Jerry said, ‘You know… it’s funny… you’d think it would be more horrible with that whole load of things out there, but it don’t seem as bad as it did with one — when Sally looked in the window. One thing, alone…’ He was looking out, squinting, tight lines drawn around his mouth. ‘Well, it ain’t like snakes, is what I mean,’ he said.
Mary and I looked at him.
I realised what he was doing — that he was just saying the first thing that came into his head, to hold our attention; to keep us from considering the gauntlet we soon must run.
He said, ‘Now, you take your snakes. One snake, on his own… he ain’t so scary. But you get a whole pit of snakes, all squirming together and wriggling about, that scares anybody. Now, you’d think that whole load of ghouls would be the same. But it ain’t.’ He paused. I thought he’d run dry, but he was just getting his words in order. He said, ‘I guess they’re more on the line of rats in a sack.’
Mary and I looked at each other, then at Jerry. But he knew what he was saying.
He said, ‘Knew a fella once, used to make his living plucking rats out of a burlap bag. That’s right. He’d go around the bars toting this big bag full of rats. He wasn’t welcomed in restaurants, but he’d go in bars. He’d have fifteen, twenty rats in there. Well, he’d let everyone look in the sack, they’d see all them rats squirming around, they’d get pretty edgy. Then this fella, he’d wager he could reach down in that sack with his bare hand and pluck a rat out. Well, nobody would believe him. He’d get plenty of takers on his bet. Then, sure enough, he’d reach in and grab him a rat and pluck it right out, all wriggling and squealing. Saw him do it a dozen times. Never the once did he get bit.’ Jerry looked at his hand, as if amazed that it had not been bitten. ‘So one time I’m having a drink with him, I ask him what the secret is. He’d had some drink, he tells me there’s no secret to it at all; he don’t know why they don’t bite him, they just don’t. But here’s the thing. He said that when he first started rat-plucking, he tried it with just one rat in the bag. Well, he got bit every time. But as long as there was more than one rat in there, he never got chawed. Now, that was the secret, although he didn’t see it as a secret. When there was a whole squirming mass of rats, they just didn’t bite. He could pluck them out one by one, fifteen, twenty in a row, never got nipped — but as soon as there was just one rat left in the sack, it bit him every time. Just something in the nature of rats in a sack. Well, you see what I mean…’
He had spoken slowly and thoughtfully.
It was nine-thirty-five.
The canvas shelter on the pier was billowing like a sail and the men who’d gone in there wearing white coats came out looking like astronauts or deep sea divers. They were bundled into thick, protective clothing, heavy leather gauntlets and helmets with black glass visors. The visors were lifted and their faced showed white in the openings. These were obviously the men who would examine prospective evacuees — who would, I hoped, examine us.
It was nine-forty and we were discussing whether we should walk steadily down the front, carefully avoiding the ghouls, or try to make it in one quick rush. We had already determined that we must make our approach down the waterfront, even though it was swarming with ghouls. The alternative was to sneak through the back streets and with narrow roads turning and intersecting that was too dangerous — we would have no warning if one of the things were lurking around a turning, in a doorway, in an alley. On the front we could, at least, see the danger.
But to run or walk…
Mary summed that up.
She said, ‘I don’t think I could walk,’ and we knew what she meant. We decided to run. It might not be the safest policy, for quick movement might well draw their attention, just as the loudspeaker in the van had attracted them to it, but we doubted our nerve — doubted we could walk through that terrible throng. I felt my heart might explode if I denied my impulse to run… to maintain a moderate pace while my heart and brain screamed for the primordial solution, the flight that instinct demanded.
At nine-forty-five a van roared down to the gates.
The back opened and men jumped out, some in uniform and some in civilian clothing. The men in protective clothing opened the gates and the men from the van rushed through. The driver moved the van some ten yards down the barrier, then jumped out and ran back to the gates. A second van arrived, then a third. The occupants all passed through the gates and rushed directly out to the landing craft. There was no examination and I figured that must have already been done, at the laboratory. Examination at the pier was for us and any others who had remained in the town. I watched carefully but saw neither Elston nor Larsen. I figured they had left in the helicopters.
Then it was time for us to leave.
We went out the door fast, Jerry first and Mary next and I brought up the rear, shamefully close upon her heels. We went straight across the front to the fence, wanting that barrier on one side of our course. We passed within six feet of a ghoul. He turned stiffly, watching us, but did not offer pursuit. Two others took tentative steps towards us but, in doing so, they brushed against one another. They snarled in silence and snapped. Then we were running along the line of the fence and, for all our fear, it was easy. We made it to the gates with no more trouble than our labouring lungs and jangling nerves could claim.
We were not the first there.
Half a dozen others had come from the nearer streets of the town, joining at the fence, warily regarding one another. The gate was closed again and the men in protective suits had their visors down. Sunlight reflected from the black glass, glinting like stars in the void. They were faceless behind the glass, alien and inhuman. We drew up, panting, beside the others. Jerry spoke to a man he recognised. Three or four others came dashing from the streets, running hard. One was a woman, sobbing hysterically.
From behind his visor, one of the examiners said, ‘All right. You’ll come through one at a time. Go behind the canvas and take your clothing off. Take everything off.’ He paused at the gate. ‘The rest step back. Move it!’
Someone pushed the hysterical woman forward.
The visored man opened the gate and let her through. The men in blue uniforms had their automatic weapons trained on the rest of us. Two of them, standing apart from the line, held their guns on the woman. The visored man closed the gates again and the woman went behind the canvas. Two men in protective clothing followed her in.
Suddenly I felt like laughing… laughing wildly.
I realised that the canvas had not been erected to house some delicate instrument that could detect the latent disease but simply for the sake of modesty… so that we could undress in privacy! Modesty in the face of this horror! So was authority bound within their dimensions.
Then a darker realisation followed.
I knew we had hoped for too much from these saviours. They had found no way to detect the disease, they simply intended to examine us, naked, looking for any recent wound or break in the skin through which the disease might have got into our bodies.
I didn’t, at first and with my mind jumping madly, see how this would affect us.
The woman emerged from behind the canvas and was directed to the pier. She moved on, stumbling and sobbing. She looked back once. The gate opened again and a man passed through. Jerry took a step forward and the guns all trained on him.
He stopped dead, raising his hands to shoulder-height.
‘There’s another woman here,’ he said. ‘For crissake let her go through next!’
The man at the gate nodded. Sunlight ran like black fire up his helmet.