Vic and Blood by Harlan Ellison
Finally, I started getting hip to the possibilities of getting out of there. It began with me remembering the poodle I'd fed Blood one time. It had to come from a downunder. And it couldn't have got up through the dropshaft. So that meant there were other ways out.
They gave me pretty much the run of the town, as long as I kept my manners around me and didn't try anything sudden. That green sentry box was always somewhere nearby.
So I found the way out. Nothing so spectacular; it just had to be there, and I found it.
Then I found out where they kept my weapons, and I was ready. Almost.
IX
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't no sun. Goofy.
They came around the house. “Morning, Vic,” Lew greeted me. He was hobbling along with a cane, the old fart. Aaron gave me a big smile. The kind you'd 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.
“Well, howdy, Lew. Mornin', Aaron, Ira.”
Lew seemed right pleased by that.
Oh, you lousy bastards, just you wait!
“You ‘bout ready to go meet your first lady?”
“Ready as I'll ever be, Lew,” I said, and got up.
“Cool smoke, ain't it?” Aaron said.
I took the corncob out of my mouth. “Pure dee-light.” I smiled. I hadn't even lit the fucking thing.
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, “This's Ira's house. Quilla June is his daughter.”
“Well, land sakes,” I said, wide-eyed.
Ira's lean jaw muscles jumped.
We went inside.
Quilla June was sitting on the settee with her mother, an older version of her, pulled thin as a withered muscle. “Miz Holmes,” I said and made a little curtsey. She smiled. Strained, but smiled.
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.
Matched her eyes.
Something went thump in my gut.
“Quilla June,” I said.
She looked up. “Mornin', Vic.”
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't Strike All Of Them Dead with a bolt of lightning in the ass, or some crap like that.
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.
“You didn't tell ‘em, did you?” I asked.
She shook her head.
And suddenly, I didn't 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: “Oh, Vic, I'm sorry, so sorry, I didn't mean to, I had to, I was sent out to, I was so scared, and I love you, and now they've got you down here, and it isn't dirty, is it, it isn't the way my Poppa says it is, is it?”
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.
For all her propriety, Quilla June Holmes didn't much like her prayer-shouting Poppa.
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's 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.
She stared at me with big eyes. “What're you going to do?”
“You want to get out of here?”
She nodded.
“Then just stand back behind the door. No, wait a minute. I got a better idea. Get on the bed.”
She lay down on the bed. “Okay,” I said, “now pull up your skirt, pull off your pants, and spread out.” She gave me a look of pure horror. “Do it,” I said. “If you want out.”
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, “Call your Poppa. Just him.”
She hesitated a long moment, then she called out in a voice she didn't have to fake, “Poppa! Poppa, come here, please!” Then she clamped her eyes shut tight.
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.
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't be much good to me in getting Aaron into the room, so I opened the door, stuck my head around, looked worried, and said, “Aaron, would you come here a minute, please?” 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's 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.
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.
“Come on!”
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. “He's back in there,” I said, heading for the front door. “The Good Lord got him in the head.”
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.
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'd 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's office and got the .30-06 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.
“Where we gonna go, where we gonna go, oh Poppa Poppa Popp...!”
“Hey, listen, Quilla June, Poppa me no Poppas. You said you wanted to be with me ... well, I'm goin'! Up, baby, and if you wanna go with me, you better stick close.”
She was too scared to object.
I stepped out the front of the shop, 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.
I dropped to one knee, wrapped the sling of the .30-06 around my forearm, sighted clean, and fired dead at the big eye in the front. One shot, spang!
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.
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.
And right then the shots started. Big, booming sounds. The .45 I'd given Quilla June. I looked up, and on the porch around the second floor, there she w
But dumb! Mother dumb! Wasting time on that, when we had to get away.
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'd 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.
She was really into it.
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. “You made me miss.” The voice gave me a chill.
I took the .45 away from her. Dumb. Wasting ammunition like that.
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, “Chick can shoot her old lady as easy as you do shouldn't be worried about a drop this small.” She got out on the ledge, other side of the railing and held on. “Don't worry,” I said, “you won't wet your pants. You haven't got any.”
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.
I grabbed Quilla June by the arm and started off toward the south end of Topeka. It was the closest exit I'd found in my wandering, and we made it in about fifteen minutes, panting and weak as kittens.
And there it was.
A big air-intake duct.
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.
It took a long, long time.
Quilla June kept asking me, from down behind me, whenever she got too tired to climb, “Vic, do you love me?” I kept saying yes. Not only because I meant it. It helped her keep climbing.
X
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't fuck around with Jimmy Cagney.
They never had a chance.
Quilla June was exhausted. I didn't blame her. But I didn't want to spend the night out in the open; there were things out there I didn't like to think about meeting even in daylight. It was getting on toward dusk.
We walked toward the access dropshaft.
Blood was waiting.
He looked weak. But he'd waited.
I stooped down and lifted his head. He opened his eyes, and very softly he said, “Hey.”
I smiled at him. Jesus, it was good to see him. “We made it back, man.”
He tried to get up, but he couldn't. The wounds on him were in ugly shape. “Have you eaten?” I asked.
“No. Grabbed a lizard yesterday ... or maybe it was day before. I'm hungry, Vic.”
Quilla June came up then, and Blood saw her. He closed his eyes. “We'd better hurry, Vic,” she said. “Please. They might come up from the dropshaft.”
I tried to lift Blood. He was dead weight. “Listen, Blood, I'll leg it into the city and get some food. I'll come back quick. You just wait here.”
“Don't go in there, Vic,” he said. “I did a recon the day after you went down. They found out we weren't fried in that gym. I don't know how. Maybe mutts smelled our track. I've been keeping watch, and they haven't tried to come out after us. I don't blame them. You don't know what it's like out here at night, man ... you don't know...”
He shivered.
“Take it easy, Blood.”
“But they've got us marked lousy in the city, Vic. We can't go back there. We'll have to make it someplace else.”
That put it on a different stick. We couldn't go back, and with Blood in that condition we couldn't go forward. And I knew, good as I was solo, I couldn't make it without him. And there wasn't 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.
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* * *
FROM: THE WIT AND WISDOM OF BLOOD
“In terms of labor relations, the basic problem with living your life is that it's on the-job training and by the time you get some skill at it, you're permanently laid off.”
“The truest thing ever said about the human condition is this: The surest test of who's an intellectual is ... anyone who can hear the 'William Tell Overture' and not think of The Lone Ranger
“Vic!” Quilla June's voice was high and whining. “Come on! He'll be all right. We have to hurry!”
I looked up at her. The sun was sinking into the darkness. Blood trembled in my arms.
She got a pouty look on her face. “If you love me, you'll come on!”
I couldn't 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?
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'd make it; he was strong.
He ate again. There was plenty left from the night before. I didn't eat. I wasn't hungry.
We started off across the blasted wasteland that morning. We'd find another city, and make it.
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?
Sure I know.
A boy loves his dog.
The Treehouse—Los Angeles—1964
Harlan, with Ahbhu; for whom he wrote “A Boy and His Dog.”
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* * *
RUN, SPOT, RUN
EXCERPT FROM THE SEQUEL TO “A BOY AND HIS DOG"
(This section of the forthcoming novel Blood's A Rover follows immediately in time and location the ending of the previously-published novella “A Boy and His Dog.” In the preceding section Vic and Blood, after escaping the city where Fellini's roverpak holds sway, have been separated when Vic follows Quilla June into the downunder city of Topeka. Finally escaping with her, Vic returns to find Blood—his chief link with survival—starving and wounded. Making the only decision he can, Vic kills the girl and uses the meat to save Blood's life.)
WE KEPT GOING WEST and I'd have tried to use Freud to cheer him up, but it doesn't pay to be too cerebral with a fifteen-year-old boy who has done something he can't live with.
“It's mostly my fault,” I said one day, about a week later. He looked miserable. He wasn't sleeping much, and when he did sleep he hummed and moaned. I didn't mind the moaning as much as the humming: an eerie, continuous tone without apparent break for breathing. How he did it I don't know. It worried me. He was losing his edge.
He didn't stop walking, and he didn't even look at me.
“It is not unappreciated,” I said.
Answer came there none.
I hustled to keep up with him, even though he wasn't going at that trail pace he can adopt for an hour or two at a time when we're trying to get past some long danger zone. He was doing a zombie walk, actually; without any spring, without any bounce. But it was exhausting, just one foot in front of the other: through mud, through ash, sometimes through rubble. Just one foot in front of the other, hour after hour.
I was afraid to say anything about food.
He was still remembering that special meal I'd had. And the leftovers.
I never said I was hungry. I wasn't worried that he'd get rankled. I was worried he wouldn't answer.
Maybe more than an edge had been dulled by my special meal.
&nb
Like the night of the day after I ate it, when we were still on a stretch of what a rusty sign said had been the Ohio Turnpike, when I started seeing ghosts ... and they were all wearing frilly pink dresses.
It had been incredibly hot all day, humid under a low, thick, mean-looking cover of thunder-head clouds that packed in the air and sent up waves of shimmer from the unruptured slabs of roadway. Just before sunset the storm broke and it didn't bring any relief from the clutching heat. It was a boiling rain that hit the Turnpike and just sizzled. The pads of my paws were raw, but I didn't ask Vic to slow down or stop.
He just kept pacing off the miles, heading west.
The storm stopped after darkness fell, but the clouds outdistanced us and kept building up behind. If there was a moon riding above them, I couldn't see it.
There were sounds from the woods that flanked the Turnpike. Some of the sounds were words, but they weren't from throats I recognized.
Vic didn't seem to hear. He stared straight ahead, seeing nothing; and we kept moving. I didn't like traveling at night in this kind of country. My head ached, my stomach bubbled.
And then I saw the ghost.
It oozed up through a fissure in the roadway, the first one in a pink dress. It came up like a fog, like the smoke of a genie from a bottle. Vaporous, transparent, it skimmed out of the fractured Turnpike and hung there before me, swaying.
Vic walked right through it.
I could see him going away beyond the swaying shape. I drew back and the fur bristled all along my back. My lips skinned back over my muzzle and I heard myself beginning that growl deep in my throat that was a combination of terror and murder. My hindquarters trembled with contained energy, the preparation to spring or bolt.