Harry Harrison
THE GHOUL SQUAD 



I
Look at them,' Patrolman Charlie Vandeem said, jerking his thumb towards the grey vehicle parked on the other side of the road - then spitting in the same direction. 'Just sitting there like vultures waiting for their pound of flesh. Vultures.'

'The ITB have a job to do and they're doing it,' Doc Hoyland said, pushing his fingers up under the back of the girl's jaw to find the fluttering pulse. 'What did the ambulance say, Charlie? How long will they be?'

'Ten minutes more at least. They were way out on the other side of town when the call came in.' He looked down at the girl stretched out on the ground, at the thin limbs and cheap cotton dress, stained now with blood, and the bandage that covered her head like a turban. She was young, almost pretty: he turned quickly away and the grey bulk of the ITB wagon was still there waiting.

'The ITB!' the young patrolman said loudly, 'you know what people call them, Doc?'

'The Isoplastic Transplantation Bank…'

'No, you know what I mean. They call them the Ghoul Squad, and you know why.'

'I know why, and I also know that is no way for a law officer to talk. They've got an important job to do.' His voice changed as he pressed tighter, groping for the vanishing flutter of the pulse, weaker than a dying butterfly's wing. 'She's not going to make it, Charlie, ambulance or no. She didn't bleed much but… half her brain is gone.'

'There must be something you can do.'

'Sorry Charlie, not this time.' He pulled the loose collar of her dress down and felt the back of her neck. 'Make a note for the record that she is not wearing a necklace and that there is no medallion.'

'Are you sure?' the patrolman asked, flapping open his notebook. 'Maybe it fell and broke down her dress…'

'Maybe it didn't. The chains are made of metal. Do you want to look?'

Although he was in his thirties Charlie was still young enough to blush. 'Now don't go getting teed off at me, Doc, that was just for the record. We have to be sure.'

'Well I'm sure. Write that down, and the time, and what you see for yourself.' He stood and waved his arm. The grey ITB truck rumbled to life and started over to them.

'What are you doing?'

'She's dead. No pulse, no respirations. Just as dead as the other two.' He nodded towards the still smoking wreck of the pickup truck. 'It just took a few minutes longer. She was really dead when they hit that tree, Charlie, there was never any chance.'

Behind them the heavy tyres braked to a stop and there was a slam as the rear door of the vehicle was thrown open. A man jumped down from the cab: the initials ITB in neat white letters were on the pocket of his grey uniform, the same grey as the truck. He spoke into a hand recorder as he approached.

'Eight April, 1976, on State Highway 34, approximately 17 miles west of Loganport, Georgia. Victim of an auto wreck, female, Caucasian, in her early twenties, cause of death…' he paused and looked up at Dr Hoyland.

'Massive brain trauma. Almost the entire left frontal lobe of the cerebrum is gone.'

As the driver came around the truck, snapping open a folding stretcher, the first ITB man turned to the patrolman.

'This is now a medical matter, officer,' he said, 'and no longer a police concern. Thanks for your help.'

Charlie had a quick temper. 'Are you trying to get rid of me?'

Doc Hoyland took him by the arm and turned him away.

'The answer is yes. You have no more business here now than you have in, well, in an operating theatre. These men have a job to do, and it must be done quickly.'

Charlie's mind was made up for him as he heard the approaching wail of the ambulance. He went to flag it down and his back was turned as they bent and cut the clothes from the girl's body. Working quickly now they placed the corpse on to the stretcher and drew a sheet of sterile plastic over it. A heavy curtain covered the open rear of the vehicle and they raised the bottom a bit to slide the stretcher under it.

When the patrolman turned back the men were already swinging the doors shut. At his feet was the blanket from the patrol car, speckled with the girl's blood and littered with the crumpled rags that had been her garments. A puff of vapour rose from the top of a vent of the grey vehicle.

'Doc - what are they doing in there?'

The doctor was tired. He had had very little sleep the night before, and his temper was getting short.

'You know just as well as I do what they are doing,' he snapped 'The ITB does a good job and a vital one. Only fools and crackpots think differently.'

Charlie said ghouls as he started to the car to radio a report, but he didn't say it loud enough for the doc to hear.

II
This Christmas, in the year 1999, was really one for celebrations. Something about the new century being just a few days away seemed to excite everyone, that and the general prosperity and the tax cut that had been President Greenstein's holiday present to the entire country. What with Christmas falling on a Monday this year and the 26th now being an official holiday as well, the four-day weekend had been a very very merry one. Someone had said that all the corn likker drunk in this one county would have floated a battleship and he was probably right, if it was a small battleship.

Sheriff Charlie Vandeen was nowhere near as tired as his deputies. In fact, he had to admit, he wasn't tired at all. He had not been home since the fire on the night of the 23rd but that didn't mean much. He had a cot in the room behind his office and he slept there, just as comfortably as in his bachelor apartment. His deputies knew where to find him in an emergency and that was good enough most of the time. Anyway, it hadn't been that kind of holiday weekend, nothing really big, just a lot of everything little. Fires, drunks and fender benders, fights and noisy parties. Sheriff Charlie had had a good sleep. Now, showered and shaved and wearing a clean pressed uniform, he looked out at the foggy drab dawn of December 26th and wished the whole blamed holiday was over and people were back to work. The birthday of the Prince of Peace, the reverend had said that in church during the midnight service, when Charlie had looked in, which was his duty but not his pleasure. People sure had funny ideas how to celebrate that kind of birthday. He yawned and sipped at the steaming black coffee. Off in the distance there was a growing rumble: he looked at his watch. The morning hoverliner from the Bahamas, right on time.

Leaning back in the chair he unconsciously slipped into a familiar daydream. Something he always hoped to do. The drive to Macon, to the big hoverterminal on the Ocmulgee river outside of town. His bag whisked away, then up the gangplank into the arena-sized hoverliner. He'd be in the Top-side Bar when they left, he'd seen enough pictures of it to know just what it would be like, looking down at the world rushing by. He'd have a Mint Julep first, to celebrate his leaving, then Jamaica Rum Punch to celebrate the holiday ahead. He would sit up there, king of the castle, getting quietly wiped out while the pine slashes and swamps whooshed by below. Then the beach and the blue ocean and the golden islands ahead, the luxury hotel and the girls. In the daydream he always had a nice bronze tan when he walked out on to the beach, and he was a good bit younger. The grey streaks were gone from his hair and his gut was a good fifteen inches smaller. When the girls looked at him…

Through the reverie he was suddenly aware that the distant rumble had stopped. At the same moment the sky, above the low hanging fog, lit up in a sudden rosy glare.

'Oh my God,' he said, standing, unaware that the chair had fallen over backward and that the cup had dropped from his fingers, crashing to the floor. 'Something's happened to it.'

The hovercraft was foolproof, that's what they said, floating safely on a cushion of air, moving over land and water with equal ease. If, for some unaccountable reason, the engines should fail, they were supposed to simply sink down, to float or stand until they could move again. They were supposed to. There still had been some close calls, collisions and the like. When something the size of an ocean liner rushes along at over 150 miles an hour accidents are always possible. It looked like the laws of chance had finally come up with a zero. Luck had run out. He reached for the phone.

While a deputy alerted the cars and the new ambulance service, fire department as well, he verified the fact that a hoverliner, in this area, did not answer their call signal. He reported what he had seen and heard and hung up. He still hoped that his suspicions were wrong, but it was a very slight hope.

Jamming his hat on to his head he kicked in to his high-heeled boots at the same time, then ran for the door grabbing up his raincoat and gunbelt on the way. Unit three was parked at the kerb outside and Ed Homer was dozing over the wheel. He jerked awake when the Sheriff climbed in next to him: he hadn't heard the explosion. As they pulled away Charlie sent out an all units alarm… There was no telling what they would find out there. He still hoped that he was wrong, but by now it was a mighty small hope.

'Do you think it hit in the swamp, Sheriff?' Ed asked, flooring the turbine and burning rubber down the highway.

'No, wasn't far enough west from what I could tell. And if it was we couldn't reach it in any case. I think it's still in the Cut.'

'I'll take Johnson's road out, then the farm road along the Cut.'

'Yeah,' Charlie said, buckling on his gun.

It was full daylight now, watery and grey, but they still needed their lights for the patches of fog. They braked and broadsided into the side of the road and Ed touched the siren to pull over a lumbering milktruck on collection rounds. After that it was a straight run to the Cut, the broad highway through the pines that the hovercraft used. Grain couldn't be grown here, the downblast from the air cushion blew the kernels from their stalks, and grazing animals panicked when the big craft passed. A cash crop of grass for fodder was still possible, and the Cut was an immensely long meadow before it ran into the swamp. The cruiser bumped along the dirt track the harvesters used and there, dimly seen through the rising fog, was a boiling column of black smoke.

Ed Homer, wide-eyed, automatically took his foot from the accelerator as they came close. The hoverliner was gigantic in death, cracked open and smoking, tilted up where it had nosed into the trees after dragging an immense raw furrow for 500 yards through the field.

They drove slowly towards it, passing great tumbled sheets of black skirting torn from the bottom of the liner. People were climbing out of the wreck, lying in the grass, helping others to safety. The car braked to a stop and when the turbine died they could hear the cries and shocked moans of pain.

'Get on the network and tell them exactly where we are,' the Sheriff said, throwing open the door. 'Tell them we're going to need all the medical aid they can find. Fast. Then help to get those people clear.'

He ran towards the wrecked liner, to the people sprawled on the ground. Some of them were burned and bloody, some of them obviously dead, some of them uninjured though still numb from the sudden shock. Two men in uniform carried a third: his right leg hung at an impossible angle and there was a belt about his thigh that cut deeply into the flesh. He stifled a moan as they put him down before turning back to the wreck. The Sheriff saw that the man was still conscious, though his skin was parchment white under the bruises and oil smears.

'Is there any chance of more fire or explosion,' he asked the man. At first the officer could only gasp, then gained a measure of control.

'Don't think so… automatic extinguishers kicked in when the engines blew. That's under control. But there is sure to be fuel leakage. No smoking, open fires, must tell them…'

'I'll see to that. Just take it easy, the ambulances are on the way.'

'People inside…'

'We'll get them out.'

The Sheriff started towards the looming wreck, then stopped. The crew and male passengers seemed to be organized now. People were being helped to safety, even carried out on stretchers. It was more important for him to wait here for the assistance that would be arriving soon. He went back to the car and flicked the microphone switch from radio to bullhorn.

'May I have your attention please.' He twisted the volume up full and the heads turned as the amplified voice rolled over them. 'This is the Sheriff speaking. I've called in medical aid and they'll be arriving at any moment now. I have been told that there may be fuel leakage and danger of fire - but there is no fire now. But do not smoke or light matches…'

There was a fluttering roar from behind him, growing louder. A copter, a big multirotor one. This would be the ambulance people. Dust rolled out as the machine dropped close by and he put his back to it. When the blades slowed he turned to look. It was grey from nose to tail and Sheriff Charlie Vandeen felt that same hot needle of anger that had not lessened after all the years. He ran towards it as the entrance-way dropped down.

'Get back inside, you're not wanted here,' he called out to the two men who were hurrying down. They stopped, surprised.

'Who are you?' the first man asked. His hair, beneath his cap, was almost the same grey as the rest of his uniform.

'I'm the Sheriff, you can read, can't you?' He tapped at his badge, at the large clear letters, black on gold, but his fingers only brushed against the fabric of his shirt. Surprised, he looked down at the two empty holes in his pocket. When he had put on a clean uniform he hadn't changed his badge from the old one.

'You heard what I said,' he called out to the men who had passed him while his attention had been on the missing badge. 'The Ghoul Squad isn't needed here, not in my county.'

The older man turned and looked back at him coldly.

'So you are that sheriff. I know about your county. Nevertheless we are doctors and since there are no other medical personnel present we intend to function in that capacity.' He looked down at the Sheriff's hand which rested on his pistol butt. 'If you intend to fire upon us for doing that you will have to shoot us in the back.' He turned and both men started walking quickly towards the wreck.

The Sheriff pulled his gun up a bit, then cursed and shoved it back. All right, fine, they were doctors. Let them act like doctors for once. That was okay by him.

Sirens sounded down the cut and there were more copters coming in low over the trees. He saw Ed Homer helping a woman from the wreck and almost went to help, until he realized that he could do far more out here. Every kind of assistance would be arriving now and they would need organizing if they weren't to start falling over each other. The fire department pumper was bouncing across the field and they ought to get right up against the wreck to make sure there would be no fires. He ran out and waved to them.

Bit by bit organization replaced confusion. The unhurt passengers were guided from the area and the medical teams went to work on the wounded. Two local doctors had heard the call on the emergency network and had been temporarily drafted into the teams. One of them was old Doc Hoyland, in his seventies now and semi-retired, who still rushed out like a firehorse when he heard the bell. He was needed today.

There was a growing row of figures covered with blankets that the Sheriff glanced at once, then turned away. When he did this he saw two men in grey carrying a stretcher towards their copter.

In sudden anger he ran towards them, to the base of the entranceway.

'Is that man dead?' he asked, glancing quickly at the gaping mouth and staring, unmoving eyes. The lead stretcher-bearer looked at the Sheriff and almost smiled.

'Are you kidding? That's the only kind we ever go near. Now get out of the way-'

'Take him and put him over there with the other victims.' Charlie touched the butt of his revolver, then grabbed it firmly. 'That is an order.'

The men hesitated, not knowing what to do, until the rear bearer said, 'Set,' and they put the stretcher on the ground. He thumbed his pocket radio to life and talked quickly into it.

'Over there,' the Sheriff said, pointing.'I mean it and I'm playing no games.' The men bent reluctantly just as the ITB doctor, whom the Sheriff had first talked to came hurrying up. There were two State Troopers with him, both of whom the Sheriff knew by sight. The Sheriff spoke even as the doctor opened his mouth.

'You better load your ITB ghouls back aboard, doc, and get out of here. There's going to be no hunting on my game preserve.'

The doctor shook his head, almost sadly. 'No, it is not going to be that way at all. I told you that we knew about you, Sheriff, and that we have been avoiding trouble by keeping our units from entering your area of jurisdiction. We do not wish any public differences of opinion. However, this time we have no recourse but to make our position clear. The ITB is a federal agency established by federal law and no local authorities may interfere with it. We cannot create a precedent here. Therefore I must ask you to stand aside so that these men may pass.'

'No!' the Sheriff said hoarsely, colour flooding his cheeks. 'Not in my county… ' He stepped back, his hand still on his gun as the two State Troopers approached. The first one nodded at him.

'What the doctor says is right, Sheriff Vandeen. The law is on his side. Now you don't want to cause yourself any trouble.'

'Step back!' the Sheriff shouted, pulling at his gun, a loud roaring in his ears. Before it slid clear of the holster the two troopers were there, one on each side, holding him firmly. He struggled against them, gasping in air, trying to ignore the growing pain in his chest. Then he slumped forward suddenly, a dead weight.

The ITB doctor had the Sheriff flat on the ground and was bent over him when Dr Hoyland hurried up.

'What happened?' he asked, slipping his stethoscope from his pocket. He tore open the Sheriff's shirt and put the pickup against his chest while he listened to the explanation. He opened his bag and gave the prone man a swift injection.

'Just what you might have expected,' he said, struggling to stand. A trooper helped him to his feet. His face was as wrinkled as a hound dog's and had the same solemn expression. 'But you can't talk to Charlie Vandeen. Angina pectoris, he's had it for years. Progressive heart deterioration. He's supposed to take it easy, you see how well he listens to me.' A fine rain, no heavier than mist, was beginning to fall. The doctor drew his chin down inside his coat collar like an ancient turtle. 'Get him out of this,' he ordered.

The ITB men put the corpse aside and gently placed the Sheriff on to the stretcher. They carried it into their copter and the two doctors followed. Inside the body of the copter there was a narrow corridor formed by the curved inner wall and a partition of thin transparent plastic sheeting that stretched when they pressed against it. The Sheriff was breathing hoarsely, laboriously, and his eyes were open now.

'I have been after him for the last five years to have a heart transplant. The one he's got is not strong enough to pump soda-pop.' Dr Hoyland looked down, frowningly grim, while one of the stretcher bearers covered the Sheriff with a blanket, up to the shoulders.

'He wouldn't do it?' the ITB doctor asked.

'No. Charlie has a thing about transplants and the ITB.'

'I have noticed that,' the doctor said, dryly. 'Do you know why?'

The voices were distant, garbled hums to Charlie Vandeen, but his eyes worked well enough. He saw the two men carrying a stretcher with a man's body on it. They pushed it against the plastic wall which parted like a great obscene mouth and drew it in. It was now in a small room walled with plastic where a man waited, dressed and masked in white. He stripped the body nude in an instant, then sprayed it all over with a nozzle hooked to a tank on the wall. Then, dripping with fluid, the corpse was rolled on to a plastic sheet and pushed through the other wall of this cell into the larger inside room.

Here the ghouls waited. Charlie did not want to look but he could not stop himself. On the table. A single practised cut opened the body from sternum to pubis. Then dissection began. Something was removed from the gaping wound and, with long tongs, dropped into a container. Fumes rose up. Charlie moaned.

Dr Hoyland nodded. 'Of course I know why Charlie acts this way. It's no secret, it's just that nobody talks about it. He had a shock, right in the family, when he had just joined the state troopers. His kid sister, no more than sixteen as I remember, driving home from a school dance. Bunch of wiseacre kids, a hotrod, some moonshine, a crackup, you know the story.'

The ITB doctor nodded a little sadly. 'Yes I do. And her medallion…?'

'She left it home. She was wearing her first party dress, low neck, and it showed.'

Through a thickening haze the Sheriff saw something else, red and dripping, taken from the body and put into the box. He groaned aloud.

'It's going to take more than that shot,' Dr Hoyland said. 'Do you have one of those new portable heart-lung machines here?'

'Yes, of course, I'll get it rigged.' He pointed to his assistant who hurried away. 'I cannot blame him for hating us, but it is all so useless. When the immune response was finally overcome in the seventies there were just no organs and limbs available for the people who desperately needed them. So the Congress passed the ITB law. If people do not want their bodies used to benefit others they simply wear a medallion that states this fact. They will never be touched. The act of not wearing a medallion means that the person involved is ready to donate whatever parts of his body may be needed. It's a fair law.'

Dr Hoyland grunted. 'And a tricky one. People lose medallions or never get round to getting them and so forth.'

'Here comes the machine now. It's a very just law. No one loses by it. Most of the religions - as well as the atheists - agree that the body is just so much inert chemicals after death. If these chemicals can benefit mankind where is the argument? The ITB takes the bodies without medallions and removes the parts that we know are vitally needed. They are frozen in liquid nitrogen and go into banks all over the country. Do you think that the healthy kidney you just saw would be better utilized decomposing in the ground, rather than give some dying citizen a long and happy life?'

'I'm not arguing. Just telling you how Charlie Vandeen feels. A man has a right to live or die his own way I've always believed.'

Grunting with the effort he bent and readied the machine to preserve the life of the dying Sheriff.

'N-no…' the Sheriff gasped. 'Take it away…'

'You're going to need this to save yourself, Charlie,' Doc said softly. 'This will keep you alive until we get you back to the hospital. We'll put a new pump in you then and you'll be good as new in a couple of weeks.'

'No,' the Sheriff said, louder now. 'Not to me you don't. I live and die with what God gave me. Do you think I could live with parts of someone else's body inside me. Why…' impotent tears filled his eyes '… you might even be giving me my own little sister's heart.'

'No, not after all these years, Charlie. But I understand.' He waved away the man with the heart-lung machine. 'I'm just trying to help you, not make you do anything you think wrong.'

There was no answer. The Sheriff's eyes were open but he had stopped breathing. There, in those few seconds, he had passed that invisible dividing line. He was dead.

'He was a rough man but an honest one,' Doc Hoyland said softly. "There have been a lot worse people in this world.' He closed the dead man's eyes and climbed painfully to his feet. 'I think we had better get back to work, doctor. There are a lot more people out there who need us.'

They had turned away when the ITB assistant called after them.

'Doctor, this man's not wearing a medallion.'

Doc Hoyland nodded. 'Not around his neck. He always said it might get torn off in an accident, must have told me a dozen times. Said that a sheriff always had his badge. You'll find the medallion soldered to the back of his badge.'

They were at the exit before the assistant called after them again. 'I'm sorry, doctor, but he doesn't seem to be wearing a badge. Are you sure about the medallion?'

'Of course I'm sure.' He turned shocked eyes to the ITB doctor who waited stolidly beside him. 'No - you can't! You know how he felt. I can send for his badge.'

'The law states that the medallion must be somewhere on the person.'

'I know the law, but you can't do this to him. Not Charlie. You can't…'

There were seconds of silence before the ITB doctor said: 'What do you think?' Then, gently, he led the old doctor out.