The Other Side of Here

Lucy's teeth chattered suddenly. But Waldron kept on, methodically examining cars. The badly shattered ones, of course, were mostly so crumpled that to open their doors quietly was impossible. But at last he found a convertible with its top down. He stepped over the door and tried its glove compartment. It made a slight noise as it opened. He whispered: "A flashlight! That helps!"

A moment later he whispered again: "I can use the radio."

Then there was a long, long wait. Finally, the faintest, tiniest possible humming noise came, then music—turned down so that one could barely be sure it was there.

They waited. They had timed in between news broadcasts from New York. A tenor singing about love was about as inappropriate to Lucy's and Waldron's situation as any sound could be. But presently a voice muttered: ... has not expanded. The method of contagion has so far baffled all epidemologists. Even electron microscopes give no clue to the microorganism involved, and culture-plates exposed all about the plague areas have provided no unknown forms of bacteria or viruses. The existence of still-active material for the spread of the plague, however, was proved today. A group of newspapermen, who had been isolated because they secured an interview with the plague-spreader, Waldron, volunteered today to make a crucial experiment. Several members of the group considered that they might have been somehow immune to the cause of the plague, in that they had talked to Waldron without becoming infected. As single individuals, approaching from different directions, they moved toward the city.

One of them, Nick Bannerman of the Messenger, interpreted some of Waldron's statements as indications that the virulence of the plague thinned out at the edges of the plague spots. From Waldron's statements, he believed that he would be able to detect the presence of whatever conditions make the plague virulent before he actually became a victim. He equipped himself with a walkie-talkie and moved toward the city along the Pulaski Skyway. He would return, he said, if he felt any symptoms. Epidemologists were not hopeful, but considered that if he felt slight symptoms and withdrew, he might develop immunity if he did not become a victim. In such a case serum from his blood might immunize other persons and in time permit of the immunization of the entire population. At four this afternoon he started toward the plague spot. He kept in touch by walkie-talkie. He was in the act of saying that he felt no symptoms whatever when his voice cut off in the middle of a word. Nothing has been heard from him since....

The voice murmured on. Waldron tensed. Presently the newscast came to an end. He turned it off. Then the silence was so deep that the blood in his own ears seemed to make a pulsing sound. There was no light anywhere except to the east, where a pale glare shone up toward the sky. That was the glow of New York's myriad street lights. The nearer lights of Jersey City were hidden by houses.

"Walkie-talkie," whispered Waldron. "That's it! If I could get hold of one..."

He stood still, thinking intensively. There was silence....

Something crashed no more than two blocks away. It was a sound like tinware falling. Lucy groped blindly for his hand.

"All right," he whispered.

He led her away—half a block, a block. He froze, clutching her arm tightly. A little knot of men, about half a dozen, came out of an alleyway. They crossed the street and vanished.

"Close, that. But I ought to have my armor on underneath my clothes. Then I could simply stand still. The two of us wouldn't look like anybody who'd have been stealing trucks and killing big shots. Listen!"

He whispered desperate instructions of what she was to do if he went stone-hard and rigid. He had made extra high-frequency packs. He still had two of them. He turned one on and—while Lucy stared and listened desperately for other living beings-he got the armor off, piece by piece, and back on again with his ordinary clothing outside of it. Then he said grimly: "We ought to have another suit of this stuff for you. If I can catch one of those fellows alone, I'll try." Then he said: "Damn! I've shot this pistol empty! We've got to find some weapons. A motorcycle cop or a traffic cop would have a gun—if we can find any."

"You said walkie-talkie—"

"Our next enterprise," he told her. "Hold everything!"

They had spoken in whispers. The last was barely breathed. Another patrol of the invaders had appeared. This one was not as near as the first. It went on, oblivious. Waldron and Lucy moved cautiously. There were two more alarms by the time they had traveled a mile.

"There must be a couple of thousand men in town here, looting it," whispered Waldron. "And half of them are hunting for us. They won't be sure whether they're looking for a traitor or a rebel, or whether somebody like Professor Hamlin. But he hasn't been mentioned in the newscasts yet. No time. They'll be guessing at a traitor."

They probably were. But the hunt for a traitor would not immediately extend to the examination of every normally clothed body of a man in the darkened streets of Newark. That would be too big a job. Yet the search going on must be a desperate one. Though conducted in pitch darkness, all lights and noise were forbidden lest the world beyond the dead city recover from its delusion that plague, and not planned crime, was responsible for its state of horror.