James Gunn - The Immortals

Harry woke up, smothering, fighting against something that enveloped him completely, relentlessly. There was a sound of scuffling nearby. Something spat and crackled. Someone cursed.

Harry fought, futilely. Something ripped. Again. Harry caught a glimpse of a grayer darkness, struggled toward it, and came out through a long cut in the taut blanket, which had been pulled under the bed on all four sides.

“Quick!” Christopher said, folding up his pocketknife. He headed for the door, where Pearce was already standing patiently.

Marna picked up a metal leg that had been unscrewed from the desk. Christopher slipped the chair out from under the doorknob and silently opened the door. He led Pearce outside, and Marna followed. Dazedly Harry came after her.

In Cabin 14 someone screamed. Something flashed blue. A body fell. Harry smelled the odor of burning flesh.

Marna ran ahead of them toward the gate. She rested the ferrule of the desk leg on the ground and let the metal bar fall toward the fence. The fence spat blue flame, which ran, crackling, down the desk leg. The leg glowed red and sagged as the metal softened. Then everything went dark, including the neon sign above them and the light at the gate.

“Help me!” Marna panted.

She was trying to lift the gate. Harry put his hands underneath and pulled. The gate moved a foot and stuck.

Up the drive someone yelled hoarsely, without words. Harry strained at the gate. It yielded at last and then rolled up smoothly. He raised his hand to hold it up while Marna got through, and then Pearce and the boy. Harry edged under and let the gate drop.

A moment later the electricity flickered on again. The desk leg melted through and dropped away.

Harry looked back. Coming toward them was a motorized wheelchair. In it was something lumpy and monstrous, a nightmarish menace—until Harry recognized it for what it was: a basket case, a quadruple amputee complicated by a heart condition. An artificial heart-and-lung machine rode on the back of the wheelchair like a second head. Behind galloped a gangling scarecrow creature with hair that flowed out behind. It wore a dress in imitation of a woman…

Harry stood transfixed, watching, fascinated, while the wheelchair stopped beside one of the gun emplacements. Wires reached out from one of the chair arms like Medusan snakes, inserted themselves into control plugs. The machine gun started to chatter. Something plucked at Harry’s sleeve.

The spell was broken. He turned and ran into the darkness.

Half an hour later he was lost. Marna, Pearce, and the boy were gone. All he had left was a tired body, an arm that burned, and a wrist that hurt worse than anything he could remember.

He felt his upper arm. His sleeve was wet. He brought his fingers to his nose. Blood. The bullet had creased him.

He sat disconsolately on the edge of the turnpike, the darkness around him as thick as soot. He looked at the fluorescent dial of his watch. Three-twenty. A couple of hours until sunrise. He sighed and tried to ease the pain in his wrist by rubbing around the bracelet. It seemed to help. In a few minutes it dropped to a tingle.

“Doctor Elliott,” someone said softly.

He turned. Relief and something like joy flooded through his chest. There, outlined against the dim starlight, were Christopher, Marna, and Pearce.

“Well,” Harry said gruffly, “I’m glad you didn’t try to escape.”

“We wouldn’t do that, Doctor Elliott,” Christopher said.

“How did you find me?” Harry asked.

Marna silently held up her arm.

The bracelet. Of course. He had given them too much credit, Harry thought sourly. Marna sought him out because she could not help herself, and Christopher, because he was out here alone with a senile old man to take care of and he needed help.

Although, honesty forced him to admit, it had been he and not Christopher and Pearce who had needed help back there a mile or two. If they had depended on him, their heads would be dangling in the motel’s freezer, waiting to be turned in for the bounty. Or their still-living bodies would be on their way to some organ bank somewhere.

“Christopher,” Harry said to Pearce, “must have been apprenticed to a bad-debt evader.”

Pearce accepted it for what it was: a compliment and an apology. “Dodging the collection agency traps and keeping out of the way of the health inspector,” he whispered, “makes growing up in the city a practical education… You’re hurt.”

Harry started. How did the old man know? Even with eyes, it was too dark to see more than silhouettes. Harry steadied himself. It was an instinct, perhaps. Diagnosticians got it sometimes, he was told, after they had been practicing for years. They could smell disease before the patient lay down on the couch. From the gauges they got only confirmation.

Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe the old man smelled the blood with a nose grown keen to compensate for his blindness.

The old man’s fingers were on his arm, surprisingly gentle. Harry pulled his arm away roughly. “It’s only a crease.”

Pearce’s fingers found his arm again. “It’s bleeding. Find some dry grass, Christopher.”

Marna was close. She had made a small, startled movement toward him when Pearce had discovered his wound. Harry could not accept her actions for sympathy; her hate was too tangible. Perhaps she was wondering what she would do if he were to die.

Pearce ripped the sleeve away.

“Here’s the grass, Grampa,” Christopher said.

How did the boy find dry grass in the dark? “You aren’t going to put that on the wound!” Harry said quickly.

“It will stop the bleeding,” Pearce whispered.

“But the germs—”

“Germs can’t hurt you—unless you let them.”

Pearce put the grass on the wound and bound it with the sleeve. “That will be better soon.”

He would take it off, Harry told himself, as soon as they started walking. Somehow, though, it was easier to let it alone now that the harm was done. After that he forgot about it. When they were walking again, Harry found himself beside Marna. “I suppose you got your education dodging health inspectors in the city, too?” he said dryly.

She shook her head. “No. There’s never been much else to do. Ever since I can remember I’ve been trying to escape. I got free once.” Her voice was filled with remembered happiness. “I was free for twenty-four hours, and then they found me.”

“But I thought—” Harry began. “Who are you?”

“Me? I’m the governor’s daughter.”

Harry recoiled. It was not so much the fact, but the bitterness with which she spoke that shocked him.

Sunrise found them on the turnpike. They had passed the last ruined motel. Now, on either side of the turnpike, were rolling, grassy hills, valleys filled with trees, and the river winding muddily beside them, sometimes so close they could have thrown a stone into it, sometimes turning beyond the hills out of sight.

The day was warm. Above them the sky was blue, with only a trace of fleecy cloud on the western horizon. Occasionally a rabbit would hop across the road in front of them and vanish into the brush on the other side. Once they saw a deer lift its head beside the river and stare at them curiously.

Harry stared back with hunger in his eyes.

“Doctor Elliott,” Christopher said.

Harry looked at him. In the boy’s soiled hand was an irregular lump of solidified brown sugar. It was speckled with lint and other unidentifiable additions, but at the moment it was the most desirable object Harry could imagine. His mouth watered, and he swallowed hard. “Give it to Pearce and the girl. They’ll need their strength. And you, too.”