Famine

by Graham Masterton

  Ed snatched the keys out of the chauffeur’s hand, and ran back along the verandah. As he hurried down the brick steps, he could see the Chevy wagon only two hundred feet away, and he was caught in the glare of its lights. He threw himself into the open door of the Lincoln, stabbed the wrong key into the ignition, wrestled it out again, stabbed another key in, and then twisted the engine into screaming life.

  Dazzling headlights crowded his rearview mirror. There was a shot, and the back window turned to milk. Della screamed at Shearson Jones, ‘Get down! They’ll take your head off!’

  Ed tugged the gear shift into reverse, and then pressed his foot on the gas pedal. Another bullet banged into the Lincoln’s trunk, with a hollow echoing sound.

  The limousine’s rear wheels slithered and shrieked on the gravel, spraying up dust and stones. Then it shot backwards, straight into the oncoming Chevy wagon, and there was a loud kabbosssh! of colliding metal. Ed felt his neck wrenched from the impact, and Shearson tumbled against the back of his seat with all the elegance of two hundred and fifty pounds of Idaho potatoes. But Ed pulled the gear shift right down to second, shoved his foot on the gas again, and the Lincoln roared forwards towards the main gates with its rear end sliding sideways and its suspension bouncing wildly.

  The car collided with the wrought-iron gates, and stopped, its engine bellowing in frustration. Della was clutching the back of her seat, her eyes wide, her pump-gun ready for a last quick shoot-out with Peter Kaiser and Muldoon. Shearson was lying sideways now, and puffing in pain.

  ‘They’re coming again!’ shouted Della, her voice shrill.

  Ed threw the Lincoln back into reverse, stepped on the gas again, and for a second time the long black car hurtled backwards into the battered Chevy wagon. For long seconds, both vehicles were locked together in a crunching, grinding tangle of bumpers and crushed lights, their tyres whinnying and their engines outraged. Then Ed changed back into drive, and the Lincoln surged forward into the gates with another resonant crash of metal.

  They wouldn’t have made it through if it hadn’t been for Muldoon’s powerful wagon, right up behind them. Muldoon gave them an extra shunt as they hit the gates, and the force of both vehicles together was enough to burst open the locks. The Lincoln slewed out into the road, its trunk lid flapping up in the air, its radiator grille twisted and broken, but still roadworthy and going at full speed.

  ‘Now, hit it!’ screamed Della, in excitement. ‘Get your foot down and really hit it!’

  ‘What the hell do you think I’m doing?’ Ed demanded, juggling with the steering wheel as the Lincoln skidded sideways around a ferociously tight curve. ‘This isn’t a sports car, for Christ’s sake. This is a two-ton limousine!’

  The road from Fall River Lake leads down to Fall River itself, and joins up with the east-west highway which runs through Keighley and Augusta and back into Wichita. But it’s a wiggling series of hairpins, through rocks and pines and deceptive tunnels of light and shade, and the thin strip of blacktop is patchy, uneven, and often cambered the wrong way.

  Ed glanced in his mirror as they sped beside the lake. Through the frosted rear window, he could see the flash of headlights as the Chevy wagon came after them. He said to Della, breathlessly, ‘They’re right in back of us. Why don’t you try to pick them off when we take the next right-hand curve?’

  Della shook her head.

  ‘Why not?’ yelled Ed. ‘They’re trying to kill us!’

  ‘Maybe they are, maybe they’re not,’ said Della. ‘They’re trying to catch us, more than anything. But I don’t like to shoot at people unless I really have to.’

  Ed lost his concentration for a moment, and the Lincoln barely made it around a long left-hand curve, its tyres screaming in a falsetto harmony that went on and on, until Ed couldn’t believe that he was going to be able to hold on to the car any longer. He was plastered in sweat by the time the road took a twist in the opposite direction, and they were driving downhill through a shadowy archway of pines.

  He checked the mirror again, and the lights of the Chevy Suburban were still behind him, although further away now. Nobody in their right mind would have taken a curve at that speed on purpose.

  ‘Listen,’ said Ed, as he piloted the Lincoln down a fast slalom of alternating bends, ‘They’re chasing us, they’re shooting at us, and you don’t think you really have to shoot back?’

  ‘I want Peter Kaiser alive,’ said Della. ‘He’s going to be a material witness to this fraud, and he’s more susceptible to legal pressure than Shearson Jones.’

  In the back of the car, lolling from side to side as the Lincoln howled around curve after curve, Shearson Jones said, ‘So that’s who you are, my gingery angel. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, incarnate. No wonder they gave me such a cock-and-bull story about you when I asked them to check you out.’

  Della twisted around in her seat. With her loosely-tied emerald-green bathrobe and her upraised pump-gun, she looked like some kind of comic-strip Dragon Lady, all silk and cleavage and sawn-off rifle. As he glanced across at her, it occurred to Ed, noi for the first time that night, that she must be naked under that wrap.

  ‘You know something,’ he said, as he spun the Lincoln through a steep-sloping S-bend, ‘this must be the craziest night of my life.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ breathed Shearson, leaning forward and resting his arms on the back of Ed’s seat. ‘Last night was the craziest night of your life. The night you announced to 250 million Americans that they were probably facing imminent starvation. That was the craziest night of your life.’

  Ed said nothing. He still hadn’t mentally got to grips with what had happened last night, and right now, pushing this 7-litre Lincoln down a tortuous mountain road, he didn’t have the time to. He flicked his eyes across to the mirror again, and the Chevy’s headlights were still there, still dancing and jiggling close behind him, occasionally obscured by the flapping lid of the Lincoln’s trunk.

  They flashed past a sign, and Della said, ‘Fall River, two miles. We’ve almost made it.’

  Shearson said, ‘I’ll have your scalps for this. I hope you understand that. You, Hardesty; and you, my dear; and that pontificating Charles Kurnik at the FBI. Three scalps, to add to my collection.’

  ‘Shut up, senator,’ said Ed, and at the same moment one of the Lincoln’s front tyres burst. There was a loud, flabby report, followed by the slap-slap-slap of tom rubber on the road, and then the huge limousine was swerving and sliding from side to side, with Ed spinning the steering-wheel in a desperate struggle to keep the car out of the trees.

  ‘Hold it!’ shrieked Shearson, in an unnaturally feminine voice. ‘For God’s sake, hold it!’

  The Lincoln’s trunk swung around to the left, and sideswiped the trunk of a roadside pine. Then the car screeched around in the opposite direction, its front wheels banging and shuddering over a line of rocks. Ed, gripping the wheel, saw trees, darkness, sky, and more trees, and then his whole world tilted sideways and he was hit on the bridge of the nose by something as hard as an iron bar.

  A whole minute of silence passed by. Ed raised his head. His nose felt as if it had swollen three times its normal size. He looked painfully around him and saw that the limousine had dropped down an eighty foot slope, and was now resting at an angle of forty five degrees in a narrow rock-strewn gully. There was no sound but the ticking of the engine as it slowly cooled down, and the whistling of black-capped chickadees in the trees.

  Beside him, Della was holding her head in her hands. The pump-gun had dropped to the floor. In back, Senator Jones suddenly started moaning, and saying, ‘My finger. God damn it, I’ve broken my finger.’

  Ed said, ‘Della, are you okay?’

  Della nodded dumbly. Ed turned to Senator Jones and asked, ‘Is it just your finger? Nothing else broken?’

  ‘Isn’t a finger enough?’ snarled Shearson.

  Behind them, up on the road, the Chevy’s lights had stopped. Ed picked up the rifle, a
nd tried to open his door. The impact of the crash had wedged it back in its frame, so he had to kick it twice with his heels before it would budge, then he climbed out into the sharp early-morning air.

  Peter Kaiser and Muldoon were already on their way down the slope. It was still too dark to see clearly, but Ed caught the glint of Muldoon’s nickel-plated automatic as he came down through the trees.

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t give up now,’ said Shearson, from the back of the car. ‘You don’t stand a chance in hell.’

  ‘Just shut up,’ said Ed, and crouched his way along the length of the Lincoln’s fender. Then he lay down on the ground, on a slope of pine needles and pine cones, and positioned himself so that he could take a shot at Peter Kaiser or Muldoon as soon as they were in range.

  Della slipped out of the driver’s door behind him, and wriggled her way up close.

  ‘Whatever you do, don’t hurt Peter Kaiser,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be a number-one plea-bargaining witness. Especially when we put some pressure on his mother.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep us alive,’ said Ed.

  Soon, Peter Kaiser and Muldoon were less than twenty feet away, and their faces were clearly visible against the black shadows of the pines. This is going to be like shooting coconuts at a fair, thought Ed, as he squinted along the rifle. The front Sight of the pump-gun appeared as a dark notch in Muldoon’s pale head.

  ‘Senator Jones? Are you there?’ called Peter, anxiously.

  They could hear the car’s suspension squeak as Shearson moved his bulk towards the opposite window.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Shearson called out, hoarsely. ‘I’ve broken my damned finger, but that’s all. It’s Hardesty you’ve got to watch out for. He’s around the car somewhere, with the girl.’

  There was a pause, and then Peter shouted, ‘Hardesty? You there?’

  Ed looked around at Della, but Della shook her head. Don’t answer, not yet. See what they have to offer first.

  ‘If you can hear me, Hardesty, you’d better listen good,’ said Peter. ‘You’re guilty so far tonight of burglary, theft, criminal damage, kidnapping, and homicide. You hear that? Calvin Muldoon is dead, and you shot him. You’re holding a US senator against his will. You’re in a pretty sticky position, Hardesty, and you’d better understand it’

  ‘Why haven’t you called the police?’ Ed shouted back, before Della could stop him. He could see Muldoon quickly jerk his head around to see if he could make out where the voice was coming from.

  Peter Kaiser took a couple of steps closer. ‘I haven’t called the police because the police are too busy with all the rioting and the looting you started off with that broadcast of yours. Apart from that, you’ve ransacked some pretty sensitive papers there. I wouldn’t like them to get into the hands of somebody who might misinterpret them.’

  ‘So what’s your offer?’ asked Ed. ‘You want to make a deal?’

  ‘The offer’s simple. I’ll let you out of here alive, as long as you let Senator Jones go free, and as long as you never mention anything about the Blight Crisis Appeal again.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Ed.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You take the tail off of my wife and my daughter. Because I warn you, if anything happens to them. I’ll hunt you down and take your head off.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Peter nodded. ‘I can agree to that. Now, do you want to come out, with your hands where we can see them?’

  Ed turned to Della again. “What do you think?’ he asked her.

  Della said, ‘I don’t trust him. My reason says he’s probably on the level, but my instinct says beware.’

  Ed squeezed her hand. ‘Well, I’ve always been the kind of person to follow my instinct. Let’s give them a test. Remember the old cowboy films?’

  He handed her the gun to hold, and then, twisting on the needly floor of the woods, he tugged his red sweatshirt off.

  ‘Striptease, at a time like this?’ she asked him.

  ‘Just give me the gun,’ he told her.

  Quickly, he wrapped the sweatshirt around the barrel of the rifle. Then, hesitantly and jerkily, he raised it up above the protective fender of the Lincoln, as if it was someone coming out of cover.

  ‘There!’ said Peter.

  The silence of the woods was cracked by three pistol shots in rapid succession. Ed’s sweatshirt was flapped up into the air by one bullet, and they felt the wind of a second as it passed narrowly overhead. The third pinged off the Lincoln’s trunk.

  Ed snatched down the rifle, rolled around to the slope which he had chosen as his firing position, snuggled the butt against his cheek and looked for Peter and Muldoon.

  Muldoon, crouched as low as an arm-swinging baboon, was only a few feet away, running in fast to finish off the red sweatshirt. Peter was already round the other side of the limousine – presumably intent on rescuing Shearson. Della was right behind Ed, her head buried beside his thigh.

  Muldoon didn’t have a chance. He was so close that Ed shouted, ‘Muldoon! Drop it!’ just to give the man a break. But Muldoon made a dive for the ground, and fired off another thunderous shot from his .45, and Ed squeezed the trigger without allowing himself to think anything else but kill him.

  The shot echoed and echoed, and then there was silence again. Ed cautiously rose to his feet, and walked around the Lincoln with the pump-gun held up and his eyes alert.

  Muldoon was lying on his back on the stony ground, his eyes wide open, his automatic thrown aside, his plaid cowboy shirt dark with blood.

  Peter appeared, holding a revolver, but Ed swung the rifle towards him and said, ‘Drop it,’ and he did.

  ‘You’ve killed him,’ said Peter, in a shaky voice.

  Ed nodded. ‘I didn’t want to. Believe me. But it was him or us.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’ asked Peter. ‘Are you going to shoot the rest of us, too? Or what? One way or another, we’re going to have to report this to the police.’

  ‘The police already know,’ said Ed, quietly. ‘At least, the federal authorities do.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Della works for the FBI. The reason we broke into your office was to find evidence of what you’ve been doing with this Blight Crisis Appeal to take you to court.’

  ‘You’re joking. Are you joking?’

  ‘You think I go around shooting people for fun? I never hurt anybody in my life before, until tonight,’ Ed snapped at him. He was shaking, and if he could have done, he would have slung the pump-gun right off into the trees.

  Shearson Jones pushed open the passenger door of the wrecked Lincoln. ‘Would someone help me out of here?’ he demanded. ‘And would someone tell me what the devil’s going on?’

  Della came up, brushing pine needles from her robe. ‘We’re getting out of here, that’s what,’ she said, in a clear voice. ‘We’re going to leave Muldoon here for the moment, and we’re going to drive into Wichita and turn in these papers to the FBI. And if you’re innocent enough to think that we’re in trouble, Mr Kaiser, just think what kind of trouble you’re in. Fraud, embezzlement, tax evasion, carrying unlicensed firearms, attempted murder of a federal agent. You’ll be lucky if they let you out to see the turn of the century.’

  ‘Is there room in that wagon for all of us?’ wheezed Shearson, plodding up the hill towards them.

  ‘There should be, with Muldoon gone,’ said Peter. ‘I have Karen with me, too, though.’

  ‘You brought Karen? Why?’

  Peter Kaiser looked embarrassed. ‘Kind of insurance. In case we had to do a trade – her freedom for Shearson’s.’

  ‘My, my,’ said Della, shaking her head. ‘You do get your money’s worth out of your girlfriends, don’t you?’

  With Ed staying a little way behind to keep Peter covered, they slowly made their way up to the road again. Karen was standing by the wagon in bare feet, jeans, and the white puffy-sleeved shirt she usually wore in bed.
When she saw them coming – Peter and Della, Shearson and Ed, she couldn’t work out what had happened at first – who had captured whom. But when Ed said, ‘It’s okay, Karen. Everything’s fine,’ she came walking across the blacktop bare-footed with tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh, God, I was frightened,’ she said, holding Ed’s arm. ‘Oh, God, I can’t tell you how frightened I was.’

  Ed put his arm around her and held her close. Della, beside the wagon, gave him a mocking little raise of her eyebrows, and a smile that could have meant anything at all.

  Seven

  During the weekend, an intensive search by fifteen volunteers from the St Louis Fire Department had revealed five radioactive isotopes in grain elevators along the waterfront, and ‘perceptible’ radioactivity in almost every grain and flour store within a six-mile radius of the city. The isotopes had been taken to the National Nuclear Research station in Kokomo, Indiana, where tests showed by late Monday afternoon that each of them contained over 4000 curies of radioactive cobalt-60.

  At 11.43 p.m. on Monday night, the President was informed of the discovery, and he issued immediate instructions for the contaminated cereals to be destroyed. They were to be taken out to sea and jettisoned in deep water off Miami, under the supervision of experts from the Navy, the Bureau of Atomic Energy, and the FBI. The President emphasised that it was ‘essential, at this time of threatened shortage, not to let these radioactive foodstuffs go astray, or to fall into the hands of those who might not be so scrupulous about where they go to.’

  Geiger-counter searches of grain elevators and flour warehouses all over the country were put into motion a few minutes after midnight, and by seven o’clock on Tuesday morning, officials had discovered isotopes in Chicago, Duluth, Milwaukee, and Seattle. Whoever had planted the isotopes had shown no discrimination. They were found in grain stores at breweries, amongst oats and bran in animal-feed factories, and in flour warehouses at kosher bakers. The nuclear laboratories were unable to tell where the isotopes had come from, since their casings bore no serial numbers or manufacturer’s marks, but three out of the seven analysts working on them expressed an opinion that the cobalt was of European origin.