Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman (48 page)

Some opted out, calling it an invitation to suicide, calling it vigilantism, but as the break-ins continued it made a certain sense to keep live male bodies, armed or not as they wished, highly visible on the downtown streets. The one place everybody sweated out was the huge Betterway supermarket down in the shopping mall; already a couple of small raids had resulted in smashed windows, and this was the one viable food-supply center for the whole town. It had constant trouble keeping stocked, but what was there was all there was, and Jake Sugarman, the manager, was breaking rules and letting people low on funds run up tabs, at least on cheap meats and staples, and people knew that store had to be kept going—especially with all the empty stores down in Westchester and Dutchess and the southern Connecticut counties.

So the watch patrols began, with Jack Dillman suddenly finding himself a leader and organizer and coordinator, such an unaccustomed role that he hardly knew what to do with it, but he worked to put it together. He and several others were formally deputized, and patrols walked the streets, and the women drove the neighborhoods and an uneasy peace settled on Brook-dale. Except there was not all that much peace in some quarters, because tonight Jack Dillman would be taking patrol out of turn so that the man he was covering for could come over and tumble his wife. . . .
But why not split it open, tonight?

At eight-thirty sharp Jack pulled his car into the bank parking lot, down at the edge of the shopping mall. He shoved a clip of shells into his M-l and double-checked the safety. Then he cut across the corner of the green to the Village Tav. Bud Elvin, small, wiry and fortyish, was standing outside with a small .30-.30 carbine slung over his shoulder, talking to one of the local police. "You the lucky one again tonight, huh?" he greeted Jack.

"Yeah. I get all the luck. Didn't Hal call you?"

"Nah. But
that
don't surprise me."

"How did things go last night?" Jack asked the cop.

"Quiet. Been quiet all week." The cop grinned. "I think the sports are scared one of you guys is going to trip over his rifle and shoot somebody. This place has been like a morgue."

"Well, that's just what we have in mind," Jack said. "Anything special tonight?"

"Keep a close eye on the drugstore," the cop said. "Kennie reported a couple of strangers in there this afternoon, man and a woman, trying to pass some bad drug paper. He thought they might be just casing the place, scouting for somebody. So pay attention over there. And over at the Betterway, of course."

"Yeah, there's some good news, at any rate," Bud said. "Somehow Sugarman sprung a couple of fresh shipments loose from somewhere, last couple of days. Half a semi-load of side beef and pork came in yesterday from a packer out in Ohio, and new produce the day before, and flour and macaroni this afternoon. Jake was walking on air."

The cop got into his squad car, and Jack and Bud started off on foot. It was going to be a long one, Jack reflected, not a whole lot to watch for, really, until midnight, with the Better-way and the drugstore both open until eight, Clancy's Bar until ten, the Tav and a couple of the other watering holes even later.
If things stay quiet like this, maybe we can shove the starting time to 10:30 or 11:00, give a guy a little sleep,
he thought. They crossed the green, made the circuit of the Betterway with its big parking lot on three sides, its loading docks and the truck ramps down to basement storage around at the rear. Bud wasn't exactly the most scintillating company, hardly said a word from one hour to the next after his limited supply of small talk was exhausted and his two rancid jokes from the latest
Hustler
told. They circled their assigned blocks, keeping themselves highly visible under the bright parking lights in the Betterway store lot and the town streetlights elsewhere. Now and then they glimpsed other pairs patrolling other streets, once in a while walked down to confer. Ten-thirty came, then 11:30, and Bud was yawning; Jack was just getting more and more tense. Finally, a little after midnight he could stand it no longer. "I've got to take a quick check on something," he told Bud. "Take me a half an hour. We've seen no strange people or cars around. Why don't you go into the Tav for a quick beer? I'll be right back."

His hands were trembling as he let himself into his car, wheeled it down to the end of the business section, then up the winding wooded road toward the Heights and home. The drive took exactly eight minutes. He hesitated as he turned into the little three-house cul-de-sac to be sure a driver wasn't already swinging around there. Then he turned into his own driveway, cutting his lights.

The figure towering over Siddie Harper was a perfectly huge man, six feet eight at least, with shoulders as broad as a barn, enormous arms, hands like sledgehammers, thick-fingered, short-thumbed. He was bareheaded and dressed in assorted filthy rags leaving half of his vast expanse of chest bare. He was just standing there, staring down at her for a long while, and then he crouched down, reaching for her with those massive hands. "Hurt?" he said.

Siddie shrank away as he came for her until she saw the docile eyes and smooth, unlined baby face of the never-bright. He touched her scraped face with a thick finger, looked at the streak of blood. "Hurt?" he said again.

"No, not bad. Just a scrape." She edged back, still unsure. "Who're you?"

"Joey." He stared at her stupidly. "Not hurt?"

"No, no, but look, can you get me that chair?"

"Chair?"

"Over there." She pointed to the overturned wheelchair on the sidewalk. "Bring it over."

"Wheels!" The huge man walked over, picked up the chair like a toy. He spun one wheel and grinned, then tried the other, which jammed. "Won't go round."

"It's bent. Try to unbend it."

"Unbend?"

"Twist it straight, Joey, so it'll go around."

He turned the heavy chair over in his hands, grabbed the bent wheel and pressed it against his knee. It bent back straight like a

cold licorice whip. "Goes around now."

She could see that the axle was bent too, but maybe that didn't matter. "Joey, put me in the chair. I can't get into it. My legs don't work."

He blinked at her. "Don't work? Hurt?"

"Yes, they're hurt. Just lift me up and put me in it."

"Lift up." He grinned. He knelt, picked her up like a rag doll, lifted her with surprising gentleness.

"In the chair, Joey."

"Yeah. In the chair." He got her into it, watched as she inspected the wheels, turned them, rolled the chair ahead a few feet and then rolled it back. Something went clank-clank underneath it as it rolled, but at least it
went.
"Well, thanks, Joey. Thanks a lot. Listen, do you know ..." She paused, saw the big man wasn't tracking her, just watching her. "That store in the next block—you know?"

"Back there?"

"That's right. Is it still open?"

"Open?"

"Is the man still there?"

He shook his head. "All broke up. Nothin' there."

She looked at him, an idea formulating. She had to find food somewhere, get back home. There was still Tessie in a crumpled heap in the blankets in the other room. "Let's go see the store. You come along."

Joey followed her as she maneuvered the chair along the sidewalk. It was like one of the old Frankenstein- movies she'd seen on the late show, with the monster following Igor like a huge, dangerous puppy. Maybe nobody'd bother her if Joey came along. Joey didn't seem to mind. Joey didn't seem to have anything to do. She questioned him, probing a little. Like probing a vast, soggy sponge. Joey didn't know where he lived except somewhere near the El. Joey didn't know how he'd gotten here or what he was doing here. Just wandering, eating garbage out of cans in alleys when he could find it. Too big for anybody to argue with or fight with. She couldn't tell if he'd always been dim or if something terrible had just recently happened to his mind—he couldn't tell her. He said he was forty-one, but he looked ageless as cast iron. He said he hadn't been sick, but he couldn't really remember. He couldn't put sentences together too well, and it was slow getting through, but there was
something
up there, not too capable but willing enough, and childlike and needing—

Joey was right about one thing—the little grocery store was a wreck, window smashed, door hanging open—but it hadn't been completely emptied. Some canned goods still sat here and there on the shelves—a few soups, canned vegetables and fruit, tomato juice—things nobody had wanted. "And cocoa!" Siddie cried, tossing one-pound cans to Joey. "Man once lived for a week on just cocoa, somewhere out west. I read about it somewhere. How much can you carry, Joey?"

"Carry?"

"Bags. Food." She got him to stacking cans of food and cocoa into grocery bags. "What about out back?" She pointed and Joey emerged from the rear with a fifty-pound bag of flour on his shoulder. Meanwhile Siddie found a pencil and began scribbling a list of things taken on a grocery bag, every item accounted for. "There's nobody here to make a deal with, but we don't steal. Maybe somebody'll come back." Before they packed out, with Joey laden like a pack pule, she made him drag some moldy wallboard from the back to block up the broken window and to get the door carefully closed. "Maybe nobody'll bother with it, and we can come back. Now let's get out of here."

Joey followed her, wonderingly, as she wheeled the banged-up chair back down the street. It was already getting dark and bitter cold, and she could hear the child crying again as they approached the building. At the stoop she made Joey set down the food. "Now you've got to help me upstairs again, somehow, I don't know how—"

"Upstairs?"

"Up." She pointed at the stairs, jabbed at the second-story window with her finger. "Maybe you can just drag it up—oh, Christ." ^

He wasn't tracking, just staring at the stairs and her in the wheelchair. Then suddenly he reached down and picked her up, chair and all, turned around and started up the stairs. She clutched one chair arm and threw her other arm around his heavy neck, felt his muscles strain to lift the chair high enough to clear the steps. He didn't pause until he reached the second-story landing and he wasn't even panting.

"Great," Siddie said. "That was great, I just hope you don't get mad at me. Now go back down and bring up the food." She pointed down the stairs again. "Down."

The man regarded her, utterly crestfallen. "I gotta go?"

"Not away, Joey, just bring the food up. The bags."

She was afraid he might forget and just wander off when he got down there, and he did get sidetracked for ten minutes watching a big yellow tomcat near the garbage cans in the alley, but finally she heard him plodding back up, thump—thump-thump, coming down the hall and dumping the bags on the kitchen table. He looked around the place like a child in wonderland as Sidonia followed him around in the chair. Then he saw the child's body in the bedroom corner in the blankets and he began crying. "It's okay, Joey. She won't hurt you. Won't hurt anybody, but she's got to go out of here, down to the street. I don't even know if there's a truck anymore." She got a wet washcloth, made him bend down and tied it across his mouth. "Keep it on. Take her down across the street. That's all we can do. Then come back."

After three repetitions he got it, lifted the body in a blanket like a sack of oats, and headed down. Siddie got a gas flame going on the stove—thank Jesus the supply was back on, at least for a while. When Joey came back she showed him the big copper clothes boiler. "Put water in it and put it on the stove. You've got to take a> bath."

"Bath?"

"Wash all over. In the tub. Get the crud off, get Tessie's bugs off. I'll boil your clothes while you're at it."

It took forever, herding him into a tub with enough hot water poured in to take the chill off the tap water, getting his ragged clothes and Tessie's blankets into the boiler, digging a set of her biggest brother's pants and shirts out of a closet for Joey to put on, big enough that Joey only split one seam getting into them, and through it all the sound of the child crying, intermittently. She was exhausted, her body still wracked with the infection, but some ideas were formulating in her mind. Most eveiybody seemed gone from the building, or not showing, but there were some signs of life she had seen from out on the street. She knew
she
needed help—she was a prisoner up here without help—but there had to be other people around somewhere who needed help too. Maybe sick or getting sick, maybe dying, but if they could work together, they didn't have to be sick or dying alone in some icy room somewhere with the windows broken out. There could be safety in numbers—it might be easier to find something to eat together instead of each one grubbing for himself—and some body warmth in numbers too, mattresses and blankets to be pooled—certainly something better than crawling under front doorsteps to sleep and eating out of garbage cans like Joey had been doing. Of course they said it was trouble to be around too many people—one person gave it to another—but if they were all sick already anyway, what difference would it make? She wasn't sure, but she had a hunch that now that she was recovering she couldn't catch it again; if she'd been going to die from it, it already would have happened. There must be others who'd recovered, she'd heard about one or two before she got sick. She couldn't run up and down those stairs, go out and get things, but she and others that had recovered could at least help the sick ones. . . .
Somebody's got to do something, you can 't just sit here and watch everybody die and not try to help—