"Yeah. Felt a little misery this morning, but I thought it would go away."
"Do you think it might be a colloid?" Alex asked.
"Please don't say that," Jo said.
"It's all right," Victor told her. "That's a question has to be asked when anybody gets sick." He looked at Alex. "Truth is, man, I don't know. Might just be a regular virus. Might be one of them slimy muffugs. I can't tell."
"Better get moving," Alex said. "You'll be easy prey if you get too weak."
"I got a ways to go to my crib." Victor's eyes were very red. He was clearly feeling worse every minute.
"Maybe we better take you back to my place," said Jo. "Keep an eye on you."
"You don't mind?"
"Come on, man." Alex gave him a hand, grasping Victor's one arm.
"You know," Victor said as they went underground. "We be lucky to live here. Some cities got no tunnels underneath. No place to hide from them creepy-crawlies."
"That's right," said Alex, wondering if delirium was setting in.
"Way I figure it, most everybody's dead in those places. Maybe we're like rats living in the sewers, but at least we're living."
"Yes, at least we're living," Jo repeated.
They made their way along the rusted tracks until Jo pointed to the shaft above, which was practically invisible even in the lantern light. They climbed up, Victor having some difficulty, and crept through to the sewer on the other side. The entire city, on both sides of the Schuylkill River, had been built over a system of passageways, steam vents, gas lines, and tunnels, something of a subterranean city in itself. Most of those who had lived aboveground knew little about this dark labyrinth before the colloids came, but the less fortunate street people had been well acquainted with Philadelphia's underworld. Maybe that was why so many of them were still alive.
"Man, it's getting worse," Victor said, gasping. "I don't like to whine, but I'm really feeling sick. I don't know if I can make it much longer."
"We'll be there soon," Jo said.
"All right."
Five minutes later, they were helping Victor up into her—their—nest. Victor lay back, breathing heavily, sweat droplets like pearls on his forehead.
"Hanging in there, man?" Alex asked.
"Still alive," Victor said, but his voice was weak and tremulous.
Alex sensed that a bad end was coming for Jo's friend. He could not be certain, but it looked as if Victor might be infected by a colloid.
Closing his eyes, Victor tried to sleep. After only a few minutes, however, he lurched toward the vent opening. He hung his head over the edge and vomited into the slowly moving water below.
"Don't worry," he said, gasping and falling back on the piled rags. "It's biodegradable."
Alex and Jo tried to smile, understanding just what a brave man he was. The odds were that he was being eaten from the inside out by an alien organism, and here he was making jokes at his own expense.
"Know how I lost this?" Victor asked, raising the stump of his right arm. "One of them bastards infected me two years ago. I cut that muffug off myself, man."
Jo was weeping now, softly.
"Always knew they was gonna get me again, sooner or later."
"You can't be sure," Jo said, sniffing and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand.
"I'm sure." Victor looked right at her. "This time it's deep inside me, though. In my guts. No way to cut it out."
"Jesus," said Alex.
"I want you to do something for me."
"Name it."
"Kill me."
Shit, Alex thought. Two in one fucking day. And though he hardly knew this man, it pained him to have to do it. This wretched world needed more men with Victor's balls. "It'll be clean," said Alex.
"Thanks."
Alex nodded, and Victor closed his eyes. When it became apparent that he had lost consciousness, Jo said, "How can we be certain? There's so much disease in the world, and no medicine to stop the contagion. It could be anything."
"Jo, he didn't get this from eating green apples. He's got a colloid inside him. Do you think he would say what he did if he wasn't positive?"
"He's delirious. He said himself that he lost his arm to a colloid. Maybe he's just got a fever and thinks he's infected."
Alex had to admit that it was possible. "We'll wait a little while longer, then. But you know how quick it can be past the initial stage. We'll have to keep a vigil."
"Don't worry. I'll stay with him."
"We both will, Jo. Like you said, we're in it together."
She managed a wan smile. Shaking a few drops of clean water from a canteen onto a rag, she gently wiped Victor's face.
"He's so hot."
Alex said nothing. Leaning against the wall, he waited for the inevitable. The Ingram was in his lap.
* * *
Alex heard people talking, a man and a woman. They seemed to be far away, at the bottom of a well. He was in the psycho ward, sure as shit stinks. Thirteen Thompson, as it was so esoterically called. The thirteenth floor of the Thompson Wing of Jefferson University Hospital. The nut house. He couldn't get into the veterans' hospital because this wasn't service related. That was why he was here. But no, he wasn't in any hospital. He must have been dozing, heard the nurses out in the hall, or something. A man and a woman. No, there was water dripping.
Opening his eyes, he remembered where he was. In a sewer, cramped in a ventilator shaft with an ex-Society Hill princess and a dying man.
Victor was talking. He seemed lucid, though he looked terrible. His eyes were red and rheumic, and his skin was ashen. He was sweating, though it was chilly in the sewer tonight.
"Jo," Victor was saying in a gasping voice, "I want you and Alex to have my stash."
"You're going to be all right," Jo said. "Don't start writing your last will and testament just yet, all right?"
"I'm telling you, babe. This is it."
"Victor . . . "
"Once it starts crawling up my spine, what you see won't be me anymore. My body's gonna belong to some monster from Jesus only knows where. I might attack you then. So you gotta make sure Alex kills me before that."
Jo could no longer convincingly pretend that she didn't think it was going to happen. "Oh, Victor, I'm so sorry."
"You got nothin' to be sorry for, Jo. You been a good friend."
She was crying openly now, the tears like jewels in the lantern light. "I'm sorry. I guess I should be used to this by now."
"You never get used to this shit," Victor said. "But listen, babe. Let me tell you where my stash is at. First thing is, reach inside my coat and pull out that big ol' forty four."
Jo did so, withdrawing an enormous pistol.
"You'll find bullets in my pockets," Victor said, wheezing. "Now, listen to what I tell you."
Victor grimaced and sat part way up, suffering a spasm. He fell back on the pile of rags and groaned. "You got to get across the river to West Philly."
"Where in West Philly?" Alex said, leaning forward. When Victor had told them that his place was too far for a sick man to go, he wasn't kidding.
"Basement off Lancaster, house got leveled during the war. But there's a way to get into the basement. I put some planks over the steps and covered it with trash. Whole neighborhood's all wrecked, and nobody goes there much anymore. So there ain't many colloids around there, either."
"What street is it?"
"Ishan." Victor choked.
"Ishan? I don't know that street. Are you sure that's the right . . . ?"
Victor's mouth opened wide, spittle flecking his lips. He coughed spasmodically and gagged. He was unable to breathe, rasping and choking. A lump appeared on his throat.
At first Alex couldn't tell if it was Victor's Adam's apple, but then he saw that it was too low on the throat. And it was swelling, fast enough for him to see it balloon and threaten to break the skin.
"Good God!" Jo cried.
The death rattle sounded in Victor's throat. Foam gushed out through his clenched teeth and his body shook alarmingly. "Do it!" he rasped. "Do it, Alex!"
Alex took the safety off his weapon and pointed it at the dying man. But just as he was about to fire, Victor's gray hand shot out and grasped Jo's shoulder. He pulled her on top of him, as she screamed in horror. The colloid had taken over.
"Jo, get away from him!" Alex shouted. But she couldn't. And he couldn't get a shot off without running the risk of hitting her. Alex bolted toward the struggling figures.
Jo wasn't screaming anymore. She reached down to her boot and pulled out something that clicked and gleamed in the dim light. It was a switchblade. With one quick and graceful motion, she cut Victor's throat.
The gray hand relaxed its grip on her shoulder and fell away. Victor gurgled, the foam turning pink, and then crimson flowed so dark that it looked black in the lamplight. Arterial blood sprayed as Victor's body shuddered and was still.
Jo shrank back away from the corpse. "Will the colloid come out?" she asked. "Can it infect us now?"
"Probably not. It's suffering from shock now, with its hooks so deep into his nervous system."
Alex pushed the body with his foot, until it teetered on the edge of the shaft. He kicked it hard, and it went over the ledge, splashing below.
"Don't you think we should have burned it?" Jo asked, her eyes wide with fear.
"No, it will probably dissolve. They don't like water very much, unless it's inside a living organism."
"Yeah, right. Alex, hold me."
He put his arm around her, feeling her trembling body. His heart was pounding, too. He had almost lost her, so soon after finding her.
In spite of the need to preserve kerosene, they left the lantern burning even while they were asleep that night.
"How the hell do we find Ishan Street, or Ishan Place, or Ishan Court, or whatever it is?" Alex said. They were moving slowly through a tunnel, following the tracks. This route would take them under the Schuylkill River to West Philadelphia. They were on an upward incline now, which meant that they would soon see daylight.
"I don't know, Alex. We'll just have to look."
"But where? Lancaster's a long, long street. It goes on for miles."
"True, but don't you think it's worth putting some time into? Think of what we might get out of this."
"I don't know. When he traded bullets for the picture frame, Victor claimed he didn't have much left."
"He always said things like that. It was just the way he did business." There was a trace of sadness in her voice, but she would be all right.
A faint light filtered down through the tunnel mouth ahead. The rubble deepened as they came closer to the surface, until they had to pick their way, with difficulty, through trash that was sometimes hip deep.
They finally climbed out into the sunlight. The remains of West Philadelphia stretched out before them. A few blocks to the south were the blackened stones that had been the University of Pennsylvania, built in the Age of Enlightenment and destroyed in a fruitless effort to purge the city of colloids, three years earlier. To the north was the ghetto, where the rats now held dominion over all.
"It's been a long time since I've been to West Philly," Alex said.
"No wonder." Jo shook her head. "And I thought Center City was in a bad way."
"Even if I knew where Ishan was in the first place, it would still be hard to find. There aren't too many street signs left around here."
Perhaps Jo could see the hopelessness of the situation, now that they had actually come this far. They were faced with dozens of square miles of rubble. "Lancaster goes all the way out to Paoli and beyond," he said.
"True, but it stands to reason that Victor wouldn't keep his stash miles from where he did his business. I bet it's not all that far from where we're standing."
She didn't give up easily. "Well, let's get started."
They roamed through the abandoned streets and ruined row houses, few of which still stood in one piece. Looking for planks covered by trash was akin to finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. Debris was everywhere, though there was not nearly so much paper as in the old days, and the once ubiquitous fast-food containers were rarely seen anymore.
While they were going through a house that still had three walls standing, Alex thought he heard bricks clink. The Ingram's safety went off before he even thought about it, and he made a hand motion for Jo to be quiet. Backing up, and wincing as his still fresh scar rubbed against the bare bricks, he walked softly to the rear of the house.
Footsteps sounded just beyond the wall.
Alex moved out quickly, pointing his weapon ahead of him as he came into the open. Half a step and he would be back inside, covered by the wall.
"Don't move!" he shouted.
The man walking toward him showed no concern. In fact, he didn't even seem to notice Alex. He was tall and graybearded, wearing a ragged cassock and carrying a long piece of white, plastic piping like a staff. He reminded Alex of a biblical prophet. Besides the pipe, he didn't seem to be carrying any weapons.
"I thought I told you to hold still!" Alex roared.
The bearded man walked right past him, tapping with the pipe as if he was blind—which he clearly was not—and entered the three-sided house. Astonished, Alex followed him in and watched as he approached Jo.
"Daughter, I've come to you because you've been chosen," he said in a booming voice as he stopped in front of her. He raised the pipe above his head, but Alex saw that he had no intention of striking out with it. "The Good Lord has singled you out for salvation, and I am his prophet, come to anoint you."
"Terrific," Jo said, arching one eyebrow elegantly as she glanced at Alex. "I always thought I was kind of special."
"Me, too." Alex moved toward them, putting the safety on the Ingram. He looked up at the bearded man, who must have been nearly seven feet tall. "But your friend the prophet doesn't recognize my divinity, I guess."
The bearded man turned on him. "You blaspheme. This woman is not divine, she has merely been singled out for a purpose by God."