The Brain Eaters

Chapter 27

Anton Kuryakin looked around him with a deep sadness. A great country was being brought to its knees. The streets of the cities were clogged with debris and abandoned cars. Shops were closed and shuttered. Others had their windows smashed out and stood open and gutted like dead animals.

For the most part, people stayed off the dying streets. Those who had to be out hurried along, huddled in upon themselves, avoiding contact with any others they might meet. The eyes of many of the people were already dead.

Worst were the screamers. The wild, agonized victims of the brain eaters. They ran along the streets, hopelessly trying to rip the parasites from inside their heads. People recognized them now for what they were. They knew the terrible violence such victims were capable of, and they shunned them like the lepers of ancient times.

Kuryakin stood at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Milwaukee and looked about him at the dying city without pleasure. He had always believed that the superiority of the Soviet system would one day bring down the Western democracies, but it gave him no enjoyment to see the old adversary beaten in this terrible way.

After his flight left San Francisco, there was the short period when they were airborne and everything might have been normal. Normal, that is, except for the grim tension on the faces of the passengers and the crew and the soft sobbing of an old woman in the seat behind him. At least they were isolated at sixteen thousand feet from the ugly reality on the ground. The fragile sense of normality collapsed when they landed.

After that, Kuryakin had seen the situation become rapidly more desperate. There was near chaos at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Flights to all points were being canceled, People fought for seats on airplanes that would never take off. There was no reliable information on what was coming in, and the anxiety in the faces of those who waited was awful to see.

While people dashed frantically and pointlessly from counter to counter, Kuryakin placed himself stolidly in line at the shuttle-flight boarding gate. Thus he managed to get a seat on one of the last flights to take off for Milwaukee.

The scene at Mitchell Field was a smaller version of O’Hare. Everybody was in a panic to leave the city, but nobody knew where he wanted to go. With other countries closing their borders to Americans, they were trapped with the brain eaters.

Getting from the airport to downtown Milwaukee had been the easiest part of Kuryakin’s journey. Almost all the traffic was in the other direction, and the few taxis that were still operating were glad to take a fare back into the city. Getting from Milwaukee to his final destination was proving to be much more difficult.

“Can you drive me to the Biotron factory?” he asked the cabdriver who had brought him from Mitchell Field.

“Where’s that?” the man asked, looking back at his passenger and running a critical eye over his too-short haircut and the unstylish drape of his suit.

“It is located in a village called Wheeler.”

The cabbie looked blank.

“That is near a larger city called Appleton.”

“Appleton? Are you crazy?”

“I am not crazy. That is the name of the city. Do you not know where it is?”

“Sure I know. This Biotron place — is that the one on TV where those doctors are trying to come up with something to stop the brain eaters?”

“That is correct. You will take me there?”

“Do you know how far that is?”

“No.”

The driver cocked his head speculatively. “How much money you got?”

“American money?”

“Hell, yes. What do you think, pesos?”

Kuryakin pulled out his worn leather wallet and carefully counted the bills inside. “I have thirty-three dollars in American bills and some coins.”

“Shit. And you want me to drive you to Appleton for that?”

“Yes, please.”

“Mister, you already owe me twenty bucks for the trip from the airport. What you got left ain’t going to get you out of town, never mind all the way to Appleton.”

Kuryakin paid the man his twenty dollars and accepted the scowl he got for not adding a tip. One day the Western workers would understand the insult of offering a man a gratuity on top of the wages he earned for merely doing his job.

There were no buses running out of Milwaukee. No trains. No public transportation of any kind. Kuryakin sat down on a deserted bus-stop bench to think. As best as he could remember, the drive from Milwaukee to the Biotron plant had taken two or three hours. While he rode as a passenger in the back seat of the car supplied by the American State Department, he had paid little attention to the route followed by the driver. However, as a product of the Russian school system, he was an excellent reader of maps. If he could obtain a map of the highway system, he was sure he could locate the town of Wheeler, and once he was there, it would not be difficult for him to find Biotron. His means of traveling there was another problem to be faced.

There were an unusual number of police and soldiers on the streets. They paid no attention to Kuryakin. He understood that they were too busy with the problem of the brain eaters to concern themselves with him. Under normal circumstances, he no doubt would have been arrested long ago and would now be in some secret police prison facing the harsh interrogation for which American police were noted. Even though he felt relatively safe, he did not wish to jeopardize his anonymity by approaching one of these men for help. He would simply have to rely on other means to get where he wanted to go.

As Kuryakin sat organizing his thoughts into a plan, a big American car jounced up over the curb and crunched its gleaming front end into a light standard. The door on the driver’s side burst open, and a man tumbled out. He wore a T-shirt with the name of a popular beer on it. His eyes bulged, and his mouth gaped in a scream. On his face the red boils worked as though there were tiny mice under the skin trying to chew their way out. Kuryakin recognized the symptoms of the brain eaters.

The man took off in an erratic run down the sidewalk, hammering his fists against the unyielding plate-glass windows as he stumbled past.

Two men in army uniforms on the opposite side of the street shouted at him. He turned in their direction, roaring out his pain and madness. He started across the street toward the uniformed men.

“Halt!”

Kuryakin heard the shout clearly on the near-deserted street. Several people peered cautiously from doorways at the commotion. From around the corner came several more men in uniform.

The stricken man continued to run at the two soldiers. His hands were stretched out in front of him, the fingers bent into claws. One of the soldiers fired his automatic rifle into the air. The man continued to charge. Both soldiers dropped to a kneeling position and fired. His body jerked, and he stumbled backward as the bullets tore into him, but he righted himself and came doggedly on for another half-dozen steps before he fell.

Hesitantly, keeping their weapons at the ready, the soldiers approached the fallen man. The others, who had been attracted by the shouts and gunfire, joined them. A few civilians came out of the buildings. They formed a cautious circle around the unmoving man on the ground.

Kuryakin was ignored in the excitement. So was the automobile the man had been driving. It still sat with its front end mashed against the light standard, the door hanging open.

Kuryakin rose from the bench and walked to the automobile. One of the headlights was smashed, but there seemed to be no disabling damage. No fluids were leaking out underneath. He got in behind the steering wheel and pulled the door shut.

He knew that maps were usually stored in a compartment on the right-hand side of the dash panel. He released the catch, and the door popped open. Inside the compartment he found a wad of the crinkly receipts given to American drivers when they purchased gasoline on credit. There was an aspirin bottle with only a few tablets left inside, a pair of sunglasses, a box of facial tissues, a can opener, a woman’s compact, a comb, a roll of breath mints, two ball-point pens, several loose keys, assorted screws, and three maps.

One of the maps detailed the streets of Milwaukee. The others were for the states of Wisconsin and Illinois. Kuryakin discarded the Illinois map and spread the other two out on the seat beside him. He found his present location by matching the street names on a sign at the intersection to the grid of the Milwaukee map. On the state map he located the village of Wheeler and plotted the route he would have to take to get there.

Out on the street none of the people gathered around the dead man paid any attention to Kuryakin or to the automobile. Damaged and abandoned cars were no longer a novelty. And no one had time to notice an oddly dressed man climbing into one.

As a scientist of some repute in his native country, Kuryakin was privileged to have access to an automobile. The solid, sensible Ilyushin he drove on the streets of Moscow was a much simpler and sturdier machine than the gaudy American vehicle, but the principle was the same.

As a driver himself, and rather proud of his ability, Kuryakin had taken every opportunity on this visit to discuss the differences between Russian and American machines with the drivers assigned to his delegation. He thought the American cars were overly padded and contained too many controls and gauges that had little to do with the machine’s operation. However, he was too diplomatic to criticize an important product of the host country.

He tried now to remember the things he had learned. The engine, he recalled, was started by a twist of the key. The keys to this vehicle, in a shiny leather case, had been left dangling from the lock on the steering post by the doomed owner. Kuryakin gave the ignition key a twist as he had seen the American drivers do.

Nothing happened.

Kuryakin frowned at the controls. He must have forgotten something.

The gear lever; that was it. The pointer had to be in a specific location to allow the key to activate the ignition. Kuryakin experimented until he found that the P position freed the key switch. The engine came to life. He glanced out onto the street, but the only activity was around the body of the car’s late owner. Very carefully he moved the lever to the R position and backed the big automobile back onto the street. He shifted to D and eased forward past the knot of people and around a corner heading toward Highway 45.

While Anton Kuryakin picked his way carefully through the cluttered streets of Milwaukee toward the highway, Eddie Gault lay curled into a tense fetal position between the damp, twisted sheets of the bed he shared with Roanne Tesla.

The inside of Eddie’s head was on fire. It felt as if something were in there trying to push his eyeballs out. It seemed much longer than two days earlier that he was assuring Roanne that he felt just fine.

Eddie thought he knew all about pain. There was that impacted wisdom tooth a couple of years before. And the time he chopped off a toe splitting logs on his uncle’s farm. Or when he was hit in the balls by a line drive while pitching in high school. None of those times had hurt like this. And it was getting worse.

From out in the living room he heard the murmur of the television set. Roanne must be watching. She deserved a little time to herself. She had been at his side almost constantly, both during the short flu thing and now since the headaches had started. That day, though, he had noticed that she was looking at him a little bit sideways. Eddie thought he knew why.

He freed himself from the tangled sheets and pushed his feet out of the bed. He sat there for a minute, then stood up. Every movement he made hammered at his skull. Biting down hard to keep from crying, he walked unsteadily to the doorway leading into the living room.

On the television screen two people in white doctor coats were talking to one of those pretty-boy television reporters. One of the doctors was a young Oriental, and the other was a woman with big tits. Eddie listened for a minute and figured out that they were part of the group working out at the Biotron labs to find a cure for the brain eaters.

Their words came to Eddie filtered through the throbbing pain, but he got the sense of what they were saying. They had come up with some kind of a test where you could tell for sure from a person’s blood whether he had the brain eaters in him.

A small groan got away from him.

Roanne looked around and saw him standing there. She quickly got out of the chair and snapped off the television set. She made no move to come closer.

“Why did you shut it off?” he said.

“I thought it was disturbing you.”

“Those doctors said they’ve got a test for the brain eaters.”

“You know how doctors are. They’ll say anything to make it look like they’re accomplishing something. Why don’t you go back to bed, baby?”

“I think I got ‘em, Roanne. I think I got the brain eaters.”

She moved a hand as though to comfort him but came no nearer. “Don’t say that, Eddie. It’s just nerves.”

He pressed both hands to his temples. “No. Something’s in there. It hurts so bad, I can’t tell you.”

“Lie down, baby. I’ll make a poultice for your head.”

“It won’t do any good. Nothing’s going to do any good. I got ‘em.”

Roanne put a hand to her mouth and shook her head in denial.

“I want to go to the plant.”

“No, Eddie.”

“I want to see those doctors. Maybe they can do something for me.”

“They aren’t letting anybody in. They have guards at the gate.”

“They’ll let me in. They’ll do it because I’m the one who set the brain eaters free.”

“They think it was an accident.”

“I’m going to tell them it wasn’t.”

“You can’t do that,” Roanne said.

“I’ve got to. Then they’ll have to let me in. They’ll have to help me.”

“They’ll lock you up.”

“I’m going in,” Eddie said stubbornly.

“They’ll lock you up. Then they’ll come and get me.”

Eddie stared at her through pain-dimmed eyes. His tortured mind worked sluggishly. “That’s what you’re really scared of, isn’t it — that they’ll find out what you made me do. You don’t care about me at all.”

“That’s not true, Eddie. I love you.”

“Then why are you backing away from me?”

“I–I’ve never seen you acting like this before. You scare me.”

Eddie gripped his pounding head and rocked it from side to side as though it were something that didn’t belong on his body. “I’m going to see the doctors,” he said. “Don’t try to stop me.”

He stumbled across the room past Roanne. She shrank back against the wall as he fumbled at the knob, finally opening the front door.

He staggered out onto the patch of dirt in front of the house where they parked the van. Roanne watched as he pulled himself in behind the wheel and started the engine. He knocked over the mailbox as he turned onto the road and weaved off in the direction of the Biotron plant.

Roanne watched him drive out of sight, then left the window and picked up a newspaper. It was three days old, the last she had been able to buy. She frowned at the picture on the front page and the boxed caption next to it. Then she picked up the telephone.

After several seconds she heard the familiar buzz of the dial tone. Good old automated telephone company. Still working. She dialed a number and spoke briefly to the voice that answered on the other end. Then she hung up and went back to the window.

Clouds were gathering. There was going to be a storm.