James Gunn - The Immortals

Her surrender was a small triumph for Harry, but something to strengthen him when he started thinking about the deadly thing on his wrist and the peculiar state of the world, in which the Medical Center had been out of touch with the governor’s mansion for three weeks, in which a convoy could not get through, in which a message had to be sent by a messenger on foot.

Under other conditions Harry might have thought Marna a lovely thing. She was slim and graceful, her skin was clear, her features were regular and pleasing, and the contrast between her dark hair and her blue eyes was striking. But she was young and spiteful and linked to him by a hateful condition. They had been thrown together too intimately too soon, and, besides, she was only a child.

They reached the gate with only a minute to spare.

On either side of them the chain-link double fence stretched as far as Harry could see. There was no end to it, really; it completely encircled the town. At night it was electrified, and savage dogs roamed the space between the fences.

Somehow citizens still got out. They formed outlaw bands that attacked defenseless travelers. That would be one of the dangers.

The head guard at the gate was a dark-skinned, middle-aged squire. At sixty he had given up any hopes for immortality; he intended to get what he could out of this life. That included bullying his inferiors.

He looked at the blue, daylight-only pass, and then at Harry. “Topeka? On foot?” He chuckled. It made his big belly shake until he had to cough. “If the ghouls don’t get you, the headhunters will. The bounty on heads is twenty dollars now. Outlaw heads only—but then, heads don’t talk. Not if they’re detached from bodies. Of course, that’s what you’re figuring on doing—joining a wolf pack.” He spat on the sidewalk beside Harry’s foot.

Harry jerked back his foot in revulsion. The guard’s eyes brightened.

“Are you going to let us through?” Harry asked.

“Let you through?” Slowly the guard looked at his wristwatch. “Can’t do that. Past curfew. See?”

Automatically Harry bent over to look. “But we got here before curfew—” he began. The guard’s fist hit him just above the left ear and sent him spinning away.

“Get back in there and stay in there, you filthy citizens!” the guard shouted.

Harry’s hand went to his pocket where he kept the hypospray, but it was gone. Words that would blast the guard off his post and into oblivion trembled on his lips, but he dared not utter them. He wasn’t Dr. Elliott anymore, not until he reached the governor’s mansion. He was Harry Elliott, citizen, fair game for any man’s fist, who should consider himself lucky it was only a fist.

“Now,” the guard said suggestively, “if you were to leave the girl as security—” He coughed.

Marna shrank back. She touched Harry accidentally. It was the first time they had touched, in spite of a more intimate linkage that joined them in pain and release, and something happened to Harry. His body recoiled automatically from the touch, as it would from a scalding sterilizer. Marna stiffened, aware of him.

Harry, disturbed, saw Pearce shuffling toward the guard, guided by his voice. Pearce reached out, his hand searching. He touched the guard’s tunic, then his arm, and worked his way down the arm to the hand. Harry stood still, his hand doubled into a fist at his side, waiting for the guard to hit the old man. But the guard gave Pearce the instinctive respect due age and only looked at him curiously.

“Weak lungs,” Pearce whispered. “Watch them. Pneumonia might kill before antibiotics could help. And in the lower left lobe, a hint of cancer—”

“Aw, now!” The guard jerked his hand away, but his voice was frightened.

“X ray,” Pearce whispered. “Don’t wait.”

“There—there ain’t nothing wrong with me,” the guard stammered. “You—you’re trying to scare me.” He coughed.

“No exertion. Sit down. Rest.”

“Why, I’ll—I’ll—” He began coughing violently. He jerked his head at the gate. “Go on,” he said, choking. “Go out there and die.”

The boy Christopher took the old man’s hand and led him through the open gateway. Harry caught Marna’s upper arm—again the contact—and half helped her, half pushed her through the gate, keeping his eye warily on the guard. But the man’s eyes were turned inward toward something far more vital to himself.

As soon as they were through, the gate slammed down behind them and Harry released Marna’s arm as if it were distasteful to hold it. Fifty yards beyond, down the right-hand lanes of the disused six-lane divided highway, Harry said, “I suppose I ought to thank you.”

Pearce whispered, “That would be polite.”

Harry rubbed his head where the guard had hit him. It was swelling. He wished for a medical kit. “How can I be polite to a charlatan?”

“Politeness does not cost.”

“Still—to lie to the man about his condition. To say—cancer—” Harry had a hard time saying it. It was a bad word—it was the one disease, aside from death itself, for which medical science had found no final cure.

“Was I lying?”

Harry stared sharply at the old man and then shrugged. He looked at Marna. “We’re all in this together. We might as well make it as painless as possible. If we try to get along together, we might even all make it alive.”

“Get along?” Marna said. Harry heard her speak for the first time; her voice was low and melodious, even in anger. “With this?” She held up her arm. The silver bracelet gleamed in the last red rays of the sun.

Harry said harshly, raising his wrist, “You think it’s any better for me?”

Pearce whispered, “We will cooperate, Christopher and I—I, Doctor Elliott, because I am too old to do anything else, and Christopher because he is young and discipline is good for the young.”

Christopher grinned. “Grampa used to be a doctor before he learned how to be a healer.”

“Pride dulls the senses and warps the judgment,” Pearce said softly.

Harry held back a comment. Now was no time to argue about medicine and quackery. The road was deserted. The once magnificent pavement was cracked and broken. Grass sprouted tall and thick in the cracks. The weeds stood like young trees along both edges, here and there the big, brown faces of sunflowers, fringed in yellow, nodding peacefully.

Beyond were the ruins of what had once been called the suburbs. The distinction between them and the city had been only a line drawn on a map; there had been no fences then. When they had gone up, the houses outside had soon crumbled.

The real suburbs were far out. First it was turnpike time to the city that had become more important than distance; then, helicopter time. Finally time had run out for the city. It had become so obviously a sea of carcinogens and disease that the connection to the suburbs had been broken. Shipments of food and raw materials went in and shipments of finished materials came out, but nobody went there anymore—except to the medical centers. They were located in the cities because their raw material was there: the blood, the organs, the diseases, the bodies for experiment…

Harry walked beside Marna, ahead of Christopher and Pearce, but the girl didn’t look at him. She walked on, her eyes straight ahead, as if she were alone. Harry said finally, “Look, it’s not my fault. I didn’t ask for this. Can’t we be friends?”

She glanced at him just once. “No!”

His lips tightened, and he dropped away. He let his wrist tingle. What did he care if a thirteen-year-old girl disliked him?

The western sky was fading from scarlet into lavender and purple. Nothing moved in the ruins or along the road. They were alone in an ocean of desolation. They might have been the last people on a ruined earth.