The first of them reached him and walked by. He roamed among them, growing sicker with each one he passed. To his right an old woman stumbled, and fell to the ground. She rolled and twisted, moaning animal sounds pouring out of her mouth. He knelt beside her and turned her over. She was covered with black dirt and the red stain of clay from the inside of the pit. Her gray hair was matted on her head, and the cries poured out of her without stopping. He left her. Others stumbled over her and fell, making a pile-up of rolling bodies. There was nothing he could do.
When he moved back into their midst again, he saw others down, vomiting, fainting, crying. A little girl limped by, pulling at her hair. It came out in her hands, great handfuls of it, blond and useless. He closed his eyes and stood still to catch hold of himself, but he was buffeted by the crowd sweeping past him, blindly unaware of barriers, man or tree. The stench of them was overpowering. Linc pulled out his handkerchief and held it over his nose, trying to shut it out.
Now he gazed into their faces, ignoring the desperate state of their bodies. The shock of meeting them eye to eye brought the protecting handkerchief down. There was nothing in these people. He looked at them, but they didn’t look back. Their eyes met his, and went through him. Their gaze was empty, devoid of sense or humanity. They were nothing, staring at him with the blank stare of idiots.
He watched them hard, determining if the blankness was the trance of hypnosis or something else. It was something else. They were no longer hypnotized; they were no longer anything to be hypnotized; they were dead shells of human beings, the light and mind gone out of them.
He walked faster, striding through them, trying not to look upon their naked horror, but searching for a pair of eyes with a vestige of sense left in them. The crowd surged about him, a stumbling, falling surge, and he grew dizzy with dodging.
A certain color caught his eye—the soft, gray plaid of a sport jacket—and he ran. That man, off at the edge of the crowd—he had to be Wes. The man’s back was to him, but as he neared, he knew it was Wes. And the jacket wasn’t as dirty as the others, the figure not so bent or fumbling.
Linc reached him, grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him around. “Wes!” he cried as he met the happily familiar face. “Wes, where—?”
Linc stopped, for the eyes that swept to meet his own were not Wes’ eyes. The face was Wes’, the body, the jacket, were Wes’, but Wes was gone out of them all. The shell of the man looked at him and sighed. And that was all.
Linc closed his eyes and cried out, loud and strong against the stench and the shuffling of thousands of feet. He clenched his friend tight and cried with the sighs that breathed out of Wes’ lungs.
A hand on his shoulder turned him around fearfully. He didn’t want to meet any more idiot eyes. But it was Stanley. And in Stanley’s hand was a small radiation counter.
At the sight of Wes, his face fell. “How,” was all he said, “did he get here?”
“He’s been among them for three days,” Linc told him.
“And you didn’t report it?”
“I couldn’t. He went on my say-so. I had to wait.” Linc indicated the counter in Stanley’s hand. “What are you doing with that?”
“Following a hunch that turned out to be right. These pitiful, collapsing people are radioactive, Linc. All of them, slightly radioactive. That’s why they’re dying. Radiation sickness. Every one of them is doomed. Every one of them is radioactive.”
Linc took a firmer hold on Wes.
“Wes, too,” Stanley said. “Only not quite so much as the others.” He put the counter in his pocket, out of sight. “I figure that Hendricks died of the same cause. It wasn’t his proximity to the reactor, as you thought. It was his stay in the hole. And that’s why you came away from the reactor all right, while he didn’t.”
Linc nodded. It made sense. But he didn’t want to consider it right now.
“What about the other thing?” he asked Stanley. “What about their minds? Radiation can’t account for their mindlessness.”
“No, it can’t. That’s something else again. I don’t know yet.” Stanley hesitated a moment, then moved away, back through the stumbling stream of dying people that walked the road.
“What will we do with them all?” Linc heard Iverson’s voice over the din of moans and cries. “They’re dying! What will we do with them?”
Linc tilted his head back and searched the sky. He wanted to see the distorted shape of a flying Eye—to vent his hate, to allay the guilt and grief that burdened his heart. But the sky was empty, and overcast. The Eyes had let these people go. Yet he knew that they were gathering more into the hole, even while they were herding these out.
He took hold of Wes firmly, and steadying him, walked back through the crowd, leading him around the fallen ones, shielding him from the falling, hearing his sighs like cries from his own soul.
He cut out of the stream at the corner, and with the driver’s help, lifted Wes into the station wagon. Iverson could worry about the others. Wes was going home.
“It’s pure hell,” the driver muttered. “A pure hell those things have made. I tried to pick up a little boy but the others tramped over him before I could get there. What’s going to happen to us, Mr. Hosier? What are we going to do?”
****
Back again in the parking lot, Iverson and Stanley helped him shift Wes from the station wagon to his own car. Iverson had work to do—hospitals to call, arrangements to make for the care and final disposition of thousands—but he waited to help with Wes. Linc felt a numbness that penetrated to his bones. He hadn’t known grief since childhood, and the weight of it was almost intolerable.
“He was only gone three days,” Stanley said. “Maybe we can bring him out of it. Those others have been in there a week or more.”
“I’d like to know why he went in the first place—and why you didn’t report it three days ago.” Iverson was sour.
“Not now,” Linc sighed. “Don’t light into me now. How much do you think I can stand, old man? Wes is my friend. Let me do what I have to do for him, then tear me to bits if you want. But not now!”
He went around to his side of the car and climbed in, slamming the door on Iverson’s low “Sorry. Take all the time you need.”
He drove out of the lot and down the streets for home. Wes sat propped beside him, his eyes empty and distant, his only sound the continual sighing. If only the sighing meant there was fight still left in the shell. If only the sighing were a sign that Wes was still struggling against the effects of the Eyes. But such a hope was senseless. Linc knew that whenever he glanced at Wes’ dark, blank eyes.
As the cement hummed beneath the wheels, he let the damnation come and torture him. He had found one friend—one hard-sought friend—and he had killed him. Selfishly killed him. He had sent him out unprepared, and what tortures Wes had suffered, what horrors of mind and body he had endured, would remain forever a mystery. But he had done it. On account of Kelly. To have Kelly and feel her warm in his arms, he had killed his friend.
He pulled into the drive and lifted Wes from the car. Kelly already had the door open, and together they carried Wes upstairs and placed him on his bed. With warm, sudsy water, Linc washed the lanky body, dressed Wes gently in pajamas, and tucked him warmly under the covers. When Kelly came back, Wes: dull eyes were closed, and the room looked like any other sickroom.
“Linc?” Kelly’s touch was on his arm, fleeting and unsure. “What are you thinking?”
“That he can’t even offer me forgiveness.”
She didn’t answer him, one way or another. She simply stood by the bed, staring at Wes, and she was white and trembling.
“Don’t you have anything to say?” he asked loudly. “Why aren’t you telling me that it’s best this way? That you’re happy it’s Wes lying there and not me? That you’re grateful to have your chosen protector safe a
nd sound and to hell with the rest of the world? You should be here, in my arms, making me forget my conscience again.”
She turned a stricken face to him, but still said nothing.
“Well?” he shouted. “Have you got enough love or worth in your whole body and soul to make up for what we did together? Wes is not a man to be easily atoned for. He was worth more than the two of us combined!”
She wavered, swaying on her feet. She took everything he threw at her, but offered no reply.
“Say something!” He cursed her, wanting to make her cry, to sob and pay in part for some of his grief.
In the heavy silence, Ichabod’s nails clicked across the floor. The dog jumped onto the bed, peered into Wes’ face, licked the man’s chin, wagged his little tail—then whined, long and high. His tail drooped, and he jumped from the bed, clicking back out of the room and down the stairs.
Kelly was crying now. Silently, and to herself, she was crying. “Wes is dead to the dog,” she said. “Ichabod knows he’s not really here any more.”
“But he’s not dead to us,” Linc answered her. “We still have to go through that. It may take days for him to die. And we’re going to spend those days taking care of him. Watching him, nursing him, knowing we can’t save him, but offering our souls to try.”
“Of course, we are,” she said softly. “Of course, we are.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Linc sat in the dim bedroom, watching Wes breathe, hearing Wes sigh, bathing Wes’ hot forehead with cool, damp clothes. The doctor had come and gone, and now there was only waiting.
The doctor’s words still echoed off the empty ceiling. Linc recalled him as he had entered the room; Dr. Ellston, the lab physician and one of Wes’ friends. He was a tall man, thin and balding, with a transparent look to his skin and a pinkness that proclaimed frequent scrubbing. His blue eyes were large and intently probing, but after he had examined Wes and sat down with Linc, they lost their intentness, turning to blunt sympathy and frank apology.
“There’s not a thing to be done,” Ellston had said. “I’ve worked with radiation cases before, but Wes’ condition has gone too far. I can’t help him, Linc.”
“I didn’t expect that you could. But I feel easier knowing that you came and tried.”
The doctor let out his breath in a soft exhalation of weariness. “I had just returned to the lab for more supplies when you called. I’ve spent the last hours in pure hell. They’ve taken the people who came out of the hole to every available place—the armory, the high schools, the basement of the library—and they overflow every accommodation. And there’s nothing to be done for any of them except lead them to shelter, try to make them comfortable, and wait for them to die. Some die on the way.”
“Don’t their relatives come to claim them?”
“Some do, but it only complicates things. As dying patients, they have to be kept together in some semblance of hospital order. They can’t be spread all over town. Anyway, I’ve learned how it must have been for doctors during the great plagues—when they were surrounded by death and completely helpless to prevent it. These people won’t stay in their beds. They wander about, moaning and sighing. It’s more like bedlam than a hospital.”
For a moment Linc wondered why Ellston was burdening him with these pictures, then realized the reason. By describing the miseries of thousands, he was trying to dwarf the misery of Wes a little. Ellston would have deliberately done that. He was that kind of man.
But now he was gone and the verdict for Wes was pronounced and certain. And Linc was lonely. Sitting by the bed, waiting for death, he was lonely.
It was a new emotion, and it stung sharply. He had never had a friend, or wanted one. Wes was the first—and now, without Wes, he was lonely. It struck home clearly how many times he had sloughed other people off, unsympathetic to what he saw in their faces. Yet how could he blame himself when he hadn’t understood?
Along with the loneliness, another emotion grew to stand watch with him. Fear. Every plan he’d followed had failed, and the Eyes still roamed the streets. He could see them on Colt Street whenever he looked out. The time for Collins’ bomb was approaching faster now that so many people had emerged from the hole. The people who remained captive numbered only in the hundreds. The number grew every day, but three thousand had come out to walk and crawl down the road with Wes.
Linc wasn’t confident any more. He had failed, and failed too greatly, bringing shame with failure, and self-damnation. Whenever he fed Ichabod, or forced himself to fondle the dog and give him some of the affection he so badly missed, he realized again how traitorous he had been, accepting Kelly and letting Wes walk bravely to his doom.
As night closed around the house, and Kelly came to take her turn at the bed watch, Linc drove to the lab. His stomach growled for food, yet he wasn’t hungry; his eyes blurred from fatigue, yet he wasn’t sleepy. He had promised himself one thing—to rid himself of tie fear, the shame and the loneliness. That could be accomplished only one way, through revenge.
He pulled the tarp off the cage and looked into the watery blueness of the Eye. It glowered back at him, and he imagined he could see laughter in it, victory in it. He braced himself and hated it with his soul, and when the shadows and swirls began to form inside his mind, he thrust them off viciously, making the great, distorted thing in the cage blink and recoil. He fought it. Every new thrust, every new pull and tug, met with refusal, violent refusal. His body ached and he felt it from a distance. His mind reeled, and he still pushed on. This Eye had lied to Wes. It had told Wes that he had a chance of withstanding its brothers. It wouldn’t lie to him.
When he felt himself swaying from weariness, he looked away from the iris, shuffled to the window, and breathed deep of the cold, fresh air that billowed in. He checked his watch. Two hours. Two hours! He had withstood the Eye for two hours, alone, sustaining himself with hatred.
Wes’ words echoed in him, Wes’ hope for the future had been centered in him, and he had ignored it. For two days, he had sat beside the silent bed and forgotten his first duty. He turned from the window. He would ignore it no longer.
“Tomorrow,” he said to the Eye. “Tomorrow! Then maybe you’ll know what it is to grieve, and suffer, and be defeated. If you can feel at all, you’ll know! I’ll make you know!”
As he sped the dark streets, he felt better, uplifted and purposeful. Tomorrow he would go on the journey he should have taken before. Tomorrow he would go into the hole and finish what Wes had started. And take revenge for Wes.
He slammed into the house, more alive than he had been for days, and suddenly hungry. He went straight to the kitchen. He wanted nothing to do with Kelly. Since he had found Wes, he hadn’t touched her. He hadn’t wanted her touch. It was somehow unclean. It had led to treachery before, and he wouldn’t give it the chance again.
He got out the old, dry remains of the fried chicken, poured a tall glass of milk, and sat down at the table. He had barely taken a bite when Kelly came in.
“What are you doing away from Wes?” he demanded.
“Wes is sleeping. I heard you slam the door, and I thought something must be wrong.”
“Well, it isn’t. For the first time in days, it isn’t.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Simply that I’ve decided on a plan of action, and I’m going to follow it. One way or another, it will atone. If I win, then I’ll forgive myself for Wes. If I lose, I’ll have followed him and won’t need forgiveness.”
She gripped the back of the nearest chair. “You sound as though you intend to repeat what Wes did,” she murmured, not letting it out in full voice as though she were afraid of it.
“Exactly,” he said. “I should have gone in the first place.”
“Down into that hole?” Kelly’s words were slow and spaced. “Down into that radiation? You can’t, Linc. You’re crazy e
ven to consider it.”
“Let’s not begin on that again,” he commanded. “It won’t work twice. I know exactly what I mean to you. Well, if I don’t come back, go out and find yourself a new protector. I’m through with that job anyway. The minute we lose Wes, we lose each other.”
“We actually lost each other the minute you found Wes!”
“Am I supposed to weep at that? And pity each of us and say we should have another chance?”
“How could we have another chance, when we didn’t have one in the beginning? You never trusted me.”
“Should I have?” he shouted.
“No,” she admitted, “I was using you. Things are different now.”
“You can’t prove that statement, Kelly, so don’t say it.”
“All right—shut me out, and play the wronged hero. But I’m human, too. I’ve seen you change in the last few days. I’ve seen you grow desperate and fearful and need things you didn’t need before.”
“I admit it,” he said. “I’m not ashamed of it.”
“Then why can’t you understand that the same things have happened to me? I need things—you—as I’ve never needed you before. If a person can love out of desperation, then that’s what I’m doing.” She came over to him and put her arms about his shoulders, making him face her. “I’m not pretending any more. I mean every word I say. I’m pleading with you to stay here and be safe—not to keep me safe this time, but because I want you and need you.”
“Take your hands off me, Kelly!” He stood up, shoving her away.
“You blame me, don’t you? You think it was my fault that Wes went out and didn’t make it back?”
“I’d like to blame you. But I can’t. I’m the one who gave in—who was swayed from sense and conscience. One thing I do know. I have brains enough not to make the same mistake again.”
“Since when is it a mistake to love someone? Or is that emotion too weakening for you?”
The Flying Eyes Page 10