where he was and complete his dying. But the sight of ants wheeling excitedly around the drying blood on the road made him uneasy. If he died there the ants would be all over him and in him by the time he was found. It would be better to die at home, cleanly. The sun was setting. The Sunbury house was east of Fort Repose. Therefore, he must go west. With the orange sun as his beacon, he began to crawl. When darkness came he rested, bathed his face in ditch water and drank it, too, and tried walking. He could walk perhaps a hundred yards before the road spun up to meet him. Then he would crawl. Thus, walking and crawling, he had finally reached the Bragg steps.
When Dan finished, Randy said, “It had to come, of course. The highwaymen killed off travel on the main highways and so now they’ve started on the little towns and the secondary roads. But in this case, Dan, it sounds like they were laying for you personally. I think they knew you were a doctor, and you’d be going way out River Road to the Sunburys’, and certainly the woman knew you kept a couple of bottles of bourbon in the car.”
“All they had to do,” Dan said, “was hang around Marines Park, look at the notices on the bandstand, and ask questions. I didn’t know any of them, but I think I’ve seen one before, the youngest. I used to see him hanging around Hockstatler’s drugstore before The Day.”
“They didn’t have a car?”
“No.”
“I guess what they wanted most was transportation.”
“They won’t get much. We had only two or three gallons of gas left.” He added, apologetically, “I’m sorry, Randy. I was careless. I shouldn’t have stopped. I’ve lost our transport, our medicines, and my tools.”
Leaning over the bed, Randy’s fingers interlocked. He unconsciously squeezed until the tendons on his forearm stood out like taut wires. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Worst of all,” Dan said, “I’ve lost my glasses. I guess they smashed when that goon slugged me with the bat. I won’t be much good without glasses.”
Randy knew that Dan’s vision was poor. Dan was forced to wear bifocals. He was very nearsighted. “Don’t you have another pair?” he asked.
“Yes-in the bag. I always kept my spare glasses in the bag because I was afraid I might lose or break the pair I was wearing, on a call.” He sat up straight in bed, his face twisted. “Randy, I may never be able to get another pair of glasses.”
Randy stood up. “I’ve got to start working on this, Dan.” “What are you going to do?”
“Find them and kill them.” He said this in a matter-of-fact manner, as if announcing that he was going downtown to have his tires checked, in the time before The Day.
Dan said, “I’m afraid you’re going at this wrong, Randy. Killing highwaymen is secondary. The important thing is the typhoid in the river. If you think things are bad now, wait until we have typhoid in Fort Repose. And it’s not only Fort Repose. It goes from the Timucuan into the St. Johns and downriver to Sanford, Palatka, and the other towns. If they are still there.”
“All I can do about typhoid is warn people, which you have done already and which I will do again. I can’t shoot a germ. I’m concerned with the highwaymen right now, this minute. Next, they’ll start raiding the houses. It’s as inevitable as the fact that they left the main highways and ambushed you on River Road. Typhoid is bad. So is murder and robbery and rape. I am an officer in the Reserve. I have been legally designated to keep order when normal authority breaks down. Which it certainly has here.
And the first thing I must do to keep order is execute the highwaymen. That’s perfectly plain. See you later, Dan.”
Randy turned to Helen. “Take care of him. Feed him up,” he said, a command.
Walking beside him toward the Admiral’s house, Lib found it difficult to keep pace. She had never seen Randy look and speak and act like this before. She held his arm, and yet she felt he had moved away from her. He did not seem anxious to talk, confide in her, or ask her opinion, as he usually did. He had moved into man’s august world of battle and violence, from which she was barred. She held tighter to his arm. She was afraid.
The admiral, freshly shaven and pink-faced, was in his den, touching whale oil to the recoil mechanism of an automatic shotgun. “I was wondering,” he said to Randy, “whether you would be around here or I should come to you. How’s Dan?”
“He’ll be all right. We lost the car and the medicines and the last of the bourbon but we didn’t lose our doctor. The most important thing we lost were his glasses. He’s very nearsighted.”
“You forgot something,” the Admiral said, hardly looking up from his work. “We not only have lost transport but communications. We no longer have a way to recharge batteries. This battery I have now-” he nodded at the radio-”is good for perhaps another eight to ten hours. After that “ he looked up”nothing. Silence. What do you plan to do?”
“I plan to kill them. But I don’t know how to find them. I came to talk to you about it.”
Lib said, “May I interrupt? Don’t look at me that way, Randy. I’m not trying to interfere in your business. I just wanted to say I brought the Admiral’s coffee. While you’re talking, I thought I’d boil water and make a cup for him.”
The Admiral said, absently, “Kettle’s in the fireplace.”
She went into the living room. It was silly, but sometimes the Admiral irritated her. The Admiral made her feel like a mess boy.
Sam Hazzard laid the automatic sixteen gently on the desk.
“Ever since I heard about it, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You have to go get them. They won’t come to you. Not only that, they may be a hundred miles from here by now.”
“I think they’re right around here,” Randy said. “One of the gang was a local drugstore cowboy, now toting two real guns. And they don’t have enough gas to get far. I think they’ll try to score a few more times before they move on. Even when they’re gone, others will come. We have the problem whether it’s this particular gang or another gang. I’m going to try to form a provisional company.”
“Vigilantes?”
“No. A company under martial law. So far as I know I’m the only active Army Reserve officer in town so I guess it’s up to me.” “Then what do you do?”
Lib came in and set a cup beside each of them. She found a clear space at the far end of the room-length desk, boosted herself up, and attempted to appear inconspicuous.
“Suppose I organized a patrol on foot? Set up roadblocks?” Randy suggested.
“The highwaymen were mobile, you’re not,” the Admiral said. “If they see an armed patrol, or a roadblock, they’ll simply keep out of your way.”
Randy said, “Well, we can’t just sit here and wait for them.” “All this I’ve been thinking,” The Admiral said. “Also I was thinking of the Q-ships we used in the First World War.”
Lib started to speak but decided it would be unwise. It was Randy who said, “I remember, vaguely, reading about Q-ships but I don’t remember much about it. Enlighten me, Sam.”
“Q-ships were usually auxiliary schooners or wornout tramps, targets on which a German submarine captain wouldn’t be likely to waste a torpedo but would prefer to sink with gunfire. Concealed a pretty hefty battery behind screens that looked like deck loads. Drill was to prowl submarine alley unescorted and helpless looking. The sub sees her and surfaces. Sometimes the Q-ship had a panic party that took to the boats. Best part of the act. Soon as the sub opened fire with its deck gun the Q-ship ran up the flag and unmasked the battery. Blammy! It was quite effective.” “Very ingenious. But what has it got to do with highwaymen?”
“Nothing at all, unless you can put a four-wheeled Q-ship on the roads around Fort Repose.”
Randy shrugged. “We’re not mobile. Plenty of cars we could use-for instance, yours, Sam-but gasoline is practically nonexistent. We might have to cruise around for days before they tack led us. I might be able to requisition a gallon or two here and there but then the word would get around and they’d be watching for us.”
Lib had to speak. “Could I make a suggestion? I think Rita Hernandez and her brother must have gasoline. They’re the big traders in town, aren’t they?”
Randy had tried to wipe Rita out of his mind. They were even, they were quits. He wanted nothing from Rita any more. He said, “It’s true that if anybody’s holding gas, it’s Rita.”
“Not only that,” Lib said, “but they have that grocery truck. Can you imagine anything more enticing to highwaymen than a grocery truck? They won’t really think it’s filled with groceries, of course, but psychologically it
