(eng) Murray Leinster by The Other Side Of Here

Author:The Other Side Of Here [Here, The Other Side Of]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

Of course, they had a tremendous advantage in their flight. The looters of the city would find it impossible to accept (heir presence. The higher-ups of the scale-armored folk knew of the existence of Steven Waldron and that he had managed to get out of Newark, but that could have been assumed an accident. Also they may have believed his other escapes were the result of his extreme alertness. Always he got away from later plague spots before they were formed.

But the invaders—or the looters—could not imagine that Waldron actually knew how to counteract the weapon or the instrument that had thrown four inhabited places in the stasis of catalepsy. Shots, heard in the night, would seem to the higher-ups to have resulted from one of their underlings firing unfamiliar weapons by accident. Even when some of the squealing, groveling looters babbled of someone killing two noblemen or leaders, Waldron had been wearing authentic scaly armor. There would still be no reason to think that one of the authentic inhabitants of the city was alive. Still less chance existed that it would be believed a single man had dared return to the dead area.

So the small truck went racketing from the scene of the shooting. Twice Waldron flashed on his headlights for guidance and flashed them off again. Such momentary flickerings in the mist above the buildings were not likely to be noticed. In a little while the truck was speeding up the right-hand fork beside Lincoln's statue. A few minutes later, Waldron turned right and stopped to listen for pursuit.

Leaping from the truck, he took some of the stiffened figures from the back and hid them in shadows and in lanes. Then he drove on, stopped and listened—again he disposed of more girls' frozen forms. Then he dodged and twisted and presently arrived at a hillside street where he could see, very far in the distance, the lights of the Oranges and the other communities on beyond. Those lights were not as numerous as usual. Everybody who could run away had done so. But the truck's headlights could be seen where humans were still alive and moving and alert.

Waldron turned on the truck's headlights to their brightest, and he and Lucy fled. But he risked a few brief seconds to flash the light on and off again, three short flashes of light, and three long ones, and three short ones again. Presently men would become aware that there was life in the dead, still city of Newark.

During the racketing flight from downtown, Waldron had kept his original purpose in mind. The placing of the truck had its purpose. Its lights would not be visible from where the looting was busiest. But now or soon there would be a deadly hunt for whoever had killed the two officer-leaders. If it was true that all of them carried metal-tipped whips and used them so arrogantly and mercilessly as Waldron had seen, then it was apparent that a hideous division of castes existed among the invaders.

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