Howard L. Myers The Creatures of Man

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up with the older man at the door of the bus, and could hear Mike wheezing.
"How you doing, Mike?" he asked.
"Hi, Joe," Mabry responded hoarsely.
Inside, Cosman climbed behind the wheel and Mabry mounted the ladder to the
gun turret on the foreroof. "What's keeping Diego?"
"Here he comes," Mabry replied, sounding less winded. "No . . . it ain't
Diego. It's somebody else."
Whoever it was boarded the bus and dropped into the second driver's seat
beside Cosman, who eyed the man curiously.
"I'm John Haddon," the man said, "subbing for Diego what's-hisname. Your
second driver."
Cosman nodded curtly, not sure he liked this guy and wondering what was wrong
with Diego. "I'm Joe
Cosman, and that's Mike Mabry up in the nest." He flipped a switch on the dash
and spoke into the mike. "Bus 502 crewed and ready. Open up!"
"Okay, 502," the speaker responded. "Move out."
Cosman put the bus in gear and rolled forward. The inner door of the Westwall
Emergency Lock folded aside as the bus approached. When it was passed, the
door closed and the outer door, a hundred feet ahead, swung apart. The bus
passed through it and into the swirling blackness of the outdoors.
He heard Haddon gasp at the sudden darkness and wondered if this was the man's
first mission. "The smoke thins when we get a few hundred yards from the
Dome," he said, keeping his attention on the
dashboard instruments.
"How . . . ?" Haddon started, then apparently thought it better to leave his
question unasked.
Cosman nursed the bus along, partly by feel and partly by the radarscope which
revealed the position of the guidewall along the edge of the ramp. After a
couple of minutes he brought the bus onto the South
Sandusky Dome expressway, switched on the autopilot, and sat back.
"Your first mission, Haddon?" he asked.
"Well . . . the first real one. I've had mock-up training, of course."
"Okay. You know where the coffee is?"
"Oh, certainly!"
"Fine. That's part of the second driver's job. Go get us some. Make mine
black."
"Mine with white and sweet," said Mabry.
Haddon got up and moved out of the cockpit, back into the passenger section.
Cosman and Mabry watched him go; then the driver looked up at the gunner.
Mabry shrugged elaborately and chuckled.
Cosman spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness and the gunner chuckled
again and nodded.
After a moment Mabry asked, "How close can we get on the expressway?"
"To within a couple of miles, I think." Cosman got out his road map,
triangulated the position he had been given for the downed plane, and marked
the spot on the map. "Yeah. A little less than two miles.
Plenty of old roads there. We probably won't need to use the tracks to get
in."
Haddon returned with the covered coffee mugs in time to hear the end of that.
"Is it in . . . dog country?" he asked.
Mabry answered, "Everything outside is dog country, bud. Everything except the
Bog."
"Oh." Haddon handed a mug up to the gunner, then brought Cosman his.
"In fact," Mabry went on, "even inside the Dome seems to be dog country."
Cosman frowned. Old Mabry had his good points, but holding his tongue wasn't
one of them. Remarks like that one shouldn't be made. They could get a guy in
trouble. Especially in front of a stranger like
Haddon, who might blab.
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"No coffee for yourself?" he asked to change the subject.
"It might tense me up," said Haddon, peering at the blank blackness of the
windshield.
Mabry guffawed. "Good thinking, bud! You gotta stay loose to be a rescueman.
Some folks say the dogs pick the people who smell afraid to pull down. So
don't get in a sweat and you'll be okay."
Haddon turned to look up at the gunner, and Cosman could see the look of
dislike in his eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about!" Haddon
sniffed.
Mabry laughed, pulled his mask aside, took a long swig of coffee, and replaced
the mask.
Cosman activated the windshield washer and switched on the headlights. The
heavy trucks rumbling past the bus on the fast inside lane now became visible
. . . huge dark forms running on their automatic controls, each one sending
its spout of black exhaust up to mingle with the thinner smog of the
dawn-touched sky.
"Won't the lights tell the dogs this is a manned vehicle?" Haddon asked
uneasily. "I mean . . . not that I
think the dogs are intelligent, or anything like that . . ."
"For whatever reason, the dogs never bother a bus on its way to a rescue,"
Cosman replied evenly. He was becoming angry in spite of himself. This
effeminate kid Haddon did not belong in rescue work, that was for damned sure.
The Labor Draft Board had either goofed badly or was scraping the bottom of
the barrel. And old Mabry wasn't making things any better by putting the kid
on.
And no copters on this mission. That was the worst annoyance of all. It was .
. . surrender. It was letting the dogs have things their way, without even an
attempt to fight them off. It was admitting defeat.
"Not that I think the dogs are intelligent, or anything like tha-a-at,"
Mabry gurgled, mimicking Haddon, "it's just that they're so fa-a-ast.
That's because they can metabolize smog when they ain't metabolizing people.
You know why they ain't eaten me and Joe, boy?"
Haddon, with tightly pursed lips, kept a frigid silence.
"Because we're too sexy!" Mabry answered his own question. "The dogs don't [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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