by Ed Gorman
SURVIVAL
By Ed Gorman
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
© 2012 Ed Gorman
Cover Design By: David Dodd
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OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY ED GORMAN
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Nightmare Child
Serpent's Kiss
Shadow Games
Showdown
Robert Payne Series
Blood Moon
Hawk Moon
Voodoo Moon
Harlot's Moon
Sam McCain Series
The Day the Music Died
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Murder in the Wings
The Autumn Dead
A Cry of Shadows
Novellas:
The End of It All
Cast in Dark Waters (with Tom Piccirilli)
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Chapter 1
A lot of people in the hospital were still mad at me about last night . . . but then they'd been mad at me before and they'd be mad at me again . . .
. . . the problem was, what got them mad was that he was more crazed than dangerous, the dreamduster who'd broken into the supply area on the first floor. He was also nine years old. They'd wanted me to kill him but I'd declined the honor and handed my .38 auto Colt to Young Doctor Pelham and said, you want him killed, you kill him yourself. Pelham just muttered some bullshit about the Hippocratic oath and gave me my weapon back.
What I ended up doing with the little bastard was putting a chute on him and then taking him up on a skymobile and pushing him out somewhere over Zone
He'd be lucky to survive forty-eight hours. There was some new kind of influenza taking hold there. It had already buried something like 2,000 people in less than a week. Maybe I would've done him a favor killing him quick the way Pelham wanted me to. Being a dreamduster, his life was over anyway . . .
After dumping the kid, I went back to the hospital and walked the ten flights up to my room. There's an elevator but since all our power comes from the emergency generators Pelham figured out how to soup-up, we use the elevators only when it's absolutely necessary.
My little place is on the same floor as the mutants that our two resident bio-engineers are studying with the belief that one of the pathetic wretches will someday yield a vaccine useful to what remains of the human race. Tuesday, March 6, 2009-six long years ago now-the Fascist-Christian party got their hands on several nuclear warheads (helped considerably by several Pentagon Generals who were also part of the plot) and proceeded to purify our entire planet of its sins and sinners. What the Christers in all their wisdom didn't understand was that twenty of the warheads also carried some pretty wild germ warfare devices, devices that had killed many of the workers who'd helped create them.
Tenth floor of the hospital used to be the psych ward. Each patient had his own room with a heavy door and a glass observation square built in.
I used to hurry past the doors on the way to my room but now I stopped most times and peered in through the squares.
They're pretty repulsive looking, no doubt about that, none older than five years old, none resembling a real human being in more than a passing way, not unless you consider three arms and no vertebrae-or a completely spherical body with a head the size and shape of a pin-cushion-or a squid-like creature with heartbreaking little hand-flippers-definitely not the kind of folk you'd like to see at your next family reunion.
They were used to seeing me now and as I waggled my fingers and smiled at them, they made these sad frantic little noises, the way puppies do when they want to be picked up. So, exhausted as I was, I spent a few minutes with each of them. By now I was not only used to looking at them, I was also used to smelling them. Poor little bastards, they can't help it.
I went to my room and got some sleep.
What I am, you see, is what they call an Outrider. Back in the Old West, this was a person who rode on ahead of the wagon train to make sure everything was safe.
A year ago, after my wife and two daughters died from one of the variant strains of flu that had claimed half the people in Fort Waukegan, I tried to kill myself with my trusty .38 auto Colt. Oh, the bullet went in all right but it managed to traverse the exterior of my skull without doing serious or permanent damage.
A scout from Fort Glencoe found me out on the periphery of Zone 2 and brought me back to the hospital. Once they had me on my feet again, they asked me what I'd done before the Christers got their bright idea of "purifying" the planet. When I told them I'd been a homicide detective, they asked me how I'd like to stay in Fort Glencoe permanently, as an Outrider-scouting Zones 1 through 5 surrounding Fort Glencoe and making sure no bands of warriors were headed here-and doubling as a hospital security guard. Dreamdusters, the junkies who got off on synthetic powder that was cheap to make and more powerfully addictive than any heroin ever concocted were always breaking into hospital supply rooms in search of toxins and vaccines that would give them the ultimate kick 'til they got some real dreamdust.
They kept telling me how lucky I was to be alive.
I wasn't sure about that.
But I stayed on as their Outrider and Security man and it was in that role that I first heard of Paineaters, even though I didn't quite believe in them, at least not as described by my boss and nemesis, Young Doc Pelham.
Troubled sleep. But then it usually is. I dream of Joan and the girls and I wake up with a terrible sadness upon me. Usually I throw my legs off the side of the bed and sit there with my head in my hands remembering faces and voices and touches and laughter.
Then there's the nightmare. It started a few months back when I-well when I got in some trouble with the staff here . . .
Today, though, there wasn't any time for reveries.
Not with somebody pounding, pounding, pounding on my door.
"Yeah?" I said, rolling, still mostly asleep, from bed.
She didn't say anything. Just came through the door.
Nurse Polly. Coppery hair; big brown melancholy eyes; sweet little wrists and ankles; and a kind of childlike faith that everything will always work out.
"Pelham."
"Oh, great," I said.
"Emergency, he says."
"Isn't it always?"
She gave me a look I couldn't quite read. "You slept through it."
"Slept through what?"
I stood up, giving her a good look at my hairy legs in boxer shorts. (Nurse Polly and I had made love several times in a conveniently located storage closet on the third floor. We always did it standing up. She was very good, sexy and tender at the same time. She seemed to sense that I always felt guilty about it. "You're thinking about your wife, aren't you?"
"Yeah; guess I am." ''That's all right."
"It is?"
"Sure. I'm thinking about my husband. He died pretty much the same way." And then we'd just hold each other, two lonely animals needing comfort and solace.)
"We had two people die in surgery last night. He couldn't operate because-Well, you know."
"God."
"We've got three operations scheduled today and no Paineater."
"I won't go alone. I want somebody to go with . me."
"I'll go."
"Really?"
"Uh-huh."
"I don't know."
"Why?"
"Polly, you've got a great big heart. And you can get so involved with them . . . " I shook my head. "You know what happened to me, what I did."
I didn't know if she felt like being held by a hairy guy in white boxer shorts with red hearts on them but I figured I'd give it a try.
I held her and she seemed glad I did, snuggling into me and putting her arms around my waist. Then she took my hand. "C'mon. Let's go see Pelham."
But I held back. "You know what I did-he shouldn't send me out to get a new one." I was getting spooked. I didn't want to go through it all again.
She looked at me and shook her head. "You want me to take you down and show you the patients waiting for surgery? One of them had his eyes cut out by a dreamduster."
"Shit," I said.
Chapter 2
Young Doctor Pelham might not be so bad under normal circumstances-where a doctor had the staff and facilities to do his best work-but here he's always stressed out and usually angry. I might be that way myself if I was losing 60% of my patients on the table.
A day or two after the Christers dropped the bombs, the looting and raping and murdering began. I hate to be cynical about it but the human beast was a much darker one than I'd ever imagined. Made me regret all the times I'd been civilized about it and spoken up against the death penalty.
A couple of things became clear to all citizens good and true, man and woman, white and black, Christian and Jew, straight and gay-that there were a whole lot of really terrible people out there meaning them great malice. The good folk would have to band together. The concept of a fortress came along soon after.
Most Forts comprise five or six miles inside a wall of junk cars. The walls are patrolled twenty-four hours by mean humans and even meaner dogs. Zoners, those living in the outer areas, sometimes sneak through but most of them end up as little more than blood and flesh gleaming on the teeth of the Dobermans.
Most Forts are also built around hospitals. The good citizens had to quickly decide which was the most important of all buildings. Police station? Courthouse? Hospital? Indeed. With the bioengineered warheads continuing to do their work, life was a constant struggle not only against violence-once every three months or so a small army of Zoners would take a run at the various Forts and inflict great casualties. They also brought disease.
Inside the walls of scrap metal, the citizens lived in any sort of shelter they could find. Houses, garages, schools, roller rinks-it didn't matter. You lived where you could find room for you and your family.
Then there was the hospital. I know how you probably imagine it, ten floors of the various units that all modem hospitals have-maternity, pediatric, surgical, psychiatric, intermediate care, intensive care-all staffed by crisply garbed interns and residents and registered nurses and practical nurses and nurses aides, many of whom spend their time walking between the pharmacy, the central service department, the food service and the laboratories.
But forget it.
This hospital is ten floors of smashed windows and bullet-riddled walls and blood-stained floors. Before the Fortress wall could be erected, some roving Zoners staged a six-day battle that cost a thousand people their lives, and nearly resulted in the Zoners taking over the hospital.
Patients are brought in on the average of fourteen a day. On average, eight of those are buried within twenty-four hours.
''There isn't any time for your usual bullshit," Young Doctor Pelham told me when I stood before his desk. "In case you want to give me any, I mean."
The glamorous Dr. Sullivan, dark of hair and eye, red of mouth, supple and ample of figure, sat in a chair across the room, listening. Everybody knew two things about the good doctors Pelham and Sullivan. That they'd once been lovers. And that they now hated each other and that Sullivan wanted Pelham's job. She was always telling jokes about him behind his back.
''They're kids," I said, wishing Polly had stayed. Her presence would have made Pelham less harsh. She had that effect on people.
"I know they're kids." .
"Little kids."
"Little kids. Right. But I don't have a lot of choice in the matter. I have to do right by my patients."
Much as I dislike him, Pelham's arguments about the Paineaters are probably sound. Ethically, he had to weigh the welfare of his patients against the welfare of the Paineaters. He had to choose his patients.
He sat behind his desk, a trim man in a white medical smock that had lost its dignity to spatters of human blood and other fluids. He looked up at me with tired brown eyes and a face that would have been handsome if it didn't look quite so petulant most of the time. "I've got what he wants."
He reached down behind his desk and lifted up a leather briefcase. He set it on the desk.
"It's a shame we have to deal with people like that," Dr. Sullivan said.
"Do you have a better idea, Susan?" Pelham snapped.
"No, I guess I don't."
''Then I'd thank you to stay out of this."
She really was twice as beautiful when she was angry. She got up and left the room. "I want one understanding," I said.
"Here we go," he said, "you and your fucking understandings."
"I won't bodyguard her. Don't forget what happened last time."
The brown eyes turned hostile. "You think I could forget what you did, Congreve? You think any of us could ever forget what you did?"
"I was thinking of her."
"Sure you were, Congreve, because you're such a noble sonofabitch." He shook his head. "You did it because you couldn't take it anymore. Because you weren't tough enough."
He pushed the briefcase across to me.
"We need one right away. I've got seven patients ready for surgery. They're going to die if I don't get to them in just a few hours."
I picked up the briefcase. "Just so we understand each other, Doc. I won't bodyguard her."
He smiled that smirky aggravating smile of his. "It's not something you have to worry about, Congreve. You think after what you did, we'd even want you to guard her?"
I guess he probably had it right. Who the hell would want me to guard her?
I went outside and got in my skymobile.
Chapter 3
Polly was in the passenger seat. She'd changed into a green blouse and jeans and a brown suede jacket.
"I don't remember inviting you."
"C'mon, Congreve. I won't be any trouble."
"I get downed somewhere and surrounded by a gang of Zoners and you won't be any trouble? Then I have to worry about you as well as myself."
She brought an impressive silver Ruger from somewhere inside her jacket. "I think I can take care of myself."
If you've ever seen photographs or film of Berlin right after World War II, you have some sense of what Chicago looks like these days, skyscrapers toppled, entire neighborhoods reduced to ragged brick and jagged glass and dusty heaps of stone. With no sanitation, no electricity, no official order of any kind, you can pretty well imagine what's happened: the predators have taken over. Warlords divided up various parts of each Zone. You do what they say or they kill you. Very simple.
We were headed for the eastern sector of Zone 2, which had once been the inner-city.
"I disappointed you today, didn't I?" Polly said.
"A little, I suppose."
"I know how you feel about Paineaters."
"I can't help it. I just keep seeing my own daughters."
"We don't have any choice, Congreve. You have to understand that."
"I'll take your word for it."
"You can really be an asshole sometimes."
"But Pelham can't?"
"We weren't talking about Pelham."
"I was. Pelham and all the other Pelhams who
run these Fortresses and use Paineaters."
"You should see the patients who-"
"I've seen the patients," I said, "that's the only reason I'm doing this. Because I don't have the stomach or balls or whatever it takes to see all those people lying there and suffering. Otherwise I wouldn't help at all."
She leaned over and touched my hand. "I shouldn't have called you an asshole."
I smiled at her. "Oh, what should you have called me?"
She smiled right back. "A prick is what I should have called you."
"I guess that's a promotion of sorts, anyway."
"Of sorts," she said.
Sometimes when you're up there, you can forget everything that's happened in the last six years. Dawn and sunset are especially beautiful and you can feel some of the old comfort and security you knew; and that awe you found in the beauty of natural things. That's why I took the skymobile every chance I got . . . because if I didn't look down I could pretend that the world was the same as it had always been . . .
The last twenty miles, we went in low. That's when you get a sense of the daily carnage, going low like that.
Bodies and body parts strewn all over the bomb blasted Interstate. And not just warriors, either, children, women, family pets. Families try to leave a Zone area when there's a war going on. Too often they make the mistake of following the Interstate where bandits wait. These are not the gentlemen bandits of Robin Hood fame. A doc told me once he'd seen a ten-year-old girl that ten adult bandits had gang raped. I'd kill all of them if I got a chance.
Originally, Jackson Heights had been a nice little shopping area for upscale folks. But those upscale folks who didn't get killed by the Christers' bombs got their throats slashed by the Zoners who took the place over and renamed it after one of their old time leaders.
