“The plane?”
“Nope — them soldiers over there. They ain't letting nothing cross over — that feller that took my boat, he was a soldier too. Shot him.”
Gary read the leaflet again and stood there for long minutes watching the other end of the bridge, watching the soldiers clustered there. Presently his eyes picked out others patrolling the shore to the north and south of the bridge.
“Are they watching the whole damned river?”
The riverman nodded. “Seems so. We're contaminated, mister.” He reached for the leaflet, folded it and returned it to his pocket, patted the pocket for security. Again his eyes sought the river, his lost boat floating away.
Gary turned his back on the bridge to face the crowd, to thread a path through their silent ranks. He found their faces dull, mirroring nothing but helplessness and unviolent anger at what the anonymous men across the river had done to them. The people gathered there waited, simply waited, hoping the army would do something about them. Their attitudes suggested they would wait until the bridge and the highway crumbled and fell away from beneath them, waiting for someone to help them. Gary cast one sullen glance backward at a lone sentry prowling the opposite shore, and picked his way through parked automobiles to where he had left the Studebaker.
Irma and the car were gone.
He swore at her briefly, angry because she had waited so short a time, because she had taken with her the arms and ammunition he now needed. Picking his way through the automobiles he had felt a momentary foolishness at coming back to her again, a slight embarrassment as he pictured the sudden reunion, but these easily turned to anger when he discovered her absence. His first thought was to walk into town and hunt about for her or to find another car, but an idea stopped him. Glancing briefly at the people clustered on the bridge, he slid behind the wheel of the first car having a key in the ignition lock, turned it about and followed the road paralleling the river. There was no outcry behind him.
4
Contamination and quarantine.