Jack Chalker - A War of Shadows

This book is for Eva C. Whitley, so loving a completist that she not only has all my writings, but she married me, too.

The shadow of death passed through Cornwall, Nebraska, but it was such a nice day that nobody noticed.

The sign off Interstate 80 simply read “Cornwall, next left,” and left it at that. If you took it you were immediately taken onto a smaller and rougher road that looked as if it had last been maintained in the days of the Coolidge administration. Avoiding the potholes and hoping that your own vehicle wasn’t too wide to pass the one coming toward you, you finally passed a small steak house and bar and were told by a smaller sign that you were in Cornwall, Nebraska, Town of the Pioneers, population 1160, together with the news that not only did they have Lions and Rotary, but when they met as well.

The town itself was little more than a main street composed of a few shops and stores, an old church, the inevitable prairie museum, and a motel which had never seen better days, as much maintained by pride as by business.

There wasn’t very much business in Cornwall; like thousands of others throughout the great plains states the town existed as a center for the farmers to get supplies and feed, and to order whatever else they needed from the local Montgomery Ward’s or Sears catalog store.

It was stifling hot on this mid-July afternoon. The ancestors of these people had settled in inhospitable Nebraska because they had lost hope of Oregon; trapped with all their worldly possessions, they had made the land here work—but they had never tamed it.

Three blocks down a side street, a woman gave a terrified shriek and ran from her front door out onto the sidewalk, down toward the stores as fast as she could. Rounding the corner, she ran into the small five-and-ten and screamed at a man checking stock on one of the shelves.

“Harry! Come quick! There’s somethin’ wrong with the baby!” She was almost hysterical.

He ran to her quickly, concern on his face. “Just hold on and calm down!” he said. “What’s the matter?”

“It’s Jennie!” she gasped, out of breath. “She just lies there! Won’t move, won’t stir, nothin’!”

He thought frantically. “All right, now, you get Jeb Ferman—he’s got some lifesavin’ trainin’. Did you call the doctor?”

She nodded. “But he’ll be fifteen, twenty minutes coming from Snyder! Harry—please come!”

He kissed her, told her to get Ferman and join him at the house. Jeb had once been a medic in the Army, and was head of the local volunteer fire department.

In a few minutes, they were all at the house.

It wasn’t that the child was quiet; in many circumstances parents would consider that a blessing. Nor was she asleep—her eyes were open, and seemed to follow Jeb Ferman’s finger.

She just didn’t move otherwise. No twitching, no turning, not even of the head. Nothing. It was as if the tiny girl, no more than ten weeks old, was totally paralyzed.

Jeb shook his head in confusion. “I just don’t understand this at all,” he muttered.

By the time the doctor arrived from two towns over, Jennie was no better, and her eyes seemed glazed.

While they all clustered around as the man checked everything he could, the concerned mother suddenly felt dizzy and swooned almost into her husband’s arms. They got her onto the sofa.

“It’s just been too much for me today,” she said weakly. “I’ll be all right in a minute. I’ve just got this damned dizziness.” Her head went back against a small embroidered pillow. “God! My head is killing me!”

The doctor was concerned. “I’ll give her a mild sedative,” he told her husband. “As for Jennie—well, I think I’d better get her into a hospital as quickly as possible. It’s probably nothing, but at this age almost anything could happen. I’d rather take no chances.”

Harry, feeling frantic and helpless now with two sick family members on his hands, could only nod. He was beginning to feel pretty rotten himself.

It would take a good forty minutes to get an ambulance, and the patient was very small, so the doctor opted for a police car. He and the father got in the back, carefully cradling the young and still motionless infant, and the car roared off, a deputy at the wheel, siren blaring and lights flashing.

Not far out of town the car started weaving a little, and the deputy cursed himself. “Sorry, folks,”—he yelled back apologetically. “I don’t know what happened. Just felt sorta dizzy-like.”

He got them to the hospital, pulling up to the emergency entrance with an abandon reserved for police, and stepped out.

And fell over onto the concrete.

The doctor jumped out to examine him, and a curious intern, seeing the collapse, rushed to help.

“Hey! Harry! Get Jennie inside!” the doctor snapped. “I got to take care of Eddie, here!”

The intern took immediate charge, and the two men turned the deputy over and looked at him. There were few scrapes and bruises from the fall, and he was breathing hard and sweating profusely.

“I’ll get a stretcher,” the intern said. He turned and looked back at the police car, seeing Harry still sitting in it, holding the baby.

“Harry!” he yelled. “I told you to get Jennie inside!”

There was no reply, no sign that he had been heard at all. The doctor jumped up swiftly and leaned back into the car.

Harry sat there stiff as a board, only his panicked eyes betraying the fact that he was alive.

The doctor ran inside the emergency room entrance.

“We got us some kind of nasty disease!” he snapped. “Be careful! Isolation for all of them, full quarantine for the staff. Admit me, too—I’ll assist from inside, since I’ve been in contact with them. And get another ambulance over to Cornwall fast! I think we got a young woman there with the same thing!”

Tom Scott and Gordon Martin had driven ambulances over half the roads of Nebraska in the six years since they’d started, and were hardened, prepared for almost anything—but never for driving into Cornwall that late July afternoon.

There were bodies all over. A couple of cars had crashed, but that was only part of it. People lay all over the place, in odd positions. Inside the cafe, hamburgers were frying to a crisp while customers sat motionless in the booths; the cook, fallen onto the grill still clutching a spatula, was frying too. Down at the service station a stream of gasoline trickled into the street as an attendant, leaning against a car as unmoving as the driver behind the wheel, continued to pump gas into a tank that had obviously been full a long time.

“Jesus God!” Scott reached for the radio. “This is Unit Six to dispatch,” he said, trying to sound calm and businesslike.

“Dispatch, go ahead Six.” A woman’s cool, professional tones came back at him.

“We—I—I don’t know how to tell you. Get everybody you can over to Cornwall, full protective gear, epidemic precautions. Everybody in this whole damned town’s paralyzed or dead!”

“Say again?” The tone was not disbelieving; it was the sound of someone who was sure she’d misunderstood.

“I said the whole town’s frozen stiff, damn it!” he almost screamed, feeling the fear rise within him. “We got some kind of disease or poison gas or something here—and I’m right in the middle of it!”

Within minutes four doctors were airlifted to Cornwall by State Police helicopters; troopers blocked the entrances and exits to the town except for emergency vehicles. It was a totally unprecedented thing, and there were no contingency plans for it, but they acted swiftly and effectively, as competent professionals. Nearby National Guard vehicles were pressed into service as well, and a frantic hospital tried to figure out where and how to deal with the huge number of patients. It was a 150-bed hospital; they already had forty-six patients. Appeals went out to hospitals and doctors as far away as Lincoln, and the CAP was asked to provide additional airlift capability.