“What time do you have to be back?”
Dena’s smile softened. “There’s no bed check tonight.”
He took the glass from her hand, set it down along with his on the night table, and drew her into his arms.
Chapter 27
Anton Kuryakin looked around him with a deep sadness. A great country was being brought to its knees. The streets of the cities were clogged with debris and abandoned cars. Shops were closed and shuttered. Others had their windows smashed out and stood open and gutted like dead animals.
For the most part, people stayed off the dying streets. Those who had to be out hurried along, huddled in upon themselves, avoiding contact with any others they might meet. The eyes of many of the people were already dead.
Worst were the screamers. The wild, agonized victims of the brain eaters. They ran along the streets, hopelessly trying to rip the parasites from inside their heads. People recognized them now for what they were. They knew the terrible violence such victims were capable of, and they shunned them like the lepers of ancient times.
Kuryakin stood at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Milwaukee and looked about him at the dying city without pleasure. He had always believed that the superiority of the Soviet system would one day bring down the Western democracies, but it gave him no enjoyment to see the old adversary beaten in this terrible way.
After his flight left San Francisco, there was the short period when they were airborne and everything might have been normal. Normal, that is, except for the grim tension on the faces of the passengers and the crew and the soft sobbing of an old woman in the seat behind him. At least they were isolated at sixteen thousand feet from the ugly reality on the ground. The fragile sense of normality collapsed when they landed.
After that, Kuryakin had seen the situation become rapidly more desperate. There was near chaos at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Flights to all points were being canceled, People fought for seats on airplanes that would never take off. There was no reliable information on what was coming in, and the anxiety in the faces of those who waited was awful to see.
While people dashed frantically and pointlessly from counter to counter, Kuryakin placed himself stolidly in line at the shuttle-flight boarding gate. Thus he managed to get a seat on one of the last flights to take off for Milwaukee.
The scene at Mitchell Field was a smaller version of O’Hare. Everybody was in a panic to leave the city, but nobody knew where he wanted to go. With other countries closing their borders to Americans, they were trapped with the brain eaters.
Getting from the airport to downtown Milwaukee had been the easiest part of Kuryakin’s journey. Almost all the traffic was in the other direction, and the few taxis that were still operating were glad to take a fare back into the city. Getting from Milwaukee to his final destination was proving to be much more difficult.
“Can you drive me to the Biotron factory?” he asked the cabdriver who had brought him from Mitchell Field.
“Where’s that?” the man asked, looking back at his passenger and running a critical eye over his too-short haircut and the unstylish drape of his suit.
“It is located in a village called Wheeler.”
The cabbie looked blank.
“That is near a larger city called Appleton.”
“Appleton? Are you crazy?”
“I am not crazy. That is the name of the city. Do you not know where it is?”
“Sure I know. This Biotron place — is that the one on TV where those doctors are trying to come up with something to stop the brain eaters?”
“That is correct. You will take me there?”
“Do you know how far that is?”
“No.”
The driver cocked his head speculatively. “How much money you got?”
“American money?”
“Hell, yes. What do you think, pesos?”
Kuryakin pulled out his worn leather wallet and carefully counted the bills inside. “I have thirty-three dollars in American bills and some coins.”
“Shit. And you want me to drive you to Appleton for that?”
“Yes, please.”
“Mister, you already owe me twenty bucks for the trip from the airport. What you got left ain’t going to get you out of town, never mind all the way to Appleton.”
Kuryakin paid the man his twenty dollars and accepted the scowl he got for not adding a tip. One day the Western workers would understand the insult of offering a man a gratuity on top of the wages he earned for merely doing his job.
There were no buses running out of Milwaukee. No trains. No public transportation of any kind. Kuryakin sat down on a deserted bus-stop bench to think. As best as he could remember, the drive from Milwaukee to the Biotron plant had taken two or three hours. While he rode as a passenger in the back seat of the car supplied by the American State Department, he had paid little attention to the route followed by the driver. However, as a product of the Russian school system, he was an excellent reader of maps. If he could obtain a map of the highway system, he was sure he could locate the town of Wheeler, and once he was there, it would not be difficult for him to find Biotron. His means of traveling there was another problem to be faced.
There were an unusual number of police and soldiers on the streets. They paid no attention to Kuryakin. He understood that they were too busy with the problem of the brain eaters to concern themselves with him. Under normal circumstances, he no doubt would have been arrested long ago and would now be in some secret police prison facing the harsh interrogation for which American police were noted. Even though he felt relatively safe, he did not wish to jeopardize his anonymity by approaching one of these men for help. He would simply have to rely on other means to get where he wanted to go.
As Kuryakin sat organizing his thoughts into a plan, a big American car jounced up over the curb and crunched its gleaming front end into a light standard. The door on the driver’s side burst open, and a man tumbled out. He wore a T-shirt with the name of a popular beer on it. His eyes bulged, and his mouth gaped in a scream. On his face the red boils worked as though there were tiny mice under the skin trying to chew their way out. Kuryakin recognized the symptoms of the brain eaters.
The man took off in an erratic run down the sidewalk, hammering his fists against the unyielding plate-glass windows as he stumbled past.
Two men in army uniforms on the opposite side of the street shouted at him. He turned in their direction, roaring out his pain and madness. He started across the street toward the uniformed men.
“Halt!”
Kuryakin heard the shout clearly on the near-deserted street. Several people peered cautiously from doorways at the commotion. From around the corner came several more men in uniform.
The stricken man continued to run at the two soldiers. His hands were stretched out in front of him, the fingers bent into claws. One of the soldiers fired his automatic rifle into the air. The man continued to charge. Both soldiers dropped to a kneeling position and fired. His body jerked, and he stumbled backward as the bullets tore into him, but he righted himself and came doggedly on for another half-dozen steps before he fell.
Hesitantly, keeping their weapons at the ready, the soldiers approached the fallen man. The others, who had been attracted by the shouts and gunfire, joined them. A few civilians came out of the buildings. They formed a cautious circle around the unmoving man on the ground.
Kuryakin was ignored in the excitement. So was the automobile the man had been driving. It still sat with its front end mashed against the light standard, the door hanging open.
Kuryakin rose from the bench and walked to the automobile. One of the headlights was smashed, but there seemed to be no disabling damage. No fluids were leaking out underneath. He got in behind the steering wheel and pulled the door shut.