Wilson Tucker - The Long Loud Silence

Had been there. The taxi stood at the curb, motor running.

Gary turned his head to look back through the restaurant window, to see the cabby still buried in his paper. The girl was bringing him a second coffee. Gary stepped off the curb and walked around the vehicle to slide under the wheel. He released the brake and put the car into low gear, moving off slowly and quietly to avoid attention of the driver. When he was a block away he changed gears and pushed the throttle to the floor, scooting along the nearly deserted street. A cross-town thoroughfare claimed his attention and he turned west, thinking to flee still further from the river. By this time those trailing him would believe him going steadily south.

He found the western route closed. A roadblock had been thrown across the highway and two or three cars were lined up there, undergoing an inspection by uniformed police. Without changing speed he turned off on a side road and drove north, striving to give the impression such had been his route.

He continued north until he came to an intersecting road, and pivoted toward the city once more. Back in Shreveport he directed the cab south, having described a complete circle from his earlier start, only to find a similar roadblock on the highway to Alexandria and Baton Rouge. He stopped well back from the barrier where police were inspecting the passengers of a cross-country bus, and turned around.

The routes to the west and south were closed to him — the plague scare had snowballed that quickly to those dimensions. Escape to the north might be open, on the theory that he would not return that way, but again he would find barriers thrown up on the southern outskirts of Little Rock. The girl lay on the apartment floor in Little Rock — the last apparent clue to him. There would be more in Shreveport tomorrow or the next day. A waitress, another bartender, more.

Escape only to the east?

Driving cautiously, Gary sent the cab across the Red River into Bossier City. No one stopped him. He continued on, seeking out and finding the federal route to Monroe and the Mississippi. There were no roadblocks that way. Not yet.

Not yet… but there would be soon. As soon as that cabdriver reported his stolen vehicle, as soon as the police manning the roadblocks reported the cab had not gone west or south. Suddenly the cab stuck out like a yellow thumb on a bare highway. He had to get rid of it.

The opportunity came shortly after dawn next morning.

She was a middle-aged woman driving an old Model A Ford, driving it slowly and carefully along her lane. Gary slowed the stolen cab and fell in behind her, watching the manner of her driving, noting that her speed never exceeded a steady, careful thirty miles an hour. A cautious, lonely woman driving along in a lonely dawn, intent on some distant destination. She had pulled over on the far right side of the road to permit him to pass, and was taking quick peeks at the cab in her mirror.

Gary shoved down on the accelerator and shot around her, to swing directly in front of the Ford and apply the brakes. She obediently slowed, nervously gauging her distance by watching his bumper and taillights. He slackened speed again, dropping well below her accustomed thirty and was satisfied to see the uncertainty on her face. She tried to fall well behind him but he kept his foot on the brake and stayed just ahead of her. Finally, when the two vehicles were doing less than ten miles an hour, he jerked to a complete stop. Her reflexes were not quick enough and the Ford piled into the rear of the cab.

Gary slid out from under the wheel, leaving the motor running and the door open, to walk back and inspect the damage. She was beside him in an instant, berating him for his poor driving and decrying the damage to her own car. Without a word he seized her arm and pulled her forward, to place her on the front seat of the cab. She stared at him, speechless then with surprise and growing anger. He left her there, ran back to the Ford and jumped in. Before she could recover her wits and step down to the pavement he had backed the Ford away from the tangle of bumpers and shot forward, curving out and around the stalled cab with a rich burst of speed. The woman screamed at him as he sped by. The old car would do no more than fifty, wide open, but he slammed his foot to the boards and held it there until the yellow taxi and wildly gesticulating woman had fallen from sight behind.

Gary slowed to a leisurely thirty, secure in the belief that the cautious woman would not attempt to close the gap between them. Plus the necessary amount of time she would need before continuing in the cab — she would undoubtedly waste many minutes, debating the honesty of driving off in the strange vehicle.

The high-pitched sound of a diving plane caught his ear. Gary twisted the wheel and savagely nosed the car over into the nearer ditch, to leap clear and run for the fields as soon as the Ford had come to rest. At the fence he stopped. The plane was several miles behind him, back along the highway he had just traversed and it was not coming his way. He wandered back to the road, staring into the distance.

The aircraft's motors were screaming again and he found it just as it was pulling out of a dive. As he watched, the plane climbed into the sky, snapped around in another circling approach, and dived at the highway once more. Quite clearly he could hear the rattle of machine guns. The ship plummeted below the horizon and was hidden for only a moment, before tilting its nose for the climb. It made one last pass at the target while Gary stood there watching, and then stayed in the sky to aimlessly circle the object, waiting.

The cabdriver would be annoyed at the loss of his vehicle.

Gary backed the Ford onto the road and hurried eastward toward the river, toward the only place of safety that he knew. He hoped the occupants of the plane would not notice his car. There was no shred of doubt now that his presence had been detected in Shreveport.

The river lay wide and dark ahead of him, moving along listlessly with a whispering nothing that wasn't quite sound and yet was not silence. The real silence lay on the other side, a silence so complete it was a tangible thing that could be held in the hand. A loud, hurtful silence. Gary lay motionless, frozen in the marshy grasses, his eyes searching for the black silhouette of a sentry against the night sky. They knew he was here somewhere now, knew that he had entered the forbidden ten-mile zone, knew with certainty that he was hiding in some secret place between the wrecked taxi and the river. They even knew where he was going, and would have denied him the right to go back to the silence.

Gary lay still, hating the silence and the river.

There was no other choice for him if he wanted to go on living beyond this moment and this hour, and that knowledge angered him. He felt a burning hatred of the choice, of the narrowness of it and of the hard necessity for making it. He could spring to his feet now and shout his defiance of the west — to die in the next second, or he could go back across the line of quarantine — and what? The river was a tormenting barrier that divided the nation in halves, unequal halves in which unequal lives were played out on a stage of poverty or plenty. For many — food, drink, chocolates, radio, sensation, gasoline, money, neon, flesh, sleep, peace. For some — be quick or be dead, starve slowly or die quickly by violence. And so common a thing as a river was the line of bitter division.

The black and almost shapeless mass of a prowling sentry moved against the stars.

Gary stopped breathing, watching the dim figure stalk past him, watching him out of sight. He counted a hundred while waiting for any others that might be following the sentry and then rose up on hands and knees to edge toward the water. A rock turned under his knee and he froze to the sand, watching and listening. Slowly then, feeling his way with his senses as much as his fingers, he wormed toward the river's edge, on the alert for trip wires. One outstretched hand came down in water, causing a minute splash. After a taut, silent moment of listening he lowered his naked body into the river and moved sluggishly away from the Louisiana shore.