There was a good-enough moon. They made the outskirts of the city by
eleven o'clock. A restaurant, all but demolished, gave them canned
food; Trace had to bat Johnson in the chops to keep him from wolfing
down a dirty chicken sandwich he found lying on the floor, and Johnson
went into a fit of wailing hysterics, but when he came out of it he was
just about cured, and didn't weep or shiver any longer. They walked
a little farther and at midnight Trace plunked them down on a wooded
hill, beyond the rayed area. He and Bill Blacknight gathered dry brush
and built a blazing fire against the chill of January.
"Dangerous?" queried Slough, the tiny man.
"Calculated risk," said Trace. "I think we can presume the saucers
won't be over this sector for a while, and if they do come, they may
believe it's a natural fire. The main reason is to attract survivors
to us." He didn't mention that he himself was so inured to climatic
changes he would never have thought of building a fire for warmth,
save for the others. He wore his heavy shirt and trousers and over them
a light topcoat Bill had found for him. He could not have said off-hand
whether he was cold or comfortable.
When they had all gone to sleep, some like corpses and others as
light-slumbering as wildcats, Trace walked a beat around them, keeping
an eye and an ear open for approaching steps. There were none.
Toward morning he heard the dark girl sobbing. He sat beside her and
stroked her hair soothingly. When Bill took the watch, Trace fell
asleep with one arm over the girl's shoulders. At dawn she was all
right, and could talk again.
Her name was Jane Kelly and she'd been a teacher, and Trace considered
her a very fine-looking dish indeed, even in the fat parka. She was
not so flamboyantly female as Barbara Skye, the redhead, but she was
distinctly not the sort you would take for a boy at forty paces. She
had curves and a warm face and eyes like brown gold, if there was such
a thing.
Trace said "Yo," like John Wayne was always doing in those Old West
pictures about the cavalry. "Let's travel." They tramped off toward
Washington.
They never reached it. They never even got as far as Philadelphia.
* * * * *
The first trouble came as they were crossing a field of frozen
mud and corn-stalk stubble; Barbara turned her ankle and sat down
with a squawk. She was wearing high heels, not spikes but a good
two-and-a-half inches, and Trace was disgusted with himself for
neglecting his job. He was so full of vengeance and hatred that he
forgot to check on the little things that could sabotage him. He should
have scrounged some shoes for her somewhere yesterday.
He glanced at Jane's feet. She wore sensible shoes. They didn't
improve her ankles any, but they couldn't spoil them either. Trace had
never been an admirer of sensible shoes, yet now he felt a rush of
affectionate gratitude to Jane for wearing them.
"You can't go barefoot," he said to Barbara, who was chattering
petulantly and rubbing her ankle, exposing an astonishing length of
silken thigh in the process. "And you can't travel in those things.
You'll have to be carried."
"Why don't you leave her?" said Kinkaid, the plump man. "She's no use
to you. Neither am I. I'll stay with her."
Barbara said venomously, "I'd as soon be stranded with one of those
bird-footed weirdies as with you, Tubby. Take your cotton-pickin'
eyeballs off my leg before I scratch them out for you."
Hafnagel, the big man, said, "Take a vote, Roscoe. You can't force us
to limp all over creation with you. Because you're crazy enough to want
to find the saucers is no--"
"I'm no soldier," said Johnson. He was a blond man with a crooked nose
and jughandle ears. "I'm going to take to the hills. The aliens are
invincible; but a man might avoid them for years in the hills. There's
farms and such to live off."
"Don't think I'll go with you," said Barbara, standing up. "I wouldn't
trust one of you creeps if Roscoe was out o' sight. I'm going with him
if I have to walk on my palms."
"We're not splitting up," said Trace. "Someone's got to carry you,
honey." His breath misted out on the frosty air. "Hafnagel, you're big
enough."
Hafnagel knelt down. Barbara straddled his shoulders, the man took her
ankles carefully in his stiff fingers, as impersonally as if they had
been firewood, rose and started forward. "Hey," Barbara said, "this is
okay. You can see from up here."
"Any saucers?" asked Trace.
"No. Nothing moving at all." They all went on.
Trace's troubles multiplied through the day. Of all his crew, only
three were interested in cracking back at the destroyers--the midget
Slough, the magician Blacknight, and the teacher Jane Kelly. Barbara
was against his plan, but would not leave Trace, whose uniform gave her
a sense of security. The three others fought him constantly, with words
and sometimes with action.
Hafnagel tried to knock him out during a halt. Trace presented him with
a bloody nose, and saddled him with Barbara and drove them all onward.
Johnson broke for cover when they passed a willow-bordered river. Trace
caught up with him and washed his face in the icy current, and Johnson
restricted himself to verbal attacks thereafter.
Kinkaid refused to budge from their noon camp. Trace grabbed his left
ankle and dragged him over the hard rocky earth for twenty yards, and
Kinkaid shrieked that he'd walk. Later he pretended to go lame, fooled
Trace into half-carrying him for a mile, and then had his fat face
slapped so hard that he was filled with respect for Trace's authority,
and made no more trouble.
* * * * *
Those were the intentional oppositions. Trace had likewise to contend
with recurrent hysterics, with terrible fits of moaning agony of
mind, and with a depression that now and again settled over the entire
company. He bellowed at them, shoved them around, occasionally patted
them like dogs; he realized what they were going through, and he was
not a callous man, but he knew he had to keep them on the move for
their own sakes as well as that of his plan. Civilization had all but
died yesterday. He couldn't expect to pick up a gang of hard, angry,
level-headed companions. He had to make do with what he had, and
improve on this weak raw material by his tough, high-handed methods.
Again and again he examined the strange firearm he'd taken from that
green beast with the flag. It baffled him. There was no place to load
the thing, no jointure in all its smooth dark surface. The muzzle was
pierced by a hole about a millimeter wide. That was where the missile
would come out; but could the weapon be reloaded there? What kind of
ammo would go into a millimeter opening?
The pistol--he decided to call it that--was much lighter than a Colt of
comparable size. There was a narrow trigger and trigger guard in the
same position as on an earth-made revolver. That was logical, as the
hands of the aliens were, barring the color, perfectly human. Trace
decided he'd have to take a chance and fire the thing. The unchancy
weapon would come in handy if he could work it. He bit his lip. Maybe
it had just one shot. Oh, blazes. He had to find out.
On their next halt, he aimed it at a tree (there was no sight and he
aimed by feel, like a gunman) and pulled the trigger. It had a hard
pull, so hard that only a strong man could have budged it at all. It
made no sound. There was a thin streak of green light, and the trunk of
the tree commenced to smoke and steam. Then it burst into yellow-green
flame and exploded, fragments of bark and splintered wood showering out
to a great distance. Trace ducked, let up on the trigger, and the beam
died. He was reasonably sure now that it wasn't a one-shot.
"And that's what you want us to go against," said Johnson. "A million
Martians armed with those. What right have you to make us?" he
shrieked. "What authority?"
"This authority," said Trace, hefting the pistol. "Likewise the supreme
authority of the United States Army, as I have declared martial law.
And then there's the authority of me, Sergeant Trace Roscoe, who will
mop up this whole damn valley with your fat puss if so be it you are
disinclined to obey my orders, buster."
"Thinks he's so tough," grumbled Kinkaid.
But they all followed Trace when he marched on. Jane Kelly kept up
easily with the men, and Trace was especially proud of her; but he had
to admit that most all of them were whipping into shape better than
he'd any right to hope for. "Few more days and I'll have me a real fine
belly-achin' fighting-mad platoon here," he said to himself.
Unfortunately he didn't have a few more days. He made contact with the
green-skinned destroyers no more than half an hour thereafter.