two months ago. The plague itself hadn't really hit Brookdale, Connecticut, yet, even though it was savaging Boston and New Haven and outlying places like Guilford; Brookdale was more self-contained, more of a total bedroom community, and the very few suspicious cases that had turned up so far had been hustled away fast to the big county hospital. Somehow, too, affluent Brookdale seemed to have a reasonable supply of S-3147 stockpiled at the Public Health Service offices, enough to treat contacts and suspected contacts, at least so far. Not inexpensive stuff, that drug, two thousand bucks for a four-day course for one person, and nobody seemed to know how Brookdale happened to have supplies on hand when a place like New Haven just plain didn't and couldn't get it—but then, this was not something one asked too many questions about, was it? When one happened to be a solid citizen in Brookdale? No, not really.

  The trouble was that if plague itself had not been hitting comfortable, affluent Brookdale, other unpleasant things had. Packs of midnight raiders had begun assaulting the residential community, first in isolated incidents, then with accelerating frequency. Men and sometimes women began turning up here and there at secluded homes at two in the morning, heads covered with nylon stocking masks, well armed, kicking in doors, holding the husbands at gunpoint, gang-raping the mothers and daughters, stripping the houses of jewelry and money and blank checks and stereos and TVs and liquor and any guns that happened to be around. Not many places, at first, one here, one there, but then more and more, bolder, more atrocious, shooting the ones who resisted, hitting harder and more viciously every week. The police did their best to cope—but Brookdale's small police force was spread pretty thin anyway, and were hard to contact in a hurry when telephones were out half the time, or wires were cut—

  At first people thought the bombers were Brookdale's own kids running wild on some kind of hideous break-loose lark— Brookdale had a singularly wild crowd of kids in high school and just out, home and hanging around, with colleges slamming their doors as fast as they could on all sides—kids who didn't care to account for their time, with lots of parents who just didn't care or had given up trying long since. But soon a large network of parents, cooperating and communicating with each other as the raids became more frequent and closer to home, found they couldn't pin things down to their kids, at least not with any consistency; their hellers, it developed, were mostly just getting off at local coke and pot parties where nobody was going anywhere much except sprawled out on the floor with the music going and all those cool vibes. These raiders were coming in from outside—somewhere—who could know where? Brookdale was just a nice, juicy, defenseless target, like some other affluent communities in the area. . . .

  Things had begun getting really raw when some of the raiders coming in obviously had the Horseman's hoofprints all over them in black and blue, coughing and spitting blood on their victims. The rawness intensified when they came into closer neighborhoods, when people could hear the carnage going on in the house next door and didn't dare do a thing, terrified to unbolt a door until they heard rubber squealing on the streets as the dog packs took off. It was about then that Jack Dillman and Angelo Curccio and Bud Elvin and a few others decided that Brookdale couldn't remain a juicy, defenseless target anymore, especially with the local police walking one by one through the town-council meetings demanding more money as hazard pay and threatening to strike, and no help from other towns because they were having their own problems—

  It started off with block watches: porch lights and floodlights on, everybody supplied with screamers, everybody pledged to turn out at any hour, in case of trouble, everybody to watch everybody else's house throughout the night on regular shifts, to start a screamer going if they saw anything whatsoever that was suspicious. Firearms were voted down at first—Christ, somebody'd shoot some neighbor's ass off for sure—but in the first week they trapped three gangs by turning quiet little murderous raids into block-wide melees, blocking escape routes with cars sideways across streets and somebody snaking out to slash getaway tires and taking baseball bats and spading forks to the raiders until the cops came and hauled them away.

  The effect was electrifying: the raids dropped sharply in frequency by the second week, and the raiders tended to bolt the minute the screamers went off. But the system didn't help the more isolated homes too much, and people were getting tired and going to sleep on watch. Fewer people could cover more territory, Jack pointed out at a meeting of twenty or thirty townspeople, if cars would just patrol all night and the drivers trigger screamers whenever they saw trouble. One person could cover several residential blocks effectively, and people living there would recognize which cars were theirs and which weren't. Some merchants from the neat shopping plaza downtown were at that meeting, and appealed for some citizen help patrolling the shops and stores—there had been looting, break-ins, trashing, and they didn't have any way to work all day and stand watch all night. Ultimately it was decided that wives could do the driving, they'd be safe enough in cars as long as everybody responded to a screamer alarm in any neighborhood. They could take half-night shifts on regular rotation, eight-thirty to one, one to five, while the men with firearms could foot-patrol the business district on all-night shifts, in pairs, spread out so that each participating man drew the duty one night out of seven.

  Some opted out, calling it an invitation to suicide, calling it vigilantism, but as the break-ins continued it made a certain sense to keep live male bodies, armed or not as they wished, highly visible on the downtown streets. The one place everybody sweated out was the huge Betterway supermarket down in the shopping mall; already a couple of small raids had resulted in smashed windows, and this was the one viable food-supply center for the whole town. It had constant trouble keeping stocked, but what was there was all there was, and Jake Sugarman, the manager, was breaking rules and letting people low on funds run up tabs, at least on cheap meats and staples, and people knew that store had to be kept going—especially with all the empty stores down in Westchester and Dutchess and the southern Connecticut counties.

  So the watch patrols began, with Jack Dillman suddenly finding himself a leader and organizer and coordinator, such an unaccustomed role that he hardly knew what to do with it, but he worked to put it together. He and several others were formally deputized, and patrols walked the streets, and the women drove the neighborhoods and an uneasy peace settled on Brook-dale. Except there was not all that much peace in some quarters, because tonight Jack Dillman would be taking patrol out of turn so that the man he was covering for could come over and tumble his wife. . . . But why not split it open, tonight?

  At eight-thirty sharp Jack pulled his car into the bank parking lot, down at the edge of the shopping mall. He shoved a clip of shells into his M-l and double-checked the safety. Then he cut across the corner of the green to the Village Tav. Bud Elvin, small, wiry and fortyish, was standing outside with a small .30-.30 carbine slung over his shoulder, talking to one of the local police. "You the lucky one again tonight, huh?" he gre
eted Jack.

  "Yeah. I get all the luck. Didn't Hal call you?"

  "Nah. But that don't surprise me."

  "How did things go last night?" Jack asked the cop.

  "Quiet. Been quiet all week." The cop grinned. "I think the sports are scared one of you guys is going to trip over his rifle and shoot somebody. This place has been like a morgue."

  "Well, that's just what we have in mind," Jack said. "Anything special tonight?"

  "Keep a close eye on the drugstore," the cop said. "Kennie reported a couple of strangers in there this afternoon, man and a woman, trying to pass some bad drug paper. He thought they might be just casing the place, scouting for somebody. So pay attention over there. And over at the Betterway, of course."

  "Yeah, there's some good news, at any rate," Bud said. "Somehow Sugarman sprung a couple of fresh shipments loose from somewhere, last couple of days. Half a semi-load of side beef and pork came in yesterday from a packer out in Ohio, and new produce the day before, and flour and macaroni this afternoon. Jake was walking on air."

  The cop got into his squad car, and Jack and Bud started off on foot. It was going to be a long one, Jack reflected, not a whole lot to watch for, really, until midnight, with the Better-way and the drugstore both open until eight, Clancy's Bar until ten, the Tav and a couple of the other watering holes even later. If things stay quiet like this, maybe we can shove the starting time to 10:30 or 11:00, give a guy a little sleep, he thought. They crossed the green, made the circuit of the Betterway with its big parking lot on three sides, its loading docks and the truck ramps down to basement storage around at the rear. Bud wasn't exactly the most scintillating company, hardly said a word from one hour to the next after his limited supply of small talk was exhausted and his two rancid jokes from the latest Hustler told. They circled their assigned blocks, keeping themselves highly visible under the bright parking lights in the Betterway store lot and the town streetlights elsewhere. Now and then they glimpsed other pairs patrolling other streets, once in a while walked down to confer. Ten-thirty came, then 11:30, and Bud was yawning; Jack was just getting more and more tense. Finally, a little after midnight he could stand it no longer. "I've got to take a quick check on something," he told Bud. "Take me a half an hour. We've seen no strange people or cars around. Why don't you go into the Tav for a quick beer? I'll be right back."

  His hands were trembling as he let himself into his car, wheeled it down to the end of the business section, then up the winding wooded road toward the Heights and home. The drive took exactly eight minutes. He hesitated as he turned into the little three-house cul-de-sac to be sure a driver wasn't already swinging around there. Then he turned into his own driveway, cutting his lights.

  The figure towering over Siddie Harper was a perfectly huge man, six feet eight at least, with shoulders as broad as a barn, enormous arms, hands like sledgehammers, thick-fingered, short-thumbed. He was bareheaded and dressed in assorted filthy rags leaving half of his vast expanse of chest bare. He was just standing there, staring down at her for a long while, and then he crouched down, reaching for her with those massive hands. "Hurt?" he said.

  Siddie shrank away as he came for her until she saw the docile eyes and smooth, unlined baby face of the never-bright. He touched her scraped face with a thick finger, looked at the streak of blood. "Hurt?" he said again.

  "No, not bad. Just a scrape." She edged back, still unsure. "Who're you?"

  "Joey." He stared at her stupidly. "Not hurt?"

  "No, no, but look, can you get me that chair?"

  "Chair?"

  "Over there." She pointed to the overturned wheelchair on the sidewalk. "Bring it over."

  "Wheels!" The huge man walked over, picked up the chair like a toy. He spun one wheel and grinned, then tried the other, which jammed. "Won't go round."

  "It's bent. Try to unbend it."

  "Unbend?"

  "Twist it straight, Joey, so it'll go around."

  He turned the heavy chair over in his hands, grabbed the bent wheel and pressed it against his knee. It bent back straight like a

  cold licorice whip. "Goes around now."

  She could see that the axle was bent too, but maybe that didn't matter. "Joey, put me in the chair. I can't get into it. My legs don't work."

  He blinked at her. "Don't work? Hurt?"

  "Yes, they're hurt. Just lift me up and put me in it."

  "Lift up." He grinned. He knelt, picked her up like a rag doll, lifted her with surprising gentleness.

  "In the chair, Joey."

  "Yeah. In the chair." He got her into it, watched as she inspected the wheels, turned them, rolled the chair ahead a few feet and then rolled it back. Something went clank-clank underneath it as it rolled, but at least it went. "Well, thanks, Joey. Thanks a lot. Listen, do you know ..." She paused, saw the big man wasn't tracking her, just watching her. "That store in the next block—you know?"

  "Back there?"

  "That's right. Is it still open?"

  "Open?"

  "Is the man still there?"

  He shook his head. "All broke up. Nothin' there."

  She looked at him, an idea formulating. She had to find food somewhere, get back home. There was still Tessie in a crumpled heap in the blankets in the other room. "Let's go see the store. You come along."

  Joey followed her as she maneuvered the chair along the sidewalk. It was like one of the old Frankenstein- movies she'd seen on the late show, with the monster following Igor like a huge, dangerous puppy. Maybe nobody'd bother her if Joey came along. Joey didn't seem to mind. Joey didn't seem to have anything to do. She questioned him, probing a little. Like probing a vast, soggy sponge. Joey didn't know where he lived except somewhere near the El. Joey didn't know how he'd gotten here or what he was doing here. Just wandering, eating garbage out of cans in alleys when he could find it. Too big for anybody to argue with or fight with. She couldn't tell if he'd always been dim or if something terrible had just recently happened to his mind—he couldn't tell her. He said he was forty-one, but he looked ageless as cast iron. He said he hadn't been sick, but he couldn't really remember. He couldn't put sentences together too well, and it was slow getting through, but there was something up there, not too capable but willing enough, and childlike and needing—

  Joey was right about one thing—the little grocery store was a wreck, window smashed, door hanging open—but it hadn't been completely emptied. Some canned goods still sat here and there on the shelves—a few soups, canned vegetables and fruit, tomato juice—things nobody had wanted. "And cocoa!" Siddie cried, tossing one-pound cans to Joey. "Man once lived for a week on just cocoa, somewhere out west. I read about it somewhere. How much can you carry, Joey?"

  "Carry?"

  "Bags. Food." She got him to stacking cans of food and cocoa into grocery bags. "What about out back?" She pointed and Joey emerged from the rear with a fifty-pound bag of flour on his shoulder. Meanwhile Siddie found a pencil and began scribbling a list of things taken on a grocery bag, every item accounted for. "There's nobody here to make a deal with, but we don't steal. Maybe somebody'll come back." Before they packed out, with Joey laden like a pack pule, she made him drag some moldy wallboard from the back to block up the broken window and to get the door carefully closed. "Maybe nobody'll bother with it, and we can come back. Now let's get out of here."

  Joey followed her, wonderingly, as she wheeled the banged-up chair back down the street. It was already getting dark and bitter cold, and she could hear the child crying again as they approached the building. At the stoop she made Joey set down the food. "Now you've got to help me upstairs again, somehow, I don't know how—"

  "Upstairs?"

  "Up." She pointed at the stairs, jabbed at the second-story window with her finger. "Maybe you can just drag it up—oh, Christ." ^

  He wasn't tracking, just staring at the stairs and her in the wheelchair. Then suddenly he reached down and picked her up, chair and all, turned around and started up the
stairs. She clutched one chair arm and threw her other arm around his heavy neck, felt his muscles strain to lift the chair high enough to clear the steps. He didn't pause until he reached the second-story landing and he wasn't even panting.

  "Great," Siddie said. "That was great, I just hope you don't get mad at me. Now go back down and bring up the food." She pointed down the stairs again. "Down."

  The man regarded her, utterly crestfallen. "I gotta go?"

  "Not away, Joey, just bring the food up. The bags."

  She was afraid he might forget and just wander off when he got down there, and he did get sidetracked for ten minutes watching a big yellow tomcat near the garbage cans in the alley, but finally she heard him plodding back up, thump—thump-thump, coming down the hall and dumping the bags on the kitchen table. He looked around the place like a child in wonderland as Sidonia followed him around in the chair. Then he saw the child's body in the bedroom corner in the blankets and he began crying. "It's okay, Joey. She won't hurt you. Won't hurt anybody, but she's got to go out of here, down to the street. I don't even know if there's a truck anymore." She got a wet washcloth, made him bend down and tied it across his mouth. "Keep it on. Take her down across the street. That's all we can do. Then come back."