“Amos! Did you hear?” He was wheezing as if he had been running. “Just came over the radio while you were in here gabbling.”
He was cut off by the sound of more motorcycles. They swept down the single main street of Wesley, heading west. The riders were all in military uniform, carrying weapons and going at top speed. Dust erupted behind them, and Doc began coughing and swearing. In the last few years, he had grown more and more outspoken about his atheism; when Amos had first known him, during his first pastorate, the man had at least shown some respect for the religion of others.
“All right,” Amos said sharply. “You’re in the house of God, Doc. What came over the radio?”
Doc caught himself and choked back his coughing fit. “Sorry. But damn it, man, the aliens have landed in Clyde, only fifty miles away. They’ve set up a base there! That’s what all those rockets going over meant.”
There was a sick gasp from the people who had heard, and a buzz as the news was passed back to others.
Amos hardly noticed the commotion. It had been Clyde where he had served before coming here again. He was trying to picture the alien ships dropping down, scouring the town ahead of them with gas and bullets. The grocer on the corner with his nine children, the lame deacon who had served there, the two Aimes sisters with their horde of dogs and cats and their constant crusade against younger sinners. He tried to picture the green-skinned, humanoid aliens moving through the town, invading the church, desecrating the altar! And there was Anne Seyton, who had been Richard’s sweetheart, though of another faith . . .
“What about the garrison nearby?” a heavy farmer yelled over the crowd. “I had a boy there, and he told me they could handle any ships when they were landing! Shell their tubes when they were coming down-”
Doc shook his head. “Half an hour before the landing, there was a cyclone up there. It took the roof off the main building and wrecked the whole training garrison.”
“Jim!” The big man screamed out the name, and began dragging his frail wife behind him, out toward his car. “If they got Jim-”
Others started to rush after him, but another procession of motorcycles stopped them. This time they were traveling slower, and a group of tanks was rolling behind them. The rear tank drew abreast, slowed, and stopped, while a dirty-faced man in an untidy major’s uniform stuck his head out.
“You folks get under cover! Ain’t you heard the news? Go home and stick to your radios, before a snake plane starts potshooting the bunch of you for fun. The snakes’ll be heading straight over here if they’re after Topeka, like it looks!” He jerked back down and began swearing at someone inside. The tank jerked to a start and began heading away toward Clyde.
There had been enough news of the sport of the alien planes in the papers. The people melted from the church. Amos tried to stop them for at least a short prayer and to give them time to collect their thoughts, but gave up after the first wave shoved him aside. A minute later, he was standing alone with Doc Miller.
“Better get home, Amos,” Doc suggested. “My car’s half a block down. Suppose I give you a lift?”
Amos nodded wearily. His bones felt dry and brittle, and there was a dust in his mouth thicker than that in the air. He felt old and, for the first time, almost useless. He followed the doctor quietly, welcoming the chance to ride the six short blocks to the little house the parish furnished him.
A car of ancient age and worse repair rattled toward them as they reached Doc’s auto. It stopped, and a man in dirty overalls leaned out, his face working jerkily. “Are you prepared, brothers? Are you saved? Armageddon has come, as the Book foretold. Get right with God, brothers! The end of the world as foretold is at hand, amen!”
“Where does the Bible foretell alien races around other suns?” Doc shot at him.
The man blinked, frowned, and yelled something about sinners burning forever in hell before he started his rickety car again. Amos sighed. Now, with the rise of their troubles, fanatics would spring up to cry doom and false gospel more than ever, to the harm of all honest religion. He had never decided whether they were somehow useful to God or whether they were inspired by the forces of Satan.
“In my Father’s house are many mansions,” he quoted to Doc, as they started up the street. “It’s quite possibly an allegorical reference to other worlds in the heavens.”
Doc grimaced, and shrugged. Then he sighed and dropped one hand from the wheel onto Amos’ knee. “I heard about Dick, Amos. I’m sorry. The first baby I ever delivered—and the handsomest!” He sighed again, staring toward Clyde as Amos found no words to answer. “I don’t get it. Why can’t we drop atom bombs on them? What happened to the moon base’s missiles?”
Amos got out at the unpainted house where he lived, taking Doc’s hand silently and nodding his thanks.
He would have to organize his thoughts this afternoon. When night fell and the people could move about without the danger of being shot at by chance alien planes, the church bell would summon them, and they would need spiritual guidance. If he could help them to stop trying to understand God, and to accept Him . . .
There had been that moment in the church when God had seemed to enfold him and the congregation in warmth—the old feeling of true fulfillment. Maybe, now in the hour of its greatest need, some measure of inspiration had returned.
He found Ruth setting the table. Her small, quiet body moved as efficiently as ever, though her face was puffy and her eyes were red. “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it, Amos. But right after the telegram, Anne Seyton came. She’d heard— before we did. And-”
The television set was on, showing headlines from the Kansas City Star, and he saw there was no need to tell her the news. He put a hand on one of hers. “God has only taken what he gave, Ruth. We were blessed with Richard for thirty years.”
“I’m all right.” She pulled away and turned toward the kitchen, her back frozen in a line of taut misery. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Anne’s here. Dick’s wife! They were married before he left, secretly—right after you talked with him about the difference in religion. You’d better see her, Amos. She knows about her people in Clyde.”
He watched his wife go. The slam of the outside door underlined the word. He’d never forbidden the marriage; he had only warned the boy, so much like Ruth. He hesitated, and finally turned toward the tiny, second bedroom. There was a muffled answer to his knock, and the lock clicked rustily.
“Anne?” he said. The room was darkened, but he could see her blond head and the thin, almost unfeminine lines of her figure. He put out a hand and felt her thin fingers in his palm. As she turned toward the weak light, he saw no sign of tears, but her hand shook with her dry shudders. “Anne, Ruth has just told me that God has given us a daughter—”
“God!” She spat the word out harshly, while the hand jerked back. “God, Reverend Strong? Whose God? The one who sends meteorites against Dick’s base, plagues of insects, and drought against our farms? The God who uses tornadoes to make it easy for the snakes to land? That God, Reverend Strong? Dick gave you a daughter, and he’s dead! Dead!”
Amos backed out of the room. He had learned to stand the faint mockery with which Doc pronounced the name of the Lord, but this was something that set his skin into goose-pimples and caught at his throat. Anne had been of a different faith, but she had always seemed religious before.
It was probably only hysteria. He turned toward the kitchen door to call Ruth and send her in to the girl.
Overhead, the staccato bleating of a ram-jet cut through the air in a sound he had never heard. But the radio description fitted it perfectly. It could be no Earth ship!
Then there was another and another, until they blended together into a steady drone.
And over it came the sudden firing of a heavy gun, while a series of rapid thuds came from the garden behind the house.
Amos stumbled toward the back door. “Ruth!” he cried.
There was another burst of shots. Ruth was cr
umpling before he could get to the doorway.
* * * *
II
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ... I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou has brought me into the dust of death.
psalms, xxii, 1, 14, 15.
There were no more shots as he ran to gather her into his arms. The last of the alien delta planes had gone over, heading for Topeka or whatever city they were attacking.
Ruth was still alive. One of the ugly slugs had caught her in the abdomen, ripping away part of the side, and it was bleeding horribly. But he felt her heart still beating, and she moaned faintly. Then as he put her on the couch, she opened her eyes briefly, saw him, and tried to smile. Her lips moved, and he dropped his head to hear.
“I’m sorry, Amos. Foolish. Nuisance. Sorry.”
Her eyes closed, but she smiled again after he bent to kiss her lips. “Glad now. Waited so long.”
Anne stood in the doorway, staring unbelievingly. But as Amos stood up, she unfroze and darted to the medicine cabinet, to come back and begin snipping away the ruined dress and trying to staunch the flow of blood.
Amos reached blindly for the phone. He mumbled something to the operator, and a minute later to Doc Miller. He’d been afraid that the doctor would still be out. He had a feeling that Doc had promised to come, but could remember no words.
The flow of blood outside the wound had been stopped, but Ruth was white, even to her lips. Anne forced him back to a chair, her fingers gentle on his arm.
“I’m sorry, Father Strong. I—I—”
He stood up and went over to stand beside Ruth, letting his eyes turn toward the half-set table. There was a smell of something burning in the air, and he went out to the old wood-burning stove to pull the pans off and drop them into the sink. Anne followed, but he hardly saw her, until he heard her begin to cry softly. There were tears this time.
“The ways of God are not the ways of man, Anne,” he said, and the words released a flood of his own emotions. He dropped tiredly to a chair, his hands falling limply onto his lap. He dropped his head against the table, feeling the weakness and uncertainty of age. “We love the carnal form and our hearts are broken when it is gone. Only God can know all of any of us or count the tangled threads of all our lives. It isn’t good to hate God!”
She dropped beside him. “I don’t, Father Strong. I never did.” He couldn’t be sure of the honesty of it, but he made no effort to question her, and she sighed. “Mother Ruth isn’t dead yet!”
He was saved from any answer by the door being slammed open as Doc Miller came rushing in. The plump little man took one quick look at Ruth, and was beside her, reaching for plasma and his equipment. He handed the plasma bottle to Anne, and began working carefully.
“There’s a chance,” he said finally. “If she were younger or stronger, I’d say there was an excellent chance. But now, since you believe in it, you’d better do some fancy praying.”
“I’ve been praying,” Amos told him, realizing that it was true. The prayers had begun inside his head at the first shot, and they had never ceased.
They moved her gently, couch and all, into the bedroom where the blinds could be drawn, and where the other sounds of the house couldn’t reach her. Doc gave Anne a shot of something and sent her into the other room. He turned to Amos, but didn’t insist when the minister shook his head.
“I’ll stay here, Amos,” he said. “With her. Until we know, or I get another call. The switchboard girl knows where I am.”
He went into the bedroom and closed the door. Amos stood in the center of the living room, his head bowed, for long minutes.
The sound of the television brought him back. Topeka was off the air, but another station was showing scenes of destruction.
Hospitals and schools seemed to be their chief targets. The gas had accounted for a number of deaths, though those could have been prevented if instructions had been followed. But now the incendiaries were causing the greatest damage.
And the aliens had gotten at least as rough treatment as they had meted out. Of the forty that had been counted, twenty-nine were certainly down.
“I wonder if they’re saying prayers to God for their dead?” Doc asked. “Or doesn’t your God extend his mercy to races other than man?”
Amos shook his head slowly. It was a new question to him. But there could be only one answer. “God rules the entire universe, Doc. But these evil beings surely offer him no worship!”
“Are you sure? They’re pretty human!”
Amos looked back to the screen, where one of the alien corpses could be seen briefly. They did look almost human, though squat and heavily muscled. Their skin was green, and they wore no clothes. There was no nose, aside from two orifices under their curiously flat ears that quivered as if in breathing. But they were human enough to pass for deformed men, if they were worked on by good make-up men.
They were creatures of God, just as he was! And as such, could he deny them? Then his mind recoiled, remembering the atrocities they had committed, the tortures that had been reported, and the utter savagery so out of keeping with their inconceivably advanced ships. They were things of evil who had denied their birthright as part of God’s domain. For evil, there could be only hatred. And from evil, how could there be worship of anything but the powers of darkness?
The thought of worship triggered his mind into an awareness of his need to prepare a sermon for the evening. It would have to be something simple; both he and his congregation were in no mood for rationalizations. Tonight he would have to serve God through their emotions. The thought frightened him. He tried to cling for strength to the brief moment of glory he had felt in the morning, but even that seemed far away.
There was the wail of a siren outside, rising to an ear-shattering crescendo, and the muffled sound of a loud-speaker driven beyond its normal operating level.
He stood up at last and moved out onto the porch with Doc as the tank came by. It was limping on treads that seemed to be about to fall apart, and the amplifier and speakers were mounted crudely on top. It pushed down the street, repeating its message over and over.
“Get out of town! Everybody clear out! This is an order to evacuate! The snakes are coming! Human forces have been forced to retreat to regroup. The snakes are heading this way, heading toward Topeka. They are looting and killing as they go. Get out of town! Everybody clear out!”
It paused, and another voice blared out, sounding like that of the major who had stopped before. “Get the hell out, all of you! Get out while you’ve still got your skins outside of you. We been licked. Shut up, Blake! We’ve had the holy living pants beat off us, and we’re going back to momma. Get out, scram, vamoose! The snakes are coming! Beat it!”
It staggered down the street, rumbling its message, and now other stragglers began following it—men in cars, piled up like cattle; men in carts of any kind, drawn by horses. Then another amplifier sounded from one of the wagons.
“Stay under cover until night! Then get out! The snakes won’t be here at once. Keep cool. Evacuate in order, and under cover of darkness. We’re holing up ourselves when we get to a safe place. This is your last warning. Stay under cover now, and evacuate as soon as it’s dark.”
There was a bleating from the sky, and alien planes began dipping down. Doc pulled Amos back into the house, but not before he saw men being cut to ribbons by shots that seemed to fume and burst into fire as they hit. Some of the men on the retreat made cover. When the planes were gone, they came out and began regrouping, leaving the dead and hauling the wounded with them.
“Those men need me!” Amos protested.
“So does Ruth,” Doc told him. “Besides, we’re too old, Amos. We’d only get in the way. They have their own doctors and chaplains, probably. They’re risking their lives to save us, damn it—they’ve
piled all their worst cases there and left them to warn us and to decoy the planes away from the rest who are probably sneaking back through the woods and fields. They’d hate your guts for wasting what they’re trying to do. I’ve been listening to one of the local stations, and it’s pretty bad.”
He turned on his heel and went back to the bedroom. The television program tardily began issuing evacuation orders to all citizens along the road from Clyde to Topeka, together with instructions. For some reason, the aliens seemed not to spot small objects in movement at night, and all orders were to wait until then.
Doc came out again, and Amos looked up at him, feeling his head bursting, but with one clear idea fixed in it. “Ruth can’t be moved, can she, Doc?”
Star SHort Novels - [Anthology] Page 9