Unless I’ve dropped a stitch at some point and have messed up the chronology, I met Vic—whom I permit to wallow in the delusion that he is my “master”—in 2061. In the year of what they
once knew as their Lord—2061. He was twelve at the time; I have no idea how old I was, but I was wise beyond my years.
As solos go, Vic is okay. He’ll never be Bertrand Russell in the cerebration department, their Lord knows, but he’s steadfast, responsible and game as they come. A bit too game,
occasionally. The kid takes too many chances to suit my highly attuned sense of survival.
The way Vic tells it, he found me.
Having long-since learned the twists and turns of the labyrinth that is the human ego, I permit him to batten on this monstrous inaccuracy.
A little self-delusion goes a long way to keeping one’s pet human in line. It also permits them a rat hole of dignity-preservation into which they can scurry, when
they’re put in their place. To be specific, I remember an evening.
We had found a case of bottles in what was left of a Trader Joe’s. Half a dozen were still intact with the contents unevaporated. (When I discovered what the contents were composed of, I realized the liquid was probably nonbiodegradable unto the hundredth generation.) Six bottles of a virulent jet fuel substitute labeled Sweet Betsy Pike fruit wine, 92 proof; distilled from grain, rare earths, and unnameable trace metals; helium, argon, rutabaga, and Necco wafers. I would sooner have swilled my own piss.
But good old Albert, aka Vic, whooped and howled like a Belgian wolfhound getting a glucose enema. “This booze is worth its weight in ammo!” he yowled, capering around the dirt-banked pit, all that remained of the basement of the Trader Joe’s. As he danced, he did a little sidestep so he wouldn’t trip over the bodies of the two rovers he’d had to waste to gain possession of the Sweet Betsy Pike fruit wine. One of them wasn’t quite dead, kept jerking his right leg the way I do when I’m sleeping and having a bad dream.
The other one was spread out a bit; really a messy shot; way below Vic’s standard between-the-eyes.
So we took the six bottles in a wrap-up and went looking for Skipper and Walter, who were the ramrods of a roverpak called The 82nd Airborne. They called themselves that for who knows
what reason, maybe they’d seen that old movie, I think it was a Van Johnson flick, maybe it was Geronimo or Gung Ho, or something like that. Vic is the movie buff, not me. Mostly I’m bored by flicks, unless they’re about food.
The 82nd Airborne was the armorer for most of the roverpaks, except for Fellini and that bunch of teenaged pederastees he uses for slaves. Freaky as Fellini is, he’s smart; and he’d
found his own secret cache of ammunition, which was one of the things that made his the single strongest roverpak in the area. They’re kidnappers and mean shitty killers—they do it for
chuckles, not because they have to—so nobody crosses him. He’s also dead chill on solos who might get to some excavatable food before his gang does; thus and therefore nobody goes near
him. So except for that creep Fellini, The 82nd Airborne kept everyone in slugs. That was their barter. But you had to bring Skipper and Walter something valuable—not to mention your empty
brass which they used for making reloads—before they’d fill you up again.
Vic seemed to think that a few bottles of diabetically sweet poison was heavy bartering coin. He was right, of course. He has a good sense about that kind of thing. Not me. I can never
figure out what makes humans go for one kind of awful tasting slop over some other equally noxious crap. I once brought Vic a nice, dead sparrow and suggested he use it to get us fresh
water. He looked at me as if I was crazy. “People don’t eat dead birds, Blood,” he said. He was trying to be patient.
“And why is that, Albert,” I said, being cranky.
“Stop calling me Albert!” I love to hear Vic scream. And since he’s never quite understood why I get such a kick out of calling him Albert—after Albert Payson Terhune, who wrote all those
stupid dog books in which we noble creatures were pets, always being saved by some sappy human—it is my best gambit to make him scream.
“Okay, so why, master Vic?”
“Because dead bird is lousy tasting, that’s why.”
“But you eat sheep, and cow, and snake. I’ve even seen some of you eat French fried rat.”
“Yeah?” he said, nastily. “Well, there are even low scumbags who think parboiled dog is a delicacy. Keep fucking with me and I’ll trade you for fresh water.”
And he walked away, leaving the dead sparrow on the sidewalk. So did I. Yucchhh.
Anyhow, we took the Sweet Betsy Pike fruit wine over near what used to be the docks, and Vic yelled out across the harbor, “Hey! Skipper! Walter!”
And after a while a light went on, out there on the big barge in the middle of the harbor, this barge that used to be a garbage scow, but which Skipper and Walter and The 82nd Airborne
had taken over for their home turf, where they had all the lathes and the reloading presses and the die sets for reloading brass set up. And somebody, maybe Skipper, but I couldn’t tell across
the water, used a megaphone and yelled back, “Yeah, who is it? Whaddaya want?”
And Vic yelled back that it was him and Blood, and he had barter, and the voice asked across the water what kind of ammo Vic needed, and Vic said 30.06 dum-dums and .45
automatics, and the voice asked what he had to trade, and Vic yelled back that he had booze, and the megaphone voice took a beat as if he was asking someone else if it was cool, and then
hollered over that they’d send the skiff. So we waited in the dark, sitting on the edge of the jetty, looking out across the harbor, all that inky water, and I passed the time by trying to run Vic
through his lessons.
“Name the presidents of the United States after Franklin D. Roosevelt,” I said.
Vic kicked at the water. He didn’t answer.
“After Roosevelt,” I insisted.
“Don’t want to,” he said, fishing around in his left-to-right bandolier for a cigarette butt.
“What’s the matter, brain in repose at this time?”
“Get off me.” There was a miserable tone in his voice.
“Come on, take a crack at it. I’ll get you started: Truman, Eisenhower…”
He filched up a butt from one of the bandolier pockets, along with his flint and steel, and sparked himself alight. “Truman, Eisenhower…” I said again, a little tougher.
He turned on me sharply and looked down where I was sitting in the dark. “God damn you,Blood! Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush,
Clinton, Trump, I told you I didn’t want to do it!”
He was yelling.
“You forgot Ford,” I said. Quietly.
“Oh, piss off!” And he got up and walked away.
I didn’t know what was lumbering him. We hadn’t had a bad day; it had been a pretty good one, in fact. A couple of tins of salt beef and some canned cherries from that Trader Joe’s; we
had a pretty secure flop for the night; a janitor’s apartment tucked back at the rear of an alley under a blasted apartment building, with only one channel of attack in case someone came after
us. Not a bad day.
I got up and followed him.
“Hey,” I said, finding him easily in the dark. “What’s on your mind, kiddo?”
He pulled on the cigarette butt till it was so short I wondered if it was singeing the little hairs in his nose. I plopped my tail down and waited. After a second he snapped the butt off his thumb
and forefinger, it went spiraling off into the ink and made a pssss in the harbor. When he spoke, I knew he was thinking about other places, other times. “Hell, I don’t know, Blood. Just feeling
very crummy. One of those rovers this afternoon, the one kept saying please please please when I shot him. No women for almost a month. Fellini and that bunch of creepycrazies taking
over everything bit by bit, pushing us out into the flats. All this history and crap you keep whipping on me till my head hurts. Every day’s just like every other day, just hustling for food.”
My pet boy was suffering from battle fatigue.
“Come on down here so we can talk face to face.”
He put his back against one of the pilings and slid down. He looked at me balefully. I said gently, “I think I’ve picked up a flea behind my right ear. Would you mind doing me a
scratch?”
His expression didn’t brighten, but he reached over and began to work in the fur behind my right ear. I had him trained to a fine edge.
“Look, Vic: this is only temporary. One day very soon—and I keep telling you this – something’s going to start happening in this country. These caches of canned food aren’t going
to last much longer; we’ve been lucky so far. But pretty soon someone’s going to realize it can’t go on like this and they’re going to settle down and start a farm. I’ve told you about farms.
They’re going to start planting food right in the ground so you can eat any time you want.”
He snorted derisively. I ignored it.
“Someone’s going to plant food and then they’ll put up a stout guard wall around the homestead to keep out creeps like Fellini, and then after a while someone else will join him, and
then there’ll be two, and then a third, and they’ll have to learn to live together and trust each other—”
Another snort. And, “If you want Tinker Bell to live, all you got to do is clap your hands.”
“—and no matter how much you make an ass of yourself, after a while it’ll be a real settlement. Humans have a tribe instinct…they may have started doing it already…the war’s
been over almost forty years…unless I’ve dropped a stitch somewhere. But I think I’m sure it’s almost forty, give or take a couple. It may already be happening somewhere, maybe they’ve
already started.”
“It’s all ramadoola.”
“Maybe not. If we could just get away from this area, look around, you’d see I’m right.”
Vic snorted a half-chuckle; to him it was all bullshit. He couldn’t see it, couldn’t put a can opener into it, couldn’t drop it with a shot. It was a dream, and he didn’t know what it was to dream, so it was all ramadoola, bullshit.
“Come on now, kiddo,” I said, keeping at it, “you’ve heard enough rumors from the minstrels that pass through, and there was that solo last year…”
“Rumors. Bullshit. About ‘over the hill’—right?”
“Perhaps. That’s as good a name for Valhalla as any.”
“And where’s that?”
“No place. It’s just a word out of mythology.”
“And what’s that?!” he snarled, getting angry at my using a word he didn’t know. “Is that some more useless bullshit you’re gonna try and teach me?”
“No. You have no need for mythology, old friend.” It made me sad. “You’ll make your own.”
We sat quietly for a few minutes, waiting for the skiff. “But there’s got to be an ‘over the hill,’ kiddo. Take my word for it.”
“Trust me…right?”
“That’s right. Trust me.”
He looked off across the harbor, where the light on the skiff had detached itself from the dark bulk of the barge, and he murmured, “Yeah, well, we ain’t never gonna see it, dog.” I didn’t
correct his grammar. He was just feeling down, feeling low; he’d get over it. A decent firefight, some sex, he’d be okay again. I didn’t even object when he called me dog. But I’d get him later: call him “boy.”
Then I’d tell him about Tarzan.
And after that I’d teach him about mythology.
The skiff slid in at the jetty and there were three skinny rovers leveling shotguns at us. We moved back and they braced us. “Spread,” said the one in the prow. Vic didn’t lie down and
spread. He stood there with the 30.06 in the crook of his arm, the flap of the .45’s holster unbuttoned. He just stared back at them. The one in the middle had a lantern. It didn’t give much
light, but they could see he wasn’t about to let them frisk him. “Spread,” the skinny guy in the prow said again. He had a pump gun.
“You’re here,” Vic said, “so that means Skipper and Walter sent you over; and that means they know me; and they know I’m okay; so stop playing Clint Eastwood and move your ass so
we can get in.” Response: the sound of shotgun hammers locking back.
They faced each other that way for a couple of long moments and I thought, oh shit, they always have to do their machismo number. And I calculated how far and how high I’d have to jump to get at the throat of the skinny in the middle with the lantern. But the pump gun in the prow nodded, and backed off, so we got in the skiff.
And they took us over the water to the barge.
Everybody forgot Ford.
I’m still telling about this evening I remember.
We got over to the barge, just a big scow, really; and a rope ladder was lowered. Vic grabbed me under the belly so I whooshed; and then he started climbing up one-handed.
On the way over I’d heard the one with the lantern call the one with the pump gun Snake.
Genuine typecasting. Slitty little eyes cold as a sidewinder’s, green, with little wrinkles at the outer corners from squinting a lot. He’d gone up the ladder first and now three unblinking snake
eyes stared over the rail at us: the ones in his thin face and the unblinking eye at the end of the pump gun.
“Can’t that eggsucker climb up hisself?” he asked.
There was some mean laughter from the rovers still in the skiff and some others on deck. I said to Vic, in his head, blocked off in case any of them were able to intercept, “Calling a noble
canine eggsucker is actionable. Let me at him.” Vic thought back, “You can explain what it means later. Right now, cool it. We need the loads.”
We went on board, and it was the first time I ever saw the tiniest sign that humans could be friendly to one another. Minstrels had safe passage, but even that was given with suspicion. But
Vic actually shook hands with Skipper and Walter.
Skipper was a short kid, maybe seventeen, with straight brown hair that he greased back flat to his head. He had a nice pair of blue eyes that watched everything. His hands were small but
they were fast. I could see where he would have decided to play it safe, running a roverpak, rather than going solo. He had the kind of hands I’ve come to recognize on humans who like to
make things.
He came out of a superstructure erected on the mid-deck of the scow as Vic and I came over the taffrail. Two more members of The 82nd Airborne were waiting with Bren guns.
And Snake was still chivvying us with the pump gun. But when Vic saw this short kid come out of the gimcrack superstructure—like the remains of a Quonset hut, patched with rotting
boards and oil drums—he yelled, “Hey, Skipper! How’s chances of getting this clown with the pump gun to back off before I spin it up his ass?”
Skipper laughed and came up to Vic, and they shook hands. “Snake!” he said to squinty-
face, “this solo’s a friend of mine, for god’s sake!”
Snake made a nasty face. “He gimme trouble. Him an’ that runty eggsucker.”
That’s twice, I thought with a snarl. Vic! Aren’t you going to defend my good name?
“Hey, pinhead,” Vic said softly to Snake, “don’t call my dog an eggsucker or I’ll empty your mouth.”
That’s more like it, I thought.
Shut up, Vic fired back.
Skipper saw unnecessary trouble and he hustled Vic through the door. I dashed between their legs, just missing being booted by that sneaky Snake. Inside it was a lot bigger than it had looked from on deck. Found materials furnished the place. Bunk beds with rovers sleeping in them, snoring and moaning with bad dreams. There was a brick fireplace with a length of stovepipe for the smoke. It was dim and smoky but I could see, almost as soon as I smelled, a chicken turning on a spit. There were even a few old people:
one of them was a withered crone turning the chicken. Then I realized they weren’t that old.
They just looked old. Maybe top age was thirty.
That’s old these days.
Then Skipper’s partner came out of the shadows.
Walter was funny. He was pudgy and didn’t say anything that made sense. He whistled a lot and sometimes sang bits and snatches of old songs. Every once in a while he’d come over and
hug or kiss Skipper. They were friends, and it rubbed off on the rest of The 82nd Airborne. And Vic.
They took the four bottles of wine Vic offered and all the brass Vic had policed up, and the deal was made. Then Skipper suggested Vic hang out and get ripped with some of them, and
Vic said he’d put up the other two bottles, and they proceeded to get themselves so crosseyed, so quickly, that it only reaffirmed my opinion of people. I was sorry to see Vic in that state,
however. He is a very sloppy drunk.
Which was when he made his mistake with me, which was when I had to put him in his place, which was where I began with this anecdote.
One of Skipper and Walter’s workmen came out of the factory area at the rear of the barge and gave Vic a boot full of loads, and Vic dumped them into his sack, and kissed Walter, and
said to me, “Hey, Blood, have a drink.”
I just looked at him. He had said it aloud, not with his mind, silent, the way we talk most of the time. He’d said it aloud so all the rest of them could hear it. I just looked at him. There are
times when Vic is in really tacky taste.
“Whassa matter?” Skipper said. “He don’t wanna drink with us? Too good to drink with us? Dogs ain’t s’posed to drink with us? Somethin’ wrong he don’t wanna drink with us?” He wasn’t a surly lush, he was just rambling. But Vic knew better. I don’t drink. I don’t use dope. I have sworn a vow of sexual abstinence. One of us has to be pure, so we can hope to
stay alive. Also, I am a noble creature.
I thought at Vic, That was a stupid move.
He thought back, Oh, take it easy, for crissakes. Have a bite of this stuff. Good for you.
Between solos and their dogs, as between selected members of roverpaks and their dogs, the mind-to-mind is a closed channel. No one can eavesdrop. It’s partially genetic, partially
empathic, partially chemically induced. At least it was that way during the War, when my ancestors were first altered for skirmisher duty. I suppose the solos and rovers who can ’path
are the children of those troopers who were trained and inoculated to work with the skirmishers. All I know for certain is that there have only been one or two other humans with whom I’ve had mind-to-mind communication.
So no one else was listening to our bickering.
I’m going for a walk, I thought. When I get back, I’d like to see you on your feet, if that’s possible. I’d like to see us get off this barge and back to our flop for the night. I’d like to see you
assuming a little of the responsibility for this partnership.
You just hate to see me happy.
I just hate to see you stinko.
I’m not stinko.
Well, you’ re sure as hell not pro-survival at the moment, Albert, dear chum.
Walter said, “Havin’ a fight with your mutt?”
Vic looked at him. “He ain’t a mutt.”
Isn’t a mutt, I ’pathed.
“Isn’t a mutt,” Vic said.
“I wouldn’t take no shit from no eggsucker,” Snake said.
I got up and walked out of the room.
I don’t have to take that kind of crap.
And if my alleged master can’t protect my honor, well, perhaps a talented sniffer ought to find a new relationship. That’s what I was thinking as I wandered into the factory section of the
barge.
I was just killing time. I wandered around, looking at the Lyman reloading press and the primer seater and the powder scale and the Saeco sizing die they used for making new slugs. There were a couple of rovers working in there. One of them was bent over a C-H Tool & Die Corp. bullet swaging die set and another one was using a canneluring tool that knurls a groove around the slug for crimping. They looked up as I came in and sat down. I like watching people work at their craft. One of the things I miss most these days is seeing a good carpenter or bootmaker practicing his art.
“G’wan, get the hell out of here, you eggsucker!” one of them snarled. He threw a fistful of shavings at me; and missed. But I got up and ambled away. Metal shavings in the paw pad can
be a nuisance.
That was the third time in ten minutes I’d been called an eggsucker. My mood was definitely not benevolent. The next dipshit who insulted me was, I swore, destined to go to his grave with
my fangs in his throat.
I wandered around for a while, then back into the exquisite, sumptuous, palatial saloon of the elegant garbage scow. For rovers who lived like pigs, they sure had a high-assed opinion of
themselves. Give slobs a lathe and some turning equipment and they think they’re the chosen people.
Vic was still lying on his back.
Walter was asking, “What’s it like out there?”
Vic looked up at him blearily. “Whaddaya mean: what’s it like out there? Out where?”
“Being solo.”
“Oh.” He hiccuped. “Okay, I suppose.”
Bullshit, I said, mind-to-mind. Vic shrugged.
“Things are getting tighter. Most of the fast easy food you can dig up is gone. Found a Trader Joe’s today…where I got the wine…had to fight to get it. Fellini’s organizing fast. He’s got that big slave-wagon of his. About two dozen good shots hanging around all the time. He’s scared off most of the solos, or made ’em join. Fat bastard hates me…I keep gettin’ to the buried stuff before him…or I steal it off him when he beats me to it. Won’t be long.”
“What won’t be long?” Skipper asked.
“Till he takes over the city.”
They seemed startled. I realized they had very little sense of history, of the passage or progression of events. What was now, was now; and anything beyond that required imagination, of which their pointy little heads had never known a shadow.
Vic was different. I’d taught Vic.
“Stands to reason,” Vic said, playing the big man, the teacher, slurring his words over the wine. Idiot savant. “He can’t let any solos run loose because they might find the ammo and food he needs to keep feeding his people. And it’s those troops of his that keep solos from putting a slug in his fat head. He loses them, if he can’t feed ’em, and he’s not in charge anymore…he’s just another fat old man.”
“Yeah, but what’s that got to do with us?” Skipper asked. “We’re not solos. We’re organized. We’ve got our own thing here, our own turf. Everybody needs us to reload their brass.”
Vic laughed. “Dream on, Skipper. Fellini doesn’t need you. At least he doesn’t think he does,which is the same thing.”
Walter said, “Yeah, but the other roverpaks need us.”
“For how long, man? As soon as Fellini cleans out or scares off the solos in the area, then he’ll start taking over the roverpaks, one by one. He has to. Only way he can control the situation.”
Skipper looked interested. “How do you know all this? Some minstrel lay it all on you…?”
“Hell, no,” Vic said. “Blood told me a lot of it, and I just figured out the rest. As George Santayana said in The Life of Reason, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ I’ve studied history. I know that’s what’ll happen.”
They were staring at him as if he was crazy. I’d warned Vic never to flaunt his education. It made people nervous.
The pump gun skinny, good old Snake, said, “Where the hell’d you get all that shit?”
Vic suddenly realized, through his drunken haze, that he’d made himself look different, set himself apart. “Uh…”
They were all staring at us now. Skipper looked very twitchy. Vic licked his lips nervously.
“Uh…I got it all from Blood,” he said, the miserable sonofabitch fink. Direct lineal descendant of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
Snake bared yellow teeth, snickered, and said, “I wouldn’t take all that stupid shit from no eggsucker.”
That was number four.
That was it!
Take that, you asshole! And I went for the mammy-jammer.
Oh, I was lovely. A furry blur of light, a death-dealing instrument of destruction, a lone noble beast defending his honor against the Philistines, a juggernaut of power and pain, up and arching out in a smooth leap that took me over Skipper’s head, right past the loudmouth and into the wall of the barge. I fell down and lay there twitching. How fleeting is grandeur.
Snake raised his weapon and threw down on me. Through blurred eyes I saw the creep’s finger curling around the trigger to blow me away. And then his head exploded and spattered all over me.
I heard Vic say, “Freeze, piss-ants!”
Then he was shuffling among them, pointing that big .45 at Skipper’s skull, and he knelt down smoothly, and he was kind of manhandling me up into his free arm, and I crawled around over his shoulder and got into the rucksack…upside-down. Then I guess I fainted.
Next thing I knew, we were on the dock and I was being jangled around like crazy, because Vic was running for our lives in the dark. I assumed all this, because I was wedged down with the tin cans and the rest of the crap in Vic’s rucksack. But he’d gotten us out of there…alive…I
was at least sure of that much.
After a while, he slowed down, and I could hear him panting like crazy. And cursing at me.
“Stupid, goddam, short-tempered, imbecilic, moron dog! Damned near got us killed. Spoilt my night! Lost us the only armorer in the territory, goddam stupid lousy ignorant fucking eggsucker!”
That was number five! But I was upside-down. And half conscious. Even so, it made me feel bad that he’d said it.
Finally, he stopped, shucked out of the knapsack, turned it over and dumped me out. We
were in an alley.
It was dark. But I could feel the heat coming off him. Oh, boy, was he pissed off at me.
I staggered around for a minute, trying to get my left front leg to work in unison with my right rear, and finally I circled around him and sat down on some rubble. He was sitting there with his head in his hands, looking miserable.
“I was getting tired of this town, anyway,” I said, hoping to cheer him up a little. It was obvious: we’d have to get out now. Nowhere to get fresh ammo, marked lousy by The 82nd Airborne, which would make us persona non grata with the other roverpaks who might otherwise
tolerate a reliable solo and his dog.
Vic peered up at me from between his hands. It was dark but I could read him even in the dark. He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me. I didn’t feel too terrific.
“I hear there’s some activity out around Duluth,” I said.
That was a lie. I’d heard the taconite creatures that came up out of Lake Superior would eat your ass off.
He didn’t say anything. And he had his mind blocked off; but the seepage was awful. Like blood oozing out under a doorjamb.
“We could try for ‘over the hill’ in the direction of Vermont,” I said. I didn’t even know if
Vermont was there anymore.
Then we sat and stared at each other for a while.
Finally, I just decided it was better to blow off steam than to squat on my tail feeling guilty.
“Look, kiddo, it wasn’t all my fault! If you hadn’t gotten bagged, or if you hadn’t let them insult me without saying anything, I wouldn’t have run amuck! It’s your responsibility, too.”
“That’s it,” he said, quietly, and he got up. His being quiet scared the hell out of me.
Then he just walked out of the alley, right out into the middle of the street, and kept going. No cover, no checking out the turf, nothing. He just walked away from me.
I sat there for a second, and then padded to the mouth of the alley and watched him go. Just like that. We’d been together close on two years, and here was this ingrate fourteen-year-old clown thinking he could just up and walk away like that. Without even a by-your-leave or a thank
you for all I’d done for him. The silly sonofabitch!
Well, let him go, I thought. Let the moron get himself chewed up by Fellini or some backshooting solo. Let him try sniffing out females, see how good he was at it. Might not matter so much at age fourteen, but wait till he hit fifteen, sixteen…ha! Seventeen! At seventeen, like every other weird human boy, he’d start running around on all fours looking for sex. And some female solo with as much muscle as him would stick a bayonet in his chest just when he was about to get on her. Serve him right, too, the asshole.
Let him go! An educated nose like mine came high these days. There were solos just crying for a good dog. And I worked cheap. It didn’t take that much to feed me; not as much as an Akita or a Doberman. There were even roverpaks that needed a good lead dog. Even if I started at
the bottom of the pile, with my talent I’d be lead dog in no time. It wouldn’t be easy. A new dog always had to eat some shit for a while before his excellence was recognized. But I could do it. Maybe a year. Maybe two. In a roverpak. Eating shit.
I decided to follow him, to tell him he was on his own. To tell him I could make it just very wellthank you without a stupid boy like him running the show.
I trotted out of the alley and kept to the shadows. Even if he was going to be stupid about survival, I still had my wits about me. The trouble on the barge hadn’t been all my fault. He’d let them call me an eggsucker. Four times! He knew I didn’t like that. And besides, the clown with
the pump gun had given him trouble earlier. I knew he’d blown Snake away halfway because of that, not just on my account.
I was maybe a block behind him, and there he was, just staggering half-drunk down the center of the avenue. What a schmuck!
Then I saw the glowing green haze that meant there was a screamer in a crater in the middle of the road. Vic was too juiced even to see it. But then, humans can’t see the greenish-blue radiation haze as well as we noble creatures can. Go ahead, you dip, I thought, just walk on
down the street and in another ten steps you’re going to be hugging a screamer. Go on, walk away from me; you’re not five minutes without me and already about to get burned. You toad.
Bumble, bumble, bumble, he just went careening toward the crater, and the green haze got brighter, which meant the screamer was aware my valiant ex-master was on the way. So long, turkey, I thought. That’s it for you, screwloose!
And then I thought of eating shit at the bottom of a roverpak for a year or two, and the next thing I knew I was running full out toward him, howling my brave little heart out. “Albert, you nincompoop! Look out! Screamer crater right in front of you! Look out, dummy! Jump it, dodge it,
get away from there, you simple shit!”
But he was too drunk to know what he was doing. And there, right on schedule, coming up like something out of an old Japanese horror flick…there was the king awful ugliest screamer I’ve ever seen, oozing green slime and his parts falling off like some medieval drawing of a rotting flagellant or a leper, nothing but bitten fingernails all the way back to the knuckles, and eyelashes as long as spider legs, and big whirling eyes without eyelids, his mouth open and yelling with the pain of his burns, groping and clutching and trying to climb out of the pit…
And stupid Vic just sashaying up to him as if he were a chorus girl looking for a good time.
Look out, you asshole! I screamed mind-to-mind, and sailed past him on the rise, just looming up in that screamer’s face and baring my fangs and barking like crazy…
And the poor devil fell back into the pit and I didn’t have to touch him, which would have been the end of me, and I fell into the pit and didn’t even stop to look around, just came up running and scrabbled like a mole up the other side and off down the street trying to beat today
into tomorrow.
And here came my valiant master, the well-known brain damage case, Vic aka Albert, running along behind me, his mouth open and screaming in terror just the way that poor devil screamer had screamed, which is rotten syntax, but I was terrified!
The next time I stopped for breath, I was two miles up the road and way back there somewhere good old Vic was running so hard his knees were hitting him in the chin. I stopped and fell down and lay on my side in the gutter and just breathed in and out as best I could, and
prayed for a better life.
Vic came running up, went fifty yards past me, realized the heap in the gutter had been me, and came back. He fell down on the curb and panted for ten minutes.
When the lights stopped flashing and my chest stopped hurting and I stopped sounding like an asthmatic, I flipped over, got my legs under me, and sat down properly.
He was staring at me. I stared back. For a long time.
“You hungry?” he asked, finally.
“I could eat.”
“There’s some of those canned cherries left.”
“That would be all right.”
He pulled a can of cherries out of the rucksack, and the can opener. “Green, wasn’t he?” I said, offhandedly.
“Oh, he was okay.”
“You looked as if you didn’t know whether to shit or wind your watch.”
“Eggsucker,” he said. He was grinning.
So we just sat there and ate the canned cherries.
“Name the presidents after Roosevelt,” I said. “Franklin, not Teddy.”
And he did. But he forgot Ford again. There’s only so much you can do with a human. But it’s a living.