Algis Budrys - Some Will Not Die

“Well, that’s that,” Holland said outside Matt’s headquarters. He stretched luxuriously, his eyes grinning. He slapped Ted’s shoulder lightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, and walked off, his stride catlike, easily holding his slung rifle straight up and down with the heel of his hand against its butt.

Ted smiled. Jack had been cooped up on the boat for a month. The adjective “catlike” was as easily applied to his frame of mind as to his walk. Ted smiled again. Ruefully.

He hitched his own rifle sling higher up on his shoulder and walked determinedly toward the Garvins’ apartment.

Ever since his father’s death, Ted and his mother had more or less been staying with the Garvins. Their apartments adjoined, and up to the time that Ted had earned the right to carry his own rifle, both families had been equally under Matt’s protection. Ted had been raised with Jim and Mary Garvin—discounting Bob, who was five years younger than Ted, and therefore even more useless than Mary as a companion. Recently, of course, Mary had been acquiring greater significance, even if she was only thirteen. She seemed to him admittedly more mature of mind than other girls her age, most of whom Ted ignored completely.

He bent over and tightened the mounting screws on his rear sight with careful concentration.

“You mean they had a machinegun?” Mary asked breathlessly.

“Ahuh.” He shrugged casually, and made sure the windage adjustment was traveling freely but precisely. “Had a bad time for a couple of minutes there.” He pulled out the bolt assembly and squinted at the already immaculate walls of the chamber.

“What did you do then? I’d have been awfully scared.”

He shrugged again. “Turned around and ran. It looked like only a couple of guys, but it smelled like more. No telling what they might have backing them up.” He slipped the bolt back in and worked it a few times, spreading the lubricant evenly. “Tell you the truth, I kept thinking about those mortars Matt’s got down by the river. No reason for them not to be set up the same way. Anyway, we pulled out. Ryder was on the portside turret—that’s the left—and he hosed them down a little. Knocked them out, I guess, because we were still in range and they didn’t do anything about it.” He ran the lightly oiled rag over all of the rifle’s exposed metal, set the safety, and slid in a freshly loaded clip. As he looked up, Jim caught his eye and winked, looking sidelong at Mary. Ted’s cheeks reddened, and he shot a steely glance at his friend.

“Well, I guess I’ll turn in,” he said lightly. His mother had gone inside a few moments before. He stretched and yawned. He slung the rifle on his shoulder. “Good night, everybody.”

“Good night, Ted,” Mrs. Garvin smiled, looking up from her sewing. “G’nite, Ted,” Jim said cuttingly.

“Good night, Ted,” Mary said. He raised his hand in a short, casual wave to her and walked through the connecting doorway, the heel of his hand resting easily against his rifle’s butt.

“Ted?”

He winced faintly as he closed the door behind him. “Yes, Mom,” he said quickly, before the apprehension in her voice could multiply itself.

She came into the room, standing just inside. “Of course it’s you,” she said with a nervous smile. “I don’t know who I thought it’d be.”

“Well, there’s the bogeyman, and then there’s ghoolies and ghosties…” He let his mock gravity trail off into a smile, and her face smoothed a little.

“Can I get you some tea or something?” he asked, putting the rifle up on the rack he’d hung beside the door.

“Why, yes, thanks. Are you going to sleep now?”

“I guess so. I’m pretty tired,” he said on his way to the kitchen.

“I made your bed. Your room’s just the way you left it.”

“Thanks, Mom,” he said, letting himself smile with tolerant tenderness, in the kitchen where no one could see him.

He brought the cupful of tea out to her, and she took it with a grateful smile. “It’s good to have you home again,” she said. “I rattled around in here, all by myself.”

“There’s all those Garvins next door,” he pointed out.

She smiled lightly. “Not as many for me as there are for you. The kids get a little noisy sometimes, for my taste. Matt’s busy all day, and he goes to sleep almost as soon as he eats. And Margaret’s not as good company as she used to be.” Her smile grew worried. “She’s getting awfully gloomy, Ted. Matt’s in his forties, and he’s still carrying his rifle with the rest of the men. What would happen if he died?”

“I guess he’s got to, Mom. It’s his responsibility. If he couldn’t handle it, somebody else would be running things. He’s doing a good job, too. I haven’t heard many complaints about it.”

“I know, Ted. Margaret knows too. But that doesn’t help, does it?”

“No, I suppose not. Well, there isn’t anything we can do about it, the way things are.” He bent over and kissed her cheek. “Going to stay up for a while?”

She nodded. “I think so, Ted. Good night.”

“Good night, Mom.”

He went down the hall to his room, undressed, and blew out the lamp. He lay awake, his eyes closed in the darkness.

It was a hard life, for the women. He wondered if that was why Jack Holland wasn’t married. He was twenty-nine already.

Damn. Thirteen more years.

Matt was either forty-two or three. Old Matt, who wouldn’t be so old in any other time and place. Old Matt must have been young, nineteen-year-old Matt sometime, trying to stay alive in the first few months after the plague. The vague plague, that nobody knew much about because he could only know what had happened to him or those with him, and had no idea what it had been like all over the world.

All over the world. There must be thousands of places like Manhattan, scattered out among the cities, with men like Matt and Jack in them, trying to organize, trying to get people together again. And, more than likely, there were thousands of guys like Ted Berendtsen, who ought to cut out this pointless mental jabbering and get some sleep, right… now.

“Man, I’m not going to like this,” Jim Garvin said as they loaded up their packs and jammed extra clips into their bandoliers.

Ted shrugged, smoking up his foresight to kill glare. “Be crazy if you did. But it’s got to be done faster than we figured, I guess.”

“Pop say anything to you about it?”

Ted shook his head. “Nope. But that report Jack and I brought back from Philly is what did it. We’ve got to have this area squared away in case they move up on us. They know where we came from.” He settled his pack snugly onto his shoulders, and twisted his belt to get the Colt’s holster settled more comfortably. He didn’t usually carry a pistol, but this was going to be close-range work, once they flushed their men out from cover. The thing weighed a ton.

“S’pose you’re right,” Jim admitted.

Ted frowned slightly. Jim should at least have thought of the obvious question, as long as he was in a questioning frame of mind. He’d wondered about it himself, until he realized that the attempt to take all of the lower West Side in one operation had to be made. Just perhaps, the slow process that had worked on the East Side could be modified to fit, and there was time enough, more than likely, but that territory had been completely impenetrable for twenty years. The men in it knew every alley and back yard. Any attempt to take it piecemeal would mean an endless series of skirmishes with infiltrators.

Of course, he had a year and some months on Jim.

“Set?” Jack Holland came up to them, his pack bulging with ammunition, dynamite, and gasoline bombs, his rifle balanced in his hand. Ted nodded shortly, and was vaguely surprised to hear Jim say, “Yes, sir.” He looked from Jim to Jack, and barely twitched an eyelid. Jack grinned faintly.