A Boy and His Dog

by Harlan Ellison

Blood got up and shook himself off. He was cut up bad. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and went over to lie down in the shadows, to lick himself off.

  I went and found that Quilla June, and she was crying. About all the guys we’d killed. Mostly about the one she’d killed. I couldn’t get her to stop bawling so I cracked her across the face and told her she’d saved my life, and that helped some.

  Blood came dragassing over. “How’re we going to get out of this, Albert?”

  “Let me think.”

  I thought and knew it was hopeless. No matter how many we got, there’d be more. And it was a matter of macho now. Their honor.

  “How about a fire?” Blood suggested.

  “Get away while it’s burning?” I shook my head. “They’ll have the place staked-out all around. No good.”

  “What if we don’t leave? What if we burn up with it?”

  I looked at him. Brave … and smart as hell.

  V

  We gathered all the lumber and mats and scaling ladders and vaulting boxes and benches and anything else that would burn, and piled the garbage against a wooden divider at one end of the gym. Quilla June found a can of kerosene in a storeroom, and we set fire to the whole damn pile. Then we followed Blood to the place he’d found for us. The boiler room way down under the YMCA. We all climbed into the empty boiler, and dogged down the door, leaving a release vent open for air. We had one mat in there with us, and all the ammo we could carry, and the extra rifles and sidearms the rovers’d had on them.

  “Can you catch anything?” I asked Blood.

  “A little. Not much. I’m reading one guy. The building’s burning good.”

  “You be able to tell when they split?”

  “Maybe.If they split.”

  I settled back. Quilla June was shaking from all that had happened. “Just take it easy,” I told her. “By morning the place’ll be down around our ears, and they’ll go through the rubble and find a lot of dead meat, and maybe they won’t look too hard for a chick’s body. And everything’ll be all right … if we don’t get choked off in here.”

  She smiled, very thin, and tried to look brave. She was okay, that one. She closed her eyes and settled back on the mat and tried to sleep. I was beat. I closed my eyes, too.

  “Can you handle it?” I asked Blood.

  “I suppose. You better sleep.”

  I nodded, eyes still closed, and fell on my side. I was out before I could think about it.

  When I came back, I found the girl, that Quilla June, snuggled up under my armpit, her arm around my waist, dead asleep. I could hardly breathe. It was like a furnace; hell, it was a furnace. I reached out a hand, and the wall of the boiler was so damned hot I couldn’t touch it. Blood was up on the mattress with us. That mat had been the only thing’d kept us from being singed good. He was asleep, head buried in his paws. She was asleep, still naked.

  I put a hand on her tit. It was warm. She stirred and cuddled into me closer. I got a hard-on.

  Managed to get my pants off, and rolled on top of her. She woke up fast when she felt me pry her legs apart, but it was too late by then. “Don’t … stop … what are you doing … no, don’t … ”

  But she was half-asleep, and weak, and I don’t think she really wanted to fight me anyhow.

  She cried when I broke her, of course, but after that it was okay. There was blood all over the wrestling mat. And Blood just kept sleeping.

  It was really different. Usually, when I’d get Blood to track something down for me, it’d be grab it and punch it and pork it and get away fast before something bad could happen. But when she came, she rose up off the mat, and hugged me around the back so hard I thought she’d crack my ribs, and then she settled back down slow slow slow, like I do when I’m doing leg-lifts in the makeshift gym I rigged in the auto wrecking yard. And her eyes were closed, and she was relaxed-looking. And happy. I could tell.

  We did it a lot of times, and after a while it was her idea, but I didn’t say no. And then we lay out side-by-side and talked.

  She asked me about how it was with Blood, and I told her how the skirmisher dogs had gotten telepathic, and how they’d lost the ability to hunt food for themselves, so the solos and roverpaks had to do it for them, and how dogs like Blood were good at finding chicks for solos like me. She didn’t say anything to that.

  I asked her about what it was like where she lived, in one of the downunders.

  “It’s nice. But it’s always very quiet. Everyone is very polite to everyone else. It’s just a small town.”

  “Which one you live in?”

  “Topeka. It’s real close to here.”

  “Yeah, I know. The access dropshaft is only about half a mile from here. I went out there once, to take a look around.”

  “Have you ever been in a downunder?”

  “No. But I don’t guess I want to be, either.”

  “Why? It’s very nice. You’d like it.”

  “Shit.”

  “That’s very crude.”

  “I’m very crude.”

  “Not all the time.”

  I was getting mad. “Listen, you ass, what’s the matter with you? I grabbed you and pushed you around, I raped you half a dozen times, so what’s so good about me, huh? What’s the matter with you, don’t you even have enough smarts to know when somebody’s—”

  She was smiling at me. “I didn’t mind. I liked doing it. Want to do it again?”

  I was really shocked. I moved away from her. “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you know that a chick from a downunder like you can be really mauled by solos? Don’t you know chicks get warnings from their parents in the downunders, ‘Don’t cumup, you’ll get snagged by them dirty, hairy, slobbering solos!’ Don’t you know that?”

  She put her hand on my leg and started moving it up, the fingertips just brushing my thigh. I got another hard-on. “My parents never said that about solos,” she said. Then she pulled me over her again, and kissed me, and I couldn’t stop from getting in her again.

  God, it just went on like that for hours. After a while Blood turned around and said, “I’m not going to keep pretending I’m asleep. I’m hungry. And I’m hurt.”

  I tossed her off me—she was on top by this time—and examined him. The Doberman had taken a good chunk out of his right ear, and there was a rip right down his muzzle, and blood-matted fur on one side. He was a mess, “Jesus, man, you’re a mess,” I said.

  “You’re no fucking rose garden yourself, Albert!” he snapped. I pulled my hand back.

  “Can we get out of here?” I asked him.

  He cast around, and then shook his head. “I can’t get any readings. Must be a pile of rubble on top of this boiler. I’ll have to go out and scout.”

  We kicked that around for a while, and finally decided if the building was razed, and had cooled a little, the roverpak would have gone through the ashes by now. The fact that they hadn’t tried the boiler indicated that we were probably buried pretty good. Either that, or the building was still smoldering overhead. In which case, they’d still be out there, waiting to sift the remains.

  “Think you can handle it, the condition you’re in?”

  “I guess I’ll have to, won’t I?” Blood said. He was really surly. “I mean, what with you busy coitusing your brains out, there won’t be much left for staying alive, will there?”

  I sensed real trouble with him. He didn’t like Quilla June. I moved around him and undogged the boiler hatch. It wouldn’t open. So I braced my back against the side, and jacked my legs up, and gave it a slow, steady shove.

  Whatever had fallen against it from outside resisted for a minute, then started to give, then tumbled away with a crash. I pushed the door open all the way, and looked out. The upper floors had fallen in on the basement, but by the time they’d given, they’d been mostly cinder a
nd lightweight rubble. Everything was smoking out there. I could see daylight through the smoke.

  I slipped out, burning my hands on the outside lip of the hatch. Blood followed. He started to pick his way through the debris. I could see that the boiler had been almost completely covered by the gunk that had dropped from above. Chances were good the roverpak had taken a fast look, figured we’d been fried, and moved on. But I wanted Blood to run a recon anyway. He started off, but I called him back. He came.

  “What is it?”

  I looked down at him. “I’ll tell you what it is, man. You’re acting very shitty.”

  “Sue me.”

  “Goddammit, dog, what’s got your ass up?”

  “Her. That nit chick you’ve got in there.”

  “So what? Big deal … I’ve had chicks before.”

  “Yeah, but never any that hung on like this one. I warn you, Albert, she’s going to make trouble.”

  “Don’t be dumb!” He didn’t reply. Just looked at me with anger and then limped off to check out the scene. I crawled back inside and dogged the hatch. She wanted to make it again. I said I didn’t want to; Blood had brought me down. I was bugged. And I didn’t know which one to be pissed off at.

  But God she was pretty.

  She kind of pouted and settled back with her arms wrapped around her. “Tell me some more about the downunder,” I said.

  At first she was cranky, wouldn’t say much, but after a while she opened up and started talking freely. I was learning a lot. I figured I could use it some time, maybe.

  There were only a couple of hundred downunders in what was left of the United States and Canada. They’d been sunk on the sites of wells or mines or other kinds of deep holes. Some of them, out in the west, were in natural cave formations. They went way down, maybe two to five miles. They were like big caissons, stood on end. And the people who’d settled them were squares of the worst kind. Southern Baptists, Fundamentalists, lawanorder goofs, real middle-class squares with no taste for the wild life. And they’d gone back to a kind of life that hadn’t existed for a hundred and fifty years. They’d gotten the last of the scientists to do the work, invent the how and why, and then they’d run them out. They didn’t want any progress, they didn’t want any dissent, they didn’t want anything that would make waves. They’d had enough of that. The best time in the world had been just before the First War, and they figured if they could keep it like that, they could live quiet lives and survive. Shit! I’d go nuts in one of the downunders.

  Quilla June smiled, and snuggled up again, and this time I didn’t turn her off. She started touching me again, down there and all over, and then she said, “Vic?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Have you ever been in love?”

  “What?”

  “In love? Have you ever been in love with a girl?”

  “Well, I damn well guess I haven’t!”

  “Do you know what love is?”

  “Sure. I guess I do.”

  “But if you’ve never been in love … ?”

  “Don’t be dumb. I mean, I’ve never had a bullet in the head, and I know I wouldn’t like it.”

  “You don’t know what love is, I’ll bet.”

  “Well, if it means living in a downunder, I guess I just don’t wanna find out.” We didn’t go on with the conversation much after that. She pulled me down and we did it again. And when it was over, I heard Blood scratching at the boiler. I opened the hatch, and he was standing out there.

  All clear,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. Put your pants on,” he said it with a sneer in the tone, “and come on out here. We have to talk some stuff.”

  I looked at him, and he wasn’t kidding. I got my jeans and sneakers on, and climbed down out of the boiler.

  He trotted ahead of me, away from the boiler over some blacksoot beams, and outside the gym. It was down. Looked like a rotted tooth stump.

  “Now what’s lumbering you?” I asked him.

  He scampered up on a chunk of concrete till he was almost nose level with me.

  “You’re going dumb on me, Vic.”

  I knew he was serious. No Albert shit, straight Vic. “How so?”

  “Last night, man. We could have cut out of there and left her for them.That would have been smart.”

  “I wanted her.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s what I’m talking about. It’s today now, not last night. You’ve had her about a half a hundred times. Why’re we hanging around?”

  “I want some more.”

  Then he got angry. “Yeah, well, listen, chum … I want a few things myself. I want something to eat, and I want to get rid of this pain in my side, and I want away from this turf. Maybe they don’t give up this easy.”

  “Take it easy. We can handle all that. Don’t mean she can’t go with us.”

  “Doesn’t mean,” he corrected me. “And so that’s the new story. Now we travel three, is that right?”

  I was getting really uptight myself. “You’re starting to sound like a damn poodle!”

  “And you’re starting to sound like a boxer.”

  I hauled back to crack him one. He didn’t move. I dropped the hand. I’d never hit Blood. I didn’t want to start now.

  “Sorry,” he said, softly.

  “That’s okay.”

  But we weren’t looking at each other.

  “Vic, man, you’ve got a responsibility to me, you know.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “Well, I guess maybe I do. Maybe I have to remind you of some stuff. Like the time that burnpit-screamer came up out of the street and made a grab for you.”

  I shuddered. The motherfucker’d been green. Righteous stone green, glowing like fungus. My gut heaved, just thinking.

  “And I went for him, right?”

  I nodded. Right, mutt, right.

  “And I could have been burned bad, and died, and that would’ve been all of it for me, right or wrong, isn’t that true?” I nodded again. I was getting pissed off proper. I didn’t like being made to feel guilty. It was a fifty-fifty with Blood and me. He knew that. “But I did it, right?” I remembered the way the green thing had screamed. Christ, it was all ooze and eyelashes.

  “Okay, okay, don’t hanger me.”

  “Harangue, not hanger.”

  “Well, WHATEVER!” I shouted. “Just knock off the crap, or we can forget the whole fucking arrangement!”

  Then Blood blew. “Well, maybe we should, you simple dumb putz!”

  “What’s a putz, you little turd … is that something bad … yeah, it must be … you watch your fucking mouth, son of a bitch; or I’ll kick your ass!”

  We sat there and didn’t talk for fifteen minutes. Neither one of us knew which way to go.

  Finally, I backed off a little. I talked soft and I talked slow. I was about up to here with him, but told him I was going to do right by him, like I always had, and he threatened me, saying I’d damned well better because there were a couple of very hip solos making it around the city, and they’d be delighted to have a sharp tail-scent like him. I told him I didn’t like being threatened, and he’d better watch his fucking step or I’d break his leg. He got furious and stalked off. I said screw you and went back to the boiler to take it out on that Quilla June again.

  But when I stuck my head inside the boiler, she was waiting, with a pistol one of the dead rovers had supplied. She hit me good and solid over the right eye with it, and I fell straight forward across the hatch, and was out cold.

  VI

  “I told you she was no good.” He watched me as I swabbed out the cut with disinfectant from my kit, and painted the gash with iodine. He smirked when I flinched.

  I put away the stuff, and rummaged around in the
boiler, gathering up all the spare ammo I could carry, and ditching the Browning in favor of the heavier .30-06. Then I found something that must’ve slipped out of her clothes.

  It was a little metal plate, about three inches long and an inch-and-a-half high. It had a whole string of numbers on it, and there were holes in it, in random patterns. “What’s this?” I asked Blood.

  He looked at it, sniffed it.

  “Must be an identity card of some kind. Maybe it’s what she used to get out of the downunder.”

  That made my mind up.

  I jammed it in a pocket and started out. Toward the access dropshaft.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Blood yelled after me.

  “Come on back, you’ll get killed out there!

  “I’m hungry, dammit! I’m wounded!

  “Albert, you sonofabitch! Come back here!”

  I kept right on walking. I was gonna find that bitch and brain her. Even if I had to go downunder to find her.

  It took me an hour to walk to the access dropshaft leading down to Topeka. I thought I saw Blood following, but hanging back a ways. I didn’t give a damn. I was mad.

  Then, there it was. A tall, straight, featureless pillar of shining black metal. It was maybe twenty feet in diameter, perfectly flat on top, disappearing straight into the ground. It was a cap, that was all. I walked straight up to it, and fished around in my pocket for that metal card. Then something was tugging at my right pants leg.

  “Listen, you moron, you can’t go down there!”

  I kicked him off, but he came right back.

  “Listen to me!”

  I turned around and stared at him.

  Blood sat down; the powder puffed up around him. “Albert … ”

  “My name is Vic, you little eggsucker.”

  “Okay, okay, no fooling around. Vic.” His tone softened. “Vic. Come on, man.” He was trying to get through to me. I was really boiling, but he was trying to make sense. I shrugged, and crouched down beside him.

  “Listen, man,” Blood said, “this chick has bent you way out of shape. You know you can’t go down there. It’s all square and settled, and they know everyone; they hate solos. Enough roverpaks have raided downunder, and raped their women, and stolen their food, they’ll have defenses set up. They’ll kill you, Vic!”