"000002-some_wil" - читать интересную книгу автора (Budrys Algis)[Image] [Image] CHAPTER TWO: Three years went by. His boots full of frigid water, and his rifle securely strapped to his pack, Matt Garvin was picking his way through the trash in the drainage channel between the subway rails. A hundred feet ahead of him, dim light from a roof grating patched out the darkness, and he ran his thumb over the safety catch of the Glock he had looted out of a littered pawnshop drawer on Eighth Avenue. He stopped for a moment, opened his mouth to quiet the sound of his breath, and listened. Water dripped from a girder to the concrete of the station platform ahead of him. Behind him in the tunnel--at about the Third Avenue entrance, he judged--someone else was moving. That was all right. There were two long blocks between them, and he'd be out of the tunnel by the time the other man was within dangerous distance. He listened again, disregarding the faint splash of water on the platform, the different but equally unimportant slosh up the tunnel. He heard nothing, and his eyes, probing as much of the First Avenue station platforms as he could see, found nothing but dim gray, bounded by the converging lines of platform and roof, broken by the vertical thrust of girders. Moving forward cautiously, he reached a point near the beginning of the north side platform, and stopped to listen again. Nothing moved. He pulled himself up on the platform and lay flat, the Glock ready, but there was no scrape of motion, either on this platform or on the one across the tracks, and none of the indistinct shadows changed their shapes as he watched them. Nevertheless, as a final if somewhat inconclusive check, he listened to the water droplets as they fell steadily from the girder to the platform. Sometimes a man got careless and let such a drop hit him, interrupting the beat. But there was nothing. He pushed himself up off his stomach, crouched, and padded quietly to the tiled wall beside the foot of the stairs. A few months ago, he had tried putting up a mirror there, in order to see up the stairs without exposing himself. It had been smashed within a few days, and he had been especially cautious for a while, but no one had ever been waiting for him at the head of the stairs. He had finally come to the conclusion that someone else must have solved the problem ahead of him. A fresh corpse at the street entrance had tended to confirm this--the possibility that it was only a decoy had been discarded as an overcomplication. It had been good to feel that he had an ally--if only in this vague, circumstantial way. It was no indication that the very man responsible might not be his killer tomorrow, but there was enough of an idealist left in Garvin to allow him a certain satisfaction at this proof that there was at least one other man somewhere near who could draw the distinction between self-protection and deliberate trap-setting. However, he had never tried to replace the mirror. He listened again as a matter of routine, heard nothing, and waited. After ten minutes, there had still been no sound, and knowing that his own approach had been silent, he broke suddenly and silently for the opposite wall, gun ready to fire in his hand. There was no one at the head of the stairs. He crept upward cautiously, found no one at the turnstile level, and reached the foot of the stairs to the street. It was unlikely that there would be anyone up there, exposed to the daylight. Moreover, if he made his passage into the building fast enough, he was unlikely to have any trouble. Lately, there had not been any considerable amount of sniping from windows. Ammunition was running low, and the possible rewards of nighttime scavenging from the corpses were not usually worth the expenditure. Shifting the straps of his pack into a tighter position, he moved carefully up the steps, took a sweeping look at the deserted length of Fourteenth Street, and zig-zagged across the sidewalk at a run. His beating footsteps were a sudden interruption in the absence of sound. As he reached the entrance to his building and slipped inside the door, silence returned. In the darkness of the lobby, Garvin's shoes whispered on worn rubber matting, for it had been raining on the last day the building staff had functioned. The firedoor on the stairwell clicked open and shut, and his steps on the cement stairs were regular taps of leather as he climbed. He was not completely relaxed--above the sound of his own footsteps, he listened for the noise that might be made by someone else in the stairwell. Nevertheless, though there were other people scattered throughout the fifty-odd apartments in the building, no one had ever attacked anyone else within the building itself. There had to be a sort of mutual respect between the families. The thought of fighting within the twists and corridors of the building, with every closed door a deathtrap, was not an attractive one. The stairwell, in particular, was the only means of passage to the world outside. Only a psychopath would have risked obstructing it. He reached his floor and stepped out on the landing with only a minimum amount of precaution. He crossed the corridor to his own door, unlocked it, and stepped inside, holstering his gun. The shot roared out of the hallway leading from the bedrooms and crashed into the metal doorframe beside him. Garvin leaped sideward, landing on the kitchen floor with a thud. His fingers slapped against his gun butt, hooked around it, and the gun was in his hand, his feet under him in a slash of motion as he rolled and flung himself backward behind the stove. The breath whistled out of his nostrils and back in through his mouth in an uneven gasp. There was no sound in the apartment. He turned his head from side to side, trying to find some noise--a hand on a doorknob, a footstep on linoleum--that would tell him where his attacker was. There was nothing. The kitchen was beside the apartment door. Beyond it was the dining alcove and the living room, and beyond that were two bedrooms opening on a hall that ran the remainder of the apartment's length. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, its door facing the apartment entrance. The man could have fired from either bedroom, or from the bathroom itself. Where was the man--and where was Margaret? Garvin's knuckles cracked as his hand tightened on the gun's butt, and his face became almost stuporous in its lack of overt expression. Keeping his gun ready, Garvin moved forward until he was barely hidden inside the kitchen doorway. His mind was busy searching out and separating the remembered impressions of the attack. The shot had been fired in the hall. It was impossible to decide how far back. Had the man moved after firing? He tried to remember if there had been any other sound. No, he decided. Wherever the shot had come from, there the man still was. What had happened to Margaret? His jaw tightened as he considered the possibilities. If she had seen the man come in, she might have tried to shoot him--if she had been near her gun. If not, she might still be hiding somewhere in the apartment, waiting for Garvin to come home. If the man had gotten in without her knowing it.... The possibilities were indeterminate, he told himself savagely. Whatever had happened, in any case, there was nothing he could do about it now. If she were still hidden, it was up to her to handle that part of the situation as her judgment dictated. There was still no sound in the apartment. How long had the man been here? If Margaret was still alive and undiscovered, would the hidden man stumble on her if he was forced to move on to another room? Her gun was probably in the larger bedroom. Was she there, waiting for a chance to get a shot in? He could count on nothing to help him. He and Margaret had both learned all the tricks that life in New York demanded. He would have to act as though he could be sure that she would know how to take care of herself. But he was not sure. The silence continued. He had to get the man moving; had to get some idea of his location. And he needed freedom of movement. He unstrapped his magnum and carefully set it aside. Backing up noiselessly, Garvin reached behind him and opened the casement window, pushing the panel slowly. The guide rod slid in its track with a muted sound. "Please!" The voice, distorted by the echoes of the hallway, was frightened and anxious. Garvin snatched his hand away from the window. It was quiet again. The man had stopped. but the quavering print of his voice was still playing back in Garvin's mind. And suddenly he understood how he would feel, unexpectedly trapped in a strange apartment. Every corner would have its concealed death, each step its possible drastic consequence. Was the pitiful hope of whatever goods could be brought away worth the stark terror of unknown deadliness? He opened the window a bit farther. "Please! No! I...." The words rushed out of the shadowed hallway. "I'm--I'm sorry! I was frightened...." Garvin's lips stretched in a reflex grin. If the man actually thought Garvin was somehow going to cross from window ledge to window ledge along the building's sheer outside wall, he had to be in a room where he was open to such an attack. He couldn't be in the bathroom. The large bedroom was in the corner of the apartment. By the time a man inching along the building's face could possibly reach it, it would be easy to take any number of steps to handle the situation. The man had to be in the smaller bedroom, the one nearest the living room. And he had to be standing at the door. The door to the small bedroom was set flush with the wall, and opened to the left. In order to defend the room or fire down the hallway, the door would have to be completely open. Therefore, the man's hand and arm were exposed, and, most probably, his face as well. The man had to maintain his position in command of the hall. If Garvin could once get a clear lane of fire down the hallway, it was the other man who was trapped in an exitless room. But the hall was dark, while the living room had a large window, the light of which would have made it suicidal for Garvin to step out. Once again, he thought of Margaret. He fought down the urgency of the impulse to cry out for her. If the other man didn't know about her, it was so much more advantage on Garvin's side. Grimly, Garvin worked the mechanism of the Glock as noisily as possible. The sound, like the slip of the window's guide rod, was designed only to make his unknown adversary go into a deeper panic. There had already been a bullet in the chamber. He ejected it carefully into his palm and put it in his pocket. He pushed the window completely open, thudding the guide-rod home against its stop. "Please! Listen to me!" The panicked voice began again. "I want to be friends." Garvin stopped. "Are you listening?" the man asked hesitatingly. There was no accompanying sound of movement from the bedroom. The man was maintaining his position at the door. Garvin cursed silently and did not answer. "I haven't talked to anybody for years. Not even shouted at them, or cursed. All I've done for six years is fight other people. Shooting, running. I didn't dare show myself in daylight. "It isn't worth it. Staying alive isn't worth it. Grubbing through stores for food at night. Like an animal in a garbage can!" The trembling voice was filled with desperate disgust. "Are you listening?" Unseen, Garvin's eyes grew bleak, and he nodded. He remembered the odd touch of kinship he had felt with the man who had killed the stalker at the subway entrance. The mirror at the turn of the steps had been an attempt to make at least that small part of his environment a bit less dangerous. When the stalker smashed it, it meant that there were still men who would kill for the sake of a knapsack that might or might not contain food. "Please," the man in the bedroom said. "You've got to understand why I--I came in here. I had to find some people I could talk to. I knew there were people in this building. I got a passkey out of the Stuyvesant Town offices. I wanted to find an apartment for myself. I was going to try to make friends with my neighbors." Garvin twitched a corner of his mouth. He could picture an attempt at communication with the deadly silence and armed withdrawal that lurked through the apartments beyond his own walls. "Can't you say something?" the panic-stricken man demanded. Garvin scraped the Glock's barrel against the window frame, as though an armed man were beginning to clamber out on one of the nonexistent window ledges. "No! Think! How much food can there be left, where we can get to it? There are whole gangs in the warehouses, and they won't let anybody near them. The rifle ammunition's getting low already. How long can we go on this way--fighting over every can of peas, killing each other over a new shirt? We've got to organize ourselves--get a system set up, try to establish some kind of government. It's been six years since the plague, and nothing's been done." The man stopped for a moment, and Garvin listened for the sound of motion, but there was nothing. "I--I'm sorry I shot at you. I was frightened. Everybody's frightened. They don't trust anybody. How can they?" Talk, talk, talk! What have you done with Margaret, damn you? "But please--please trust me." The unsteady voice was on the point of breaking. "I want to be friends." Despite his fear, the man obviously wasn't going to move from his position until he was absolutely sure that Garvin was out on the window ledges. Even then.... Garvin pictured the man, trembling against the door, not sure whether to run or stay, keeping watch on the hallway, ready to spin around at the sound of breaking glass behind him. He was frightened, now. But had he been? Was it only after that one shot had missed, and the self-made trap had snapped home, that the terror had begun to tremble in his throat? What had happened to Margaret? Garvin moved back to the kitchen doorway. "Come out," he said. [Image] There was a sigh from the bedroom door--a ragged exhalation that might have been relief. The man's shoes shuffled on the linoleum of the bedroom floor, and his heel struck the metal sill. He moved out into the hall, thin, his hollowed eyes dark against his pale face. [Image] Garvin pointed the Glock at his chest and fired twice. The man held his hands against himself and fell into the living room. Garvin sprang forward and looked down at him. He was dead. "Matt!" The door of the hall closet rebounded against the wall, and Margaret clasped her arms around Garvin. She buried her teeth in his shoulder for a moment. "I heard him fumbling with the key. I knew it wasn't you, and it was too far to the bedroom." Garvin slipped his gun into its holster and held her, feeling the spasmodic shake of her body as she cried. The hall closet was almost directly opposite the door to the small bedroom. She hadn't even dared warn him as he came in. He looked down at the man again, over Margaret's shoulder. One of the man's hands were tightly clasped around a Colt that must have been looted from a policeman's body. "You poor bastard," Garvin said to the corpse. "You trusted me too far." Margaret looked up, as pale as the man had been when he stepped out to meet Garvin's fire. "Matt! Hush! There wasn't anything else you could do." "He was a man--a man like me. He was scared, and he was begging for his life," Garvin said. "He wanted me to trust him, but I was too scared to believe him." He shook himself sharply. "I still can't believe him." "There wasn't anything else to do, Matt," Margaret repeated insistently. "You didn't have any way of knowing whether I was all right or not. You've said it yourself. We live the way we have to--by rules we had to make up. He was in another man's house. He broke the rules." Garvin's mouth shaped itself into a twisted slash He couldn't take his eyes off the dead man. "We're good with rules," he said. "The poor guy heard somebody--so he took a shot at me. "And what could I do? Somebody tried to kill me in my own home. It didn't really matter, after that, what he said or did, or what I thought. I had to kill him. Any way at all." He pulled away from Margaret and stood beside the corpse for a moment, his arms swinging impatiently as he tried to decide what to do. Then he moved forward, as though abruptly breaking out of an invisible shell. His footsteps echoed loudly in the hall, and then he was back from the bedroom, a sheet dangling out of his clenched hand. "Matt, what're you going to do?" Margaret asked, her voice almost a whisper as her puzzled eyes tried to read his face. He bent and caught the dead man under the arms. "I'm putting up a 'No Trespassing' sign." He dragged the corpse to the living room window, knotted one end of the sheet to the metal centerpost, and slung the remainder of the sheet around the dead man's chest, leaving just enough slack so his lolling head would hang out of sight. Then he lowered the corpse through the open window. Garvin turned. Suddenly, all his muscles seemed to twist. "I hope this keeps them away! I hope I never have to do this again." Even with the distance between them, Margaret could easily see him trembling. "I'll do it again, if I have to," he went on. "If they keep coming, I'll have to kill them. After a while, I'll be used to it. I'll shoot them down with children in their arms. I'll use their own white flags to hang them up beside this one. I'll ignore the sound of their voices. Because they can't be trusted. I know they can't be trusted, because I know I can't be trusted." He stopped, turned, and looked at Margaret. "You realize what that poor guy wanted? You know who he sounded like? Like me, that's who--like me, Matt Garvin, the guy who just wanted a place to live in peace." "Matt, I know what he said he--" "Hey! Hey, you, in there!" The muffled voice came blurredly into the apartment, followed by a series of sharp knocks on the other side of the wall that separated this apartment from the next. Margaret stopped, but Garvin slid forward, his boots making no sound on the floor as he moved quietly over to the wall. The knocking started again. "You! Next door. What's all that racket?" Garvin heard Margaret start to say something. His hand flashed out in a silencing gesture, and he put his ear to the wall. His right hand came down and touched the Glock's holster. "I'm warning you." He could hear the voice more clearly. "Speak up, or you'll never come out of there alive. I'm mighty particular about my neighbors, and if you've knocked off the ones I had, I'll make damn sure you don't enjoy their place very long." Garvin's mouth opened. He'd known there was someone in there, of course, but, up to now, there had never been any break in the silence. "Well?" The voice was impatient. "I've got the drop on you. My wife's in the hall right now, with a gun on your door. And I can get some dynamite in a big hurry." Garvin hesitated. It meant giving the other man an advantage. "Hurry up!" But there-was nothing else he could do. "It's all right," he finally said, speaking loudly enough for the other man to hear. "There was somebody in here, but we took care of it." "That's better," the other man said, but his voice was still suspicious. "Now let's hear your wife say something." Margaret moved up to the wall. She looked at Garvin questioningly, and he reluctantly nodded. "Go ahead," he said. "This is Margaret Garvin. We're--we're all right." She stopped, then seemed to reach a decision and went on with a rush. "My husband's name is Matt. Who are you?" That wasn't right. Garvin frowned. She was getting too close to an infringement on the silent privacy that had existed for so long, now. Men were no longer brothers. They were distant nodding acquaintances. Surprisingly, the other man did not hesitate a perceptible length of time before answering. "My name's Gustav Berendtsen. My wife's name is Carol." The tone of his voice had changed, and now Garvin thought he could make out the indistinct trace of a pleased chuckle in Berendtsen's voice. "Took care of it, did you? Good. Damn good! Nice to have neighbors you can depend on." The voice lost some of its clarity as Berendtsen obviously turned his head away from his side of the wall. "Hey, Toots, you can put that cannon down now. They straightened it out themselves." Out in the hall, a safety-catch clicked, and no-longer-careful footsteps moved back from the Garvins' door. Then Berendtsen's door opened and shut, and, after a moment, there was a shy voice from beside Berendtsen on the other side of the wall. "Hello. I'm Carol Berendtsen. Is--" She stopped, as though she too was as unsure of herself as Margaret and Garvin were, here in this strange situation that had suddenly materialized from beyond the rules. But she stopped only for a moment, "Is everything all right?" "Sure, everything's all right, Toots!" Berendtsen's voice cut in from behind the wall. "I've been telling you those were damn sensible people living in there. Know how to mind their own business. People who know that, know how to make sure nobody else tries minding it, either." "All right, Gus, all right," Garvin and Margaret heard her say, her low voice still carrying well enough to be heard through the masonry. "I just wanted to hear them say it." And then she added something in an even lower voice. "It's been a long time since I heard people just talking," and Garvin's hand tightened on Margaret's as they heard her. "Sure. Toots, sure. But I kept telling you it wasn't always going to be that way. I--" His voice rose up to a louder pitch. "Hey, Garvins! I gotta idea. Also got a bottle of Haig and Haig in here. Care for some? We'll come over," he added hurriedly. Garvin looked at Margaret's strained face and trembling lips. He could feel his own face tightening. "Please, Matt?" Margaret asked. She was right. It was too big a chance not to take. "Sure, Hon," he said. "But get my rifle and cover the door from the hall," he added softly. "All right," he said, raising his voice. "Come over." "Right," Berendtsen answered. "Be a minute." The words were jovial enough, Garvin thought. He heard Margaret move back into the hall, and his mind automatically registered the slight creak of the sling's leather as she lifted the rifle to cover the door. And then he heard Carol Berendtsen's voice faintly through the wall. "I--I don't know," she was saying to Gus, her voice uncertain. "Will it be all right? I mean, I haven't talked to another woman in.... What'll she think? I haven't got any good clothes. And there's a strange man in there... Gus, I look so--I'm ashamed!" And Gus Berendtsen's voice, clumsy but gentle, its power broken into softness. "Aw, look, Toots, they're just people like us. You think they've got any time for frills? I bet you're dressed just fine. And what's to be ashamed of in being a woman?" And then there was a moment's silence. "I'll bet you're prettier than she is, too." "You'd better think so, Gus." Something untied itself in Garvin. "I think you can put that rifle away, Hon," he said to Margaret. He saw her look of uncertainty, and nodded to emphasize the words. "I'm pretty sure." [Image] Garvin poured out another finger of the Scotch. He raised his glass in a silent mutual toast with Berendtsen, who grinned and lifted his own glass in response. Gus chuckled, the soft, controlled sound rumbling gently up through his thick chest. The glass was almost out of sight in his spade of a hand, huge even in proportion to the rest of his body. He sat easily in the chair that should have been too small for him, the shaped power of his personality reflected in his body's casual poise. "Ought to be able to set up a pretty good combo," he said. "One of us stays home to hold the fort while the other one goes out for the groceries. Take turns. Might try knocking a hole through this wall, too. Be easier." He slapped the plaster with his hand. Garvin nodded. "Good idea." They both smiled at the drift of women's voices that came from one of the bedrooms. "Make it easier on the baby-sitter, too." "My gal was a little worried," Berendtsen agreed. He grinned again. "You know, we may have something here." He raised his glass again, and Garvin, catching his train of thought, matched the gesture. "To the Second Republic," Berendtsen said. "All six-and-two-halves rooms of it," Garvin affirmed. Then his glance reached the living room window, and he realized that there was still something undone. He got up to loosen the sheet and let the body fall to join the others that lay scattered among the dark buildings. But he stopped before his hand touched the sheet. No one would know, now, how much honesty there had been within the fear of the intruder's voice. But it was time somebody in the world got the benefit of the doubt. They'd carry him down to the ground, Gus and he, and give him a burial, like a man. [Image] Please click here for the next chapter [Image] [Image] CHAPTER TWO: Three years went by. His boots full of frigid water, and his rifle securely strapped to his pack, Matt Garvin was picking his way through the trash in the drainage channel between the subway rails. A hundred feet ahead of him, dim light from a roof grating patched out the darkness, and he ran his thumb over the safety catch of the Glock he had looted out of a littered pawnshop drawer on Eighth Avenue. He stopped for a moment, opened his mouth to quiet the sound of his breath, and listened. Water dripped from a girder to the concrete of the station platform ahead of him. Behind him in the tunnel--at about the Third Avenue entrance, he judged--someone else was moving. That was all right. There were two long blocks between them, and he'd be out of the tunnel by the time the other man was within dangerous distance. He listened again, disregarding the faint splash of water on the platform, the different but equally unimportant slosh up the tunnel. He heard nothing, and his eyes, probing as much of the First Avenue station platforms as he could see, found nothing but dim gray, bounded by the converging lines of platform and roof, broken by the vertical thrust of girders. Moving forward cautiously, he reached a point near the beginning of the north side platform, and stopped to listen again. Nothing moved. He pulled himself up on the platform and lay flat, the Glock ready, but there was no scrape of motion, either on this platform or on the one across the tracks, and none of the indistinct shadows changed their shapes as he watched them. Nevertheless, as a final if somewhat inconclusive check, he listened to the water droplets as they fell steadily from the girder to the platform. Sometimes a man got careless and let such a drop hit him, interrupting the beat. But there was nothing. He pushed himself up off his stomach, crouched, and padded quietly to the tiled wall beside the foot of the stairs. A few months ago, he had tried putting up a mirror there, in order to see up the stairs without exposing himself. It had been smashed within a few days, and he had been especially cautious for a while, but no one had ever been waiting for him at the head of the stairs. He had finally come to the conclusion that someone else must have solved the problem ahead of him. A fresh corpse at the street entrance had tended to confirm this--the possibility that it was only a decoy had been discarded as an overcomplication. It had been good to feel that he had an ally--if only in this vague, circumstantial way. It was no indication that the very man responsible might not be his killer tomorrow, but there was enough of an idealist left in Garvin to allow him a certain satisfaction at this proof that there was at least one other man somewhere near who could draw the distinction between self-protection and deliberate trap-setting. However, he had never tried to replace the mirror. He listened again as a matter of routine, heard nothing, and waited. After ten minutes, there had still been no sound, and knowing that his own approach had been silent, he broke suddenly and silently for the opposite wall, gun ready to fire in his hand. There was no one at the head of the stairs. He crept upward cautiously, found no one at the turnstile level, and reached the foot of the stairs to the street. It was unlikely that there would be anyone up there, exposed to the daylight. Moreover, if he made his passage into the building fast enough, he was unlikely to have any trouble. Lately, there had not been any considerable amount of sniping from windows. Ammunition was running low, and the possible rewards of nighttime scavenging from the corpses were not usually worth the expenditure. Shifting the straps of his pack into a tighter position, he moved carefully up the steps, took a sweeping look at the deserted length of Fourteenth Street, and zig-zagged across the sidewalk at a run. His beating footsteps were a sudden interruption in the absence of sound. As he reached the entrance to his building and slipped inside the door, silence returned. In the darkness of the lobby, Garvin's shoes whispered on worn rubber matting, for it had been raining on the last day the building staff had functioned. The firedoor on the stairwell clicked open and shut, and his steps on the cement stairs were regular taps of leather as he climbed. He was not completely relaxed--above the sound of his own footsteps, he listened for the noise that might be made by someone else in the stairwell. Nevertheless, though there were other people scattered throughout the fifty-odd apartments in the building, no one had ever attacked anyone else within the building itself. There had to be a sort of mutual respect between the families. The thought of fighting within the twists and corridors of the building, with every closed door a deathtrap, was not an attractive one. The stairwell, in particular, was the only means of passage to the world outside. Only a psychopath would have risked obstructing it. He reached his floor and stepped out on the landing with only a minimum amount of precaution. He crossed the corridor to his own door, unlocked it, and stepped inside, holstering his gun. The shot roared out of the hallway leading from the bedrooms and crashed into the metal doorframe beside him. Garvin leaped sideward, landing on the kitchen floor with a thud. His fingers slapped against his gun butt, hooked around it, and the gun was in his hand, his feet under him in a slash of motion as he rolled and flung himself backward behind the stove. The breath whistled out of his nostrils and back in through his mouth in an uneven gasp. There was no sound in the apartment. He turned his head from side to side, trying to find some noise--a hand on a doorknob, a footstep on linoleum--that would tell him where his attacker was. There was nothing. The kitchen was beside the apartment door. Beyond it was the dining alcove and the living room, and beyond that were two bedrooms opening on a hall that ran the remainder of the apartment's length. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, its door facing the apartment entrance. The man could have fired from either bedroom, or from the bathroom itself. Where was the man--and where was Margaret? Garvin's knuckles cracked as his hand tightened on the gun's butt, and his face became almost stuporous in its lack of overt expression. Keeping his gun ready, Garvin moved forward until he was barely hidden inside the kitchen doorway. His mind was busy searching out and separating the remembered impressions of the attack. The shot had been fired in the hall. It was impossible to decide how far back. Had the man moved after firing? He tried to remember if there had been any other sound. No, he decided. Wherever the shot had come from, there the man still was. What had happened to Margaret? His jaw tightened as he considered the possibilities. If she had seen the man come in, she might have tried to shoot him--if she had been near her gun. If not, she might still be hiding somewhere in the apartment, waiting for Garvin to come home. If the man had gotten in without her knowing it.... The possibilities were indeterminate, he told himself savagely. Whatever had happened, in any case, there was nothing he could do about it now. If she were still hidden, it was up to her to handle that part of the situation as her judgment dictated. There was still no sound in the apartment. How long had the man been here? If Margaret was still alive and undiscovered, would the hidden man stumble on her if he was forced to move on to another room? Her gun was probably in the larger bedroom. Was she there, waiting for a chance to get a shot in? He could count on nothing to help him. He and Margaret had both learned all the tricks that life in New York demanded. He would have to act as though he could be sure that she would know how to take care of herself. But he was not sure. The silence continued. He had to get the man moving; had to get some idea of his location. And he needed freedom of movement. He unstrapped his magnum and carefully set it aside. Backing up noiselessly, Garvin reached behind him and opened the casement window, pushing the panel slowly. The guide rod slid in its track with a muted sound. "Please!" The voice, distorted by the echoes of the hallway, was frightened and anxious. Garvin snatched his hand away from the window. It was quiet again. The man had stopped. but the quavering print of his voice was still playing back in Garvin's mind. And suddenly he understood how he would feel, unexpectedly trapped in a strange apartment. Every corner would have its concealed death, each step its possible drastic consequence. Was the pitiful hope of whatever goods could be brought away worth the stark terror of unknown deadliness? He opened the window a bit farther. "Please! No! I...." The words rushed out of the shadowed hallway. "I'm--I'm sorry! I was frightened...." Garvin's lips stretched in a reflex grin. If the man actually thought Garvin was somehow going to cross from window ledge to window ledge along the building's sheer outside wall, he had to be in a room where he was open to such an attack. He couldn't be in the bathroom. The large bedroom was in the corner of the apartment. By the time a man inching along the building's face could possibly reach it, it would be easy to take any number of steps to handle the situation. The man had to be in the smaller bedroom, the one nearest the living room. And he had to be standing at the door. The door to the small bedroom was set flush with the wall, and opened to the left. In order to defend the room or fire down the hallway, the door would have to be completely open. Therefore, the man's hand and arm were exposed, and, most probably, his face as well. The man had to maintain his position in command of the hall. If Garvin could once get a clear lane of fire down the hallway, it was the other man who was trapped in an exitless room. But the hall was dark, while the living room had a large window, the light of which would have made it suicidal for Garvin to step out. Once again, he thought of Margaret. He fought down the urgency of the impulse to cry out for her. If the other man didn't know about her, it was so much more advantage on Garvin's side. Grimly, Garvin worked the mechanism of the Glock as noisily as possible. The sound, like the slip of the window's guide rod, was designed only to make his unknown adversary go into a deeper panic. There had already been a bullet in the chamber. He ejected it carefully into his palm and put it in his pocket. He pushed the window completely open, thudding the guide-rod home against its stop. "Please! Listen to me!" The panicked voice began again. "I want to be friends." Garvin stopped. "Are you listening?" the man asked hesitatingly. There was no accompanying sound of movement from the bedroom. The man was maintaining his position at the door. Garvin cursed silently and did not answer. "I haven't talked to anybody for years. Not even shouted at them, or cursed. All I've done for six years is fight other people. Shooting, running. I didn't dare show myself in daylight. "It isn't worth it. Staying alive isn't worth it. Grubbing through stores for food at night. Like an animal in a garbage can!" The trembling voice was filled with desperate disgust. "Are you listening?" Unseen, Garvin's eyes grew bleak, and he nodded. He remembered the odd touch of kinship he had felt with the man who had killed the stalker at the subway entrance. The mirror at the turn of the steps had been an attempt to make at least that small part of his environment a bit less dangerous. When the stalker smashed it, it meant that there were still men who would kill for the sake of a knapsack that might or might not contain food. "Please," the man in the bedroom said. "You've got to understand why I--I came in here. I had to find some people I could talk to. I knew there were people in this building. I got a passkey out of the Stuyvesant Town offices. I wanted to find an apartment for myself. I was going to try to make friends with my neighbors." Garvin twitched a corner of his mouth. He could picture an attempt at communication with the deadly silence and armed withdrawal that lurked through the apartments beyond his own walls. "Can't you say something?" the panic-stricken man demanded. Garvin scraped the Glock's barrel against the window frame, as though an armed man were beginning to clamber out on one of the nonexistent window ledges. "No! Think! How much food can there be left, where we can get to it? There are whole gangs in the warehouses, and they won't let anybody near them. The rifle ammunition's getting low already. How long can we go on this way--fighting over every can of peas, killing each other over a new shirt? We've got to organize ourselves--get a system set up, try to establish some kind of government. It's been six years since the plague, and nothing's been done." The man stopped for a moment, and Garvin listened for the sound of motion, but there was nothing. "I--I'm sorry I shot at you. I was frightened. Everybody's frightened. They don't trust anybody. How can they?" Talk, talk, talk! What have you done with Margaret, damn you? "But please--please trust me." The unsteady voice was on the point of breaking. "I want to be friends." Despite his fear, the man obviously wasn't going to move from his position until he was absolutely sure that Garvin was out on the window ledges. Even then.... Garvin pictured the man, trembling against the door, not sure whether to run or stay, keeping watch on the hallway, ready to spin around at the sound of breaking glass behind him. He was frightened, now. But had he been? Was it only after that one shot had missed, and the self-made trap had snapped home, that the terror had begun to tremble in his throat? What had happened to Margaret? Garvin moved back to the kitchen doorway. "Come out," he said. [Image] There was a sigh from the bedroom door--a ragged exhalation that might have been relief. The man's shoes shuffled on the linoleum of the bedroom floor, and his heel struck the metal sill. He moved out into the hall, thin, his hollowed eyes dark against his pale face. [Image] Garvin pointed the Glock at his chest and fired twice. The man held his hands against himself and fell into the living room. Garvin sprang forward and looked down at him. He was dead. "Matt!" The door of the hall closet rebounded against the wall, and Margaret clasped her arms around Garvin. She buried her teeth in his shoulder for a moment. "I heard him fumbling with the key. I knew it wasn't you, and it was too far to the bedroom." Garvin slipped his gun into its holster and held her, feeling the spasmodic shake of her body as she cried. The hall closet was almost directly opposite the door to the small bedroom. She hadn't even dared warn him as he came in. He looked down at the man again, over Margaret's shoulder. One of the man's hands were tightly clasped around a Colt that must have been looted from a policeman's body. "You poor bastard," Garvin said to the corpse. "You trusted me too far." Margaret looked up, as pale as the man had been when he stepped out to meet Garvin's fire. "Matt! Hush! There wasn't anything else you could do." "He was a man--a man like me. He was scared, and he was begging for his life," Garvin said. "He wanted me to trust him, but I was too scared to believe him." He shook himself sharply. "I still can't believe him." "There wasn't anything else to do, Matt," Margaret repeated insistently. "You didn't have any way of knowing whether I was all right or not. You've said it yourself. We live the way we have to--by rules we had to make up. He was in another man's house. He broke the rules." Garvin's mouth shaped itself into a twisted slash He couldn't take his eyes off the dead man. "We're good with rules," he said. "The poor guy heard somebody--so he took a shot at me. "And what could I do? Somebody tried to kill me in my own home. It didn't really matter, after that, what he said or did, or what I thought. I had to kill him. Any way at all." He pulled away from Margaret and stood beside the corpse for a moment, his arms swinging impatiently as he tried to decide what to do. Then he moved forward, as though abruptly breaking out of an invisible shell. His footsteps echoed loudly in the hall, and then he was back from the bedroom, a sheet dangling out of his clenched hand. "Matt, what're you going to do?" Margaret asked, her voice almost a whisper as her puzzled eyes tried to read his face. He bent and caught the dead man under the arms. "I'm putting up a 'No Trespassing' sign." He dragged the corpse to the living room window, knotted one end of the sheet to the metal centerpost, and slung the remainder of the sheet around the dead man's chest, leaving just enough slack so his lolling head would hang out of sight. Then he lowered the corpse through the open window. Garvin turned. Suddenly, all his muscles seemed to twist. "I hope this keeps them away! I hope I never have to do this again." Even with the distance between them, Margaret could easily see him trembling. "I'll do it again, if I have to," he went on. "If they keep coming, I'll have to kill them. After a while, I'll be used to it. I'll shoot them down with children in their arms. I'll use their own white flags to hang them up beside this one. I'll ignore the sound of their voices. Because they can't be trusted. I know they can't be trusted, because I know I can't be trusted." He stopped, turned, and looked at Margaret. "You realize what that poor guy wanted? You know who he sounded like? Like me, that's who--like me, Matt Garvin, the guy who just wanted a place to live in peace." "Matt, I know what he said he--" "Hey! Hey, you, in there!" The muffled voice came blurredly into the apartment, followed by a series of sharp knocks on the other side of the wall that separated this apartment from the next. Margaret stopped, but Garvin slid forward, his boots making no sound on the floor as he moved quietly over to the wall. The knocking started again. "You! Next door. What's all that racket?" Garvin heard Margaret start to say something. His hand flashed out in a silencing gesture, and he put his ear to the wall. His right hand came down and touched the Glock's holster. "I'm warning you." He could hear the voice more clearly. "Speak up, or you'll never come out of there alive. I'm mighty particular about my neighbors, and if you've knocked off the ones I had, I'll make damn sure you don't enjoy their place very long." Garvin's mouth opened. He'd known there was someone in there, of course, but, up to now, there had never been any break in the silence. "Well?" The voice was impatient. "I've got the drop on you. My wife's in the hall right now, with a gun on your door. And I can get some dynamite in a big hurry." Garvin hesitated. It meant giving the other man an advantage. "Hurry up!" But there-was nothing else he could do. "It's all right," he finally said, speaking loudly enough for the other man to hear. "There was somebody in here, but we took care of it." "That's better," the other man said, but his voice was still suspicious. "Now let's hear your wife say something." Margaret moved up to the wall. She looked at Garvin questioningly, and he reluctantly nodded. "Go ahead," he said. "This is Margaret Garvin. We're--we're all right." She stopped, then seemed to reach a decision and went on with a rush. "My husband's name is Matt. Who are you?" That wasn't right. Garvin frowned. She was getting too close to an infringement on the silent privacy that had existed for so long, now. Men were no longer brothers. They were distant nodding acquaintances. Surprisingly, the other man did not hesitate a perceptible length of time before answering. "My name's Gustav Berendtsen. My wife's name is Carol." The tone of his voice had changed, and now Garvin thought he could make out the indistinct trace of a pleased chuckle in Berendtsen's voice. "Took care of it, did you? Good. Damn good! Nice to have neighbors you can depend on." The voice lost some of its clarity as Berendtsen obviously turned his head away from his side of the wall. "Hey, Toots, you can put that cannon down now. They straightened it out themselves." Out in the hall, a safety-catch clicked, and no-longer-careful footsteps moved back from the Garvins' door. Then Berendtsen's door opened and shut, and, after a moment, there was a shy voice from beside Berendtsen on the other side of the wall. "Hello. I'm Carol Berendtsen. Is--" She stopped, as though she too was as unsure of herself as Margaret and Garvin were, here in this strange situation that had suddenly materialized from beyond the rules. But she stopped only for a moment, "Is everything all right?" "Sure, everything's all right, Toots!" Berendtsen's voice cut in from behind the wall. "I've been telling you those were damn sensible people living in there. Know how to mind their own business. People who know that, know how to make sure nobody else tries minding it, either." "All right, Gus, all right," Garvin and Margaret heard her say, her low voice still carrying well enough to be heard through the masonry. "I just wanted to hear them say it." And then she added something in an even lower voice. "It's been a long time since I heard people just talking," and Garvin's hand tightened on Margaret's as they heard her. "Sure. Toots, sure. But I kept telling you it wasn't always going to be that way. I--" His voice rose up to a louder pitch. "Hey, Garvins! I gotta idea. Also got a bottle of Haig and Haig in here. Care for some? We'll come over," he added hurriedly. Garvin looked at Margaret's strained face and trembling lips. He could feel his own face tightening. "Please, Matt?" Margaret asked. She was right. It was too big a chance not to take. "Sure, Hon," he said. "But get my rifle and cover the door from the hall," he added softly. "All right," he said, raising his voice. "Come over." "Right," Berendtsen answered. "Be a minute." The words were jovial enough, Garvin thought. He heard Margaret move back into the hall, and his mind automatically registered the slight creak of the sling's leather as she lifted the rifle to cover the door. And then he heard Carol Berendtsen's voice faintly through the wall. "I--I don't know," she was saying to Gus, her voice uncertain. "Will it be all right? I mean, I haven't talked to another woman in.... What'll she think? I haven't got any good clothes. And there's a strange man in there... Gus, I look so--I'm ashamed!" And Gus Berendtsen's voice, clumsy but gentle, its power broken into softness. "Aw, look, Toots, they're just people like us. You think they've got any time for frills? I bet you're dressed just fine. And what's to be ashamed of in being a woman?" And then there was a moment's silence. "I'll bet you're prettier than she is, too." "You'd better think so, Gus." Something untied itself in Garvin. "I think you can put that rifle away, Hon," he said to Margaret. He saw her look of uncertainty, and nodded to emphasize the words. "I'm pretty sure." [Image] Garvin poured out another finger of the Scotch. He raised his glass in a silent mutual toast with Berendtsen, who grinned and lifted his own glass in response. Gus chuckled, the soft, controlled sound rumbling gently up through his thick chest. The glass was almost out of sight in his spade of a hand, huge even in proportion to the rest of his body. He sat easily in the chair that should have been too small for him, the shaped power of his personality reflected in his body's casual poise. "Ought to be able to set up a pretty good combo," he said. "One of us stays home to hold the fort while the other one goes out for the groceries. Take turns. Might try knocking a hole through this wall, too. Be easier." He slapped the plaster with his hand. Garvin nodded. "Good idea." They both smiled at the drift of women's voices that came from one of the bedrooms. "Make it easier on the baby-sitter, too." "My gal was a little worried," Berendtsen agreed. He grinned again. "You know, we may have something here." He raised his glass again, and Garvin, catching his train of thought, matched the gesture. "To the Second Republic," Berendtsen said. "All six-and-two-halves rooms of it," Garvin affirmed. Then his glance reached the living room window, and he realized that there was still something undone. He got up to loosen the sheet and let the body fall to join the others that lay scattered among the dark buildings. But he stopped before his hand touched the sheet. No one would know, now, how much honesty there had been within the fear of the intruder's voice. But it was time somebody in the world got the benefit of the doubt. They'd carry him down to the ground, Gus and he, and give him a burial, like a man. [Image] Please click here for the next chapter |
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