CHAPTER III
All that night, his car rolled across an unlighted, empty world. Wary of the great thruways, he followed the lesser roads. And every village, every town, every hillside or valley farm, was dark and silent. All this area that included Pennsylvania had been evacuated two years ago, and the people of these houses were now living the new life in the sprawling new cities on another planet.
Twice Wales stopped his car and cut the motor and lights, and waited, listening. Once he was sure that he heard a distant humming from far back along the highway, but it fell silent, and though he waited with gun in hand, no one came. So each time he drove on, but he could not rid himself of the conviction that someone followed him secretly.
With morning, his spirits lifted a little. He was only an hour's drive from the old Pennsylvania-Ohio line where the town of Castletown was. And there, if anywhere, he must find the trail to Lee and Martha Kendrick.
Kendrick, to the world, had become identified with the asteroid that was plunging ever nearer in its fateful orbit. It had, from the first, been called Kendrick's World. Kendrick, if anyone could, might convince those who had begun to doubt Doomsday. If Kendrick could be found....
Wales drove down a winding hillside road into the town of Butler, ten minutes later—and ran smack into a barricade.
The moment he saw the cars drawn up to block the highway, he tried to swing around fast. But he wasn't quick enough.
A voice said, "Kill the motor and get out."
Men had come out of the bushes that, in two years, had grown up close to the highway. They were unshaven men, wearing dirty jeans, with rifles in their hands. There were two on one side of the highway, and an older man on the other.
Wales looked at their dusty faces. Then he cut the motor and got out of the car.
They took his weapons, and the older man said, "You can put your hands down now. And come along with us."
"Where?"
"You'll see."
One man remained, searching Wales' car. The other two, their rifles on the ready, walked beside Wales down the long winding hill highway into the old town.
"I thought all these towns were evacuated," said Wales.
"They were, a long time ago," said the older man.
"But you men—"
"We're not from here. Now anything more you want to know, you ask Sam Lanterman. He'll have some things to ask you."
The main street of the town looked to Wales vaguely like a gypsy camp. Dusty cars were parked double along it, and there was a surprising number of men and women and kids about. The men all carried rifles or wore belted pistols. The children were pawing around in already-looted stores, and most of the women looked with a blank, tired stare at Wales and his guard.
They took him into the stone courthouse. In the courtroom, dimly lighted and smelling of dust and old oak, four men were seated around what had once been a press-table. One of Wales' captors spoke to the man at the head of the table.
"Got a prisoner, Sam," he said importantly. "This fellow. He was driving from the east."
"From the east, was he?" said Lanterman. "Well, now, he might just have come from the south and swung around town, mightn't he?"
He looked keenly at Wales. He was a gangling man of forty with a red face and slightly bulging blue eyes that had a certain fierceness in them. The others at the table were two heavy men who looked like farmers, and a small, dark, vicious-looking young man.
"You didn't," said Lanterman, "just happen to come from Pittsburgh, did you?" They all seemed to watch him with a certain tenseness, at this.
Wales shook his head. "I came from the east, all the way across state."
"And where were you heading?"
Wales didn't like the implications of that "were". He said, "To Castletown. I'm looking for my girl. It's where she used to live."
"People in Castletown been gone two years," Lanterman said promptly. "To Mars—the damn fools!" And he suddenly laughed uproariously.
More and more worried, Wales said, "She wrote me she wasn't going to leave till I came."
"You're not one of those Evacuation Officials, are you?" Lanterman asked shrewdly.
"A lot more likely he comes from Pittsburgh," said the dark young man.
Wales, sensing an increasing suspicion and danger, thought his safest bet was honest indignation. He said loudly,
"Look, I don't know what right you have to stop me when I'm trying to reach my girl! I'm not an Evac official and I don't know what all this talk about Pittsburgh means. Who made you the law around here?"
"Son," said Lanterman softly, "there isn't any law any more. The law left here when all the people left—all except a few who wouldn't be stampeded off Earth by a lot of moonshiny science nonsense."
Wales said, as though himself dubious, "Then you don't think there's really going to be Doomsday, like they say?"
"Do you think so?"
Wales pretended perplexity. "I don't know. All the big people, the Government people and all, have told us over and over on the teevee, about how Kendrick's World will hit the Earth—"
"Kendrick's so-and-so," said one of the farmer-looking men, disgustedly.
"I thought," said Wales, "that I'd see if my girl was going to leave, before I decided."
He wondered if he weren't laying on the stupid yokel a little too thick. But he had realized his danger from the first.
All the bands of non-evacuees who remained in closed-out territory, making their own law, were dangerous. He'd found that out in Morristown only last night. And Lanterman and his men seemed especially suspicious, for some reason.
"Look," said Lanterman, and then asked, "What's your name, anyway?"
"Jay Wilson," said Wales. His name had been in the news, and he'd better take no chances.
"Well, look now, Wilson," said Lanterman, "you don't always want to believe what people tell you. Me, I'm from West Virginia. Had a farm there. On the TV it told us how this Kendrick had found out Earth was going to be destroyed, how, everyone would have to go to Mars. My woman said, 'Sam, we'll have to go.' I said, 'Don't you get in a panic. People have always been predicting the end of the world. We'll wait a while and see.' Lot of our neighbors packed up and went off. People came to tell us we'd better get going too. I told them, I don't panic easy, I'm waiting a while."
Lanterman laughed. "Good thing I did. More'n a year went by, and the world didn't end. And then it turned out that this here Kendrick that started the whole stampede—he hadn't left Earth. Not him! Got all the fools flying out to Mars on his say-so, but wasn't fool enough to go himself. Fact is, people say he's hiding out so the Evacuation officials can't make him go. Well, if Kendrick himself won't go, that predicted it all, why should we go?"
And that, Wales thought despairingly, was the very crux of the problem. Where was Lee Kendrick anyway? He must know that his remaining on Earth was being fatally misinterpreted by people like these.
Lanterman added, with a certain complacency, "All the fools went, and left their houses, cars, cities. Left 'em to those of us who wasn't fools! That's why we gathered together. Figured we might as well pick up what they'd left. We got near a hundred men together, I said, 'Boys, let's quit picking over these empty villages and take a real rich town. Let's go up to Pittsburgh.'"
One of the farmer-men said gloomily, "Only this Bauder had the idea first. His bunch took over Pittsburgh, as we found out."
Lanterman's eyes flashed. "But they're not going to keep it! Since we first tried it, we've got a lot more men. One or two joining us every few days. We'll show Bauder's outfit something this time!"
Of a sudden, the strangeness of the scene struck at Wales. A few years before, this quiet old country courthouse had been the center of a busy, populous town, of a county, a nation, a world.
Now world and nation were drained of most of their people. An Earth almost de-populated lay quiet, awaiting the coming of the destruction from space. Yet men who did not believe in that destruction, men in little bands, were, with the passing of all law, contending for the possession of the great evacuated cities.
Lanterman stood up. "Well, what about it, Wilson? You want to join up with us and take Pittsburgh away from Bauder? Man, the loot there'll be—liquor, cars, food, everything!"
Wales knew he had no real choice, that even though it was a maddening interruption to his search for Kendrick, he must pretend to accede. But he thought it best not to agree too readily.
"About Pittsburgh, I don't care," he said. "It's Castletown I want to get to—and my girl."
"Ho," said Lanterman, "I'll tell you what. You join up with us and I'll give you Castletown, all for your own. Of course, I'll still be boss of the whole region."
Wales made another attempt for information. "I've heard of this Brotherhood of Atonement," he said. "Are you with that outfit?"
Lanterman swore. "That bunch is crazy. No sense to 'em at all. Hell, no, we're not Atoners."
Wales said, slowly, "Well, looks like if I and my girl decide to stay, we'd better be in your bunch. Sure, I'll join."
Lanterman clapped him on the back. "You'll never regret it, Wilson. I've got some big ideas. Those that stick with me will get more'n their share of everything. Pittsburgh is only the start."
He added impressively, "You're joining at a lucky time. For tonight's when we're taking Pittsburgh."
The young, dark man snarled, "If he's a spy, then letting him know that will—"
"You're too suspicious, Harry," said Lanterman. "He's no spy. He's come."
He looked down at the dark young man. "All right, Harry, you take your bunch along now. And you remember not to start things till you hear our signal."
Ten cars, with thirty-odd men in them, pulled out of the main street in the twilight. Harry was in the first car, and they headed south out of town.
Lanterman then told the others, "Rest of us better get going too, all except those that are staying to guard the women and kids. You stick along with me, Wilson."
Motors roared, all along the street. Lanterman climbed grandly into a long black limousine, and Wales followed him.
The car was full of men and gun-barrels when its driver, a leathery young chap who was chewing tobacco, pulled out along the street. The other cars, nearly a score of them, followed them. But they headed southeastward.
"We're going pretty far east," Wales protested. "Pittsburgh's south."
Lanterman chuckled. "Don't you worry, Wilson. You'll get to Pittsburgh, before the night's over."
For an hour the caravan of cars, without lights, rolled along silent roads and through dark villages.
They came to a halt in a little town that Wales couldn't recognize. But when he saw wooden piers, and the broad, glinting blackness of a river, he realized it must be one of the smaller towns a bit upriver from Pittsburgh on the Allegheny.
There were a dozen big skiffs tied to the piers, and a quartet of armed men guarding them. There were no lights, and the darkness was a confusion of shadowy men and of unfamiliar voices.
"Get your damned gun-butt out of my ribs, will you?"
Wales realized that the whole party was embarking in the boats. He followed Lanterman into one of them. Lanterman said,
"Now I don't want one bit of noise from any of you. Get going."
The boats were cast off and forged out into the dark, wide river. In the moonless night, the shore was only a deeper bulk of blackness. Lanterman's boat, leading, swung across to the southern shore, and then kept close to it as they went silently downstream.
Occasional creak of oars, the voices of frogs along the bank—these were the only sounds. The deep summery, rotten smell of the river brought a powerful nostalgia to Wales.
Impossible to think that all this must soon end!
The darkness remained absolute as they went on downriver. They had entered what was once the busiest industrial region of the world, but it was desolate and black and silent now.
Wales ventured to whisper, "Why this way, instead of using the bridges?"
Lanterman snorted. "They expect us to use the bridges. Wait, and you'll see." A moment later he called. "No more rowing. Drift. And no noise!"
They drifted silently along the bank. A huge span loomed up vaguely over them. Wales thought it would be the old Chestnut Street Bridge.
He was startled when, beside him, Lanterman hooted. It was a reasonably good imitation of a screech-owl, twice repeated.
A moment later, from the northern, farthest end of the big bridge, rifle-shots shattered the silence. There was a sudden confusion of firing and shouting there.
Lanterman chuckled. "Harry's right on time. He'll make enough row to bring the whole bunch there."
Presently there was a sound of motors. Cars without lights, many of them, were racing along the riverside highway from downtown Pittsburgh. They rushed over the bridge, toward the distant uproar of shooting.
"That decoyed them out," Lanterman said. He gave orders, quick and fierce. "Allerman, you and Jim take your boats in here. Block the bridges, so they can't get back in a hurry."
Two skiffloads of men darted toward the dim shore. And the rest, with Lanterman's skiff leading, moved under oars down along the riverside.
Now Wales glimpsed lights—a few dim, scattered gleams. With a shock, he saw big, black towers against the stars, and realized they were the skyscrapers of downtown Pittsburgh.
Their skiffs shot in, bumped and stopped. The men piled out, onto a cobbled levee that slanted up from the river.
Lanterman's voice rang out. "We've got 'em cold, with most of their men chasing Harry across the river! Come on! But remember—don't shoot anyone unless they show fight! Most of 'em'll join us, later."
The dark figures of the men, gun-barrels glinting in the starlight, went up the levee in a stumbling rush. Somewhere ahead, a voice yelled in alarm.
Wales, behind Lanterman, felt more than ever caught in a nightmare. These men, ignorant in their unbelief, battling for an empty city upon a world toward which doom was coming—it seemed a terrible dream from which he could not wake.