Better in the Dark (29 page)

“Dave?” Harry said. “Dead?” For a moment he was still. “Poor bastard.”

“Why feel that way? It’s one more bed,” Carol said, then threw her mug across the room so that it smashed into unrecognizable pieces.

Natalie shut the doors on the van and found a place to stand between two inflatable stretchers. Her eyes were gritty with smoke and fatigue, and she wished she could peel her exhausted, aching muscles from her bones and sleep.

“Are you all right?” Maria called from the front of the van. She raced along the deserted streets as fast as she dared.

“Sure,” Natalie said listlessly. “What time is it?”

“It’s after ten. We’ll be through with this by noon.” She cornered expertly and gunned the motor as she came to the main arterial.

A little later, Natalie said, “Someone told me that Dave Lillijanthal died.”

“Yeah, it’s true,” Maria said, her mind on her driving.

“Too bad.”

Up ahead was a group of stragglers, worn people carrying away their lives on their backs. They went without looking back as the fire pursued them.

“You heard about Radick?” Natalie asked when they were well past the stragglers. She was suspicious of people now, and looked with suspicion on any gathering.

“I heard.”

A truck lumbered out of a side street and stalled halfway through the intersection. Maria leaned on the horn and swerved wildly to avoid it. As she pulled back around the truck, she shrieked as her bumper knocked against someone and sent the persons flying.

“Should I stop?” Maria yelled to Natalie.

Natalie did not hesitate. “No. Keep going.”

“But I might have hurt ...”

“Keep going.”

Natalie saw the look in Harry’s eyes as she came into the kitchen, and the words of greeting died on her lips. “What is it?” she asked, and waited with a fear she thought she could no longer feel.

“Ernest came in with some burn victims about an hour ago. From Westbank.”

She shook her head, not understanding.

“One of them is Mark,” Harry said and saw her blanch.

They had put him in Dave’s bed, because it would give him the least painful death. His beauty was gone, like a clay figure which had not satisfied the artist and been pinched and smeared in the sculptor’s frustration. His disfigurement would have been hideous if there had been the slightest chance he would live.

“Mark?” Natalie said, not finding him in the tortured body that lay under wet sheets which smelled of medication.

The head turned its charred features toward her, and Natalie gasped, for not even Harry’s warning had prepared her for the ruin there. “Nat?” said the cracked voice, as unlike Mark as the face was.

“Yes. I’m here,” she managed to say. Her hands felt icy, and she doubted she could move.

“Sure.” One eye was seared blind, but the other turned glitteringly on her. “Stupid interfering bitch!”

She cringed under the words, and her eyes were fever-shiny with tears.

“You had to interfere,” the horrid voice went on, singsong, like a litany of vengeance. “You couldn’t leave it alone. You had to mess. Stupid bitch! Stupid, stupid bitch!”

“Mark,” she started to say, but he cut her short. “You did this! You did this to me! I could have made it, but you had to get in the way!” The voice cracked, and the breath came in strident whistles. Under the sheets Mark’s body convulsed with pain while the sheets clung to the scorched and ruptured skin, making the agony worse.

Natalie reached out to hold him down, to spare him some suffering.

“Screw yourself with a bowie knife,” he hissed at her as she touched him. With a last effort he tried to pull himself erect. He made a strange sound in his throat, shuddered, and died.

By afternoon the fire had spread across the riverfront and was sending long snouts of flame into the heart of the city. At the Van Dreyter house, both power and water had failed, and the generator could not be repaired to run the pump of the well or the lights in the house. A stillness hung over the house with the afternoon heat.

“Then who do we take with us?” Carol asked, speaking for the few doctors at the breakfast table. “Burn victims or disease patients? Five of the vans are working, which means we can taken twenty people at the most.”

Harry nodded. “We take the ones who need the most help but who have a good chance for survival.”

“Triage,” Natalie murmured, thinking of Radick.

“With any luck we’ll make Auburn by morning, and that means help by tomorrow evening at the latest. Peter can pass out the morphine until then, can’t you?” he asked Peter.

The deterioration of Peter’s condition made speaking difficult. “I think so. But I doubt I’ll last much more than twenty-four hours. My temperature was one hundred three this morning, and I am sure it is higher now.”

Natalie marveled at his coolness, at his detachment. She felt a curious compassion for the epidemiologist, who saw his own death with so little feeling. “Lisa might be able to help,” she said.

“Lisa has typhus. She can’t do anything,” Harry snapped, then said in quick contrition, “Never mind me, Natalie. I didn’t mean that.”

Roger Nicholas rubbed his eyes before speaking. “Well, we’d better make our selection quickly and get moving. We have to be out of here before sunset. If there’s going to be trouble here it will be after dark.”

“We’ll put up barricades,” Peter Justin said calmly. “I am sure we will be able to protect ourselves. Particularly if the place looks deserted.” He raised his hand to forestall objections. “You may think that we will be more vulnerable, and in a sense you’re right. But the house will be sealed, and I am certain we can hold out until tomorrow night.”

Reluctantly Harry nodded. “You’re right.”

“Who goes where, then?” Carol asked. “Who drives, who rides, who has charge of the patients?”

“Jim and Maria and you will drive. I guess Roger and Ernest...” Harry said.

Ernest Dagstern surprised them all. “I’m not going.”

They all turned to the stocky little chiropractor. He met their inquiring eyes evenly. “I won’t leave until these patients are safe. Dr. Justin can’t do it himself, and you know it. And Dr. Skye is in no condition to. They need my help. I won’t leave as long as they do.”

The room was hushed. Then Harry cleared his throat. “That’s your decision, Ernest. I promise you we’ll be back as soon as possible.” He felt badly as he said it, because it was a trivial promise, compared to what Ernest would do.

Carol pushed away from the breakfast table. “We’d better get moving, then. We don’t have a lot of time.”

“Who is going to make the decisions about which patients go?” Harry stopped her, and the others hesitated.

“I will,” Peter Justin said calmly. “It’s my specialty.”

The rear doors of the van slammed shut, and Harry tried to make himself comfortable on the narrow bench that crossed the door when it was closed. Ahead of him the inflatable stretchers filled the van to the driver’s seat, with only a slim aisle between them.

In the front, Natalie rode beside Jim Varnay, who was second in line in the five-van cavalcade. Ahead Ted Lincoln rode with Dominic and two of the nurses, and behind Carol Mendosa drove Kirsten and Katherine, with Maria and Roger behind them and Howard Webbster bringing up the rear. They had decided to travel together as far as the fire, and then they would split into two groups, in case of trouble. Jim and Ted would take the northern route through the city, and the others would go around by the southern.

Harry glanced out the small rear window as they pulled away from the Van Dreyter house, standing forlorn against the bright afternoon. He hated to leave it. For leaving was defeat, and defeat rankled. He turned his attention to the human cargo they carried.

In less than twenty minutes they had reached the edge of the fire. There, with the agreed exchange of signals, the vans parted company, and Harry saw the three in Carol’s group moving southward, lit by the glow of the fire.

They were almost to the Old Capitol Bridge when Jim suddenly braked to a halt. Ahead, Ted slowed, waiting.

“What is it?” Harry asked, afraid that the fire had beaten them to their crossing.

Natalie opened the door and, to Harry’s surprise, got out.

“What is it?” Harry said again, louder.

Jim Varnay shook his head. “I don’t know. A kid just ran in front of the van, so I stopped. He’s alone. Natalie said she’d talk to him.”

The kid was a scrawny fifteen, and his bright-blue eyes were red-rimmed from lack of sleep. He stood in the street, his caution gone as Natalie came toward him. “Yes?” she said, when he did not speak.

“You’re a doctor, right?” he demanded, and ran one bony hand through his tangled taffy-colored hair.

“I am,” Natalie said, ignoring the word of warning Jim called to her. The kid intrigued her. She studied him, saw his desperation, his recent hunger, his restless worry disguised as bravado. “Do you need a doctor?”

“No, not me. I’m okay. It’s my ... friends. Some of them are sick. I don’t know what’s wrong. You got to help them.” He planted his feet apart. “I saw you coming from the house earlier. You’re running out.”

“We’re going for help,” Natalie said, in spite of the twinge his words gave her. “How many friends do you have? What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re sick.” He shouted this, then tried to calm himself. “I promised them I’d take care of them. I promised them I wouldn’t let them die.” Suddenly he crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m Tristam,” he said, as a challenge.

Natalie heard Jim Varnay start to open the door. She called to him. “Stay where you are, Jim. I’m in no danger. Tristam didn’t come to hurt anyone.” She nodded, as if making up her mind. “If you’ll wait a minute,” she told the red-headed boy, “I’ll get my kit from the van.”

“You’ll come?” He was amazed.

“Of course.” She turned back, and reached into the cab, and found that Jim had grabbed her arm. “You’re not going back out there,” he said softly. “You know what that kid did to Dave and Stan.”

“I know that his gang left me alone once. I know that he needs help.” She pulled her arm free.

“Tell him we’ll be back tomorrow.”

She looked into Jim’s dark face. “They might not have a chance tomorrow. We might not find them again.”

Suddenly Harry leaned over the partition. “Natalie.”

Her eyes went to his, and for the first time in her life she felt the loss of intimacy that went far beyond the intimacy of lovers. “Don’t ask me to come with you, Harry,” she pleaded. “I couldn’t tell you no and I must stay here.”

For Harry the world rolled back as he read the emotion in her face. He did not feel the throb in his foot or the headache which had bothered him all that day. Now he wanted to hold her, to keep her with him. Involuntarily he stretched out his hand to her and lightly, lightly touched her face. He heard himself say, “You do what you think is right, Natalie.”

Through strain and fatigue her smile was radiant. “Thanks for your love, Harry,” she said as she took her kit from the van. She moved quickly, easily, a burden taken from her. “I’ll see you in a day or so.” With a wave to Jim she slammed the door and knocked on the side of the van as a signal to drive on.

When the van had picked up speed, she turned to Tristam. “All right. We can go now.”

It was shortly after mignight when Jim Varnay pulled the van in behind Ted Lincoln’s at the cordon around the town of Auburn. Below them in the valley the fire still waved, a bright flag in the night.

There were shouts up ahead, and Harry listened without hearing while Ted dealt with the National Guard troops manning the cordon.

“They’re letting us through,” Jim said after a while. It was the first words he had spoken to Harry since they left Natalie with Tristam.

“Good.” Harry tried to stretch his stiff legs in the van, but the cramps only got tighter. He sighed.

Jim put the van into gear and followed Ted’s van into the town. He pointed out the window and said,“Look. We’ve got an escort.”

Harry turned disinterested eyes on the line of National Guardsmen that flanked the vans. He turned to look at the patients on the inflatable cots, not really seeing them. It was almost over. It was going to end. He put a hand to his eyes, wishing he could feel something in response. But there was only the ache in his head and the dull hurt of exhaustion. In his soul he did not think he could be at rest until he saw Natalie again.

There was a sharp rap on the door and a young Guardsman shouted to Jim to park and get out.

Harry rolled down the larger window on his side. “We have sick people in this van. They need immediate medical help,” he said, and found that his sore throat turned his words to croaks.

The Guardsman nodded and yelled at someone else.

Harry opened the door and fought off a moment’s dizziness before he got out. “We’re from Stockton,” he said to no one in particular.

“This way, sir,” the Guardsman said, pulling Harry’s arm.

Harry looked at him, puzzled, and was about to ask a question when his legs at last gave way and he sank to the pavement, asleep.

Aaron McChesney was precisely neat from the line of his mustache to the set of his clothes. His eyes were metallically cold and he looked as if he could stab you to death with the old-fashioned crease in his trousers. He closed Peter Justin’s notebook as Harry came into the room, still groggy from sleep.

“Good afternoon, Dr. Smith,” he said with a cordiality that went no farther than good form required.

“Good afternoon,” Harry said automatically. “What time is it, anyway?”

McChesney narrowed his eyes critically, but answered the question. “It’s three forty-seven.”

Harry looked at the clock, alarmed. “That late? I didn’t know I’d slept so long.” He did not feel rested: the aches in his joints were worse and his headache made it a penance to look around quickly. He supposed a meal would help, but he did not have an appetite.

“Yes. Your other two vans came in early this morning.”

“Two?” Harry said. He did not want to ask what had happened to the third.