Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  When his chief answered, he said two words: “Lake Success!”

  There was a pause. Then, for once in his career, a touch of excitement sounded in his chief’s voice. “We’ll check that from here. We’re plotting them by radar now. Damn it, I hope you’re wrong. They’ll be in session in an hour or so.”

  KIRKLAND was musing on destiny.

  He saw himself as an inevitable force in the history of the world. He had been needed; therefore he had been created. It was his mission to destroy confusion, and that meant destroying freedom. Only the free knew turmoil; slaves knew only peace.

  There was a tremendous longing in his soul as he stared at the mind-destroying tube. He wished he could be free from his own turmoil and confusion, wished that he too could escape into the peace of a robot-world. Everyone equal, everyone pursuing the same ordained ends! What a delightful prospect!

  He noticed a smaller plane banking ahead of them, and saw that it was followed by three other ships. They were slim and beautiful, shining in the early sun. With a roar they shot over them, and, banking, came around again; and this time they approached on a straighter and truer line.

  Harbingers, Kirkland thought. Harbingers of success coming to meet him. With a thrill of joy, Kirkland raised the mind-destroying tube and pointed it squarely at his own eyes. His mind teetered giddily, ready to rush off and escape its own confusion and excitement. He pressed the catch and the bolt of light struck him in the face. Pain flooded through his brain, and the mocking shadows lingering on the edge of his consciousness vanished in a bright white flash.

  Everything faded slowly and he was aware of nothing at all but a tremendous chattering and the sound of splintering glass and a hot pain in his chest. But the sound of his own laughter drove all that away forever . . .

  “MAJOR ROVERE, reporting, sir.

  Bomber 024789 is going down in a spin, with smoke coming out of motor and from the tail. It’s going to crash in an empty stretch of the beach. There! It’s down, sir, burning.”

  “Very good, Major.” The Commanding General’s voice was quiet, soft. “Get down as close as you can and see—see if there are any survivors.”

  Clark snapped off the radio and stood for a moment staring out at the bright sunlight. Then he lit a cigarette with fingers that were trembling slightly, and glanced at Denise Masterson. She came to his side and put a hand lightly on his arm.

  “You’re tired,” she said. “Can’t you stop for a while now, get some sleep?”

  He smiled thinly. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee, if you like. Maybe I can get some sleep about next week.”

  “Thank you, I’d like coffee.”

  Clark nodded to Trenton and walked slowly to the door. With Denise’s hand on his arm he left the office and went tiredly toward the elevators.

  FIX ME SOMETHING TO EAT

  First published in the May 1951 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  How good would your appetite be if you were invited to dinner and found the main course would be yourself?

  “WE HAVEN’T got a chance, Barny.”

  “Shut up I Keep your eye on that cop at the corner.”

  The two speakers were crouched beside a third-floor window over-looking the street. It was nighttime and their shadows loomed intermittently against a wall of the room, appearing and disappearing in unison with the neon-sign that flashed from the top of a building across the street.

  Now he cast a beseeching glance at Barny’s grim profile, and said: “They’ve got us surrounded. The street is too quiet.”

  “Maybe they have, and maybe they haven’t,” Barny said. The neon light flashed across his face, brought out the gleam in his eyes and glinted on the gun in his big hand. “They don’t know what building we’re in, though. If they did we’d have heard from them before this.”

  “They been clearing people out of the block all day,” Filly said. “They’re ready to come after us.”

  “We’ll be here when they do,” Barny said. “It wouldn’t be polite not to welcome the lousy rats. Keep your eye on that cop. He’ll probably give the signal.”

  At the corner of the block a man stood reading the paper. He wore a trench coat with the collar turned up against the misting rain that was falling.

  Filly watched this man and the breath was ragged in his throat.

  Barny Myers and Filbert Smith had robbed a bank in the center of town the day before and the proceeds of the job—sixty-eight thousand dollars—was securely stacked away in a small black bag in the closet of the room. They had planned to get clear out of the state by this time, but a series of incredibly bad breaks had completely shattered their schedule. First, a nervous guard at the bank had gone for his gun. They had shot him dead, but in the excitement a teller pressed a general alarm that had brought dozens of police cars to the scene. Driving off in the getaway car they had crashed into a milk wagon at the first intersection. They had abandoned the car and stolen another, but within half a mile the engine had sputtered and died. They saw then that the gas gauge read:

  Empty!

  They had set off on foot, dodged through alleys and streets and finally had come across this rooming house. The landlady, a drunken old drudge, had given them a room and. they had settled down for a siege.

  A GENTLE knock sounded on the door.

  Barny wheeled, his lips forming a silent oath.

  “It’s them!” Filly squealed.

  “Shut up!” Barny said. He walked to the door, moving slowly and stealthily, and his gun was ready. Gripping the knob, he turned it slowly, and then jerked open the door.

  A small girl with enormous eyes and dark pigtails stood in the corridor. She let out a tiny scream and then clapped both hands over her mouth.

  “What’d ya want?” Barny snapped.

  The girl’s eyes were fixed in awe on the gun. She took her hands away from her mouth and whispered, “Is that a real gun? The kind cowboys wear? I saw one in a circus once, only it had a shiny handle.”

  “What’d ya want?” Barny repeated.

  “My mother sent me to get you,” the little girl said. “She’s sick and she sent me to get somebody to help her. She has to go to the hospital,” she added, and her voice was solemn with the importance of her mother’s illness.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “Just down the hall. Will you come and help her?”

  There was a speculative light in Barny’s tiny eyes. “Yeah, I’ll come with you, kid.”

  “For God’s sake!” Filly cried hoarsely.

  “Shut up!” Barny said. “Maybe we’ll take the kid’s mother to a hospital.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Think it over, stupe, and you’ll get the idea. Come on, kid, take me to your mother.”

  “Oh, thank you.”

  Barny followed the little girl down the corridor and turned into a room whose door was standing open. He saw a tired-looking young woman of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty lying in a narrow bed with the covers pulled up to her throat.

  “It was good of you to come,” she said, smiling weakly at Barny.

  “He’s going to help you, Mommy,” the little girl said.

  “What’s your trouble?” Barny said. “I think it might be pneumonia,” the woman answered. “I worked late the other night, you see, and got soaked coming, home. The next morning after I’d taken Judy to school, I. began to feel that I was coming down with something.”

  “Well, I think the best thing to do is take you to a hospital,” Barny said.

  “I—I don’t have any money. It will have to be the County Hospital.”

  “Don’t you worry about that. Just get into some kind of a wrapper and we’ll get started.”

  Barny went back to his own room while the woman was dressing. Filly looked at him and shook his head. “I don’t get it.”

  Barny peered out the window at the cop at the corner. “Still waiting for us, eh?” he said, his voice grim. “Well, they won’t have to wait much longer. W
e’re leaving, Filly. We’re walking out of here with that brat and her mother as shields.”

  Filly nodded and smiled slowly. His little mouth looked like a rosy O.

  “I understand now,” he said. “For a minute I thought you might be trying to relive your days in the Boy Scouts.”

  “They wouldn’t let me in the Scouts when I was a kid,” Barny said, grinning. “I had a bad reputation on account of blowing the safe at the corner drug store when I was ten years old. Come on. Get the money and let’s go.”

  HE WALKED back to the sick woman’s room and helped her to her feet. She was wearing a blue robe and slippers and her face was drawn and pale.

  “I’m not sure I can make it,” she said. “My knees are like water.”

  “You can make it all right,” Barny said. “Try real hard.”

  They went into the corridor and started down the rickety steps. Barny had his left arm about the woman’s waist and his right hand was in his suit-coat pocket holding his gun. Filly came after them holding the little girl’s hand.

  When they reached the first-floor hallway Barny jerked his head at Filly. “Check the back entrance.”

  Filly hurried off and Barny was alone with the woman and her daughter. There was one light in the hallway, a glaring unshaded bulb hanging from the ceiling, and in its pitiless illumination the rugs and furniture and wall paper seemed a bit cheaper than they actually were.

  “I don’t understand this,” the woman said. She was leaning heavily on Barny’s arm. “Why are we waiting here?”

  “We’re going out the back way,” Barny said. “Now shut up. I got things on my mind.”

  “But—”

  “I said, shut up.”

  The little girl began to cry. “Don’t you say that to my Mommy.”

  Filly came back and Barny nodded at the little girl. “Shut her up,” he said. “How’s the back?”

  “Okay, it leads to an alley which leads to a street. We can get a car there maybe.”

  Filly scooped the, little girl up as he was talking and clapped a hand firmly over her mouth. “Follow me,” he said. “We won’t run into trouble until we hit that street. They’ll be waiting there, I guess.”

  Barny dragged the woman roughly down the corridor and through a kitchen to the backyard. The small party proceeded into the alley and turned to the right. Ahead was a street, and by the light of a lamp at the intersection, Barny saw a parked car with a man sitting behind the wheel. It wasn’t a police car, so Barny began to grin. This might solve everything.

  Actually it couldn’t have been simpler . . .

  There were cops waiting, all right, and they flashed lights on them but held their fire when they saw the hostages. Barny chased the man from the car, which was a big powerful Cadillac, and pushed the woman, into the front seat, while Filly was leaping into the back with the child.

  Barny gave the car the gun and raced right through the police cordon, and not a shot was fired; but three squad cars set off after them with sirens screaming.

  That was when they got their first break in the whole miserable undertaking. Leaving the south end of town barely two blocks ahead of the racing police cars they managed to squeeze through a rail-crossing inches” ahead of a lumbering freight train. The police cars were blocked and Barny and Filly had the open highway to themselves.

  “What about the woman and the kid?” Filly said.

  “Toss ’em out. I’ll slow down.”

  “No—no,” the woman said, and her voice was barely a whimper.

  Barny slowed down to about forty. “Okay, hurry up,” he snapped.

  Filly opened the door and shoved the wailing child onto the running board. She clung to his arms, sobbing, and he had to strike her across the face to make her let go. The woman was too weak to struggle; but she stared at Barny with eyes that were suddenly murderous with hate.

  “God will punish you,” she gasped. “He will pay you back for this—this devilishness.”

  Barny shoved her out of the car with one powerful thrust of his arm and stepped on the accelerator. Filly peered out of the rear window.

  The child was lying perfectly still in the middle of the road, in a small crumpled heap, and the mother, he saw with astonishment, was trying to crawl toward her daughter. The woman’s back or leg was broken because her progress was flopping and uneven, but the fact that she could make the effort at all struck Filly as remarkable.

  “This mother love is quite a thing,” he said to Barny. And then he grinned because he didn’t like or trust any women . . .

  THEY COVERED fifty miles in the next forty-five minutes, and Barny began to scowl.

  “We got to get off this road. They’ve wired ahead probably by now.”

  “I’ll watch for a place to turn off,” Filly said.

  Ten minutes, later he spotted a gravelled side road. He shouted and Barny slapped on the brakes, then backed up and turned off onto the side road.

  They went on for the next hour or so, following the narrow winding road through country that became increasingly wild and virgin. Tall trees grew up straight from the sides of the road, and between the great trunks there was an almost impenetrable screen of underbrush.

  “This is perfect,” Barny said, grinning. “I knew there were woods out this way from town but I thought they’d be full of houses and people. But you could lose a whole damn regiment in here without missing ’em.” Finally the road ended in a small clearing. They climbed out of the car and peered around, somewhat abashed by the deep unmoving silence. The moonlight that filtered through the trees was weak and pale, n “Well, what now?” Filly said, and unconsciously lowered his voice.

  “We’ll push on into the woods,” Barny said. “First, we’ll hide the car, though. We can go through these woods and come out on the other side by tomorrow morning. Then we grab another car and keep going.”

  They drove the car as deep into the bushes as they could and covered it with tree branches. When that was done Filly picked up the satchel of money and followed Barny into the woods.

  Six hours later they stopped for about the fifth time to smoke, a cigarette and get their breath. They sat on the end of an upturned log and listened to the creepy silence.

  “Damn place gets on my nerves,” Filly said.

  “As long as you don’t hear nothing you’re okay,” Barny said. “Just remember that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dogs. Did you ever have dogs after you?”

  “No,” Filly said.

  “It ain’t any fun.”

  “Well, who’d set dogs after us?” Filly said uneasily.

  “The police might. They find that we took to the woods and they’ll break out dogs, all right. Let’s get moving.”

  “Sure, what are we waiting for?” Filly said, with a glance over his shoulder.

  They kept on the rest of the night and by dawn both men were tired and hungry. It was cold in the woods, a dank clammy wind mourned about them constantly, and they had been unable to find water.

  “So we’d be in the clear by morning, eh?” Filly said, sarcastically.

  “Shut up!” Barny said. “I didn’t know these damn woods were so deep.”

  “Well, I’m not moving another step until I get good and rested,” Filly said, flopping down on the cold hard ground. He closed his eyes and breathed slowly and gratefully.

  A sound that was somewhat like the thin wailing of a flute drifted in with the wind.

  Barny turned his head sharply, trying to guess its direction.

  “What’s that?” Filly said.

  “Dogs, bloodhounds. You can stay and get a good rest if you want,” he said with harsh cruelty and strode off into the trees.

  “Barney, wait for me,” Filly cried, scrambling to his feet.

  THE NOISE of the dogs grew In volume with every mile they covered. They were running now, stumbling occasionally in the heavy brush, but recovering as quickly as they could and staggering on to keep ahead of the de
vil-sound that whined in the wind.

  Finally, Barny stopped and listened a moment. They could still hear the dogs, but the sound was fainter now.

  “They lose the trail?” Filly said, and the words came out like sobs.

  “No, they’ve stopped. It ain’t right. I know, dogs and they don’t stop like that.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  “Keep going.”

  They plunged on into the brush, too tired to notice the branches that lashed their faces, even too tired to feel the terrible pangs of hunger and thirst. Then they heard a new sound before them, a chopping noise, the unmistakable sound of an axe biting into wood.

  Barny took the gun from his pocket and moved ahead cautiously toward that familiar sound. He pulled a heavy bush aside and peered into a clearing.

  There an old man was chopping wood. He was a fat little man with silvery hair and a tiny gray beard. He wore a soft flannel shirt and baggy trousers and he was humming a tune under his breath as he swung the axe with inefficient gusto at the log between his feet.

  Barny dropped the gun slowly back into his pocket and winked at Filly. Then he pushed the brush aside and stepped into the clearing.

  “Howdy, Pop,” he said.

  The old man looked up with a surprised smile on his face. He studied Filly and Barny for a second or two, and it was obvious that his old brain was struggling to assess the situation. Then he said: “ ’Allo, my friends.”

  “Our car broke down and we’re looking for some place to get some food and a bed,” Barny said. “Can you help us out?”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” the old man said eagerly. There was something foreign about his accent. It sounded faintly French, Filly decided. “You come with me. You are tired, non? And hungry, eh? We will fix all of that.”

  “Who’s ‘we’ ?” Barny said, and his hand moved unconsciously to his pocket.

  “My wife Marie.” He laughed and the wrinkles about his eyes puckered in dozens of wreaths, and criss-crosses. “She is good cook, you’ll see. You come, eh?”

  “Sure,” Barny said. He laughed shortly. “We’ll come.”

  The old man led them about a half mile along a faintly marked trail and when they turned sharply for about the twentieth time they saw a weather-beaten frame house set in the middle of a clearing. There was a barn and several out-buildings clustered about it, and chickens and dogs were running about in the hard-packed dirt yard.