Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman

by Alan Edward Nourse

  She thought about it for a full day and night, trying to think out ways to make the unthinkable possible. For the past four years her major terror had been a fear of heights and falling; she had nightmares about falling, and woke up screaming. But now, alone, fear of falling or not, there was no other choice but to get herself down those stairs.

  It took her most of another day to work up the nerve to actually try it. First she wheeled herself down the dark hall from the door of the flat to the top of the stairs, a yawning gulf stretching down and down to a landing and a wall, then farther on down the other way to the first-floor hallway. For a moment she panicked at the very sight of that gaping chasm; she pounded on the floor with the heavy cane she used to hook things to her, screamed out for help again and again, but no answer came. The place seemed empty, deserted. She considered trying to do it by brute strength alone, clinging to the banister with one arm and scratching at the wall with the other hand as she eased the chair down, but she knew she didn't dare. She was far too weak for that; she knew the agony of overtaxed muscles too well. She wheeled herself back into the flat, found an old piece of clothesline rope under the sink. Back at the top of the stairs she turned the chair, disengaged the left arm of it, tossed it down with a clatter, then seized the banister and slid herself off the chair onto the floor. She could ease herself down the stairs all right, that was no problem, but without the chair at the bottom she couldn't do anything once she was down there; the chair had to go first.

  She tied the clothesline securely to the banister at the top, tied the other end around the axle of the chair. Seizing the banister with her left arm, she clutched the rope in her right hand, gently pushed the chair to the stairtop and over. It started down, bump, bump, bump, faster, the rope sizzling through her hand until she howled from the burn and let it go. The chair leaped downward, banging on each third step, came to the end of the rope in midair halfway down, snapped the rope and crashed down into the wall at the landing.

  Siddie eased herself down, step by step. Eased down, rested. The strength she was used to wasn't there, and she wasn't thinking clearly; she was a third of the way down before she realized she had left the upper half of the rope tied to the banister above, and painfully had to work her way back up to retrieve it. Finally down at the landing, she tied the broken rope back together, then dragged her legs along to the chair, finding only that its back was bent from its upside-down collision with the wall.

  This time she was more careful. She wound three turns of rope around the cane and wedged the cane into a banister spoke to control the rope's slide as the chair went down. She rested for an hour, dozing part of the time, before she dared try it, but it went smoothly, especially because at the last minute she wrapped her hand in her T-shirt tail before clutching the rope. Halfway down, the chair stopped and she followed, reached it, tore the tail off her T-shirt to tie the wheel to the banister before climbing back up to untie the rope. Long minutes later she had repeated the process, and the chair came to rest on the first-floor hallway.

  The outside door hung open on one hinge—and that left seven steps to go, down the outside stoop onto the street. She was exhausted now, tired beyond words, no longer able to face the ordeal of hitching herself up and down stairs to get ropes. The seven stairs didn't look too steep, and suddenly something in her mind said To hell with it all, I've got to get down there

  NOW, and she acted on it. She grabbed the iron rail and hoisted herself into the chair, replaced the left arm, then clutched the railing and started easing the chair down. She controlled it for three steps before the strength of her arm gave and she and the chair plunged down to the street, lurched to the right as a wheel gave and bent when they hit the bottom, banged down the curb into the street, across to the other side, struck the other curt) and threw Sidonia off, skidding on her face on the sidewalk as the chair turned over twenty feet away, the unbent wheel spinning and spinning in the air like a crazy thing.

  Five minutes later she opened her eyes, realizing she was still alive and miraculously unhurt except for scrapes and bruises. She tested the limbs she could move. Only then did she become aware of the perfectly enormous human figure towering over her.

  56

  Frank Barrington liked Dr. Sam Maclvers from the moment he saw him on that sunny winter morning in Willow Grove, Nebraska. The dour little sandy-haired man, senior physician of the two-man Willow Grove Family Medical Clinic, was not really all that senior—maybe forty-four or forty-five, Frank thought—but he had that certain wiry agelessness about him, the look of having stood out in the wind and weather too long, so common to many Scots. Maclvers had a long crooked nose and a face like a prune, which could wrinkle into a wry smile once in a while, and a pair of tired gray eyes that looked as if they might have been watching far too many less than pleasant things for far too many years at far too close quarters. No flies sitting on this one, Frank thought, five minutes after he met him, and if I'm going to have to have some people on my side up here, this man looks like a mighty good one for openers. And aside from first impressions, there was something else that Frank liked: there was no possible doubt, after the first ten minutes together, that Dr. Sam Maclvers saw with utter bleak certainty just exactly what was coming down the pike toward Willow Grove, Nebraska, and was damned well ready to do anything necessary to stop it.

  Frank had driven up from Wichita that morning on frigid, snow-packed roads through endless miles of flat winter-stub-bled wheat country, the monotony of the trip broken only on occasion when the road dipped down into small creek or river valleys, probably verdant enough in summer but now lined with tall, skeletal leafless trees and small towns that looked battened down for a long, cold winter, lights on behind frosty win-clows in the late morning dawn, woodsmoke curling from chimneys and rich in the air. Willow Grove lay in one such river valley, bigger and more sprawly than other towns, a pretty place as the sun broke through, many evergreens planted among the stark elms and oaks and sycamores.

  Frank found the small, neat clinic building with no trouble, following Sally Grinstone's directions. He paused with Maclvers just long enough for a fast cup of coffee before they took off together in the doctor's well-worn Chevy. "I'm free for the day," Maclvers told him, "as long as I stop at the hospital and check an OB who may be going to do something. So you tell me what you want to see."

  "Everything," Frank said. "The lay of the town, where things are, the medical facilities, the countryside around. The broad geography, so I can snoop myself later. Things like what (lie school gymnasium looks like and where the telephone office is and where the power company keeps their boom trucks—"

  "Yes, if you're going to be the commissar of this little opera-lion, I guess you'll need to know where things are located."

  "Aren't we going to pick up the public-health man first?"

  "You mean Periy Haglund?" Maclvers frowned. "That was the plan, but he called me an hour ago and said he couldn't make it."

  "I see," Frank said. "That's not so good. Maybe we can catch him later in the day."

  "Afraid not. He said he'd be out of town for a couple of days. He didn't say where. I'll just have to brief him when he gets back."

  It was a typical southern Nebraska town, flat as a pancake except for the little dip down to the river, a major Main Street on the old highway, now broken up in the main shopping area to form a grid of one-way streets and angle parking, some care in the planning, pleasant-looking even in winter. The usual roadside sprawl at either end, and the inevitable grain elevators standing like giant sentinels—"the Nebraska Rockies," Mac-Ivers called them. Neatly kept homes on the side streets, some looking very old, and a couple of 1910-vintage buildings downtown, restored and well kept. A look of quiet prosperity about the place. Kids on bicycles, pickup trucks parked in driveways alongside the little Toyotas and other compacts. Not many Cadillacs or Lincolns that Frank could see, and that added up, too. Too damn smart to buy Cadillacs, he thought, or too tight. "Any sign of infectio
n yet?" he asked the doctor.

  "Not yet, and it's not that we haven't been watching, either. The usual round of bronchitis and flu for this time of year, and a couple of cases of measles that we don't like to see, mostly in the older school kids. We thought we had that stopped. As far as plague is concerned, we've just been dead lucky, so far. Of course, this isn't exactly a world trade center, it's pretty dead during the winter. Not much traffic in and out. No place much to go, except for vacations to Mexico, and there hasn't been any enthusiasm for that this year, believe me."

  "How many people?"

  "Around twenty thousand in the town, another ten thousand out in the county and on the farms. Willow Grove is the major grain center for the region, but then we have the little satellite towns scattered around—Plunkett and Metuskie and Dust Bin— that's no joke, there is a place called Dust Bin—and Wattsville, and Oberon down in Kansas. They account for another few thousand people all together."

  "Sounds very workable. People know each other, I suppose? And work together?"

  "Pretty much, and pretty well." The doctor swung past a school, took Frank in to see the gym and meet the principal. "Matter of fact, everybody knows most everybody, and there's been a very positive response to the meetings we've been holding—lots of families represented by somebody. In town we're getting the block watches set up, like Sally Grinstone suggested, somebody on eveiy block responsible for people counts and reporting what's going on, so we should be able to get a picture of what's happening twice a day. See that church over there kitty-corner from the clinic? Big parish hall there is a natural storage and distribution center for your pneumomycin. People can get in and out without a lot of mingling, and it's within reach of everybody. We've got your tetracycline stored in there—you can take it on back with you if you want to." Maclvers looked at Frank. "I just wish you'd let us start stockpiling the stuff now instead of waiting until the ax drops."

  Frank shook his head. "We just don't have it ready yet," he said, as earnestly as he could. It was a lie, and he found himself feeling bad lying to this little doctor, so he suddenly decided to level. "But that's not really the problem. The truth is, it's an arbitrary matter of policy that we've had to decide on for right now. Doc, you're smart enough to see the situation. We are totally extra-legal, and our necks are out there through the noose individually and personally. We're trying to do something ihat's absolutely insupportable, medically speaking, and totally unjustifiable as far as any constituted authority is concerned. We've got to test the efficacy of a brand-new drug very quickly on a whole lot of people who are getting sick, and right now Willow Grove, Nebraska, turns out to be our guinea pig. If some higher authority comes in and cuts us off here, we're cut off, and we're the only source for the finished drug, right now. We're trying something wild and crazy, and it's sink or swim, and to our minds, that means we've got to keep it a hundred percent under our own control. If we win on this, and get a really definitive profile of disease control in Willow Grove, it'll he the first place since Canon City that we've stopped this damned thing, and we'll all smell sweet, and the end will jus-tify the means. At the very worst, we're pretty sure it won't hurt anybody, and you must be sold on that, too, or you wouldn't be playing games with us at all—"

  "We're playing games with you bacause there's no other ball fame in sight," the doctor cut in. "I don't think Perry Haglund is really sold, he seems to keep tossing up horror-story scenarios for us to bat down, but my partner and I don't foresee any horror story much worse than what's going to happen when that Horseman finally rides into Willow Grove unless we can do something to stop him. We just wish to hell you'd let us get ahead of him, that's all."

  "Well, you think it through, Doc," Frank said. "Suppose you stockpiled the stuff now, right here in town. Everybody would know it, and you know what would happen then. You'd be on the dime, subjectively involved right up to the neck, and I don't think there'd be a way in the world you could keep from putting the whole damned town on the stuff before the infection even turned up. You'd just inevitably jump the gun. And if you did that, and then nobody got sick, what would we learn! Nothing. Not one damned thing of any use to anybody."

  "What you're saying is that we've got to have some corpses."

  "I'm just repeating it. Sally already told you that."

  "Sounds an awful lot like playing God," Maclvers said.

  "Yes, and it's not fun. But it's the only game we can see that has a dream of winning. We had to make some rules, so that's how we're going to play it."

  The doctor took a deep breath. "Okay, Commissar," he said. He grinned crookedly at Frank. "At least I know one thing for sure: you really were at Canon City; I checked that out three ways. So let's make Willow Grove Canon City number two. Okay, the parish hall is the stockpile, and maybe a good central headquarters, but the clinic has got better communications. You can check that out and see what you think a little later when you meet my partner Whitey Fox. Right now let's get over to the hospital; you can look around while I see if that OB of mine is ready to sprout or not. . . ."

  In Brookdale, Connecticut, the call came late in the afternoon when Jack Dillman was just climbing out of the shower, and Carmen took it down below. A moment later she called up the stairs. "Jack, can you get it? It's Hal Parker."

  That wimp, Jack thought. That fucking bastard is going to pull it again. He took his time drying off, then walked to the phone beside his drawing board, still covered with the half-finished layout he was no longer working on because there was no way at all to deliver it anymore, and probably nobody to pay for it, either. "Yeah?"

  "Jack, buddy. Hal here." The same bluff, hearty voice he always used, as rich and vibrant as Hal himself was confidently handsome.

  "What's your problem, Hal?"

  '' Buddy, I need a favor. Somebody to cover for me tonight.'' Me faked a cough and somehow made the voice less vibrant. '' Must have picked up a flu bug or something, it's really got me down and out today. How about you picking up for me tonight? I'll take your turn Friday in trade."

  Jack hesitated just long enough. "Boy, Hal, I dunno. I had some work planned tonight—"

  "Buddy, you know I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't desperate, but I tried Vince and Angelo and practically everybody else I could think of and they're all boxed in. I'll be okay to cover for you Friday, don't worry."

  You bet your ass you will, you prick. You '11 be all taken care of by morning. "Well," Jacksaid,''I suppose I can cover. But, look—you want Carmen to drive tonight, too, in Ellen's place?"

  "Huh? Oh, no. No. That won't be necessary. Ellen's fine. She'll go ahead and drive."

  "Okay, just thought I'd check," Jack said. "I'll meet Bud down at the Tav at eight-thirty."

  "That's great, buddy, great. I owe you one. You know I'd do the same for you."

  Yeah, I know what you'd do for me, Jack thought as he set the phone down. I'm not stone blind. And with me out of the house from 8:30 until 5:00 a.m., and your Ellen out driving until at least 1:00 a.m., you'll have plenty of time to do it for me, too, old buddy. Where's it going to be, your place or ours? Probably ours, Ellen might stop at your place any old time to take a quick pee.

  He walked downstairs and met Carmen coming out of the kitchen with the martini tray. "What was that all about?" she said.

  "What would you guess?" He took a martini. That was what got him the most, he thought, the sheer indignity of it, all the pukey little lies he was supposed to swallow. "He's got the flu tonight, he says. He wants me to cover his watch for him."

  "Really? I hope it isn't—something bad."

  "Don't worry about it, dear. His blood alcohol's too high for anything to grow in there."

  "Did he want me to drive in Ellen's place, too?"

  Jack looked at her. "He didn't say anything about that."

  Carmen turned away and set the tray down in the living room. "Seems to me this is the third time he's pulled this since you guys started these night watches."

  "The f
ourth time, to be exact. One time it was a bad cold or something, and then there was a lodge meeting, except that I heard later there wasn't any lodge meeting that night. I forget what the other excuse was."

  "Well, you didn't have to say yes," Carmen said. "You could have told him to shove it if you didn't like it."

  "Yeah sure, but somebody's got to take the watch, and if old Hal isn't going to show up, somebody's got to show up for him." And anyway, it wouldn 't do any good to refuse; he d just find some other way to shove it, big virile Hal Parker. . . .

  Jack gulped down his martini without tasting it, drank another standing, staring out the front window. Then he went to the front closet and took the old M-l out of its rack, his old rifle from Korea, tested the action out of easy habit. He took a couple of filled clips off the shelf and stuck them in his pocket. At least he knew how to shoot the damned thing, more than you could say for some of the others on these patrols. He'd never bought a smaller or lighter rifle, never bought any other firearm, for that matter. He'd had to drag this one out of the attic and spend a day cleaning it when the watches had started. Actually, he'd always been pretty fiercely antigun in his thinking, l ight in the midst of a whole bunch of gun nuts living in this small community, arguing endlessly against their silly cant. If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. Didn't sound so silly anymore, with what had been going on these past (wo or three months. He was glad he had this baby now. Probably couldn't actually make himself shoot anybody with it, but ihen so far they hadn't really had to. "We'll, I'd better get a little nap if I'm going to be out all night," he said. "Wake me up for dinner about eight."

  He sprawled out on the daybed in the TV room and closed his eyes, but he couldn't relax as his anger and frustration mounted ,ii the cheap baldness of this pukey little affair, his own self-disgust at having played along with it. He might just as well have invited the bastard in for cocktails first. Of course he didn't have any real proof—he'd very carefully never looked too i losely for proof. Maybe it was all in his head. Maybe he was lust one more burnt-out exurban jackass with paranoid delusions about his still-beautiful, still-painfully-passionate wife. Hut there were so many things, the little things, the way the bastard kept pawing her at cocktail parties and her playing the innocent coquette, making sure Jack didn't fail to notice. The w;iy they'd disappear from the crowd for a half-hour at a time. I lie time she'd spend away from home, "having coffee" with oiiiebody, "shopping," even now when there wasn't anything in speak of to shop for. And old Hal, with his big, bearish Ivy I cague good looks, and all that family money so he only had to play at making a living, two half-days a week in the office, and ill that time on his hands, and all that booze. . . .