The Brain Eaters, page 23
“Are you talking to me about conscience?”
Kitzmiller subsided. “It is somewhat late for that, isn’t it. Nevertheless, it becomes more difficult every day for me to sustain the lie.”
“You don’t have to talk to anybody.”
“I know. Young Corey Macklin does all the talking for me. Nevertheless, the reporters are here. I see them outside the fence. I read in their eyes that they do not believe all that we are telling them.”
“It’s not important whether they believe or not. You know how vital it is that no rumors get started.”
“By rumors do you mean the true story of the brain eaters? Who the real father is?” Kitzmiller’s mouth twisted in a wry smile.
“It is vital,” the other man repeated.
“So you say.” He let several seconds go by, then sighed. “Very well. I will say nothing … for now.” He pushed himself up out of the chair. “I must get back to the laboratories.”
The other man stayed in his chair, frowning, and watched him go.
• • •
During the drive from Milwaukee back to the Biotron plant, Corey came to a decision. He saw the absurdity of charting a new direction for his future at a time when he had no assurance there would be a future. All the same, it was a decision, and he felt better having made it.
He flashed his identification at the gate and was waved through by the armed security man. Only half a dozen cars were parked now in the executives’ lot. Corey wondered grimly how many of the names still painted on the unused spaces belonged to dead men.
He entered the building and walked into the office used by Lou Zachry. The government man was talking on the telephone. He held up a hand signaling Corey to wait while he concluded the conversation.
“You’re sure of your facts?” Zachry said into the mouthpiece. Then, after a pause, he asked, “And what makes you think this Karloff is our man? … Description fits, eh? … And Raslov knows? … I see. I guess all we can do is try to head him off at this end.”
Zachry hung up the phone wearily and exhaled between clenched teeth.
“Lou,” Corey began, “I want to talk to you.”
“Sit down. How was Milwaukee?”
Corey remained standing. “Milwaukee was depressing. Lou, I want out.”
“Yeah, don’t we all. The press conference was a little sticky this afternoon without you here. I tried to work up a handout for the pool people, but I don’t have your knack. Better try to come up with a fresh angle for them next time.”
“Lou, hear me. I want out of the job. Now.”
Zachry looked at him. The square, all-American face sagged with weariness. “You can’t mean that. You’re upset about something.”
“I’m upset, all right, but I mean it like I never meant anything else. I quit. I’m through. I don’t want to do this chicken-shit job anymore.”
“Do you know what kind of a bind that leaves me in, Corey?”
“I’m sorry, but — ”
“It’s not like I can go out and hire somebody else. We all signed on here for the duration — however long or short a time that may be.”
“I don’t remember signing anything,” Corey said.
“A figure of speech.”
“I don’t feel bound by a figure of speech.”
Zachry pinched his eyes shut and massaged them with thumb and middle finger. “No, you’re right. There’s no contract. I’ve no right to keep you if you don’t want to stay.”
“Lou, don’t do a Knute Rockne number on me. The important work here is being done in the laboratories. That will get done, or it won’t, regardless of whether I’m here to hand-hold a bunch of reporters. I don’t know how much time I’ve got left, but I don’t want to spend it making up phony press releases.”
Zachry gave him a shrewd look. “What happened in Milwaukee? Did you decide to take one of the book contracts?”
“Hell, no. I don’t give a damn about writing the brain-eaters story anymore. Anyway, in a little while there might be nobody left to read it.”
“What is it, then?” Zachry asked. “I know you’re frustrated with your role here, but — ”
“It’s more than that, Lou. I’m not sure what happened to me. Maybe I got religion.”
Zachry leaned back in the chair. “Okay. Whatever it is you feel you’ve got to do, I wish you luck. You were a big help to me here. I’ll make some arrangements, but it won’t be easy. Especially now.” He inclined his head toward the telephone. “Do you know what that call was?”
Corey shook his head.
“Those Russians who came through here last month — the so-called agricultural delegation — it seems they lost one of them in San Francisco.”
“What do you mean lost?”
“The FBI botched a routine surveillance. Thought they were supposed to detain the people. Everything got confused, and by the time it was straightened out, one of them, Anton Kuryakin, was missing.”
“What of it?”
“Kuryakin is probably the Soviet Union’s top man in biochemistry. They’ve traced him to a flight out of San Francisco for Chicago. To me that means he’s coming here.”
“Isn’t that kind of a jump in logic?”
“Not really. The man is an Iron Curtain version of Kitzmiller. He tried to talk to Kitzmiller while they were here, but you know our Dr. K and his Commiephobia.”
“It sounds like you’ve got a touch of that yourself.”
“Maybe. But I’m as sure as I sit here that Kuryakin is on his way. Worse, Viktor Raslov and the two goons aren’t far behind. Just one more thing for me to worry about” — he paused for a beat — “in addition to writing handouts to keep the media pool off my back.” He looked up at Corey through knitted brows. “But none of this is your worry anymore, is it.”
“I’ll write the goddam handouts,” Corey said.
“You’re staying?”
“Gimme the ball, coach.”
Zachry came around the desk and wrung Corey’s hand. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me.” He glanced at his watch. “And just in time. I promised the pool an extra briefing this evening when you got back from Milwaukee. Told them you were checking out some important new leads.”
“You son of a bitch,” Corey said.
“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.” He gave Corey the old all-American grin.
• • •
Corey found Dr. Kitzmiller in the laboratory, huddling with his associates. Dena cocked a questioning eyebrow at him. He gave her a tell-you-later look and managed to separate Kitzmiller from the others momentarily.
“I have a briefing scheduled with the reporters in a little while,” he said, “and I need some help from you.”
“I don’t care what you tell those dummkopfs, Mr. Macklin. Just keep them out of my hair.”
“Dr. Kitzmiller, I can’t go on feeding them the same baloney. These people are not stupid. If they seem intrusive, that’s their job. This is a terrible time for our country, but the people still have a right to know what’s going on. And we have a duty to tell them something.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I want to tell them about the blood test to detect presence of the parasite.”
“I have already explained to you that we have only preliminary data. Any announcement would be premature.”
“The old rules don’t apply anymore, doctor,” Corey said heatedly. “What might have been premature last year is damn near too late now. The people out there are waiting to hear what we’re doing to try to save them. I want to tell them.”
Kitzmiller took a step back as though to have a better look at Corey. “You sound different, young man.”
“Maybe I’m thinking different.”
“Very well. If you feel it is so important, tell the people about the blood test. Make it clear, however, that this is not a cure, nor will it necessarily lead to a cure.”
“I’d like to have the specialists themselves tell the reporters about it. It was Dr. Pena and Dr. Knight who developed the test, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was, but I could not possibly spare them for — ”
“Half an hour,” Corey said. “If we give the pool reporters half an hour of real news coming from somebody with real credentials, they’ll be a lot easier to live with.”
Dr. Kitzmiller sighed heavily. “Everywhere I turn today I meet with opposition. Very well, take my doctors, but not one minute more than your half hour, or I swear I will bar you from the laboratories, too.”
“It’s a deal.”
Corey put out a hand, but Kitzmiller ignored it and hurried back to his teammates.
• • •
Drs. Pena and Knight proved to be an unqualified hit with the reporters. Marcus Pena was relaxed and friendly, with the unlined face of a teenager and a respect for the intelligence of his audience. Dorothea Knight said little, but she had a sensational chest, which was more than enough for the news-starved media. At last television had something to show pictures of.
After the briefing was over, Corey returned the two doctors to Kitzmiller’s care and retired to his cramped little room. He turned the lamp to the wall, sat down on the bed, and pulled off his shoes. Then he lay back with his hands clasped behind his head and stared at the ceiling. A spider that had somehow gotten into the pesticide palace was optimistically spinning a web up in one corner. While Corey’s eyes followed the progress of the little creature, his mind was many miles away.
A knock at the door.
“Enter.”
The door opened, and Dena Falkner stood there. Her caramel-colored hair was down and was given a soft halo effect by the brighter light out in the hall.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He hesitated, then said, “Not really.”
“Okay.” She turned to leave.
“No, wait, Dena. I guess I do want to talk.”
She came back in and closed the door.
“How did you know?” he asked.
“You’re different somehow.”
“Lou Zachry said almost the same thing to me. Even Kitzmiller. I must be easy to read.”
“You’re not so tough.”
“In more ways than one,” he said. “I wish I’d thought to pick up some bourbon while I was in Milwaukee.”
Dena pulled a flask from her laboratory smock and held it up for his inspection. “Is Canadian all right?”
“What’s that, a specimen bottle?”
“It’s Canadian Club. But if you’re squeamish — ”
“No,” he said quickly. “Canadian is terrific. And you must be clairvoyant.”
“Sympatico,” she corrected.
Corey produced two tumblers. They poured the whiskey, sat down side by side on the bed, and toasted each other silently.
“Doc Ingersoll’s dead,” he said.
Dena touched his hand.
“He shot himself today when he knew the brain eaters were in him.”
“Oh, Corey, I’m so sorry.”
“I was with him this morning. I was right there in Doc’s apartment when those little bastards were eating him up. The pain he felt must have been unspeakable. And I didn’t even notice.”
He paused for a swallow. Dena watched him silently.
“I was too wrapped up in my own miserable little complaints to notice that my best friend was in agony. How’s that for sensitive?”
“We’re all kind of unfocused these days,” she said.
“I can’t blame it on ‘these troubled times,’” he said. “It’s me. It’s the way I’ve always been. I’ve spent the better part of my life looking for the Big Story. Not because I gave a damn for the story but because it was going to make Corey Macklin rich and famous. A celebrity. Doc told me I was going to be a celebrity. That’s all the brain eaters meant to me. They were my Big Story. So a few people died. I couldn’t help that. So then a lot of people died. I still didn’t understand. Then Doc died. The one man in the world who was my friend. He damn near died in front of my eyes, and I didn’t see it. Some friend.”
Dena poured more whiskey into their tumblers. She said, “Okay, so you were a bastard. What are you going to do about it?”
“When I came back here, I was going to quit.”
“That’s no answer.”
“I see that now. I guess I’ll hang around and do whatever I can to be useful. Who knows? We might beat this thing yet.”
“Who knows.” She grinned at him.
“You sure don’t allow a guy much time for self-pity.”
“Not on my booze.”
“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.
