The Gods Hate Kansas Page 4

He was almost to the main highway when a man got up from a bank beside the road and stepped out, jerking his thumb in the traditional hitchhiker’s gesture. Temple stepped on the brake, his interest quickening.

  “Mind giving me a lift to town?”

  Temple swung the door open. “Hop in. What are you doing afoot out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  The stranger settled back and grinned. “Waiting for you, Doc.” He was a large, rather nondescript man with pale brown eyes and pale brown hair. “You are Curtis Temple, aren’t you?”

  “How…”

  “Cramer, that state trooper, told me about meeting you at the diner. In fact, he dropped me back there on Solle’s road to wait for you. It was lucky for me your girl friend gave you the brush-off. If you’d gone through with that damn fool stunt of ramming the gate, I’d be facing a mighty long, hot walk about now.”

  The car slammed to a jolting stop and Temple glared at him wildly. “How do you know about all that? Who are you, anyhow?”

  “Stilwell, FBI. As to knowing what went on…” He fished in a jacket pocket and produced a pair of compact folding binoculars. “These may look like toys but they help me do a pretty fair job of detecting at half a mile, Doc. Now, what say we find us a less conspicuous parking place and see if we can’t horse-trade some information about things that are bugging us both?”

  CHAPTER 6

  The Crimson Plague

  When he finally parked on a remote side road, Temple described everything that had occurred from the moment of Van Arden’s call to the present; he explained the organization and purpose of the Meteoritics Team. He finished grimly, “The only thing I know for sure is that Lee Mason is not herself in any way. I don’t know about the rest of…”

  “The same,” Still said gloomily. “But there’s nothing you can pin down. It’s like wrestling a patch of fog. I’m not supposed to be on this case because officially there isn’t any case. They haven’t busted any laws that I know of. If they’ve bent any, it was with official sanction.”

  “I can swear Mullane was kidnapped. He wouldn’t act as he did of his own free will. I know him well enough to know that.”

  “You’d play hell making it stick,” Stilwell said wearily. “They arrived just ahead of you this morning with Mullane driving and both Solles sound asleep in the back. That makes nine top scientists in three days who have come under their own power and apparently of their own volition. I’d bet that Air Force chopper you saw brought more of them.”

  “Then why are you spying on them?” Temple demanded. Stilwell scowled. “It started the night those fireballs appeared and all hell broke loose in Washington. Van Arden couldn’t decide whether he thought they were missiles or space ships full of purple people eaters, so he hedged his bets. He called out your team in case they came from space, and mine—along with the CIA—in case they came from behind the Curtain. Those first few days, I got pretty well acquainted with both Van and your people and I liked them all. Then suddenly I didn’t like them at all.” Temple swung sharply, his eyes narrow. “Go ahead.”

  “Everybody was laughing and excited the night they hauled those rocks out and cracked them open. Half an hour later they were all like your girl friend, like zombies. Van Arden put in a call to Washington and talked almost an hour. I don’t know who he called or what he said, but about midnight every one of us outside your science team got orders to pull out and keep hands off. Something didn’t smell right to me at all, so I thought up a couple of excuses to hang around Bomer. But for all I’ve learned since, I might as well be back in Wichita running my field office.”

  “But there must be a thousand workmen in there,” Temple said. “And all the material for that layout. They didn’t just pull that out of thin air.”

  “Not quite, but almost. The Mason girl visited local lumber and building supply men, they started phoning and for forty-eight hours every road in this end of the state was choked with trucks. She called on the local employment agency and workmen started arriving by plane, train and bus. They’re getting fantastic wages but that’s all I know. Not one’s been permitted to set foot outside that fence since he was hired. You may not like this, Doc, but it looks very much as if your blonde is the boss of the whole show. Everyone she’s called on has shut up like a clam and acted like a zombie ever since.”

  Temple’s clenched fists hammered against the wheel in helpless frustration. Suddenly he whirled, his eyes alight. “Somebody high up in Washington is making all this possible. That person must know what it’s all about. Haven’t you any contacts in the Bureau or around the Pentagon who might leak?”

  Stilwell’s jaw set. “I just might. Doc. Come to think of it, I just might. I’m probably asking him to lay his neck on a block and holler for the axe, but damn it, this is no time to be squeamish. Let’s go put in a call and blast the poor guy’s career all to hell.”

  On the main street of Bomer, Stilwell pointed to a sign bearing the familiar white bell on blue background. “There’s the local telephone office. Park as close as you can and I’ll put in my call from there. They know me so we can get some privacy.”

  Temple found a parking space and started around the car to join the FBI man on the sidewalk. Stilwell started to say something but his voice broke on a strangled cry. An expression of fearful agony twisted his face. His big body stiffened and went up on tiptoe as if every joint had locked under some intolerable tension. Several passers-by stopped, gaping. Temple lunged forward with outstretched hands.

  Suddenly it appeared as if some terrible internal pressure exploded, forcing every drop of blood in Stilwell’s body out to the surface. His pale brown eyes bulged into glassy protrusions. The flesh of his face and neck puffed out and turned a bright, ugly crimson, dotted with droplets of exuded blood that gave it the appearance of raw beef.

  For an instant Stilwell poised on his toes, then plunged forward. Temple caught the plunging body and lowered it, stiff as a statue, to the sidewalk. He was stunned by the suddenness and horror of the seizure, only dimly aware that somewhere close by a woman was shrieking and a babbling crowd was closing in.

  A man fought his way through, shouting, “I’m a doctor. Let me through here. Get out of the way.” He knelt by Temple, cried, “Good God!” and snatched a stethoscope from the bag he carried. After a moment he straightened, shaking his head. “Whatever it is, he’s beyond help now.”

  No one thought of contagion. To the pushing crowd it was only a strange and morbidly fascinating form of death. Half a dozen willing volunteers crowded in to help carry Stilwell’s body across to the funeral establishment that also served as local morgue. As they picked it up, a sudden impulse made Temple slip the small, powerful binoculars from Stilwell’s jacket pocket to his own.

  He stood back in the white-tiled embalming room while the doctor completed a superficial examination of the body. Temple was still dazed by the swiftness of the tragedy, too shocked to realize the magnitude of his own loss.

  The doctor straightened at last, shaking his head. “This beats me. I’ve never encountered or even read of anything remotely resembling these symptoms. Before we do another thing, I’m going to phone the State Medical Association and ask for instructions. We may be facing a rare or wholly new form of disease.”

  He looked almost happy about it as he reached for the telephone. The next moment he was stiffening, crashing to the floor, his face masked by the same hideous suffusion of blood.

  The men who had been lingering surreptitiously after carrying Stilwell’s body in stared for a moment in pop-eyed horror. Then with yells of terror, they whirled and ran, jamming the doorway with a clawing, howling mass. On the sidewalk outside, a huge crowd had gathered, waiting for further news of the mysterious malady. The panic-stricken bearers burst out like a cork from a bottle, scattering those nearest the door.

  The last man to emerge took two steps, stiffened and went down with a blood mask for a face. As the crowd broke into a screaming bedlam, another of the volun
teer pallbearers was felled in their midst. By the time Curtis Temple reached the sidewalk, the fear-maddened mob was in full flight, jamming the street in both directions. In the immediate area there was no one but the two grotesque bodies on the sidewalk.

  Moving like a man in a nightmare, and with no clear motivation, Temple got the first victim under the armpits and began to drag the stiff figure toward the mortuary door. Suddenly the funeral director, a plump little man with snow-white hair, ran out and lifted the feet.

  He looked at Temple with frightened eyes and said, “Somebody has to do it, and I’ve already handled the first one enough to catch it if I’m going to.”

  By the time they had laid the two bodies beside that of the doctor on the morgue room floor, other courageous townspeople were coming in quietly to help do what must be done. Doctors contacted state and national medical authorities. A reporter put the story on the press wires, then went on the air to plead for calm. Cramer set up highway patrol roadblocks to turn travelers away from the stricken town. Police and businessmen patrolled streets to avert mass panic.

  Because they had already been exposed, Temple and Adams, the mortician, took over the job of moving the bodies to an empty shed out beyond the edge of town. They used the hearse and left it at the shed, plodding back on foot in numb silence.

  No more victims were stricken that night. By morning the vanguard of an army of medical warriors began arriving to battle the horrible disease. An emergency laboratory was set up and squads moved out to find the enemy, grimly analyzing soil, water, air, food, anything that might conceivably have bred contagion or carried it in.

  On their heels came some of the country’s leading medical authorities with a team of courageous nurses. A warehouse at the edge of town was converted into a pathology center where they began the grisly task of autopsying the bodies of the victims and subjecting organs and tissues to every known test.

  As the day wore on with no new cases, a measure of calm returned to the town and bolder citizens began to resume their normal activities. But within the ranks of the searchers there was no calm but a growing dismay.

  By mid-afternoon they faced the incredible fact that nowhere was there a clue to the mystery malady. No contamination of any sort could be found in the area. The bodies showed no unfamiliar virus or bacteria, no trace of any organic malfunction to explain the seizures. Teams of researchers, digging into the vast treasury of medical experience, found no record of any case even remotely similar anywhere in the world.

  The doctors, equipped with every modern defense against contagion, took complete charge of burying the remains of the victims in a remote area far from town. Within an hour after that task was completed, three doctors, a nurse, the workmen who had volunteered to fill the graves and an innocent farmer two miles from the site were stricken with a return of what newspapers and television had christened “The Crimson Plague.”

  A fresh panic rolled out in waves to engulf the country. In Topeka the Governor declared a state of emergency. National Guard units were flung completely around Bomer in a wide, tight cordon to prevent anyone’s leaving town and thereby possibly spreading the unknown contagion.

  Temple, reeling with exhaustion, had finally been forced to take a hotel room and sleep a few hours. When he returned to emergency headquarters to give whatever aid he could, his mind was still too numb to think beyond the moment or to wonder how he had so far escaped the Crimson Plague.

  The bodies of the latest victims had been stored in the same shed Temple and Adams had used for the first victims. Shortly after dark a grim and silent mob marched out from town. Temple followed them, mystified but unable to get a word of explanation from those he tried to question. Near the shed the main body halted.

  A dozen or so men went on and, from a cautious distance, hurled buckets of gasoline over the shed and the hearse parked beside it. Others moved up to throw burning torches. In a moment both shed and hearse were a mass of roaring flames. The mob stood watching in ominous and frightening silence as the fire completed its work of total destruction. With the collapse of the last shed wall, the silent crowd began to turn away, its macabre effort at self-preservation completed.

  A sudden gust of night wind came out of the west, causing the flames to dance eerily, lifting a swirl of ashes from the ruins. The soft flakes swept down over the crowd and almost instantly people began dropping with the unmistakable symptoms of the Crimson Plague.

  Curtis Temple could only stand frozen as the survivors, half mad with terror, fled screaming back across the prairie to town. Behind them, more than a score of bodies lay stiff and lifeless on the ground.

  In the small hours of morning a group of the nation’s leading medical authorities faced one another grimly, after hours of secret discussion. The chairman rose, his face gray, his eyes dull with despair.

  “I don’t have to remind you, gentlemen, that not a word or hint of what has been said here tonight must pass these doors. I’m afraid the public at large will learn the truth soon enough. We have reached agreement on only one point—we are completely and hopelessly stumped. The Crimson Plague cannot be either anticipated or checked by any means at our command. Neither burial nor cremation appear to destroy its virulence or hamper its spread. We don’t know what it is, where it came from or how to halt it.”

  One of his distinguished colleagues lifted a haggard face. “We know one more fact. Unless we find some place where the bodies of Crimson Plague victims can be isolated beyond all possibility of even remote contact with the living, the contagion may quickly spread over the nation and then the entire globe.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Sinister Fortress

  In his hotel room Temple paced the floor, beating clenched fists together in an agony of frustration. The television screen in one corner of his room showed a long aerial view of Bomer, taken from a distance of several miles and including part of the ring of Guardsmen. An announcer whose voice trembled on the verge of hysteria was urging the public to remain calm.

  During the early hours of morning the Crimson Plague had leaped the human barricade surrounding Bomer and struck simultaneously at a score of towns within a radius of sixty miles. So widely separated were the stricken areas that it was impossible to blame the spread on a frightened refugee who might have slipped through the cordon carrying infection.

  It was fearfully obvious that the Plague moved and spread by a means of its own, independent of human carriers. If this were so, then man’s sole, feeble hope of confining and controlling it was gone. A famous commentator, better known for sensationalism than sense, added to the frenzy by coining the phrase, “Today Kansas—Tomorrow The World!” Others hinted darkly at germ-warfare experiments behind the Iron Curtain.

  Temple snapped off the set and stood gritting his teeth in impotent despair. His casual phrase, The Gods Hate Kansas, suddenly took on new and sinister meaning.

  The meteorites had fallen on Kansas. The fantastic change in the personalities of the Meteoritics Team had occurred there. Now, from that same focal point, the Crimson Plague was spreading its deadly tentacles. It was impossible to see all this as mere coincidence. The mysteries had to be linked somehow into a single dark pattern.

  Why hadn’t he himself caught the Plague if it were so contagious? He had been in closest contact with Stilwell both before and after his death. Were deadly, undiscoverable organisms already incubating in his own bloodstream, awaiting their time to strike? But others had escaped equal or even greater exposure. Was there any relationship between the meteorites, the Crimson Plague and the strange activities of the meteor camp?

  His spinning thoughts persisted in returning to Stilwell’s death. Was his selection as the first victim of the horror no more than random chance? The FBI man had shared Temple’s suspicions and had willingly become his ally in probing the mysteries. He had been on the verge of a phone call that promised the first tangible clue.

  Temple had no idea of whom he had been about to call, or even in
what branch of the government. That avenue had been effectively blocked by Stilwell’s death. Was it coincidence or sinister design? If design, why had Temple been spared to continue his own determined probe of the mysteries?

  The endless chain of unanswered questions blurred in his throbbing head. Out of the chaos, only one clear fact emerged. The answer to all the questions lay behind the electrified fence that guarded the camp. Until he could pass that barrier and get inside, all speculation was fruitless and pointless. There had to be a way into the camp, and he must find it quickly.

  The determination steadied him and brought back the steely glint to his eyes. He swallowed pills for the headache, went out into the morning heat and stood looking up and down the street. The sign he was looking for caught his eye.

  The Bomer Employment Agency was a narrow office with two empty desks behind a railing and a small closed room at the rear. A bell jangled as Temple walked in and a man came from the small room. He was thin, with an expressionless face and empty eyes that reminded Temple sharply of Lee Mason’s.

  “I understand they’re hiring electricians out at that meteorite camp,” Temple began. “I—”

  “Not any more,” the thin man interrupted. “Jobs are filled.”

  “Maybe I could leave an application anyhow, in case one gets hurt or sick and they need a replacement.”

  “They won’t,” the other said flatly. “The work’s about finished. Sorry.” He terminated the conversation by walking off.

  Temple left, looking thoughtful. He spent the next few hours tramping the streets, pumping storekeepers or anyone else who had contact with the camp. The results were disheartening. None had ever made deliveries to the camp. No one from there came to town except Lee Mason, or one of the Solles who picked up grocery orders.

  “You won’t get anything out of Gus or his boy,” the grocer told him. “They never was much for talking, but now they act like they’re walking in their sleep. You ask ’em something, they just stare into space and don’t hear you.”