Doomsday Eve Read online

  "In less than two minutes you will find out," he answered. His long legs had already started taking him toward the hole. After hesitating for an instant, the nurse hastily followed him.

  The prospect hole extended less than ten feet into the side of the mountain and was not timbered. This was good. It meant no heavy beams would collapse around their heads when the hills began to shake. A quick examination revealed that the stone of the roof seemed to be solid. Zen stopped within three feet of the entrance.

  "Why don't we go farther back?" the nurse asked.

  "We're in far enough for protection from bits of flying metal but not too far to dig ourselves out if the roof should collapse—I hope," Zen answered.

  Somewhere outside a man screamed, in terror.

  The thing in the sky coughed again, closer now. BRRROOOMMM——BrrroooMMM——BrOOOm!

  The blooper struck.

  The sound was that of the simultaneous firing of many cannon. The walls of the prospect tunnel seemed to twist and wave. Loose stones dropped from the roof and a fine dust seemed to extrude from the walls. A boulder half as big as a small house hurtled past the entrance, snapping pines like matchsticks. A slide of loose rocks followed it. In the distance another slide could be heard growling back at the sky as it grew to avalanche proportions.

  The nurse's fingers tightened on Zen's arm, then relaxed. Every nerve in his body was as taut as a steel wire as he waited for her reaction. Other than the tightening and relaxing of her fingers, there was none. Her hands remained on his arm and she remained in the tunnel with him. To Kurt Zen, this was disappointing.

  "What kind of nerves do you have? Most women would have been in my arms and would have had their noses buried in my chest."

  "I'm sorry, colonel, if my education in how to be afraid has been neglected." She coughed at the dust.

  "Aren't you really afraid, Nedra?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Then you aren't an ordinary human!" The instant he had blurted out the words, he was sorry he had spoken. It was possible to give away too much too soon.

  "Then what am I?" Her voice was calm.

  He dodged her question. "Aren't you even afraid to die?"

  "When so many have died already, why should I hesitate to join them?" the nurse answered. She released his arm and brushed dust from the shoulders of her uniform. She glanced up at him and it seemed that some kind of a radiation flowed from her eyes, a wave of it that sent a tingle over his entire skin surface. Outside, another smaller boulder went bouncing past the entrance to the tunnel. Fumbling in his pockets for cigarettes, Zen found a crumpled package. He offered one to the nurse but she thanked him and refused it. He did not insist. Cigarettes were too precious to waste on people who didn't really want them. Outside, another man began to scream. The nurse moved automatically in that direction. He caught her arm and held her back.

  "Wait until the rocks stop rolling, Nedra."

  She did not protest. Looking up at him, she said, "You think I'm one of the new people, don't you?"

  Zen coughed and swore at the cigarette, insisting that the tobacco was moist. This was a lie and both knew it. But—what to say? Her question was a complete stunner. "What makes you think that?" he asked, desperate for words.

  "I just think it. It's true, isn't it?"

  As an intelligence officer, Zen was accustomed to asking the questions, but this nurse had completely turned the tables on him. He took a deep drag on the cigarette. "I don't know. Are you?" He made his voice as casual as was possible.

  Her eyes studied him. The trace of a smile came over her face and tugged at the comers of her lips. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

  "Go right ahead." The man had stopped screaming outside but another boulder was going past. In the distance, the avalanche was trying to grind to a halt but it sounded as if millions of tons of rock were on the move to a safer location.

  "Are you one of the new people?" the nurse asked.

  The cough was real this time. Zen could not suppress his surprise. "What on earth makes you ask a question like that?"

  "I just felt like asking it," the nurse replied. "Am I wrong?"

  "Who are the new people?"

  "Why, everybody has heard of them. They're the new race that is going to provide the nucleus for new growth after all ordinary men and women have been destroyed in this war." Surprise showed in her violet eyes. "Do you mean you have never heard of them?"

  "I've heard the usual rumors that are afloat," Zen said, shrugging. "But all the stories have impressed me as a pack of lies. Really, I think the enemy has started most of them, to get us to relax our war effort."

  "Do you honestly think that?" Her voice had a puzzled note in it. "I mean, honestly and truly."

  "I think what the evidence tells me to think, nothing less. In this case, I have seen none of the so-called evidence."

  Shrugging, Zen moved toward the opening of the tunnel, then drew back as a mass of rock crashed outside. "It's raining boulders out there," he said. "What do you know about the so-called new people?"

  "Not much," she answered.

  "You're a very lovely liar, but the fact that you are lovely doesn't make you any less a liar," Zen said. She was very beautiful with her violet eyes and bronze hair, but an overworked intelligence officer could not be concerned with these things.

  "Thank you, colonel," she said. "But I do not relish being called a liar." Her face showed hurt, just the right amount of it, but at the same time her eyes laughed at him. "However, I guess there is nothing I can do about it, is there?" Somehow she contrived to look like a small girl who has been unjustly accused of some deed she has not committed.

  In the distance the avalanche had ground to a halt. Now, no more boulders were bounding down the hill. A vast, puzzled silence held the mountains. In that silence, Zen fancied he could hear the thoughts of the frightened men who had remained alive thus far, and were wondering how to prolong their precarious existence. They were also wondering if staying alive was worth the effort involved. Why not give up now and be done with all tragedy, with all tears, with all trying to find the road to the future?

  Up the trail a man began to scream.

  Like a homing pigeon that has finally found the right direction, the nurse moved toward the sound. Zen caught her arm again. Looking puzzled, she stopped. "Please, colonel. I am needed up there." She nodded up the slope in the direction of the screaming man.

  "You are probably needed by many others," he commented.

  She did not seem to understand. "But I am a nurse. It is my duty to help those who are wounded."

  "I know." He was a little startled to find himself in sympathy with this impulse. "But, not yet."

  "Why not?"

  "Because that slope is still too hot to be safe." He held up his left wrist. Instead of a watch, he wore a miniature radiation counter there. The needle was creeping up toward the red line.

  "The radiation count is about forty right here at the mouth of this prospect hole," he pointed out.

  "That is interesting," the nurse said. The tone of her voice said it was not important.

  "Halfway up the slope, it will hit a hundred. At the top of the ridge, where the explosion took place, the count may reach a thousand." In his opinion, he had said enough.

  In her opinion, he had not said anything at all. "That makes no difference. Wounded men are up there. I am a nurse. My duty is clear to me."

  "If you try to help them under these circumstances, you will become a casualty yourself."

  "But what of the men who need help?"

  "They will simply have to get out of the radiation zone themselves, or wait until the area is clear and help can reach them."

  "You are heartless!"

  "Not at all," he denied. "If anything could be done to help them I would be doing it. Don't you understand what has happened? That was an Asian N bomb that exploded. In an N bomb the immediate effect is minor. The real purpose of the weapon is to spray the area wit
h high intensity radiation, to make the ground unfit for living for months. Any living creature caught within the direct blast of the radiation is doomed, and neither you, nor I, nor the medics, can do anything to help them—" He broke off as another man began screaming up the slope.

  The nurse was irresolute. "But that man needs help," she pointed out.

  "Certainly he needs help," Zen agreed.

  "Well—"

  Zen watched her carefully. She seemed to understand his words but something else pulled at her far more strongly: the screaming of the injured man. Each time the soldier cried out, she started in his direction.

  "Well, well, thank you, colonel." Turning, she moved with a sure stride up the slope.

  Zen swore under his breath and started after her, then caught the motion as the question rose in him as to why she should throw her life away. She knew the meaning of radiation in lethal quantities. Unquestionably, she also knew what would happen to any normal human who ventured into a hot zone.

  Was she, then, a normal human being? Was he actually witnessing one of the miracles performed by the new people? If she came off the mountain slope alive, it would certainly prove something. Zen cursed again. She was going where he could not safely follow. If she returned unharmed, he had enough proof to warrant following her to the ends of the earth, if need be.

  III

  The radio transmitter inside Zen's pack was small but very powerful. It did not look like a radio transmitter at all; there was no antenna and no apparent source of power. Only the tiny earphone and the throat microphone revealed its true nature.

  He slipped the phone into his ear, fitted the microphone against his throat, then picked up the piece of plastic tubing that was red on one end and green on the other. Wires ran from each end of this tube to the small box that housed the transmitter.

  "Red goes to the right hand," he muttered. "Green to the left. Or is it the other way around?" Making up his mind that red went to the right, he closed his fingers around the ends of the plastic tube, then watched the tiny meter on top of the small box that contained the transmitter.

  The needle moved on the dial.

  "Calling nine dash nine," he spoke. "This is six one calling nine dash nine." He repeated the call three times, then sat back on his haunches to await an answer.

  "Come in six one," the earphone said. "What color is red?"

  "It's green this week," Zen answered promptly.

  "What color was it last week?"

  "Last week? Um. Oh, yes. No color."

  "And that means—"

  "White. This is Kurt Zen, colonel, intelligence, reporting. Connect me immediately with General Stocker."

  Satisfied with the identity of the caller, the operator said, "Just a minute, colonel, I'll see if the general will talk to you."

  "Tell him it's important," Zen urged.

  "They always say that," the operator sighed. "I'll put you through as soon as I can."

  "Kurt, boy, where are you?" General Stacker's voice boomed into a distant microphone. The general's voice always boomed, he was always hearty, he was always sure that while things might look black right now, they would work out all right in the end. By the time the booming voice reached Zen's earphone, it had been transformed into a tinny squeak. Kurt thought he detected an uneasy note in the squeak and he wondered if the general had finally glimpsed the end, and was finding it not quite as he had supposed.

  "In hell, general," Zen answered. He swiftly told where he was and what had happened. "Cuso's blooper knocked out the last pass by which we can bring an effective force against him. This whole area is loaded with radiation."

  "How will we ever root that bastard out of his hole now?"

  "That's for the staff to decide. I have more important news."

  "Yes? Talk, Kurt, and fast. You don't mean that you—"

  "Yes. I mean I think this nurse may be it. I don't know yet." Zen explained what had happened.

  "Damn it, Kurt, do you mean to tell me that if she comes back alive, you will know she is immune to the radiation, and hence must be one of the new people? But if she comes back dead, or so loaded with radiation that she will die within a few days, then you will know she was just like all the rest of us?" Even through Zen's earphone, the general's voice had begun to boom.

  "That's the way I see it," Zen answered.

  "But goddammit—Are you hurt, Kurt?" The general's voice was suddenly solicitous. "Are you all right?"

  "Damn it, I'm in my right mind," Zen answered. "I was in a prospect hole when the blast went off. Don't you think I've got enough sense to take cover?" Stocker's suddenly solicitous attitude irritated him. "Sorry, sir," he apologized an instant later.

  "It's quite all right, boy. I know that nerves get frayed in combat. But this nurse—"

  "That's the way I see it, sir," Zen said doggedly. "I request permission to follow her."

  "If she comes back alive, you mean?"

  "I would appreciate it if you would stop reminding me of that possibility."

  "Oh. So you are emotionally interested in her?"

  "Well, what if I am? She's a nice kid."

  "They all are, boy. They all are—until you get to know them. As to permission to follow her, you've not only got it, but it's an order. We've got to find out about these new people. One of them appeared in President Wilkerson's private office this morning and told him to call off a planned landing in Asia."

  "Really?" Zen said. "In the President's office!"

  "That's what I said."

  "Did it really happen? I mean, was anyone present?"

  "No one except the President's secretary. She's under heavy sedation right now, from shock. She thought God Almighty Himself had come walking in. The old man is not in much better shape." Stocker's voice showed signs of strain. "I've got my orders from Wilkerson himself and I'm passing them on to you. Find these new people! Follow that nurse to hell if you have to."

  "Right, sir."

  "Report to me when you have something to report—that is, something besides going to bed with her. Off." Zen grimaced as he pulled the tiny phone out of his ear. He slipped the transmitter back into the pack and slung it over his shoulder. The radiation count was dropping but it was still too high for safety. He looked longingly up the trail. Wounded men were coming down but Nedra was not in sight.

  The wounded men were no longer a fighting unit, but had become individuals, each one intent only on his own survival. Patriotism had gone from their minds, they no longer gave a hoot about saving their country, but were only interested in saving their own lives.

  Far up the trail, Zen could see a tall figure moving upward. The nurse! He unslung the pair of field glasses from his shoulder. Through the powerful lenses Nedra's lithe figure was very clear. He saw her move to the side of the trail and kneel beside a wounded man who lacked the courage to walk downhill. Somehow she got the man to his feet and started him along the trail. He stumbled and fell. Again the nurse knelt beside him but this time she made no attempt to lift him. Instead, she got to her own feet.

  Zen decided the man had died as he fell.

  She continued on up the slope.

  Down below, motors roared and then came to a halt. Turning, Zen saw that a first aid station was being set up down there. The medics worked fast; already they were directing the wounded men to the back end of a truck, where an examination station had been set up. But, fast as they worked, they were too late to help the vast majority of the wounded. The futility of the effort depressed Zen, so he returned his attention to the nurse.

  She was in the middle of the trail again. The avalanche, directly ahead of her, had stopped her progress. A man was with her.

  Through the glasses, the man looked as tall and craggy as a mountain peak. No soldier, he was without helmet or other headgear. His hair, white as the snow on top of a mountain, was flying in the wind. His face looked like a statue hewn in granite. Zen guessed that he was a resident of this region, a mountaineer who had sought
safety in these remote fastnesses, and who had been blasted out of his hiding place by Cuso's radioactive blooper and was wandering down this trail to die. The nurse was talking to him.

  Involuntarily, as if they had a will of their own, Zen's legs started carrying him up the slope. He had taken a dozen steps before he remembered the counter on his wrist.

  "To hell with the count!" he thought. "I'm going up there and drag her down here. She's not going to throw her life away while I skulk like a coward down below. I don't give a damn whether she's one of the new people or not. She's human!"

  He climbed the slope with giant strides. Then he saw that Nedra was running toward him and waving him back.

  "Colonel! You can't come up here."

  "I am coming up there!" he shouted in reply.

  "No!"

  When he did not stop, she ran faster toward him. The craggy man kept pace with her. Reaching Zen, she caught his sleeve, turned him around, and started him down the slope. "You can't be here." Her voice was breathless with protest.

  "Are you giving me orders?" Zen growled. Secretly he was pleased because she was concerned about him.

  "If you will permit me, colonel, I think Nedra's intention is to save your life," the craggy man spoke. He had a voice like a bell tolling in the distance, sweet-toned and musical, but with overtones of great strength.

  "What about her life?" Zen demanded.

  "I'm going down now, colonel," the nurse said hastily. "They've set up a first aid station. They will need me there."

  "You will need their attention is what you mean," Zen said.

  "Colonel, the counter!" she answered.

  The needle was well over the hundred mark and was still rising.

  "Come, colonel." Hooking her arm in his, Nedra began moving down the rough, boulder-strewn trail. Zen did not move. She tugged harder.

  "Your life is in danger here, sir," the craggy man said, politely.

  "That is of interest to me only," Zen answered. "And what about your life?"

  "Colonel, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine," the nurse said quickly. "Colonel Zen, Sam West. We'll talk while we walk down to the first aid station."