Doomsday Eve Read online

  "Does he live back there?" the intelligence agent asked.

  "I really don't know," the nurse answered. "I think he does, but I'm not certain."

  "It's rough country to live in."

  "From what I have seen of him, he seems capable of living almost anywhere."

  "Do you know him well?"

  The violet eyes regarded him thoughtfully. "You are asking a great many questions, sir."

  "I'm going to ask more."

  "My telephone number, no doubt. I'm sorry, but I don't have a telephone." The violet eyes grew pensive. "But if I did have a telephone number, there is no one I would rather give it to than you."

  He felt a warm glow at her words. The dream that he had once shared with millions of other men, of a wife and kids, came into his mind again, a yearning that was as old as history. If he had his free choice, he would go with this dream.

  He knew he did not have a free choice. Indeed, he doubted if he had any choice at all. Nor had any other man. History had moved past the day when this dream could be realized. Fate was sweeping it into the dust heap of good things that were gone forever.

  V

  "She is immune to radiation!" Zen thought after Nedra had left to rejoin her unit. This in itself was of sufficient importance to attract and hold the interest of the top military and scientific minds. Perhaps soldiers could also be immunized. Perhaps, by some impossible freak of chance, a way might be found for workers to return to abandoned factories, to long-closed shops and forges. This might mean a new flow of goods and materials to troops that were desperately short of them and to a civilian population that, at a conservative estimate, was more than half starved.

  A human being who had achieved immunity to radiation was important enough to command his complete attention. Also, the probability was very great that she was one of the mysterious new people. Something else about her interested him even more. He could not put his finger on this something else but he suspected it had to do with the future, with another world than the one he knew. Or with another universe. Again the memory of his contact with the race mind flicked through his consciousness.

  Now he knew what he was going to do insofar as Nedra was concerned. He had a hunch what her next move would be. He would wait for her to make it.

  Finding a carbine was not difficult. On this trail, the weapons were to be had for picking them up. A dead man's ammunition pouches were filled with cartridges. He took the pouches. Carrying the carbine, he slid down the bank toward the mountain stream that talked to itself at the bottom of the canyon. The water was clear and cool but dead trout floating in it warned him not to drink.

  Seeking a place from which he could watch the canyon, he moved upward. A dim trail was visible through the pines here.

  "An old narrow-gauge railroad," he thought. The rails had been removed long since, the ties had rotted away, and the roadbed itself was hardly a trail through the growth of trees. He had barely settled himself in a spot from which to watch the ravine below, than a stone turned on the old roadbed.

  Nedra was coming along the trail.

  He let her pass without challenge. Sliding out of hiding, he followed her.

  Twisting and turning, the trail climbed slowly upward. When it reached the edge of the timber, Zen caught a glimpse of a slide of yellow rock far ahead, an old mine dump, which told him why the road had been constructed in the first place. A ghost town was probably ahead.

  He caught a glimpse of Nedra moving steadily ahead along the old road bed.

  "If she doesn't know exactly where she is going, then I'm missing my guess," he thought, as he followed her. Elation was rising in him. She was leading him straight to the hiding place of the new people.

  Here in these mountains a small group could remain in hiding forever. Food might eventually become a problem, but there was plenty of game in the ranges: deer, elk, and bear, and some of the high valleys had been in cultivation before the war. A few hardy pioneers had always managed to find a living in this wilderness. If they could do it, so could this new group.

  Of course, they would have to evade Cuso's roving patrols, raiding for food, supplies and women. But that ought not to be too difficult. The ghost town was in sight.

  Surrounding an old mine, a crusher, and a concentrator, the ghost town was also in ruins. Unlike so many small cities, the ruin here had not come from attack but from nature. The snows of winter had piled their burden on flimsy roofs, the seepage of spring had rotted the timbers, with the result that many of the houses had simply collapsed. Weeds grew in the doorways and scrub cedars had found roots in the streets.

  Nedra was walking down the middle of what had once been the main street. Her stride was still certain and she seemed to know exactly where she was going.

  The ragged man appeared in the door of the garage on her left. He spoke to the nurse, calling to her. She jumped at the sound of the voice, glanced at the man, then continued walking.

  "Hey, wait a minute, cutie!" the fellow shouted, loud enough for Zen to hear him. He lunged out of the doorway toward her. She turned to face him.

  Kurt Zen lifted the carbine, then dropped the muzzle. He not only had great confidence in Nedra's ability to protect herself, but he wanted to see what would happen.

  The loop of rope, thrown with all the skill of a cowboy, came from the opposite side of the street. It settled over her shoulders, pinned her arms to the side, and was instantly jerked tight. She was pulled to the ground.

  The man who had lunged out of the doorway of the garage leaped toward her. Throwing her on her stomach, face down, he jerked both hands behind her back, then began to search her for a weapon.

  The man who had thrown the rope came out of hiding to help his companion. He was short, with bow legs.

  Together, they held the nurse down.

  Zen raised the carbine to his shoulders. Although he had not previously fired this weapon, at this distance he could not miss.

  Her scream came to his ears.

  "Colonel! Watch out!"

  In startled surprise, he slid the carbine from his shoulder. She had known he was following her and that he was somewhere near! Thoughts like startled hornets flicked through his consciousness. How had she known he was following her? Why had she let him do it? More important, where was she leading him? Most important of all, why was she trying to save him when her own life was in danger?

  Even if she had known he was following her, obviously she hadn't known these men were here. She hadn't been coming to meet them. Then what was her purpose in climbing to this old ghost town which lay just at timberline on the edge of a mountain wilderness where Cuso was held at bay?

  The first ruffian was standing erect. Zen brought the sights of the carbine to bear on the center of his ragged coat.

  "Drop the gun!" a voice said behind him.

  Even more surprising than the command was the fact that he knew the voice that had spoken. Or he thought he did. He let the carbine slide from his fingers.

  "Now get 'em up."

  He raised his hands. "Hello, Jake," he called out.

  An exclamation of surprise came from behind him. "How the hell did you know me?"

  "Recognized your voice," Zen answered. "Can I turn around now?"

  "Sure. Sure. But what the hell are you doing up here?"

  Turning, Zen saw the automatic rifle that covered him. The muzzle was wavering and the man who held it seemed confused. His face was covered with a heavy growth of black whiskers and long hair peeped out from under a battered helmet.

  "Jake, it's really good to see you again." As if such things as automatic rifles did not exist, Zen advanced with outstretched hand.

  "Kurt Zen! I haven't seen you since—since—"

  "The night that Denver got it," Zen answered. Horror overwhelmed him as he remembered what had happened to the Mile-High city. A bomb had struck from the sky that night and parts of Denver had gone much higher than a mile.

  "Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I thought you h
ad got it that night, Kurt."

  "I thought the same thing about you. What are you doing up here? And what—what happened to Marcia?"

  The instant Zen asked the question, he wished he had kept still. At the name something happened in the man's eyes. They began to change, going from comprehension to blankness, then coming back to understanding, then losing that and going back to blankness. One instant the eyes looked at Zen and the man remembered and liked this colonel. The next instant, neither the eyes nor the mind behind them knew him. Zen was then an alien, a stranger, to be distrusted and feared and possibly destroyed. When Zen had known him in Denver, Jake had been a young airman. He and Marcia had been newly married and very much in love with each other.

  "She—she—" The voice was choked and tight with pain. "The radiation got her." For an instant, the memory held true. But there was too much pain in the memory for this man to face it. The memory went away. Only the pain remained. "Marcia? Oh, she's fine. The next leave I get, we're going to have a second honeymoon." A glow appeared in the man's eyes. "I can see her now, waiting for me. You must go with me, Kurt, and meet her again, the next leave I get."

  Zen could have slugged him. He could have lifted the rifle out of Jake's hands without protest. Instead, he did nothing. The man's pain was much too real to hurt him further.

  "What's going on here?" a rough voice said.

  It was the man in the ragged coat. Nedra and the man who had thrown the rope had disappeared. There was no indication where they had gone. This man's beard was thin and ragged. He had teeth like the fangs of a wolf but the lights in his eyes did not shift. Instead, they remained fixed in constant hostility and suspicion. He had a sub-machine gun in his hands. The muzzle covered Zen.

  "Oh, hello, Cal. I—" Jake became confused. "This is an old buddy of mine. I knew him down below ... I knew him when.... He's all right."

  Cal's eyes said he did not believe a word he had heard. He looked Zen up and down. The muzzle of the gun did not waver from the intelligence agent's stomach. "What are you doing up here?"

  "Maybe I got tired of the way things are down there," Zen answered. He was not lying. He was tired of the way things were going. So were uncounted millions of others.

  Cal's eyes indicated he did not believe this. Zen could see him turning over different possibilities in his mind. He was inclined to use the gun. Dumping another body down the gorge would be an easy solution to the problem of an intruder. "How are things going down there?" he asked.

  "Tough," Zen said, with conviction in his voice.

  "What was the big boom over that way this morning?"

  "Cuso letting go with a blooper."

  Interest kindled in Cal's eyes. "What was over there that was worth the cost of a blooper?"

  "A column of troops heading for Cuso's lair," Zen answered. "He didn't like it."

  "I guess he wouldn't," Cal said. "You with 'em?"

  "I was."

  "Which way are they going now?"

  "Back down hill to die," Zen answered.

  "Why didn't you go with 'em?"

  "I got tired," Zen said. He waved his hands in a gesture which was intended to explain how a man sometimes got tired and went off to rest for a while. Cal grunted. This he understood.

  "Are you hot?" he asked.

  "Nope. The medics checked me just before I took off."

  "And are there others down there who feel like heading for the hills?"

  "Most of them are too damned near dead to make the effort. Why desert when you've had it?"

  "The blooper got a lot of 'em, eh?"

  "What the blast didn't get, the radioactivity did."

  "Is the pass too hot for more troops to go through it?"

  "My guess is that way."

  "Your guess? Don't you know?"

  "I didn't go up to see. I'm not that soft in the head."

  "I see your point. Well, things must be really rough if colonels are deserting. This is interesting." Cal fingered the gun but the muzzle no longer pointed at Zen's stomach. "What are you looking for up here?"

  "A place to hide out."

  "For how long?"

  "Hell, how long can this go on?" Zen answered. "Even when it's over, I don't want to go back down there and walk on skulls."

  "Walk on skulls?"

  "That's all that will be left."

  "You think the Asians are gonna win, then?"

  "I got a hunch there will be more skulls than anything else in Asia, too. No, I don't think they're going to win. I don't think anybody is going to win this one, except the people who have enough sense to hide."

  Jake came out of his dreaming and put his hand on Cal's shoulder. "Kurt's all right," he said.

  It was obvious that Cal did not think very highly of this recommendation.

  "He's my pal," Jake continued. "Let him join us. He'll make a good hand. Besides, me and him were buddies. And there was a girl—" He stopped speaking and broke into dark musing as the memory of his wife came again into his mind.

  "Were you with this woman?" Cal asked.

  "He never was with this woman in his life!" Jake screamed. "She was mine, I tell you. Mine!"

  "Shut up, crazy head."

  "Tell him, Kurt. Tell him Marcia was mine."

  "Sure, Jake," Zen soothed. "Everybody knew you and Marcia were that way. Cal and I were talking about another woman."

  "Oh. That's different. But I don't want to hear either of you say that Marcia didn't belong to me."

  The wolf-faced man looked as if he was about to use his gun on Jake. "You stinking nut head, you stay out of this!"

  "All I was trying to do was to tell you Kurt was my pal."

  "All right, you've told me. Now shut up." Cal turned to Zen again. "About this woman, colonel? Were you together?"

  "No," Zen said.

  "But she yelled out to you when me and Ed grabbed her."

  "I heard her."

  "You did?" Cal's finger went around the trigger of the gun.

  "Yeah. I was following her but I didn't know she knew it until she yelled."

  "Oh." Cal kept his finger on the trigger. "Why were you following her?"

  "Hell, don't be stupid!" Zen exploded. "Why would any man follow a woman like that?"

  A trace of a grin went across the wolf face at this answer. Cal licked his lips. This was an answer he understood. "I don't blame you for that. But why was she coming up here?"

  "That I don't know," Zen said. "I don't think it made much difference anyhow. As soon as night came—" He squinted at the sun.

  "Do you think she might be a spy for Cuso heading for his camp to report?"

  Zen felt his lower jaw sag. This was a thought that had not crossed his mind. He knew only too well that the Asiatic had spies in as many places as he could get them. Cuso's survival depended in a large degree on knowing how many troops were moving against him, how they were armed and over what passes they were coming.

  "I see by your face that you had never thought of that," Cal said. "Then what is she doing up here?"

  "I don't know. I realized she was ahead of me about a mile back. As to what she is doing, maybe she got tired of all that down there too, and decided to come up here and live in the mountains?"

  "A woman in this wilderness?"

  "Some women have delusions that they can return to the primitive and make a go of it."

  "And maybe she had some other idea," Cal said.

  Zen shrugged.

  "Knowing this may be important to us," Cal said.

  "Then we had better go ask her," Zen said. He was still shocked at the thought that Nedra might be a spy. Up until now, he had thought he was shockproof.

  "You want to ask her?" Cal said.

  "Sure."

  "Okay, you do the asking. I'll listen. And don't get any funny ideas." His finger curled around the trigger of the gun. "Remember, that if a patrol should come looking for a deserter, they would only be going to shoot him. I would be doing them a favor if I shot him in a
dvance."

  "I covered my tracks," Zen said. "Nobody will be looking for me."

  "How did you do it?"

  "I traded dog tags with a hunk of meat that had once been a GI. There wasn't enough left of him to tell for sure what he was. The burial detail will clip my tags from his body and another colonel will be listed as killed in action. The GI will be listed as missing."

  "That was smart," Cal said, approvingly. For the first time, Zen thought he detected a note of admiration in the voice tones of the ragged man.

  Nedra was leaning against what had once been a work-bench in the garage. Her helmet was off, her hair was ruffled, and her tunic had been almost torn from her body. A look of pure gratitude appeared on her face when Zen stepped through the doorway. A little cry of gladness on her lips, she started toward him. Her eyes said she had never been as happy to see anybody in her life as she was to see this tall, lean colonel.

  With her was the little bow-legged man. He didn't look happy as Zen entered. "Stand still," he snarled at the girl. "Who the hell are you?"

  At his words, Nedra let her body sag back against the bench.

  "Ed, this is Kurt," Cal said. "He's joining us."

  The look in Ed's eyes was pure venom. "He may join us but he won't last long. This woman is mine. I saw her first."

  Zen wished fervently that he had the carbine back in his possession. Some vermin did not deserve to live. But Jake had that weapon. While he could probably take the carbine away from Jake, the gun in Cal's hands was very steady.

  "She's not mine, you know," he said to Ed. "So far as I am concerned, you are welcome to her."

  "Oh, that's different," Ed said, relieved.

  If Zen's words relieved Ed, they had the opposite effect on Nedra. She opened her mouth to speak to him, then closed it in an apparent effort to bite off words that no lady should use.

  Cal laughed. "Ed is mighty touchy about his women. But don't let that stop you. Ask her what she is doing up here?"