Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (26 page)

was a pall over them now.

       Mark watched from a distance, and throughout the day he kept them in sight. When they camped that night, their first night in the open forest, he was in a tree nearby.

       The boys were all right, he thought with satisfaction. As long as their groups were not separated, they would be all right. But the Gary brothers were clearly nervous. They started at noises.

       He waited until the camp was still, and then, high in a tree where he could look down on them without being seen, he began to moan. At first no one paid any attention to the noises he made, but presently Gary and his brothers began to peer anxiously at the woods, at one another. Mark moaned louder. The boys were stirring now. Most of them had been asleep when he started. Now there was a restless movement among them.

       "Woji!" Mark moaned, louder and louder. "Woji! Woji!" He doubted anyone was still asleep. "Woji says go back! Woji says go back!" He kept his voice hollow, muffled by his hand over his mouth. He repeated the words many times, and ended each message with a thin, rising moan. After a time he added one more word. "Danger. Danger. Danger."

       He stopped abruptly in the middle of the fourth "Danger." Even he was aware of the listening forest now. The Gary brothers took torches into the forest around the camp, looking for something, anything. They stayed close to one another as they made the search. Most of the boys were sitting up, as close to the fires as they could get. It was a long time before they all lay down to try to sleep again. Mark dozed in the tree, and when he jerked awake, he repeated the warning, again stopping in the middle of a word, though he wasn't certain why that was so much worse than just stopping. Again the futile search was made, the fires were replenished, the boys sat upright in fear. Toward dawn when the forest was its blackest Mark began to laugh a shrill, inhuman laugh that seemed to echo from everywhere at once.

       The next day was cold and drizzly with thick fog that lifted only slightly as the day wore on. Mark circled the straggling group, now whispering from behind them, now from the left, the right, from in front of them, sometimes from over their heads. By midafternoon they were barely moving and the boys were talking openly of disobeying Gary and returning to Washington. Mark noted with satisfaction that two of the Gary brothers were siding with the rebellious boys now.

       "Ow! Woji!" he wailed, and suddenly two groups of the boys turned and started to run. "Woji! Danger!"

       Others turned now and joined the flight, and Gary shouted at them vainly, and then he and his brothers were hurrying back the way they had come.

       Laughing to himself, Mark trotted away. He headed west, toward the valley.

       Bruce stood over the bed where the boy lay sleeping. "Is he going to be all right?"

       Bob nodded. "He's been half awake several times, babbling about snow and ice most of the time. He recognized me when I examined him this morning."

       Bruce nodded. Mark had been sleeping for almost thirty hours. Physically he was out of danger, and probably hadn't been in real danger at all. Nothing rest and food couldn't cure anyway, but his babblings about the white wall had sounded insane. Barry had ordered everyone to leave the boy alone until he awakened naturally. Barry had been with him most of the time, and would return within the hour. There was nothing anyone could do until Mark woke up.

       Later that afternoon Barry sent for Andrew, who had asked to be present when Mark began to talk. They sat on either side of the bed and watched the boy stir, rousing from the deep sleep that had quieted him so thoroughly that he had appeared dead.

       Mark opened his eyes and saw Barry. "Don't put me in the hospital," he said faintly, and closed his eyes again. Presently he opened his eyes and looked about the room, then back to Barry. "I'm in the hospital, aren't I? Is anything wrong with me?"

       "Not a thing," Barry said. "You passed out from exhaustion and hunger, that's all."

       "I would like to go to my own room then," Mark said, and tried to rise.

       Barry gently restrained him. "Mark, don't be afraid of me, please. I promise you I won't hurt you now or ever. I promise that." For a moment the boy resisted the pressure of his hands, then he relaxed. "Thank you, Mark," Barry said. "Do you feel like talking yet?"

       Mark nodded. "I'm thirsty," he said. He drank deeply. He began to describe his trip north. He told it completely, even how he had frightened Gary and his brothers and routed the expedition to Philadelphia. He was aware that Andrew tightened his lips at that part of the story, but he kept his eyes on Barry and told them everything.

       "And then you came back," Barry said. "How?"

       "'Through the woods. I made a raft to cross the river." Barry nodded. He wanted to weep, and didn't know why. He patted Mark's arm. "Rest now," he said. "We'll get word to them to stay in Washington until we dig up some radiation detectors."

       "Impossible!" Andrew said angrily outside the door. "Gary was exactly right in pressing on to Philadelphia. That boy destroyed a year's training in one night."

       "I'm going too," Barry had said, and he was with Mark now in Washington. Two of the younger doctors were also with them. The young expedition members were frightened and disorganized; the work had come to a stop, and they had been waiting in the main building for someone to come give them new instructions.

       "When did they start out again?" Barry demanded.

       'The day after they got back here," one of the young boys said.

       "Forty boys!" Barry muttered. "And six fools." He turned to Mark. "Would we accomplish anything by starting after them this afternoon?"

       Mark shrugged. "I could alone. Do you want me to go after them?"

       "No, not by yourself. Anthony and I will go, and Alistair will stay here and see that things get moving again."

       Mark looked at the two doctors doubtfully. Anthony was pale, and Barry looked uncomfortable.

       "They've had about ten days," Mark said. "They should be in the city by now, if they didn't get lost. I don't think it would make much difference if we leave now or wait until morning."

       "Morning, then," Barry said shortly. "You could use another

night's sleep."

       They traveled fast, and now and again Mark pointed out where the others had camped, where they had gone astray, where they had realized their error and headed in the right direction again. On the second day his lips tightened and he looked angry, but said nothing until late in the afternoon. "They're too far west, getting farther off all the time," he said. "They might miss Philadelphia altogether if they don't head east again. They must have been trying to bypass the swamps."

       Barry was too tired to care, and Anthony merely grunted. At least, Barry thought, stretching out by the fire, they were too tired at night to listen for strange noises, and that was good. He fell asleep even as he was thinking this.

       On the fourth day Mark stopped and pointed ahead. At first Barry could see no difference, but then he realized they were looking at the kind of stunted growth Mark had talked about. Anthony unpacked the Geiger counter and it began to register immediately. It became more insistent as they moved ahead, and Mark led them to the left, keeping well back from the radioactive area.

       "They went in, didn't they?" Barry said.

       Mark nodded. They were keeping their distance from the contaminated ground, and when the counter sounded its warning, they moved south again until it became quieter. That night they decided to keep moving west until they were able to get around the radioactive area, and enter Philadelphia from that direction, if possible.

       "We'll run into the snowfields that way," Mark said.

       "Not afraid of snow, are you?" Barry said.

       "I'm not afraid."

       "Right. Then we go west tomorrow, and if we can't turn north by night, we come back and try going east, see if we pick up a trail or anything that way."

       They traveled all day through an intermittent rain, and hourly the temperature fell until it was near freezing when they made camp that night.

       "How much farther?" Barry asked.

       "Tomorrow," Mark said. "You can smell it from here." Barry could smell only the fire, the wet woods, the food cooking. He

studied Mark, then shook his head.

       "I don't want to go any farther," Anthony said suddenly. He was standing by the fire, too rigid, a listening look on his face.

       "It's a river," Mark said. "It must be pretty close. There's ice on all the rivers, and it hits the banks now and then. That's what you hear."

       Anthony sat down, but the intent look didn't leave his face. The next morning they headed west again. By noon they were among hills, and now they knew that as soon as they got high enough to see over the trees they would be able to see the snow, if there was any snow to see.

       They stood on the hill and stared, and Barry understood Mark's nightmares. The trees at the edge of the snow were stark, like trees in the middle of winter. Beyond them other trees had snow halfway up their trunks, and their naked branches stood unmoving, some of them at odd angles, where the pressure had already knocked them over and the snow had prevented their falling. Up higher there were no trees visible at all, only snow.

       "Is it still growing?" Barry asked in a hushed voice. No one answered. After a few more minutes, they turned and hurried back the way they had come. As they circled Philadelphia heading east, the Geiger counter kept warning them to stay back, and they could get no closer to the city from this direction than they had been able to from the west. Then they found the first bodies.

       Six boys had come out together. Two had fallen near each other; the others had left them, continued another half-mile and collapsed. The bodies were all radioactive.

       "Don't get near them," Barry said as Anthony started to kneel by the first bodies. "We don't dare touch them," he said.

       "I should have stayed," Mark whispered. He was staring at the sprawled bodies. There was mud on their faces. "I shouldn't have left. I should have kept after them, to make sure they didn't go on. I should have stayed."

       Barry shook his arm, and Mark kept staring, repeating over and over, "I should have stayed with them. I should . . ." Barry slapped him hard, then again, and Mark bowed his head and stumbled away, reeling into trees and bushes as he rushed away from the bodies, away from Barry and Anthony. Barry ran after him and caught his arm.

       "Mark! Stop this! Stop it, do you hear me!" He shook him hard again. "Let's get back to Washington."

       Mark's cheeks were glistening with tears. He pulled away from Barry and started to walk again, and he didn't look back at the bodies.

       Barry and Bruce waited for Anthony and Andrew, who had requested, demanded, time to talk to them. "It's about him again, isn't it?" Bruce said.

       "I suppose."

       "Something's got to be done," Bruce said. "You and I both know we can't let him go on this way. They'll demand a council meeting next, and that'll be the end of it."

       Barry knew. Andrew and his brother entered and sat down. They both looked grim and angry.

       "I don't deny he had a bad time during the summer," Andrew said abruptly. "That isn't the point now. But whatever happened to him has affected his mind, and that is the point. He's behaving in a childish, irresponsible way that simply cannot be tolerated."

       Again and again since summer these sessions had been held. Mark had drawn a line of honey from an ant hill up the wall into the Andrew brothers' quarters, and the ants had followed. Mark had soaked every match he could get his hands on in a salt solution, dried them carefully, and restacked them in the boxes, and not one of them had lighted, and he had sat with a straight face and watched one after another of the older brothers try to get a fire. Mark had removed every nameplate from every door in the dormitories. He had tied the Patrick brothers' feet together as they slept and then yelled to them to come quickly.

       "He's gone too far this time," Andrew said. "He stole the yellow Report to Hospital tags, and he's been sending dozens of women to the hospital to be tested for pregnancy. They're in a panic, our staff is overworked as it is, and no one has time to sort out this kind of insanity."

       "We'll talk to him," Barry said.

       "That's not good enough any longer! You've talked and talked. He promises not to do that particular thing again, and then does something worse. We can't live with this constant disruption!"

       "Andrew, he had a series of terrible shocks last summer. And he's had too much responsibility for a boy his age. He feels a dreadful guilt over the deaths of all those children. It isn't unnatural for him to revert to childish behavior now. Give him time, he'll get over it."

       "No!" Andrew said, standing up with a swift, furious motion. "No! No more time! What will it be next?" He glanced at his brother, who nodded. "We feel that we are his targets. Not you, not the others; we are. Why he feels this hostility toward me and my brothers I don't know, but it's here, and we don't want to have to worry about him constantly, wondering what he'll do next."

       Barry stood up. "And I say I'll handle it."

       For a moment Andrew faced him defiantly, then said, "Very well. But, Barry, it can't go on. It has to stop now."

       "It will stop."

       The younger brothers left, and Bruce sat down. "How?"

       "I don't know how. It's his isolation. He can't talk this out with anyone, doesn't play with anyone . . . We have to force him to participate in those areas where the others would accept him."