Phantoms Read online

  After several seconds had passed in silence, Bryce began to lean toward the drain, to peer into it—

  —and Jenny said maybe he shouldn’t—

  —and something exploded out of that dark, round hole.

  Everyone cried out, and Lisa screamed, and Bryce staggered back in fear and surprise, cursing himself for not being more careful, jerking his revolver up, bringing the muzzle to bear on the thing that came out of the drain.

  But it was only water.

  A long, high-pressure stream of exceptionally filthy, greasy water shot almost to the ceiling and rained down over everything. It was a short burst, only a second or two, spraying in every direction.

  Some of the foul droplets struck Bryce’s face. Dark blotches appeared on the front of his shirt. The stuff stank.

  It was exactly what you would expect to gush out of a backed-up drain: dirty brown water, threads of gummy sludge, bits of this morning’s breakfast scraps which had been run through the garbage disposal.

  Gordy got a roll of paper towels, and they all scrubbed at their faces and blotted at the stains on their clothes.

  They were still wiping at themselves, still waiting to see if the singing would begin again, when Tal Whitman pushed open one of the swinging doors. “Bryce, we just got a call. General Copperfield and his team reached the roadblock and were passed through a couple of minutes ago.”

  23

  The Crisis Team

  Snowfield looked freshly scrubbed and tranquil in the crystalline light of morning. A breeze stirred the trees. The sky was cloudless.

  Coming out of the inn, with Bryce and Frank and Doc Paige and a few of the others behind him, Tal glanced up at the sun, the sight of which unlocked a memory of his childhood in Harlem. He used to buy penny candy at Boaz’s Newsstand, which was at the opposite end of the block from his Aunt Becky’s apartment. He favored the lemondrops. They were the prettiest shade of yellow he had ever seen. And now this morning, he saw that the sun was precisely that shade of yellow, hanging up there like an enormous lemondrop. It brought back the sights and sounds and smells of Boaz’s with surprising force.

  Lisa moved up beside Tal, and they all stopped on the sidewalk, facing downhill, waiting for the arrival of the CBW Defense Unit.

  Nothing moved at the bottom of the hill. The mountainside was silent. Evidently, Copperfield’s team was some distance away.

  Waiting in the lemon sunshine, Tal wondered if Boaz’s Newsstand was still doing business at its old location. Most likely, it was now just another empty store, filthy and vandalized. Or maybe it was selling magazines, tobacco, and candy only as a front for pushing dope.

  As he grew older, he became ever more acutely aware of a tendency toward degeneration in all things. Nice neighborhoods somehow became shabby neighborhoods; shabby neighborhoods became seedy neighborhoods; seedy neighborhoods became slums. Order giving way to chaos. You saw it everywhere these days. More homicides this year than last. Greater and greater abuse of drugs. Spiraling rates of assault, rape, burglary. What saved Tal from being a pessimist about mankind’s future was his fervent conviction that good people—people like Bryce, Frank, and Doc Paige; people like his Aunt Becky—could stem the tide of devolution and maybe even turn it back now and then.

  But his faith in the power of good people and responsible actions was facing a severe test here in Snowfield. This evil seemed unbeatable.

  “Listen!” Gordy Brogan said. “I hear engines.”

  Tal looked at Bryce. “I thought they weren’t expected until around noon. They’re three hours early.”

  “Noon was the latest possible arrival time,” Bryce said. “Copperfield wanted to make it sooner if he could. Judging from the conversation I had with him, he’s a tough taskmaster, the kind of guy who usually gets exactly what he wants out of his people.”

  “Just like you, huh?” Tal asked.

  Bryce regarded him from under sleepy, drooping eyelids. “Me? Tough? Why, I’m a pussycat.”

  Tal grinned. “So’s a panther.”

  “Here they come!”

  At the bottom of Skyline Road, a large vehicle hove into view, and the sound of its laboring engine grew louder.

  There were three large vehicles in the CBW Civilian Defense Unit. Jenny watched them as they crawled slowly up the long, sloped street toward the Hilltop Inn.

  Leading the procession was a gleaming, white motor home, a lumbering thirty-six foot behemoth that had been somewhat modified. It had no doors or windows along its flank. The only entrance evidently was at the back. The curved, wraparound windshield of the cab was tinted very dark, so you couldn’t see inside, and it appeared to be made of much thicker glass than that used in ordinary motor homes. There was no identification on the vehicle, no project name, no indication that it was army property. The license plate was standard California issue. Anonymity during transport was clearly part of Copperfield’s program.

  Behind the first motor home came a second. Bringing up the rear was an unmarked truck pulling a thirty-foot, plain gray trailer. Even the truck’s windows were tinted, armor-thick glass.

  Not certain that the driver of the lead vehicle had seen their group standing in front of the Hilltop, Bryce stepped into the street and waved his arms over his head.

  The payloads in the motor homes and in the truck were obviously quite heavy. Their engines strained hard, and they ground their way up the street, moving slower than ten miles an hour, then slower than five, inching, groaning, grinding. When at last they reached the Hilltop, they kept on going, made a right-hand turn at the corner, and swung into the cross street that flanked the inn.

  Jenny, Bryce, and the others went around to the side of the inn as the motorcade pulled up to the curb and parked. All of the east-west streets in Snowfield ran across the broad face of the mountain, so that most of them were level. It was much easier to park and secure the three vehicles there than on the steeply sloped Skyline Road.

  Jenny stood on the sidewalk, watching the rear door of the first motor home, waiting for someone to come out.

  The three overheated engines were switched off, one after the other, and silence fell in with a weight of its own.

  Jenny’s spirits were higher than they had been since she’d driven into Snowfield last night. The specialists had arrived. Like most Americans, she had enormous faith in specialists, in technology, and in science. In fact, she probably had more faith than most, for she was a specialist herself, a woman of science. Soon, they would understand what had killed Hilda Beck and the Liebermanns and all the others. The specialists had arrived. The cavalry had ridden in at last.

  The back door of the truck opened first, and men jumped down. They were dressed for operations in a biologically contaminated atmosphere. They were wearing the white, airtight vinyl suits of the type developed for NASA, with large helmets that had oversize, Plexiglas faceplates. Each man carried his own air supply tank on his back, as well as a briefcase-size waste purification and reclamation system.

  Curiously, Jenny did not, at first, think of the men as resembling astronauts. They seemed like followers of some strange religion, resplendent in their priestly raiments.

  Half a dozen agile men had scrambled out of the truck. More were still coming when Jenny realized that they were heavily armed. They spread out around both sides of their caravan and took up positions between their transport and the people on the sidewalk, facing away from the vehicles. These men weren’t scientists. They were support troops. Their names were stenciled on their helmets, just above their faceplates: SGT. HARKER, PVT, FODOR, PVT. PASCALLI, LT. UNDERHILL. They brought up their guns and aimed outward, securing a perimeter in a determined fashion that brooked no interference.

  To her shock and confusion, Jenny found herself staring into the muzzle of a submachine gun.

  Taking a step toward the troops, Bryce said, “What the hell is the meaning of this?”

  Sergeant Harker, nearest to Bryce, swung his gun toward the sky and fired a
short burst of warning shots.

  Bryce stopped abruptly.

  Tal and Frank reached automatically for their own sidearms.

  “No!” Bryce shouted. “No shooting, for Christ’s sake! We’re on the same side.”

  One of the soldiers spoke. Lieutenant Underhill. His voice issued tinnily from a small radio amplifier in a six-inch-square box on his chest. “Please stay back from the vehicles. Our first duty is to guard the integrity of the labs, and we will do so at all costs.”

  “Damn it,” Bryce said, “we’re not going to cause any trouble. I’m the one who called for you in the first place.”

  “Stay back,” Underhill insisted.

  The rear door of the first motor home finally opened. The four individuals who came out were also dressed in airtight suits, but they were not soldiers. They moved unhurriedly. They were unarmed. One of them was a woman; Jenny caught a glimpse of a strikingly lovely, female, oriental face. The names on their helmets weren’t preceded by designation of rank: BETTENBY, VALDEZ, NIVEN, YAMAGUCHI. These were the civilian physicians and scientists who, in an extreme chemical-biological warfare emergency, walked away from their private lives in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, and other Western cities, putting themselves at Copperfield’s disposal. According to Bryce, there was one such team in the West, one in the East, and one in the Southern-Gulf states.

  Six men came out of the second motor home. GOLDSTEIN, ROBERTS, COPPERFIELD, HOUK. The last two were in unmarked suits, no names above their faceplates. They moved up the line, staying behind the armed soldiers, and joined up with Bettenby, Valdez, Niven, and Yamaguchi.

  Those ten conducted a brief conversation among themselves, by way of intersuit radio. Jenny could see their lips moving behind their Plexiglas visors, but the squawk boxes on their chests did not transmit a word, which meant they had the capability to conduct both public and strictly private discussions. For the time being, they were opting for privacy.

  But why? Jenny wondered. They don’t have anything to hide from us. Do they?

  General Copperfield, the tallest of the twenty, turned away from the group at the rear of the first motor home, stepped onto the sidewalk, and approached Bryce.

  Before Copperfield took the initiative, Bryce stepped up to him. “General, I demand to know why we’re being held at gunpoint.”

  “Sorry,” Copperfield said. He turned to the stone-faced troopers and said, “Okay, men. It’s a no-sweat situation. Parade rest.”

  Because of the air tanks they were carrying, the soldiers couldn’t comfortably assume a classic parade rest position. But, moving with the fluid harmony of a precision drill team, they immediately slung their submachine guns from their shoulders, spread their feet precisely twelve inches apart, put their arms straight down at their sides, and stood motionless, facing forward.

  Bryce had been correct when he’d told Tal that Copperfield sounded like a tough taskmaster. It was obvious to Jenny that there was no discipline problem in the general’s unit.

  Turning to Bryce again, smiling through his faceplate, Copperfield said, “That better?”

  “Better,” Bryce said. “But I still want an explanation.”

  “Just SOP,” Copperfield said. “Standard Operating Procedure. It’s part of the normal drill. We don’t have anything against you or your people, Sheriff. You are Sheriff Hammond, aren’t you? I remember you from the conference in Chicago last year.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m Hammond. But you still haven’t given me a suitable explanation. SOP just isn’t good enough.”

  “No need to raise your voice, Sheriff.” With one gloved hand, Copperfield tapped the squawk box on his chest. “This thing’s not just a speaker. It’s also equipped with an extremely sensitive microphone. You see, going into a place where there might be serious biological or chemical contamination, we’ve got to consider the possibility that we might be overwhelmed by a lot of sick and dying people. Now, we simply aren’t equipped to administer cures or even amelioratives. We’re a research team. Strictly pathology, not treatment. It’s our job to find out all we can about the nature of the contaminant, so that properly equipped medical teams can come in right behind us and deal with the survivors. But dying and desperate people might not understand that we can’t treat them. They might attack the mobile labs out of anger and frustration.”

  “And fear,” Tal Whitman said.

  “Exactly,” the general said, missing the irony. “Our psychological stress simulations indicate that it’s a very real possibility.”

  “And if sick and dying people did try to disrupt your work,” Jenny said, “would you kill them?”

  Copperfield turned to her. The sun flashed off his faceplate, transforming it into a mirror, and for a moment she could not see him. Then he shifted slightly, and his face emerged into view again, but not enough of it for her to see what he really looked like. It was a face out of context, framed in the transparent portion of his helmet.

  He said, “Dr. Paige, I presume?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Doctor, if terrorists or agents of a foreign government committed an act of biological warfare against an American community, it would be up to me and my people to isolate the microbe, identify it, and suggest measures to contain it. That is a sobering responsibility. If we allowed anyone, even the suffering victims, to deter us, the danger of the plague spreading would increase dramatically.”

  “So,” Jenny said, still pressing him, “if sick and dying people did try to disrupt your work, you’d kill them.”

  “Yes,” he said flatly. “Even decent people must occasionally choose between the lesser of two evils.”

  Jenny looked around at Snowfield, which was as much of a graveyard in the morning sun as it had been in the gloom of night. General Copperfield was right. Anything he might have to do to protect his team would only be a little evil. The big evil was what had been done—what was still being done—to this town.

  She wasn’t quite sure why she had been so testy with him.

  Maybe it was because she had thought of him and his people as the cavalry, riding in to save the day. She had wanted all the problems to be solved, all the ambiguities cleared up instantly upon Copperfield’s arrival. When she’d realized that it wasn’t going to work out that way, when they had actually pulled guns on her, the dream had faded fast. Irrationally, she had blamed the general.

  That wasn’t like her. Her nerves must be more badly frayed than she had thought.

  Bryce began to introduce his men to the general, but Copperfield interrupted. “1 don’t mean to be rude, Sheriff, but we don’t have time for introductions. Later. Right now, I want to move. I want to see all those things you told me about on the phone last night, and then I want to get an autopsy started.”

  He wants to skip introductions because it doesn’t make sense to be chummy with people who may be doomed, Jenny thought. If we develop disease symptoms in the next few hours, if it turns out to be a brain disease, and if we go berserk and try to rush the mobile labs, it’ll be easier for him to have us shot if he doesn’t know us very well.

  Stop it! she told herself angrily.

  She looked at Lisa and thought: Good heavens, kid, if I’m this frazzled, what a state you must be in. Yet you’ve kept as stiff an upper lip as anyone. What a damned fine kid to have for a sister.

  “Before we show you around,” Bryce told Copperfield, “you ought to know about the thing we saw last night and what happened to—”

  “No, no,” Copperfield said impatiently. “I want to go through it step by step. Just the way you found things. There’ll be plenty of time to tell me what happened last night. Let’s get moving.”

  “But, you see, it’s beginning to look as if it can’t possibly be a disease that’s wiped out this town,” Bryce protested.

  The general said, “My people have come here to investigate possible CBW connections. We’ll do that first. Then we can consider other possibilities. SOP, Sheriff.”

&nbs
p; Bryce sent most of his men back into the Hilltop Inn, keeping only Tal and Frank with him.

  Jenny took Lisa’s hand, and they, too, headed back to the inn.

  Copperfield called out to her. “Doctor! Wait a moment. I want you with us. You were the first physician on the scene. If the condition of the corpses has changed, you’re the one most likely to notice.”

  Jenny looked at Lisa. “Want to come along?”

  “Back to the bakery? No, thanks.” The girl shuddered.

  Thinking of the eerily sweet, childlike voice that had come from the sink drain, Jenny said, “Don’t go in the kitchen. And if you have to go to the bathroom, ask someone to go along with you.”

  “Jenny, they’re all guys!”

  “I don’t care. Ask Gordy. He can stand outside the stall with his back turned.”

  “Jeez, that’d be embarrassing.”

  “You want to go into that bathroom by yourself again?”

  The color drained out of the girl’s face. “No way.”

  “Good. Keep close to the others. And I mean close. Not just in the same room. Stay in the same part of the room. Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  Jenny thought about the two telephone calls from Wargle this morning. She thought of the gross threats he’d made. Although they had been the threats of a dead man and should have been meaningless, Jenny was frightened.

  “You be careful, too,” Lisa said.

  Jenny kissed the girl on the cheek. “Now hurry and catch up with Gordy before he turns the corner.”

  Lisa ran, calling ahead: “Gordy! Wait up!”

  The tall young deputy stopped at the comer and looked back.

  Watching Lisa sprint along the cobblestone sidewalk, Jenny felt her heart tightening.

  She thought: What if, when I come back, she’s gone? What if I never see her alive again?

  24

  Cold Terror

  Liebermann’s Bakery.

  Bryce, Tal, Frank, and Jenny entered the kitchen. General Copperfield and the nine scientists on his team followed closely, and four soldiers, toting submachine guns, brought up the rear.

  The kitchen was crowded. Bryce felt uncomfortable. What if they were attacked while they were all jammed together? What if they had to get out in a hurry?

  The two heads were exactly where they had been last night: in the ovens, peering through the glass. On the worktable the severed hands still clutched the rolling pin.

  Niven, one of the general’s people, took several photographs of the kitchen from various angles, then about a dozen close-ups of the heads and hands.

  The others kept edging around the room to get out of Niven’s way. The photographic record had to be completed before the forensic work could begin, which was not unlike the routine policemen followed at the scene of a crime.

  As the spacesuited scientists moved, their rubberized clothing squeaked. Their heavy boots scraped noisily on the tile floor.

  “You still think it looks like a simple incident of CBW?” Bryce asked Copperfield.

  “Could be.”

  “Really?”

  Copperfield said, “Phil, you’re the resident nerve gas specialist. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  The question was answered by the man whose helmet bore the name HOUK. “It’s much too early to tell anything for certain, but it seems as if we could be dealing with a neuroleptic toxin. And there are some things about this—most notably, the extreme psychopathic violence—that lead me to wonder if we’ve got a case of T-139.”

  “Definitely a possibility,” Copperfield said. “Just what I thought when we walked in.”

  Niven continued to snap photographs, and Bryce said, “So what’s this T-139?”

  “One of the primary nerve gases in the Russian arsenal,” the general said. “The full moniker is Timoshenko-139. It’s named after Ilya Timoshenko, the scientist who developed it.”

  “What a lovely monument,” Tal said sarcastically.