{"id":25208,"date":"2025-11-23T11:25:03","date_gmt":"2025-11-23T15:25:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=25208"},"modified":"2025-11-23T11:25:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-23T15:25:06","slug":"harlan-ellison-a-boy-and-his-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/harlan-ellison-a-boy-and-his-dog\/25208\/","title":{"rendered":"Harlan Ellison: A Boy and His Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis:<\/strong> \u201cA Boy and His Dog\u201d is a stark tale by Harlan Ellison, published in April 1969 in New Worlds<\/em> magazine. It follows Vic, a teenager who roams a post-apocalyptic world in the company of a dog with psychic abilities, with whom he shares a close bond. In a devastated city, Vic searches for food for them both, while the dog tracks down women so the boy can satisfy other appetites. One day, inside a ruined movie theater, the animal detects the scent of a young woman who should not be there. Following that trail leads Vic into unfamiliar territory, filled with dangers and an unexpected mission.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Harlan<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A Boy and His Dog<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Harlan Ellison
(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I was out with Blood, my dog. It was his week for annoying me; he kept calling me Albert. He thought that was pretty damned funny. Payson Terhune: ha ha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d caught a couple of water rats for him, the big green and ocher ones, and someone\u2019s manicured poodle, lost off a leash in one of the downunders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019d eaten pretty good, but he was cranky. \u201cCome on, son of a bitch,\u201d I demanded, \u201cfind me a piece of ass.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood just chuckled, deep in his dog-throat. \u201cYou\u2019re funny when you get horny,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe funny enough to kick him upside his sphincter asshole, that refugee from a dingo-heap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFind! I ain\u2019t kidding!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor shame, Albert. After all I\u2019ve taught you. Not \u2018I ain\u2019t<\/em> kidding.\u2019 I\u2019m not<\/em> kidding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He knew I\u2019d reached the edge of my patience. Sullenly, he started casting. He sat down on the crumbled remains of the curb, and his eyelids flickered and closed, and his hairy body tensed. After a while he settled down on his front paws, and scraped them forward till he was lying flat, his shaggy head on the outstretched paws. The tenseness left him and he began trembling, almost the way he trembled just preparatory to scratching a flea. It went on that way for almost a quarter of an hour, and finally he rolled over and lay on his back, his naked belly toward the night sky, his front paws folded mantislike, his hind legs extended and open. \u201cI\u2019m sorry,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could have gotten mad and booted him, but I knew he had tried. I wasn\u2019t happy about it, I really wanted to get laid, but what could I do? \u201cOkay,\u201d I said, with resignation, \u201cforget it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He kicked himself onto his side and quickly got up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat do you want to do?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot much we can<\/em> do, is there?\u201d I was more than a little sarcastic. He sat down again, at my feet, insolently humble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I leaned against the melted stub of a lamppost, and thought about girls. It was painful. \u201cWe can always go to a show,\u201d I said. Blood looked around the street, at the pools of shadow lying in the weed-overgrown craters, and didn\u2019t say anything. The whelp was waiting for me to say okay, let\u2019s go. He liked movies as much as I did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, let\u2019s go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He got up and followed me, his tongue hanging, panting with happiness. Go ahead and laugh, you eggsucker. No popcorn for you<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Our Gang was a roverpak that had never been able to cut it simply foraging, so they\u2019d opted for comfort and gone a smart way to getting it. They were movie-oriented kids, and they\u2019d taken over the turf where the Metropole Theater was located. No one tried to bust their turf, because we all needed the movies, and as long as Our Gang had access to films, and did a better job of keeping the films going, they provided a service, even for solos like me and Blood. Especially<\/em> for solos like us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They made me check my .45 and the Browning .22 long at the door. There was a little alcove right beside the ticket booth. I bought my tickets first; it cost me a can of Oscar Mayer Philadelphia Scrapple for me, and a tin of sardines for Blood. Then the Our Gang guards with the bren guns motioned me over to the alcove and I checked my heat. I saw water leaking from a broken pipe in the ceiling and I told the checker, a kid with big leathery warts all over his face and lips, to move my weapons where it was dry. He ignored me. \u201cHey you! Motherfuckin\u2019, toad, move my stuff over the other side\u2026it goes to rust fast\u2026an\u2019 it picks up any spots, man, I\u2019ll break your bones!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He started to give me jaw about it, looked at the guards with the brens, knew if they tossed me out I\u2019d lose my price of admission whether I went in or not, but they weren\u2019t looking for any action, probably understrength, and gave him the nod to let it pass, to do what I said. So the toad moved my Browning to the other end of the gun rack, and pegged my .45 under it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood and me went into the theater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want popcorn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cForget it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome on, Albert. Buy me popcorn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m tapped out. You can live without popcorn.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re just being a shit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shrugged: sue me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went in. The place was jammed. I was glad the guards hadn\u2019t tried to take anything but guns. My spike and knife felt reassuring, lying-up in their oiled sheaths at the back of my neck. Blood found two together, and we moved into the row, stepping on feet. Someone cursed and I ignored him. A Doberman growled. Blood\u2019s fur stirred, but he let it pass. There was always some<\/em> hardcase on the muscle, even on neutral ground like the Metropole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(I heard once about a get-it-on they\u2019d had at the old Loew\u2019s Granada, on the South Side. Wound up with ten or twelve rovers and their mutts dead, the theater burned down and a couple of good Cagney films lost in the fire. After that was when the roverpaks had got up the agreement that movie houses were sanctuaries. It was better now, but there was always somebody too messed in the mind to come soft.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a triple feature. Raw Deal<\/em> with Dennis O\u2019Keefe, Claire Trevor, Raymond Burr and Marsha Hunt was the oldest of the three. It\u2019d been made in 1948, eighty-six years ago; god only knows how the damn thing\u2019d hung together all that time; it slipped sprockets and they had to stop the movie all the time to re-thread it. But it was a good movie. About this solo who\u2019d been japped by his roverpak and was out to get revenge. Gangsters, mobs, a lot of punching and fighting. Real good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The middle flick was a thing made during the Third War, in \u201992, twenty-seven years before I was even born, thing called Smell of a Chink<\/em>. It was mostly gut-spilling and some nice hand-to-hand. Beautiful scene of skirmisher greyhounds equipped with napalm throwers, jellyburning a Chink town. Blood dug it, even though we\u2019d seen this flick before. He had some kind of phony shuck going that these were ancestors of his, and he<\/em> knew and I<\/em> knew, he was making it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWanna burn a baby, hero?\u201d I whispered to him. He got the barb and just shifted in his seat, didn\u2019t say a thing, kept looking pleased as the dogs worked their way through the town. I was bored stiff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was waiting for the main feature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally it came on. It was a beauty, a beaver flick made in the late 1970s. It was called Big Black Leather Splits<\/em>. Started right out very good. These two blondes in black leather corsets and boots laced all the way up to their crotches, with whips and masks, got this skinny guy down and one of the chicks sat on his face while the other one went down on him. It got really hairy after that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All around me there were solos playing with themselves. I was about to jog it a little myself when Blood leaned across and said, real soft, the way he does when he\u2019s onto something unusually smelly, \u201cThere\u2019s a chick in here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re nuts,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI tell you I smell her. She\u2019s in here, man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without being conspicuous, I looked around. Almost every seat in the theater was taken with solos or their dogs. If a chick had slipped in there\u2019d have been a riot. She\u2019d have been ripped to pieces before any single guy could have gotten into her. \u201cWhere?\u201d I asked, softly. All around me, the solos were beating-off, moaning as the blondes took off their masks and one of them worked the skinny guy with a big wooden ram strapped around her hips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGive me a minute,\u201d Blood said. He was really concentrating. His body was tense as a wire. His eyes were closed, his muzzle quivering. I let him work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was possible. Just maybe possible. I knew that they made really dumb flicks in the downunders, the kind of crap they\u2019d made back in the 1930s and \u201940s, real clean stuff with even married people sleeping in twin beds. Myrna Loy and George Brent kind of flicks. And I knew that once in a while a chick from one of the really strict middle-class downunders would cumup, to see what a hairy flick was like. I\u2019d heard about it, but it\u2019d never happened in any theater I\u2019d<\/em> ever been in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the chances of it happening in the Metropole, particularly, were slim. There was a lot of twisty trade came to the Metropole. Now, understand, I\u2019m not specially prejudiced against guys corning one another\u2026hell, I can understand it. There just aren\u2019t enough chicks anywhere. But I can\u2019t cut the jockey-and-boxer scene because it gets some weak little boxer hanging on you, getting jealous, you have to hunt for him and all he thinks he has to do is bare his ass to get all the work done for him. It\u2019s as bad as having a chick dragging along behind. Made for a lot of bad blood and fights in the bigger roverpaks, too. So I just never swung that way. Well, not never<\/em>, but not for a long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So with all the twisties in the Metropole, I didn\u2019t think a chick would chance it. Be a toss-up who\u2019d tear her apart first: the boxers or the straights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if she was<\/em> here, why couldn\u2019t any of the other dogs smell her\u2026?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThird row in front of us,\u201d Blood said. \u201cAisle seat. Dressed like a solo.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow\u2019s come you<\/em> can whiff her and no other dog\u2019s caught her?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou forget who I am, Albert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t forget, I just don\u2019t believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Actually, bottom-line, I guess I did<\/em> believe it. When you\u2019d been as dumb as I\u2019d been and a dog like Blood\u2019d taught me so much, a guy came to believe everything<\/em> he said. You don\u2019t argue with your teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not when he\u2019d taught you how to read and write and add and subtract and everything else they used to know that meant you were smart (but doesn\u2019t mean much of anything now, except it\u2019s good to know it, I guess).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(The reading\u2019s a pretty good thing. It comes in handy when you can find some canned goods someplace, like in a bombed-out supermarket; makes it easier to pick out stuff you like when the pictures are gone off the labels. Couple of times the reading stopped me from taking canned beets. Shit, I hate<\/em> beets!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I guess I did<\/em> believe why he could whiff a maybe chick in there, and no other mutt could. He\u2019d told me all about that<\/em> a million times. It was his favorite story. History he called it. Christ, I\u2019m not that<\/em> dumb! I knew what history was. That was all the stuff that happened before now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I liked hearing history straight from Blood, instead of him making me read one of those crummy books he was always dragging in. And that<\/em> particular history was all about him, so he laid it on me over and over, till I knew it by heart\u2026no, the word was rote<\/em>. Not wrote<\/em>, like writing, that was something else. I knew it by rote, means you got it word-for-word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when a mutt teaches you everything you know, and he tells you something rote, I guess finally you do<\/em> believe it. Except I\u2019d never let that leg-lifter know it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

II<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What he\u2019d told me rote was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over sixty-five years ago, in Los Angeles, before the Third War even got going completely, there was a man named Buesing who lived in Cerritos. He raised dogs as watchmen and sentries and attackers. Dobermans, Danes, schnauzers and Japanese akitas. He had one four-year-old German shepherd bitch named Ginger. She worked for the Los Angeles Police Department\u2019s narcotics division. She could smell out marijuana. No matter how well it was hidden. They ran a test on her: there were 25,000 boxes in an auto parts warehouse. Five of them had been planted with marijuana sealed in cellophane, wrapped in tin foil and heavy brown paper, and finally hidden in three separate sealed cartons. Within seven minutes Ginger found all five packages. At the same time that Ginger was working, ninety-two miles farther north, in Santa Barbara, cetologists had drawn and amplified dolphin spinal fluid and injected it into Chacma baboons and dogs. Altering surgery and grafting had been done. The first successful product of this cetacean experimentation had been a two-year-old male Puli named Ahbhu, who had communicated sense-impressions telepathically. Cross-breeding and continued experimentation had produced the first skirmisher dogs, just in time for the Third War. Telepathic over short distances, easily trained, able to track gasoline or troops or poison gas or radiation when linked with their human controllers, they had become the shock commandos of a new kind of war. The selective traits had bred true. Dobermans, greyhounds, akitas, pulis and schnauzers had become steadily more telepathic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ginger and Ahbhu had been Blood\u2019s ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He had told me so, a thousand times. Had told me the story just that way, in just those words, a thousand times, as it had been told to him. I\u2019d never believed him till now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the little bastard was<\/em> special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I checked out the solo scrunched down in the aisle seat three rows ahead of me. I couldn\u2019t tell a damned thing. The solo had his (her?) cap pulled way down, fleece jacket pulled way up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAre you sure?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs sure as I can be. It\u2019s a girl.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf it is, she\u2019s playing with herself just like a guy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood snickered. \u201cSurprise,\u201d he said sarcastically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mystery solo sat through Raw Deal<\/em> again. It made sense, if that was a girl. Most of the solos and all of the members of roverpaks left after the beaver flick. The theater didn\u2019t fill up much more, it gave the streets time to empty, he\/she could make his\/her way back to wherever he\/she had come from. I sat through Raw Deal<\/em> again myself. Blood went to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the mystery solo got up, I gave him\/her time to get weapons if any\u2019d been checked, and started away. Then I pulled Blood\u2019s big shaggy ear and said, \u201cLet\u2019s do it.\u201d He slouched after me, up the aisle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got my guns and checked the street. Empty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, nose,\u201d I said, \u201cwhere\u2019d he go?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer. To the right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started off, loading the Browning from my bandolier. I still didn\u2019t see anyone moving among the bombed-out shells of the buildings. This section of the city was crummy, really bad shape. But then, with Our Gang running the Metropole, they didn\u2019t have to repair anything else to get their livelihood. It was ironic; the Dragons had to keep an entire power plant going to get tribute from the other roverpaks; Ted\u2019s Bunch had to mind the reservoir; the Bastinados worked like fieldhands in the marijuana gardens; the Barbados Blacks lost a couple of dozen members every year cleaning out the radiation pits all over the city; and Our Gang only had to run that movie house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whoever their leader had been, however many years ago it had been that the roverpaks had started forming out of foraging solos, I had to give it to him: he\u2019d been a flinty sharp mother. He knew what services to deal in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe turned off here,\u201d Blood said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I followed him as he began loping, toward the edge of the city and the bluish-green radiation that still flickered from the hills. I knew he was right, then. The only things out here were screamers and the access dropshaft to the downunder. It was a girl, all right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cheeks of my ass tightened as I thought about it. I was going to get laid. It had been almost a month, since Blood had whiffed that solo chick in the basement of the Market Basket. She\u2019d been filthy, and I\u2019d gotten the crabs from her, but she\u2019d been a woman, all right, and once I\u2019d tied her down and clubbed her a couple of times she\u2019d been pretty good. She\u2019d liked it, too, even if she did spit on me and tell me she\u2019d kill me if she ever got loose. I left her tied up, just to be sure. She wasn\u2019t there when I went back to look, week before last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWatch out,\u201d Blood said, dodging around a crater almost invisible against the surrounding shadows. Something stirred in the crater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trekking across the nomansland I realized why it was that all but a handful of solos or members of roverpaks were guys. The War had killed off most of the girls, and that was the way it always was in wars\u2026at least that\u2019s what Blood told me. The things getting born were seldom male or<\/em> female, and had to be smashed against a wall as soon as they were pulled out of the mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The few chicks who hadn\u2019t gone downunder with the middle-classers were hard, solitary bitches like the one in the Market Basket; tough and stringy and just as likely to cut off your meat with a razor blade once they let you get in. Scuffling for a piece of ass had gotten harder and harder, the older I\u2019d gotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But every once in a while a chick got tired of being roverpak property, or a raid was got-up by five or six roverpaks and some unsuspecting downunder was taken, or\u2014like this time, yeah\u2014some middle-class chick from a downunder got hot pants to find out what a beaver flick looked like, and cumup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was going to get laid. Oh boy, I couldn\u2019t wait!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

III<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Out here it was nothing but empty corpses of blasted buildings. One entire block had been stomped flat, like a steel press had come down from Heaven and given one solid wham! and everything was powder under it. The chick was scared and skittish, I could see that. She moved erratically, looking back over her shoulder and to either side. She knew she was in dangerous country. Man, if she\u2019d only known how<\/em> dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one building standing all alone at the end of the smashflat block, like it had been missed and chance let it stay. She ducked inside and a minute later I saw a bobbing light. Flashlight? Maybe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood and I crossed the street and came up into the blackness surrounding the building. It was what was left of a YMCA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That meant \u201cYoung Men\u2019s Christian Association.\u201d Blood had taught me to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what the hell was a young men\u2019s Christian association? Sometimes being able to read makes more questions than if you were stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t want her getting out; inside there was as good a place to screw her as any, so I put Blood on guard right beside the steps leading up into the shell, and I went around the back. All the doors and windows had been blown out, of course. It wasn\u2019t no big trick getting in. I pulled myself up to the ledge of a window, and dropped down inside. Dark inside. No noise, except the sound of her, moving around on the other side of the old YMCA. I didn\u2019t know if she was heeled or not, and I wasn\u2019t about to take any chances. I bowslung the Browning and took out the .45 automatic. I didn\u2019t have to snap back the action\u2014there was always a slug in the chamber.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started moving carefully through the room. It was a locker room of some kind. There was glass and debris all over the floor, and one entire row of metal lockers had the paint blistered off their surfaces; the flash blast had caught them through the windows, a lot of years ago. My sneakers didn\u2019t make a sound coming through the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The door was hanging on one hinge, and I stepped over\u2014through the inverted triangle. I was in the swimming pool area. The big pool was empty, with tiles buckled down at the shallow end. It stunk bad in there; no wonder, there were dead guys, or what was left of them, along one wall. Some lousy cleaner-up had stacked them, but hadn\u2019t buried them. I pulled my bandanna up around my nose and mouth and kept moving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out the other side of the pool place, and through a little passage with popped light bulbs in the ceiling. I didn\u2019t have any trouble seeing. There was moonlight coming through busted windows and a chunk was out of the ceiling. I could hear her real plain now, just on the other side of the door at the end of the passage. I hung close to the wall, and stepped down to the door. It was open a crack, but blocked by a fall of lath and plaster from the wall. It would make noise when I went to pull it open, that was for certain. I had to wait for the right moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flattened against the wall, I checked out what she was doing in there. It was a gymnasium, big one, with climbing ropes hanging down from the ceiling. She had a squat, square, eight-cell flashlight sitting up on the croup of a vaulting horse. There were parallel bars and a horizontal bar about eight feet high, the tempered steel all rusty now. There were swinging rings and a trampoline and a big wooden balancing beam. Over to one side there were wall-bars and balancing benches, horizontal and oblique ladders, and a couple of stacks of vaulting boxes. I made a note to remember this joint. It was better for working out than the jerry-rigged gym I\u2019d set up in an old auto wrecking yard. A guy has to keep in shape, if he\u2019s going to be a solo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was out of her disguise. Standing there in the skin, shivering. Yeah, it was chilly, and I could see a pattern of chicken-skin all over her. She was maybe five-six or -seven, with nice tits and kind of skinny legs. She was brushing out her hair. It hung way down the back. The flashlight didn\u2019t make it clear enough to tell if she had red hair or chestnut, but it wasn\u2019t blonde, which was good, and that was because I dug redheads. She had nice tits, though. I couldn\u2019t see her face, the hair was hanging down all smooth and wavy and cut off her profile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The crap she\u2019d been wearing was thrown around on the floor, and what she was going to put on was up on the vaulting horse. She was standing in little shoes with a kind of funny heel on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t move. I suddenly realized I couldn\u2019t move. She was nice, really nice. I was getting a real big kick out of just standing there and seeing the way her waist fell inward and her hips fell outward, the way the muscles at the side of her tits pulled up when she reached to the top of her head to brush all that hair down. It was really weird the kick I was getting out of standing and just staring at a chick do that. Kind of very, well, woman stuff. I liked it a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d never ever stopped and just looked at a chick like that. All the ones I\u2019d ever seen had been scumbags that Blood had smelled out for me, and I\u2019d snatch\u2019n\u2019grabbed them. Or the big chicks in the beaver flicks. Not like this one, kind of soft and very smooth, even with the goose bumps. I could have watched her all night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She put down the brush, and reached over and took a pair of panties off the pile of clothes and wriggled into them. Then she got her bra and put it on. I never knew the way chicks did it. She put it on backwards around her waist, and it had a hook on it. Then she slid it around till the cups were in front, and kind of pulled it up under and scooped herself into it, first one, then the other; then she pulled the straps over her shoulder. She reached for her dress, and I nudged some of the lath and plaster aside, and grabbed the door to give it a yank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She had the dress up over her head, and her arms up inside the material, and when she stuck her head in, and was all tangled there for a second, I yanked the door and there was a crash as chunks of wood and plaster fell out of the way, and a heavy scraping, and I jumped inside and was on her before she could get out of the dress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She started to scream, and I pulled the dress off her with a ripping sound, and it all happened for her before she knew what that crash and scrape was all about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her face was wild. Just wild. Big eyes: I couldn\u2019t tell what color they were because they were in shadow. Real fine features, a wide mouth, little nose, cheekbones just like mine, real high and prominent, and a dimple in her right cheek. She stared at me really scared.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then\u2026and this is really weird\u20261 felt like I should say<\/em> something to her. I don\u2019t know what. Just something. It made me uncomfortable, to see her scared, but what the hell could I do about that<\/em>, I mean, I was going to rape her, after all, and I couldn\u2019t very well tell her not to be shrinky about it. She was the one cumup, after all. But even so, I wanted to say hey, don\u2019t be scared, I just want to lay you. (That never happened before. I never wanted to say<\/em> anything to a chick, just get in, and that was that.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it passed, and I put my leg behind hers and tripped her back, and she went down in a pile. I leveled the .45 at her, and her mouth kind of opened in a little o shape. \u201cNow I\u2019m gonna go over there and get one of them wrestling mats, so it\u2019ll be better, comfortable, uh-huh? You make a move off that floor and I shoot a leg out from under you, and you\u2019ll get screwed just the same, except you\u2019ll be without a leg.\u201d I waited for her to let me know she was onto what I was saying, and she finally nodded real slow, so I kept the automatic on her, and went over to the big dusty stack of mats, and pulled one off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I dragged it over to her, and flipped it so the cleaner side was up, and used the muzzle of the .45 to maneuver her onto it. She just sat there on the mat, with her hands behind her, and her knees bent, and stared at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I unzipped my pants and started pulling them down off one side, when I caught her looking at me real funny. I stopped with the jeans. \u201cWhat\u2019re you<\/em> lookin\u2019 at?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was mad. I didn\u2019t know why I was mad, but I was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s your name?\u201d she asked. Her voice was very soft, and kind of furry, like it came up through her throat that was all lined with fur or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She kept looking at me, waiting for me to answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVic,\u201d I said. She looked like she was waiting for more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVic what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t know what she meant for a minute, then I did. \u201cVic. Just Vic. That\u2019s all.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, what\u2019re your mother and father\u2019s names?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I started laughing, and working my jeans down again. \u201cBoy, are you a dumb bitch,\u201d I said, and laughed some more. She looked hurt. It made me mad again. \u201cStop lookin\u2019 like that, or I\u2019ll bust out your teeth!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She folded her hands in her lap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got the pants around my ankles. They wouldn\u2019t come off over the sneakers. I had to balance on one foot and scuff the sneaker off the other foot. It was tricky, keeping the .45 on her and getting the sneaker off at the same time. But I did it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was standing there buck-naked from the waist down and she had sat forward a little, her legs crossed, hands still in her lap. \u201cGet that stuff off,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She didn\u2019t move for a second, and I thought she was going to give me trouble. But then she reached around behind and undid the bra. Then she tipped back and slipped the panties off her ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, she didn\u2019t look scared any more. She was watching me very close and I could see her eyes were blue now. Now this is the really weird thing\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t do it. I mean, not exactly. I mean, I wanted<\/em> to fuck her, see, but she was all soft and pretty and she kept looking<\/em> at me, and no solo I ever met would believe me, but I heard myself talking<\/em> to her, still standing there like some kind of wetbrain, one sneaker off and jeans down around my ankles. \u201cWhat\u2019s your<\/em> name?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cQuilla June Holmes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s a weird name.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy mother says it\u2019s not that uncommon, back in Oklahoma.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat where your folks come from?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She nodded. \u201cBefore the Third War.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey must be pretty old by now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey are, but they\u2019re okay. I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were just frozen there, talking to each other. I could tell she was cold, because she was shivering. \u201cWell,\u201d I said, sort of getting ready to drop down beside her, \u201cI guess we better\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damn it! That damned Blood! Right at that moment he came crashing in from outside. Came skidding through the lath, and plaster, raising dust, slid along on his ass till he got to us. \u201cNow<\/em> what?\u201d I demanded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWho\u2019re you talking to?\u201d the girl asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHim. Blood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe dog!?!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood stared at her and then ignored her. He started to say something but the girl interrupted him. \u201cThen it\u2019s true what they say\u2026you can all talk to animals\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou going to listen to her all night, or do you want to hear why I came in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, why\u2019re you here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re in trouble, Albert.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome on, forget the mickeymouse. What\u2019s up?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood twisted his head toward the front door of the YMCA. \u201cRoverpak. Got the building surrounded. I make it fifteen or twenty, maybe more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow the hell\u2019d they know we was here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood looked chagrined. He dropped his head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome other mutt must\u2019ve smelled her in the theater.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGreat.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow what?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow we stand \u2019em off, that\u2019s what. You got any better suggestions?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust one.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I waited. He grinned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPull your pants up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IV<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The girl, this Quilla June, was pretty safe. I made her a kind of a shelter out of wrestling mats, maybe a dozen of them. She wouldn\u2019t get hit by a stray bullet, and if they didn\u2019t go right for her, they wouldn\u2019t find her. I climbed one of the ropes hanging down from the girders and laid out up there with the Browning and a couple of handfuls of reloads. I wished to God I\u2019d had an automatic, a bren or a Thompson. I checked the .45, made sure it was full, with one in the chamber, and set the extra clips down on the girder. I had a clear line-of-fire all around the gym.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood was lying in shadow right near the front door. He\u2019d suggested I try and pick off any dogs with the roverpak first, if I could. That would allow him to operate freely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That was the least of my worries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019d wanted to hole up in another room, one with only a single entrance, but I had no way of knowing if the rovers were already in the building, so I did the best I could with what I had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything was quiet. Even that Quilla June. It\u2019d taken me valuable minutes to convince her she\u2019d damned well better hole up and not make any noise; she was better off with me than with twenty of them<\/em>. \u201cIf you ever wanna see your mommy and daddy again,\u201d I warned her. After that she didn\u2019t give me no trouble, packing her in with mats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I heard two things, both at the same time. From back in the swimming pool I heard boots crunching plaster. Very soft. And from one side of the front door, I heard a tinkle of metal striking wood. So they were going to try a yoke. Well, I was ready.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quiet again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sighted the Browning on the door to the pool room. It was still open from when I\u2019d come through. Figure him at maybe five-ten, and drop the sights a foot and a half, and I\u2019d catch him in the chest. I\u2019d learned long ago you don\u2019t try for the head. Go for the widest part of the body: the chest and stomach. The trunk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, outside, I heard a dog bark, and part of the darkness near the front door detached itself and moved inside the gym. Directly opposite Blood. I didn\u2019t move the Browning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rover at the front door moved a step along the wall, away from Blood. Then he cocked back his arm and threw something\u2014a rock, a piece of metal, something\u2014across the room to draw fire. I didn\u2019t move the Browning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When the thing he\u2019d thrown hit the floor, two rovers jumped out of the swimming pool door, one on either side of it, rifles down, ready to spray. Before they could open up, I\u2019d squeezed off the first shot, tracked across and put a second shot into the other one. They both went down. Dead hits, right in the heart. Bang, they were down, neither one moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mother by the door turned to split, and Blood was on him. Just like that, out of the darkness, riiiip!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood leaped, right over the crossbar of the guy\u2019s rifle held at ready, and sank his fangs into the rover\u2019s throat. The guy screamed, and Blood dropped, carrying a piece of the guy with him. The guy was making awful bubbling sounds and went down on one knee. I put a slug into his head, and he fell forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It went quiet again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not bad. Not bad atall atall. Three takeouts and they still didn\u2019t know our positions. Blood had fallen back into the murk by the entrance. He didn\u2019t say a thing, but I knew what he was thinking: maybe that was three out of seventeen, or three out of twenty, or twenty-two. No way of knowing; we could be faced-off in here for a week and never know if we\u2019d gotten them all, or some, or none. They could go and get poured full again, and I\u2019d find myself run out of slugs and no food and that girl, that Quilla June, crying and making me divide my attention, and daylight\u2014and they\u2019d be still laying out there, waiting till we got hungry enough to do something dumb, or till we ran out of slugs; and then they\u2019d cloud up and rain all over us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBlood! The rifle!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Came out of the shadows, grabbed it up in his mouth and dragged it over to the pile of wrestling mats in the far comer. 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\u2019t have to worry about getting him something tender. It was lying all over the floor of that gymnasium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014a mother-ugly akita, big as a house, and a Doberman bitch the color of a turd\u2014shot 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But firing, I\u2019d given away my position. One of the rovers fired from the hip and .30\u201306 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\u2019d 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\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t even have time to figure out what the fuck was happening\u2026Blood was rolling around with the Doberman and the sounds they were making were awful\u2026the rover with the .30\u201306 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another shot from the Winchester, and the rover fired right into the mats. She ducked back behind, and I knew I couldn\u2019t count on her for anything more. But I didn\u2019t 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\u2019s head against the floor till he stopped moving, then I grabbed up the empty .30\u201306 and whipped his head till I knew he wasn\u2019t gonna give me no more aggravation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I found the .45 and shot the Doberman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood got up and shook himself off. He was cut up bad. \u201cThanks,\u201d he mumbled, and went over to lie down in the shadows, to lick himself off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went and found that Quilla June, and she was crying. About all the guys we\u2019d killed. Mostly about the one she\u2019d<\/em> killed. I couldn\u2019t get her to stop bawling so I cracked her across the face and told her she\u2019d saved my life, and that helped some.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood came dragassing over. \u201cHow\u2019re we going to get out of this, Albert?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet me think.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought and knew it was hopeless. No matter how many we got, there\u2019d be more. And it was a matter of macho<\/em> now. Their honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow about a fire?\u201d Blood suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGet away while it\u2019s burning?\u201d I shook my head. \u201cThey\u2019ll have the place staked-out all around. No good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat if we don\u2019t leave? What if we burn up with it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked at him. Brave\u2026and smart as hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

V<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019d 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\u2019d had on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you catch anything?\u201d I asked Blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA little. Not much. I\u2019m reading one guy. The building\u2019s burning good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou be able to tell when they split?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMaybe. If<\/em> they split.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I settled back. Quilla June was shaking from all that had happened. \u201cJust take it easy,\u201d I told her. \u201cBy morning the place\u2019ll be down around our ears, and they\u2019ll go through the rubble and find a lot of dead meat, and maybe they won\u2019t look too hard for a chick\u2019s body. And everything\u2019ll be all right\u2026if we don\u2019t get choked off in here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan you handle it?\u201d I asked Blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI suppose. You better sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nodded, eyes still closed, and fell on my side. I was out before I could think about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/em> a furnace. I reached out a hand and the wall of the boiler was so damned hot I couldn\u2019t touch it. Blood was up on the mattress with us. That mat had been the only thing\u2019d kept us from being singed good. He was asleep, head buried in his paws. She was asleep, still naked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put a hand on her tit. It was warm. She stirred and cuddled into me closer. I got a hard-on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. \u201cDon\u2019t\u2026stop<\/em>\u2026what are you doing\u2026no, don\u2019t\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But she was half-asleep, and weak, and I don\u2019t think she really wanted to fight me anyhow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was really different. Usually, when I\u2019d get Blood to track something down for me, it\u2019d 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\u2019d crack my ribs, and then she settled back down slow slow slow, like I do when I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We did it a lot of times, and after a while it was her idea, but I didn\u2019t say no. And then we lay out side-by-side and talked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She asked me about how it was with Blood, and I told her how the skirmisher dogs had gotten telepathic, and how they\u2019d lost the ability 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\u2019t say anything to that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked her about what it was like where she lived, in one of the downunders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice. But it\u2019s always very quiet. Everyone is very polite to everyone else. It\u2019s just a small town.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhich one you live in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTopeka. It\u2019s real close to here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, I know. The access dropshaft is only about half a mile from here. I went out there once, to take a look around.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you ever been in a downunder?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo. But I don\u2019t guess I want to be, either.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy? It\u2019s very nice. You\u2019d like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShit.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s very crude.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m<\/em> very crude.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNot all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was getting mad. \u201cListen, you ass, what\u2019s the matter with you? I grabbed you and pushed you around, I raped you half a dozen times, so what\u2019s so good about me, huh? What\u2019s the matter with you, don\u2019t you even have enough smarts to know when somebody\u2019s\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was smiling at me. \u201cI didn\u2019t mind. I liked doing it. Want to do it again?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was really shocked. I moved away from her. \u201cWhat the hell is wrong with you? Don\u2019t you know that a chick from a downunder like you can be really mauled by solos? Don\u2019t you know chicks get warnings from their parents in the downunders, \u2018Don\u2019t cumup, you\u2019ll get snagged by them dirty, hairy, slobbering solos!\u2019 Don\u2019t you know that?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She put her hand on my leg and started moving it up, the fingertips just brushing my thigh. I got another hard-on. \u201cMy parents never said that about solos,\u201d she said. Then she pulled me over her again, and kissed me, and I couldn\u2019t stop from getting in her again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God, it just went on like that for hours. After a while Blood turned around and said, \u201cI\u2019m not going to keep pretending I\u2019m asleep. I\u2019m hungry. And I\u2019m hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tossed her off me\u2014she was on top by this time\u2014and 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, \u201cJesus, man, you\u2019re a mess,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re no fucking rose garden yourself, Albert!\u201d he snapped. I pulled my hand back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCan we get out of here?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He cast around, and then shook his head. \u201cI can\u2019t get any readings. Must be a pile of rubble on top of this boiler. I\u2019ll have to go out and scout.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019t tried the boiler indicated that we were probably buried pretty good. Either that, or the building was still smoldering overhead. In which case, they\u2019d still be out there, waiting to sift the remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThink you can handle it, the condition you\u2019re in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI guess I\u2019ll have<\/em> to, won\u2019t I?\u201d Blood said. He was really surly. \u201cI mean, what with you busy coitusing your brains out, there won\u2019t be much left for staying alive, will there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sensed real trouble with him. He didn\u2019t like Quilla June. I moved around him and undogged the boiler hatch. It wouldn\u2019t open. So I braced my back against the side, and jacked my legs up, and gave it a slow, steady shove.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019d given, they\u2019d been mostly cinder and lightweight rubble. Everything was smoking out there. I could see daylight through the smoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019d been fried, and moved on. But I wanted Blood to run a recon anyway. He started off, but 1 called him back. He came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked down at him. \u201cI\u2019ll tell you what it is, man. You\u2019re acting very shitty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSue me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGoddammit, dog, what\u2019s got your ass up?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer. That nit chick you\u2019ve got in there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo what? Big deal\u2026I\u2019ve had chicks before.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, but never any that hung on like this one. I warn you, Albert, she\u2019s going to make trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be dumb!\u201d He didn\u2019t 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\u2019t want to; Blood had brought me down. I was bugged. And I didn\u2019t know which one to be pissed off at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But God she was pretty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She kind of pouted and settled back with her arms wrapped around her. \u201cTell me some more about the downunder,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At first she was cranky, wouldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were only a couple of hundred downunders in what was left of the United States and Canada. They\u2019d 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\u2019d 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\u2019d gone back to a kind of life that hadn\u2019t existed for a hundred and fifty years. They\u2019d gotten the last of the scientists to do the work, invent the how and why, and then they\u2019d run them out. They didn\u2019t want any progress, they didn\u2019t want any dissent, they didn\u2019t want anything that would make waves. They\u2019d 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\u2019d go nuts in one of the downunders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quilla June smiled, and snuggled up again, and this time I didn\u2019t turn her off. She started touching me again, down there and all over, and then she said, \u201cVic?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUh-huh.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHave you ever been in love?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn love? Have you ever been in love with a girl?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, I damn well guess I haven\u2019t!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo you know what love is?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSure. I guess I do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut if you\u2019ve never been in love\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t be dumb. I mean, I\u2019ve never had a bullet in the head, and I know I wouldn\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t know what love is, I\u2019ll bet.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, if it means living in a downunder, I guess I just don\u2019t wanna find out.\u201d We didn\u2019t 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. \u201cAll clear,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou sure?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, yeah, I\u2019m sure. Put your pants on,\u201d he said it with a sneer in the tone, \u201cand come on out here. We have to talk some stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked at him, and he wasn\u2019t kidding. I got my jeans and sneakers on, and climbed down out of the boiler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He trotted ahead of me, away from the boiler over some blacksoot beams, and outside the gym. It was down. Looked like a rotted stump tooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow what\u2019s lumbering you?\u201d I asked him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He scampered up on a chunk of concrete till he was almost nose level with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going dumb on me, Vic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew he was serious. No Albert shit, straight Vic. \u201cHow so?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLast night, man. We could have cut out of there and left her for them. That<\/em> would have been smart.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, I know. That\u2019s what I\u2019m talking about. It\u2019s today now, not last night. You\u2019ve had her about a half a hundred times. Why\u2019re we hanging around?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI want some more.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he got angry. \u201cYeah, well, listen, chum\u2026I<\/em> 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\u2019t<\/em> give up this easy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake it easy. We can handle all that. Don\u2019t mean she can\u2019t go with us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDoesn\u2019t<\/em> mean,\u201d he corrected me. \u201cAnd so that\u2019s<\/em> the new story. Now we travel three, is that right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was getting really uptight myself. \u201cYou\u2019re starting to sound like a damn poodle!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019re starting to sound like a boxer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hauled back to crack him one. He didn\u2019t move. I dropped the hand. I\u2019d never hit Blood. I didn\u2019t want to start now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSorry,\u201d he said, softly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we weren\u2019t looking at each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVic, man, you\u2019ve got a responsibility to me, you know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t have to tell me that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I shuddered. The motherfucker\u2019d been green. Righteous stone green, glowing like fungus. My gut heaved, just thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd I went for him, right?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nodded. Right, mutt, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd I could have been burned bad, and died, and that would\u2019ve been all of it for me, right or wrong, isn\u2019t that true?\u201d I nodded again. I was getting pissed off proper. I didn\u2019t like being made to feel guilty. It was a fifty-fifty with Blood and me. He knew that. \u201cBut I did it, right?\u201d I remembered the way the green thing had screamed. Christ, it was all ooze and eyelashes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, okay, don\u2019t hanger me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHarangue<\/em>, not hanger.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, WHATEVER!\u201d I shouted. \u201cJust knock off the crap, or we can forget the whole fucking arrangement!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then Blood blew. \u201cWell, maybe we should<\/em>, you simple dumb putz<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s a putz<\/em>, you little turd\u2026is that something bad\u2026yeah, it must be\u2026you watch your fucking mouth, son of a bitch; or I\u2019ll kick your ass!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We sat there and didn\u2019t talk for fifteen minutes. Neither one of us knew which way to go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I backed off a little. I talked soft and I talked slow. I was about up to here with him, but told him I was going to do right by him, like I always had, and he threatened me, saying I\u2019d damned well better because there were a couple of very hip solos making it around the city, and they\u2019d be delighted to have a sharp tail-scent like him. I told him I didn\u2019t like being threatened, and he\u2019d better watch his fucking step or I\u2019d break his leg. He got furious and stalked off. I said screw you and went back to the boiler to take it out on that Quilla June again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when I stuck my head inside the boiler, she was waiting, with a pistol one of the dead rovers had supplied. She hit me good and solid over the right eye with it, and I fell straight forward across the hatch, and was out cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VI<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI told you she was no good.\u201d He watched me as I swabbed out the cut with disinfectant from my kit, and painted the gash with iodine. He smirked when I flinched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I put away the stuff, and rummaged around in the boiler, gathering up all the spare ammo I could carry, and ditching the Browning in favor of the heavier .30\u201306. Then I found something that must\u2019ve slipped out of her clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a little metal plate, about three inches long and an inch-and-a-half high. It had a whole string of numbers on it, and there were holes in it, in random patterns. \u201cWhat\u2019s this?\u201d I asked Blood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked at it, sniffed it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMust be an identity card of some kind. Maybe it\u2019s what she used to get out of the downunder.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That made my mind up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I jammed it in a pocket and started out. Toward the access dropshaft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere the hell are you going?\u201d Blood yelled after me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome on back, you\u2019ll get killed out there!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m hungry, dammit! I\u2019m wounded!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAlbert, you sonofabitch! Come back here!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kept right on walking. I was gonna find that bitch and brain her. Even if I had to go downunder to find her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took me an hour to walk to the access dropshaft leading down to Topeka. I thought I saw Blood following, but hanging back a ways. I didn\u2019t give a damn. I was mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, there it was. A tall, straight, featureless pillar of shining black metal. It was maybe twenty feet in diameter, perfectly flat on top, disappearing straight into the ground. It was a cap, that was all. I walked straight up to it, and fished around in my pocket for that metal card. Then something was tugging at my right pants leg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cListen, you moron, you can\u2019t go down there!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I kicked him off, but he came right back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cListen to me!<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I turned around and stared at him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood sat down; the powder puffed up around him. \u201cAlbert\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy name is Vic, you little eggsucker.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, okay, no fooling around. Vic.\u201d His tone softened. \u201cVic. Come on, man.\u201d He was trying to get through to me. I was really boiling, but he was trying to make sense. I shrugged, and crouched down beside him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cListen, man,\u201d Blood said, \u201cthis chick has bent you way out of shape. You know<\/em> you can\u2019t go down there. It\u2019s all square and settled, and they know everyone; they hate solos. Enough roverpaks have raided downunder, and raped their women, and stolen their food, they\u2019ll have defenses set up. They\u2019ll kill<\/em> you, Vic!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat the hell do you care? You\u2019re always saying you\u2019d be better off without me.\u201d He sagged at that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVic, we\u2019ve been together almost three years. Good and bad. But this can be the worst. I\u2019m scared, man. Scared you won\u2019t come back. And I\u2019m hungry, and I\u2019ll have to go find some dude who\u2019ll take me on\u2026and you know most solos are in paks now, I\u2019ll be low mutt. I\u2019m not that young any more. And I\u2019m hurt pretty bad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could dig it. He was talking sense. But all I could think of was how that bitch, that Quilla June, had rapped me. And then there were images of her soft tits, and the way she made little sounds when I was in her, and I shook my head, and knew I had to go get even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI got to do it, Blood. I got<\/em> to.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He breathed deep and sagged a little more. He knew it was useless. \u201cYou don\u2019t even see what she\u2019s done to you, Vic. That metal card, it\u2019s too easy, as if she wanted<\/em> you to follow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I got up. \u201cI\u2019ll try to get back quick. Will you wait\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was silent a long while, and I waited. Finally, he said, \u201cFor a while. Maybe I\u2019ll be here, maybe not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I understood. I turned around and started walking around the pillar of black metal. Finally I found a slot in the pillar, and slipped the metal card into it. There was a soft humming sound, then a section of the pillar dilated. I hadn\u2019t even seen the lines of the sections. A circle opened and I took a step through. I turned and there was Blood, watching me. We looked at each other, all the while that pillar was humming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo long, Vic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake care of yourself, Blood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHurry back.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo my best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah. Right.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I turned around and stepped inside. The access portal irised closed behind me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VII<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I should have known. I should have suspected. Sure, every once in a while a chick came up to see what it was like on the surface, what had happened to the cities; sure, it happened. Why, I\u2019d believed her when she\u2019d told me, cuddled up beside me in that steaming boiler, that she\u2019d wanted to see what it was like when a girl did it with a guy, that all the flicks she\u2019d seen in Topeka were sweet and solid and dull, and the girls in her school\u2019d talked about beaver flicks, and one of them had a little eight-page comic book and she\u2019d read it with wide eyes\u2026sure, I\u2019d believed her. It was logical. I should have suspected something when she left that metal I.D. plate behind. It was too easy. Blood\u2019d tried to tell me. Dumb? Yeah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second that access iris swirled closed behind me, the humming got louder, and some cool light grew in the walls. Wall. It was a circular compartment with only two sides to the wall: inside and outside<\/em>. The wall pulsed up light and the humming got louder, and the deckplate I was standing on dilated just the way the outside port had done. But I was standing there, like a mouse in a cartoon, and as long as I didn\u2019t look down I was cool, I wouldn\u2019t fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I started settling. Dropped through the floor, the iris closed overhead, I was dropping down the tube, picking up speed but not too much, just dropping steadily. Now I knew what a dropshaft was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Down and down I went and every once in a while I\u2019d see something like 10 LEV or ANTIPOLL 55 or BREEDER-CON or PUMP SE 6 on the wall, faintly I could make out the sectioning of an iris\u2026but I never stopped dropping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I dropped all the way to the bottom, and there was TOPEKA CITY LIMITS POP. 22,860 on the wall, and I settled down without any strain, bending a little from the knees to cushion the impact, but even that wasn\u2019t much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I used the metal plate again, and the iris\u2014a much bigger one this time\u2014swirled open, and I got my first look at a downunder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It stretched away in front of me, twenty miles to the dim shining horizon of tin can metal where the wall behind me curved and curved and curved till it made one smooth, encircling circuit and came back around around around to where I stood, staring at it. I was down at the bottom of a big metal tube that stretched up to a ceiling an eighth of a mile overhead, twenty miles across. And in the bottom of that tin can, someone had built a town that looked for all the world like a photo out of one of the water-logged books in the library on the surface. I\u2019d seen a town like this in the books. Just like this. Neat little houses, and curvy little streets, and trimmed lawns, and a business section and everything else that a Topeka would have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except a sun, except birds, except clouds, except rain, except snow, except cold, except wind, except ants, except dirt, except mountains, except oceans, except big fields of grain, except stars, except the moon, except forests, except animals running wild, except\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They were canned down here, like dead fish. Canned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I felt my throat tighten up. I wanted to get out. Out! I started to tremble, my hands were cold and there was sweat on my forehead. This had been insane, coming down here. I had to get out. Out!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I turned around to get back in the dropshaft, and then it grabbed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That bitch Quilla June! I shoulda suspected!<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The thing was low, and green, and boxlike, and had cables with mittens on the ends instead of arms, and it rolled on tracks, and it grabbed me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It hoisted me up on its square flat top, holding me with them mittens on the cables, and I couldn\u2019t move, except to try kicking at the big glass eye in the front, but it didn\u2019t do any good. It didn\u2019t bust. The thing was only about four feet high, and my sneakers almost reached the ground, but not quite, and it started moving off into Topeka, hauling me along with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People were all over the place. Sitting in rockers on their front porches, raking their lawns, hanging around the gas station, sticking pennies in gumball machines, painting a white stripe down the middle of the road, selling newspapers on a corner, listening to an oompah band on a shell in a park, playing hopscotch and pussy-in-the-corner, polishing a fire engine, sitting on benches reading, washing windows, pruning bushes, tipping hats to ladies, collecting milk bottles in wire carrying-racks, grooming horses, throwing a stick for a dog to retrieve, diving into a communal swimming pool, chalking vegetable prices on a slate outside a grocery, walking hand-in-hand with a girl, all of them watching me go past on that metal motherfucker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could hear Blood speaking, saying just what he\u2019d said before I\u2019d entered the dropshaft: It\u2019s all square and settled and they know everyone; they hate solos. Enough roverpaks have raided downunders, and raped their women and stolen their food, they\u2019ll have defenses set up. They\u2019ll kill you, Vic!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks, mutt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodbye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VIII<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The green box tracked through the business section and turned in at a shopfront with the words BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU on the window. It rolled right inside the open door, and there were half a dozen men and old men and very old men in there, waiting for me. Also a couple of women. The green box stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of them came over and took the metal plate out of my hand. He looked at it, then turned around and gave it to the oldest of the old men, a withered toad wearing baggy pants and a green eyeshade and garters that held up the sleeves of his striped shirt. \u201cQuilla June, Lew,\u201d the guy said to the old man. Lew took the metal plate and put it in the top left drawer of a rolltop desk. \u201cBetter take his guns, Aaron,\u201d the old coot said. And the guy who\u2019d taken the plate cleaned me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLet him loose, Aaron,\u201d Lew said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron stepped around the back of the green box and something clicked, and the cable-mittens sucked back inside the box, and I got down off the thing. My arms were numb where the box had held me. I rubbed one, then the other, and I glared at them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow, boy\u2026\u201d Lew started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSuck wind, asshole!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women blanched. The men tightened their faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI told you it wouldn\u2019t work,\u201d another of the old men said to Lew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBad business, this,\u201d said one of the younger ones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lew leaned forward in his straight-back chair and pointed a crumbled finger at me. \u201cBoy, you better be nice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hope all your fuckin\u2019 children are hare-lipped!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is no good, Lew!\u201d another man said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGuttersnipe,\u201d a woman with a beak snapped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lew stared at me. His mouth was a nasty little black line. I knew the sonofabitch didn\u2019t have a tooth in his crummy head that wasn\u2019t rotten and smelly. He stared at me with vicious little eyes. God, he was ugly, like a toad ready to snaffle a fly off the wall with his tongue. He was getting set to say something I wouldn\u2019t like. \u201cAaron, maybe you\u2019d better put the sentry back on him.\u201d Aaron moved to the green box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay, hold it,\u201d I said, holding up my hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aaron stopped, looked at Lew, who nodded. Then Lew leaned real far forward again, and aimed that bird-claw at me. \u201cYou ready to behave yourself, son?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYeah, I guess.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019d better be dang sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOkay. I\u2019m dang<\/em> sure. Also fuckin\u2019<\/em> sure!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019ll watch your mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t reply. Old coot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re a bit of an experiment for us, boy. We tried to get one of you down here other ways. Sent up some good folks to capture one of you little scuts, but they never came back. Figgered it was best to lure you down to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sneered. That Quilla June. I\u2019d take care of her!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the women, a little younger than Bird-Beak, came forward and looked into my face. \u201cLew, you\u2019ll never get this one to cow-tow. He\u2019s a filthy little killer. Look at those eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow\u2019d you like the barrel of a rifle jammed up your ass, bitch?\u201d She jumped back. Lew was angry again. \u201cSorry,\u201d I said real quickly, \u201cI don\u2019t like bein\u2019 called names. Macho, y\u2019know?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He settled back and snapped at the woman. \u201cMez, leave him alone. I\u2019m tryin\u2019 to talk a bit of sense here. You\u2019re only making it worse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mez went back and sat with the others. Some Better Business Bureau these creeps were!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs I was saying, boy: you\u2019re an experiment for us. We\u2019ve been down here in Topeka close to thirty years. It\u2019s nice down here. Quiet, orderly, nice people, who respect each other, no crime, respect for the elders, and just all around a good place to live. We\u2019re growin\u2019 and we\u2019re prosperin\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut, well, we find now that some of our folks can\u2019t have no more babies, and the women that do, they have mostly girls. We need some men. Certain special kind of men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started laughing. This was too good to be true. They wanted me for stud service. I couldn\u2019t stop laughing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCrude!\u201d one of the women said, scowling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis\u2019s awkward enough for us, boy, don\u2019t make it no harder.\u201d Lew was embarrassed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here I\u2019d spent most of Blood\u2019s and my time aboveground hunting up tail, and down here they wanted me to service the local ladyfolk. I sat down on the floor and laughed till tears ran down my cheeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I got up and said, \u201cSure. Okay. But if I do, there\u2019s a couple of things I<\/em> want.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lew looked at me close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first thing I want is that Quilla June. I\u2019m gonna fuck her blind, and then I\u2019m gonna bang her on the head the way she did me!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They huddled for a while, then came out and Lew said, \u201cWe can\u2019t tolerate any violence down here, but I s\u2019pose Quilla June\u2019s as good a place to start as any. She\u2019s capable, isn\u2019t she, Ira?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A skinny, yellow-skinned man nodded. He didn\u2019t look happy about it. Quilla June\u2019s old man, I bet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, let\u2019s get started,\u201d I said. \u201cLine \u2019em up.\u201d I started to unzip my jeans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The women screamed, the men grabbed me, and they hustled me off to a boarding house where they gave me a room, and they said I should get to know Topeka a little bit before I went to work because it was, uh, er, well, awkward, and they had to get the folks in town to accept what was going to have to be done\u2026on the assumption, I suppose, that if I worked out okay they\u2019d import a few more young bulls from aboveground and turn us loose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I spent some time in Topeka, getting to know the folks, seeing what they did, how they lived.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was nice, real nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They rocked in rockers on the front porches, they raked their lawns, they hung around the gas station, they stuck pennies in gumball machines, they painted white stripes down the middle of the road, they sold newspapers on the corners, they listened to oompah bands in a shell in the park, they played hopscotch and pussy-in-the-corner, they polished fire engines, they sat on benches reading, they washed windows and pruned bushes, they tipped their hats to ladies, they collected milk bottles in wire carrying-racks, they groomed horses and threw sticks for their dogs to retrieve, they dove into the communal swimming pool, they chalked vegetable prices on a slate outside the grocery, they walked hand-in-hand with some of the ugliest chicks I\u2019ve ever seen, and they bored the ass offa me<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inside a week I was ready to scream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could feel that tin can closing in on me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could feel the weight of the earth over me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They ate artificial shit: artificial peas and fake meat and make-believe chicken and ersatz corn and bogus bread, and it all tasted like chalk and dust to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Polite? Christ, you could puke from the lying, hypocritical crap they called civility. Hello Mr. This and Hello Mrs. That. And how are you? And how is little Janie? And how is business? Are you going to the sodality meeting Thursday? And I started gibbering in my room at the boarding house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The clean, sweet, neat, lovely way they lived was enough to kill a guy. No wonder the men couldn\u2019t get it up and make babies that had balls instead of slots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first few days, everyone watched me like I was about to explode and cover their nice whitewashed fences with shit. But after a while, they got used to seeing me. Lew took me over to the Mercantile, and got me fitted out with a pair of bib overalls and a shirt that any solo could\u2019ve spotted a mile away. That Mez, that dippy bitch who\u2019d called me a killer, she started hanging around, finally said she wanted to cut my hair, make me look civilized. But I was hip to where she was at. Wasn\u2019t a bit of the mother in her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat\u2019sa\u2019matter, cunt,\u201d I pinned her. \u201cYour old man isn\u2019t taking care of you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She tried to stick her fist in her mouth, and I laughed like a loon. \u201cGo chop off his<\/em> balls, baby. My hair stays the way it is.\u201d She cut and run. Gone like she had a diesel tail-pipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It went on like that for a while. Me just walking around, them coming and feeding me, keeping all their young meat out of my way till they got the town stacked-away for what was coming with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jugged like that, my mind wasn\u2019t right for a while. I got all claustrophobed, clutched, went and sat under the porch in the dark at the rooming house. Then that passed, and I got piss-mean, snapped at them, then surly, then quiet, then just mud dull. Quiet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I started getting hip to the possibilities of getting out of there. It began with me remembering the poodle I\u2019d fed Blood one time. It had to come from a downunder. And it couldn\u2019t have got up through the dropshaft. So that meant there were other ways out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They gave me pretty much the run of the town, as long as I kept my manners around me and didn\u2019t try anything sudden. That green sentry box was always somewhere nearby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I found the way out. Nothing so spectacular; it just had to be there, and I found it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then I found out where they kept my weapons, and I was ready. Almost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

IX<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It was a week to the day when Aaron and Lew and Ira came to get me. I was pretty goofy by that time. I was sitting out on the back porch of the boarding house, smoking a corncob pipe with my shirt off, catching some sun. Except there wasn\u2019t no sun. Goofy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They came around the house. \u201cMorning, Vic,\u201d Lew greeted me. He was hobbling along with a cane, the old fart. Aaron gave me a big smile. The kind you\u2019d give a big black bull about to stuff his meat into a good breed cow. Ira had a look that you could chip off and use in your furnace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, howdy, Lew. Mornin\u2019, Aaron, Ira.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lew seemed right pleased by that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, you lousy bastards, just you wait!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou \u2019bout ready to go meet your first lady?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cReady as I\u2019ll ever be, Lew,\u201d I said, and got up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCool smoke, ain\u2019t it?\u201d Aaron said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took the corncob out of my mouth. \u201cPure dee-light.\u201d I smiled. I hadn\u2019t even lit the fucking thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They walked me over to Marigold Street and as we came up on a little house with yellow shutters and a white picket fence, Lew said, \u201cThis\u2019s Ira\u2019s house. Quilla June is his daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWell, land sakes,\u201d I said, wide-eyed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ira\u2019s lean jaw muscles jumped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We went inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quilla June was sitting on the settee with her mother, an older version of her, pulled thin as a withered muscle. \u201cMiz Holmes,\u201d I said and made a little curtsey. She smiled. Strained, but smiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quilla June sat with her feet right together, and her hands folded in her lap. There was a ribbon in her hair. It was blue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Matched her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Something went thump in my gut.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cQuilla June,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She looked up. \u201cMornin\u201d, Vic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then everyone sort of stood around looking awkward, and finally Ira began yapping and yipping about get in the bedroom and get this unnatural filth over with so they could go to Church and pray the Good Lord wouldn\u2019t Strike All Of Them Dead with a bolt of lightning in the ass, or some crap like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I put out my hand, and Quilla June reached for it without looking up, and we went in the back, into a small bedroom, and she stood there with her head down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou didn\u2019t tell \u2019em, did you?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She shook her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And suddenly, I didn\u2019t want to kill her at all. I wanted to hold her. Very tight. So I did. And she was crying into my chest, and making little fists beating on my back, and then she was looking up at me and running her words all together: \u201cOh, Vic, I\u2019m sorry, so sorry, I didn\u2019t mean to, I had to, I was sent out to, I was so scared, and I love you, and now they\u2019ve got you down here, and it isn\u2019t dirty, is it, it isn\u2019t the way my Poppa says it is, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I held her and kissed her and told her it was okay, and then I asked her if she wanted to come away with me, and she said yes yes yes she really did. So I told her I might have to hurt her Poppa to get away, and she got a look in her eyes that I knew real well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all her propriety, Quilla June Holmes didn\u2019t much like her prayer-shouting Poppa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked her if she had anything heavy, like a candlestick or a club, and she said no. So I went rummaging around in that back bedroom and found a pair of her Poppa\u2019s socks in a bureau drawer. I pulled the big brass balls off the headboard of the bed and dropped them into the sock. I hefted it. Oh. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She stared at me with big eyes. \u201cWhat\u2019re you going to do?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou want to get out of here?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen just stand back behind the door. No, wait a minute. I got a better idea. Get on the bed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She lay down on the bed. \u201cOkay,\u201d I said, \u201cnow pull up your skirt, pull off your pants, and spread out.\u201d She gave me a look of pure horror. \u201cDo it,\u201d I said. \u201cIf you want out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So she did it, and I rearranged her so her knees were bent and her legs open at the thighs, and I stood to one side of the door, and whispered to her, \u201cCall your Poppa. Just him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She hesitated a long moment, then she called out in a voice she didn\u2019t have to fake, \u201cPoppa! Poppa, come here, please!\u201d Then she clamped her eyes shut tight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ira Holmes came through the door, took one look at his secret desire, his mouth dropped open, I kicked the door closed behind him and walloped him as hard as I could. He squished a little, and spattered the bedspread, and went very down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She opened her eyes when she heard the thunk! and when the stuff spattered her legs, she leaned over and puked on the floor. I knew she wouldn\u2019t be much good to me in getting Aaron into the room, so I opened the door, stuck my head around, looked worried, and said, \u201cAaron, would you come here a minute, please?\u201d He looked at Lew, who was rapping with Mrs. Holmes about what was going on in the back bedroom, and when Lew nodded him on, he came into the room. He took a look at Quilla June\u2019s naked bush, at the blood on the wall and bedspread, at Ira on the floor, and opened his mouth to yell just as I whacked him. It took two more to get him down, and then I had to kick him in the chest to put him away. Quilla June was still puking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grabbed her by the arm and swung her up off the bed. At least she was being quiet about it, but man, did she stink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCome on!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She tried to pull back, but I held on and opened the bedroom door. As I pulled her out, Lew stood up, leaning on his cane. I kicked the cane out from under the old fart and down he went in a heap. Mrs. Holmes was staring at us, wondering where her old man was. \u201cHe\u2019s back in there,\u201d I said, heading for the front door. \u201cThe Good Lord got him in the head.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we were out in the street, Quilla June stinking along behind me, dry-heaving and bawling and probably wondering what had happened to her underpants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They kept my weapons in a locked case at the Better Business Bureau, and we detoured around by my boarding house where I pulled the crowbar I\u2019d swiped from the gas station out from under the back porch. Then we cut across behind the Grange and into the business section, and straight into the BBB. There was a clerk who tried to stop me, and I split his gourd with the crowbar. Then I pried the latch off the cabinet in Lew\u2019s office and got the .30\u201306 and my .45 and all the ammo, and my spike and my knife and my kit, and loaded up. By that time Quilla June was able to make some sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere we gonna go, where we gonna go, oh Poppa Poppa Popp\u2026!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey, listen, Quilla June, Poppa me no Poppas. You said you wanted to be with me\u2026well, I\u2019m goin\u2019! Up<\/em>, baby, and if you wanna go with me, you better stick close.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was too scared to object.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stepped out the front of the shopfront, and there was that green box sentry, coming on like a whippet. It had its cables out, and the mittens were gone. It had hooks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I dropped to one knee, wrapped the sling of the .30\u201306 around my forearm, sighted clean, and fired dead at the big eye in the front. One shot, spang!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hit that eye, the thing exploded in a shower of sparks, and the green box swerved and went through the front window of The Mill End Shoppe, screeching and crying and showering the place with flames and sparks. Nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I turned around to grab Quilla June, but she was gone. I looked off down the street, and here came all the vigilantes, Lew hobbling along with his cane like some kind of weird grasshopper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And right then the shots started. Big, booming sounds. The .45 I\u2019d given Quilla June. I looked up, and on the porch around the second floor, there she was, the automatic down on the railing like a pro, sighting into that mob and snapping off shots like maybe Wild Bill Elliott in a \u201940s Republic flick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But dumb! Mother dumb! Wasting time on that, when we had to get away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found the outside staircase going up there, and took it three steps at a time. She was smiling and laughing, and every time she\u2019d pick one of those boobs out of the pack her little tonguetip would peek out of the corner of her mouth, and her eyes would get all slick and wet and wham! down the boob would go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was really into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as I reached her, she sighted down on her scrawny mother. I slammed the back of her head, and she missed the shot, and the old lady did a little dance-step and kept coming. Quilla June whipped her head around at me, and there was kill in her eyes. \u201cYou made me miss.\u201d The voice gave me a chill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took the .45 away from her. Dumb. Wasting ammunition like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dragging her behind me, I circled the building, found a shed out back, dropped down onto it, and had her follow. She was scared at first, but I said, \u201cChick can shoot her old lady as easy as you do shouldn\u2019t be worried about a drop this small.\u201d She got out on the ledge, other side of the railing and held on. \u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d I said, \u201cyou won\u2019t wet your pants. You haven\u2019t got any.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She laughed, like a bird, and dropped. I caught her, we slid down the shed door, and took a second to see if that mob was hard on us. Nowhere in sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I grabbed Quilla June by the arm and started off toward the south end of Topeka. It was the closest exit I\u2019d found in my wandering, and we made it in about fifteen minutes, panting and weak as kittens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And there it was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A big air-intake duct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I pried off the clamps with the crowbar, and we climbed up inside. There were ladders going up. There had to be. It figured. Repairs. Keep it clean. Had to be. We started climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It took a long, long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quilla June kept asking me, from down behind me, whenever she got too tired to climb, \u201cVic, do you love me?\u201d I kept saying yes. Not only because I meant it. It helped her keep climbing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

X<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We came up a mile from the access dropshaft. I shot off the filter covers and the hatch bolts, and we climbed out. They should have known better down there. You don\u2019t fuck around with Jimmy Cagney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They never had a chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quilla June was exhausted. I didn\u2019t blame her. But I didn\u2019t want to spend the night out in the open; there were things out there I didn\u2019t like to think about meeting even in daylight. It was getting on toward dusk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We walked toward the access dropshaft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blood was waiting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He looked weak. But he\u2019d waited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stooped down and lifted his head. He opened his eyes, and very softly he said, \u201cHey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I smiled at him. Jesus, it was good to see him. \u201cWe made it back, man.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He tried to get up, but he couldn\u2019t. The wounds on him were in ugly shape. \u201cHave you eaten?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo. Grabbed a lizard yesterday\u2026or maybe it was day before. I\u2019m hungry, Vic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quilla June came up then, and Blood saw her. He closed his eyes. \u201cWe\u2019d better hurry, Vic,\u201d she said. \u201cPlease. They might come up from the dropshaft.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried to lift Blood. He was dead weight. \u201cListen, Blood, I\u2019ll leg it into the city and get some food. I\u2019ll come back quick. You just wait here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDon\u2019t go in there, Vic,\u201d he said. \u201cI did a recon the day after you went down. They found out we weren\u2019t fried in that gym. I don\u2019t know how. Maybe mutts smelled our track. I\u2019ve been keeping watch, and they haven\u2019t tried to come out after us. I don\u2019t blame them. You don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like out here at night, man\u2026you don\u2019t know\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He shivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTake it easy, Blood.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut they\u2019ve got us marked lousy in the city, Vic. We can\u2019t go back there. We\u2019ll have to make it someplace else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That put it on a different stick. We couldn\u2019t go back, and with Blood in that condition we couldn\u2019t go forward. And I knew, good as I was solo, I couldn\u2019t make it without him. And there wasn\u2019t anything out here to eat. He had to have food at once, and some medical care. I had to do something. Something good, something fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cVic!\u201d Quilla June\u2019s voice was high and whining. \u201cCome on! He\u2019ll be all right. We have to hurry!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I looked up at her. The sun was sinking into the darkness. Blood trembled in my arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She got a pouty look on her face. \u201cIf you love me, you\u2019ll come on<\/em>!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I couldn\u2019t make it alone out there without him. I knew it. If I loved her. She asked me, in the boiler, do you know what love is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n


It was a small fire, not nearly big enough for any roverpak to spot from the outskirts of the city. No smoke. And after Blood had eaten his fill, I carried him to the air-duct a mile away, and we spent the night inside on a little ledge. I held him all night. He slept good. In the morning, I fixed him up pretty good. He\u2019d make it; he was strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He ate again. There was plenty left from the night before. I didn\u2019t eat. I wasn\u2019t hungry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We started off across the blast wasteland that morning. We\u2019d find another city, and make it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had to move slow because Blood was still limping. It took a long time before I stopped hearing her calling in my head. Asking me, asking me: do you know what love is?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sure I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A boy loves his dog.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE END<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cA Boy and His Dog\u201d is a stark tale by Harlan Ellison, published in April 1969 in New Worlds magazine. It follows Vic, a teenager who roams a post-apocalyptic world in the company of a dog with psychic abilities, with whom he shares a close bond. In a devastated city, Vic searches for food for them both, while the dog tracks down women so the boy can satisfy other appetites. One day, inside a ruined movie theater, the animal detects the scent of a young woman who should not be there. Following that trail leads Vic into unfamiliar territory, filled with dangers and an unexpected mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25207,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[618,552,570],"class_list":["post-25208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-short-stories","tag-harlan-ellison-en","tag-science-fiction","tag-united-states","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":559,"label":"Short stories"}],"post_tag":[{"value":618,"label":"Harlan Ellison"},{"value":552,"label":"Science fiction"},{"value":570,"label":"United States"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/lecturia.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Harlan-Ellison-Un-muchacho-y-su-perro.webp",1024,1024,false],"author_info":{"display_name":"Juan Pablo Guevara","author_link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/author\/spartakku\/"},"comment_info":"","category_info":[{"term_id":559,"name":"Short stories","slug":"short-stories","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":559,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":419,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":559,"category_count":419,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Short stories","category_nicename":"short-stories","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":618,"name":"Harlan Ellison","slug":"harlan-ellison-en","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":618,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":9,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":552,"name":"Science fiction","slug":"science-fiction","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":552,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":121,"filter":"raw"},{"term_id":570,"name":"United States","slug":"united-states","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":570,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":294,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}