And then one day, another day, Harry Slencik came down the trail to Ben’s place just at dark in the evening, just as Ben had pulled in and was getting himself something with rum and butter and brown sugar in it to warm him up after making his evening inventory out in the cold. It surprised Ben a little, seemed like he hadn’t seen Harry except for a glimpse or two across a field for a week or more. Big, bland-faced Harry Slencik with his sweat-stained old cowboy hat cocked to one side as usual on his big head, and the usual big grin on his face; but that night when Ben greeted him and asked him in, it seemed as though Harry’s big grin had some look of a skull about it. “Cold out there,” Harry said, and looked over at Ben’s rum-and-butter. “You got any more of that stuff around, why don’t you buy me one?”

  The big man walked over and sat down, warmed his hands by Ben’s fireplace while Ben made the drink. Took a long pull, big smile gone, set the cup down on the hearth and just sat staring at the flickering light.

  Ben sat down across from him. “Amy, Harry?”

  Harry nodded. “She’d kill me if she knew I was down here; she says it’s nothin’, just a little chest cold, but it’s not just a little chest cold. Coughing and feverish, threw up once this morning that I know of. She’s been goin’ too hard, hasn’t been taking precautions, goin’ into all those trailers, takin’ care of that baby; I told her she shouldn’t be doing all that, but hell, Ben, I can’t fight with Amy when she’s got her mind made up, you know that.”

  “No, you don’t get far fighting with Amy. But we’d better go up and see her.”

  Harry nodded again, stood up slowly. “Ben, listen. She don’t want to go down to that barn down there, and I don’t want her to. I’ll put her to bed and take care of her, make sure nobody comes in and gets contaminated or nothin’.”

  “Harry, for Christ sake — ”

  “I know it ain’t very smart, but that’s what I want. We been in that cabin up there too long to go somewhere else now.”

  Well, Amy wasn’t the only hardheaded one in the family, Ben thought, trudging up the path with Harry. He checked her over carefully, and after a sad little pro forma protest that everything was fine, she let him get her to bed, get some aspirin into her, get something cold on her forehead. He didn’t put on mask or gown or gloves; there’d been too many things in the past, they’d all been together too long for that at this point, he wasn’t going to look at this woman out of a big protective gown or over a cold muslin face mask, to hell with that. “Well, you’re right,” he said finally. “You’ve got a little bronchitis; what you need right now is some sleep and a little rest for a couple of days, and Harry’ll see that you get it. But you’ve got to stay in bed — no going out, no seeing anybody. There are others can pick up the load …” And Amy nodded weary agreement, no argument there, and turned her head, got comfortable with her wheezing and occasional burst of coughing and was sleeping, finally, before Ben clapped Harry on the shoulder and left. Back at his cabin he threw all his clothes into the big vat of Clorox and sloshed his hands and face and hair with Bard-Parker’s, but his heart wasn’t in it. It seemed, all of a sudden, that his heart wasn’t in anything anymore. At this point, who the hell cares? And what does it matter?

  Amy died about two the next afternoon, Lord only knew how long she’d been sick before even Harry noticed. Tears were freezing on Harry’s cheeks as he and Ben and Mel Tapper put her down in the burial place just at dusk, and nobody said any words, it was just too bitter cold to stand out there talking. But — maybe it was an omen — that night the frigid, icy sky clouded over and the temperature outside rose thirty-five degrees overnight and next day a warm southerly breeze brought the mercury above freezing and somebody said something about it seeming almost springlike and after a while Ben Chamberlain found himself thinking that Amy or no Amy, maybe some of the Freehold would endure …

  66

  “It’s saturation bombing,” Ted Bettendorf said when Frank collared him in the basement of the First Methodist Church in Willow Grove at two in the morning. “That’s what it is, plain and simple.”

  “The air force would call it ‘deep interdiction,’ “ Frank said. “Bombing and enfilading behind the enemy’s lines.”

  “It’s still saturation bombing,” Bettendorf insisted, “and it’s never worked in modern warfare that I know of on a tactical level. And with an antibiotic? I don’t know that it’s ever even been tried. Jesus!”

  “Look, don’t carry the analogy too far,” Frank pleaded. “We’re not talking about field warfare, and we’re not talking about dropping antibiotic bombs — except figuratively.”

  “Yes, I know.” Bettendorf paced the floor. “What you’re actually talking about, specifically, is loading up the entire population in the area — every man, woman and child in Willow Grove, Nebraska, and its surrounding villages — with a full ten-day therapeutic dose of a new, completely untested antibiotic drug, including about seventy-five percent of that population that has no established evidence of infection whatever, nor even any established evidence of contact with the infection.”

  “Not yet,” Frank said. “But what are the odds that any one of them is going to turn up with active infection, or have active exposure in the next ten days? You figure the odds. You’ve got the numbers from other similar communities. You know what the penetration curves are.”

  “It’s insane,” Bettendorf said.

  “Different, maybe. Not insane. Look, the bald fact is that what we’re doing now isn’t working, even with a remarkably effective drug. That’s what you were telling us in our little conference. We aren’t stopping it. It’s simply moving too fast. Monique hit the target right on the bull’s-eye: we’re always behind it, never quite catching up. We’re merely reacting to what it does — and that’s not enough. We’ve got to jump over it just like we had to jump over those state cops a week ago just to get the drug into town.”

  Bettendorf shook his head. “Frank, what you’re proposing is scientifically insupportable. If we were to try it and it backfired, our asses would be hanging so far out in the wind there’d be nothing left of them.”

  “Seems to me that mine is already out there quite a ways,” Frank pointed out. “So are a lot of other people’s.”

  “That’s true enough — including mine.” Ted scratched his jaw. “Jesus. The CDC could be drummed right out of existence as a credible entity. But then, its credibility isn’t all that high right now, as it is. And if something doesn’t slow this plague down somehow, there’s not going to be any CDC around very long to point fingers at — ”

  “Who’s going to be pointing fingers, anyway?” Frank said.

  “The entire scientific and medical community, for openers.”

  “Oh, come on, Ted. What scientific and medical community? There isn’t any left, to speak of. It may be gone for good, as far as we know. All we have are a few remnants here and there, a few Whitey Foxes and Sam MacIvers slugging it out for their own immediate patients. And what do they have to offer? Precious little, I’d say.”

  The tall gray man paced some more, paused to sift some computer readouts through his fingers, shook his head. “Well, I still say it’s insane,” he said, “even if Monique is right on target. But suppose we tried it — would it even be practical? It would have to be all or nothing, you see. How many individual doses of that stuff did you bring up here to begin with — ten thousand or so? And you’re already running low, just covering the ones we know are infected or exposed. Now you’re talking about a gram of the stuff per day per person for ten days straight — and for how many people? About twenty-five or thirty thousand? That’s well over a million and a quarter doses you’re talking about, and to do what you want to do you’d need them here, right now, today. Where are you going to get them?”

  “Well, in the first place, we don’t need it all today,” Frank said. “We only need about 120,000 doses the first day, along with some wild kind of distribution system, to buy us twenty-four hours. But in practical terms, I’ve already checked, and there are approximately 700,000 doses in all stockpiled right now in Wichita.”

  “In Wichita.”

  “That’s right. I’ve also already talked to Sally, and by now” — Frank consulted his watch — ”she will have stolen a truck — ”

  “Stolen a truck,” Ted Bettendorf repeated.

  “ — stolen a truck and gotten it loaded with half the stockpile we have down there and be heading north, due to pull in here about eight hours from now if the truck she’s stolen doesn’t break down. No, you haven’t met Sally Grinstone yet, but you will, you will. Sally is a very resourceful young woman, and she doesn’t mind stealing trucks in the least when she figures she needs one. She’ll only bring half of the stockpile with her, just on the off-chance that some vagrant idiot somewhere down in Kansas tried to hijack the truck somewhere along the way. Meanwhile, Running Dog — ”

  “That’s the Indian?”

  “ — will bring the other half of the stockpile up in a different vehicle, following a different route and arriving a little later. While all this is going on, the rest of us are going to figure out how we can get the stuff spread out, with instructions, to thirty thousand people, preferably within the next twenty-four hours …”

  Ted Bettendorf reached for a chair and sat down, somewhat unsteadily. “I — I think I’m following you,” he said carefully. “But you still are only accounting for three-fifths of the drug you’re going to need.”

  “Right,” Frank said. “That’s where you come in. Tom Shipman and his rump factory for making this stuff is down in Wichita, and the only thing standing between us and the remaining two-fifths of the drug we need is enough tetracycline to make it with. The finished product may not come to us in the elegant form you’d like, all dosed out and stuffed in capsules — it may come up here in bulk, packed in drums, just a raw green powder mixed with excipient, and we may have to guess a little bit at the exact dosage, but if Tom can get enough tetracycline fast enough and the place down there doesn’t catch fire, he should be able to produce in time.”

  The man from Atlanta suddenly stood up. “Yes,” he said, “and it’s time we’re talking about, isn’t it? If you need tetracycline somewhere in Wichita, you’d better tell me just where in Wichita you want it to appear, and then I’d better get on the telephone and start drumming it up for you. And you’d better get Sam MacIvers out of bed and start planning how you’re going to distribute the stuff.” He looked at Frank. “It may be insane and scientifically insupportable and we may all be dead men if this scheme doesn’t work, but by hell, it’s going to feel good to be doing something for a change. Even something as crazy as this.”

  Sally Grinstone pulled into town at ten in the morning in a twelve-ton dump truck marked Murphy’s Sand and Gravel, its rear neatly packed with cartons and a tarp thrown over the top. She was covered with grease from head to toe — the muffler had fallen off halfway there and she’d had to crawl under the truck and wire it back on again — ”All I needed was a ticket from some jackass for making too much noise” — so she didn’t look too much like an angel of mercy, but 350,000 doses of the Shipman drug were delivered safe and sound in Willow Grove, Nebraska. Ted Bettendorf spent eight hours on the telephone, pausing only once to look at this grease-smeared truck thief of a female with a completely unreadable expression on his face; he had trouble getting through to much of anybody for most of the eight hours, and the ones he did get through to either didn’t believe it was really Ted Bettendorf calling them from somewhere out in Sticks ville, or thought he had taken leave of his wits, considering the requests, pleas and directives he came up with, but at the end of the time he sighed and rumpled his hair and said to Sally Grinstone, “Better phone your chemist friend down there and tell him to get ready, because he’s about to be buried in tetracycline.”

  Meanwhile Frank and Monique, the two doctors and their office people, Sally Grinstone and Running Dog (when he finally arrived with his half of the stockpile) set about organizing the first stage of a truly prodigious distribution effort. Later on, nobody could possibly have said who did precisely what, who came up with what ideas, who manned the phones for what purpose, or who could take credit for any given thing that happened; it was totally impromptu, there were no guidelines to follow, and plans changed from hour to hour or even minute to minute, mostly in terms of implementing changes to speed things up.

  The problem was simple enough, on the face of it: how to get three days’ dosage of the drug into the hands of every breathing soul in Willow Grove and environs within twenty-four hours, even within twelve if possible, without exposing anyone to any unnecessary contact with anyone in the process — and identify for certain which people had the medicine in hand, with instructions, and which ones didn’t. It was clear from the start that the people could not be allowed to come get the medicine — the medicine had to be taken to the people, and people had to be notified that it was coming and why. Sally took over liaison with the media, most notably the town’s single radio station, providing a stream of messages to be poured out without even pauses for station identification — communiqués written by Sally, even identifying which streets and which blocks were being covered when, and repeating the most vital word: STAY HOME; WAIT; SOMEONE WILL BRING ENVELOPES WITH MEDICINE TO YOUR DOOR; READ THE DIRECTIONS AND THEN TAKE THE MEDICINE AS DIRECTED; YOUR LIFE MAY DEPEND UPON FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY.

  Tim Larramee and the other Eagles mustered their Scouts and took over the waiting room of the clinic to help with the stupefyingly dull task of counting out twelve capsules and putting them in envelopes, one envelope for each citizen, stapling the envelopes shut and rubber-stamping them with directions made from one Scout’s toy printing set; running to the stationers for staples and inking pads and more envelopes and still more envelopes. Once a supply of envelopes was ready the town police delivered Scouts and others willing to serve as delivery boys carrying boxes full of envelopes to block after block of homes, each delivery boy armed with a felt marker to leave a clearly marked X on each door where delivery had been made, along with the number of envelopes delivered to that house — “Use the red markers,” Sally insisted; “we might as well make it symbolic while we’re at it.” By noon the first loads of envelopes were going out, and feedback said that most folks were getting the message, if not directly from the radio, then from the next-door neighbors who were, at Sally’s broadcast suggestion, going out on their front porches and shouting next door or beating on a dishpan until somebody looked. By 5:00 P.M. most of the downtown residences had been covered and some of the more peripheral areas were being penetrated. Squad-car policemen not actually depositing Scouts on street corners were patrolling the streets themselves, looking for unmarked houses, delivering envelopes in person. By midnight, with virtually everyone involved facing exhaustion, the stockpiles of drug had dwindled sharply, and street maps were checked, and outlying village maps were checked, and there came a point of consensus that just about everybody had been covered who could be covered and there was nothing more now but to go home to bed …

  That night in his mind’s eye Ted Bettendorf saw the Horseman, riding the streets and byways of Willow Grove, Nebraska, pale and naked, bony legs clasping the flanks of his nightmare steed, pale as its rider, its shoulders pouring sweat, great nostrils flaring, fearsome eyes blazing with death, the great and spiral horn spearing up from its heavy forehead. Silent hoofbeats clattered through the streets and alleys and across the rooftops, and behind the Horseman his ragged, filthy hell-child rode, clinging fiercely to his master. Was there something different tonight? The pale steed seemed nervous, pausing now and then, changing direction slightly at no urging from the Horseman, dancing a nervous death-dance at the street corners, looking, turning before dashing off. Did the beast sense something different tonight? Did the Horseman? No matter; still they rode through the frozen night.

  … to bed, yes, but not to sleep. Long hours, wide-eyed, staring into the darkness. Too exhausted for talk, too much tension to sleep. A waking nightmare of waiting.

  And at dawn, more waiting. Too early to know anything, far too soon. Frank and Monique found MacIvers pacing his waiting room at 7:00 A.M., already taking the day’s calls. More new cases, ignoring all directions, waiting until seven to call the doctor. Contacts written down, medications confirmed; yes, keep taking them. Frank and Monique drank coffee in glum silence, hearing the doctor’s gravelly voice. No point even looking for Bettendorf, he would have nothing to tell them. By noon MacIvers was showing signs of cracking, his voice tense as piano wire on the telephone, fairly snarling answers — Frank caught Monique’s glance, nodded, took the little doctor’s arm — ”Come on. There’s a little gas in the van. Let’s take a ride.”

  They rode out to the edge of town, down along the river gorge, through the willows, the little city park, empty of people, up the grade on the other side. No words, and after a while Sam MacIvers turned his face to the window and covered his eyes with a hand and began crying, very quietly. Frank drove on out through the open fields of wheat stubble, let him get it over with, and presently he stopped. Sam turned back, looked out through the windshield. “Dumb country,” he said gruffly. “Stupid country, some people think, even people who live here, but it’s beautiful, beautiful. Made to support life. Good rich land, good people. Too many tornadoes in the summer, but that’s all right, too, they pass.”

  Back in town, back at the clinic, Sam said, “Thanks,” and Frank nodded, watched the little men sprawl out on a waiting-room couch and sleep like a baby for three hours while he manned the phone.