A rover came dashing straight through the front door at top speed, took a leap, hit on his shoulders, rolled, came up going in a different direction, and snapped off three rounds into different corners of the room before I could track him with the Browning. By that time he was close enough under me where I didn't have to waste a .22 slug. I picked up the .45 without a sound and blew the back off his head. Slug went in neat, came out and took most of his hair with it. He fell right down.
“Blood! The rifle!”
Came out of the shadows, grabbed it up in his mouth and dragged it over to the pile of wrestling mats in the far corner. I saw an arm poke out from the mass of mats, and a hand grabbed the rifle, dragged it inside. Well, it was at least safe there, till I needed it. Brave little bastard: he scuttled over to the dead rover and started worrying the ammo bandolier off his body. It took him a while; he could have been picked off from the doorway or outside one of the windows, but he did it. Brave little bastard. I had to remember to get him something good to eat when we got out of this. I smiled, up there in the darkness: if we got out of this, I wouldn't have to worry about getting him something tender. It was lying all over the floor of that gymnasium.
Just as Blood was dragging the bandolier back into the shadows, two of them tried it with their dogs. They came through a ground floor window, one after another, hitting and rolling and going in opposite directions, as the dogs—a mother-ugly akita, big as a house, and a Doberman bitch the color of a turd—shot through the front door and split in the unoccupied two directions. I caught one of the dogs, the akita, with the .45, and it went down thrashing. The Doberman was all over Blood.
But firing, I'd given away my position. One of the rovers fired from the hip and .30-06 soft-nosed slugs spanged off the girders around me. I dropped the automatic, and it started to slip off the girder as I reached for the Browning. I made a grab for the .45 and that was the only thing saved me. I fell forward to clutch at it, it slipped away and hit the gym floor with a crash, and the rover fired at where I'd been. But I was flat on the girder, arm dangling, and the crash startled him. He fired at the sound, and right at that instant I heard another shot from a Winchester, and the other rover, who'd made it safe into the shadows, fell forward holding a big pumping hole in his chest. That Quilla June had shot him, from behind the mats.
I didn't even have time to figure out what the fuck was happening ... Blood was rolling around with the Doberman and the sounds they were making were awful ... the rover with the .30-06 chipped off another shot and hit the muzzle of the Browning, protruding over the side of the girder, and wham it was gone, falling down. I was naked up there without clout, and the sonofabitch was hanging back in shadow waiting for me.
Another shot from the Winchester, and the rover fired right into the mats. She ducked back behind, and I knew I couldn't count on her for anything more. But I didn't need it; in that second, while he was focused on her, I grabbed the climbing rope, flipped myself over the girder, and howling like a burnpit-screamer, went sliding down, feeling the rope cutting my palms. I got down far enough to swing, and kicked off. I swung back and forth, whipping my body three different ways each time, swinging out and over, way over, each time. The sonofabitch kept firing, trying to track a trajectory, but I kept spinning out of his line of fire. Then he was empty, and I kicked back as hard as I could, and came zooming in toward his corner of shadows, and let loose all at once and went ass-over-end into the corner, and there he was, and I went right into him and he spanged off the wall, and I was on top of him, digging my thumbs into his eyesockets. He was screaming and the dogs were screaming and that girl was screaming and I pounded the motherfucker's head against the floor till he stopped moving, then I grabbed up the empty .30-06 and whipped his head till I knew he wasn't gonna give me no more aggravation.
Then I found the .45 and shot the Doberman.
Blood got up and shook himself off. He was cut up bad. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and went over to lie down in the shadows, to lick himself off.
I went and found that Quilla June, and she was crying. About all the guys we'd killed. Mostly about the one she'd killed. I couldn't get her to stop bawling so I cracked her across the face and told her she'd saved my life, and that helped some.
Blood came dragassing over. “How're we going to get out of this, Albert?”
“Let me think.”
I thought and knew it was hopeless. No matter how many we got, there'd be more. And it was a matter of macho now. Their honor.
“How about a fire?” Blood suggested.
“Get away while it's burning?” I shook my head. “They'll have the place staked-out all around. No good.”
“What if we don't leave? What if we burn up with it?”
I looked at him. Brave ... and smart as hell.
V
We gathered all the lumber and mats and scaling ladders and vaulting boxes and benches and anything else that would burn, and piled the garbage against a wooden divider at one end of the gym. Quilla June found a can of kerosene in a storeroom, and we set fire to the whole damn pile. Then we followed Blood to the place he'd found for us. The boiler room way down under the YMCA. We all climbed into the empty boiler, and dogged down the door, leaving a release vent open for air. We had one mat in there with us, and all the ammo we could carry, and the extra rifles and sidearms the rovers'd had on them.
“Can you catch anything?” I asked Blood.
“A little. Not much. I'm reading one guy. The building's burning good.”
“You be able to tell when they split?”
“Maybe. If they split.”
I settled back. Quilla June was shaking from all that had happened. “Just take it easy,” I told her. “By morning the place'll be down around our ears, and they'll go through the rubble and find a lot of dead meat, and maybe they won't look too hard for a chick's body. And everything'll be all right ... if we don't get choked off in here.”
She smiled, very thin, and tried to look brave. She was okay, that one. She closed her eyes and settled back on the mat and tried to sleep. I was beat. I closed my eyes, too.
“Can you handle it?” I asked Blood.
“I suppose. You better sleep.”
I nodded, eyes still closed, and fell on my side. I was out before I could think about it.
When I came back, I found the girl, that Quilla June, snuggled up under my armpit, her arm around my waist, dead asleep. I could hardly breathe. It was like a furnace; hell, it was a furnace. I reached out a hand, and the wall of the boiler was so damned hot I couldn't touch it. Blood was up on the mattress with us. That mat had been the only thing'd kept us from being singed good. He was asleep, head buried in his paws. She was asleep, still naked.
I put a hand on her tit. It was warm. She stirred and cuddled into me closer. I got a hard-on.
Managed to get my pants off, and rolled on top of her. She woke up fast when she felt me pry her legs apart, but it was too late by then. “Don't ... stop ... what are you doing ... no, don't...”
But she was half-asleep, and weak, and I don't think she really wanted to fight me anyhow.
She cried when I broke her, of course, but after that it was okay. There was blood all over the wrestling mat. And Blood just kept sleeping.
It was really different. Usually, when I'd get Blood to track something down for me, it'd be grab it and punch it and pork it and get away fast before something bad could happen. But when she came, she rose up off the mat, and hugged me around the back so hard I thought she'd crack my ribs, and then she settled back down slow slow slow, like I do when I'm doing leg-lifts in the makeshift gym I rigged in the auto wrecking yard. And her eyes were closed, and she was relaxed-looking. And happy. I could tell.
We did it a lot of times, and after a while it was her idea, but I didn't say no. And then we lay out side-by-side and talked.
She asked me about how it was with Blood, and I told her how the skirmisher dogs had gotten telepathic, and how they'd lost the abili
ty to hunt food for themselves, so the solos and roverpaks had to do it for them, and how dogs like Blood were good at finding chicks for solos like me. She didn't say anything to that.
I asked her about what it was like where she lived, in one of the downunders.
“It's nice. But it's always very quiet. Everyone is very polite to everyone else. It's just a small town.”
“Which one you live in?”
“Topeka. It's real close to here.”
“Yeah, I know. The access dropshaft is only about half a mile from here. I went out there once, to take a look around.”
“Have you ever been in a downunder?”
“No. But I don't guess I want to be, either.”
“Why? It's very nice. You'd like it.”
“Shit.”
“That's very crude.”
“I'm very crude.”
“Not all the time.”
I was getting mad. “Listen, you ass, what's the matter with you? I grabbed you and pushed you around, I raped you half a dozen times, so what's so good about me, huh? What's the matter with you, don't you even have enough smarts to know when somebody's—”
She was smiling at me. “I didn't mind. I liked doing it. Want to do it again?”
I was really shocked. I moved away from her. “What the hell is wrong with you? Don't you know that a chick from a downunder like you can be really mauled by solos? Don't you know chicks get warnings from their parents in the downunders, ‘Don't cumup, you'll get snagged by them dirty, hairy, slobbering solos!’ Don't you know that?”
She put her hand on my leg and started moving it up, the fingertips just brushing my thigh. I got another hard-on. “My parents never said that about solos,” she said. Then she pulled me over her again, and kissed me, and I couldn't stop from getting in her again.
God, it just went on like that for hours. After a while Blood turned around and said, “I'm not going to keep pretending I'm asleep. I'm hungry. And I'm hurt.”
I tossed her off me—she was on top by this time—and examined him. The Doberman had taken a good chunk out of his right ear, and there was a rip right down his muzzle, and blood-matted fur on one side. He was a mess, “Jesus, man, you're a mess,” I said.
“You're no fucking rose garden yourself, Albert!” he snapped. I pulled my hand back.
“Can we get out of here?” I asked him.
He cast around, and then shook his head. “I can't get any readings. Must be a pile of rubble on top of this boiler. I'll have to go out and scout.”
We kicked that around for a while, and finally decided if the building was razed, and had cooled a little, the roverpak would have gone through the ashes by now. The fact that they hadn't tried the boiler indicated that we were probably buried pretty good. Either that, or the building was still smoldering overhead. In which case, they'd still be out there, waiting to sift the remains.
“Think you can handle it, the condition you're in?”
“I guess I'll have to, won't I?” Blood said. He was really surly. “I mean, what with you busy coitusing your brains out, there won't be much left for staying alive, will there?”
I sensed real trouble with him. He didn't like Quilla June. I moved around him and undogged the boiler hatch. It wouldn't open. So I braced my back against the side, and jacked my legs up, and gave it a slow, steady shove.
Whatever had fallen against it from outside resisted for a minute, then started to give, then tumbled away with a crash. I pushed the door open all the way, and looked out. The upper floors had fallen in on the basement, but by the time they'd given, they'd been mostly cinder and lightweight rubble. Everything was smoking out there. I could see daylight through the smoke.
I slipped out, burning my hands on the outside lip of the hatch. Blood followed. He started to pick his way through the debris. I could see that the boiler had been almost completely covered by the gunk that had dropped from above. Chances were good the roverpak had taken a fast look, figured we'd been fried, and moved on. But I wanted Blood to run a recon anyway. He started off, but I called him back. He came.
“What is it?”
I looked down at him. “I'll tell you what it is, man. You're acting very shitty.”
“Sue me.”
“Goddammit, dog, what's got your ass up?”
“Her. That nit chick you've got in there.”
“So what? Big deal ... I've had chicks before.”
“Yeah, but never any that hung on like this one. I warn you, Albert, she's going to make trouble.”
“Don't be dumb!” He didn't reply. Just looked at me with anger and then limped off to check out the scene. I crawled back inside and dogged the hatch. She wanted to make it again. I said I didn't want to; Blood had brought me down. I was bugged. And I didn't know which one to be pissed off at.
But God she was pretty.
She kind of pouted and settled back with her arms wrapped around her. “Tell me some more about the downunder,” I said.
At first she was cranky, wouldn't say much, but after a while she opened up and started talking freely. I was learning a lot. I figured I could use it some time, maybe.
There were only a couple of hundred downunders in what was left of the United States and Canada. They'd been sunk on the sites of wells or mines or other kinds of deep holes. Some of them, out in the west, were in natural cave formations. They went way down, maybe two to five miles. They were like big caissons, stood on end. And the people who'd settled them were squares of the worst kind. Southern Baptists, Fundamentalists, lawanorder goofs, real middle-class squares with no taste for the wild life. And they'd gone back to a kind of life that hadn't existed for a hundred and fifty years. They'd gotten the last of the scientists to do the work, invent the how and why, and then they'd run them out. They didn't want any progress, they didn't want any dissent, they didn't want anything that would make waves. They'd had enough of that. The best time in the world had been just before the First War, and they figured if they could keep it like that, they could live quiet lives and survive. Shit! I'd go nuts in one of the downunders.
Quilla June smiled, and snuggled up again, and this time I didn't turn her off. She started touching me again, down there and all over, and then she said, “Vic?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
“What?”
“In love? Have you ever been in love with a girl?”
“Well, I damn well guess I haven't!”
“Do you know what love is?”
“Sure. I guess I do.”
“But if you've never been in love...?”
“Don't be dumb. I mean, I've never had a bullet in the head, and I know I wouldn't like it.”
“You don't know what love is, I'll bet.”
“Well, if it means living in a downunder, I guess I just don't wanna find out.” We didn't go on with the conversation much after that. She pulled me down and we did it again. And when it was over, I heard Blood scratching at the boiler. I opened the hatch, and he was standing out there.
All clear,” he said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, yeah, I'm sure. Put your pants on,” he said it with a sneer in the tone, “and come on out here. We have to talk some stuff.”
I looked at him, and he wasn't kidding. I got my jeans and sneakers on, and climbed down out of the boiler.
He trotted ahead of me, away from the boiler over some blacksoot beams, and outside the gym. It was down. Looked like a rotted tooth stump.
“Now what's lumbering you?” I asked him.
He scampered up on a chunk of concrete till he was almost nose level with me.
“You're going dumb on me, Vic.”
I knew he was serious. No Albert shit, straight Vic. “How so?”
“Last night, man. We could have cut out of there and left her for them. That would have been smart.”
“I wanted her.”
“Yeah, I know. That's what I'm talking about. It's today
now, not last night. You've had her about a half a hundred times. Why're we hanging around?”
“I want some more.”
Then he got angry. “Yeah, well, listen, chum ... I want a few things myself. I want something to eat, and I want to get rid of this pain in my side, and I want away from this turf. Maybe they don't give up this easy.”
“Take it easy. We can handle all that. Don't mean she can't go with us.”
“Doesn't mean,” he corrected me. “And so that's the new story. Now we travel three, is that right?”
I was getting really uptight myself. “You're starting to sound like a damn poodle!”
“And you're starting to sound like a boxer.”
I hauled back to crack him one. He didn't move. I dropped the hand. I'd never hit Blood. I didn't want to start now.
“Sorry,” he said, softly.
“That's okay.”
But we weren't looking at each other.
“Vic, man, you've got a responsibility to me, you know.”
“You don't have to tell me that.”
“Well, I guess maybe I do. Maybe I have to remind you of some stuff. Like the time that burnpit-screamer came up out of the street and made a grab for you.”
I shuddered. The motherfucker'd been green. Righteous stone green, glowing like fungus. My gut heaved, just thinking.
“And I went for him, right?”
I nodded. Right, mutt, right.
“And I could have been burned bad, and died, and that would've been all of it for me, right or wrong, isn't that true?” I nodded again. I was getting pissed off proper. I didn't like being made to feel guilty. It was a fifty-fifty with Blood and me. He knew that. “But I did it, right?” I remembered the way the green thing had screamed. Christ, it was all ooze and eyelashes.
“Okay, okay, don't hanger me.”
“Harangue, not hanger.”
“Well, WHATEVER!” I shouted. “Just knock off the crap, or we can forget the whole fucking arrangement!”