street. Garvin himself was protected from the south side of Fourteenth Street by the line of cars on his right. Moreover, one man and his knapsack were not generally a worthwhile target, any longer.
Still, worthwhile or not, he picked his route carefully, and held to a low, weaving crouch. Holding the shotgun at high port, he moved rapidly eastward between the twin lines of cars, his eyes never still, his feet in their tennis shoes less noisy than the wind, his head constantly turning as he listened for what his eyes might miss.
And it was his ears that warned him at the corner of Avenue A. He heard the quiet sound of a store’s latched door, which was bound to snap its lock no matter how carefully eased into place, and then there was the friction of leather shoes on a sidewalk.
He stopped, sheltered by an automobile’s curved flanks, and the shotgun’s muzzle swung almost automatically toward the source of the sound. He straightened his back cautiously and looked across the street through the car’s rear windows, his breath sucking in through his teeth as he saw her.
The girl was slim; sprinting across the sidewalk in nervously choppy strides as she left the drugstore. Her face was white, and her eyes were terrifiedly wide. Obviously panicked at being out in the street during daylight, she was running blindly, straight for where Garvin was crouched, trying to reach the comparative safety of the island before she was seen.
He took two rapid steps backward before he realized there was no place for him to hide, and the girl was across the street before he could think of anything else to do. Then she was on the island, ducking into the shelter of the double row of cars, and it was too late to think.
She hadn’t seen him yet. She was too intent on safety to see danger until he straightened out of his instinctive crouch, letting the shotgun’s muzzle drop. Then her mouth opened, her eyes becoming desperate, and he saw the unexpected gun in her other hand.
“Hey!” He shouted in surprise as he charged forward, throwing his arm out. He felt the shock of his forearm deflecting her wrist upward, and then the gun jumped in her hand, the echoes pattering like a hard-shoe dance down the empty street. His charge threw their bodies together, and his arm hooked like a whip and pinned her gun-arm out of the way. His thighs snapped together in time to take the kick of her driving knee, but he could only dig his chin into her shoulder and try to shelter his face against the side of her head as her other hand clawed at his ear and neck. Then his momentum overcame her balance, and they were safely down on the island’s cobblestones.
“Stay down!” he grunted urgently as he twisted around and slapped the gun out of her hand, catching it before it could be damaged against the stones. She sobbed an incoherent reply, and her nails drew fresh blood from his face. He fell back, but threw his shoulder into her stomach in time to keep her from forcing her way back to her feet.
“Haven’t you got any sense?” he cursed out hoarsely as she tried to break away. He flung an arm out and kept her scrambling fingers from his eyes. “Every gun in the neighborhood’s waiting for us to stand up and get shot.”
“Oh!” She stopped struggling immediately, and this unexpected willingness to believe him was more surprising than his first glimpse of her. As her arms dropped, he rolled away, wiping the blood off his stinging face.
“For Christ’s sake!” he panted, “What did you think I was going to do?”
Her face turned color. “I—”
“Don’t be stupid!” he cut her off harshly. “Do you have any idea how many women were left alive by that damn virus, or whatever it was?” She winced away from the sound of his voice, surprising him again. How did she manage to stay alive, this naive and sensitive? “Raping a girl sort of ruins your chances for striking up a permanent acquaintance with her,” he went on in a gentler voice, and was oddly pleased to see a smile lightly touch her face.
“Here.” He tossed her gun into her lap. “Reload.”
“What?” She was staring down at it.
“Reload, damn it,” he repeated with rough persistence. “You’re one round short.” She picked the weapon up gingerly, but snapped the cylinder out as if she knew what she was doing, and he felt free to forget her for the moment.
He pulled his legs up under him and got into a squat crouch, turning his upper body from side to side as he tried to spot the sniper he was almost sure the sound of her shot had attracted. One man was a doubtful target, but the two of them were worth anyone’s attention, and he did not trust that anyone’s eyesight to save the girl.
The windows of Fourteenth Street looked blankly back at him. For some reason, he shuddered slightly.
“Do you see anyone?” the girl asked softly, surprising him again, for he had forgotten her as an individual even while adding her as a factor to the problem of safety.
He shook his head. “No. That’s what worries me. Somebody should have been curious enough to look out. Probably, somebody was—and now he’s picked up a rifle.”
Apprehension overlaid her face. “What’re we going to do? I’ve got to get home.” She fumbled in her jumper pockets until she found a tube of sulfa ointment. “My father’s hurt.”
He nodded briefly. At least that explained why she’d been outside. Then he grimaced. “Gunshot wound?”
“Yes.”
“Thought so. That stuff’s no good. Not anymore.”
“There were so many kinds of things in the drugstore,” she said uncertainly. “This was the only one I was sure of. Is it too old?”
He shrugged. “Way past its expiration date, that’s for sure. And I’ve got a hunch we’re up against whole new kinds of bacteria that won’t even blink at the stuff. Every damn antibiotic in the world was turned loose, I guess, and what lived through that is what we’ve got to deal with. These days, my vote’s for soap and carbolic acid.
“Bad?” he asked suddenly.
“What?”
“Is he hurt bad?”
Her lip trembled. “He was shot through the chest three days ago.”
He grunted, then looked back at the blank windows again. “Look—will you stay here until I get back? I want to see you home. You need it,” he added bluntly.
“Where are you going?”
“Drugstore.”
Her lips parted in bewilderment. The innocence of trust did not belong on this deadly street. Her simple acceptance of everything he told her—even her failure to shoot him when he gave her back the gun—reacted in him to create a baseless but deep and sudden anger.
“To make a phone call,” he added with brutal sarcasm. Then he managed to smooth his voice. “If something happens, don’t you do anything but turn around and go home, understand?”
The anger fading, but still strong, he jumped to his feet and began to run without waiting for an answer.
Stupid kid, he thought as he weaved across the street. She had absolutely no business running around loose. He crossed the white center-line, and no one had fired yet.
If the snipers had any brains, they’d wait until he came out. They’d be able to judge whether his load was worth bothering with.
How had she managed to live this long? His sole slammed into the curb, and he drove himself across the sidewalk.
Just my luck to get shot by somebody stupid.
He tore the door open and flung himself into the drugstore, catching one of the fountain stools for balance as he stopped. He leaned on it for a moment while he waited for his breath to slow.
They were probably figuring the smart percentage. One man with his pack wasn’t temptation enough. He and the girl definitely were, once they were close together again, where a simple dash under cover of night would reach their bodies. But the girl by herself was safe from all but the myopic, and he, separated from her, was also moderately safe. A handful of packages from the drugstore might tip the scales against him—until you stopped to
