Harlan Ellison - No Doors, No Windows

“Daddy’s got a dirty mouth,” Harry said. And received a gloveful of nickels across the back of the head for his trouble. He slumped forward in the chair, arms tied behind him to the slats. His eyes fluttered closed, open, closed again. The man with the five-fingered blackjack was a short, extremely surly, box-shaped individual named Routener. His face was oily and his hair was very curly.

Harry came up from the pit again, and stared unfocused at Daddy.

“Boy, you know what old Daddy’s gonna goddam well do for you? He’s gonna introduce you to some of the finest goddam concrete that you ever saw. He’s gonna make your acquaintance all the way from your goddam feet to your gaah dam head. And then he’s gonna have a li’l heart-to-heart and mouth-to-hand talktalk with his goddam daughter. In’t that right, Angela girl?” Angie shivered. There was such loathing in her eyes as she stood against the wall of the construction shed, that it burned from her face like the inferno the barn had become.

“Is that the sandy concrete you used on the hospital?” Harry asked. “I hear tell it’s groovy goods; how many people got buried when the building collapsed and fell into the valley?”

“Shut your goddamned mouth!”

“Better use somebody else’s concrete, Daddy. I might be able to chew my way out of your product.” The gloveful of nickels again. Wham! Across the temple. He went away for a while. When his eyes opened again, he was lying on the ground outside the shed, and Routener was standing over him, a big .45 packed in his mitt, and that oily face saying something. After a few minutes and several kicks in the ribs, he understood that Routener wanted him to get up.

“Where’s the rest of the group?” It was a toss-off question; Harry was merely glad the other hooded men were nowhere in sight. There was always a better chance of getting away without holes in untidy places if there were less cooks ready to stir the pot.

“Rggll,” said Routener.

“Thanks,” Harry answered, and moved forward as Routener shoved the .45 into his ribs, hard.

They walked toward the excavations and Harry found himself looking down into what must have been set-pits for three big buildings. The drop was easily a hundred feet, and at the bottom of all three was quagmire. It was suckmud of the worst sort. Harry had been around enough to know what Daddy was going to have to do, if he was going to build there: fill in that muck till it settled. And it looked as though they had started the fill already. With garbage. Soft sand. Rubbish.

The buildings would get erected, and then, slowly, begin to sink. If the residents were lucky they would find out in time and third-floor occupants could step out of their windows onto the surrounding ground. First- and second-floor tenants would have to take the elevators upstairs to free themselves. Harry wondered how much graft was attached to this little goodie. He didn’t wonder for very long; at that point Routener indicated the mixing trough of wet cement standing by the edge of the pit.

“Fszl,” Routener commanded Harry. He pressed the .45 even harder into Harry’s ribs.

And Harry was about to say screw it and take a chance on diving headfirst down the slope, trying to get away from the Neanderthal with the blocky .45 — when he heard the click. It was right down alongside his ribs. It was the locking mechanism in the barrel of the .45 — a mechanism that kept the pistol from firing as long as pressure was exerted against it. Harry stepped closer to Routener, swung heavily, keeping the .45 imbedded in his side, and stuck his thumb into the pistolero’s eye, as hard as he could. Routener screamed. The thumb went in. Harry dropped his shoulder, hauled back and grabbed the pistol. Then he swung hard. Holding the .45 by the barrel he caught Routener flush on the tip of his prognathous jaw. The squat bully-boy’s head flipped back like the top on a pack of cigarettes, and he did a gainer and a half off the edge of the excavation. Harry watched him go.

When Daddy turned around and saw the big mouth of the .45, his style was fine, just fine:

“How’d you like to drive for me, boy. How’d you like to make ten times what that bonding outfit paid you? You could make a goddamned fortune workin’ for me, boy, a goddamned fortune. Whaddaya say?”

“No thanks, big Daddy,” Harry said, untying Angie as he kept the .45 trained unwaveringly on the bald contractor. “You’ve got a foul mouth, and my family always brought me up to be genteel. Move!” He ushered Daddy ahead of him, with Angie bringing up the rear, rubbing her chafed wrists.

They went back around the construction shed, and Harry saw another nitro truck, a previous shipment from his company. “Get in; see if the keys are there,” he said to Angie. She climbed up, looked inside, said the ignition was empty. “Come here and hold this howitzer on your poppa.” She came to him, took the .45 and stood with legs wide apart staring down the blue-metal length of it.

“Move?” She dared him.

Daddy froze.

Harry went to the cab, opened the hood and proceeded to jump the ignition wires. He crawled behind the wheel, kicked it over, and the engine roared into life.

He was checking just how much juice had been left in the wagon when he heard the first two shots. He was out of the truck and around the side when the next three explosions ripped the air.

Daddy was bleeding profusely. It wasn’t that she was a bad shot, just sadistic. She’d shot him in the neck, both arms, both legs, and seemed ready to put one into his stomach when Harry grabbed the weapon away from her. “Give me that! What the fuck is it with you! You some kind of goddam nut-case? Jeeezus!” She started crying then. She folded against him. He helped her up into the cab of the nitro wagon.

“We’ll call a doctor for you, Daddy, first house we hit down the road,” Harry said. “Stay healthy, Daddy. See you around sometime.” He sprinted around the truck, popped behind the wheel and threw the monster into gear. He drove fast, but carefully, and the image of Daddy lying there, bleeding from every pore, was a heartwarming thought.

“Where are we going?”

“Raleigh. The capitol. I think the highway commission would like to know about Daddy’s dealings.”

“They’ll come after us. If you stop to call, they’ll come after us.”

“We’ll call.”

“Let him die, Harry. He let my mother die; let him die!”

“We’ll call.”

“They’ll come after us. They’ll catch us, there are plenty of them, all over the state. We’ll never get to Raleigh.”

“We’ll call, and we’ll get there. They’ll stay away from us in this truck. I’ve got enough juice in this wagon to turn a lot of hair prematurely gray. And they’ve had experience with my lousy driving already. Nobody’s going to make me too nervous.”

She smiled wanly and after they stopped at a roadhouse to call, the smile strengthened. They were on the highway, heading out, and Angie seemed pleased to be in the warm cab.

“Where will we go after Raleigh?” she said.

“You can go where you want, I suppose, it’s a big world.”

She was staring at him. There was a long moment of silence, then she said, “No, I asked where we would go after Raleigh?”

He stared straight ahead. Kept driving. There were no other cars on the road. “Wrong word. There’s no we . There’s you, and there’s me, and that’s two separate units.”

“Why, you sonofabitch!”

Then she started trying to slap him. Harry let her work at it for a few seconds, then punched her in the mouth. Not hard enough to put her away, but hard enough to convince her he wasn’t there for target practice.