Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) (22 page)

“If you want war on your terms, we take
what we like,” the teacher answered, lifting her rifle in a gesture that was
unmistakable.
 
“On ours, you have a
choice.
 
Make up your mind,
Russian—that’s the American way—but don’t overlook all the consequences.”
 

Yorovich and I took the four men to a
sporting goods store, herding them carefully away from the racks of
weapons.
 
The Cossack took us at our
word.
 
We said he could take what he
wanted and he did just that.
 
He squeezed
his long, muscular legs into corduroy riding breeches, and he found a
flame-colored, silk shirt.
 
Around his
waist he tied a broad, yellow scarf.
 
He
was delighted with what he saw when he examined himself in the full-length
mirror.
 
One by one the others stripped
off their uniforms.
 
Naked, they pawed
through the display of clothing, whispering over the workmanship and awed by
the abundance.
 

We fed the men at a table in the hotel
lobby.
 
None of us was able to eat so
soon, except for Jim Riley and Ted Fisher.
 
The two kids tore themselves away from their games long enough to plow
through plates of beans and a quart of milk.
 

Willie Clapper had not come into the
hotel when we were feeding the men.
 
I
didn’t want to make an issue of it in front of them.
 
Afterward Pat Thatcher and I tried to find
him, without any luck.
 
There were scores
of places where he could have hidden in that deserted village.
 
Pat and I were both certain he hadn’t gone
far.
 

“This could be dynamite,” Pat told
me.
 

I agreed with him.
 
“I suppose Willie’s planning to steal the
Caddy or the jeep somehow and make tracks for L. A.”
 

“Let him go, Jerry.
 
In this set-up he’s nothing but bait.
 
They’ll keep sending more men after him as
long as he’s here.”
 

“It would be a hell of a lot worse if he
got away.
 
They’d send bombing planes,
then, to wipe us out.”
 

“They can smash up the village.
 
We’d take to the hills; we’ll have to sooner
or later, in any case.”
 

“You called him bait, Pat.
 
Maybe that’s not such a bad idea.
 
Let the men come.
 
We’ll pull the same thing we did today.”
 

He took a cigar from his pocket and
jammed it into my mouth.
 
“It’s your
world, Jerry.
 
If I’d been giving the
orders this afternoon, they’d all be dead.”
 

“Tonight we’ll set up a watch in the
hotel lobby.
 
You and
Yorovich and I.”
 

“It looks as if we’ll have to trust that
Russian,” Pat admitted.
 
“You were right
about him, Jerry.”
 

“We’ll give him the first watch, up to
midnight.
 
I’ll take it from there until
four.
 
You cover the rest.”
 

“You’re biting off the tough part for
yourself.”
 

“I know that.”
 
I pulled on my cigar.
 
“It’s my world, you tell me.
 
I’m ready to fight for it.”
 

We had our community bedded down inside
the hotel by eight o’clock.
 
Cheryl and I
rounded up Hank Jenkins; he was willing to call it a day when we let him take a
bottle to his room.
 
The four Russians
we put into two storage rooms on the first floor back of the lobby.
 
It seemed the safest place to keep them,
since Thatcher,
Yorovich
and I were sleeping in the
lobby.
 
The men still had to be
considered prisoners; I had no illusions about that.
 

Boris Yorovich shouldered a submachine
gun and posted himself on the walk in front of the hotel.
 
Pat Thatcher lay on a leather lounge under a
woolen blanket.
 
Moonlight slanted
through a window on the old man’s face; I saw the deep lines of
exhaustion.
 
Pat had given us everything
he had.
 
I began to understand why he had
made such an effort to wake me up to my responsibilities.
 
When Pat thrust the cigar between my teeth,
he was resigning a leadership he hadn’t the energy to hold.
 
The act had been a symbol to him, perhaps
more so than it was to me.
 
When Pat was
asleep, I walked to the front window and stood looking at the street.
 
Fifty feet away I saw Yorovich’s shadow, grotesquely
lengthened by the angle of moonlight.
 
The window was open.
 
I heard the
far cry of an animal in the forest above the village; I heard the wind in the
pines.
 

And I felt terribly alone—a hollow,
empty solitude.
 
I realized how many
decisions Pat had made for us.
 
That job
had become mine.
 
I couldn’t run back
into my boyhood because I wasn’t ready for anything else.
 
I had to be ready.
 
The Soviet invasion,
whether I liked it or not, had made me a man.
 

I felt a hand on my shoulder.
 
I turned and saw Cheryl in the darkness
behind me.
 
“I want to talk, Jerry,” she
whispered.
 
“Let’s go outside.
 
We mustn’t waken Pat.”
 

I picked up a rifle and stuffed
cartridges in my shirt pocket.
 
“In case
we meet Willie Clapper,” I explained.
 

Cheryl and I passed Yorovich and walked
toward the lake.
 
The moon was very
bright; stars blazed in the sky with the special brilliance given them by
mountain heights.
 
Cheryl drew me down on
the pine needles beside her.
 

“I was so sure of it in my room, Jerry,
but now—
”
 
She
took my hand.
 
Her fingers were hot and
trembling.
 
“I was thinking about my
parents.
 
Objectively.
 
I haven’t done that before.
 
I knew I was alone.
 
Everything is gone.
 
We’re never going back to it again.”
 

“You grew up, Cheryl.
 
We can’t be school kids any more.”
 

“Growing up—but even
more than that, Jerry.”
 
She waved her hand
toward the hills.
 
“Out there is death
and horror, a world falling apart.
 
So
little of it has touched us really, but I feel it like a terrible
nightmare.”
 

“We have to build a new world on—”

“I’m not talking about a world,
Jerry.”
 
Her voice dropped to a whisper,
like the gentle lapping of the lake water on the stony beach.
 
“Tonight I became a woman, and a woman makes
the abstract into something personal.
 
It’s the way we are.
 
The world is
screaming death in my soul.
 
Death;
death!
 
And inside of me is a cry of
life—far stronger, far more real.
 
Let
the politicians tear the world down; a woman brings it alive again.”
 

Suddenly she pressed her lips on mine.
 
I felt a surge of excitement—like ice; like
fire—blaze through my body.
 
My arms
tightened around her.
 
“You’re sure,
Cheryl?” I asked.
 
“You’ve made up your
mind?”

“Not by the old standards, Jerry.
 
Not love—the way my father had it in the
movies he made.”
 

We lay back on the knoll.
 
The moon glowed above us, making a scarlet
halo of her red hair.
 
Her hands fumbled
at my shirt.
 
I felt the caress of her
fingers on my chest…

Afterward Cheryl lay in my arms, the
filmy web of her hair against my cheek.
 

She raised herself on her elbow and
looked into my face, laughing softly.
 
“You know, Jerry, I don’t think I can truthfully say I picked you for
looks.”
 
With her finger she traced the
muscle football had built across my chest and belly.
 
I felt no embarrassment, as I would have a
week before.
 

The ecstasy burned in me again and I
drew Cheryl against my breast.
 

And then our dream was shattered.
 
Far away we heard a pistol shot and the high
hum of an automobile motor.
 
I pulled
Cheryl to her feet and snatched up my rifle.
 
We ran over the uneven ground toward the hotel.
 

VII
.
 
The
City—Saturday
morning Chen Phiang

I WALKED slowly away from my cousin’s
home, carrying his strange gift in my hands.
 

I stopped in an alleyway where none of
our men could see what I did, and I broke open a bottle by cracking the cap
against a wall.
 
The brown fluid was
refreshing, sweet, in no way unpleasant.
 
I drank it slowly, savoring the unfamiliar tang.
 
This was a small thing, compared to the
enormous crime I committed in rescuing the two intellectuals, yet the American
drink had more meaning to me.
 
It was a
tangible act of defiance.
 

Nonetheless, it seemed an odd gift.
 
Had my cousin understood the feeling of
independence it would give me?
 
Perhaps.
 
But his eyes
had said more than his words.
 
“Drink no
water.”
 
For some reason that was
important.
 

As I walked back to my hotel I passed
the Soviet headquarters house.
 
The
sidewall was broken and burned, but there was no other damage.
 
General Zergoff was still stationed there,
for the heavy guard was still around the house.
 
A red ambulance stood in the street.
 
The rear door was open.
 
Three
doctors in Russian uniforms were examining a man strapped to a wheeled
stretcher.
 

I saw General Zergoff storm out of the
house, trailing a retinue of clerks.
 
The
General looked at the man on the stretcher.
 
He issued orders to the doctors, chopping the air with his hand in the
assertive gesture so typical of the political commissar.
 
The doctors bundled the man back into the
ambulance.
 
The vehicle shot down the
boulevard, its siren screaming.
 

I went into a dark booth far at the back
and I opened another bottle of Coke.
 
I
drank it slowly and again I had that feeling of wellbeing that came with
honest defiance.
 
I was one of them and
I was not afraid.
 

Sound trucks came through the streets,
blasting an official bulletin issued by the Soviet High Command.
 
We were not to be alarmed by the large number
of casualties.
 
The men were not victims
of an American poison—the Fascist enemies of the people hadn’t that much
ingenuity—but of their own conscientiousness.
 
Some troops during the night had come down too close to the bombed
areas.
 
They were suffering minor
radioactive burns.
 
But they would be
given expert care by Soviet physicians, and each man was automatically awarded
the Order of Lenin for his courage.
 

The confusion in the streets was the
situation I wanted.
 
As another red
ambulance swung past the door, I suddenly realized how I could get my two
intellectuals out of the city.
 

I left the saloon and ran toward my
cousin’s house.
 

VIII.
 
The
Valley—Saturday morning.
 
Jerry Bonhill

BORIS YOROVICH lay on the walk, blood
spilling over his shirt from a bullet wound in his shoulder.
 
The Cadillac was gone.
 
I bent over the Russian.
 
“Clapper!” he whispered.
 
He pointed weakly toward the door of the
hotel.
 

“Take care of him, Cheryl,” I
snapped.
 
She nodded.
 

In the lobby I groped for the matches
and lighted the oil lamp we had left as an emergency light on the registration
desk.
 
I saw Pat Thatcher.
 
His skull was smashed.
 
His shirt had been ripped open in Clapper’s
eagerness to get the keys to the Cadillac.
 

Numbly I pulled the blanket over Pat’s
face.
 
For a moment I was paralyzed by
grief.
 
Thatcher’s murder had more
meaning to me than the death of my own father.
 

I heard voices in the upper hall and I
shook the weight of grief from my mind.
 
One of the storage room doors burst open and Feodor Psorkarian hobbled
across the threshold.
 
The Cossack’s feet
and hands were tied.
 
He was working his
head furiously to free himself from the yellow scarf gagging him.
 
I cut him free.
 
He cried his excited, Russian anger.
 
Then, remembering, I wouldn’t understand him,
he said in almost equally chaotic English,

“After him we go!
 
That spy; that saboteur!
 
He came; he threatened—like the secret
police.
 
Always the
fear.
 
Always
the guns!”
 
The Cossack pulled me
toward the door.
 
“Our
jeep.
 
You have the keys, my
American friend.
 
We still have time to
stop them!”

I looked in his eyes.
 
What I saw made my decision for me.
 
I threw him my rifle.
 
“O.K., Cossack, let’s go.”
 

We leaped into the jeep.
 
I drove.
 
Psorkarian steadied my rifle on the hood while he held his eye on the
road ahead of us.

He was calm enough then to give a
coherent picture of what had happened.
 
Willie Clapper broke into the storage room, which the Cossack shared
with Andrei Trenev.
 
Clapper was armed
with a pistol he had stolen from a village sporting goods shop that
afternoon.
 
He asked their help to
escape.
 
The Cossack refused.

After persuasion failed, Clapper tried
threats.
 
He said he would turn all the
prisoners over to the secret police, but if the Cossack and Trenev would help
him he promised them leniency.
 
The
Cossack had heard Russian promises before; he wasn’t buying any.
 
Trenev, of course, was frightened into
obedience.
 
He stood at attention and
saluted Clapper.
 
Psorkarian swung his
fist at Trenev, but Clapper struck the Cossack with the handle of his pistol.

We were two hundred yards behind the
Cadillac when Clapper first spotted us.
 
Andrei Trenev opened fire with his rifle.
 
Feodor Psorkarian adjusted his sights
casually.
 
He muttered, “
try
to outrun a Cossack, will you?”
 
He took deliberate aim and fired.
 
The rear window of the Cadillac shattered.

He fired twice in rapid succession.
 
Both rear tires on the Cadillac blew.
 
The car lurched into the embankment, slid
along the granite, and spun off the highway.
 
We heard the crash of rending metal and glass as I jammed on the brakes.

The wreckage lay precariously suspended
on a narrow ledge forty feet below the road.
 
We heard no sound except the slow turning of a wheel suspended in
space.
 
The Cossack and I climbed down
the rocks.
 
Clapper was dead, the post of
the steering column rammed like a lance through his chest.
 
Andrei Trenev lay face up on the ledge, his
right leg bent grotesquely beneath him.
 
He was conscious; his face was twisted with pain and terror.
 

The Cossack stood over him, holding the
rifle like a club.
 
“Shall I finish him?”

“No!”
 
I threw the back of my arm against his wrist.
 
In his surprise Psorkarian almost lost his
balance.
 
“We’ll take him back to the
village.”

We made a stretcher of our shirts and
carried him back to the jeep.
 
There was
flask of vodka in the pocket; Psorkarian tipped it against Trenev’s lips and
the pain washed slowly out of his eyes.
 
The fear went with it.

“You’re helping me,” the boy whispered.

It was close to midnight when we
returned to the hotel.
 
We carried Trenev
into the lobby and lay him on a lounge.
 
The others were all waiting for us.
 
Boris Yorovich sat propped in a chair, his shoulder wrapped with
gauze.
 
Janice Gage was beside him,
holding his hand.

Hank said he would sit up with his
patients.
 
This was important for the restoration
of his ego.

The next morning we buried Pat Thatcher
beside the Negro’s grave, on the knoll overlooking the lake.

We were all there; even Andrei Trenev
had been carried to the knoll on a stretcher.
 
I was acutely aware of my own position.
 
Subtly each of them acknowledged my leadership, the choice Pat had
made.
 
They were watching me, wondering
if I could carry it off.
 
I knew that,
too.
 
A kid of nineteen!—I felt one
moment of cold panic, and Cheryl’s hand was in mine and I was a man again.

In dead silence I shook the hand of each
of the Russians.
 
I turned very
deliberately and, with Cheryl beside me, walked back toward the hotel.
 

“Was that wise?” she asked.
 
“So soon?”

“There’s nothing else we can do,
Cheryl.
 
Pat told me Clapper was bait as
long as we kept him here.
 
He’s dead; we
can’t get rid of him, now.
 
The Russians
will keep sending men after him.
 
We
have to trust the ones we have.
 
A
military stand is ridiculous.”
 

And we didn’t have long to wait.
 
Less than half an hour after the others
returned to the hotel, we heard a motor on the road east of the village.
 
I told Yorovich to give our Russians their
submachine guns; we’d try the same type of ambush that had worked so successfully
the day before.
 

I heard the truck motor.
 
I heard Yorovich’s shout and the burst of
gunfire.
 
A confusion
of voices.
 
More
gunfire.
 
Then silence.
 
Slow footsteps on the marble tile of the
lobby.
 
Feodor Psorkarian stood at the
coffee shop door.
 
He held the submachine
gun at an angle in his hand.
 
Smoke still
curled from the barrel.
 
Blood trickled
from a wound in his arm.
 

“We didn’t do this as neatly as you did,
Jerry,” he said.
 
“Five we killed; only
nine surrendered.”
 

“And our people?”

“Just this scratch.”
 
He touched his wound negligently.
 
“Andrei fought like a demon.
 

“There’s something else, Jerry.
 
Three of the prisoners—and I’ll swear not a
bullet touched them—are lying in the road spitting up blood.
 
A couple of others look damn sick.”
 

I ran toward the street.
 
“Where’s Hank Jenkins?”

“He’s already out there.”
 

IX. The
Valley—Saturday afternoon.
 
Dr. Stewart
Roswell

BEFORE noon on the second day of the war
George Knight and I escaped Los Angeles.
 
Chen Phiang developed an amazing ingenuity.
 

Originally, the Communist soldier planned
to take only Knight and myself out of Los Angeles.
 
But Lin Yeng’s family went with us as
well.
 
“By tomorrow this will be a city
of death.
 
We have no reason to stay,”
Lin said.
 

Six of us crowded into
the body of the panel truck.
 
It was
hot and it became unbearably stuffy.
 

We remained locked in the back of the
truck until we reached the Arrowhead highway at Running Springs.
 
Chen Phiang got out, then, and opened the
rear door.
 
“I think there will be no
more guard posts,” he said.
 
“But perhaps
it is not wise to stop here.
 
I do not
know your mountains.”
 

“By tomorrow it won’t matter,” Lin Yeng
told him.
 

“The sickness?” his cousin asked.
 
“Is it truly an American poison or—”

“A poison, yes.
 
But it’s something they did to
themselves.”
 
Lin Yeng described the
effect of radiation on the city water supply.
 
The Chinese soldier grimaced.
 
He
looked at his uniform, wiping his hands over the rough cloth.
 
Suddenly he ripped off the tunic and flung it
away.
 
He kicked off his boots and
removed the paratrooper’s trousers.
 
He
stood naked on the deserted road, a powerful man having the muscular grace of
a tiger.
 
With his uniform gone, I seemed
to see his face for the first time—the handsome, strongly intelligent face of a
boy.
 
His hair was shaved close.
 
His eyes glowed with the hope of youth—the
same idealism I had seen in my classrooms for as long as I had been
teaching.
 

The Orientals did not have our western
mores about modesty, and the Chinese family was undisturbed by what Chen Phiang
had done.
 

Knight got out of the truck and hobbled
a short distance, exercising his muscles.
 
But I saw that it was very painful to him.
 
His face went white and it was beaded with
sweat.
 
I helped him back to the
truck.
 
He leaned against the door,
breathing hard.
 

“Stewart,” he said, “I told you this
catastrophe gives us a magnificent opportunity.
 
We mustn’t lose it.”
 

“Not all of us, I’m afraid, are going to
see it quite the way you do.”
 

“If I could only persuade people to know
the good that is in their own hearts!
 
If
I could talk to them—
”
 
He
put his hand on my arm.
 
“By tomorrow, Stewart, the troops in Los Angeles will be at our
mercy.
 
Sick men dying
in agony.
 
There are two things
our people could do.
 
We could take
revenge.
 
We could kill them all.
 
But suppose for the first time in human
history we met force and hatred with love!”

“You might pull off your miracle,
Knight, if you could speak to every individual in Los Angeles as you have to
me.”
 

Chen Phiang appeared wearing jeans and a
plaid shirt.
 
Back in the truck Lin Yeng
and I rode in front with Chen, to give the others more room.
 
Lin wanted us to drive as far as Big Bear;
since it was larger than any other mountain
resort,
he
thought we might have a chance of finding people there.
 

Once we stopped to round up some
refugees.
 
It was three hours before we
found them all and helped them back to the truck.
 

Because we had stopped so long on the
road, it was five o’clock in the afternoon—Saturday, the second day of the
war—before our panel truck entered the village of Big Bear.
 
A tall, broad-shouldered
boy of nineteen—with the penetrating gaze
of a man; a frightening kind
of maturity—met us in front of the hotel.
 
His name was Jerry Bonhill.