The Other Side of Here

FIVE

At ten o'clock the next morning the phrase likening Waldron to a mad dog had been demonstrated. He was regarded as beyond all human kinship. The news broadcasts made it plain that one man—and one man only—was responsible for the most blood-chilling catastrophe in human history. And Waldron had planned things quite otherwise.

It was obvious, by now, that the physician who had started out with a high-frequency power-pack and certain knowledge of how to revive stone-hard people had not gotten through to anybody who would accept his offer to revive the supposedly dead.

The black car was hidden from overhead detection by trees which stretched over the curving narrow highway. Half a mile ahead, a northward-reaching road was jammed with a black, unending, crawling stream of motor vehicles. By this time, stalled cars had closed the Merritt Parkway. Now other, parallel roads were in use as escape routes from New York. Waldron was moving down one of them. There was not one gap in the flood of vehicles moving north. Above them hung an effluvium of burned gasoline and cylinder oil. It seemed that the very air was filled with a terror that became a palpable reality.

Waldron had tried to make a phone call from a deserted farmhouse. A desperately plausible individual had tried to keep him in conversation. But the ruse hadn't worked. Waldron had hurried back to the car and roared away to a hiding place under trees. Planes had appeared only minutes later. They bombed the deserted farmhouse from which he'd talked. They bombed a tractor in a nearby field. They went on to bomb other deserted farmhouses. That was when Waldron shot the car to a more distant place of hiding.

By the time the planes returned to soar above the remains of the building from which he'd spoken, the black car was a long way off. Now Waldron looked down at the preposterous sight of a city's population in flight by totally inadequate means.

"See if you can spot those planes," he said presently. "If we can't see them, they probably can't see us."

Lucy got out of the car and went back to where the sky was clearly visible. From far off came the sound of new explosions. Lucy returned. She was tense.

"They're behind that last big hill."

"If you're right," said Waldron, "we may live a little while longer. I'm going to hit this migration."

The black car's motor roared. It shot forward, horn blaring. But there was no possible way for the mass of fugitives to open a path for it. There was not two feet of space between any two cars. However, Waldron kept the car headed toward the flood of traffic. The scream of the car's horn and its seemingly irresistible momentum caused a flurry ahead. Cars tried to close up the tiny spaces to make room and avoid being struck. A protesting din of horn-tootings arose.

It looked like sheer ruthlessness. But Waldron did jam on the brakes as the traffic ahead turned into a bedlam of horns and shoutings. However, a very minor gap had been produced by his tactics in the nearer line of cars. Thrusting his front wheels into that gap, Waldron drove ahead. He pushed the nose of his car into the line and gave all other men the choice of making room for him, or of smashing him and themselves.

Bitter curses rose around him. There were grindings and scrapings. The black car was struck, jarred and dented. A wave of bumper clashings went backward and forward among the cars, like the rippling of water disturbed by a stone. But he was in the traffic, moving and breathing in the mephitic fumes it created.

Loud explosions burst off to one side. The last possible farmhouse in which Waldron could have hidden had now been bombed. The planes, completing their bombing run, flew over the line of traffic. They swept back. Waldron knew that if there had been the barest suspicion that he was in the stream of cars, bombs would have been dropped there too.

"When we humans," said Waldron, "get an idea in our heads, we do carry things to extremes."

But he made no other comment. The car next to them was an ancient taxicab jammed with scared men and women, including a woman with a sleeping baby. The car directly ahead was a delivery truck jammed with Negroes. Beside that was a sports car containing seven people. A motorcycle-and-side-car combination seemed lost in the traffic, though it carried a woman and three children besides the motorcyclist.

A heavy-duty juggernaut of a truck was loaded with household possessions as well as a family, which was certainly not that of the corporation owning the truck. A sedan, neat and trim and newly polished, had all the windows on one side smashed. A limousine held a white-haired woman and an elderly man in the back; in the front were servants in livery. The footman beside the driver had a repeating shotgun between his knees.

Yet, despite the seeming confusion, there were distinctly four lanes of cars. Waldron discovered that his lane moved faster than the next. Presently he saw the cause. An ancient, angular car of the style of fifteen years before was in the stalled line. Steam came from its radiator and a thunderous thumping noise came from its innards.

The engine was no longer running. The thumping came from somewhere in the motor as the wreck on four wheels was pushed by the car behind it. And that other car did not serve willingly, its driver cursing and shouting furiously. And Waldron heard a pounding noise and discovered that it was a flat tire on the wheeled wreck, which bumped and banged and thumped. But in that traffic it was not possible to stop to change tires.

The horde of fugitives pressed on. Once something made the whole column slow down. Then it moved again and Waldron saw a car being pushed off the road. It had caught fire.

This went on for hours. The maximum speed was five miles an hour. Shortly after noon Lucy worried because Waldron had nothing to eat. She took his knife and hacked open a can of the fruit they'd brought from the grocery shelves in the filling station. She fed him as he drove. She had seen other drivers in the swarm being fed and refreshed in the same way.

But the strain was great, not only on men but on machines. Motors heated and boiled. Sometimes they caught fire and flamed luridly. Again they passed in solemn procession a place where a burning car had been heaved out of the way by main strength. It was a pyramid of fire. Its gas tank exploded when they were only a hundred yards beyond and there was tragedy. But the snail-like flight continued.

Then, quite suddenly, the line broke. Some cars darted to the right, where a great highway led northeast. Some swerved to the left and their motors roared as they sped away. Some went straight on, and divided further along, and re-divided.

Waldron turned on the car radio again.

"I've got a hunch what I'll have to do," he said heavily. "But we might as well check up on developments during (the day."

The radio hummed. Music came out of it. Waldron estimated the traffic ahead and behind. He drew out of the road. At least he could get back on it when he chose, here.

The music stopped. An announcer said: News bulletin! It is still not certain that Waldron has been killed and further outbreaks of the plague thus prevented. But he attempted to communicate with authorities this morning, speaking incoherently of reviving plague victims. Planes bombed the farmhouse from which he is believed to have telephoned, and other previously evacuated dwellings in the neighborhood. Two automobiles, also, moving in the same area, were bombed. One was found to be in use by a band of looters. The occupants of the other car have not yet been identified. It is hoped, however, that Waldron is dead, though only with his death made sure can we be positive that no other plague spots will appear. Meanwhile, military cordons have been thrown about Newark and the three other areas ...

"We get an idea in our heads," Waldron observed bitterly, "and we keep it until it's knocked out. And it happens that I'm probably the only person who knows that this idea has to be jolted out of official craniums. It's going to be dangerous, Lucy. I'll drive you to a railroad station. I've got some cash. You can get on a train and go as far as it will take you—"

"No!" said Lucy fiercely.

"It would be safer, though I don't know how much."

"There are just two people in the world I care about," said Lucy, as savagely as before. "There's my father and there's you, Steve. My father is alive, but he's in the hands of the people who're making this monstrous thing they call the plague. And you— Don't you see, Steve, that if anything happens to you I've nothing to live for any more?"

"I'd question that," said Waldron dryly, "but it happens that I don't see much for anybody to live for if Fran's gang isn't licked. He wanted you to go out West. That may mean all the East is likely to be frozen. And Fran—" He frowned. "If Fran's people know you're with me, and they probably do, if you were captured they'd probably make very sure of you. And Fran risked his life and all his family's to prevent it. So the only choice is staying with me or going West, far West."

"I stay!" said Lucy. "Anywhere you go, I go too. And if you're—if you're killed—"

Her voice wavered. Waldron put his hand on hers. "You're a good kid, Lucy." Then he said brusquely, "Our first job is gas and oil. We need it. Then we'll have just about enough time to smash that cordon around Newark in daylight. We can drive without lights and won't be seen from a distance."

He started the motor again. The wheels spun, gripped the gravel. The car roared into the traffic, which here was speeding, but a bare mile back was hardly crawling. Three miles farther on, they bought gas. Waldron asked for road directions to the Bear Mountain Bridge across the Hudson.

Traffic remained heavy, but no bar to reasonable speed. They descended into the town of Peekskill and found it agitated and uneasy. It was far enough from the developed plague spots to be less than panicky, but there was enough of the fear-stricken traffic going through to make the townspeople uncertain.

Waldron drove on up and through the winding, climbing curves in the Reservation, and presently he coasted down again and crossed on that singularly lonely-looking cantilever bridge to the Jersey shore. Here he ran into more and heavier traffic. It seemed that all of Jersey was fleeing north.

It would have been impossible to have headed south along the river road. All its lanes were filled with northbound cars. Instead, Waldron headed inland, keeping far enough from any direct route to Newark to avoid arousing suspicion.

Until within an hour of sundown there were no major problems. Very few cars were headed in his direction, although there were very many passing from the opposite way. Waldron drove and listened to the special bulletins as they were broadcast. There was no further development of what was called "the plague." The bulletins had to do with the exodus of fugitives from New York, with the exact limits of the four known dead spots, and repeated assurances that they were not growing in size.

There was also the announcement that a youthful bacteriologist had isolated the germ which was responsible for the plague. Also reported was the arrest of divers persons who were offering, confidentially, absolutely sure and certain specifics against the plague. For five dollars, it was disclosed, these gentlemen had offered a draught which immunized the drinker against all germs of every sort, known and unknown.

The bulletins continued to mention Waldron. Hysterical mobs had thought they recognized him in seven different places. Anybody who acted in a manner anybody considered suspicious was likely to be taken for the wanted man. Steve Waldron and Satan were considered to be very probably the same person. Three of the poor devils suspected of being Waldron were killed out of hand. The others were at the least severely mauled.

In Nutley, Waldron was stopped and questioned. A state trooper flagged him down and asked where he was going. Knowing his surroundings, Waldron could give satisfactory answers. The trooper warned him of the limits of the cordon, told him that the sanitary guards had been authorized to be trigger-happy and waved him on. It began to look as if crashing the cordon would not be easy.

It was at this moment that he saw a tiny drugstore which defiantly remained open for business in spite of terror. He stopped before it and went in. He bought paper and envelopes, scribbled a message and signed his name.

Only fifteen minutes later, a soldier stopped the black car at a barrier across the road.

"No civilians allowed to go past here," he announced. "You'll have to turn around, Mac, and go back."

"I've got a letter for the commanding officer," said Waldron. "From the Mayor of Nutley to the officer in command along here. I don't know what it's about, but it's important."

The soldier hesitated. Waldron held out an envelope. The soldier looked at the address.

"I guess it's okay. But don't go too fast! Maybe a quarter-mile down this road there's a barrier with a red lantern on it. That's all there is to stop you from going right on into plague territory. And you don't want to go there, Mac! Besides, there's orders to shoot to kill if anybody goes into plague territory an' then tries to come back. See?"

"I see," said Waldron.

He drove on, Lucy's hand closed tightly on his sleeve. Presently he could see Newark. There was a thin, faint mist just barely visible above the tops of the buildings. Even drone planes had been prevented from getting any photographs of the streets near the center of the town.

Waldron saw a red lantern across the road. A few paces to the right a bonfire burned, its brightness emphasizing the deepening dusk. The car rolled up to the barrier. Soldiers ran to intercept him. shouting.

"Officer in command!" called Waldron. "Letter for him!"

"Here," said a young lieutenant, by the fire.

He came forward and took the letter from Steve's hand.

He went back to the fire to read it. The other soldiers, of course, relaxed. There seemed no need for vigilance. But Waldron had not stopped his motor. He put the car into low gear as if to turn around, suddenly shifted gears, sent it hurtling forward and hit the barrier with a crash. It toppled and he rolled across it. In seconds he was in the forbidden area. He flashed on his headlights and instantly flashed them off again. He had seen enough of the road and he drove like mad.

Behind him there was stunned astonishment. On instinct, every man looked to their officer for orders. And he stood staring at the sheet of paper in his hand with the look of a man regarding a snake. The blood had drained so completely from his face that he looked white even in the ruddy firelight.

He croaked unintelligibly. Then he dropped the paper into the flames. He brushed off his hands feverishly.

"That was Waldron!" he cried thickly. "He's gone back to the plague...."

He had not read the letter. Like most men receiving a letter on one sheet, he had glanced first at the signature, and the signature was enough. Steven Waldron! In frozen horror, he thought instantly that this might be the way in which the plague-spreader Waldron had created other plague-spots elsewhere. Germs, bacteria—in a letter that would scatter them when opened. The officer watched the fire devour the letter, hoping against hope that all plague-forming germs were being destroyed.

The letter, of course, had contained exact instructions for reviving persons who were victims of the plague. But it had been signed by Waldron. So it had not been read at all. And therefore some hundreds of thousands of people would remain stiff and motionless—to all intents and purposes, dead.

Meanwhile, Waldron and Lucy careered onward through increasing obscurity toward the city of silence and of seeming death. At a signal from Waldron, Lucy turned on the little high-frequency generators that had served their purpose before. Waldron drove without lights, and as he neared the city he slowed for more silent driving. Toward the last, the car crawled, while the sunset colors faded and died, and the obscurity of dusk became darkness.

Presently something crunched under a wheel. Waldron could make out the outlines of houses, but he had been unable to see the thing lying on the ground.

Sickened, he stopped. He made sure of the revolver. Then, taking Lucy's hand, he started cautiously for the center of the town on foot.

There is no darkness so deep as that of an unlighted town at night. Here, as the houses became solid masses about them, the darkness became more nightmarish because of the stars overhead. Later, nearer the center of the city, it became more nightmarish still because the stars gradually faded. A mist filled the streets around them.

Silence hung about them. There was no sound in the furry night. No dog, no cat, not even an insect stirred. There was a silence which was touched by sheer horror. The horror became greater when Lucy stumbled and went to her knees. She discovered that she had caught herself by putting her hand on the upturned, dew-wet, unyielding face of a man who lay with his face to the sky and did not stir.

She bit her lips to keep from crying out. She clung to Waldron's hand and stumbled on. Then he said: "Sh-h-h-h!"

From somewhere came a furtive vibration. Waldron led the way toward it. Presently, in the misty blackness, they detected shapes moving. Motors hummed quietly. A truck moved away. Another came, then another. Men were at work—hundreds of them. They worked feverishly at something unguessable. Then a faint light glowed to guide an approaching truck. They saw one of the men in this glimmering of illumination. His appearance was weird, incredible, utterly unhuman.

A rustling rose at Waldron's elbow and a voice rasped a challenge. The challenge was unintelligible. A figure came close. It rasped its challenge in cryptic, snarling, alien speech. It was definitely suspicious—and it had hundreds of fellows within call.