by Brian Hodge
Only there didn’t seem to be nearly as many coming and going even during normal hours lately, and…
And when they did, they didn’t make this much noise.
Sounds like an army down there.
Sweat crept from his armpits, and his hand twisted into a fist within the sheets. He held his breath, fearing even to exhale. He heard them speaking softly, urgently, male voices, though something was wrong with them. They sounded far away, hollow.
He heard several pairs of feet ascending the stairs, and now he could make out words.
“…got readings from one, next to last on this end.”
Jason slipped from bed onto the floor and crabbed his way through the hallway and into the kitchen. His eyes were growing accustomed to the moonlight, and they fell upon the cutlery rack hanging on the wall across from him. He crept over on cat feet to ease the biggest knife out by the handle.
The squeaking of floorboards, right outside his door…
“This is the one,” said a hollow, distant voice.
Jason gripped the knife and tensed, and waited.
And nothing.
He counted off one minute, two, and his door hadn’t so much as rattled. Instead, he thought he heard others within the building opening and closing, sometimes heavy thumping sounding between.
Jason eased over to his door, put his eye up to the peephole and caught a fisheye-lens view of the door across the hall. For a moment he glimpsed someone walking past, whose proportions swelled and shrank with the lens’s distortions, but Jason could see that he was dressed entirely in white, even his head.
Jason held on to the knife, a stainless steel security blanket. He waited, closing his eyes and sitting against the wall, feeling the nap of the carpet beneath his bare leg. Feeling every minute vibration of the building.
The closing of two doors came in rapid succession, then the building door. Finally, the firing up of a large truck engine…and another.
Jason sprang to his feet, threw open his door, and paused a split second. The hallway was deserted. He ran for the stairs in a half-crouch, outside into late-night air that clung warm and clammy to his skin. He ran barefoot and nearly naked past darkened windows, fallen evergreen needles prickling underfoot. He stopped at the corner of the building, peered around and down the street out front. He’d made it just in time to see the back end of the second truck swing around onto a cross street and head east.
Several moments later the engine died again.
“So what next, Sherlock?” he asked himself. He looked down at himself, naked except for his shorts, and sighed. What the hell.
Jason sprinted across the street and cut into the shadows between two houses, both large two-story jobs. The moon shone brightly down, but there were enough shadows for cover. He threaded between the houses, from tree to tree in the back yards, moved across the alley into the next set of back yards to come out between two new houses. He hit the ground and slicked himself with chilly dew, felt stray blades of grass worm into his shorts. He stopped beside a honeysuckle bush, breathing in the sweet fragrance that brought back sudden memories of earlier summers, simpler days.
The trucks were parked half a block away, and milling about them were clones of the man he’d seen outside his door. Clad in white from top to bottom, they moved methodically from house to house, skipping one on rare occasion. As often as not, they came out of the houses bearing limp bundles that they tossed into the darkened backs of the trucks.
Suddenly he knew.
These guys were a cleanup crew, emptying houses of…their dead.
He watched with renewed attention. The white germ suits, their purpose was easy enough to ascertain. But how did they know which houses to enter? And how did they come to skip his own apartment? He remembered one of them saying something about “readings.”
Down the street, one of them moved into view with some type of camera-like thing mounted on a tripod. Slowly he scanned nearby houses.
That’s it, Jason thought. I’ll bet they’re using infrared. It would seek out body heat, letting the viewer know if a warm living body lay behind those walls.
One question remained, though. What was being done with the bodies that weren’t so warm anymore?
* *
Three A.M.
Jason held the car steady, and if there had ever been a time he’d wished for cat’s eyes, this was it. He was driving without lights, half from memory of the road and half by faith. He judged that the army trucks were about a half-mile ahead.
A couple hours earlier, he’d returned to his apartment. He dried off, picked the grass from his pubic hair, and slipped into dry shorts and dark, lightweight clothing. By the time he’d gotten out in his Mustang, the trucks he’d been watching had moved on, but then, he figured it would be too risky to follow them around anyway. He drove to the hospital and staked it out. If there was anyplace the trucks could be counted on to make regular pickups, the hospital was it.
Patience proved him correct. After that, it was simply a matter of hanging back far enough and tailing the trucks out of town as they headed west on Route 15.
They must’ve been nearing fifteen miles out when he saw the trucks turn south. Jason slowed, fixing the spot with his eyes, not daring to blink until he passed by and mentally marked the spot. This southern road led straight back into moon-tinted trees and cultivated fields. He drove a mile past, then doubled back, lights now burning, and headed south himself.
About a quarter-mile along, the road had been barricaded with a stout-looking gate built from iron pipes and four-by-fours. Trees to the left, fields to the right, along with a jeep. Jason’s headlights caught its red reflectors. And, of course, a trio of men in white.
He braked, the engine idling as he sat thirty yards from the gate. He dared go no farther. These guys carried M16s, and had them up and at the ready, threatening in a leisurely sort of way.
One of them swung up a bullhorn. “This road is closed,” he announced, that characteristically hollow voice made even worse by the squalling of the bullhorn. “Turn your car around now.”
Ahead, on the horizon…Jason thought he saw it, couldn’t be sure. If I could turn my lights off a second, get used to the dark.
He punched in the light stem. The whitesuits ahead diminished to ghosts, floating above the road.
Jason sucked in a deep breath. “Come on, don’t wuss out now,” he muttered to himself. Leaving the engine running, he opened the car door and stepped out. He could imagine the three M16s aiming together, as if in formation. I’m gonna die…
“Maybe you didn’t hear me the first time,” the fellow with the bullhorn said. “Turn back now.”
“I just need to get to my grandmother’s,” he said loudly. “She lives over in the next county, and I just got a call from her. I always use this road as a shortcut.” Over the river and through the woods, right, Jason.
“Find another route,” came the reply. “You will not be warned again.”
He lingered a second, two, three, until the face of the moon was obscured by a cloud passing over like a ghostly galleon. The darkness was nearly eclipse-perfect. And he had his answer.
Jason eased back into his car, popped the lights back on, slowly turned around and headed back to Route 15. And then headed for home.
He could’ve hidden the car somewhere nearby, crept through the fields like a night fighter behind enemy lines. But there was no need. Now he knew. Jason was all but certain there existed a new landfill project down that southern road. It was around here somewhere…now appropriated for other purposes. The red glow on the horizon had given it away.
A great burning was now taking place down that road, amid farms and woodland, ashes to ashes. Like the biggest charcoal pit in the world had been fired up.
He wiped his eyes and had to wonder if he’d just been driven back from Kelly’s fi
nal resting place.
* *
Jason slept fitfully once in his own bed again, waking late in the morning. He felt as if he might’ve fared better to have stayed up the rest of the night.
Yawning and pouring a cup of strong coffee down his throat, he put in a call to a fellow he’d known since high school. Larry Cameron had been no close friend, and they’d seen almost nothing of each other since they’d gone in opposite directions for college, Jason heading north to the U of I while Larry went to Southern Illinois University down in Carbondale. But their paths had crossed amiably enough over the years, and they’d been drunk together a time or two. And for now, well, any port in a storm.
Answer the phone, damn it, Jason thought while listening to it burr merrily away sixty miles southwest of him.
At last he answered, Larry in the flesh, alive and kicking and speaking in the monotone Jason remembered from years back. Jason introduced himself.
“Hey, what gives?” Larry said.
“I was wondering if you might do a favor for me…”
* *
Although Larry was heading into his senior year (that is, if school started on time…campus life looked pretty sparse these days, unless you spent your time hanging out at the infirmary), his apartment was still decorated in Early College. He still adorned his walls with posters of every newly arrived Hollywood starlet who posed with more cleavage in view than out of sight; a small TV reposed atop an empty beer keg in one corner; his bookshelves were constructed of unfinished planks and concrete blocks.
None of which mattered to Jason, because the one thing he cared about now was Larry Cameron’s knowledge of and skill with computers. Such had been Larry’s passion ever since he’d met the guy. He’d loved computers, and science fiction, and had sucked at anything remotely athletic…yet Larry had still managed to avoid getting tagged a nerd. Maybe because he wore contacts instead of glasses, and overlong Levi’s. And had a hot-looking girlfriend.
“You want me to do what?” Larry asked, peeling the wrapper away from a Hostess Ding-Dong. He’d offered one to Jason, who had refused.
“Put out some kind of computerized question to all the fellow geeks you can reach. See what they say about this bionic plague stuff.”
“Just like that, huh?” He chewed slowly, a crumb of chocolate clinging in stubble that looked two or three days old.
“Is it possible?”
Larry shrugged. “With computers, anything’s possible. You just gotta know which buttons to push.” He sighed. “Okay, okay, lemme think a minute.”
“Got any beer?” Jason asked.
Larry hitched his thumb toward the kitchen, about the size of a phone booth. Jason pulled a Rhinelander from the fridge and returned to a couch that looked as though someone had taken a knife to it. Rhinelander, fresh as Wisconsin’s north woods. Yeah, just like Pine-Sol. He drank it anyway.
“Mind if I ask what drove you down here for this?” Larry asked.
Jason took a big sip of beer, held it, swallowed. “Haven’t you noticed anything? Haven’t you had any friends get sick, quit showing up one day? Die?”
Larry sat in an unevenly balanced easy chair, his eyes never leaving Jason’s. To first look at him, you’d think him steady as a rock. Then you’d notice his Adam’s apple jittering. Then the tiny gleam of panic in his eyes…and denial. Then stark balls-out fear.
He’s noticed everything, Jason thought. He just doesn’t want to admit it. Does not compute.
“Aw shit, Jason,” he moaned.
Jason nodded. “That’s what I thought. We get little trickles of BS from the news, but that’s it. I don’t buy it. Isolated outbreaks hell, I’m betting it’s everywhere. I don’t know how they’ve managed to hush it up so well, but—”
“Wouldn’t be so hard,” Larry cut in. “The newspapers, the little radio stations…what do they rely on for their news? The wire services, AP, UPI. Those places are centralized, computer-based. Take ’em over and you can control what goes out to everyone. Take over the network headquarters—CBS, NBC, ABC, Mutual Radio—and you got a pretty effective blanket on everything. It wouldn’t be that hard.”
Jason smiled thinly. “So I was wondering if there was a way to bypass all that crap, get around it. And I thought of you.”
Larry stared at the wall, his eyes moist and hazy, and he thought for a long while. “First I thought we could send something out on a bulletin board system I’m patched into. But that’d take too long. I think what’d work best is this system called BITNET. All the computers of major universities are linked up with it. Only college hackers would know about it or have access to it, but it’s international, and it’s instantaneous. That’s our best shot.”
“Go for it.”
Larry shifted over into a chair before his Atari 520ST terminal and keyboard and printer and the rest of his system linked together in one corner. Jason noticed a flat pushbutton phone receiver lying beside the printer and a thin metal rectangle.
“Don’t you need one of those two-holed cradles for the phone?” Jason asked.
“Oh, be serious,” Larry said, not even bothering to look at him. “Those went out years ago.” He babbled on while he logged himself into the university computer. “We’ve gotten away with murder using this BITNET system. Hackers can pretty well talk to wherever they want. And the best thing is it doesn’t register on our phone lines. It gets charged to the university. ’Course they frown on that, and they get pissed off if they know you’re screwing around with it, but you can always get around that. What do they care if they get an extra thousand bucks a month in unaccountable phone charges, huh? Just write it off as a miscellaneous business expense.”
“Whatever,” Jason said. He usually found it best not to intrude too deeply on people lost in their own little worlds. Jason peered over at the green text on the Atari’s screen, an almost incomprehensible flow of commands and numbers. Then:
YOUR FIRST NAME: Davy
YOUR LAST NAME: Crockett
DAVY CROCKETT, RIGHT?
(Y,N): y
WAIT
………………
“Davy Crockett?” Jason said.
Larry grinned back over his shoulder. “My alias.”
WAIT………………
PASSWORD: Well-Hung
Jason burst into unexpected laughter. Larry flushed but said nothing. The computer’s screen flickered momentarily, as if making up its mind. At last:
***WELCOME TO BITNET!!!***
LOGON NODE 11/3742 AT 4 AUG 87 13:43:55
“Shazam,” Larry said nonchalantly. “We’re in.”
KILL MSG AFTER SENDING? (Y,N): n
TO: All North America
PRIVATE? (Y,N): n
ATTACH FILES: (Y,N): n
WAIT……………….
RSCS MSG SEND THROUGH NODE(S) SIU, UI, UIC, UND
The terminal flashed more and more of the cryptic initials, and Larry sat calmly watching their progress, his fingers poised over the keyboard.
“What’s it doing now?” Jason asked.
“Picking out the route for our message. It leaves from here, then goes along the network between here and the U of I, then to U of I’s Chicago campus, then across to Notre Dame…all the way to New York. New York’s the hub. And then…all points beyond.”
ENTER MESSAGE DAVY CROCKETT: How is everybody feeling out there? I think u know what I mean.
Larry hesitated a moment, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer. Then he stabbed a finger onto the Enter key, and there was no turning back.
And they waited, the screen flickering its pale luminescent green. Jason tapped the Rhinelander bottle against his knee, barely aware of doing so.
“How long do we wait?” he finally asked.
“Depends.” Larry shrugged. “It’ll have to wait until the others fi
nish whatever they’re doing before they read ours. Shouldn’t take too long to get ’em started, though.”
They watched, waited.
“Well-Hung?” Jason said, remembering the password.
Larry glanced back over his shoulder. “No brag, just fact.”
The screen began its readout:
INCOMING MSG AT 4 AUG 87 13:46:31
FROM NODE 11/1039 GREEN BAY, WIS
RESPONSE MSG: Feeling under the weather these days.
We’re dropping like flies. This isn’t going away.
“Jesus,” Jason said under his breath.
INCOMING MSG AT 4 AUG 87 13:46:54
FROM NODE 102/90125 SAN DIEGO, CAL
RESPONSE MSG: It’s the last days. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Larry’s breath caught in his throat, and when he gripped the sides of the keyboard console, his knuckles were white.
FROM NODE 118/2112 BIRMINGHAM, ALA
RESPONSE MSG: Sick as a dog today, worse than yesterday. No one gets any better. Suicide is painless, they say.
FROM NODE 17/357 WINNIPEG, MANITOBA
RESPONSE MSG: I’m the sole survivor now! I’m king of the hill! I’m A#l!
“Fucking nut case,” Larry said, his voice turning thin and reedy.
FROM NODE 18/391 ATLANTA, GA
RESPONSE MSG: I work 4 US Centers 4 Disease Control. Patched in through ARPANET. Don’t believe the whitewash. Not isolated outbreaks. No vaccine. No hope. This is it. I think we’re history.
“Was that for real?” Jason whispered.
Larry glanced over his shoulder again. “I think so. ARPANET is the system all the government computers are linked with. Jason, that was legitimate.”
The responses were coming in too quickly to read as they arrived. Larry kept his thumb on the Page Up key and scrolled the readout. Soon it became unnecessary to even read them. They all said basically the same thing. I think u know what I mean. Oh yeah, they sure did. I catch your drift. Wink, nudge, say no more.
Larry took to scrolling the readout as soon as they knew where the message had originated from. Denver. Toronto. Kansas City. Boston. Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Bangor, Maine. Athens, Georgia. Tucson. Anchorage. They poured in and in, on and on.
