The Night of the Long Knives

hed, stalked and killed, whether needed for food or not. Otherw

enty-Fi

rbert

out of the corner of my eye. I'd been keeping an extra lookout because I still expecte

m the Last War. I judged the girl was going in the same general direction and was being edged over toward my course by a

me and like me wearing a scarf loosely around the low

n we'd seen each other as our paths slowly converged. But we wer

remember what a high sky looks like. Three years ago I

ng from the amber of midday t

d see where the metal on the blast side had been eroded-vaporized by the original blast, mostly smoothly, but with welts and pustules where the metal had merely melted and run. I

t on them than skeletons. Intense radiation has killed their bacteria and preserved them indefinitely from decay, just like the packaged meat in the last advertiseme

lat-tops in a smoke screen, their prows being the juncture of the natural

been-hence, in part, the name-but I knew in a general way that I was somewhere in the

e traveler from mid Twentieth Century hopped forward to it across the few intervening years and looked at a map of it, if anybody has a map of it, he'd think that the map had run-that it had got some sort of disea

biggest stockpiles of fusionables let go and opened Death Valley to the sea-so that Los Alamos is closer to being a port. Centrally he'd find Porter County and Manteno Asylum surprisingly close together near the Gr

ctically all of them would surprise him-no one can predict what scraps of a blasted nation are going to

athlands. I don't know how else than by an area of solid, absolutely unrelieved black you'd represent the Deathlands with its multicolored radioactive dusts and its skimpy freightage of lonely Deathlanders, each bound on his murderous,

here in the Deathland

ucky knife throw. She wore boots and a weathered long-sleeved shirt and jeans. The black topping was hair, piled hig

sbow you can't easily tell whether the spring is loaded. Back around on her left hip a small leather satchel was strapped to her belt. Also o

y Baker's great psychological weapon, though (who knows?) the two .38 cartridges it contai

ding her right hand, all right, she had the long sleeve pulled down over it so just the hook stuck out. I asked myself if the hand were p

and I saw how short it was. She had no right

, I think, though some people have judged I'm younger. No way of my

she would have quicker reflexes

t of irregular ticks that almost made me start. I steadied myself and concentrated on thinking whether I should attach any special significance to her carrying a Geiger counter. Natu

rayed area more reliably than any instrument. Some buggers claim they just feel it, though I've never known any of the latter

burgher's unfaithful wife or troublesome girlfriend whom he'd personally carted out beyond the ridges of cleaned-out hot dust tha

elonged in the Deathlands

k so. She raised her boot an extra inch to ste

n experience as rich as my own or richer. I've met the super-careful type before. Th

er, planning to use it some oth

! Then the counter made good sense. But then wh

ould throw me off guard? But who would go to the trouble of carrying a Geiger counter for such d

k-it gets y

w and started to edge in toward me faster. I turned the

cant our heads around a bit to keep each other in peripheral vision. Our eyes would be on each other steadily for five or six seconds, then dart forward an instant to check for rocks and holes in the trail we were

pale complexion-very little ultraviolet gets through the dust. From the inside corner of her right eye socket a narrow radiation scar ran up be

g her, of course

usts have a bluish cast, there are few blue objects except certain dark steels, the sky never gets v

eet apart, not an inch closer, still not looking straight at each other, still not saying a word, and I realized that the initial period of unadulterated watchfulness was over, t

r to kill her or

ers for gain, or concealment of crime, or from thwarted sexual desire or outraged sexual possessiveness-and maybe they would list a few other "rational" motives-but not, they would say, just for the simple sake of murder, for the sure release and relief it gives, for the sake of wiping out one recognizable bit more (the closest bit we can, si

tinge: the werewolf gangs, the Berserkers and Amuckers, the revival of Shiva worship and the Black Mass, the machine wreckers, the kill-the-killers movements, the new witchcraft, the Unholy Creepers, the Unconsciousers, the radioactive blue gods and rock

and hysterical crippledness, they actually believe-each howlingly different community of them-that they're the new Adams and Eves. They're all excited about themse

assion-we call ourselves junkmen, scavengers, gangrene surgeons; we sometimes believe we're doing the person we kill the ultimate kindness, yes and get slobbery tearful about it afterwards; we sometimes tell ourselves we've finall

derstand our urge to m

us until it becomes an overpowering impulse that jerks us, like a puppet

deathmarch through the reddening haze, me and this girl and o

ut. Maybe they do. But I wonder if they understand how intense it can be with us Deathlanders when it's the only release (except maybe liquor and drugs, which we seld

briefly to love, briefly to shelter in-that was go

h even (though sometimes not for a single night)-you might even start to talk to each othe

hlanders know how good it feels. But then after the kill the loneliness woul

wo urges. Was she attracted to the ridgy scars on my cheeks half revealed by my scarf?-to me they have a pleasing symmetry. Was she wondering how my head and face

looked as poker-fac

rogantly thinned lips that asked to be smashed, and the slender throat?-and I realized that there was no way to describe that, not even to myself. I could only f

shed altogether, and we were standing still. Only then did I notice the obvious physical trigger for our stopping. An old freeway ran at right angles across our path. The shoulder by which we'd approached it was sharply eroded, so that the

of the red light showing through in odd patterns of dots and dashes where vaporization or later erosion had been complete. Almost but not quite lace-work. Just ahead of us, right across the freew

ing redder and smo

I could feel the twin urges growing faster in me. But that was all right, I told myself-this was the cris

s strong as the other two-the urge to speak, to tell and ask all about it. But even as I started to phrase the first crazily happy greeting, my throat lumped, as I'd known it would, with the awful melan

e. I could see her eyelids squeeze down on her eyes and her

ete and drew back her hand from it about six inches. At the same time looking at me hard-fiercely angrily, you'd say-across her left shoulder. She had the experienced duelist's trick of

ng just two fingers, very gingerly-disarmingly, I hoped-I lifted my antique firearm from its holster and laid it on the concrete and drew back my hand f

t her left side and laying them beside the dart gun. Then s

p by weighing yourself down with dozens, literally. So I am naturally very reluctant to get out of touch in any way with M

ally laid Mother on the concrete beside the .38 and rested my hands lightly o

eren't raising any more dust-and then she took hold of the hook with her left hand

must be that way so she could screw its tang into the base when she want

to me. I opened the knapsack and moving my hand slowly and very openly so she'd have no reason to suspect a ruse, I drew out a blanket and, try

aid it aside and then she took off her belt too, slowly drawing it through

ours, can be nasty weapons. I removed mine. Simultaneously each b

o weapon, then looked at me questioningly. I nodded that I was satisfied-I hadn't seen anything run out of it, by the way. Then

y never will and I'm sure that the patches of lead mesh sewed into my pants over my loins give a lot more practical protection. But I was getting real attracted to this girl by n

n her tongue along the upper one. I gave an eager grin in r

ke myself, had all their teeth jerked and replaced with durable plates. I went some of them one better. My plates were stainless steel biting and chewing ridges, smooth continuous ones that didn't attempt to copy individual teeth. A pers

o admit that she showed very sound judgment, because I keep the incisor parts of those plates filed to razor sharpness. I have to be careful about my tongue and lips

erer, but by now the attraction this girl had for me was getting

er mouth wide and showed me what was left of her own teeth

e watching very suspiciously-I knew she'd b

ng the slanting radiation scars that have replaced it, though they are crawling keloids of the ugliest, bumpiest sort. I guess to me such scars are tribal insignia-one-

concealed weapons as carefully as we should-I know I wasn't. It was getting dark fas

usly crouching a little on the left foot and whipping the right leg out of its sheath in one movement, all ready to jump without tr

chance of the minor indignity of cannibalism, which some of us practice-were suddenly gone, all gone. It was going to be all right this time, I was telling myself. This was the time it would be different, this was the time love would last, t

me another smooth slantwise scar, this one around her hips, l