The airwaves remained dead.
In a town near the river he had his first piece of luck. Some country printer had issued a newspaper, a small and hastily assembled two-page journal turned out on a flat-bed press. The newspaper had cost him a half dollar and an unending series of questions shot at him by the printer — questions which revealed the sources of the news stories in the sheet. With the radio silent, the mails unmoving and the wire services long dead, the printer had obtained his news from travelers such as they.
It wasn't much, and much of it wasn't news.
Chicago was treated in some detail because its nearness made it important and because a local family had attempted to reach it, seeking relatives. Every city of respectable size in that area had been bombed, bombed by some mysterious enemy — speculations all pointed at one enemy but no one knew for a certainty. The survivors of those cities were pillaging farms and towns and many of them had been shot. There were not many survivors — Chicago and Peoria had died under atomic bombs, but the other cities had been hit by something else, something unknown, like a gas that killed as it spread. Sometimes the survivors of those cities had wandered into the country to die later; they apparently carried the death with them, living a few days longer only because they were physically able to withstand the original treatment.
When he could, Gary put a question to the printer.
The old man stared at him. “The army? Yeah, the army's out there.” He pointed westward. “My son saw ’em.”
“Where?”
“T'other side of the river.”
“Thanks — I've got to get going.”
The old fellow shook his head. “Can't get across.”
“No? Why not?”
“Blowed up the bridge.” He related the cold facts.
“I'll get across!”
He put the car in gear.
The bridge was a high steel structure arcing across the sky above Savannah, stretching from sheer rock cliffs on the Illinois side over to the Iowa shore. Its middle gaped and dangled openly above the river waters where an explosion had torn it apart. Gary stopped the car a quarter of a mile away because he could not force a path through the knot of automobiles clogging the highway, automobiles belonging to the group of seventy-five or a hundred people clustered at the nearer end, looking out across the river. He got out of the car and squinted his eyes against the sun, peering as they were, presently to discern a small group of soldiers milling around the Iowa terminal of the bridge.
Irma moved across the seat, slid out and stood beside him, clinging to his arm. She stared at the Iowa shore.
“Russell…?”
“Yes.” It was an answer but she didn't recognize it as such. She moved around to where she could watch his face.
“Russell… are you leaving me? Now?”
“Yes.” He pointed at the far soldiers. “I belong over there.”
“Russell, you can't leave me.”
“Watch me,” he stated flatly.
“But Russell, what will I do!” She was frightened.
Gary brought his eyes away from the opposite shore. “Irma, I don't care what you do. There's the car, take it. Can you shoot a gun? There's ammunition and food to last you awhile, there's that damned bag of glass you stole. Take it and go somewhere, anywhere, I don't care.” He raised his glance once more to the Iowa shore, squinting. “I'm going over to the other side and get back in the army. I've been out of it four or five days too long.”
“I don't know what to do!” she wailed.
“Find yourself another man to sleep with,” he told her then, and shook off her restraining hand. “You'll get along.” Deliberately he walked away from her, walked toward the knot of people standing at the bridge.
She let him go for about fifty feet. “Russell.”
He turned his head toward her. “Yes?”
“Good-bye, darling.”
“So long, nineteen. Take care of yourself.”
He approached the crowd at the bridge, worked his way through it to advance part way up the structure and stand with his hand shading his eyes, peering at Iowa land. The exploded hole in the center was too wide to cross and he realized he would have to locate a boat of some kind. In the distance he saw someone observing him through field glasses, and waved at him. The wave was not returned. Gary shrugged, turned his back on Iowa to retreat to the highway.
He approached a browned, unshaven character who looked as if he might be a riverman, a man who leaned indolently on an automobile fender and chewed tobacco. “Any boats around here?” Gary asked him.
“Not now,” the man answered him.
“I've got to get across and get back to the army.”
“You a soldier?” the riverman shot at him.
“Yes.”
The oldster spat. “Not a chance.”
“Not a chance of what? Where can I find a boat?”
The other raised a lean finger to point downstream. “There goes the last one.” Gary's squinting eyes followed the finger but could see nothing on the river. The man spat again, raked him with an amused yet bitter glance. “You can't get across. That feller didn't.”
“I don't see anyone. What fellow?”
“He's in that boat driftin' downstream. Tried to get across.”
“What happened to him? Mother of Moses, make sense, will you?”
“They shot him,” the riverman said.
Gary whirled to scan the river again but could not see any vessel on its surface. “Who shot him? What for?”
“The soldiers over there shot him. He tried to get across, I told you.”
Gary stepped backward a pace. “Are you crazy?”
“I reckon somebody is.” The man straightened up and slowly searched through his pockets, to bring out a folded and creased sheet of pink paper. He handed it to Gary. “Nobody gets across, mister. We're contaminated.”
The leaflet contained about two hundred words, a terse notice written in army doubletalk with some attempt to water it down for public consumption. It stated briefly that that part of the United States lying east of the Mississippi River was under strict quarantine, due to atomic and bacteriological bombing by the enemy, and therefore all traffic across the river was forbidden. It was hoped the quarantine could be lifted in a short while. The leaflet was signed by a Sixth Army commander; Gary knew the Sixth was headquartered on the west coast.
“Where'd you get this?” he demanded.
The other pointed a thumb across the river. “Those fellers flew over in a plane and dropped them yesterday.” He turned bitter eyes at Iowa. “Blowed up the bridge, too.”
“The plane?”
“Nope — them soldiers over there. They ain't letting nothing cross over — that feller that took my boat, he was a soldier too. Shot him.”
Gary read the leaflet again and stood there for long minutes watching the other end of the bridge, watching the soldiers clustered there. Presently his eyes picked out others patrolling the shore to the north and south of the bridge.
“Are they watching the whole damned river?”
The riverman nodded. “Seems so. We're contaminated, mister.” He reached for the leaflet, folded it and returned it to his pocket, patted the pocket for security. Again his eyes sought the river, his lost boat floating away.
Gary turned his back on the bridge to face the crowd, to thread a path through their silent ranks. He found their faces dull, mirroring nothing but helplessness and unviolent anger at what the anonymous men across the river had done to them. The people gathered there waited, simply waited, hoping the army would do something about them. Their attitudes suggested they would wait until the bridge and the highway crumbled and fell away from beneath them, waiting for someone to help them. Gary cast one sullen glance backward at a lone sentry prowling the opposite shore, and picked his way through parked automobiles to where he had left the Studebaker.