The Flying Eyes (11 page)

“Of course, we are,” she said softly. “Of course, we are.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Linc sat in the dim bedroom, watching Wes breathe, hearing Wes sigh, bathing Wes' hot forehead with cool, damp clothes. The doctor had come and gone, and now there was only waiting.

The doctor's words still echoed off the empty ceiling. Linc recalled him as he had entered the room; Dr. Ellston, the lab physician and one of Wes' friends. He was a tall man, thin and balding, with a transparent look to his skin and a pinkness that proclaimed frequent scrubbing. His blue eyes were large and intently probing, but after he had examined Wes and sat down with Linc, they lost their intentness, turning to blunt sympathy and frank apology.

“There's not a thing to be done,” Ellston had said. “I've worked with radiation cases before, but Wes' condition has gone too far. I can't help him, Linc.”

“I didn't expect that you could. But I feel easier knowing that you came and tried.”

The doctor let out his breath in a soft exhalation of weariness. “I had just returned to the lab for more supplies when you called. I've spent the last hours in pure hell. They've taken the people who came out of the hole to every available place—the armory, the high schools, the basement of the library—and they overflow every accommodation. And there's nothing to be done for any of them except lead them to shelter, try to make them comfortable, and wait for them to die. Some die on the way.”

“Don't their relatives come to claim them?”

“Some do, but it only complicates things. As dying patients, they have to be kept together in some semblance of hospital order. They can't be spread all over town. Anyway, I've learned how it must have been for doctors during the great plagues—when they were surrounded by death and completely helpless to prevent it. These people won't stay in their beds. They wander about, moaning and sighing. It's more like bedlam than a hospital.”

For a moment Linc wondered why Ellston was burdening him with these pictures, then realized the reason. By describing the miseries of thousands, he was trying to dwarf the misery of Wes a little. Ellston would have deliberately done that. He was that kind of man.

But now he was gone and the verdict for Wes was pronounced and certain. And Linc was lonely. Sitting by the bed, waiting for death, he was lonely.

It was a new emotion, and it stung sharply. He had never had a friend, or wanted one. Wes was the first—and now, without Wes, he was lonely. It struck home clearly how many times he had sloughed other people off, unsympathetic to what he saw in their faces. Yet how could he blame himself when he hadn't understood?

Along with the loneliness, another emotion grew to stand watch with him. Fear. Every plan he'd followed had failed, and the Eyes still roamed the streets. He could see them on Colt Street whenever he looked out. The time for Collins' bomb was approaching faster now that so many people had emerged from the hole. The people who remained captive numbered only in the hundreds. The number grew every day, but three thousand had come out to walk and crawl down the road with Wes.

Linc wasn't confident any more. He had failed, and failed too greatly, bringing shame with failure, and self-damnation. Whenever he fed Ichabod, or forced himself to fondle the dog and give him some of the affection he so badly missed, he realized again how traitorous he had been, accepting Kelly and letting Wes walk bravely to his doom.

As night closed around the house, and Kelly came to take her turn at the bed watch, Linc drove to the lab. His stomach growled for food, yet he wasn't hungry; his eyes blurred from fatigue, yet he wasn't sleepy. He had promised himself one thing—to rid himself of tie fear, the shame and the loneliness. That could be accomplished only one way, through revenge.

He pulled the tarp off the cage and looked into the watery blueness of the Eye. It glowered back at him, and he imagined he could see laughter in it, victory in it. He braced himself and hated it with his soul, and when the shadows and swirls began to form inside his mind, he thrust them off viciously, making the great, distorted thing in the cage blink and recoil. He fought it. Every new thrust, every new pull and tug, met with refusal, violent refusal. His body ached and he felt it from a distance. His mind reeled, and he still pushed on. This Eye had lied to Wes. It had told Wes that he had a chance of withstanding its brothers. It wouldn't lie to him.

When he felt himself swaying from weariness, he looked away from the iris, shuffled to the window, and breathed deep of the cold, fresh air that billowed in. He checked his watch. Two hours. Two hours! He had withstood the Eye for two hours, alone, sustaining himself with hatred.

Wes' words echoed in him, Wes' hope for the future had been centered in him, and he had ignored it. For two days, he had sat beside the silent bed and forgotten his first duty. He turned from the window. He would ignore it no longer.

“Tomorrow,” he said to the Eye. “Tomorrow! Then maybe you'll know what it is to grieve, and suffer, and be defeated. If you can feel at all, you'll know! I'll make you know!”

As he sped the dark streets, he felt better, uplifted and purposeful. Tomorrow he would go on the journey he should have taken before. Tomorrow he would go into the hole and finish what Wes had started. And take revenge for Wes.

He slammed into the house, more alive than he had been for days, and suddenly hungry. He went straight to the kitchen. He wanted nothing to do with Kelly. Since he had found Wes, he hadn't touched her. He hadn't wanted her touch. It was somehow unclean. It had led to treachery before, and he wouldn't give it the chance again.

He got out the old, dry remains of the fried chicken, poured a tall glass of milk, and sat down at the table. He had barely taken a bite when Kelly came in.

“What are you doing away from Wes?” he demanded.

“Wes is sleeping. I heard you slam the door, and I thought something must be wrong.”

“Well, it isn't. For the first time in days, it isn't.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Simply that I've decided on a plan of action, and I'm going to follow it. One way or another, it will atone. If I win, then I'll forgive myself for Wes. If I lose, I'll have followed him and won't need forgiveness.”

She gripped the back of the nearest chair. “You sound as though you intend to repeat what Wes did,” she murmured, not letting it out in full voice as though she were afraid of it.

“Exactly,” he said. “I should have gone in the first place.”

“Down into that hole?” Kelly's words were slow and spaced. “Down into that radiation? You can't, Linc. You're crazy even to consider it.”

“Let's not begin on that again,” he commanded. “It won't work twice. I know exactly what I mean to you. Well, if I don't come back, go out and find yourself a new protector. I'm through with that job anyway. The minute we lose Wes, we lose each other.”

“We actually lost each other the minute you found Wes!”

“Am I supposed to weep at that? And pity each of us and say we should have another chance?”

“How could we have another chance, when we didn't have one in the beginning? You never trusted me.”

“Should I have?” he shouted.

“No,” she admitted, “I was using you. Things are different now.”

“You can't prove that statement, Kelly, so don't say it.”

“All right—shut me out, and play the wronged hero. But I'm human, too. I've seen you change in the last few days. I've seen you grow desperate and fearful and need things you didn't need before.”

“I admit it,” he said. “I'm not ashamed of it.”

“Then why can't you understand that the same things have happened to me? I need things—you—as I've never needed you before. If a person can love out of desperation, then that's what I'm doing.” She came over to him and put her arms about his shoulders, making him face her. “I'm not pretending any more. I mean every word I say. I'm pleading with you to stay here and be safe—not to keep me safe this time, but because I want you and need you.”

“Take your hands off me, Kelly!” He stood up, shoving her away.

“You blame me, don't you? You think it was my fault that Wes went out and didn't make it back?”

“I'd like to blame you. But I can't. I'm the one who gave in—who was swayed from sense and conscience. One thing I do know. I have brains enough not to make the same mistake again.”

“Since when is it a mistake to love someone? Or is that emotion too weakening for you?”

“You won't get around me with sarcasm either.” He was stubborn. “You won't get around me at all, so quit trying. Go back to Wes. Whatever share of the blame you did earn needs to be worked out with Wes.”

She stared at him hard, and her green eyes were wild and sparking. “If you think I'll ever come to you again—” she began, then stopped. “You're a fool, Linc. An absolute, pitiful fool! You've never felt true emotion in yourself, so you can't recognize it in anybody else. Go ahead and walk into that hole tomorrow. Kill yourself. I'll be the last to mourn.”

He heard her feet running up the stairs, and then the creak of old flooring as she went in to Wes. He sat down again and ate the chicken. Perhaps he hadn't been fair to her, but he cared little about it. The debt he owed to Wes excluded everything else.

Morning was cold. Linc could see his breath in the air when he took Ichabod out for his morning walk. It was a good morning, clear and clean, ready to accept his new start. And the natural chill of the air hid the unnatural chill of his bones when he thought about the next hours.

He fortified himself with a heavy breakfast, storing energy for the battle that lay ahead. At nine o'clock, he was ready. He climbed the stairs to Wes' room and went in. As he did, Kelly came out. He walked to the bed and stared down at his friend. Wes was paler, weaker, sighing more frequently. The radiation was eating him alive, and he hadn't much time left.

He took Wes' limp hand in his own and whispered, “Wait for me, friend. Wait for me to come back, because I will come back, with revenge for you and victory for all of us. I promise you that. If I can't win it, then I won't come back at all.”

Linc squeezed the hot hand once more, then laid it gently upon the sheet. “I'll see you soon,” he said, and left the room.

He passed Kelly at the head of the stairs, and she said nothing. She wished him neither good luck nor bad, and he felt a little empty without it.

He got into his car, drawing his bulky car coat close about him, and reached into the glove compartment for the flimsy weapons he had stored there the night before. Two tear gas bombs. As frail as they were, they might give him a valuable minute at some point or other and mean the difference between success or failure. He put them in his right-hand pocket, and started the car. As he drove off down Colt Street, he noticed Kelly watching him from the upstairs window. She didn't wave.

Just outside the city limits, he swung into Linc with five other cars, heading out under evacuation orders. He prayed that he had chosen correctly—that his group was one of those to be captured, not one that would manage to get through.

Two miles down the road, an Eye appeared, zooming across the open fields. The cars ahead of him surged forward. He could hear screams and see hands pointing skyward from the cars, and he kept pace. He wanted the capture, but he must pretend to be unwilling.

The car before him suddenly swerved in to the ditch, and stalled halfway up the other side. Following suit, he turned the wheel and swung off the road, feeling the jolt as the car lurched into the ditch and up again, coming to rest at the edge of a barren cornfield. He waited, sitting quietly, taking his cue from those in the other cars. All five of them were off the road, and silent. The doors of a blue sedan opened, and three people got out: a man, a woman and an old woman. They stood in the field, limp in the cold sun, waiting.

Linc climbed out of his car, and dropped his hands to his sides, hoping they looked properly limp and insensitive. He let his shoulders droop, and his head fall forward. The Eye was now in the cornfield, hovering six feet off the ground, rolling its brown eyeball back and forth, gathering its people in. Clouds and shadows and swirls ebbed around him, and he was familiar with them and fought them but gently. Too strong a resistance would arouse suspicion. The Eye would feel it and recoil, as the one in the lab had done.

The people were walking now, and he joined them, falling into step with the nearest man. They walked blindly, stumbling over the dead rubble of cornstalks, heads down, sightlessly following deeper and deeper into the field.

Linc could see where he was going; he could see the people if he peered up from under his eyelids; and he could see the Eye leading them, bobbing above them one moment, coming to rest the next. It blinked its giant lids and the lashes made a little breeze that ruffled the feather on one of the women's hats.

There were twelve people—men, women and children—in the march beside himself. He made thirteen. He wanted more. Twelve wasn't enough cover.

The corn stubble ended and gave way to tall, browning grass, and their feet made swishing noises as they passed through it. Swish and crunch. Swish and crunch. He focused his mind on the sound, keeping away from the swirls of the Eye.

The swirls eddied stronger and there was a tug at him that almost drew his head up, ready to fight back. He grabbed hold of himself and resumed the limp pose, but resistance was somehow harder. The shadows buffeted at the door of his mind, demanding entrance.

Peeking upward, he saw the reason for the new strength in the hypnotic pull. Another Eye, a green one, had joined his brown captor, and they were sailing together, backward across the grass toward the woods. Following the green Eye was a large mass of people. He estimated thirty at a quick count. He breathed easier. This number would give him safety.