Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) (15 page)

“Yes.
 
I saw him die.
 
And mother—she
threw herself in front of me.
 
She was
trying to say something.
 
I saw her lips
open.
 
Then—then blood came from her
mouth.
 
And father slumped down and the
car rammed into something.”
 
She
clenched her fists over her eyes.
 

“Don’t think about it,” Mom said.
 
“We all lost someone back there.”
 

“I won’t give in to it again,” the girl
promised.
 

I put the car in gear and we wobbled out
of Running Springs, driving east toward Big Bear Lake.
 

“Jerry,” Mom said.
 
“I just happened to remember:
 
Dr. Clapper has a mountain cabin somewhere
near here—between Running Spring and Snow Valley.”
 

Thatcher put in, “Clapper took off for
the hills before noon; I picked up the rumor somewhere.”
 

“Jerry, if we could find him,” Mom
proposed eagerly, “I’m sure he’d put us up for a while.”
 

“I’d rather take a chance on the
Commies,” Thatcher answered.
 

Jim Riley spoke up, “I’m sure I smell
smoke!”

So did
I
.
 
Half a minute later, as we swung around a
granite shelf towering over the road, we saw the wall of fire lapping at the
pines a mile or so north of the highway.
 

“We can’t go back,” Thatcher
snapped.
 
“We’ll have to outrun it.”
 

“In this junk heap?”
I asked.
 

I pushed the car faster than I
should.
 
Once or twice, on a sharp curve,
the shimmying wheels almost sent us off the bank.
 
Yet I didn’t seem to be able to increase the
safety margin between the fire and us.
 
If anything, the smoke in the air was getting thicker.
 
The billowing white blanket blotted out the
moonlight.
 
The haze and the darkness
reduced our visibility to less than ten feet.
 

A big buck darted suddenly in front of
us.
 
I had no time to jam on the
brakes.
 
We hit him.
 
The body jolted under the wheels.
 
I heard the sharp snap of metal; the wheel
spun in my hand; and the car lurched out of control into the embankment.
 

Thatcher leaped out and looked beneath
the car.
 
He straightened slowly.
 
“Well, that finishes the axle; we start
walking now.”
 

“What about our food?” Mom demanded.
 
“And our clothes—”

“We’ll take everything we can
carry.
 
Jerry, do you know where we are?”

“We just passed Snow Valley.
 
It isn’t much more than a mile to Lakeview
Point, at the top of the grade.”
 

“We may be all right on the other
side.
 
A firebreak runs along the ridge;
if the wind’s right, there’s a good chance the fire won’t cross it.”
 

Mom and Cheryl Fineberg took the bundles
of clothing, which were lighter.
 
Thatcher and I carried the cartons of canned goods.
 
Jim Riley insisted on doing his part, so we
gave him the water thermos.
 
I’ve handled
a fifty-pound pack on camping trips and it never bothered me.
 

We made very slow progress.
 
When we heard the crackling of the fire
somewhere behind us, I was ready to drop the boxes and make a run for it.
 
But Pat Thatcher trudged on without looking
back and his courage influenced the rest of us.
 

The air sucked in by the heat dispersed
the smoke.
 
The moon was clear above us
again.
 
Looking back, I saw that the fire
had not yet crossed the highway.
 
Then,
above the roar of flames, I heard the purr of a motor.
 

“Someone’s coming!” Mom cried.
 
“He’ll pick us up and get us out of
this.”
 

Thatcher said doubtfully, “When it’s
every man for himself—”

We moved to the shoulder of the road as
a blue Cadillac swung around the curve.
 
In the red light of the fire, we all saw the driver clearly.
 
A big man, as sleekly handsome as his car,
dark-haired and bushy-browed:
 
the somber
face we had all seen so often on the TV screen.
 

“Dr. Clapper,” Mom said, with a sigh of
relief.
 
“Thank God.
 
He’ll help us.”
 

She stepped out on the road, waving her
arms.
 
It was obvious that Willie Clapper
saw her.
 
His face was suddenly torn with
a terrible fear.
 
He gunned the motor
and almost ran Mom down as he swung past us.
 
A hundred yards beyond, he stopped long enough to throw something out of
the car.
 
It burst into flame and the
fire fed along the dry carpet of pine needles.
 
We began to run, but long before we reached the spot the brush had
caught and the fire was across the highway.
 
Behind us the inferno broke out again and we were trapped in a closing
ring of flame.
 
The sound of Clapper’s
car receded in the distance.
 

Mom stood on the road, the flickering
flame throwing distorted shadows on her face.
 
“Dr. Clapper did that,” she said.
 
“He did it deliberately—Dr. Clapper!”

Thatcher said, “When a man panics—”

“But he wasn’t frightened until he saw
us!”

Thatcher motioned toward a bluff of bare
gravel rising beyond the highway.
 
“We
might still pull through if we get under there.
 
Nothing within fifty feet of it will burn.”
 

We dropped our cartons and slid down the
embankment.
 
We had to cross a deep
gully.
 
A tiny stream trickled over the
rocks.
 
The water was hot, coated with a
scum of carbon particles.
 

It was the gully that saved us.
 
We were still at the bottom, sheltered by a
block of granite eight feet high, when the sky above the fire blazed
white.
 

“They’ve dropped an H-bomb on the
desert.”
 

I heard Thatcher say that in the
split-second before the chaos tore loose around us.
 
The earth shook.
 
The bare bluff where we had meant to take
refuge came apart and the ground lashed toward us like a wave of muddy water.
 
Instinctively we fell flat in the stream,
sheltered by the pile of granite.
 
I felt
the water flowing hot against my chest.
 
I heard Mom scream.
 

The hurricane of loose earth lashed over
us.
 
I felt tiny stones cut across my
back.
 
A tree fell over the gully, hung
there for a moment, and was whipped away again.
 

Suddenly it was over.
 

None of us was seriously hurt, although
in places our skin had been rubbed raw by the abrasive force of flying
soil.
 
I stood up.
 
The air was filled with fine dust.
 
The bluff of bare earth was gone.
 

But the blast of flying gravel had
turned the front of the fire.
 
The road
to the crest was open.
 

VII
.
 
The
City, Friday,
1:30 A.M.
 
Dr. Stewart Roswell

AN HOUR or more after Maria D’Orlez left
my room the door was thrown open again.
 
Marvin Dragen III stood on the threshold, kneading his fat hands together.
 
His two strong-arm boys flung a stranger on
the floor.
 
The man—slightly built,
graying, wearing a dark business suit—was unconscious, his face badly beaten,
his white shirt spotted with blood.
 

“I’m afraid I must impose on you, Dr.
Roswell,” Dragen smirked, licking his painted lips.
 
“We have so many guests.
 
I’ll have to ask you to share your room.
 
You and Comrade Knight—
”
 
He
indicated the unconscious
man.
 
“—will enjoy having a little
chat.”
 

When they were gone, I lifted Knight
into the chair.
 
With my handkerchief I
wiped the blood away from his lips.
 
Still unconscious, he muttered in a hoarse, almost incomprehensible
whisper, “Turn the other cheek…the other cheek…”
 
His name sounded familiar, and I might have
recognized him if his face had not been distorted by welts and bruises.
 

At last he opened his eyes.
 
For a split-second I saw fear; then, a quiet
composure.
 
“Dr. Roswell!”
 
His voice was low-pitched and gentle, with a
faint undertone of a New England accent.
 
“I didn’t know you were one of them.”
 

“I’m a prisoner just as you are.”
 

The grimace behind the bruises was meant
to be a smile.
 
“They expected me to
demonstrate how to turn the other cheek.
 
I’m a Quaker, you see.
 
Religious
pacifism seems to be particularly obnoxious to them.”
 

George Knight, the Quaker:
 
I knew him then.
 
I had met him once or twice at educational
meetings.
 
He had been a banker and later
a college president; five years ago he resigned in order to give his full time
to the work of the American Friends Service Committee.
 

“They sent a young man to bring me in,”
George Knight said.
 
“A
university student.
 
He had
visited the Service Committee once.”
 

“It still isn’t clear to me what they
want us to do.”
 

“They aren’t sure themselves.
 
They’re waiting for a boss of some sort who’s
on his way from Moscow to direct the occupation.
 
The general idea is to use us in propaganda
broadcasts.
 
My young man showed me the
list of names of the men they have imprisoned here tonight.
 
Twenty-five of us, handpicked by Moscow; we
each have an unusual prominence with special groups.”
 

George Knight went on to name them
all.
 
I recognized the names; a few of
the men I knew personally.
 
Writers, lecturers, priests, a financier, two industrialists whose
farsighted labor policies had set a pattern for business, a judge, a newspaper
editor, a Senator.
 

“All twenty-five of us have one thing in
common,” I told Knight.
 
“We’ve been
Willie Clapper’s whipping boys.”
 

“I hadn’t thought of that.
 
Actually, it was his telecasts that gave us
the notoriety we have.”
 

“And built up the special groups that
give such weight to our opinions,” I added.
 
“An interesting coincidence.”
 

“You aren’t seriously suggesting —but
that’s preposterous!”

“Is it?
 
Clapper took each of us out of relative obscurity and made our names
familiar to a national audience.
 
And we
all live in the Los Angeles area, where they could round us up quickly.
 
Why didn’t Clapper dig out any
pseudo-subversives anywhere else in the country?”

“But he must have—”

“Name one.
 
In fact, Knight, name anyone Clapper attacked
who isn’t here tonight.”
 

“Your argument can’t hold water.
 
Willard Clapper’s accusations will nullify
anything we broadcast.
 
That wouldn’t
make sense, if he had been part of their conspiracy.”
 

“The Reds can work around that —if they
have Clapper here, too.”
 

“I saw the list.
 
His name wasn’t there.”
 

“He could come in of his own
accord.”
 

Far away I heard the sound of an
automobile motor.
 
It seemed ominous; the
city had been quiet too long.
 
I walked
to the window.
 
I saw the open car racing
down the boulevard.
 
With screaming
brakes it stopped in front of the Dragen mansion.
 
The driver sprang out and saluted, while a
tall, uniformed man marched smartly up the walk, followed by four Soviet
soldiers armed with submachine guns.