Some Will Not Die Read online

  Then he was under the rail and in the shelter of the sunken terrace, his hands and face bleeding from the laceration of the hedge, while his breath panted past the dirt in his open mouth and his heart pumped rapidly and loudly.

  The girl began firing back.

  He twisted violently, breaking free of the thousand teeth the hedge had sunk into his clothes, and stared at the girl in the doorway, one leg folded under her, the other bent and thrust out, her left hand gripping her knee and the muzzle of her revolver supported at her left elbow. As if she were firing at a paper target set up on the opposite rooftop. She squeezed off two shots and waited.

  “Get out of that doorway!” he shouted. “Inside the building!”

  The girl shook her head slightly, her eyes on the rooftop. Her lower lip was caught between the tips of her teeth, and her face was expressionless. There was no answering fire from the rooftop.

  “I can’t see him anymore,” she said. “He must have jumped behind a chimney.”

  Sweating Garvin squirmed his legs into position. “Try and keep him pinned down,” he shouted across the terrace, and, jumping to his feet, sprinted for the doorway in a straight line, trying to cover the distance as rapidly as possible. He threw one glance across the street, saw no movement on the roof, and pulled the girl to her feet with a scoop of his arm. He flung the lobby door open, and they stumbled through together, into shelter.

  He slumped against the lobby wall, his ribs clammy with the perspiration streaming down the sides of his chest. He looked at the girl, his eyes shadowed by the darkness of the lobby, while his breathing slowed to normal.

  Once again, she was neglecting to reload the gun. And yet she had squatted in that doorway and done exactly the right thing to keep them from being killed. Done it in her own characteristic way, of course, exposing herself as a sitting target not only to the attacker but to anyone else as well. Somewhere, she had learned the theory of covering fire, and had the courage to apply it in spite of her woeful ignorance of actual practice.

  Thus far, he had simply thought of her as being completely out of place on the street. Now he found himself thinking that, with a little training, she might not be so helpless.

  She looked up at him suddenly, catching his glance, and he had to say something rather than continue to stand silent.

  “Thanks. You take your chances, but, thanks.”

  “I couldn’t just let him…” She trailed the sentence away, and did not start another.

  “Pretty dumb guy, whoever he was,” Garvin said.

  “Yes.” She stared off at nothing, obviously merely filling time, and the thought suddenly struck Garvin that she was waiting for something.

  “I can’t understand him,” she said abruptly.

  “Neither can I,” Garvin said lamely. Perhaps she had not meant to let him in the apartment. It was quite possible—and logical—that she would ask him to help her get into the building, but would leave him then. Was she waiting for him to give her the supplies and leave? Or didn’t she know what to do now, with the sniper waiting outside? He cursed himself for not taking the initiative, one way or the other, but plunged on. “Exposing himself on a roof like that. Somebody’s sure to pick him off.”

  “I didn’t mean… But you’re right. He is being foolish.”

  No, of course she hadn’t meant what he meant. Garvin cursed himself again. To the girl, it was incomprehensible that anyone would want to kill someone else. He, to whom it was merely stupid to expose oneself to possible fire, had completely misunderstood her. He was a predator, weighing every move against the chance of becoming prey. She was a fledgling who had fallen out of her nest into his hungry world.

  He caught himself sharply, derision in his mind. But, maudlin or not, he nevertheless did not want to leave her now, with no one to protect her.

  She looked at him again, still waiting. He did not say anything, but kept his eyes away from her face, waiting in turn.

  “You can’t go back out there now,” she said finally, hesitating.

  “No—no, I can’t.” He tried to keep his voice noncommittal.

  “Well, I… You can’t go out. You’ll have to stay here.”

  “Yes.”

  And there it was. His fingers twisted back into his damp palm and curled in a nervous fist. “Let’s get going,” he said harshly. “We have to see about your father.”

  Her expression changed, as though some cryptic apprehension had drained away in her—as though she, in her turn, had been afraid that he would not do what she hoped he would. Her voice, too, was steadier, and her lips rose into a gentle smile.

  “I’ll have to introduce you. What’s your name?”

  He flushed, startling himself. A gentle, remembered voice chided him from the past. Matthew, you were impolite.

  “Matth—Matt Garvin,” he blurted.

  She smiled again. “I’m Margaret Cottrell. Hello.”

  He took her extended hand and clasped it awkwardly, releasing it with abrupt clumsiness.

  He wondered if he’d been right—if she had not wanted him to leave, and had not known what she could do to stop him if he tried. The thought was a disquieting one, because he could not resolve it, or reach a decision. He followed her warily as she turned toward the stairway behind the lifeless elevators. Just before she became no more than a darker shadow in the stairwell’s gloom, he caught the smile on her lips once more.

  The apartment was on the third floor. When they came out of the stairway, she went to the nearest door, knocked, and unlocked it. She turned to Garvin, who had stopped a yard away.

  “Please come in,” she said.

  He started forward uneasily. He trusted the girl to some extent—more than he trusted anyone else, certainly—but for two and a half years, he had never opened any closed door before completely satisfying himself that nothing dangerous could be waiting behind it.

  Yet, he could not let the girl know that he distrusted the apartment. To her, it would probably seem foolish, and he did not want her to think him a fool.

  He stepped into the doorway, trying to hold his shotgun inconspicuously.

  “Margaret?” The voice that came from inside the apartment was thin and strained. Worry flickered over the girl’s face.

  “I’ll be right there, father. I’ve got someone with me.” She touched Garvin’s arm. “Please.”

  The second invitation broke his uncertainty, and he stepped inside.

  “He’s in the back bedroom,” she whispered, and he nodded.

  To his surprise, he noticed that the place was heated. A kerosene range had replaced the gas stove in the kitchen, beside the front door, and there was a space heater in the living room. Both had their stovepipes carefully led into the apartment’s ventilation ducts, and the hall grille had been masked off to prevent a backdraft. Garvin pursed his lips. It was a better-organized place than he’d expected.

  They reached the bedroom doorway, and Matt saw a thin man propped partially up in the bed, the intensity of the eyes heightened by the same fever that paled his lips. His chest was bandaged, and a wastebasket full of reddened facial tissues sat beside the bed. Garvin felt his mouth twitch into a grimace. The man was hemorrhaging.

  “Father,” Margaret said, “This is Matt Garvin. Matt—my father, John Cottrell.”

  “I’m glad to meet you, sir,” Garvin said.

  “I rather suspect that I’m glad to see you, too,” Cottrell said, smiling ruefully. The pale eyes, sunken deep in their dark sockets, turned to Margaret. “Were you the cause of all that firing outside?”

  “There’s a man up on the roof across the street,” she said. “He tried to kill Matt as he was bringing me home.”

  “She pulled me out of a real mess,” Garvin put in.

  “But Matt went back into the drugstore, after he met me and I told him you were hurt,” Margaret said.

  Cottrell’s gaze shifted back and forth between them, his smile growing. “After he met you, eh?” He coughed for a mo
ment, and wiped his mouth. “I’d like to hear about that, while Matt’s looking at this.” He gestured toward his bandaged chest, wincing at the pull on his muscles. “Meanwhile, Margaret, I think I’m getting hungry. Could you make some breakfast?”

  The girl nodded and went out to the kitchen. Garvin slipped the pack off his back and took out the supplies from the drugstore. As he walked toward the bed, he caught Cottrell’s look. The man was too sick for hunger, and Matt had eaten, but neither of them wanted the girl in the room while they were appraising each other.

  “A typical day in our fair city,” Cottrell said when Matt filled him in on what had happened this morning.

  Matt grunted. He had washed the caked blood off Cottrell’s chest, and swabbed out the wound, which was showing signs of a mild infection unimportant in itself.

  The bullet was deep in Cottrell’s chest—too deep to be probed for. And there was a constant thin film of blood in the old man’s mouth. Garvin re-bandaged him and threw the dirty swabs and bandages away. Then he put the bottle of germicide down on the table beside the bed, together with the rest of the supplies. He strapped his knapsack shut, testing its balance in his hand. He picked up his shotgun and took the shells out of it.

  “Being busy won’t accomplish very much, Matt,” Cottrell said quietly.

  Garvin looked up from the gun, his breath gusting out in a tired sigh. The blood in Cottrell’s throat and bronchial tubes made him cough. When he coughed, the wound that bled into his respiratory system tore itself open a little farther. And more blood leaked in and made him cough harder.

  “I don’t know very much medicine,” Garvin said. “I’ve read a first aid manual. But I don’t think you’ve got much time.”

  Cottrell nodded. He coughed again, and smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid you’re right.” He threw the newly bloodied facial tissue into the wastebasket. “Now, then, what are your plans?”

  The two men looked at each other. There was no point to hedging. Cottrell was going to die, and Margaret would be left defenseless when he did. Garvin was in the apartment—a place he never could have reached without Margaret—and Margaret could not now survive without him. On the level of pure logic, the problem and its answer were simple.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Garvin answered slowly. “Before I met Margaret, I was going to find myself someplace to hole up with a couple of years’ worth of supplies, if I could gather ’em. There’s more in this town than most people know.”

  “Or are expert enough to get away from other people?”

  Garvin looked at Cottrell with noncommittal sadness. “Maybe. I’ve come to my own way of looking at it. Anyhow, I figure if I can hold out long enough, when they start getting desperate and break into apartments—if I can make it through that, then somebody’s bound to get things organized sooner or later, and I can join ’em. I figure we’re in for a time of weeding-out. The ones who live through it will have brains enough to realize turning wolf doesn’t cure hunger.

  “Anyway—now that I’m here, I guess I’ll do what I was intending to. Carry in all the stuff I can, and just hope. It isn’t much,” he finished, “but it’s the best I can think of.” He did not mention the obstacle he was most worried about, but it was one over which he had no control. Only Margaret could say what her reaction would be.

  Cottrell nodded thoughtfully. “No, it isn’t much.” He looked up. “I think you’re probably right in theory, but I don’t think you’ll be able to follow it.”

  Garvin frowned. “I don’t see why not, frankly. It’s pretty much what you’ve been doing.”

  “Yes, it is. But you’re not I.” Cottrell stopped to wipe his lips again, and then went on.

  “Matt, I’m part of a dead civilization. I believe the last prediction was that ten percent of the population might survive. Here, in Manhattan, under our conditions, I’d estimate that only half that number are alive today. Under no circumstances is that enough people to maintain the interdependence on which the old system was based. Despite the fact that we are surrounded by the generally undamaged products of twentieth and early twenty-first-century technology, we have neither power, running water, nor heat. We are crippled.”

  Garvin nodded. There was nothing new in this. But he let the old man talk. He had to have been a tough man in his day, and that had to be respected.

  “We have no distribution or communication,” Cottrell went on. “I found this place for Margaret and myself as soon as I could, equipped it, and armed myself. For I knew that if I had no idea how to produce food and clothing for myself, then neither did the rest of my fellow survivors. And the people who did know—the farmers, out on the countryside, must have learned to look out only for themselves, or die.

  “And so I took to my cave-fortress. If you don’t know how to produce the necessities of life, and can’t buy them, then you have to take them. When they become scarce, they must be taken ruthlessly. If you have no loaf, and your neighbor has two—take them both. For tomorrow you will hunger again.

  “I am a hoarder, yes,” he said. “I carried in as much food as I could, continually foraged for more, and was ready to defend this place to the death. I moved the kerosene stoves in, and pushed the old gas range and the refrigerator down the elevator shaft, so no one could tell which apartment they’d come from. I did it because I realized that I—that all of us—had suddenly returned to the days of the cavemen. We were doomed to crouch in our little caves, afraid of the saber-toothed tigers prowling outside. And when our food ran low, we picked up our weapons and prowled outside, having become temporary tigers in our own turn.”

  “Yes, sir,” Matt said politely. He couldn’t see why old bones, raked over now, had any effect on him and his plans.

  Cottrell smiled and nodded. “I know, I know, Matt… But the point is, as I’ve said, that you are not I. It was my civilization that ended. Not yours.”

  “Sir?”

  “You were young enough, when the plagues came, so that you were able to adapt perfectly to the world. You’re not what I am—an average American turned caveman. You’re an average caveman, and you haven’t turned anything—yet. But you will. You can’t escape it. Human beings don’t stay the same all their lives, though some of them half-kill themselves trying to. They can’t. There are other people in the world with them, and, try as each might to become an island unto himself, it’s impossible. He sees his neighbor doing something to make life more bearable—putting up window screens to keep the flies out, say. And then he’s got to have screens of his own, or else walk around covered with fly-bites while his neighbor laughs at him. Or else—” Cottrell smiled oddly, “his wife nags him into it.”

  Cottrell coughed sharply, wiped his mouth impatiently, and went on. “Pretty soon, everybody wants window screens. And some bright young man who makes good ones stops being an island and becomes a carpenter. And some other bright young man becomes his salesman. The next thing you know, the carpenter’s got more orders than he can handle—so somebody else becomes a carpenter’s apprentice. You see?”

  Matt nodded slowly. “I think so.”

  “All right, then, Matt. My civilization ended. Yours is a brand new one. It’s just beginning, but it’s a civilization, all right. There are thousands of boys just like you, all over the world. Some of them will sit in their caves—maybe draw pictures on the walls, before their neighbors break in and kill them. But the rest of you, Matt, will be doing things. What you’ll do, exactly, I don’t know. But it’ll be effective.”

  Cottrell stopped himself with an outburst of coughing, and Matt bit his lip as the old man sank back on his pillows. But Cottrell resumed the thread of his explanation, and now Matt understood that he was trying to leave something behind before he was too weak to say it. Cottrell had lived longer and seen more than the man who was going to become his daughter’s husband. This attempt to pass on the benefit of his experience was the old man’s last performance of his duty toward Margaret.

  “I think, Matt,”
Cottrell went on, “that whatever you and the other young men do will produce a new culture—a more fully developed civilization. And that each generation of young men after you will take what you have left them and build on it, even though they might prefer to simply sit still and enjoy what they have. Because someone will always want window screens. It’s the nature of the beast.

  “And, it is also in the nature of the beast that some people, seeing their neighbor with his window screens, will not want to make the effort of building screens of their own. Some of them will try to bring their neighbor back to the old level—by killing him, by destroying his improvements.

  “But that doesn’t work. If you kill one man, you may kill another. And the other people around you will band together in fear and kill you. And someday, after it’s been demonstrated that the easiest way, in the long run, is to build rather than to attempt to destroy—after everyone has window screens—some bright young man will invent DDT and a whole new cycle will begin.”

  Cottrell laughed shortly. “Oh, what a nervous day for the window-screen-makers that will be! But the people who know how to make sprayguns will be very busy.

  “The plague was a disaster, Matt,” he said suddenly, veering off on a new track. “But disasters are not new to the race of Man. To every Act of God, Man has an answer, drawn from the repertoire of answers he has hammered out in the face of the disasters that have come before. It’s in his nature to build dams against the flood—to rebuild after the earthquake. To put up window screens. Because, apparently, he’s uncomfortable with what this planet gives him, and has to change it—to improve on it, to make himself just a little more comfortable. Maybe, just for the irritated hope that his wife will shut up and leave him alone for a few minutes.

  “Who knows? Man hunted his way upward with a club in his hand, once. You’re starting with a rifle. Perhaps, before your sons die, the world will once again support the kind of civilization in which a young man can sit in a cave, drawing pictures, and depend on others to clothe and shelter him.