by Ann
‘He’s probably wandering around the city seeing what he can pick up. He’s a resourceful guy. Probably came back with something we can really use but haven’t thought of.’
Judy didn’t flash me the anticipated smile. Instead, she frowned. ‘What if he went down to the research center?’
‘I’m sure he didn’t,’ I told her. ‘He’s a trusting soul, but he’s not a fool.’
I kept my eyes down as I spoke. I’m not a good liar. And that very question had been nagging at my gut. What if George had been stupid enough to present himself to the researchers? If he had, he was through. They’d never let him go and we’d never see him again.
For George wasn’t an immune like us. He was different. Judy and I had caught the virus – or toxin – and defeated it. We were left with terrible scars from the battle but we had survived. We acquired our immunity through battle with the softness agent. George was special – he had remained untouched. He’d exposed himself to infected people for months as he helped everyone he could, and was still hard all over. Not so much as a little toe had gone soft on him. Which meant – to me at least – that George had been born with some sort of immunity to the softness.
Wouldn’t those researchers love to get their needles and scalpels into him!
I wondered if they had. It was possible George might have been picked up and brought down to the research center against his will. He told me once that he’d seen official-looking vans and cars prowling the streets, driven by guys wearing gas masks or the like. But that had been months ago and he hadn’t reported anything like it since. Certainly no cars had been on this street in recent memory. I warned him time and again about roaming around in the daylight but he always laughed good-naturedly and said nobody’d ever catch him – he was too fast.
What if he’d run into someone faster?
There was only one thing to do.
‘I’m going to take a stroll over to George’s just to see if he’s okay.’
Judy gasped. ‘No, Dad! You can’t! It’s too far!’
‘Only across the street.’
‘But your legs –’
‘– are only half gone.’
I’d met George shortly after the last riot. I had two hard legs then. I’d come looking for a sturdier building than the one we’d been burned out of. He helped us move in here.
I was suspicious at first, I admit that. I mean, I kept asking myself, What does this guy want? Turned out he only wanted to be friends. And so friends we became. He was soon the only other man I trusted in this whole world. And that being the case, I wanted a gun – for protection against all those other men I didn’t trust. George told me he had stolen a bunch during the early lootings. I traded him some sterno and batteries for a .38 and a pump-action 12-gauge shotgun with ammo for both. I promptly sawed off the barrel of the shotgun. If the need arose, I could clear a room real fast with that baby.
So it was the shotgun I reached for now. No need to fool with it – I kept its chamber empty and its magazine loaded with #5 shells. I laid it on the floor and reached into the rag bag by the door and began tying old undershirts around my knees. Maybe I shouldn’t call them knees; with the lower legs and caps gone, ‘knee’ hardly seems appropriate, but it’ll have to serve.
From there it was a look through the peep hole to make sure the hall was clear, a blown kiss to Judy, then a shuffle into the hall. I was extra wary at first, ranging the landing up and down, looking for rats. But there weren’t any in sight. I slung the shotgun around my neck, letting it hang in front as I started down the stairs one by one on hands and butt, knees first, each flabby lower leg dragging alongside its respective thigh.
Two flights down to the lobby, then up on my padded knees to the swinging door, a hard push through and I was out on the street.
Silence.
We kept our windows tightly closed against the cold and so I hadn’t noticed the change. Now it hit me like a slap in the face. As a lifelong New Yorker I’d never heard – or not heard – the city like this. Even when there’d been nothing doing on your street, you could always hear that dull roar pulsing from the sky and the pavement and the walls of the buildings. It was the life sound of the city, the beating of its heart, the whisper of its breath, the susurrant rush of blood through its capillaries.
It had stopped.
The shiver that ran over me was not just the result of the sharp edge of the March wind. The street was deserted. A plague had been through here, but there were no contorted bodies strewn about. You didn’t fall down and die on the spot with the softness. No, that would be too kind. You died by inches, by bone lengths, in back rooms, trapped, unable to make it to the street. No public displays of morbidity. Just solitary deaths of quiet desperation.
In a secret way I was glad everyone was gone – nobody around to see me tooling across the sidewalk on my rag-wrapped knees like some skid row geek.
The city looked different from down here. You never realize how cracked the sidewalks are, how dirty, when you have legs to stand on. The buildings, their windows glaring red with the setting sun that had poked through the clouds over New Jersey, looked half again as tall as they had when I was a taller man.
I shuffled to the street and caught myself looking both ways before sliding off the curb. I smiled at the thought of getting run down by a truck on my first trip in over a month across a street that probably hadn’t seen the underside of a car since December.
Despite the absurdity of it, I hurried across, and felt relief when I finally reached the far curb. Pulling open the damn doors to George’s apartment building was a chore, but I slipped through both of them and into the lobby. George’s bike – a light frame Italian model ten-speeder – was there. I didn’t like that. George took that bike everywhere. Of course he could have found a car and some gas and gone sightseeing and not told me, but still the sight of that bike standing there made me uneasy.
I shuffled by the silent bank of elevators, watching my longing expression reflected in their silent, immobile chrome doors as I passed. The fire door to the stairwell was a heavy one, but I squeezed through and started up the steps – backwards. Maybe there was a better way, but I hadn’t found it. It was all in the arms: Sit on the bottom step, get your arms back, palms down on the step above, lever yourself up. Repeat this ten times and you’ve done a flight of stairs. Two flights per floor. Thank the Lord or Whatever that George had decided he preferred a second floor apartment to a penthouse after the final power failure.
It was a good thing I was going up backwards. I might never have seen the rats if I’d been faced around the other way.
Just one appeared at first. Alone, it was almost cute with its twitching whiskers and its head bobbing up and down as it sniffed the air at the bottom of the flight. Then two more joined it, then another half dozen. Soon they were a brown wave, undulating up the steps toward me. I hesitated for an instant, horrified and fascinated by their numbers and all their little black eyes sweeping toward me, then I jolted myself into action. I swung the scatter gun around, pumped a shell into the chamber, and let them have a blast. Dimly through the reverberating roar of the shotgun I heard a chorus of squeals and saw flashes of flying crimson blossoms, then I was ducking my face into my arms to protect my eyes from the ricocheting shot. I should have realized the danger of shooting in a cinder-block stairwell like this. Not that it would have changed things – I still had to protect myself – but I should have anticipated the ricochets.
The rats did what I’d hoped they’d do – jumped on the dead and near-dead of their number and forgot about me. I let the gun hang in front of me again and continued up the stairs to George’s floor.
He didn’t answer his bell but the door was unlocked. I’d warned him about that in the past but he’d only laughed in that carefree way of his. ‘Who’s gonna pop in?’ he’d say. Probably no one. But that didn’t keep me from locking mine, even though George was the only one who knew where I lived. I wondered if that meant I d
idn’t really trust George.
I put the question aside and pushed the door open.
It stank inside. And it was empty as far as I could see. But there was this sound, this wheezing, coming from one of the bedrooms. Calling his name and announcing my own so I wouldn’t get my head blown off, I closed the door behind me – locked it – and followed the sound. I found George.
And retched.
George was a blob of flesh in the middle of his bed. Everything but some ribs, some of his facial bones, and the back of his skull had gone soft on him.
I stood there on my knees in shock, wondering how this could have happened. George was immune! He’d laughed at the softness! He’d been walking around as good as new just last week. And now…
His lips were dry and cracked and blue – he couldn’t speak, couldn’t swallow, could barely breathe. And his eyes…they seemed to be just floating there in a quivering pool of flesh, begging me…darting to his left again and again…begging me…
For what?
I looked to his left and saw the guns. He had a suitcase full of them by the bedroom door. All kinds. I picked up a heavy-looking revolver – an S&W .357 – and glanced at him. He closed his eyes and I thought he smiled.
I almost dropped the pistol when I realized what he wanted.
‘No, George!’
He opened his eyes again. They began to fill with tears.
‘George – I can’t!’
Something like a sob bubbled past his lips. And his eyes…his pleading eyes…
I stood there a long time in the stink of his bedroom, listening to him wheeze, feeling the sweat collect between my palm and the pistol grip. I knew I couldn’t do it. Not George, the big, friendly, good-natured slob I’d been depending on.
Suddenly, I felt my pity begin to evaporate as a flare of irrational anger began to rise. I had been depending on George now that my legs were half gone, and here he’d gone soft on me. The bitter disappointment fueled the anger. I knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t help hating George just then for letting me down.
‘Damn you, George!’
I raised the pistol and pointed it where I thought his brain should be. I turned my head away and pulled the trigger. Twice. The pistol jumped in my hand. The sound was deafening in the confines of the bedroom.
Then all was quiet except for the ringing in my ears. George wasn’t wheezing anymore. I didn’t look around. I didn’t have to see. I have a good imagination.
I fled that apartment as fast as my ruined legs would carry me.
But I couldn’t escape the vision of George and how he looked before I shot him. It haunted me every inch of the way home, down the now empty stairs where only a few tufts of dirty brown fur were left to indicate that rats had been swarming there, out into the dusk and across the street and up more stairs to home.
George…how could it be? He was immune!
Or was he? Maybe the softness had followed a different course in George, slowly building up in his system until every bone in his body was riddled with it and he went soft all at once. God, what a noise he must have heard when all those bones went in one shot! That was why he hadn’t been able to call or answer the walkie-talkie.
But what if it had been something else? What if the virus theory was right and George was the victim of a more virulent mutation? The thought made me sick with dread. Because if that were true, it meant Judy would eventually end up like George. And I was going to have to do for her what I’d done for George.
But what of me, then? Who was going to end it for me? I didn’t know if I had the guts to shoot myself. And what if my hands went soft before I had the chance?
I didn’t want to think about it, but it wouldn’t go away. I couldn’t remember ever being so frightened. I almost considered going down to Rockefeller Center and presenting Judy and myself to the leechers, but killed that idea real quick. Never. I’m no jerk. I’m college educated. A degree in biology! I know what they’d do to us!
Inside, Judy had wheeled her chair over to the door and was waiting for me. I couldn’t let her know.
‘Not there,’ I told her before she could ask, and I busied myself with putting the shotgun away so I wouldn’t have to look her straight in the eyes.
‘Where could he be?’ Her voice was tight.
‘I wish I knew. Maybe he went down to Rockefeller Center. If he did, it’s the last we’ll ever see of him.’
‘I can’t believe that.’
‘Then tell me where else he can be.’
She was silent.
I did Warner Oland’s Chan: ‘Numbah One Dawtah is finally at loss for words. Peace reigns at last.’
I could see that I failed to amuse, so I decided a change of subject was in order.
‘I’m tired,’ I said. It was the truth. The trip across the street had been exhausting.
‘Me, too.’ She yawned.
‘Want to get some sleep?’ I knew she did. I was just staying a step or two ahead of her so she wouldn’t have to ask to be put to bed. She was a dancer, a fine, proud artist. Judy would never have to ask anyone to put her to bed. Not while I was around. As long as I was able I would spare her the indignity of dragging herself along the floor.
I gathered Judy up in my arms. The whole lower half of her body was soft; her legs hung over my left arm like weighted drapes. It was all I could do to keep from crying when I felt them so limp and formless. My dancer…you should have seen her in Swan Lake. Her legs had been so strong, so sleekly muscular, like her mother’s…
I took her to the bathroom and left her in there. Which left me alone with my daymares. What if there really was a mutation of the softness and my dancer began leaving me again, slowly, inch by inch. What was I going to do when she was gone? My wife was gone. My folks were gone. What few friends I’d ever had were gone. Judy was the only attachment I had left. Without her I’d break loose from everything and just float off into space. I needed her…
When she was finished in the bathroom I carried her out and arranged her on the bed. I tucked her in and kissed her goodnight.
Out in the living room I slipped under the covers of the fold-out bed and tried to sleep. It was useless. The fear wouldn’t leave me alone. I fought it, telling myself that George was a freak case, that Judy and I had licked the softness. We were immune and we’d stay immune. Let everyone else turn into puddles of Jell-O, I wasn’t going to let them suck us dry to save themselves. We were on our way to inheriting the earth, Judy and I, and we didn’t even have to be meek about it.
But still sleep refused to come. So I lay there in the growing darkness in the center of the silent city and listened…listened as I did every night…as I knew I would listen for the rest of my life…listened for that sound…that cellophane crinkling sound…
Bloodchild
Octavia E. Butler
Octavia Butler (1947–2006) was an American writer who became the first science fiction writer ever to receive the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant. At the time, Butler was also one of the only African American women in the science fiction field. In 2010, she was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Butler’s novels include Kindred (1979) and Parable of the Sower (1993). ‘Bloodchild’ (1984) is her most famous story, winning both the Hugo and the Nebula Award for best novelette. Although ‘Bloodchild’ might be the best example of weird science fiction by Butler, she often included horrific elements in her work. Butler wrote the story as a way of overcoming her fear of bot flies.
My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.
I lay against T’Gatoi’s long, velvet underside, sipping from my egg now and then, wondering why my mother d
enied herself such a harmless pleasure. Less of her hair would be gray if she indulged now and then. The eggs prolonged life, prolonged vigor. My father, who had never refused one in his life, had lived more than twice as long as he should have. And toward the end of his life, when he should have been slowing down, he had married my mother and fathered four children.
But my mother seemed content to age before she had to. I saw her turn away as several of T’Gatoi’s limbs secured me closer. T’Gatoi liked our body heat and took advantage of it whenever she could. When I was little and at home more, my mother used to try to tell me how to behave with T’Gatoi – how to be respectful and always obedient because T’Gatoi was the Tlic government official in charge of the Preserve, and thus the most important of her kind to deal directly with Terrans. It was an honor, my mother said, that such a person had chosen to come into the family. My mother was at her most formal and severe when she was lying.
I had no idea why she was lying, or even what she was lying about. It was an honor to have T’Gatoi in the family, but it was hardly a novelty. T’Gatoi and my mother had been friends all my mother’s life, and T’Gatoi was not interested in being honored in the house she considered her second home. She simply came in, climbed onto one of her special couches, and called me over to keep her warm. It was impossible to be formal with her while lying against her and hearing her complain as usual that I was too skinny.
‘You’re better,’ she said this time, probing me with six or seven of her limbs. ‘You’re gaining weight finally. Thinness is dangerous.’ The probing changed subtly, became a series of caresses.