Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman

by Alan Edward Nourse

  Back in his inner sanctum, Ted tried to clear his head, bring back in focus that newspaper story that had raised such a fuss. Sealey and Mancini had denied it fiercely, but Fort Collins had never denied it, and then he had simply lost track of following it up. He was not a superstitious man and he seldom paid attention to hunches, but something crawling up his spine was telling him veiy loudly that there was something more to this odd story than a cpuple of snake-oil peddlers trying to make a fast buck out in the ding-weeds. If some kind of kitchen-stove outfit was busy making some kind of rump drug that might wipe out twenty thousand people, and were dragging Fort Collins CDC into it as their backup—well, CDC's rep was not faring too well anywhere at all these days, and a bad grassroots scandal could be a terrible albatross—

  The phone buzzed. Ted grabbed it. "Monique? Ted Bettendorf in Atlanta—"

  He heard Mandy's voice. "Sorry, Ted, you're not going to get Monique. She's not there anymore." "Not thereV

  "She hasn't turned up for a week, they say, and they went out to her place and she's nowhere around. It looks like she and her boyfriend have just quietly packed up and gone west. Or some other direction."

  "Okay, go on downstairs and hold the fort. I'll be along in a minute." He dropped the phone on the hook and sank into his desk chair, shaking his head. Monique just bagging it at a time like this? Monique? He couldn't believe it. Monique was too solid—and the boyfriend she was with was solid too—or at least Carlos had once thought so. For a moment he had a shaky feeling, as though stable underpinnings were shifting subtly, as though stability were an illusion and nothing was holding still— but it passed in a wave. Tired, he was getting tired, too tired. He took out the telephone memo Mandy had handed him, then reached for his private line and slowly began dialing Perry Haglund's number.

  53

  It was almost pitch dark on Grizzly Creek when Ben Chamberlain got back to his house and found a note pinned to his back door, written in Amy Slencik's spidery hand: ben—drop over after dinner, we've got to talk.

  The old doctor tucked the note in his pocket and let himself in with a sigh. He saw that there was a huge new camper parked out behind his barn this evening, a great big thing covered with mud. Also two big motorbikes that hadn't been there that morning. Amy must have brought them down here to park during the day, and then stopped by to leave him the note.

  He looked at it again, then crumpled it up and tossed it in the fireplace. So this is going to be it, he thought gloomily. Well, better now and get it over with than sometime later in the dead of winter. He'd known it was coming all along; he'd felt it in the air around Amy, getting thicker every day as the wind got colder and the daylight shorter. Hell, it was really his own damned fault, he should have brought it right out front and center long ago, but she'd never really said anything specific yet and he was getting too old to go hunting up confrontations.

  Methodically he stuffed his wood stove full of cottonwood and opened the draft, then just as methodically started laying a new fire in the fireplace. Going to be cold tonight, colder than last night. He'd been outside working all day, finally getting all his perennials and the smaller trees mulched and piled high with straw, and none too soon, either. There'd be snow flying pretty soon now, and then the bitter arctic cold. Across the creek, all afternoon, he'd put the finishing touches on the big half-acre garden plot he'd plowed up in what used to be his private deer-and-elk pasture, tilling in the goat manure for the last time and then mulching the whole thing with leaf mold he'd collected all summer. Old Ben's secret garden, he'd thought wiyly. Hadn't mentioned it much to anybody, but next summer it would grow potatoes and carrots and peas and tomatoes galore—if he was still around after the cold died out of the ground.

  Couldn't knock the approaching winter, though. It ought to help protect them, these next few dangerous months. Traditionally, throughout the centuries, cold weather had always slowed the plague, from everything he'd ever read; now he wondered vaguely why. Rats holing up and not coming out so much? Fleas not so active? Trouble was, from all the reports he'd been hearing, it wasn't working that way this time. So much of it was pneumonic, a staggering eighty percent of it, from one CDC report he'd read, so much direct human-to-human infection, and you couldn't keep human beings from huddling together in the cold with fuel deliveries canceled, power stations failing. Here on the creek they could hope the cold might help them here in this little Freehold of theirs, if they played their cards right— but his notion of playing the cards was different from Amy's, and now finally the crunch was coming. . . .

  The old man cooked up some dinner, frying some fresh sausage and boiling some fettucini, homemade stuff he'd hand ground out of cracked wheat and bran and mixed up with one of his duck eggs. It turned out to be pretty pasty, thick and coarse, kind of falling apart instead of hanging together like the old semolina stuff used to do. But edible, at least, and it certainly does fill you up. Probably good for my bowel, too. He chuckled at himself as he sat down to eat. Even now he knew perfectly well, deep down, that all this back-to-nature do-it-yourself effort was pure sophistry as far as he was concerned, nothing but an intellectual challenge that he played around with the way you'd play around with a hobby. Sure, now he knew that he could make his own cracked-wheat fettucini—and eat it—but he also knew that he didn't really believe in it.

  And that, of course, was his problem around here right from the start. He didn't really believe in the Freehold, either. Never had. And the thought came, unbidden: If only Emmie were still here. Then at least he wouldn't have to go it alone.

  Later, when he made his way over to the Slenciks' cabin, he found the place oppressively warm, with a huge tamarack fire crackling in the fireplace and that goddamned wood cookstove of Amy's throwing heat like a blast furnace. Mel Tapper was there, looking gloomy, and Kelley, the rancher, and Dan Potter, which surprised Ben a little; the little hydraulic engineer was pretty new here to be sitting in the Inner Council. Harry Slencik poured Ben a good slug of McNaughton's and gave him a big friendly grin. "You look like you need something to warm you up," he said."

  "Kinda chilly out there," Ben acknowledged.

  "Yes, and it's going to get a whole lot chillier," Amy said, looking up through those big gray-tinted glasses.

  So here we go. Ben took the whiskey neat. "So what's the problem?"

  He knew that tact was not her long suit, but never before had she been so totally blunt. "The problem is this immigration wave we're having around here," Amy said. "The time has come that it's got to stop before we're up to the neck in stray people."

  Ben grimaced. "There's not really that many. We've been through all this before. Another couple turn up today?"

  "They sure did. In a Road Schooner half a block long. You know where they blew in from? North Dakota, that's where."

  Ben shrugged. '' Good a place to come from as any,I guess.''

  Amy looked up. "Yeah, well, these folks got four kids and Grandma in that rig with them, and they all eat. The guy is too crippled up with arthritis to work at anything, and the woman doesn't look like she'd know how to do the dinner dishes. There's not one damned thing they've got to offer us here but more mouths to feed, and the one thing they just ran out of in that rig of theirs is food. Oh, and then there's the two bikers that came in this afternoon. You haven't seen them yet, either. They're fresh up from the Bay Area, and they're a couple of real beauties. Flies in the sugar bowl, two by two. They've got a poodle as big as a horse that rides sidecar with them, and it also eats. Ben, this has just got to stop; if we don't all catch the plague from them, we're going to be starving to death instead.''

  "They won't bring us plague if we just follow the protocol we've set up," Ben said. "Keep your gate locked so they don't drive into the main compounds. Mask and gown when you go out to meet them, simple isolation technique just like I've shown everybody. Send them down to the quarantine spot on the creek and I'll see to it that they keep separate from the others down there for the crit
ical period. Four days will tell us whether they're clean or not, and meanwhile we can assess them, set up work assignments, figure out where to plant them—"

  "Ben, it isn't going to work," Amy broke in. "Something's going to slip through our guard, it just isn't that controllable, you yourself admit that."

  "It's the best we can do."

  "But we don't need these people! And I say they're going to kill us. Listen, this new crowd cracked it today, as far as I'm concerned. Harry and I went into Bozeman this morning, regular supply run, and we heard that people are getting sick in Bozeman. Four cases in one week, all in different parts of town. Doc Smythe thinks he's got them isolated and contained, but nobody is sure where it came from, and all they need is about ten more cases and they won't be able to contain it because that burns out the available vaccine and drugs. People are packing up and leaving already, and if some of them head where I think they're going to head for, we haven't seen nothing on Grizzly Creek—and they're going to bring the infection here with them."

  Ben stood up and poured himself some more whiskey. He looked at Amy and then at the others. "Okay, now everybody listen to me real carefully, because I'm going to tell you the bad news. I don't care if nobody else came up this road all winter, it wouldn't matter a whit. No matter what we do, we're not going to keep plague out of this Freehold."

  "Like hell we're not," Amy snapped. "That's why we've got the Freehold, and that's why we've got to control it. Look, I'm not worried about me, for God's sake. I'm just an old woman—or at least I sure feel like one, these days. I'm not worried about Harry, or Mel here, or even you, Ben. We've all had our turn, and if something hits us, then something hits us. But I've got two boys with wives that are pregnant, and I sure do want to see those babies safe. Mel's got his son, and Kelley's got his daughters, and we've got to keep this Freehold safe for them, not for the whole wide world. And the only way to keep it safe is to keep plague out of here, and we can't do that if we don't keep people out."

  Ben shook his head. "Sony, Amy, but you're dead wrong. I'm telling you, no matter what we do, it's going to hit here, sooner or later. We can't keep it out. We can't make it through the winter totally isolated. We can't fight a war to keep people away from here, and we can't stop the wind from blowing over the hill."

  "It's people who are going to bring it, not the wind," Amy said. "And we can shoot people dead to keep them out if we

  have to."

  For a moment the room was still. Mel Tapper shuffled his feet as if embarrassed, his craggy features working. The other men stared fixedly at the fire. Finally Ben Chamberlain sighed. "Well, I'm sorry, Amy. Maybe you can shoot people dead to keep them out, or think you can, but I sure can't. And if somebody's sick and needs help, I can't throw them out of here on their asses in the middle of November, either. I've spent most of my life trying to help sick people get well, trying to put broken bodies back together again, and I'm too old by now to start killing them with bullets or neglect. I don't know what's happening in Bozeman. I'm not going in there to find out, either. The damned thing is going to hit there sooner or later if it hasn't already, and there's not much any of us can do to help anybody back in town. But we can sure take in the ones that turn up here, and do the best we can with what we've got."

  Harry Slencik shook his head. "Look, Ben, you've got Amy all wrong. She's not seriously planning to shoot anybody, for God's sake. And she's not going to drive anybody out that's already here, leastwise not if they're trying to pack their own weight a little bit. We're not going to drive Dan Potter here away—he's been working a miracle with this water system of his—it's already delivering permanent house water for year round, and it's almost set up to irrigate the whole valley when the ground melts next spring. And how many others have we got in here now besides ourselves, including kids? Maybe twenty, twenty-five. Well, we can squeeze by with that and keep the place safe too. But we can't just be sitting ducks for anybody that wanders in and decides they like it here. Amy's dead right about that. Sooner or later somebody's going to bring something bad in with them, and what do we do then? We've got to keep the ones out that don't have to stay. Like this family with the four kids and Grandma. They're not in any real, immediate trouble. They're just plain squatters."

  "They've got to go somewhere," Ben said mildly.

  "Sure they do—but it's a big world. They don't have to pick us to squat on, and we don't have to let 'em. If they're out of food, that's all right, we can help 'em out. We can give 'em a ham and a pound of cornmeal and pack 'em out of here tonight. Tell 'em we're sorry, but they've got to move on, and that's that. And while we're at it, we can sure manage to live without those faggots and their dog, too."

  "They've also got to go somewhere," Ben said.

  "Well, not here," Harry said. "You've just got to listen to reason, Ben. We're not going to go fighting any wars with anybody, but if we have to make a little show of, like, hostility or something to keep more people from pilin' in here, then we're just going to have to do it. The way I see it, it's getting pretty close to being them or us."

  "I see," the old doctor said.

  "You can understand that, can't you?"

  "I take your point, Harry." Ben looked around the room. "What about you other folks?"

  Mel Tapper shuffled his feet. "I—I guess I've got to go along with Amy and Harry, Ben.'' Across the room the rancher nodded vigorous agreement. "Damn right," he said. "It's private land. We've all sweat for it. We can keep it private."

  "Potter? How about you? You don't have any land, you came in here like a plucked chicken. What do you think?"

  The little engineer grimaced, glanced at Amy. "Hell, Doc, I can't really say much. But I do think everybody ought to contribute something, at least. Keep as tight a ship as possible."

  "I see." Ben Chamberlain scratched his chin. "Well, like I say, I take your point. But I've got a point too, and I guess I might as well make it. In four short months this epidemic has already brought misery and nightmare and death to millions of people in this country, all over the world, and I don't think we've seen the half of it yet. So far, by the grace of God, we've all stayed clean as an elk's horns, we haven't even been touched, but that's not going to last, and I'm sorry, but just watching our own asses here on the Freehold is not going to work. Before it's all over there's going to be grief and suffering enough for every soul around, and I for one am not going to add to the total. When the crunch comes here, people are going to need people more than anything else. The only thing people are going to be able to do that'll amount to a damn is help other people as much as they can and do the best they can, and that's all." He set his glass down, put on his cap and zipped up his windbreaker. "Well, that's all I've got to say, so take it easy. Thanks for the drinks, Harry."

  "Well, sure, but hold it, Ben. We've got some other things to talk over while everybody's here."

  "Not me, Harry. I'm all talked out."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Look, I can't fight you people—but I damned well don't have to stay with you, either. I'll mark my comers down the creek here and put up a little fence line tomorrow, and I'll take care not to be trespassing on any private land. Best you folks do the same."

  He walked out into the darkness, stepped down off Harry's back porch in the darkness, and started on down the path along the creek toward his own place. He walked it firm-footed in the pitch dark, the path he'd walked down in the dark a thousand times before in those last twenty years; he knew every dip and rise, every bit of brush that slapped his face as he walked. For almost a full minute he heard only the sound of his own footfalls, the grumping of a nearby owl and the ever-present gurgle of the creek. Then he heard Harry's door crash open behind him and heard Amy screaming at him: "Ben! Come back here!"

  He kept on walking. She shouted his name again, and a moment later he heard her coming after him, still shouting, crashing a short cut through the brush to cut him off, her voice rising to a wail as she came. She caught up as h
e reached the last turn down toward the creek; now, in the starlight he could make out her slim form and her ghostly face as she broke out of the brush into the path, clutched at his arm, tried to haul him around. "Ben! For God's sake, come back! You can't walk out on us now—"

  "Sorry, girl, but I can. And I have to."

  He tried to shake loose, but she held on, turned him to her, clung to him with amazing strength. "You can't go now, Ben, you can't leave us now, after all these years! We can't let you go-"

  "I have to. You leave me no choice."

  "You don't either have to! Please, Ben, you didn't hear me right—"

  "I heard you, and I can't buy it."

  "Then I'll take it back. Maybe I was wrong, all wrong. We can do it different, do it your way if that's how it has to be."

  "I can't fight you, Amy."

  "You won't have to fight me, I promise! I thought I was right but maybe I wasn't. Either way, you've got to come back. You need us, Ben, and God knows how bad we need you." Her voice was crumbling now and he felt her wet face on his neck as she clung to him. "/ need you. Oh, God, Ben, I'm scared. I'm so scared I don't know what I'm doing half the time, and Harry's scared too and he doesn't know what to do. None of us know what to do."

  "I don't know, either," the old man said, "and I'm just as scared as you are. All I know is what I can't make myself do."

  "That's all right, you won't have to. We'll do it your way and take it the way it comes."

  'You'll say that loud and clear to the crowd back there?"

  "I'll say it."

  Very gently he disengaged her, supported her shoulder and turned back up the path with her. "Then we'd better get back," he said, "before you catch your death out here."

  54

  And as the winter deepened, the fire storm flared hotter and faster through the cities and countryside, leaving a deepening, paralyzing desolation in its wake. No major population center in the country escaped, although plans and preparations and de-lenses were hastily and desperately erected; in the end there was no way a population center could escape, for there was no way that movement of people could be stopped, and in those places like Pittsburgh and Dallas where city ordinances and state emergency orders and state militia movements and police firepower were all made part of the defense effort, to block the movement of people and attempt isolation, the fire storm licked into those cities anyway, leaping firebreaks in ways that no one could possibly foresee, through loopholes no one could plug, and the fiercest and sternest of martial-law measures quickly crumbled. One by one the cities took the bow-shock of the fire storm, and set their emergency plans and defense measures and desperation contingencies into motion, and fought back fiercely, and slowed the fury not one whit, and became overwhelmed, and gradually came unraveled like all the rest. In extreme cases like Spokane, bridges across rivers were actually blasted out and major throughways blown apart in hopes of isolating one part of a city from another, but there were all those side streets and water craft and back roads and country lanes to watch, and who would watch the watchers?