by John Brunner
“That by itself we could endure. We are resilient, brave, long-suffering people, we Americans. What is necessary, we will do. But alas there are some among us who bear the name ‘American’ and are traitors, determined to overthrow the legitimate government, freely elected, to make the work of the police impossible, to denigrate and decry the country we love. Some of them adhere to alien creeds, the communism of Marx and Mao; some, detestably, adhere to a creed equally alien yet spawned within our own borders—that of the Trainites, whose leader, thank God, is safely in jail awaiting his just punishment for kidnapping an innocent boy and imprisoning him and infecting him with foul diseases that endangered his life.
“We are fighting an enemy already in our midst. He must be recognized by his words as well as his deeds. One of the great cities of our nation today writhes in agony because the water supply, the precious diamond stream that nourishes our lives, has been poisoned. You may say: how can we resist an enemy whose weapon is the very faucet at the sink, the very water-cooler we go to for relief in the factory or the office? And I will say this! It is you, the people of our great land, who must provide the answer!
“It is not going to be easy. It is going to be very hard. Our enemies have succeeded in reducing our stocks of food to the point where we must share and share alike. Following my speech, you will be informed of the emergency arrangements we are putting in hand for equal and fair distribution of the food we have. You will be informed, too, of the plans we have for silencing known traitors and subversives. But the remainder is up to you. You know who the enemy is—you met him at work, you heard him talking treason at a party, you heard about his attendance at a commie-front meeting, you saw the anti-American books in his library, you refused to laugh at his so-called jokes that dragged the name of the United States in the mud, you shut your ears to his anti-American propaganda, you told your kids to keep away from his kids who are being taught to follow in his traitor’s footsteps, you saw him at a Trainite demonstration, you know how he lied and slandered the loyal Americans who have built our country up until it is the richest and most powerful nation in history.
“My friends, you elected me to lead you into the third century of our country’s existence. I know you can be trusted to do what is right. You know who the enemy is. Go get him before he gets you!”
THAT’S TELLING ‘EM!
“Did you hear what that son of a bitch said about Train?”
“I sure did! And he hasn’t even been put on trial yet!”
GETTING STRAIGHT
Knock.
Grimy, unshaven, in clothes he had worn for more than a week, Philip snatched for his gun even before opening his eyes. It was still nearly dark in the living-room of the apartment, which they had decided on as a home base. There had been no power since the start of the emergency. Nor had there been water. Before the battery of their one transistor radio ran down, they had learned it had been the water supply which drove the city mad ... and Harold.
He sat there in the corner, soiled, uncaring, sucking his thumb and staring at infinity. He had not spoken since the moment he killed his sister. He might as well have been autistic.
Josie was in the deep freeze with the lid shut. She was starting to stink. But that was nothing to the reek from the toilet.
Denise, as dirty as himself, without her wig, her ringworm scars like brands across her scalp, sat up and whispered, “Who can that be?”
“How the shit should I know?” Philip snapped, steadying himself on the corner of a table and rubbing sleep from his eyes with the knuckles of his gun hand. He was feeling very sick this morning, worse than yesterday, but they’d broken their one thermometer when trying to take Harold’s temperature, and on his only two expeditions out-of-doors so far he hadn’t made it to a drugstore. The first had reclaimed his gun; the second had yielded nothing except the information that all the nearby food stores had been looted. They were living off deep-frozen hamburger and orange juice.
Detour on the way to the spyhole, around their improvised hearth. It was no fun living in a modern apartment with all the utilities out. Gas had been cut off around the same time as the power. They’d been lucky to find a sheet of asbestos on which they could rig cook-stove bars.
He peered cautiously out, and tensed.
“Army!” he said under his breath, and at the same time became aware of noises from the apartment next door, which had been dead silent for two days.
“Are you sure?” Denise on her knees, trembling. “It could be someone pretending—”
But there was something convincing about the man outside the door: a top sergeant, face half-hidden by an issue filtermask, holding a clipboard and a pen, making some kind of register, maybe. Then, behind him, another man came into view, a private with medical corps collar badges. He carried a box of phials and a jar of white pills.
“It’s okay,” he muttered, and slipped the locks, although he retained the security chain and made sure his gun was poised where it could be seen.
And—
“Drop the gun or I’ll drop you!” As though by magic, the sergeant had a carbine leveled; it must have been slung at his back, muzzle down, where a flick of his arm sufficed to bring it into firing position.
“But I’m not going to do anything,” Philip said weakly. “I live here. It’s my home!”
Filthy. Stinking. Grimy. Foul. Mine.
“Drop the gun!”
He shrugged and tossed it on to a nearby cushion.
“That’s better,” the sergeant said. “Are you Philip A. Mason?”
“Y-yes.”
“ID!”
Philip fumbled in his hip pocket for his billfold and offered his driver’s license. Taking it, the sergeant added, “And open this stinking door, will you?”
“I—uh, sure!” He released the chain. The private entered and glanced around, wrinkling his nose. He’d dropped his filtermask below his chin and looked as though he wished he hadn’t. But the air in here was no worse than you got by opening a window; some of the fires in the downtown area had burned five days, and the wind was still bringing in smoke from the suburbs.
“And you’re Mrs. Mason?” the sergeant said, handing the license back. “And you got two kids?”
The sound of authority in the sergeant’s voice, Philip found, was curiously reassuring. Since Josie’s death he had been able to imagine that no one any longer anywhere in the world knew what he was about. He himself had spent hours on end, sometimes half the day, staring out of the window at the wreaths of smoke, incapable of reacting, let alone of making plans.
Denise struggled to her feet, clutching a blanket to her bosom. Since she was fully dressed—neither she nor Philip had had their clothes off in the past week—it made no particular odds.
Now a third man entered the apartment, another private, carrying a gunny sack with something heavy in the bottom. On spotting Philip’s gun he snatched at it, stripped the remaining shells out, and dropped it in the bag.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Philip objected weakly.
“Ban on firearms in this city,” the sergeant grunted. “We had like twenty thousand people shot to death so far. That your son?” Pointing at Harold, who was not even following the intruders with his eyes.
“Uh—yes.”
“And the other kid, the girl?”
“Well ...”
“She’s dead.” Clearly, from Denise.
The sergeant made a check mark, not in the least surprised. “Uh-huh. How?”
“Harold killed her. Want to see her body?”
That penetrated the sergeant’s matter-of-fact pose. Lowering the clipboard, he stared at her.
“He killed her. I thought she was just asleep, but he’d cut her up and covered her with her favorite blanket.” Denise’s voice was quite level, drained of all emotion. It had been a week of hell; there was nothing left.
The sergeant and the medical private exchanged glances.
“I guess I’d better get the doc
to check this one out,” the private said after a moment. “It’s beyond me, sarge.”
“Yeah.” The sergeant licked his lips. “Go see if he’s through with the bodies next door.”
“Bodies?” Philip took half a pace forward. They’d never been very friendly with the Friedrichs in the adjacent apartment, but they had been on nodding terms, and the day the crisis broke, when he was still thinking of joining forces and resources, he’d gone to try and talk to them—but they’d refused to open the door.
“Sure, bodies,” the sergeant said curtly. “We didn’t find anyone but you alive in this building yet. You done your military service?” Pen poised to make the next check mark on his form.
“I ...” Philip swallowed hard. “Yeah, here’s my discharge certificate.” Out with the billfold again. One had had to carry that all the time since about the time the Honduran operation turned sour; they were very fierce on dodgers.
“Mm-hm? Manila? I was there too,” the sergeant said, busily writing. “Why in hell didn’t you report like you should have done?”
“I don’t understand,” Philip said slowly.
“You were supposed to report to Wickens if you weren’t either sick or crazy. Or to the Arsenal. Three days ago.” The sergeant handed the certificate back. “You gon’ be in trouble, Mr. Mason.”
Philip shook his head. “Was it on the radio or something?” he said faintly. “Because our radio’s been out for more than three days—we kept it on all the time at the beginning because we were trying to find out what was going on—and the phone’s out, and last time I went down to the street I got shot at.”
The sergeant looked at him thoughtfully. “Well, I guess they won’t be hard on you. We need everyone we can find who’s neither sick nor crazy.”
“I am kind of sick,” Philip said. “Fever, I guess.”
“Ah, that’s easy. It’s this rabbit thing that’s giving us headaches—what’s it called, Rocco?”
The medical private said, “Tularemia. But the typhus is worse, and I keep hearing they got smallpox, too.”
Philip looked at Denise and found she was so overcome she was simply gaping. He felt that way himself.
“Got a bag for the kid?” the sergeant went on, turning to the other private, the one collecting guns. The man nodded and produced a thing like a fat black cigar; shaken, it unrolled into a plastic bag about six feet by eighteen inches.
“Coffins,” the sergeant said with a wry grin. “Best we can—”
“My God, it’s Phil Mason!” A shout from the door, and Doug McNeil thrust his way in. “And Denise! Thank God you’re alive, at least!”
He was haggard, newly bearded, and dressed in khaki fatigues a size too big, but from the way he moved he was well. Philip wondered whether he dared fall on his neck and cry.
But before he could react in any such ridiculous fashion, Doug had caught sight of Harold. A single glance, and he rounded on Denise.
“He got at the water!”
Denise gave a dull nod. They’d been over that a hundred times, reconstructing the way in which, while his mother was dozing after taking that massive dose of painkillers for her migraine, he must have drunk from the deadly supply, then taken a knife to his sister’s belly.
“Josie?”
“Here,” Philip said, and led Doug to the kitchen.
He was silent for a long time, then turned away, shaking his head.
“Disposal detail!” he snapped at the man with the plastic bag, and added, “Sorry, Phil. But we have to get all the bodies out of the city and burned, quick as we can. There’ll be a mass cremation, with a service. We’re holding three a day. Denise can attend if she likes.”
“But not me?”
Doug hesitated. Then, with rapid professional deftness, he checked Philip’s pulse, rolled back one of his eyelids, and asked him to put out his tongue.
“No, not you. You’re lucky. You have no idea at all how lucky you’ve been. Rocco, you have treated them, have you?”
“Not yet, sir,” the medical private said awkwardly.
“Hell, get on with it!” Moving out of the way of the man trying to get Josie into the plastic bag. Denise had made no move to help. Presumably she couldn’t. And continuing to Philip: “I’m told we had about one and a half guns to every two people. Those that haven’t been shot went insane, those that aren’t insane mostly have one of the three or four killer diseases that are rife ... We’re still picking up the bits.”
Rocco was offering a pill and a phial. Numb, Philip took them.
“The pill is a broad-spectrum antibiotic,” Doug said. “One of the tailored penicillins, all we could get in sufficient quantity right away. It’s better than nothing, I guess, though it does provoke allergy reactions in some people. Which is why it hasn’t already been sown broadcast to the point where the bugs don’t give a fart about it. And the liquid is a specific antidote to the nerve gas.”
“Nerve gas!” A cry from Denise, accepting her own allotment from Rocco.
“Well, that’s what we’re calling it for convenience. It’s actually a military psychotomimetic. God knows how they got it into the water. Must have been literally a ton of it to do this much damage! I don’t know all the details, but experts from the Defense Department came rushing in the day before yesterday with supplies of the antidote.” He sighed. “Trouble is, in most cases it’s too late. People who weren’t warned in time did the logical thing, like filled the bathtub and every container they had, and went right on drinking the poisoned water. Forty-eight hours, and they were beyond hope.”
“But who did it?” Philip whispered. “And is it the whole country, or just us?”
“It’s just Denver and the environs,” Doug said with a shrug. “But it might as well have been the whole country. They’ve put us under martial law, they’ve instituted rationing, and it’s going on until the government change their minds.”
“Doctor, you watch your tongue!” the sergeant snapped.
“Oh, shut up!” Doug retorted. “I’m not under military discipline—I’m a civilian volunteer. And what’s more, I seem to be one of only about a dozen doctors fit for work in the whole of the city and its suburbs. And all I’m saying is that my job would be a sight easier if they told us the whole truth. I’m working in the dark half the time—and so are you, aren’t you?”
The sergeant hesitated. “Well, doc, when it’s a case of thousands of lunatics all of a sudden ...” He spread his hands.
“Yes,” Doug said ironically. “All of a sudden!” Looking past Philip’s shoulder to where Rocco and Denise were trying to persuade Harold to take the pill and the antibiotic—with no success; he let himself be handled like a dead rabbit, but would not cooperate.
“Phil.” Dropping his voice suddenly. “You’ve got to report for duty now—everyone who was ever in the armed forces has been recalled from the reserve, and you’re fitter than most of the serving soldiers I’ve seen around here. That means it’s going to be tough on Denise.”
“How do you mean?” Philip’s mind had been full of fog for days. It was obstinately refusing to clear.
“Well ... Well, Harold’s never going to be any different, you know. We’re certain about that, when it comes to kids that young. And if you’re going to be whipped away, and—I didn’t tell you!”
He had been half turned away; now he swung back to confront Philip directly.
“Alan! He was killed!”
“Oh, my God. How?”
“Burned to death in his warehouse. Along with Dorothy. I was on the detail that checked out the ruins.” Doug licked his lips. “We think someone who’d had trouble with his filters must have put two and two together when the warning went out about poisoned water. Decided it was the Mitsuyama purifiers that had caused it. He and Dorothy went back to the office the day after the crisis, and someone threw gas bombs in. Burned a cop, too. Hadn’t someone been shot?”
“Mack,” Philip said slowly. “Who told you?”
&
nbsp; “Pete Goddard. He’s okay—and Jeannie. They’re helping with casualty admin.”
So a few people at least were likely to survive. Philip said, “About Harold?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. He’s going to be a—a burden for Denise.”
“I guess so.” That damned mental fog wouldn’t lift; it was like trying to think between the anesthetic and the coma. “But they’ll get help, won’t they? And I mean we do have some money, and—”
“Oh, shit, Phil!” So agitated, he had to grasp Philip’s arm to halt his words. Still in a low tone, privately: “The banks are shut, everything’s closed down here, and there’s no transport out of the city, nothing, nothing! And Harold in his condition ...” He waved his hand.
“But I’ve seen worse than him. Being tended like by Earth Community Chest.” So far back in the past, a boy with a shrunken leg hobbling across the entrance to Angel City’s parking lot in LA. “Or being helped by Double-V. I mean, he’s a sick kid.”
“They’ve been proscribed,” Doug said.
“What?”
“Earth Community Chest and Double-V. They were both on the list of subversive organizations to be closed down when the country went on to a war footing. Along with all the civil rights groups, all the left-wing publishers ...” Doug shook his head. “And they won’t tell us who we’re fighting.”
“Them!” the sergeant said. Philip hadn’t realized he was listening. “This is the filthiest attack in history! Kids like yours driven crazy! Women! Everyone! Not even killed clean!”
Philip gave a slow nod.
“Okay, I won’t make my offer after all,” Doug said, and turned away as Rocco offered him a pad of printed forms. “By the way, what was Josie’s full name and date of birth? I have to clip this to her bag.”
Philip supplied the data dully. And went on, “What—what offer?”
“A bag like this one,” Doug said, not looking around. “It’s that, or starve to death, or be killed in an accident, or die of typhus ... Well, you’ve made it clear you’d refuse.”