August 2, 1955
“If I hear one more
person say ‘I used to love lobster,’” Dr. Danielle Taylor hissed, “I’m
going to wring their goddamn neck!”
“S-sorry doctor—” Bobby
Williams fell silent under her glare, then Dani turned back
to the new patient and saw that despite everything, his heart
had stopped. Looking at what the Devilfish claws had done to
his body, she wasn’t surprised.
And I gave
him the last of the morphine. She raised her head and
stared at the fifty-plus patients lying around the second
floor of Miller’s Department store. And we’re going to
need more.
“You were right,
doctor.” Peeling off her scrubs, she looked over at Dr. Martha
Knight, whose ebony face showed no expression behind a cloud
of cigarette smoke. “Triage. Don’t waste morphine.”
“I’m sorry,
Dr. Taylor.” Bobby fumbled nervously with the pipe he seemed
to think would compensate for his baby face. “I thought humor
would break the tension, but—”
“Uncle Milty
you’re not. Marie, help him sterilize the instruments.” The
candy striper, who’d been heating hot water on the demonstration
range, scurried to obey.
Dani wiped her
sweaty hands on her dungarees and walked over to Knight. She
forced herself to smile and nod at the patients, much as she’d
rather not look at the claw-crushed arms, missing legs, or
the National Guardsman curled into a fetal ball from battle
fatigue. They lay on beds, tabletops, sofas, and on the few
cots Martha’s husband Hal had scrounged from somewhere.
At least
Shirley and her new baby are doing well, and the two Guardsmen
we found Tuesday aren’t badly off. Accidentally shot by their
own people, Jesus!
And the cholera
patients are holding on. They were in children’s furniture,
as far away from the others as possible, four Japanese tourists
who’d escaped from the Devilfish after being dragged half
a mile through the Boston sewers.
“Any chance
we don’t need drugs?” Knight asked Hal, turning away from Dani,
who felt as if she’d been dressed down by Taylor Hospital’s
chief of staff. “Anything new on the radio?”
“Just the usual
bulletins.” The tall electrician ran a hand over his scraggly
beard as he adjusted the controls of the TV/radio/hi-fi set.
Hal refused to take the store’s razors when he had no money
to buy them. “Stay inside, lock the doors, the government hasn’t
forgotten you. Sure, Beacon Hill isn’t forgotten, but black
folks?”
“Let’s make
up the list, then,” Dani said. “Morphine, antibiotics if there’s
any left, surgical thread—”
“I’m sure the
Guard will beat them soon,” Marie said. Like Bobby and Dani,
she’d been cut off during the first Devilfish attack outside
Boston harbor, ten days earlier. “Or maybe the lobsters will
get sick and die like the Martians did.”
“The shelled
bastards breed too fast,” Hal said. “Goddamn Professor Poirier
and his goddamn nuclear-powered rocket—”
“We don’t know
the rocket explosion has anything to do with it!” Marie protested,
flinching a little from the cursing. “The AEC said the radiation
was harmless.”
“Jesus, didn’t
you pay attention to the Dorman hearings?” Dani snapped. Marie
flinched again. “The government’s known about the mutation
risk ever since Hiroshima, and covered it up. That’s why the
AEC is looking at jail—”
Glass shattered
on the floor below and everyone froze. Hal turned off the radio.
In the silence that followed, they heard the faint, horrifyingly
familiar scrape of chitin-covered feet on the linoleum of the
first floor.
Damn, damn,
damn. With their hearing, all it would take is Shirley’s
baby to start bawling…The scurrying grew louder,
like several dozen had entered, and then they heard the clattering
of the claws that seemed to serve them for communication.
Then the claw sounds were drowned out by the smash and clang
of shelves and shop goods hitting the floor. The Devilfish
were smart, but they didn’t seem to understand human furniture
or machines—or they just didn’t care.
But they
understand stairs. Dani drew out her grandfather’s six-shooter,
while Bobby and Hal, the latter limping and leaning on his
cane, moved silently to the .30 caliber machine guns Hal
had scavenged and placed at the top of both stairs. But
they say anything less than a bazooka will only chip their
carapace, if they look behind all the junk and boxes we piled
on the stairs…
From somewhere
below, a machine gun roared, something exploded out in the
street—Dani would have looked, but they’d boarded over all
the windows—and cries and barked orders mixed with a chitinous
clattering.
“We’re saved!” Marie’s
eyes lit up as she ran over to Dani. “We can call them, they
can—”
“Be quiet!” Dani
hissed. “We can’t call, remember what almost happened last
time?”
“But I can’t
keep hiding here! I’ve got to get home!” Marie drew in her
breath for what Dani knew would be a hysterical scream, then
Dr. Knight slapped the girl hard, thrust her down in a leather
armchair and clasped a hand over her mouth.
Sitting behind
the machine gun, Bobby stared in mute shock at the sight of
a Negro slapping a white woman, but he had the sense not to
move. Dani felt just as shocked, but she knew Knight had been
right. If the Guardsmen heard Marie, so would the Devilfish.
Nothing came
up the stairs, however, and the sounds of battle shifted toward
the street, the shots growing fewer, the screams louder…then
nothing. Dani realized her cigarette had burned down to the
filter and crushed it out.
“Add some Valium
to the list.” Knight said quietly, lowering a Coke bottle from
Marie’s mouth. “Just gave the girl my last one. Then give the
list to Bobby—”
“No.”
“You’re needed
here.”
“Not as much
as more morphine. And I’m not losing another intern.”
“You know how
many of them have complications,” Knight said. “I can’t do
it alone if—”
“Then I’ll just
have to make it back.” I’m not going to look Bobby’s father
in the eyes and tell him I let his son get killed. She
shouldered her empty knapsack over her cotton t-shirt, girded
on the ammo belt she’d taken from one of the Guardsmen, slipped
the Colt into the holster and the walkie-talkie onto the other
side. And what would Dr. Paul Taylor say if he saw the way
his daughter was dressed? She slung a full loaded carbine
across her back and headed for the elevator.
“Doctor Taylor,
I’m sorry.” Bobby planted himself in her path, doing his best
to speak around the stem of his pipe. “Dr. Knight’s right,
you’re the experienced one, I can’t let you—”
“If you try
to stop me, I’ll ram your pipe so far down your throat it’ll
end up in your kidneys.” He tried to meet her eyes, then hung
his head and stepped aside. “If it’s safe, and anyone’s alive
down there, I’ll call. If not, come down and get some weapons,
ammunition, C-rations if they’ve got any. Get Marie back to
sterilizing the instruments as soon as she can, check the sutures
on Cromartie, and listen to Dr. Knight this time, is that clear?”
He didn’t look
happy, but he nodded obediently and Dani strode to the elevator
shaft and slid open the old, manually-operated doors. She pressed
the button and descended, thanking God this part of the city
still had power.
She stepped
out onto the first floor and saw a man with his head ripped
off, dead in front of her, a lake of blood mingling with a
trickle of Devilfish blue.
Despite her
best efforts, she vomited up breakfast.
I should
be stronger than this. I saw death during the Invasion, I
saw what the Martians left of Mom, Dad, Elaine— She saw
another corpse; the man had thrust his bayonet through a
Devilfish eye as he died. She kept throwing up until the
last shred of food was gone.
Dani tried to
make herself stride forcefully through Miller’s, the way she
imagined her father would have done, but the carnage, extending
from the elevator through ladies lingerie to men's wear, seemed
to fasten lead weights to her ankles. Every Guardsman seemed
to have his necks or limbs broken or twisted, and even the
far fewer Devilfish corpses made her stomach want to heave
again.
Dani’s hand
fell to her grandfather’s Colt. Was it this bad for you
in the trenches? Did you feel this helpless? No mustard gas
in Boston, but at least you could negotiate with the Huns,
even have truces…There’d been no more success at talking
to the Devilfish than with the giant ants in the Southwest. The
radio said those explosions last week were depth charges dropped
on the nests…but Cromartie said there’s a rumor they’ve already
spread to Maine.
She crouched
low, trying to stay hidden as she crawled toward the front
of the store, doing her best not to let too much blood soak
into her blue jeans. I imagine Dad would accept my clothes
under the circumstances.
But he’d
have a fit I didn’t send Bobby.
She reached
the front of the store, where moist air rolled in through the
shattered windows. There were bodies up and down the overcast
street, slightly more of them Devilfish; across the road, a
jeep drenched in blue blood had crashed into a bakery.
Dani didn’t
move, scrutinizing every detail, every shadow, before she called
Bobby and told him to check the bodies. Heart pounding, she
turned off the walkie-talkie and stepped onto the street. A
twenty-minute walk, that’s all it’ll take to reach the Knight
Clinic.
Shorter if
I have to run.
As she headed
down the road, pausing every so often to check, she remembered
the Invasion. The Martian attack on Boston had been brutal,
but the week of destruction seemed impersonal in hindsight;
the Martian ships destroyed humans along with everything else,
but they didn’t hunt them or target them like the Devilfish.
Her thoughts
jumped, for just a second, to the night near the end of the
week, hiding in the church, dragging those teenagers from their
jalopy with Steve’s help. And the evening together—Why do
you still think about that? He left; you never anything to
him but a quick lay. Everyone was doing it, you were stupid
to think it meant more.
But I could
sure use a guy like him right now.
Dani reached
the next corner, started to turn—and heard claws clacking together
somewhere near. She slipped into the doorway of an abandoned
bookstore and crouched behind a display of The Man in the
Grey Flannel Suit. Funny, I was thinking about buying a copy
before everything went to hell.
A half-dozen
Devilfish emerged out of an alley, opening and closing their
claws rapidly. Even though Dani had seen their corpses, the
sight of live ones, moving and walking, made her shudder.
They weren’t
as alien as the Martians, but that only made them more monstrous.
Two legs, two arms, almost human, but…not. Shell instead of
skin, inhuman face, inhuman arms, inhuman in the very way they
walked. Why didn’t the lobsters just grow gigantic like
those ants? What are the odds of them mutating into something
that could walk on land, become intelligent?
The Devilfish
met up with another dozen or so, with blood smeared over their
massive claws. There was a definite pattern to their gestures,
to the opening and closing of the claws, but Dani noticed they
kept cocking their head as if listening. Or sniffing. Or maybe
using a totally new sense.
To Dani’s relief,
they went to the nearest manhole and climbed in, one after
the other. What were they doing? What do the damn things
want up here? They can’t breathe out of water for more than
an hour, what is the point? The street was quiet again,
except for a pigeon cooing somewhere nearby. Before the Devilfish,
Dani had never heard Boston completely silent.
No longer willing
to walk, she raced down the next block, up a narrow alley,
paused behind a row of trashcans for another pod of Devilfish
to pass, ignoring the stink of a week’s uncollected garbage.
As soon as they were out of sight, and hopefully earshot, she
resumed running.
The smell of
the dead was noticeable before Dani reached Knight’s clinic.
The Devilfish didn’t bother with corpses, but the Guard had
learned the hard way that reclaiming the dead, their own or
civilians, only drew the lobsters’ attention. The Negroes who
hadn’t escaped the neighborhood had been left to rot.
The Knight Clinic
might be the only door on the block that remained locked; Dani,
panting from her run, was halfway inside when she heard footsteps,
pained cursing; looking outside, she saw a burly man in a ragged
uniform rushing down the street, one arm flapping at an unnatural
angle, a half-dozen Devilfish on his tail, and gaining.
Dani seized
the carbine and held it at the ready, but didn’t fire. Bullets
won’t stop them. And you have 50 patients who need drugs. He’ll
just have to run fast.
Despite his
arm, he did, leaping over corpses, cursing a blue streak, then
his foot caught on an outstretched black leg and he fell, skidding
a half-dozen feet before his forehead hit the side of an abandoned
Packard. The Devilfish claw sounds rose to a crescendo
“No!” As the
lobsters closed on him, Dani leapt into the street and began
firing. The gun kicked wildly in her hands, the Devilfish turned
to face her and to her joy, one of them dropped where it stood,
while another flopped down on the sidewalk as if it were wounded.
The others charged; as the clip ran out, she slipped in another
and kept firing, backing toward the clinic.
More Devilfish
scrambled into the street from an open manhole. A lot more.
Dani almost
went inside the clinic, thought what they’d do if they followed
her in and raced down the street instead, firing one gun or
another as she went. There are those tenements nearby, maybe
if I climb through those I can lose them inside, double back
to the clinic later—A devilfish rose out of the open manhole
ahead. Dani emptied the clip without effect except to stagger
it a little, drew an automatic and fired into its head as it
reached for her
At that range,
its carapace shattered and it fell back down. Dani heard angry
clacking inside the manhole from whoever had been under it.
More lobsters
came rushing around the corner ahead, cutting off her escape;
she glanced around, saw a burger joint with a door ripped off
its hinges to her right, and hurtled toward the doorway.
She didn’t see
the broken chair on the floor until a second before her foot
struck it. Suddenly she was flat on her side, her head cracking
against the wall, and the devilfish were crowding into the
room and even as she groped for the Colt she realized she was
going to die and her patients were going to pay the price.
One of the devilfish
reached down and seized Dani under her arm, lifting her off
the floor with one claw. It felt as if a giant nutcracker were
breaking all her ribs and she knew she should shoot it, but
it hurt too much to move, much, much too much—
And then it
dropped her. The jarring shock when her ribs hit the floor
made her scream, and for a second Dani thought she’d pass out.
The clack of
claws echoed through the restaurant, frantic and fast, as the
nearest Devilfish staggered blindly, bumping into walls, while
others behind them scrambled away, heading for the nearest
manhole.
Only a couple
of them made it. The rest fell as they ran, then stopped moving.
Maybe it was like
the Martians? Dani knew she should get up, go for the
drugs, but anything she tried moving hurt too much.
“You okay?” An
Italian guy in a National Guard uniform came cautiously through
the front door. “No? Here, lemme help you.” He knelt and lifted
her to her feet; she couldn’t keep back a moan. “Sorry, sorry—holy
cow, Jerry’s screwball idea actually worked, didn’t it? I take
back everything I said about that egghead.”
“What—worked—” Dani
gasped the words out, but suddenly it seemed to hard to talk,
or to move, or to stay awake, and even though she wanted to
tell him about Miller’s and the patients and the medicine,
the world faded away too fast.
Blissfully pain-free
in her bed at Taylor General Hospital, it took Dani a second
to recognize the smiling young man at the door. “Jack? Why aren’t
you in Washington?”
“Visiting some constituents
on the waterfront when the Devilfish first came out.” Senator
John F. Kennedy sat down by her bed and the smile faded. “One
hell of a mess, wasn’t it—you know some of my friends couldn’t
believe it when I said the ‘Danny Taylor’ who fought off two
dozen Devilfish was a woman.”
“I didn’t do anything
of the sort.” He offered her a cigarette, lit it for her when
she accepted. “The doctors tell me something killed the Devilfish
but—”
“Jimmy Raxton, a remarkable
young genius. Apparently he dissected a couple of corpses, then
concocted a gas that doesn’t hurt us, but makes it impossible
for them to breathe air. He thinks it can make it impossible
for them to breathe water, either, but it’s ‘a little more complicated.’ So
how are you? I imagine you’re getting the best of care—”
“Good as can be. Some
scarring from the claws, but my ribs are healing fine.”
“Well, we may not
be able to wait. There’s a medal ceremony coming up and if I
have to take you in a wheelchair—”
“A medal?” Dani shook
her head. “I told you, I didn’t do anything.”
“You kept dozens of
patients alive at great personal risk, according to your intern.
Not to mention O’Halloran, the guy you saved from the Devilfish—seems
you accidentally shot his leg, too, but he’s willing to overlook
that. And if you say you didn’t fight off the Devilfish, people
will think you’re just modest.” Dani started to protest, but
he waved her quiet. “You’re Paul Taylor’s daughter, and the Taylor
name has a long history in Boston. Honoring you as we start rebuilding
will mean a lot to a lot of people.
“Not to mention I
was talking to a man named Broome downstairs, visiting a friend
of his. He writes comic-books for a living, he seems to think
he could write up your story for Weird Adventures or whatever
it was.”
“Wonderful.” She smoked
thoughtfully for a second, contemplating the Taylor name, and
the hospital it built. Working with Negroes? Putting my life
on the line? Appearing in the funny books? That’s what Dad would
have called wasting my talents. Mom, too.
“I know a family name
can be a hard thing to live up to,” Jack said, as if reading
her thoughts. “Working with the Coast Guard the past couple of
weeks felt more productive than anything I’ve done in the Senate.”
“You want to re-enlist?” Dani
remembered what she knew of Jack’s atrophied adrenal glands and
other health problems. “I hate to say this, but—”
“Relax.” He shifted
awkwardly for a second, then went on. “Ike’s talking about the
need for an international response to this sort of thing, maybe
even working with the Reds; I don’t have to tell you how many
good men we lost fighting the lobsters—not to mention the Martians
and the ants—but there’ll be opposition. Putting my weight behind
something like that, something to give us a chance in this new
space age—”
“That’s one of the
best ideas I’ve heard from any politician.” Martha Knight stood
in the doorway, clutching a paper cup of coffee and a cruller. “How
are you doing, doctor?”
“Okay, all things
considered. Jack—” Dani waved with her good arm. “—this is Dr.
Knight. When you get back to Washington, will you please see
if there’s a few thousand the federal budget could spare for
her clinic. She could use it, and she’d make good use of it.
And I heard Miller’s is threatening to sue over turning their
store into a ‘Negro clinic.’ If you—”
“They won’t.” Jack
said, standing stiffly. He chatted to Martha about the clinic,
applying charm automatically as he often did, then excused himself. “There
are a couple more patients I need to visit, so I’ll be back when
you’ve finished your consultation.”
“So that’s Joe Kennedy’s
boy, eh?” Knight took the chair she’d vacated, lighting a menthol
cigarette and looking at Dani’s charts. “Well, I guess you came
through in good shape, considering all the risks you took.”
“How about our patients?”
“The Japs are fine,
most of the others pulled through. Tomkins, the kid with battle
fatigue, he’s still half out of his mind, Hawkins had some internal
bleeding we didn’t catch—” Dani cursed under her breath. “It’s
not a bad outcome, if you ignore the lost legs, the maimed arms—
“Why’d you do it?” Knight
leaned forward, her tone half-accusatory, half-concerned. “Making
all the medicine runs, trying to save the guy in the street,
what’s driving you to put your life on the line?”
“Nothing!” Dani started
to sit up, realized it was too much effort and lay there. “Would
you have let that man die?”
“You must have known
you couldn’t save him. If the Raxton Vapor hadn’t worked, you’d
both be dead.”
“If I’d thought about
it, sure I’d have known. But I saw him about to die and I didn’t
think. That’s all.”
“It’s not all.” Her
dark eyes bored into Dani’s, hard and challenging. “You had a
chance to get out the first night—”
“Not much of one.”
“—but you stayed and
helped. I know what your father thought about colored doctors
working with white doctors, let alone having them work on white
patients. If he’d heard what you—”
“My father was a great
man! This hospital and what it’s done for the community is proof
of that. And yes…you’re right about what he thought, but he wouldn’t
think the same way if he’d survived the Invasion, I’m sure of
that. Nothing’s the same any more.”
“No?”
“Like Jack was saying,
this isn’t going to end here. There’ll be more mutations, more
spacemen, more invasions, and we won’t survive unless we work
together. It’s not about American and Russian, Negro and Caucasian,
Jew or Christian—it’s human beings against everything else. We
either stand united or we’re dead.”
“And you really think
your father would agree.” An expression Dani couldn’t fathom
crossed Knight’s face. “One thing I’m sure of, your Paul Taylor
would never have taken the risks you did. Not for Negroes, not
for anyone.”
“I always thought
I was a chip off the old block, but…” Dani studied the tip of
her cigarette, then crushed it out. “He was proud of me. A doctor
with a business degree, just the person to take over as head
of this hospital someday.” Grief, and a memory of the ray-blasted
Taylor house knifed into her. “That was his dream…but it was
supposed to be years from now.”
“And your dream?”
Did I even have
one? He and Mom were always so clear about where my life was
going… “There are better things to do than pushing papers.
The National Guard MASH units, they’re going to need doctors;
I have a feeling they may need a lot of doctors.”
“May I give you some
free advice?” Dani nodded. “You can’t save everyone. Nobody can.
You’re a good doctor, but if you don’t accept some cases are
hopeless, it’ll eat you up alive.”
“We thought it was
hopeless when the Martians came. And those Jap tourists, they
didn’t give up and they’re alive. I mean, I know I can’t save
everyone, but…at least if I try, if I’m fighting, maybe I won’t
feel so helpless next time.”
“You weren’t helpless.
You took some stupid risks, but you helped me save a lot of people.” Knight
rose and after a second’s hesitation, offered her hand; after
a second’s hesitation, Dani took it. “Shall I send Senator Kennedy
back in?”
“If you see him. I’ll
remind him about your clinic and that stupid lawsuit.”
As Knight walked away,
Dani glanced at the unloaded six-shooter she’d insisted the staff
leave on her bedside table, though they’d masked it with as many
vases of flowers as possible. I guess war really is hell,
but I remember you talking about the boys you’d saved, Grandpa,
and how proud you sounded.
Dani glanced around
the hospital room, and down the hall at the staff. Her father’s
monument, his crowning achievement.
And she knew it would
be surprisingly easy to bid it goodbye.
