by Jim Stark
"Yes, of course,” snapped Helen, “and if I were you I'd—"
"Lucinda can have my place,” he said plainly, pointing at her ... at Lucinda.
"What!?” Helen shrieked.
"Dr. Pavay can have mine,” said Winnie. “We have to go."
"Are you completely fucking nuts?” shouted Helen.
"No,” said Victor as he, Winnie and the dogs started towards the jeep. “Just Human Three,” Winnie hollered over her shoulder—loudly enough that Helen's LieDeck would catch it.
Helen had to believe them—she had her LieDeck on beeper mode—and although she couldn't begin to understand their reasoning, she had no time to waste. She caught up to Victor, pulled him aside for a moment, and gave him two suicide pills from a bottle in her jacket pocket. She also handed him a small pistol that she had hidden in another pocket. “For ... the dogs,” she explained. “And good luck,” she called after them as they loped off behind the straining white Samoyeds. She ordered two agents to escort Dr. Pavay and Lucinda into the shelter, then called Randall on the radio to explain.
"Do not let Victor go!” Randall screamed into his mike.
"I couldn't stop them,” said Helen. “Their minds were made up."
"Where the hell is he going?"
"I really don't know, but they're already on their way ... in the jeep. Do you want my men to stop them at the manor and bring them back?"
There was an extended, excruciating pause in the transmission. “I ... guess not,” said Randall.
"Look, Randall,” said Helen, “time's getting scarce, and I still have to sort out Bobby Thompson and his idiot friend Geoff. They were fighting, so I locked them in the walk-in fridge, off the kitchen. Maybe by now they've cooled off a bit."
She went back to her work, without waiting for Randall to approve or disapprove. The “potential event” lead-time was down to nineteen minutes, and the door to the shelter was scheduled to be locked in six minutes. She left the yard situation in the hands of a trusted lieutenant, ran up the stairs to the front porch, ran through the cavernous living room to the kitchen and told the two agents guarding the food locker to go outside the back door and await further orders. She wanted to handle these local punks personally. As soon as the agents were out of sight, she drew her service revolver, unlocked the heavy wooden door, pushed it open and walked in the room. It stank of marijuana.
Geoff Farley was hiding behind the door. He attacked her with a butcher knife as soon as she stepped in.
Helen defended herself instinctively with her left forearm, but the knife sliced down to the bone. She responded to the pain with a piercing wail—plus a bullet into the boy's chest. Geoff twirled and fell to the cold floor, smashing his face on a drum of rice on the way down.
As Helen bent over to see if Geoff was still alive, Bobby Thompson kicked her right wrist with his boot, sending the gun flying. He leapt for it, and got it just as she was about to tackle him.
"Back off, bitch,” he screamed, and Helen froze. He was aiming the revolver right at her, from three feet away. “You fucking get me in that fucking shelter, or I'll fucking—"
"You'll never make it,” she said, cradling her slashed arm. “I can get you in, Bobby. You can have Geoff's place, but you have to give me the gun first. They won't let you in with a gun."
The agents who had just left had run back into the building, into the kitchen, when they heard the scream and the gunshot. As the first one dashed across the open doorway, Bobby turned and fired at him, and missed. One second later, the other agent threw his head and his right arm around the jamb. He fired into Bobby's torso, ending his troubled life.
"How ... long?” asked Helen breathlessly as the agent ripped off his shirt and tied the sleeves around her arm to staunch the bleeding.
"Seventeen minutes,” he said ... meaning until a nuclear weapon could detonate in a nearby location, such as Ottawa or Gatineau ... assuming one had been on its way. “Four minutes to lockdown."
"Get me down there now,” ordered Helen. “I'm no good to anybody like this. Doctor Pavay can patch me up before they lock."
The agents helped Helen down the stairs to the fallout shelter. She stumbled through the open door, her face white with pain, her arm dripping blood. Dr. Pavay rushed to her aid, and Randall stepped around them and put his hands to the heavy shelter door.
"Lock-down,” he said authoritatively. “NOW!"
Chapter 70
FORE!
Victor and Winnie didn't speak until they were half way to the manor ... except to the dogs. This was better than they had ever expected, to be taken out at sun-up, in a car, in a jeep! Wherever they were going, it was sure to be different, fun and exciting. They tried over and over to jump into the front seat, where the action was, or at least where the two people were. Flicked knuckles to their snouts solved that problem, but nothing could keep them from panting ... and dribbling saliva onto shoulders and laps.
Winnie tried to let herself enjoy the rising sun and the fresh spring air, but powerful emotions wouldn't allow. “Why do you suppose they're doing this?” she asked.
"I'm not sure,” said Victor as he steered along the bare tracks of Whiteside Highway. He knew what Winnie meant, and who “they” were. “They” were the folks who built the doomsday devices “for defense,” the people who burned a million European women alive at the stake a few centuries ago, “believing” they were witches. “They” were the people who colonized other countries, who raped and pillaged and preached and generally made human history a cause for such profound shame.
"Give it a shot,” Winnie suggested.
"Jeeze, I dunno,” Victor said. “Could be they're just trying to scare themselves, like race car drivers or bungee jumpers. Maybe Human Twos need a certain quota of fear to feel safe ... to feel powerful and in control. Maybe they're just not getting enough fear ... like there's too much civilization. I'm just guessing here. This is a new question for me. I think it might be like every kid in the world being scared of monsters under the bed, you know—like people need some sort of fright, real or imagined, to keep the instinct oiled up and ready for the day when it's really needed. So they create scary situations, play at the brink of actual danger, and every now and then it gets out of hand."
Winnie thought about it briefly and decided that if they ever did get through this, she would look into that “quota” notion Victor had come up with. “So ... what do you think will happen?” she asked.
"Jesus, Winnie, I ... just don't know,” he said. “It's possible that the world will die today ... or, then again, maybe not. Your guess is as good as mine."
"But if they don't do it—go all-out—I suppose they'll want to have a big war crimes trial at the UN,” she tried. “They'll probably want to look at all the events related to the LieDeck to see how they led to this ... this...” It was impossible to find the right next word.
"Starting with my old friend George Cluff and his C.V.A. device, I'd suppose,” said Victor. He knew he'd be called to testify ... about a thousand things. God, I'll be one of the main witnesses, he realized. And yes, he would have to testify about George Cluff's death ... murder ... if the world didn't end, that is. The jeep was waved through the front gates of the estate by the last two remaining Patriot agents.
"Listen, honey,” said Victor as he turned onto the paved road leading to the highway and slowed to a crawl, “we can still go back to the shelter ... if that's what you want.” He threw his eyes sideways so that she would catch them, and know that he was serious. “It's like ... there's nothing says a Human Three shouldn't want to live,” he said.
"I ... think we have to bet the bank on them not doing it,” said Winnie. “There's no point hanging around if they do.” Her green eyes were clear and steady—confident. She was at peace with their unspoken decision not to survive an all-out nuclear war. “Didn't Khrushchev say as much back in the nineteen sixties?"
"As much as ... what?” Victor asked.
"That after a nucl
ear war, the survivors would envy the dead,” she remembered from a long-ago history class.
Victor smiled, returned his focus to the road ahead, and pressed the accelerator. There they were again! Feelings! “Envy,” this time! The leader of the former Soviet Union had considered the deliberate destruction of the only known living planet, and his big concern was how people might feel about it, afterwards! “I'd feel mostly embarrassed.” He sighed heavily. “You know ... after ... embarrassed to be a member of the human race."
It was a short drive down to the 148; only a couple of miles. But when they reached the highway, they found a steady stream of cars, trucks, and motorcycles, all heading away from ground zero, away from the Ottawa-Gatineau area. In fact, in the absence of oncoming traffic, both lanes were moving west on the two-lane highway. And all these machines were moving fast, dangerously fast, especially the motorcycles, which darted recklessly between the other vehicles. There were no opportunities to merge safely.
Victor turned right onto the shoulder, built up speed, and simply bullied his way onto the pavement when he hit fifty miles per hour, an unsafe speed on a gravel shoulder. And while the dogs didn't know any better, Winnie showed by her body language that she was nervous. However, she figured it was doable, and Victor had managed to pull it off. Once they were on the highway, he accelerated quickly to seventy miles an hour, matching the other vehicles in his lane ... and still there was a steady stream of cars passing him in the outside lane.
He had to get out to the left hand lane in order to make a left turn two miles later, the turn south, down to Norway Bay, where the golf course was. He frowned inwardly as the trains of vehicles, all following too closely, flew west in both lanes. Then a hole opened up. He ducked into the left lane, forcing the car behind to slow down and almost causing an accident. He put on his left turn signal, put the two left tires on the far shoulder, braked as gently as he could without causing a crash and fairly skidded around the corner of the Norway Bay Road. They were finally back on a surface where there was no competition, no immediate threat or risk to life and limb, no desperate struggle for survival.
"Will we be able to get clubs and balls out there?” asked Winnie in an effort to move her mind away from the accident they almost had, and the World War III that might have now begun.
Victor tilted his head—he hadn't thought of that. “I ... don't know,” he said. “If not, we'll just take the dogs for a nice walk, okay?"
He turned on the jeep's radio, and they were both relieved that somebody was still broadcasting information from the CBC building in downtown Ottawa—someone with guts. Maybe somebody with hope, Victor thought, although the news was not good.
As they pulled into the small nine-hole course, it was clear that the maintenance crew had already been in, but had skedaddled ... perhaps when they heard that Bucharest had been vaporized by the Russians, or maybe sixteen minutes later when they heard that an American missile—likely fired from a submarine—this one carrying a hydrogen bomb—had made Leningrad ... not exist any more. The doors to the equipment shed and the pro shop were wide open, and a rusty old red tractor was sitting cockeyed in the parking lot, idling in the dawn mist.
Victor shut down the jeep. “Think I should bring the keys?” he joked ... although he did pocket the keys.
Winnie liberated Snowball and Kodiak from their leashes, and they jumped out to pee on a part of the world they'd never peed on before. When the humans exited the jeep, the dogs understood that this was the destination, this was where they were going for today's outing, to play ... to enjoy life ... to “do no harm.” Victor walked over and turned off the tractor engine—he wasn't sure why. Then he walked to the pro shop, hand in hand with his lady. They each picked out a set of somebody else's clubs, sat the bags on pull-carts and walked to the first tee, followed, preceded, circled and bumped by bounding dogs, by mere animals, who didn't know diddly about golf ... or nukes.
Victor found a brand new Top Flite ball in his bag, and a tall tee. He selected a spot, perched the ball, and took out a long club, a handsome instrument with a bulging titanium head. “This is a Mother-o'-Big-Bertha driver,” he said approvingly to Winnie as she held the dogs back by their collars. “It's supposed to be the best."
"It's not what you got,” she quipped, “but what you do with it."
Victor made his eyes into slits, and his glance seemed to say: “I'll show you.” He planted his feet as firmly as he could in the dewy grass. After a brief waggle of the club, he took a homicidal slash at the innocent, white ball. It popped off the toe end of the clubface, dribbled twenty yards down the right hand edge of the fairway and tumbled limply into a chilly creek, followed by two laughing dogs.
"Fore!” wailed Winnie at the empty acres.
"Best laid plans,” muttered Victor as he scowled at the fat-headed driver.
* * *
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