the others pushing in behind him. The car turned about, jockeying back and forth on the bridge to return to the Missouri shore. The nearer faces in the seat peered at him curiously. The car shot forward. Gary slumped against the back of the seat, exhausted with tension. He was in! After two years of bitter struggle and constant dreaming, he had crossed the river.
11
AN ORNATE brick building flashed past his window, a building which had housed the toll-collector's offices back before a part of the world had ended; now it contained a command post with a pair of sentries before the door. They stared at the passing car, watched after it when it pulled up before a smaller and newer building a short distance down the road.
At a pressure on his arm, Gary left the automobile and followed the troopers toward the small building. Someone opened the steel door, pushed him in and then crowded in after him. The door was slammed and bolted from the inside. The leader made some sort of a signal and an instant later the whole ceiling seemed to open, showering down on them a thick gray fog. Gary jerked back nervously, fighting the swirling mist with ineffective fists. The man nearest him seized his arms, held him still, and then thumped his back encouragingly. At that moment he realized what it was, where he was — this was the decontamination chamber, erected to cleanse the troops returning from patrols. Or returning from the task of throwing bodies over the bridge rails.
The fog closed around him, hiding the others.
After an interval he detected a new note in the chamber and the mist began to dissipate as blowers sucked the gas away. The other men began peeling off their suits. He lifted a slow hand to open his, and was stopped.
“Hold it, buddy. Not yet. You've gotta be processed, so keep it on until we get out of here.”
Now what the devil did he mean by that? Gary watched them, the nervous knot again forming in his stomach. They slid out of their suits and left the building, slamming the door behind them to leave him standing there alone. Again he raised a hand and commenced undressing, noticing for the first time that his uniform didn't quite fit him, that he had a stubble of beard. Abruptly the steel door opened and a medical corpsman appeared there.
He stared at Gary professionally. “I oughtta get a medal for this,” the man announced briskly. “Maybe you got the plague.”
“And maybe I haven't!” Gary retorted. “Come on, get it over with. I want to get outside — this place gives me the willies.”
“You don't go outside, brother — not until your tests come out. Gimme your arm.”
“The hell I don't! What for?”
“The hell you don't.” The soldier reached for his arm. “Blood tests, see? You might be carrying something. We gotta be damned careful.” He plunged the needle into Gary's arm and drew forth a sample. “What type blood?”
“How do I know?” Gary said with angry impatience.
“By looking at your tag, stupid.” He reached out a swift hand to lift the chain hanging from Gary's neck, to read the inscription on the metal tag. “AB. Kinda rare, ain't you?”
“What do you mean by that crack?”
“AB ain't common around here chum, like in the Egyptians or the Chinese maybe.” He glanced at the tag again. “You're Moskowitz, huh? Well, I've seen funnier — maybe you're an Egyptian Moskowitz.”
“Get the hell out of here!” Gary was fast losing his temper, aided by a growing fear. “And bring me something to eat — I'm damned tired of C-rations.”
“Okay, okay.” The corpsman completed his work and left.
Gary sat down on the floor to wait and to brood. He waited a full half hour, worrying about the dog tag on his neck. The stolen Moskowitz tag — and the Moskowitz blood type. He hadn't thought about that. It occurred to him suddenly that he hadn't thought about many things, little things really that seemed unimportant until they reached out to push him before a firing squad. What were they doing with the lieutenant's body? He had strangled the man and later encased the body in a radiation suit, but there were no bullet holes in the suit. What did
The personnel from Knox were not supposed to remove their suits on the journey, but they had done so, believing themselves safe from contamination so long as they did not fraternize with “enemy agents.” If then he admitted that the lieutenant had removed his suit en route and had been strangled by an enemy, it followed that Gary must have replaced the suit after the officer was dead. It also followed that both the officer and Gary had exposed themselves to the plague. That would be the certain end of
Bitterly, he realized he should have left the rotting officer behind. Rotting… the thought took form, shaped itself into a faint hope. It might be that they would not remove the suit from the lieutenant's body.
There were other things — he didn't know the names of people of Knox, he didn't know the history or background of Moskowitz… didn't so much as know the man's enlistment date. The serial numbers on the dog tag would give some clue to that, but he couldn't guess the accurate answer from the numbers. His only chance of escaping detection there lay in the fact that serial records may have been destroyed in a ravaged Washington.
The door opened and the corpsmen entered, carrying a tray.
“Another medal — you phony Egyptian!”
“I ain't no Egyptian,” Gary flared, half frightened.
“I'll say you ain't. AB hell! You ain't no more AB than I am. In case anybody asks, you're a big fat round O. Better remember that — you might need it sometime.”
“But the tag says—”
“The tag lies like a rug, chum, but don't let it throw you. You're an early bird, ain't you?” He put down the tray. “It happened all the time, back at the beginning; they rushed them through fast and made some mistakes. I'll bet one guy out of every twenty is walking around with the wrong type on his tag — or pushing up flowers. Sloppy work, but you can't help it. Only trouble is, if you ever need a transfusion in a hurry and they pump the wrong kind into you — bingo.”
“Maybe it changed,” Gary suggested. “It was a long time ago.”
“Nope.” The soldier shook his head and grinned at Gary's ignorance. “It never changes, no more than fingerprints. You was born with O and you'll die with O. Now eat up. I'll bring in water and a can pretty soon; you're stuck here until the tests prove out. Two or three days maybe.”
“What for?” he asked again. “Why the tests?”
“To see if you picked up anything, stupid. If you're carrying any plague germs around, we'll soon know it.” He backed away. “And I'll earn that damned medal.”
“That's a hell of a note. Listen — do me a favor. Put in for a pass for me. I've been out of circulation too long.”
“A pass he wants yet!”
Gary didn't get the pass — he never waited for it, never waited out the three days. He knew with certainty what those tests would reveal, knew beyond doubt that the test tubes or whatever things they used would point to his two years of wandering around the quarantined land, would shout what must be in his blood. Freedom was too near to wait three days.
He did nothing the first night, other than lie in the decontamination chamber and wait quietly. He called for and received repeated trays of food, a great quantity of water, the needed things a half-starved man would demand. And he noted with each opening and closing of the door that it was not locked from without. A single sentry stood outside, seldom at attention. They did not consider him a dangerous risk. Twice during the first night he sent out for water and once asked for more cigarettes. The sentry brought them, laid them in the doorway and retreated a few paces. Gary opened the door and hauled the things inside.
On the second day the medical corpsman brought paper and pencil and commenced questioning; he began in the routine way with Gary — or Moskowitz's immediate and current history, but quickly moved on to the journey
