Mickey Spillane - Survival... ZERO!

Beaver wasn't a fashion plate. He only had two suits and two sport jackets. The pockets were turned inside out and the coat linings ripped off. On the floor of the closet was a bloodstained shirt and a crumpled red vest with more blood, stiff and dried, staining the fabric.

I took another twenty minutes to make sure there was nothing I had missed and finally sat down on the edge of the bed, lit up a cigarette and looked at the mutilated body of Beaver on the floor.

I said, "You weren't lucky this time, chum. That red vest didn't bring you any luck at all, did it?"

Then I started to grin slowly and got up and went back to the closet where the red vest lay in a crushed lump. It wasn't much. It was old and worn and it must have been expensive at one time because it still held its color. Beaver had thrown it there when he took off his bloodied clothes, hurting and not caring about his lucky charm. It was too carelessly tossed off and not much for the killer to search because it didn't even have pockets.

But it had been Beaver's lucky charm once and a place to hide all his luck, something that was always with him and safe.

I found where the hand stitching was around the lower left hand edge, picked at the thread and pulled it out of the fabric. The sheet of onionskin paper folded there slid out and I opened it, scanned it slowly, then went to the phone and gave the desk clerk Eddie Dandy's number.

He said he knew how he could give his watchdogs the slip, but if he did that was the end of him in broadcasting, in life, in anything. He had been given the word strongly and with no punches pulled. He wanted to know if it was worth it.

I told him it was.

CHAPTER 12

I let him vomit his supper out in the toilet bowl and waited until he had mopped his face with cold water and dried off. He came back in the bedroom, trying to avoid the mess on the floor, but his eyes kept drifting back to the corpse until he was white again. He finally upended one of the drawers and sat on it, his hands shaking.

"Relax," I said.

"Damn it, Mike, did you have to get my ass in a sling just to show me this?"

I took a drag on my cigarette and nodded. "That's right."

Very slowly his face came out of his hands, his eyes drifting up to mine, fear cutting little crinkles into the folds of skin at their edges. "You ... did you ..."

"No, I didn't kill him,"

Bewilderment replaced the fear and he said nervously, "Who did?"

"I don't know."

"Shit."

I went and got him a glass of water, waited while he finished it, looking out the window at the glassy-wet tops of the buildings across the street. Down below a police cruiser went by slowly and turned north at the corner. "Quiet out," I said.

Behind me, Eddie said softly, "It'll be a lot quieter soon. Just a few more days. I don't know why I was worrying about coming here at all. What difference can it make?"

"It hasn't happened yet."

"No chance, Mike. No chance at all. Everybody knows it. I wasted all that time worrying and sweating when I could have been like you, calm as hell and not giving a damn about anything. Maybe I'm fortunate at that. In a few days when the lid comes off and the whole world knows that it's only a little while before it dies, everybody

else will go berserk and I'll be able to watch them and have an easy drink to kiss things goodbye." He let out a little laugh. "I only wish I could have been able to tell the whole story. They talk openly now. It doesn't seem to matter any more. You didn't know the Soviets ran down more of the story, did you?"

I shook my head and watched the rain come down, only half hearing what he said.

"That other regime ... they never thought the strain of bacteria was so virulent. It would be contained pretty much in this hemisphere and die out after a certain length of time. They made tests on involuntary subjects and decided that one out of ten would be immune, and the vaccine they had developed would protect those they wanted protected. It wasn't just two agents who were planted in this country. There were twenty-two of them, and each was supplied with enough vaccine to immunize a hundred more, all key people in major commercial and political positions who would be ready to run the country after the plague was done wiping out the populace. Oh, they could sit back and not give a damn, but there was one thing they never got to know. The vaccine was no damn good. It was only temporary. They'll last a month or two longer after the others have died, but they'll die harder because it is going to take longer. Only they're not going to know this because everyone involved in the project is dead and there's nobody to tell them. They were going to know when it happened, because the single unknown, the key man who was going to plant the stuff around the country, was the only one who knew who the others were and he was going to notify them so they could set all their grand plans into motion."

"Nice," I said.

"So he planted the stuff ... all those containers. My guess is he lucked out because of the vaccine he was injected with. There was a possibility it could do that. Funny, isn't it?"

"Why?"

"Because they have that organization all set up. They're ready to move in and set up another semislave state. The elite few get it all and the rest get the garbage. Not bad if you're one of the elite few and have the only guns around to back you up. It doesn't even make any difference if those agents were given the date or not. Either way they think they'll be ready to grab it all. It might screw up their timing, but that's about all. They move in, think they have it made, then all of a sudden it hits them too."

"It won't happen."

Eddie Dandy laughed again, a flat, sour laugh that ended in a sob. "Mike, you're mad."

I turned around and looked at him perched on the edge of the drawer, muscles tightened with near hysteria bunching in his jaw. I grinned at him, then picked up the phone. It was five minutes before they located Pat Chambers and I let him take me apart in sections before I said, "You should have gone with me, friend. It wouldn't have taken all this time."

"What are you talking about?"

"You can buy next year's calendar, Pat. You'll be able to use it."

For ten seconds there was a long silence on the other end of the line. He knew what I was talking about, and his voice came back with a tone of such absolute consternation that I barely heard him say, "Mike . .."

"It was all wrapped up in Lippy Sullivan," I told him. "Handle this gentry, Pat. And Pat ... you'd better pass the word that the President doesn't have to have a heart attack tomorrow. There'll be plenty of news for everybody to chew on ... and when you're passing the word, pass it high up where it counts and none of those eager lads with all that political ambition will be able to get their teeth in my ass for what's going to happen. Tell the thinkers to get a good story ready, because there's going to be the damndest cover-up happening tomorrow you ever saw in your life, and while it's happening I'm going to be walking around with a big grin, spitting in their eyes."

Before he could answer I told him where I was and hung up. Eddie Dandy was watching me like I had gone out of my mind. I handed him the sheet of onionskin paper.

"What's this?"

"The exact location of every one of those containers. You have the manpower already alerted and placed, the experts from Fort Derrick on hand to decontaminate them and the biggest scoop of your whole career. Too bad you'll never really be able to tell about it." I looked at him and felt my face pull into a nasty grin, "Or the rest of it."

I tried one more call, but my party wasn't at home, which confirmed what I already knew. I took the two last photos of Beaver out of my pocket, looked at them and threw them down beside the body. He didn't look like that any more.