a roof like that. Somebody’s sure to pick him off.”
“I didn’t mean… But you’re right. He is being foolish.”
No, of course she hadn’t meant what he meant. Garvin cursed himself again. To the girl, it was incomprehensible that anyone would want to kill someone else. He, to whom it was merely stupid to expose oneself to possible fire, had completely misunderstood her. He was a predator, weighing every move against the chance of becoming prey. She was a fledgling who had fallen out of her nest into his hungry world.
He caught himself sharply, derision in his mind. But, maudlin or not, he nevertheless did not want to leave her now, with no one to protect her.
She looked at him again, still waiting. He did not say anything, but kept his eyes away from her face, waiting in turn.
“You can’t go back out there now,” she said finally, hesitating.
“No—no, I can’t.” He tried to keep his voice noncommittal.
“Well, I… You can’t go out. You’ll have to stay here.”
“Yes.”
And there it was. His fingers twisted back into his damp palm and curled in a nervous fist. “Let’s get going,” he said harshly. “We have to see about your father.”
Her expression changed, as though some cryptic apprehension had drained away in her—as though she, in her turn, had been afraid that he would not do what she hoped he would. Her voice, too, was steadier, and her lips rose into a gentle smile.
“I’ll have to introduce you. What’s your name?”
He flushed, startling himself. A gentle, remembered voice chided him from the past. Matthew, you were impolite.
“Matth—Matt Garvin,” he blurted.
She smiled again. “I’m Margaret Cottrell. Hello.”
He took her extended hand and clasped it awkwardly, releasing it with abrupt clumsiness.
He wondered if he’d been right—if she had not wanted him to leave, and had not known what she could do to stop him if he tried. The thought was a disquieting one, because he could not resolve it, or reach a decision. He followed her warily as she turned toward the stairway behind the lifeless elevators. Just before she became no more than a darker shadow in the stairwell’s gloom, he caught the smile on her lips once more.
The apartment was on the third floor. When they came out of the stairway, she went to the nearest door, knocked, and unlocked it. She turned to Garvin, who had stopped a yard away.
“Please come in,” she said.
He started forward uneasily. He trusted the girl to some extent—more than he trusted anyone else, certainly—but for two and a half years, he had never opened any closed door before completely satisfying himself that nothing dangerous could be waiting behind it.
Yet, he could not let the girl know that he distrusted the apartment. To her, it would probably seem foolish, and he did not want her to think him a fool.
He stepped into the doorway, trying to hold his shotgun inconspicuously.
“Margaret?” The voice that came from inside the apartment was thin and strained. Worry flickered over the girl’s face.
“I’ll be right there, father. I’ve got someone with me.” She touched Garvin’s arm. “Please.”
The second invitation broke his uncertainty, and he stepped inside.
“He’s in the back bedroom,” she whispered, and he nodded.
To his surprise, he noticed that the place was heated. A kerosene range had replaced the gas stove in the kitchen, beside the front door, and there was a space heater in the living room. Both had their stovepipes carefully led into the apartment’s ventilation ducts, and the hall grille had been masked off to prevent a backdraft. Garvin pursed his lips. It was a better-organized place than he’d expected.
They reached the bedroom doorway, and Matt saw a thin man propped partially up in the bed, the intensity of the eyes heightened by the same fever that paled his lips. His chest was bandaged, and a wastebasket full of reddened facial tissues sat beside the bed. Garvin felt his mouth twitch into a grimace. The man was hemorrhaging.
“Father,” Margaret said, “This is Matt Garvin. Matt—my father, John Cottrell.”
“I’m glad to meet you, sir,” Garvin said.
“I rather suspect that I’m glad to see you, too,” Cottrell said, smiling ruefully. The pale eyes, sunken deep in their dark sockets, turned to Margaret. “Were you the cause of all that firing outside?”
“There’s a man up on the roof across the street,” she said. “He tried to kill Matt as he was bringing me home.”
“She pulled me out of a real mess,” Garvin put in.
“But Matt went back into the drugstore, after he met me and I told him you were hurt,” Margaret said.
Cottrell’s gaze shifted back and forth between them, his smile growing. “After he met you, eh?” He coughed for a moment, and wiped his mouth. “I’d like to hear about that, while Matt’s looking at this.” He gestured toward his bandaged chest, wincing at the pull on his muscles. “Meanwhile, Margaret, I think I’m getting hungry. Could you make some breakfast?”
The girl nodded and went out to the kitchen. Garvin slipped the pack off his back and took out the supplies from the drugstore. As he walked toward the bed, he caught Cottrell’s look. The man was too sick for hunger, and Matt had eaten, but neither of them wanted the girl in the room while they were appraising each other.
“A typical day in our fair city,” Cottrell said when Matt filled him in on what had happened this morning.
Matt grunted. He had washed the caked blood off Cottrell’s chest, and swabbed out the wound, which was showing signs of a mild infection unimportant in itself.
The bullet was deep in Cottrell’s chest—too deep to be probed for. And there was a constant thin film of blood in the old man’s mouth. Garvin re-bandaged him and threw the dirty swabs and bandages away. Then he put the bottle of germicide down on the table beside the bed, together with the rest of the supplies. He strapped his knapsack shut, testing its balance in his hand. He picked up his shotgun and took the shells out of it.
“Being busy won’t accomplish very much, Matt,” Cottrell said quietly.
Garvin looked up from the gun, his breath gusting out in a tired sigh. The blood in Cottrell’s throat and bronchial tubes made him cough. When he coughed, the wound that bled into his respiratory system tore itself open a little farther. And more blood leaked in and made him cough harder.
“I don’t know very much medicine,” Garvin said. “I’ve read a first aid manual. But I don’t think you’ve got much time.”
Cottrell nodded. He coughed again, and smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid you’re right.” He threw the newly bloodied facial tissue into the wastebasket. “Now, then, what are your plans?”
The two men looked at each other. There was no point to hedging. Cottrell was going to die, and Margaret would be left defenseless when he did. Garvin was in the apartment—a place he never could have reached without Margaret—and Margaret could not now survive without him. On the level of pure logic, the problem and its answer were simple.
“I don’t know, exactly,” Garvin answered slowly. “Before I met Margaret, I was going to find myself someplace to hole up with a couple of years’ worth of supplies, if I could gather ’em. There’s more in this town than most people know.”
“Or are expert enough to get away from other people?”
Garvin looked at Cottrell with noncommittal sadness. “Maybe. I’ve come to my own way of looking at it. Anyhow, I figure if I can hold out long enough, when they start getting desperate and break into apartments—if I can make it through that, then somebody’s bound to get things organized sooner or later, and I can join ’em. I figure we’re in for a time of weeding-out. The ones who live through it will have brains enough to realize turning wolf doesn’t cure hunger.
“Anyway—now that I’m here, I guess I’ll do what I was intending to. Carry in all the stuff I can, and just hope. It isn’t much,” he finished, “but it’s the best I can think of.” He did not mention the obstacle he was most worried about, but it was one over which he had no control. Only Margaret could say what her reaction would
