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Title: Divvy up
Author: Stephen Marlowe
Illustrator: Mel Varga
Release date: December 29, 2023 [eBook #72537]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1960
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DIVVY UP ***
DIVVY UP
By MILT LESSER
ILLUSTRATED by VARGA
_Here's a fine, hard story of the inverted
ethical system of the post-war world, where
inhumanity is the norm and cruelty pays dividends._
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories February 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Hardesty fondled the sight picture with his right eye, squinting shut
his left eye, caressing the trigger of his rifle with the index finger
of his right hand and waiting for the squad leader to issue his
commands.
"Ready," called the squad leader.
At times like this, Hardesty observed, time seemed suspended. He
wondered if it worked that way for the condemned man, too. The sun was
just coming up over the rim of the bomb crater, splashing the rubble
there with rose and gold. A hungry dog howled somewhere north of the
crater.
"Aim...."
A dozen rifles were pointed at various parts of the condemned man's
anatomy. Hardesty always selected the stomach, although there
invariably was a softie in each firing squad to spoil the fun. The
hungry dog began to yelp. Someone had probably left ground glass for it.
Before the squad leader could shout the command to fire, a rifle shot
cracked flatly, with a complete lack of resonance, across the bomb
crater. The condemned man jerked upward, then strained forward in death
against the fetters which bound him to the firing post.
"Damn it!" swore the squad leader. "Who the hell did that?"
Jumping the gun had started some years ago strictly as a sport. Now it
was business, though, and profitable if you could get away with it and
trust your confederate.
"Who did that?" screamed the squad leader.
No one spoke. The dozen members of the firing squad stood rigidly at
the aim position, their weapons pointing like accusing fingers at the
dead man slumping forward against the firing post. Two crows flapped by
like black paper overhead, cawing raucously.
"All right," snapped the squad leader. "Uh-ten-_shun_!"
* * * * *
Rifle stocks were slapped in brisk unison as the weapons were brought
down from the aim position through port to order arms. A trickle of
sweat rolled across the bridge of Hardesty's nose. A bus rumbled by two
blocks east, on what was left of Lexington Avenue. Hardesty wondered if
the driver's union sanctioned passenger trapping. He had once traveled
ten extra blocks on a bus which had slowed down without stopping at
the designated spots. He had watched braver passengers than himself
leap from the vehicle, risking broken bones. Well, they probably had
time-clocks to punch; Hardesty was in business for himself.
"In-spec-shun--_harms_!" the squad leader screamed. Twelve rifles
snapped up to port, twelve bolts were slammed back. The squad leader
walked down the line, examining rifle chambers. Three rifles to
Hardesty's left, he stopped. "Here she is," he said.
From the corner of his eye, Hardesty saw the girl, calm as murder, hurl
her heavy rifle at the squad leader. The stock slammed across his face
and knocked him down before he could parry it with his arms. The girl
turned and fled up over the rim of the bomb crater.
"Catch her!" bellowed the squad leader, who stood up, wiped the blood
from his lips and sprinted toward the crater rim. Ten members of the
squad followed him on the double. The penalty for jumping the gun was
severe; the reward for catching the culprit, considerable.
Hardesty did not follow the squad leader.
He waited until the last of the squad had scrambled up the steep slope
of the crater wall, waited until the drumming sound of feet on the
buckled pavement faded, then approached the dead man still suspended
from the firing post. The man's face looked peaceful, as if he were
only sleeping. He wore a mackinaw, a pair of patched trousers and heavy
rubble-boots. Hardesty could not see where the bullet had gone in.
Approaching the corpse, Hardesty wondered if the girl who had fired
prematurely would make good her escape. Lord knew there were places to
hide in the bombed-out city. Hardesty began to hope they would capture
her, though. It would simplify things. He did not know her name,
but fifteen minutes before the execution he had tossed a coin with
her. Hardesty had won. She would kill the condemned man prematurely,
Hardesty would remain behind to go through his pockets for booty. Later
on, they would meet at the stump of the Lever Brothers Building and
divvy up. Provided she wasn't caught. Provided Hardesty remembered.
Sucker, he thought.
He reached the dead man and started through the big flap pockets of
his mackinaw. A cold wind swirled into the crater, lifting a cloud of
choking dust. The first red glow of the sun had faded, leaving a pale
and watery orb to fight the gathering clouds in the eastern sky. It
looked like snow was on the way. Hardesty found a tattered wallet in
the left rear pocket of the man's trousers.
"Hold it," a woman's voice called softly.
Startled, Hardesty looked around. He saw no one. He might hurl himself
behind the corpse and the firing post, his rifle ready--but the woman
could have been crouched behind the embankment there.
"What do you want?" Hardesty demanded in an arrogant voice. You were a
goner if you showed fear. That's what they wanted, fear.
"I'm armed. I have you covered. I can see you but you can't see me.
Drop your rifle."
Bluff? Hardesty wondered.
"I'll count three."
And fire on two, you shrew, Hardesty thought. He wondered again
about the other girl, the one who was fleeing across the city now. A
confederate of hers? It was possible. Double-dealing invited triple
dealing. Hardesty thumbed the safety catch forward on his rifle and
dropped the weapon at his feet. He still held the dead man's wallet in
his left hand.
The woman appeared over the rear embankment of the crater. She wore
a cap with earlaps, a tattered leather lumber-jacket, a heavy black
skirt, rubble-boots and no gloves. She carried a sawed-off shotgun in
the cradle of her bent left arm. She was pretty, but did not look mean
enough to be really beautiful. Her eyes were piercing.
"What have you got in your hand?" she said.
"His wallet."
"Give it to me." The young woman came forward, kicked Hardesty's rifle
out of reach with her left foot and held out her right hand.
Just then an air-raid siren began to wail. Hardesty looked up at the
pale cold sky. He saw no jets. He heard none. The spotters didn't give
you much warning these days. _They_ knew of the raid in advance, of
course. _They_ had received word from the spotters up and down the
coast. While they would be executed if they failed to report the raid
entirely, there was no stipulation on the time limit and no way of
proving it if there had been. As a consequence, the spotters were rich
men. You hardly had time to lock up or hide your valuables with only
seconds to reach shelter.
"Think it's for real?" the woman asked Hardesty.
He shrugged. He still heard no jets. False alarms kept you on your toes
and made you wait until the last possible moment when the real thing
came. False alarms? The spotters called them air-raid drills.
"I doubt it," Hardesty said truthfully. The bomb crater would make a
fairly good shelter, anyway. The worst of the shock waves would pass
over it. Hardesty hoped shelter-seeking pedestrians wouldn't find the
bomb crater. He might be able to deal with the woman alone, but he'd
lose whatever booty was left in the dead man's pockets if a few dozen
scavengers came down into the hole.
"Give me the wallet."
Hardesty handed it over. "Who are you?" he said. "A friend of that
blonde girl who--"
"Did you take anything else? I'm the widow."
A head was silhouetted briefly against the pale sky above the rim of
the crater. The widow fired a warning shot from one barrel of her
shotgun, then quickly reloaded it. The head vanished.
"You have no right to your husband's belongings," Hardesty said. "You
ought to know that."
"You have a right?"
"Sure. Why don't I?"
"Because I saw what happened. You were in cahoots with that blonde
girl, weren't you?" The widow went through her dead husband's pockets
as she talked, stuffing what she found into the pockets of her
mackinaw. Hardesty stared hungrily at the silver gleam of coins, the
dull green of paper money.
"Lady," Hardesty said derisively, "you're a sucker. Your husband was
holding out on you."
"What else did you find?"
"I didn't say I found anything."
"But you implied it."
"Go scratch," said Hardesty in a taunting voice. He wanted the woman
to search him. He thought he could take her if she got busy with his
pockets.
"I could kill you and search you afterwards."
"You could, if I didn't hide it where you'd never find it."
"Hide what?" the woman licked her lips eagerly. She looked real pretty
now. Hardesty had always preferred the mean, hard look to the unctuous
one which stamped so many faces these days. The woman took a step
toward Hardesty, who tensed himself. It was the little things like
this which made life worth living. The cat and mouse game. Personal
politics, it was called. It used to be called ethics. The woman put her
hand in the pocket of Hardesty's coat, anxiously searching.
At that moment, the first wave of jets came over.
The sky shook itself, disgorging bombs. A bright flash blossomed beyond
the western rim of the crater, and another. Seconds later, Hardesty
heard the explosions. The woman had forgotten Hardesty and crouched in
terror at the feet of her dead husband, who still stood there leaning
forward from the firing post. Had the woman denounced him for some
personal reason? wondered Hardesty. It happened all the time. Personal
politics.
* * * * *
The second wave of jets came over, their roar all but drowning out the
stacatto pop-pop-pop of the AA guns. The country had used up its entire
supply of ground-to-bomber missiles. The enemy had depleted its store
of fusion and fission bombs. Everyone settled for ack-ack and TNT.
The bombs rained down, exploding like firecrackers on a scale model
of the ruined city. It always looked that way to Hardesty. Unreal.
He supposed it was like that, unreal, to everyone until the one bomb
which was too close and suddenly too real compressed the air before its
warhead and shrieked earthward, growing and growing and not cutting
off the shriek before the sound of the explosion like kids do when
they play war and make vocal bomb sounds but terminating the shriek
instantly with the explosion and killing you almost before you heard
the sound with concussion or flying masonry or fire.
Like that bomb, right now, right there, which picked up a two-story
building, uprooting it at the foundation and lifting it slowly into
the air in defiance of gravity, then turning it over gently, teaching
it tricks before it perished, flipping it carelessly, indifferently,
showering a slow downpour of furniture to the ground through the now
floorless bottom story and then turning the whole building once more,
like a child's block caught in a gale, and suddenly sundering it,
breaking the building into large pieces which floated lazily downward,
exploding with a paradoxical lack of violence into smaller pieces, and
the smaller ones into still smaller, until the whole thing came down,
dust and shards now, like a multi-colored snowstorm, beyond the rim of
the bomb crater.
Afterwards came the concussion, mitigated by the depth of the crater
but still strong, flipping Hardesty across the crater floor. He let
his muscles go slack, instinctively knowing there would be less
likelihood of a broken bone that way. He tasted blood in his mouth and
felt his head burrow into rubble and ashes. He stood up groggily as
the all-clear sounded. You had to be cautious. Sometimes the spotters
tricked you. Then you went out into the open and the bombs came down
again almost as if the spotters and the enemy bombardiers were in
secret entente with one another and would later meet in some undreamed
of neutral place and share the booty collected from corpses and parts
of corpses. It was a dog eat dog world.
The concussion had ripped loose the firing post, which had fallen with
the dead man still dangling, like a drunk leaning backwards against a
lamp-post, across the woman. She lay there under its weight, her legs
drumming, her arms twitching.
"Help me," she called to Hardesty in a feeble voice. "Please help
me." She was very ugly that way, with a look of supplication on her
dirt-smeared face. Hardesty walked over to her and placed his foot on
her shoulder so she wouldn't twitch so, then went through her pockets
quickly. He found two five million dollar bills and a handful of small
denomination coins, one and two hundred thousand dollars each, mostly.
Shrugging his disappointment, Hardesty realized it would be only enough
to keep him going a week, and that long only if he spent it frugally.
Those were the breaks.
"What else did you find?" the woman croaked through bloody lips.
She would probably live, Hardesty figured. She was only pinned there;
she didn't seem badly hurt. Naturally, he changed his residence in
the bombed-out city every day, but if the blonde girl were caught
and described him to save her own neck and if this woman confirmed
the description to receive her share of the ten million dollars in
denouncer's bounty, Hardesty might possibly be found. The penalty for
jumping the gun or aiding gun-jumping was death. Other citizens didn't
have their just opportunity to scavenge.
"What else?" the woman asked again.
Hardesty went over and found the sawed-off shotgun. "Nothing," he said,
and split the woman's skull open with the stock of the shotgun.
"Hey, man! Hey, over this way!"
A digging crew was working with picks and shovels on a ruined building
on 44th Street. It had been an office building of some dozen storys,
but the whole façade had collapsed. The offices thus revealed looked
like tiny cubicles with cardboard ceilings, floors and walls. The whole
ruined structure looked like a giant compartmented eggbox lying on its
side, the small square compartments cluttered with impossibly small
office furniture carved to perfect scale.
"Hey, man! We got an extra shovel."
Community effort. You had to dig out the ruins. In the early days
of the war you looked for living people, but now personal politics
had changed that. The diggers had clubs and knives ready in case any
survivors were found to contest their booty. They were hacking away at
the heaps of broken concrete with consummate effort, stopping every now
and then for hot drinks which the Red Cross brought around. They had
some union, those Red Cross workers. They were guaranteed ten percent
of the booty in any building they serviced during digging. Often only
the digging foreman got coffee, but it didn't matter.
The scene reminded Hardesty of a clever children's toy he had seen
once. It was a hollow globe of plastic, with water inside. When you
turned it upside down, tiny jet bombers dropped tinier bombs on a
skyscraper which resembled the Lever Brothers Building. The building
flew apart, spitting miniature corpses and furniture out of windows.
Minute diggers started to dig at the base of the structure and a Red
Cross vehicle spilled out tiny, spider-like Red Cross workers with
armbands. When you turned the globe right-side-up again, everything
assumed its place like before the air-raid. It was very ingenious.
Hardesty thought it would be a good idea to get out of his
neighborhood. There was no telling what had happened to the blonde.
If he were caught in her position, he certainly would have squealed.
Anyway, Hardesty had heard that the pickings were good down by the old
Navy Yard in Brooklyn, provided you could steal a boat and make your
way across the East River under the ruined bridges. Some people claimed
the waters of the river were still radioactive, but Hardesty suspected
the radiation had long since flowed out to sea. It was probably a rumor
promulgated and maintained by the roving bands of Brooklyn scavengers.
Hardesty had always preferred being a small businessman. He just
couldn't see scavenging for a salary, despite the comparative security
it offered.
"Well, what do you say, man?"
"No, really, I have to be getting along."
"All right, then. It's an order." Someone thrust a shovel at Hardesty.
He glanced at the man's sleeve and saw the starred armband of a block
captain. Damn these civil servants! You hated their guts but had to
obey them. Oh, they were psychopathic enough. Hardesty admitted that to
himself. You couldn't get any kind of a decent job with the city unless
the Civil Service Board passed on your psychopathy. But they were too
smug in an orderly, regimented way. They could quote ordinances to you
until you wanted to wring their necks but they were right and if you
did, you were as good as dead.
Hardesty took the shovel in his numb cold hands and began to dig
mechanically where the pick-ax crew had already done its work. After an
hour, he had uncovered nothing worthwhile. A teen-aged Red Cross girl
brought him a cup of evil-smelling synthetic coffee, but he drank it to
warm his stiff muscles.
All at once, he heard a tapping sound coming from a big bronze pipe
which had probably carried water or refuse from one of the offices
upstairs.
"Someone's alive in there," a youngster next to Hardesty said. He ran
over with a pick-ax and began to hack furiously at the rubble.
The block captain rushed to the spot and said, "Are you crazy or
something? There's no air in there. Give them a couple of hours and
they'll be dead. Are you forgetting your ordinances, boy?"
"But we can save them!" the youngster said in some confusion.
"We got too many mouths to feed as it is. Anyhow, you want them
contesting the booty? If they survive, they're liable to claim it all."
"I--I'm sorry." The youngster stopped hacking away with his pick-ax.
He seemed genuinely contrite, but you never knew about that type. He
might come back tonight and dig in private. By then, fortunately, it
would be too late. But the city hospitals were full of just such people
who couldn't adjust to the rigors of war. Hardesty had heard about a
proposed bill which would have them all killed painlessly. That was no
way to die, without pain, but it served them right. Of course, thought
Hardesty bitterly, the city would claim all their booty--which was
another matter entirely.
* * * * *
Five minutes later, Hardesty found a dismembered arm. It was already
frozen with the cold and seemed more like wax than flesh. The arm was
too muscular to have belonged to a woman. The man had worn a ring and
a gold-plated wristwatch which, between them, might bring eighty or
ninety million dollars on the black market. Hardesty got the watch
loose and was working the ring off the frozen fingers when the block
captain spotted him.
"I saw that," he said. He had a big beefy face with eyes so close
together they seemed to be forever staring at the tip of his nose. "You
think you're in business for yourself?"
"I'm sorry," Hardesty said lamely. "Habit. I'm a scavenger by
occupation. Here. Here's the ring."
The beefy-faced man scrutinized the ring and pocketed it. "The
wristwatch," he said,
"There must be some mistake."
"I saw you put it in your pocket."
"No, you must have been imagining things." What would it bring on the
black market? Fifty million dollars in a quick sale? Decent living for
a month. Hardesty was damned if the block captain would get it.
"Fork it over, wise guy."
The other diggers had stopped their work to watch Hardesty's
growing--and now perilous--discomfort. "Let's just get on with the
work," Hardesty suggested. He had placed the sawed-off shotgun down
near the curb when he started digging. He saw it there now, with one of
the Red Cross teen-agers staring at it covetously. He wondered if he
could reach it in time and blast the beefy block captain's face in. He
decided the shovel would be quicker and every bit as effective.
"For the last time ..." began the block captain.
Swinging the shovel like a baseball bat, Hardesty bounced it off his
jaw. He didn't wait to see the results. He bolted for the curb,
scooped up his sawed-off shotgun, and ran.
* * * * *
It was snowing now, big dry flakes which fell from a windless sky, slow
patient flakes which would fall for many hours if the leaden sky was
any indication, choking the broken arteries of the perishing city.
Let it, thought Hardesty. I don't have to go to Brooklyn, after all. I
know where I can dispose of this wristwatch.
He was jogging along in no great hurry. He had darted down Vanderbilt
Avenue by the ruins of Grand Central Station, then cut back and forth
through the streets in the low forties. They had chased him for a
while but had given him up by now, he supposed. Hell, it was only one
wristwatch. He slowed to a walk along Park Avenue and watched the city
die.
The city had been moribund ever since Hardesty could remember. It
seemed the natural state of things, just as the public politicians
had finally given in to the inevitable and now decried that war was
the natural state of human society. With war, cities died. With dead
cities, war became a more personal thing. That was where personal
politics came in. War became an individual thing as well as a social
enterprise. That was the way you lived.
An old woman came trudging along in the snow, her boot-shod feet making
footprints clear down through the thin white covering to the broken
gray sidewalk beneath it. She was selling poor-grade booty, trinkets
and a few items of faded old clothing. "Anything I've got," she hawked,
holding a yellow straw basket up for Hardesty's inspection, "anything
in the basket for only a hundred thousand dollars."
When Hardesty shook his head, she tagged along, gripping his sleeve
in clawlike fingers and tugging at it. "Go away, grandma," he said.
The old lady went on ranting about her wares in a high, incongruously
childish voice. Maybe a few of the diggers were still looking for him,
Hardesty thought. The crone's piercing voice would attract people for
blocks.
The hag cleared her throat and spat yellow phlegm in the clean white
snow. "See this dress? See, it's second hand, but you could hardly
tell. For you, a special price because you have a cruel face. For you--"
"Damn it!" said Hardesty, and fished in his pocket for a few coins.
There was no one else on the street, no one else on the lonely
landscape of battered buildings and stumps of buildings. A few feet to
Hardesty's left, a fire hydrant had ruptured; a torrent of water gushed
from it, freezing at the edges of the large puddle which had formed,
as if the ice had started there and would approach the hydrant and
strangle it. Hardesty was surprised that the city still pumped so much
pressure through its water mains.
"Here," Hardesty said, handing the old woman a few coins and taking her
basket. It was unexpectedly heavy. The old woman thanked him profusely
in her childish voice. Hardesty had no use for the contents of the
basket, but wouldn't return it to the hag. Later he could dispose of
it. Returning it to her would be charity, and you just did not indulge
in charity.
The old woman walked off through the snow, cackling happily.
"There he is!" someone cried.
Hardesty heard the footfalls pounding behind him. The diggers. He
began to run, hurling the basket away from him. He turned around to
look and saw four or five shapes sprinting after him. Hardesty raised
the shotgun without bothering to aim and fired both barrels. The hag
clutched her throat and pitched forward in the snow. One of the men
fell with her. Hardesty tossed the now useless shotgun aside and heard
something clatter against the wall next to him. Sparks flew. It was a
knife. The man's aim had been good, almost too good.
* * * * *
Hardesty circled the block twice, then hid in a doorway. It was a
doorway to absolutely nowhere. On one side was the street, on the other
was a rubble-filled bomb crater. This had once been a building, but
only the doorway stood. Even the door had been blown to bits.
A sign over the door said WAL--RIA. Hardesty thought a hotel had stood
here, long ago. He crouched in the doorway and waited, catching his
breath. It was so cold, his teeth began to chatter uncontrollably. His
lungs, though, were on fire, and his nostrils. He couldn't stay there
too long. He would freeze to death. Perhaps they had taken a wrong turn
over on Madison Avenue.
Hardesty walked boldly out into the street. No one stopped him.
Ten minutes later, after hiding in a pile of rubble when he saw someone
coming down the street, Hardesty found himself passing the stump of
the Lever Brothers Building. The girl, he thought suddenly. He had
forgotten about the blonde. He shouldn't be passing here. She might be
waiting for him.
"Psst! Hey, it's me. I didn't know to expect you or what."
It was the blonde's voice. Hardesty had in mind to run again, but there
would be too many people after him, too many people who, out of spite
or patriotism, would identify him and denounce him. He would share the
executed man's booty with the blonde girl. But not the wristwatch. She
had nothing to do with the wristwatch. Maybe, he thought, she even knew
of a good warm place to sleep.
"I had a little delay," Hardesty said. He didn't see the blonde
anywhere. She was inside the building.
"Well, come on in."
People came from all over Manhattan to see the Lever Brothers stump.
Miraculously, some of the green-tinted glass was still whole. No one
could explain this except to say it was a freak of concussion, and it
_had_ happened, hadn't it? The few panes which remained were almost the
only unbroken panes of glass in New York City.
It was green in there, and dim. Looking out through the glass, the snow
resembled tons of chopped spinach coming down. The blonde's hair was
green. Her skin was green, and her eyes. She had a hard cold look on
her face now.
"Well?" she said.
Hardesty began to empty his pockets for the divvy up.
Someone said, "Stop right there! Hold it."
The man was big and had probably used many times with success the gun
he carried in his fist. It was the man who had spoken. He covered
Hardesty with the gun while the blonde hastily went through the booty
they had found.
"You're being held under city ordinance 217," the big man told
Hardesty. Ordinance 217 was concerned with gun-jumping or aiding a
gun-jumper. The penalty was death.
* * * * *
Not long afterwards, Hardesty was bound to a firing post near the
embankment of a crater close to the Lever Brothers stump, but far
enough away so none of the glass would be shattered. The firing squad
lined up. The blonde girl was third from the right. Hardesty hoped
someone would aim for his stomach and the others would miss. If he had
to die, he wanted to die painfully.
"Ready!" barked the squad leader. Hardesty wasn't sure, but thought he
was the same man who had led that other squad.
"Aim...."
Time was suspended again. Even more for the condemned.
And then, before the squad leader could shout "fire!" Hardesty heard
a gunshot. He didn't feel the bullet go in, but as he slumped forward
away from the firing post he felt a warm wetness, and no other
sensation, in his chest. With a final effort of will he looked up and
saw the blonde girl's face. There was a faint smile tugging at the
corners of her lips. All at once Hardesty knew. She had probably taken
someone in this squad aside, as she had taken Hardesty aside. She had
made a deal with him. Meet at the Lever Brothers stump, or someplace
else? Divvy up. It was the surest way to catch gun-jumpers. The blonde
girl was working for the government and probably collected a healthy
slice of the booty.
The last thing Hardesty ever heard was the squad leader's angry voice
as the man roared: "Who the hell jumped the gun?"
THE END
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