Doomsday Eve 8

Doomsday Eve 8

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 had 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.