Free Alan E. Nourse - The Fourth Horseman by Alan Edward Nourse Page A

think you'd better talk to our Chief in the Uncommon Diseases section, Mr. Barrington. One moment . . ."
    It was a long moment; he almost thought they'd been cut off. Then a deep voice came on the line. "Ted Bettendorf here. Plague, you say? In Canon City? That's just south of Springs, isn't it? Yes, I've got it here. And you say you've been tracing a party of twenty-odd people who've been exposed?" A long pause. Then, very carefully: "That—doesn't really seem veiy likely, Mr. Barrington. We haven't had but two or three confirmed cases of plague in Colorado in the last five years, and to have twenty people suddenly involved out of the blue with a flea-vector disease doesn't add up—uh, hold it a minute! Did you say that the contacts were made in Washington State'? Okay, there has certainly been some puzzling illness going on up there, we are still digging it out—but these people are now in Colorado, you say? And that's where you are right now?" Another long pause, longer than the last. Then: "Mr. Barrington, I think I'd very much like to have you talk to our Dr. Quintana. He's had a great deal of field experience with plague."
    "Fine. Put him on," Frank said.
    "I can't. He's in flight right now to Denver. There's a case he's checking out up north of Colorado Springs, and you could contact him while he's out there. I can reach him and have him call you if you have a number."
    "Any hour," Frank said. "I'll be here." He gave the motel room number and hung up. It didn't occur to him right then to wonder what the Chief of the Uncommon Diseases section was doing in his office at two-thirty in the morning, Atlanta time.
    He sat down on a chair, staring at the blank TV screen across the room. First Pam, Then Comstock and his niece. Then Doc Edmonds and the chopper crew. Terry Gilman. Peter Toomey. Two others in Seattle, maybe more, and now Christ alone might know how many more down here. All in four days.
    Something was happening, he reflected. Somthing fast. Something bad. Something big, far bigger than just Pam. And it had to be some sort of plague. It couldn't be anything else.
    As he sat in the gloom, trying to grapple with the reality of what was happening, his eye fell on a Gideon Bible on the bedside stand. Something stirred then, deep in his mind. He remembered reading something in there once, years before, when they'd had the plague scare with the rabbit hunter. What was it? Something about horsemen. There were four of them—yes, of course. Heralds of the end of the world. He'd seen pictures too; sometimes they were depicted riding wild-eyed, hellish unicorns. The first one was Conquest, riding a white horse. The second was War, on a blood-red horse, the third, Famine, on a black horse. . . .
    And the fourth? He racked his memory. Somewhere there in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, the most hideous horseman of them ali. . .
    He picked up the Bible, searched through the back end of it. Yes. Sixth chapter of Revelation, seventh verse:
    And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the third beast say, Come and see. And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
    Death. Pestilence. Plague. Mounting his pale steed, digging in the great spurs, leaping forth at full gallop and sweeping across the land. Two thousand years ago they knew him, and knew what he meant, Frank thought. Long before that, they knew him well. And now, he thought, now, in modern day when it couldn't happen, it was beginning again.
    Impossible! But impossible or not, here, today, the Horseman had mounted his pale beast, with hell following after.
    In the early morning heat of Atlanta in August, Dr. Ted Bettendorf stopped to pick up the folder of Telex reports from communications on the first floor of the CDC building annex and then, ignoring the elevator, walked up the fire stairs to his second-floor office, leafing through the folder as he went. He was a long, lean,