“Nothing here,” said Joel.
“No, but look at the river there. There’s something going on underneath the surface.”
As they watched, a bubble broke the gray surface.
The seven squad members pulled back. “Think that’s it?” said Willie Weiker in a hushed voice.
“If it was we wouldn’t still be talking,” said Joel.
“Why didn’t they issue us gas masks?” Bruce wanted to know.
“Didn’t have ’em, all got requisitioned.” Paul Quint’s brother was in supply.
“By who?”
“Who the hell knows, Army, FBI...”
“Let’s get upwind of it anyway,” said Joel. They scrambled around to the north of the effluvial belch and considered. There were few buildings on this stretch of river. One, a weather-beaten cape, sat on a small rise behind them. Smoke rose from the center chimney.
“Thought everybody’d been excavated,” said Willie.
“Evacuated. Yeah, they should have been.”
“Let’s take a look.” Sounding like a better idea than digging at the bank of the gassy river, they all plodded up. Joel banged on the door. No answer. He hit the door again.
“Yeah what?’ The gravely male voice was muffled and irritated.
“Open up, National Guard.”
“Come back later. I’m not up.”
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Pretend I’m not.”
“There’s something in the river we need to ask you about.”
Silence. Then footsteps, the door opened. An unshaven man in long underwear and his middle fifties yawned at them. A rifle dangled loosely from his right hand. “A body?”
At the sight of the weapon several in the squad put hands on their pieces.
“Easy,” said Joel to the other Guardsmen. “Why the gun?”
“Looters. That’s why I’m here.”
“Is this your property?”
“Damn right.”
“All the way to the river?”
“Yeah. So?”
“There’s something entering the river there, that’s what. You know anything about it?”
“Yeah!” Willie chimed in. “We’re looking for someone putting biological material in the river. That wouldn’t be you, would it?”
“Shut up, Willie,” said Bruce. “That’s classified stuff.”
“It’s the seventeenth, ain’t it? Where’s he going with it now? Answer the question, Bud.”
“Jesus! For that they’re callin out the National Guard?” The man rubbed his unshaven jaw in awe.
“It’s him!” yelled Willie pointing his rifle at the man’s middle. “Drop your rifle, Bud!” Others raised their pieces.
The man’s weapon thumped against the doorsill. “Okay! Okay! You got me. It was that Christly building inspector, wasn’t it? Damn geek has been out to get me since day one. But the National Guard!”
“We always get our man,” said Willie proudly, pulling a length of rope from his knapsack.
Joel looked at the man curiously. “Why didn’t you wait until noon?”
“And in the meantime pound sand up my ass?”
“Don’t get smart,” said Willie, wishing he could snap on a pair of handcuffs as he tied the man’s hands behind him.
“Innocent people will die.” Joel felt the wind harder on his cheek. Good. Blow the stuff away from their home and Carol. “Where do I turn it off?”
“There’s a switch at the head of the cellar stairs,” the man said, shaking his head as if in a fog.
“Why kill innocent people?” Bruce wanted an answer to Joel’s comment.
“Me? How?”
“Poisoning the river.”
“Poisoning? That’s just a load of shit!”
“Don’t deny it.”
“I just admitted it!”
Joel came back from the cellar stairs. “It ends with a pipe in the river?”
“Yes.”
“Where does it start?”
“At my toilet! I just told you! Je-sus! An overloaded cesspool and they send the fucking National Guard.”
The soldiers looked at each other as the sun rose higher in the sky.
Chapter 37
Wally was awake when the knock came at the door. He turned on the light and looked at his watch. Four AM. Six o’clock in New England. Six hours left. He hadn’t slept; there must be something he could still do. He’d gone over the searches of the last three days, by air and land but mostly air. There was no trace of Hudson or any indication as to what happened to him. It was a big desert.
“Yes?”
“It’s Loni, Mr. Carver. Can I come in?”
“Wait.” He padded to the door and opened it to let her in. She stood there indecisively. “You look terrible. What’s the matter?”
“They saw birds.”
“What?”
“The pilot. Of one of the search planes. There were a lot of birds circling over a gully.”
“You mean vultures.”
“Yes.”
“Well, come in, come in. There’s no point to us talking in the hall. That doesn’t mean he’s dead, or even that it’s Hudson. Why didn’t I hear about it? Why didn’t they land and see what it is?”
“He’s in a fixed wing; there was no place to land. A posse, or whatever they call it, some men, left an hour ago. He’s gone back to his plane to guide them.”
“Why not one of the helicopters?”
“They’ve gone back to their regular duties. Three days was all they could spare them for.”
“Why wasn’t I told? How come you know?”
“He...Jimmie, he’s the pilot, just told me.”
“At three o’clock in the morning?”
“We been up, talking. He didn’t tell me until now, I guess cause he felt it was bad news.”
“You’ve been up till now? Never mind. Which way did they go?”
“We can listen in by radio at the police station.”
There was no news at four or four-thirty. At five-fifteen the radio crackled.
“Air One Oh Three to Base. Ground is only a half-mile from the site. Their radio is out, but we’re circling the arroyo, joining the other flyers.”
“He means the birds,” said Loni.
“I know that,” growled Carver.
They waited. Ground was a four-wheel drive rescue truck.
“Air One Oh Three to Base. They’re at the arroyo...They’ve found something, they’re bringing a stretcher...” Loni bit her lip. Carver leaned his forehead on his hand. “They’re coming back out...there’s someone on the stretcher...it’s a man. They’re looking at him. And...” There was silence for nearly thirty seconds.
“And what?” exploded Carver into the microphone. “Finish the damn sentence.”
“They’ve pulled a sheet over his head.”
Chapter 38
Frances Ingalls and Bob Gold sat watching a growing disaster. The third member of the audience in front of the Carver television set was Andre Adams, who had spent the previous week prodding New England state governments to do more to prevent what was on its way to becoming one of the most horrific environmental disasters of all time. His efforts, coming on top of all the other pressures facing these civil servants, reduced the number of responses to his calls to zero. He had thus decided that a visit to northern New England, which, being far enough north to be nearly at the rivers’ headwaters, hadn’t been evacuated, and was preferable to being caught up in escaping mobs. Bob Gold was only too happy to have someone house sit his cottage while he, himself, recuperated at Wally’s.
Film clips taken around New England looked more and more like a war zone, which was just the way Gold saw it. Someone had declared war on the six state region, and suddenly that secure countryside, which hadn’t been endangered during the lifetime of anyone living, was threatened with catastrophe. Few clues were handed out by authorities so the media had a guessing field day. What was known was that those living on major rivers were told to move out, and given no reason. The task proved impossible in metropolitan areas like Boston where everyone was within a few miles of the Charles River. Residents there were advised to stay inside with windows and doors closed. This suggestion not only wasn’t much comfort to anyone who dwelled in New England’s largest and most likely target, but proved particularly unsettling to those with more active imaginations, prompting many, with unprintable suggestions as to what the authorities could do with that advice, to scramble out of the bulls eye. Many of the weak - and some of the strong that got blindsided - were trampled at South Station, as proper Bostonians improperly attempted to stuff themselves aboard overloaded trains. An aerial shot of a freight train flashed on the screen; it was leaving the station crawling with what looked like banditos in a Mexican movie to Frances and ants on a chocolate bar to Bob.