by Damon Knight
“Muckfeet!” shouted somebody, and abruptly the faint reek in the air grew nauseously strong.
Plop, went a larger, greener drop.
Then they were all running.
Artie’s squad was picking its way among the piled hulks of floaters grounded on Upper Holland Boulevard. Most of the craft were taxis and civilian scoots, but there was a shiny military floater every now and then. They had to go slowly, both because the disabled machines were so close together, and because they wanted to make sure no military personnel were hiding in the clutter.
There was a sudden flapping noise. Alvah looked up, and saw a flock of small gray birds come fluttering down to rest on the shoulders of the Muckfeet. They were gray-feathered parrots with big, brainy-looking heads. The nearest one, alighting on Artie, said, “Rrrrk. Browns to Greens. We having trouble at the Fulton Street Armory. Send us some help. Rrk.” Up and down the line, the other parrots were saying the same thing, in a ragged bird chorus.
“Okay,” Artie said. “Green squad nine to Browns. Go on back and tell ‘em we coming.” The parrot squawked and took off in a flurry of feathers. After a moment the other birds flew up, too. The main flock wheeled and then headed off to the northwest; Artie’s parrot flew eastward by itself.
“Fulton Street,” Artie was saying, as he unfolded an onionskin map. “You know where that is, Alvah?”
“Sure I do. But it’s a long way over on foot,” Alvah said. “Hadn’t we better get some transportation?”
“Might as well,” Artie told him, and put a brown whistle pod to his lips. No sound came out, though his cheeks bulged. He put the whistle away. “Show me where this place is at, will you?” he asked, spreading out the map. “Lessee, we here now …”
Alvah, somewhat perplexed, located the Armory in the tracery of gray lines and pointed to it. “Our best route is probably across the LaGuardia Overpass, then down the Hudson River Floatway,” he began, but Artie shook his head.
“No, nev’ mind that. Look yonder.”
Between the skyline and the Roof, half a dozen massive gray shapes were flapping slowly along. The huge wings moved so slowly, they seemed to be merely rowing the air; but while he watched, they grew rapidly larger. In a few moments they were stalling to land, and the buffeting of their huge wings made the men stagger. They came down hard, their big bodies thumping where they landed atop the stalled floaters. They were rocs, gigantic lizard-gray creatures with reptilian heads and fierce yellow eyes. They were plumed and pinioned like birds; only along the skull the feathers gave way to short gray spines.
“Come on,” said Artie. The other members of the squad were already scrambling over the piled floater bodies, climbing astride the rocs behind the helmeted riders.
Alvah followed without pleasure; he had already had one roc ride, and had considered it sufficient. The Muckfeet were piling up happily in rows, five or six to a bird, each hanging onto the man ahead of him, with their legs dangling over the roc’s narrow gray sides. Artie motioned Alvah up ahead of him and got on behind. Gripping and being gripped, Alvah held his breath and waited for the takeoff.
At a command from the rider up ahead, the huge bird spread its wings. Flapping thunderously, it started forward along the line of floaters; Alvah could hear the big gray talons scraping and scrabbling at the metal. He held on desperately. With a lurch, they were airborne. The boulevard dropped away below; the dim translucent rectangles of the Roof drew nearer.
From the air, as they approached, they could see something was going on around the black oval bulk of the Armory. For two blocks around, the streets were empty, and near the building itself, there was a mound of smoking wreckage of some kind. The roc glided down, and Alvah lost sight of the Armory as they landed behind a building three blocks away.
Feeling dizzy, he got down from the beast’s back and followed Artie over to a little knot of excited Muckfeet.
“—wish we’d of brought the dogs,” somebody was saying stridently.
“Well, you know what we decided,” a square brown man said impatiently. He had a group commander’s patch on his tunic; he was a Jersey named Komer, whom Alvah knew slightly. He went on, “Dogs would of attacked civilians, and we didn’t want that. We could still bring ‘em in on leash, but that would take about half an hour, and by that time—”
“What’s going on anyhow?” Artie interrupted plaintively. “Bird said you run into trouble. Where’s it at?”
Komer gestured toward the Armory. “Some Newyorks holed up in there and started to heave explosives out the top windows. We sent in airweed and that, but it didn’t get them out. We getting ready to soften the doors when they beat us to it, come out running with some kind of suits on—hoods, dinguses to breathe through and that. Must be two hundred. We trying to keep them bottled up, but this stinking place got about a million underground corridors. That why we got to have more men. Otherwise before we catch them all, they going to spread out all over the city and make more trouble than you can spit.”
Artie whistled. “What kind of weapons they got?”
“Mostly clubs, but some got axes and that. Some got homemade bombs, and they all crazy mad. They don’t care if they get killed, just so they kill you, so look out. They got Ernie Pierce and two other good boys.”
Artie hefted his knobkerrie. “All right. What you want us to do?”
“You and your squad spread out that way. Try to keep ‘em from getting any farther west. Ill give you a couple message birds. You need any help, 111 try to send it, but we awful thin as it is.”
Komer turned away, to meet another group that was just arriving. Artie nodded to his men. “All right, let’s go.”
Half an hour after leaving the rest of the squad, the five of them were moving cautiously along a substreet arcade when there was a sudden scuffling of feet, and a half-dozen leaping figures charged them from the side. Alvah caught a startled glimpse of inhuman faces and stocky blue bodies. One of the Muckfeet was down, sprawled on the corridor floor. The others were fanning out, defending themselves with knobkerries. The corridor echoed to the sound of their whacks.
Alvah found himself working hard to fend off one masked, muffled figure that was trying its best to split his skull with a steel bar. The eyes stared wildly through round goggles; the rest of the face was grotesque in a respirator. The man’s body was completely covered in heavy blue cloth, including hands and feet. It must be hot and cramped in that suit, but Alvah, in the freedom of borrowed Muckfoot clothing, still found he had all he could do to hold his own. The masked man’s steel bar grazed his ear and left his skull ringing. He staggered, caught his balance with a desperate effort, and fought back.
The scuffling group drifted into a new pattern. Alvah gulped air, surged forward with .knobkerrie swinging mightily, and forced his opponent to give ground until he was back to back with another blue figure. At the contact, the two sprang away from each other; Alvah’s man looked over his shoulder, and Alvah seized the opportunity to whang him on the head. He dropped, and Alvah joined forces with another Muckfoot to topple the second man.
Breathing hard, they stopped to survey the damage. Two of the five Muckfeet were down, one groaning and hugging himself, the other motionless. The half-dozen Newyorks were all stretched out in various attitudes. Artie, dripping gore from a split cheek, ordered them stripped and relieved of their weapons. He broke a capsule of airweed spores and smeared the gel on one of the corridor walls. In twenty minutes or so the fast-growing stuff would begin to climb over the ceiling, adding to its slimy bulk by absorbing moisture from the air. When the Newyorks came to, any of them that could walk would go out into the street to get away from the airweed. The rest could be picked up by hospital details later. The stunned Muckfoot was left where he was for the time being, and the other injured man was helped back to the Armory site by another Muckfoot. That left Artie and Alvah; they moved on.
Rage and fear walked with Major Walt Reardon in the heavy suit. He could smell it in his own co
nfined stink; he was sweating all over, and the evaporator on the back of the suit wasn’t helping. These were emergency suits, never meant for long and continuous use. But they were better than surrender.
He swung his club wearily at the threads of green that dripped from the corridor ceiling. They broke and spattered, like the bodies of enemies, but it was distant and unreal. All that was outside—glove, club, green tendrils. He was inside, and he couldn’t get out.
His breath made a hoarse sucking noise in the respirator close to his mouth. It was a good respirator, he knew he couldn’t be suffering from lack of air, but it felt that way. The suit touched him clammily all around as he moved. Not for an instant could he forget it was there.
Tears stung his eyes when he remembered the bright NYFF floaters falling out of the air—drifting down, without a shot fired, defeated. If they’d only had a chance to fight!
Spread out, that was the thing. The bastards were thick as flies around the Armory. They had jumped him in the Centre Street Concourse, split his detail; he had got away through the deserted public baths, but heaven only knew what had happened to Yingling and Garrison and the rest. Spread out, that was the order. He had stayed underground, in spite of the green mess—while the damned Muckfeet strutted around up there—and he’d stay under until he was ready to come up. Catch them by surprise; kill. “Can’t do that to us,” he said hoarsely. Bright visions of Muckfeet with split skulls shimmered in his head. He peered around them, trying to see the street signs at the corridor intersection ahead. They were overgrown with green fuzzy threads, like the rest, unreadable. Even the light-emitting walls were beginning to glow greenish through the tendrils; it was like being under water.
He crossed the corridor, wavering, and scrubbed the slime off a display window. Inside, dimly visible through the green film, were half a dozen realie packets. He could see the languorous girls on the covers, and read some of the titles: “MEET ME IN CANARSIE, with Lew Rock and Ella Lorn”; “I LOVE YOU THURSDAY, with the New Sensation, Tommy-Ann Welk.” Yes, that was the window; he had passed it a hundred times. He knew where he was now; it was time to come up. He turned right, following the cross-corridor as it angled toward Upper Level.
Somewhere around Middle Rivington, In a brush with three Newyorks, Alvah lost touch with Artie. He lost his man, too, in the warren of streets under the old Copter Terminal. When he came up for air, he found the streets full of terrified people—workmen, secretaries, whitecollars, porters, freewomen, all mixed up together like Knickerbocker Day and New Year’s put together. They were packed so tight that many of them had climbed to the tops of abandoned floaters to escape the pressure. There was no room for them to move, but the nearest ones tried to make way for Alvah, just the same, when they saw his Muckfoot clothing.
He retreated, with a lump in his throat, and climbed to the nearest landing stage on the face of the building. Up and down the street, the stages were connected by stairs and railed walkways. No one was standing there, probably because of the green tendrils that spilled out of each stage entrance. Heads turned to watch him as he made his way northward. It was an up-and-down route, with a lot of stairs to -climb and descend, but it was quicker and caused less anxiety than trying to move in the street.
He saw no blue-suited Newyorks, and no Muckfeet either, except for one man, glimpsed a block away as he crossed an intersection. Probably he ought to try underground again; but the airweed was getting so thick, he hated to do it. Mulling this over, he paused in Union Square to watch a curious procession emerging from the Mercy Hospital opposite.
A couple of Muckfeet in loose white jackets came first, then a dazed-looking nun; then a little group of men in hospital bathrobes, and then, towering over them all, a sinuous camel-colored animal with some sort of complex superstructure on its back. Moving on stilt-like legs, it picked its way delicately over a pileup of abandoned floaters at the edge of the walkway. After it, another one emerged from the hospital.
The confusing business on their backs, Alvah saw, was an arrangement of wickerwork baskets, each big enough for a man, suspended in gimbals so they swung level no matter how the beast moved. Each animal carried ten such baskets. Alvah recognized them now as the brutes Muckfeet called “ambulances.” He had heard about them, but never seen one.
Three more burdened animals came out, then another group of walking patients, women this time, and with them three or four nuns, all with the same half startled, half bemused expression. Two Muckfoot women brought up the rear. As Alvah watched, one of the nuns stopped and began to tremble. One of the Muckfoot girls immediately stepped over and squeezed a bulb of something under her nose. Simultaneously, Alvah recognized the girl: it was Beej.
The nun’s expression changed; she moved on dazedly and caught up with the rest of the group.
“Beej!” said Alvah, coming forward.
“Alvah!” They embraced.
“What is that stuff?” he asked. A fine mist hung around the nipple of the bulb she was still holding.
“Don’t breathe any.” Beej hurriedly capped the bulb and put it away. “It’s a depressant, with a little tranquillizer mixed in—something to keep them calmed down for a while. These nuns is really wonderful, though, Alvah—they was scared to death, but they wouldn’t leave their patients. We thought it be better not to separate them. Later on, after they get over the first shock, they can take care of them better than us… . My heaven, this place is big though, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Alvah with a sudden glumness. She looked at him narrowly. “Don’t feel bad, Alvah, it’ll be better soon. You’ll see.”
“I know, but—”
They were passing the dark, green-hung doorway of an office building. Looking back over his shoulder, Alvah thought he caught a glimpse of movement deep in the shadowed interior. He paused.
“What’s the matter?” asked Beej alertly.
A moving green figure bloomed. Alvah had just time to say, “Look out!” before the green curtains tore apart and a man came lurching down the ramp. He ran straight at Beej, brandishing a metal bar. He was a faceless man, smeared green from head to foot, making an inarticulate sound.
Alvah moved with what seemed painful slowness. He shouldered. Beej aside as the bar came down, felt the blow numb his shoulder, and jabbed his knobkerrie at the other man’s throat.
The man went down hard, arms and legs sprawled, and Alvah followed him with a two-handed swing that would have broken his head, if Alvah hadn’t pulled back at the last moment. The sprawled figure was motionless. The metal bar tinkled on the pavement, somewhere to the left; it rolled, hit something and was silent.
Alvah prodded the man with his toe, then bent and worked open the hood closures. The face underneath was wide and muscular, with a stubborn strength in the jaw and brow. It was cyanosed, the lips blue-violet, the cheeks showing a bluish tinge under the skin. The eyes were rolled up behind half-open lids.
“Poor guy,” said Alvah with sudden comprehension. “He was down in those corridors—the air conditioning’s been off for hours.” As he spoke, he was forcing open the chest zippers of the suit, unfastening the man’s jacket and tunic underneath. He felt for a heartbeat, then straightened up slowly.
“He’s dead,” he said.
Beej went on with her charges; Alvah wandered back to the command post opposite the Armory, but the streets were full of terrified civilians, and the Muckfeet had gone elsewhere.
Alvah turned north again, and after half an hour or so ran into a Muckfoot detachment that was setting up a line of scarecrows on Second Avenue. The streets to westward were still full of people, crowding to get away. On the other side, the city looked deserted.
“We moving ‘em along a block at a time,” one of the Muckfeet told Alvah. “These here dummies—” he picked one up, a pole on a wooden base, with a gourd face and a cross-pole supporting the sleeves of an old Muckfoot jerkin —“scare ‘em just as bad as we do. They started over by the wall, then moved back to here,
and now we got them moving steady. Got to hunt through all that—” he waved at the deserted buildings behind him—“to make sure, but I guess we got most all of ‘em out.”
“What about the soldiers from the Armory?” Alvah asked.
“I saw some getting toted off,” the Muckfoot said. “I believe the boys took to slashing their suits with bowies, and then they didn’t think they was invulnerable any more, so they quit.”
An hour later, Knickerbocker Circle in Over Manhattan was littered with ameba-shaped puddles of clear plastic. Overhead,. the stuff was hanging in festoons from the reticulated framework of the Roof and, for the first time in a century, an unfiltered wind was blowing into New York. Halfway up the sheer facade of the Old Movie House, a roc was flapping along, a wingtip almost brushing the louvers, while its rider sprinkled pale dust from a sack. Farther down the street, a sickly green growth was already visible on cornices and window frames.
The antique neon sign of the Old Movie dipped suddenly, its supports softened visibly. It swung, nodded and crashed to the pavement.
Alvah moved on. He had made contact with his squad again, finally, but nobody seemed to be urgently needing his help. The evacuation was going smoothly. The war was over. Alvah walked down the windy canyon of Upper Broadway, past Sammy’s, where he had eaten cheesecake less than three weeks ago … it seemed like a century … past the silent Dramatic Arts Building and the empty realie palaces on Times Square, saying goodbye. Scuffed papers were littered along the walkway and in the freight channel. Grounded floaters were everywhere, empty, leaning against each other. The people were gone, and it began to seem wrong for Alvah to be there making echoes with his footsteps. He turned west again looking for company, feeling pretty low.
Twilight—all the streets that radiated from the heart of the City were afloat with long, slowly surging tides of humanity, dim in the weak glow from the lumen globes plastered haphazardly to the flanks of the buildings. At the end of every street, the Wall was crumbled down and the moat filled, its fire long gone out. And down the new railed walkways from all three levels came the men, women and children, stumbling out into the alien lumen-lit night and the strange scents and the wide world.