Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) (14 page)

There were only four people still in the
grove—Mom, a leather-faced old man, a girl of about my age, and a small boy of
nine.
 
And, of course, the dead, laid out
in rows under the trees.
 

The three people were strays Mom had
taken under her wing.
 
It was a habit of
hers.
 
The man said his name was Pat
Thatcher.
 
He had lost his car in the
pile-up.
 

The child was Jim Riley.
 
His parents had been killed in the
strafing.
 
We knew nothing about the
girl.
 
She sat motionless, in a state of
shock.
 
She had been like that when they
pulled her out of the shambles.
 
She
wasn’t beautiful, but she was well put together.
 
Red hair cut short, like a boy’s; blue eyes;
a tiny, turned-up nose; and freckles on her cheeks.
 

I examined the car.
 
Except for the broken windshield and side
window, it seemed undamaged.
 
But the
wheels were bogged deep in the soft soil.
 
With Pat Thatcher’s help I dug out the back wheels and began to push
the car toward solid ground.
 

Little Jim Riley and the redheaded girl
squeezed in the back beside our cartons of canned food and the bundles of
clothing.
 

Mom and Thatcher sat in front with
me.
 
I started the motor and put the car
in gear.
 
That was my first indication
that we had anything wrong.
 
The engine
pounded as if it had a bad case of mechanical asthma; the front wheels
shimmied on the highway.
 

“You’ll have to fix it,” Mom
shouted.
 

“Nothing he can do,” Thatcher
replied.
 

The shimmy of the front wheels became
steadily worse.
 
After we started up the
grade, it was impossible to push the car any faster than fifteen miles an
hour.
 
It was midnight before we reached
the three-thousand-foot level.
 

I tried the car radio again.
 
I couldn’t raise San Francisco, but I brought
in the faint, fading signal of another station—probably Salt Lake City.
 
The announcer was saying,

“…first rumor of a Soviet landing at Los
Angeles, and the government spokesman declared the rumor was without
foundation.
 
In a second bulletin…”
 
Static for half a minute.
 
The radio came up loud again, “…the bombing
of Boston and Tacoma.
 
There is as yet no
reliable estimate of casualties in Detroit and Chicago; both cities were
partially evacuated before the H-bombs fell.
 
Our only news out of Europe is still three hours old.
 
During the first twenty minutes of the war,
Soviet planes dropped H-bombs on the major English cities; the British had insufficient
time to carry out any effective evacuation of their larger centers of
population.
 
British heavy bombers made
retaliatory raids on the continent, but we still have no confirmation…”

The voice was choked out by static.
 
We couldn’t bring in the station again; I
snapped off the radio.
 
Mom began to
twist her hands together, frowning uncertainly.
 

“Jerry,” she asked, “does that mean
England’s fighting on our side?”

“It’s their war, too, Mom, just as much
as it’s ours.”
 

“But Dr. Clapper always said they
wouldn’t—they wanted to knife us in the back.
 
I’m—I’m actually glad Dr. Clapper was wrong for once.”
 
Her lips began to tremble; I saw tears on
her cheeks.
 
She added, wistfully, “I
wish I could have made myself say that while Chris was still alive.”
 

The car wheezed past the
four-thousand-foot marker.
 

Suddenly a flash of white lit the
northern sky, beyond the ridge of the mountain.
 
Two or three seconds passed.
 
Waves of concussion bent the tops of the pines, like a storm wind; a
thunder of sound shook the earth.
 
Jim
Riley awoke and started to cry.
 

“The H-bomb!”
Mom gasped.
 

“No farther north than Santa Barbara,”
Thatcher added.
 
“That’s my guess.”
 

Then we heard the roar of big bombers,
growing louder and louder in the night sky.
 
I saw them in the moonlight.
 
Not
one or two, but scores.
 
They swept low
over the city.
 
Tiny figures dropped in
rhythmic precision toward the earth.
 
In
a moment thousands of dark-colored parachutes ballooned in the air.
 

 Artist Unknown

V.
 
The City—Thursday, Midnight Dr. Stewart
Roswell

I RECOVERED slowly from the opiate Maria
D’Orlez had given me.
 
I saw her behind
the wheel of my car.
 
The dashlight
reflected upward gave her face a saintly expression—the Madonna mask.
 

Slowly I pushed myself up on the seat
beside her.
 
I hadn’t the strength to do
anything else.
 
My mind was in a
stupor.
 

Maria turned south on the oceanfront
boulevard, high on the bluff above the beach.
 
The moving panel of moonlight on the water passed across the submarines
surfaced in the harbor.
 
I saw the
catapults launching the fighter planes, and the crowded landing barges moving
toward the shore.
 

“I’m sorry, Dr. Roswell,” Maria said suddenly,
in a sultry voice.
 

“You help to betray your own country—
”
 
My
voice was
high-pitched, unrecognizable, the voice of a stranger.
 
“—and that’s all you can say?”

“We need spokesmen, respectable men to
explain our position to the American people.”
 

“And you honestly believe you can force
me to spread Communist propaganda?”

“Truth, Dr. Roswell.
 
You and the others.
 
You were my assignment tonight.
 
I followed your car when you went downtown;
that’s how I met you at the hotel.”
 

“But force, Maria—”

“Education.”
 
That one word was crisp and
granite-hard.
 
“When your mind is washed
clean of all the bourgeois rubbish you’ve been taught to believe, you’ll know
how to speak for the people.
 
It is a
great awakening, Dr. Roswell, a wonderful awakening to a glorious, new
world.”
 

She brought my car to a stop in front of
a large mansion on the oceanfront, one of the gaudiest, pseudo-Spanish
cathedrals of Millionaire’s Row.
 
I was
still too weak to stand alone; Maria had to help me up the brick walk.
 

I recognized the house.
 
It belonged to Marvin Harlip Dragen III, the
addle-witted fourth-generation heir of a nineteenth century robber baron who
spent a good part of his life dabbling at matrimony.
 
What time and energy he had left over he
devoted to Causes.
 
He was in the
strangely inconsistent position of controlling an enormous fortune, while at
the same time loudly condemning the means by which it had been acquired.
 
He was the angel of American Communism.
 

“You’ve brought us another guest, Miss D’Orlez!”
 
He beamed.
 
“How delightful.”
 

“Dr. Stewart Roswell,” she said.
 

“The historian?
 
We are pleased to have you join us, Comrade
Roswell.”
 
Dragen rubbed his hands together.
 
“It goes straight to the heart, doesn’t
it?—so many prominent men volunteering their help.”
 

“Where’s his room, Marvin?”

“Yes, a room—of course.”
 
Dragen took a list from his pocket and
studied it carefully.
 
He was a little,
soft man.
 
His round face rode above
rolls of fat.
 
His eyes were small, dark,
agate beads set too close together in a wad of pink clay.
 
His yellow hair was plastered back on his
skull to hide the balding crown.
 
The
unreal coloring of his cheeks, the bright slash of his mouth, obviously cried
his use of cosmetics.
 
“We still have one
empty room for Dr. Roswell—third floor, on the corner.
 
Though I’m afraid we’ll have to start
doubling up when our other friends arrive.”
 

Marvin rang a bell.
 
Two strong-arm boys, armed with pistols, came
from a side room and pushed me roughly toward the stairway.
 
Still unsteady on my feet, I stumbled and
fell.
 
Grinning, one of the men kicked me
viciously in the groin.
 
I lay against
the steps, paralyzed by pain.
 

Dragen waddled toward me, fluttering his
pudgy hands.
 
“I do hope you aren’t hurt,
Dr. Roswell.
 
It was an accident; you
understand that, naturally.
 
These
Comrades are really as gentle as doves.
 
They save their anger for the enemies of the people.”
 

Maria D’Orlez said, without feeling,
“I’m sure Dr. Roswell doesn’t want to be an enemy of the people.”
 

“A bloated plutocrat,” Dragen
added.
 

“But he may require a little
education…”
 
Maria’s voice trailed away
in a frightening silence.
 

The strong-arm boys laughed and jerked
me to my feet.
 
They dragged me up three
flights of steps, pushed open a bedroom
door
and flung
me into the room.
 
I heard the key turn
in the lock.
 
I lay on the floor, aware
of nothing but pain.
 
I felt myself
retching.
 
I tried to crawl away.
 
My hand touched the leg of a chair.
 
Slowly I pulled myself up until I could rest
against the chair.
 
After a time the pain
subsided.
 

The door key grated in the lock.
 
I swung around, instinctively afraid.
 
(Had I learned my first lesson, then, so
soon ?
—to respond to every new stimulus with fear?) I
expected Dragen’s bullyboys; but it was Maria D’Orlez.
 
She slid into the room stealthily, pressing
her finger on her lips.
 

She handed me a small glass containing
a milky liquid.
 
“I know what Dragen’s
men did.
 
Drink this, Dr. Roswell.
 
It will take away the pain.”
 

I pushed the glass away.
 
“Or drug me again.”
 

“Don’t say that.
 
I can’t stand that look of accusation in your
eyes.
 
I want to help you.”
 

“Is that why you brought me here?”

“We must have you on our side, Dr.
Roswell.
 
We need men of your intelligence
and ability.”
 

“Possibly, when your goons finish what
you call education—”

“But you don’t have to go through
that.”
 
She put the glass on the dresser
and came closer to me.
 
I smelled the
gardenia scent of her hair and, even in the darkness, I saw her fragile,
Madonna smile.
 
“That’s why I had to risk
talking to you again.
 
The others don’t
know I’m here.
 
You must never tell
them.”
 
She put her hand unexpectedly on
mine.
 
“Or may I—may I call you Stewart?”

Her air of timid conspiracy was contrived.
 
I knew how they operated:
 
first the mailed fist, then soft words—any
device that won their dialectic objective.
 

“Please, Stewart, forget your
bitterness.”
 
Her tears were surprisingly
real.
 
“It’s true I forced you to come
here; that was my assignment.
 
But I
sincerely admire your books; the whole party does.
 
In spirit you’ve always been one of us.
 
We ask only peace and freedom for all
humanity, an international democracy of goodwill and brotherhood.”
 

“Word games, Maria.”
 

She drew away from me and her face
became cold marble.
 
“All right,
Stewart.
 
Let’s forget that—junk your
idealism—and talk about practical things.
 
You want to save your own neck; every man does.
 
When the Soviets win this war—”

“You seem sure of that, Maria.
 
Why?”

“Because we put our
bets on material reality, the logistics of weapons.
 
We’re not waiting for any vague spiritual
nonsense to work a miracle for us.
 
Tonight, Stewart, Soviet H-bombs will wipe out nearly every industrial
city in the United States.
 
Except one.”
 

“You think the Russian cities are
immune?”

She shrugged.
 
“They’re part of the gamble.”
 

“And the people who
die?”

“Martyrs in our great
crusade for peace.
 
We’ll build them a fine memorial in the new
Moscow.”
 
She gestured toward the harbor,
where the explosions were becoming less frequent.
 
“This is what counts, Stewart; this one
industrial center which is going to survive.
 
Four hundred of the bombers in the second wave that crossed Canada tonight
are carrying paratroops—not bombs.
 
The
issue is being settled here, Stewart.
 
By midnight we’ll have our beachhead in America:
 
a harbor for our submarines, refineries to
turn out fuel, heavy industry still undamaged.
 
With Los Angeles as our base of operations, what problem will we have
conquering a nation already in chaos from the bombing?
 
America will surrender within a week.”
 

Maria D’Orlez was no longer an enigma,
but a tragic symbol of our failure to achieve our own ideals.
 

For myself, I knew the choice was very
close.
 
The strong-arm boys would be back
to resume the farce they called education.
 
Did I have the guts to hold to what I believed?
 
Did I have the faith and the conviction of
the Christian martyr?—for only that could overturn the empire of the
Politburo.
 

VI. The
Ridge—Friday morning, 12:30 A.M.
 
Jerry
Bonhill

JIM RILEY was still crying.
 
Mom reached over the seat and tried to
comfort him.
 
I felt her body
stiffen.
 
“Jerry!” she gasped.
 
“The girl…”

In the rearview mirror I saw the redhead
kneeling on the seat and aiming my rifle at the planes overhead.
 
She pulled the trigger again and again, while
the hammer clicked against the empty chamber.
 

“Let her be,” Pat Thatcher told us.
 
“It may bring her out of the shock.”
 

We were at the top of the hill, close to
the mountain village of Running Springs.
 
It was not a large village.
 
Half
a dozen stores, a tavern, and a tourist lodge.
 
In the hills back of the highway were a number of vacation cabins.
 
I banged on the door of the general store,
which was also the post office and service station.
 
When I had no answer, I tried the other
stores before I crossed the highway to the tavern.
 
A note, hastily
block-printed, fluttered from the door.
 

“Running Springs and Arrowhead
evacuated.
 
Inquire at Victorville.”
 

I walked back to the car.
 
The red-haired girl was crying softly.
 
Her logjam of emotion had been broken.
 
I told Thatcher Running Springs had been
evacuated.
 
He got out and looked
thoughtfully at the gasoline pump in front of the general store; then he broke
the lock and pushed the hose nozzle into our tank.
 

Thatcher and I got back into the
car.
 
The girl was no longer crying.
 
Mom still sat
beside
her, caressing her hand; Jim moved into the front seat, between Thatcher and
me.
 

“I—I want to thank you,” the girl said,
“for taking care of me.”
 
She bit her lip
to hold back her tears.
 
“I’m Cheryl
Fineberg.
 
If we could get through to our
house at Palm Springs, we would be able to stay there.
 
We’ve plenty of food and—and—”

“Your father was the movie producer?”
Thatcher asked.