The Long Loud Silence

by Wilson Tucker

  Gary was startled. “You think this might last a whole year?”

  “Not surprising.” Oliver tightened his line quickly, watching it intently for a moment before relaxing. “Quite possible as a matter of fact. Keep us quarantined as long as there remains a shred of doubt — and that can be a long time.” He shifted his feet on the sandy bottom and turned to allow the sun to warm his chest and stomach. “I'm not too impatient. Now if I were in their place — headquarters that is — I'd send patrols across all the bridges periodically to take samples and make tests. Send them far inland.”

  “What for?” Gary asked. “What tests?”

  “Water, soil, grain, cattle if any are still to be found. Sample the swamps and the mountain ridges. Take specimens of paint peeling from buildings, almost any substance capable of concealing a foreign body.”

  “Sometimes you sound like a schoolteacher.”

  “Sometimes I do, yes. The patrols would gather up residue and test it for contamination; when the tested matter no longer revealed a danger, the crisis would be over except for mopping up the stragglers.”

  “Except for—” Gary jerked away from the girl. “Like us?” he asked flatly.

  “Like us,” Oliver nodded. “Latent carriers, Typhoid Marys, apparently immune but spreading the death by merely breathing.”

  “That's a hell of a note! Either they shoot us for crossing the bridge, or they shoot us for staying alive over here. What's the damned country coming to?” He jerked his line savagely through the water.

  Sally left him to wade nearer the other man.

  “May not be that bad at all,” Oliver pointed out mildly, apparently unworried about his future. “Not by the time they get around to us. All depends on the prevailing mood of high brass and the state of medicine on the day the bridges are reopened. If the stragglers can be cleansed and cured by some revolutionary medical means — welcome back to the United States. If not — why then, we're blocking reconstruction.”

  “Yeah, fine! I can see me blocking reconstruction. Haven't they got anything to cure us?”

  “Who can say? Science makes wonderful strides in some respects and yet stands still in others. We thought the atomic bomb would make the land uninhabitable for thousands of years, yet you can move right back in a short while after an airburst. When I was teaching school there were no known cleansing agents for the likes of you and me — and Sally.”

  “What about that stuff I read in the library?”

  “Oh, vaccines exist, yes, but they are intended as a preventive measure, not an antidote to be administered a year or more after the poison takes effect.” He was gazing at the point where the sea met the horizon. “Seem to recall there were vaccines for one or two types of toxin of botulism, but antitoxins are useless at this late date. And as for the pneumonic plague! Perhaps, just perhaps, sulfadiazine and streptomycin could help if you were treated immediately.”

  Sally spoke up. “Is it bad, Jay?”

  “About as bad as it can get, Sally. Our only hope is that medicine will find something new in the next year, something based perhaps on the existing vaccines.”

  “But what about those tests?” Gary demanded. “How can the patrols come over on our side and then get back without catching hell?” He had forgotten his line and was watching Oliver.

  “Would use airtight suits. Something like those atomic radiation suits the bomb cleanup squads are supposed to wear. Set up a decontamination chamber on one end of the bridge and work from there; send out the patrols dressed in the suits to gather samples for laboratory tests, bring them back through the chamber and burn the suits if necessary. Easily done — standard laboratory measures. A series of such patrols would definitely establish when the danger was ended. If it ended.”

  They returned to their fishing. Sally moved up close to Oliver and held onto his arm, watching the beginning of a small swell roll in and splash against her legs.

  Neither of the fishermen had luck. After a while Gary worked away from the two and moved down the beach, slowly trolling and recasting his line but without success. Standing almost hip-deep in water he heard an automobile careening along the highway and was instantly alert, straining his ears to follow its passage. It was the first passing car they had noticed in almost a month. The car did not slow and presently the sound of it was lost to him as it sped rapidly westward. He turned and walked back to the couple, dragging the line carelessly behind.

  “You know,” he suggested as he approached, “there might be a way to get across the Mississippi.”

  “Think so?”

  “Sure. I saw something when we were hanging around those bridges — some of them at least. Did you notice the little signs down near the waterline? They were put there for the boats to read. The signs said not to drop anchor there, it was a cable crossing. Those cables follow along the bottom of the river and come up somewhere on the other side. I could get me a breathing mask and crawl along a cable.”

  Oliver didn't answer, still watching the sea.

  “I could get across that way,” Gary persisted.

  “Assuming that you evaded the sentries waiting on the other side, how long would you stay alive over there? How long could you remain free and undetected?”

  “I can get lost damned quick!”

  “You couldn't get lost — no matter how hard you tried. Dammit, corporal, didn't you listen to what I said? You'd leave a trail a blind man could follow.”

  “Nuts. I'm immune.”

  “Immunity isn't what you seem to think it is. And the people across the creek aren't immune. Your immunity wouldn't protect them, wouldn't save them from dying just because you walked by. Your immunity means that you and you alone are not subject to the diseases — at the present time. Just as Sally and I are temporarily protected. That's why the three of us are still alive. But Gary — your immunity may last you a lifetime, it usually does in common cases, and then again it may not. I hope to God you don't go across the creek, or under it. You'd only start this all over again.”

  “All right… forget it.” He knew the wisest thing to do would be to turn the subject. “Forget that I ever mentioned it. Let's knock off, they're not biting.”

  “Wait a second,” Oliver said, and raised a hand to shade his eyes against the sun.

  “What is it?” Gary followed his glance to see.

  “Thought it was a sail. Couldn't be sure but for the last couple of hours I thought I could see a sail out there.”

  Sally looked at him in surprise. “There is.”

  “Where? I wish I had a moonshiner's sharp eyes.”

  “Over there.” She pointed to the southeast. “It was there" — she indicated the west—”and it went all the way across.”

  “From New Orleans or Mobile, most likely,” Oliver guessed. “Steering for some point down the peninsula.”

  Gary couldn't see it and said nothing, dropping his eyes instead to watch the sea swirling about Sally's legs. The water rushed in with little waves to dash against her skin and form eddies about the parted legs, kicking up foam. He continued to watch with a quiet contemplation, letting the motion of the water and foam stir dream images in his mind.

  “Oh, well,” Oliver said after a while, “let's eat.”

  Gary glanced up, startled from his reverie, to find Sally watching him with a patient knowledge.

  * * *

  They observed what they believed to be Christmas Day by going swimming in moderately cold water, and then spending the remainder of the afternoon on the warm beach sand. Sally lay between them, entranced as usual by the sound of the sea and the fantasy cloud-castles floating overhead. The routine was nothing out of the ordinary but there was no new thing to do, no new way to celebrate a holiday. Gary gave the girl a wooden link chain he had carved and saved for weeks, saved for the day, while Oliver contented himself by stretching out on the sands and resting his eyes on her body. He suspected Sally was gaining weight.

  And at what they believed to be midnigh
t of New Year's Eve, Gary pushed open the cabin door and stepped into the darkness inside, to raise a pointed finger and shout, “Bang!”

  “Get the hell out of here!” Oliver cried from the blackness.

  Gary laughed at him and backed out.

  They made no real effort to tell time, to calculate the passing days or weeks, but waited with unspoken consent for the coming of a warmer season.

  * * *

  It may have been late January, or perhaps early February when the remainder of the provisions stacked in the mail truck were transferred to the cabin. The transfer represented the halfway point in their remaining supplies but the season was far advanced and they had no fear of the storehouse's being exhausted before spring. After the truck was emptied, Oliver tugged at Gary's sleeve and motioned him away from the cabin. They strode down the beach in silence.

  “Spill it,” Gary suggested after a time. “You've had something on your mind for days.”

  “Bit difficult,” Oliver answered. He walked along with his eyes on the water, kicking up loose sand.

  “First time I've ever seen you fumble with words. Come on, spill it. We're fifty-fifty, remember?”

  “That's just it,” Oliver hesitated. “About our partnership…”

  Gary stopped walking. “You want to break it up?”

  “You guessed?”

  “I guessed now, by the way you're acting. Why?”

  Oliver turned to face him. “Corporal, something's come up. I think it best that we break up.” He frowned and kicked sand again. “Sally thinks so, too.”

  “Spill it,” Gary ordered once more.

  “Well… one of us is going to be a father.”

  Gary held his silence, considering the news. It did not particularly surprise him, although he had not suspected it. He had formed the habit months earlier of taking Sally for granted, accepting her casually as no more than another woman, a convenient cook, a pleasant interlude. Now this new element had been added.

  “One of us, huh?” he answered at last. “How do you act when this happens? Are we supposed to congratulate each other, or what?”

  “I don't know,” Oliver said desperately. “It never happened to me before! And I don't know which of us is the father — that upsets me. Sally doesn't know, either.”

  The beginning of a grin appeared on Gary's lips.

  Oliver was quick to stop it. “I refuse to think of it in a humorous vein and I don't want any wisecracks! That's why I want to dissolve our partnership, corporal; right now, today. I want you to stop—”

  “Oh the hell you do?”

  “Corporal…” He hesitated and then plunged forward into the most difficult part of it. “I want to be the father. Sally wants me… too.”

  “You want to be? But I thought you said—”

  “Don't play a dumb bastard! I did say it, and Sally is. You know what I mean. But both of us can't be the father, realize that — what’ll the kid think? I want to be the father, corporal — the only one.”

  Gary regarded his partner with a momentary silence. So this was the end of the line. “All right,” he said. “I can take a hint.”

  Almost bashfully, Oliver put out his hand. “Thanks, corporal.” He made no attempt to hide his relief or that he was pleased with the outcome. “Damned white of you! Sally and I talked this thing over; we didn't know what to do. The kid scares her a little bit but the thought of you and me fighting scared her more. I'll tell her everything is all fixed up.” He turned and started back toward the cabin, a wide grin pasted foolishly across his face. “And corporal — if you're down this way next winter, drop in and see us, will you? Stop in and see my kid?”

  “Now don't rush me,” Gary objected. “I'll be around for a while yet.”

  * * *

  It had been a hollow, thoughtless promise. He left in less than a week, too aware of the sudden tension that sprang up between the girl and himself, and vaguely uncomfortable because of it. Both Sally and Oliver tried to pretend that nothing had changed, nothing was different and the old fifty-fifty partnership remained the bond between the trio. The pretending was false and the tension grew. Gary stayed away from the cabin as much as possible and seldom spoke to the girl.

  “We've had some good times,” Oliver said reminiscently.

  “Sure as hell have! I like to froze in those damned mountains, talking you into coming south.”

  “Pretty good place to hide out.”

  Gary loaded his pockets with ammunition and packed food in a shoulder bag, choosing a revolver and a heavy rifle for protection. At the final parting, he shook hands with a grinning Oliver and blew an empty kiss to the girl standing in the cabin door. She half lifted her hand to return it, and then stopped herself.

  “Where do you think you'll go?” Oliver asked.

  “Dunno. Work my way over to the river,” Gary guessed with an indifferent shrug. “Upstream, maybe.”

  “No cable-crawling!”

  “No cable-crawling,” Gary returned. “Keep your eyes open.”

  “Will do.” He nodded somberly. “You do the same.”

  Turning his back on them, Gary left the island and made his way by hand across the partially dismantled causeway. Once past the opening where the timbers had been torn up, he shifted the bag of food to a more comfortable position and strode off toward the distant, empty highway. There entered his mind a brief memory of the girl — a pleasant memory. He didn't look back to fit the memory to the person.

  The partnership was dissolved.

  6

  GARY hugged the blacker shadows along the shore and waited without emotion for the sound of the shot, for the sharp crack of a carbine. The doddering old woman had been a fool to believe she could sneak across the bridge, either she was starved to the point of sheer desperation or she was a fool. The darkness of the night couldn't hide her, not any more, not when the troops guarding the other end of the bridge were equipped with infrared lamps and sniperscopes on their rifles.

  This was the only bridge left intact along a six or seven hundred mile stretch of the Mississippi; he'd discovered that as he slowly worked his way north from New Orleans. Many of the spans that had been left open a year ago were now blown up, one more indication of the government's determination to maintain the barrier, to keep the quarantine. The troops now concentrated in strength at the western ends of the remaining bridges were hardened to their duty, almost calloused after a year of stopping the sneakers.

  The old woman had no more chance of slipping across to the Iowa shore than a snowball in a cyclotron, not as much chance as ridding her body of the seeds of plague.

  Gary crawled behind a concrete abutment and waited. He was careful not to expose his body on the roadway, not to cross over to the opposite side of the two-lane bridge. While he was too distant from the troops to be in any real danger, still some gun-happy soldier just might catch him in his 'scope and open fire. The old woman didn't know the army, didn't know their equipment as he did. In her foolish, hungry mind she might have thought she could cross over under the mantle of darkness. She should have known better, she should have known what quick death to expect after a year of it.

  Or perhaps she no longer cared.

  The old woman surely knew she couldn't live to reach the Iowa side — no one from the contaminated area crossed the river and lived more than a few seconds, a few minutes. She must have known it and counted on it. She was one of the unlucky thousands still struggling for an existence east of the river, and she would remain there until she died. There was no other real choice, no other future. But sometimes the death on the bridge was much preferred to the death in what remained of a home.

  The rifle cracked in the blackness. Good night, old woman.

  Gary lay still, waiting. There was no other sound for long minutes. He knew the routine now, had watched it many times during the daylight hours on his slow, plodding trip upstream from the Gulf. Some soldier garbed in a white radiation suit would walk out onto the bridge while
his mates covered him, move the old body with a toe of his boot, searching for a spark of life. If there was still movement he would put a pistol shot through her head. Finally he would pick up the body and hurl it over the guardrail. And then the man in the white suit would retire to a small brick building at the opposite foot of the bridge.

  He seemed to hear a faint splash. The wind was in the wrong direction and he couldn't be sure, but the hungry old woman was undoubtedly floating downstream by now. She had reached out and secured what she must have wanted.

  He crawled backward off the bridge approach and sought the sanctuary of a near-by field, cautiously seeking out the hollow depression where he had been lying when the old woman passed a half hour before. Nearing the spot, he stopped to listen and sniff the air, to satisfy himself no intruder had hidden there while he was away. Curiosity had made him follow the woman, the morbid curiosity of an onlooker who knows the game will end in disaster. She had been carrying no food, he saw that in his first swift scrutiny and again realized it when he became aware of her intentions. Had she been carrying anything to eat she wouldn't have attempted to cross the bridge, and he would have forcibly taken it from her. The old and the lame lose their meager rations to the quick and the young.

  But her arms had been bare and there were no bulges to her pockets. So he had indifferently let her go onto the bridge, silently following for no real reason. Now he lay on his back in the unkempt field, studying the clouded, moonless sky. The night was hot and sticky with a high temperature, a typical midsummer night along a riverbank in Illinois There would be rain eventually, if not tonight or tomorrow, then the following night. It didn't matter.

  Nothing mattered except the real problems of living, the day-to-day existence. Where tomorrow's meals were to be found, the careful avoidance of armed men, how to live until the following day and the day after that. How to stay alive and reasonably healthy until the quarantine was lifted.