Part 1

RUN, LITTLE MONSTER!

By Chester S. Geier

Fran had heard about the monsters men hunted down and killed. But she had never seen one--until the night that Sammy looked at her and screamed....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy January 1952 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The girl ran like the hunted thing she was, her bare feet flashing over the lush spring grass. She sobbed with the effort of breathing, and her slight, immature body trembled with exhaustion beneath her ragged dress. Fear was a wild glitter in her eyes as she stared about her in search of refuge.

The two boys came racing in pursuit, yelling threats between labored snatches of breath.

"Stop, Fran!" Davey Becker panted. "You can't get away! We'll get you!" A thread of saliva stretched from his pendulous lower lip, soaking into the front of his tattered shirt. He was a hulking figure with dull eyes set deep under a low forehead.

Sammy Becker was two years older than his brother, smaller and slimmer yet making up in cunning and a shrewish driving force what he lacked in bulk. At eighteen he was the acknowledged leader of the pair, an oddly young-old figure with wizened features and pale eyes that gleamed with sadistic urges.

"Stop!" he screeched. "You better stop, you crazy orphan! You'll be sorry!"

She knew better than to stop. Frequent torment at the hands of Sammy and Davey told her she could expect no mercy after having led them on this long chase. In despair she realized it had been a serious mistake to wander away from the house. Little enough protection was to be expected of Big Luke Becker, but for the most part he didn't allow his sons to bedevil her while the endless daily round of household chores remained to be done.

Briefly and poignantly she wished she had a father of her own--a real father to comfort her and keep her from harm. She had never known what her father was like. Vaguely she remembered having heard that he had died in the war. Her mother had told her that once, a long time ago--but even her mother was only a dim memory. A lot of people seemed to have died in the war--millions of them. She could not understand how there could ever have been that many people, for there did not seem to be many at all in the world she knew.

Darting a glance behind her, she saw Sammy and Davey were gaining. Frantically she searched the grassy field again, bright and still under the afternoon sun.

* * * * *

There seemed no place at all where she could hide. And she had to hide. A stabbing pain in her chest warned her she couldn't keep up her flight.

She didn't want Davey and Sammy to reach her. Not out here, with no one else around. She knew Sammy would beat her until her resistance was gone. Then he would run his sweaty hands over her, laughing shrilly and breathing hard. Sammy always managed it so that Davey was the one who held her. She shuddered. She didn't like the things Sammy did with his hands.

A short distance ahead she saw that the field rose in a ridge, and suddenly she recognized the spot. There was a ravine below the ridge, choked with brush. She would be able to hide here, at least until she had caught her breath and could run again.

She drew upon her last dregs of strength and urged her legs into a burst of speed. The ridge rose before her as she drew ahead of the two boys. She struggled up the slope, and the brush along the crest whipped at her legs and caught at her dress as she beat her way through it. She went down the opposite slope in staggering leaps. Near the bottom of the ravine she fell and rolled the last few yards until a wall of brush brought her up short.

She scrambled back to her feet. Bent low, she began darting through gaps in the brush, ignoring the branches that raked and lashed at her.

She heard a shout and caught a glimpse of Davey and Sammy on the ridge crest. Evidently they had seen her from above, but once down in the ravine the brush would cut off their view and make their search difficult. She hoped to be well hidden by then.

Threshing, crackling sounds rose behind her as the boys scrambled down into the ravine. It was all somehow distant and unreal. A roaring filled her ears, and her head felt strangely light. The pattern of branches and leaves blurred smokily before her eyes.

At last she reached a shallow crevice on the opposite side of the ravine, screened by a clump of brush. It was hardly large enough to squeeze her body into, but it was the best hiding place she could find in what little time remained.

* * * * *

She pressed tightly into the crevice, trembling, her eyes shut. Davey and Sammy mustn't find her! She repeated the thought over and over, straining with a frantic intensity, as if she could avoid being discovered by force of will alone.

The dizzy sensation swept over her again. She had felt it before, though not as strongly as now. And she had realized it was produced by a serious change in her--a change announcing her emergence into womanhood. It had given her a new sense of being, an exultant awareness of power. But it was her weakness now.

The noise of hurrying footsteps and rustling branches came from a point frighteningly close. She heard Davey speak in a complaining tone.

"Aw, let's go home, Sammy. Fran's gone, and I'm tired of chasing her."

"She's around here somewhere," Sammy insisted in his nasal voice. "We'd of seen her if she tried to climb out."

He pushed at the bigger boy. "Come on, you addlebrained ox! Help me look. I'm not letting her get away, no sirree! When I get hold of her--"

Davey's usually vacuous face twisted in a scowl. "You're always making me do something, Sammy. I'm not going to run after Fran all day long. Why're you always after her? Whyn't you leave her alone?"

"She's a girl," Sammy returned. "Don't you know what girls are for, you bonehead?" His voice grew taunting. "Hey, you sweet on Fran? Golly, that's a tickler! Wait'll I tell the fellows in town. Davey's sweet on Fran! Davey's mooning over the orphan!"

"You ... you stop that, Sammy!" Davey blurted. "You stop it or I'll hurt you."

"You hurt me and I'll tell the old man. I'll tell the fellows in town about Fran, too." Sammy became slyly truculent. "You better help me look. I'll tell on you."

"Aw, whyn't you leave me alone?" Davey muttered. His big shoulders slumped in defeat and listlessly he turned away to resume his part of the search.

* * * * *

Branches crackled near Fran, and she grew rigid within her meager hiding place. They mustn't find her, she thought again. They mustn't find her!

The crackling came nearer. She saw Sammy's head and shoulders as he made an opening in the brush curtain with his hands. For an instant he seemed to look directly at her. The breath seemed to catch in her throat and her heart gave a sickening lurch. Sammy looked mad, not laughingly devilish as he usually did when bent upon persecuting her. She was afraid to think of what Sammy would do when he was mad.

But incredibly he drew back and walked away. It seemed a miracle to her that she had escaped being seen. Her dress was of a nondescript shade, but her hair and the pale gleam of her skin should have given her away.

A little wonderingly she glanced at one of the slender arms that were pressed tightly against her sides. She stared, puzzled. The color of the skin was a dull brownish-gray, blending almost indistinguishably with the hue of the rock that touched it. A trick of the light she thought, it had to be that, for it had tricked Sammy.

The voices and the sounds made by the two boys grew fainter, dying away with distance. She peered cautiously from her place of concealment. Sammy and Davey had walked out of sight down the far end of the ravine. She waited until certain that Sammy had not set a trap of some sort, then slid out of the crevice and hurried toward the ravine's opposite end.

Her legs ached protestingly, but she forced herself to run. She realized she had been away from the house much too long. Big Luke would be angry--and his anger manifested itself in heavy blows of his big, bony hands.

* * * * *

The Becker house was a large frame building, weather-beaten and fallen into disrepair. Fran hated the sight of it, but it was the only home she could recall having had. Once, during a summer evening in town, Fran had heard a group of men talking about Luke Becker. She had kept in the shadows at the side of the general store, and they hadn't seen her. The Becker house, it seemed, had once been owned by a prosperous farmer, a lonely widower whose sons had died in the war. Big Luke, a refugee from the city after the first atom bomb raids, had taken shelter at the house with his two small sons.

Fran's mother had taken shelter there also, and stayed on. There had been no place else to go. None of the refugees ever went back to the city, or to any of the other cities that had been bombed. There was a sort of light in the cities, a light you couldn't see. It burned you, and you died. The light had filled the ruined cities for a long time, and would continue to fill them for a long time to come. Men--the men who were left after the bombing raids--lived in small towns now, and on farms. Farming was one of the few ways to make a living that were left.

The farmer who had taken Big Luke in had died. An accident, the man on the porch of the general store had said in his carefully low-pitched voice. And he had laughed without humor. One of the farmer's machines had killed him, and Big Luke had stayed on at the farm. It had been an unsettled time, men were law unto themselves, and Big Luke, with his powerful body, had gone unchallenged.

There was a hint of something evil in the story Fran had heard, suggested to her by the soft, meaningful tone of the man on the porch of the general store. She wasn't quite certain what it was, but she knew Big Luke was capable of anything sinister and cruel. And Sammy was very much like his father. Davey ... well, Davey was not quite right in the head. She guessed Davey would be friendly enough in his own way, if Sammy didn't keep leading him on.

* * * * *

Silence lay over the house, extending to the couple of smaller buildings behind it and the big barn and the silos off to one side. Fran could see nothing of Davey and Sammy. She had been careful to avoid being discovered by them again, and evidently they had taken more time about returning.

She slipped into the kitchen. Big Luke was not there, but after a moment she heard the creak of springs in the parlor, followed by shuffling footsteps. Big Luke appeared in the hall doorway, swaying unsteadily on his feet as he scowled at her. A sickly reek, familiar to Fran, announced that he had been drinking again. He always seemed to be drinking.

Big Luke had once been a heavy-fleshed man, but constant drunkenness had left him gaunt and shrunken. Dark hollows lay under his cheekbones, and loose skin sagged around his mouth. He looked at Fran with blood-shot eyes, his dark, unkempt hair streaked with gray and the sallowness of his face emphasized by a heavy growth of beard.

"You," he said, his voice rasping. "Where you been, girl? Why weren't you tending to your chores?"

"I ... I was outside," Fran said. She moved slowly to put the kitchen table between the man and herself.

"Outside, eh?" He staggered forward, his gaze baleful. "Just where outside? I been yelling my head off for you. Where's Sammy and Davey?"

"They chased me!" Fran flared. "I walked a piece, and they started chasing me! They're always chasing me!"

"And I bet you like 'em to chase you," Big Luke growled. "Don't try to fool me, you little snip. Don't try to tell me you ain't practicing your woman's tricks on my boys."

Fran felt a hotness leap into her face. "I never do a thing to them!" she protested. "I hate them--Sammy especially. Why don't you tell him to leave me alone?"

"Uppity, just like your ma was, you little--" Big Luke abruptly leaned across the table, and his calloused palm shot out, making a sharp clap of sound as it struck Fran's cheek.

She felt her head jerk around from the force of the blow. The side of her face felt numb and large.

"Don't get sassy with me, girl!" Big Luke snarled. "And next time you go running off when there's work to be done, I'm going to fix you good and proper. You're big enough to take a whip to. I'll have the skin off you, by God!"

* * * * *

He glared at her a moment longer, then turned and staggered back toward the parlor. Fran rubbed at her cheek, tears brimming in her eyes. She had a sense of rebellion--and hopelessness. She had often thought of running away, but no one in town would risk Luke Becker's wrath by taking her in. And the thought of fleeing to one of the other towns held possible dangers greater than those of her present life.

Her shoulders bowed in defeat and leaden resignation, she turned to the wood-burning stove. The fire had gone out, and the wood-box was almost empty. She sighed and started for the woodshed out in the yard.

Big Luke yelled after her, obviously alerted by the creak of the kitchen door. "Where you running off to now, blast it?"

"To get some wood."

"Well, no more monkey-shines, if you know what's good for you!"

The shed was large and shadowy. The single window had been boarded up after the glass was broken. As Fran began heaping one arm with rough, chopped lengths of wood, she heard a quick shuffle of footsteps and saw Sammy crossing the yard toward the doorway. He still looked mad--even madder than he had been back in the ravine.

Her heart drumming, she drew back into the deeper shadows between the side wall and the stacked wood. She knew she was caught. Sammy evidently had seen her enter the shed. And Big Luke, angry with her too, could not be depended upon for help.

Yet oddly, a part of her, unfamiliar and mysterious, remained cool. That part of her waited for Sammy Becker, while the rest of her quailed his coming.

Sammy glided through the doorway, a vengeful twist to his mouth, his fingers curved talon-like to clutch. He stood for a moment, blinking his pale eyes after the brightness of the yard.

Then the rigidness went out of his fingers. His too-wise features wrinkled puzzledly.

"Hiding again, huh?" he half whispered, as though to reassure himself. "Well, I'll get you this time! I'll fix you good!"

He started forward, his hands outstretched.

* * * * *

Fran watched him, a bewilderment growing in her. The shed was not too dark. It seemed incredible that Sammy could not see her crouching in the shadows at the end of the wood stack. But he groped at air with his hands, his movements always hesitant and uncertain.

It was inevitable that he should sooner or later stumble across Fran. She was ready. The piece of wood felt solid in her hand. She struck at Sammy's head, and he stiffened startledly at the very first movement, as though it had flashed out of nothingness itself, then lurched with a yelp against the wood stack. A small avalanche rained down on him, and Fran darted past and ran toward the house.

Davey was on the back porch with a dipper of water raised to his mouth. He stared at her with wide and somehow shocked eyes and remained frozen until she had entered the kitchen.

She realized that she had, despite everything, managed to keep a grip on the load of wood. She emptied it into the box at the side of the stove, and in doing so noticed a strangeness about the color of her arms. She peered at them, feeling as shocked and staring as Davey had looked, and her mind went back to the ravine and she remembered Sammy not seeing her even while he looked directly into her hiding place. And he hadn't seen her in the shed. Why?

During supper Sammy was unusually quiet. He looked at Fran out of the corners of his eyes, and in his wizened lace was a groping wonder--a vague fear.

Davey seemed to have forgotten his own experience. He forgot things quickly.

* * * * *

Fran lay in her straw-padded bed with her eyes fixed on the rectangle of the window, glowing luminously with moonlight. She thought back over the events of the day, and a feeling of awe touched her. There was a significance to what had happened, a kind of tingling importance that she sensed but could not quite understand.

She felt that she had somehow ... changed. She had entered into womanhood--but there was more to it than that. She felt stronger, more assured. Her very awareness seemed to have sharpened, to be reaching out and bringing her new impressions she could not identify.

She closed her eyes and sent her flowering perceptions out and away. For a moment she seemed to float in nothingness, disembodied ... spreading. And then she had the sensation of touching something. She drew back, startled, yet fascinated and curious, like a child discovering some new wonder.

And a voice spoke to her, bell-like and ringingly dear--a voice which in some incredible way she heard with her mind.

"Why, hello! Who is this?"

"I ... my name is Fran."

"Oh, I understand. This is the first time for you, isn't it?"

"Yes," she said. "I mean, whatever this is, it never happened before."

In some odd way, the voice seemed to smile. "Don't let it frighten you, Fran. You'll get used to your new ability."

"But ... but what does it mean? And who are you? Where are you?"

"You can call me Tom. I can't tell exactly where I am, because distances and locations have no meaning when a mind can reach anywhere. I don't think I'm very far away, though. As for what this means ... well, that's a little difficult to explain, Fran."

* * * * *

The voice--she knew now that it was more than just a voice--seemed to look out over an awesome vista, as if in search of some point of interest, some particular feature she could understand.

"You know about the war, Fran, and what happened to the big cities?"

"Yes. I've heard about that."

"Well, the war was fought with a new type of atom bomb, Fran. It was designed to keep people out of cities, because cities were centers of resistance. The bombs contaminated the cities with a deadly radiation that's still there. People had to leave--but many of them were affected by the radiation, and gave birth to children that were ... different. Some were monsters, Fran. And some ... well, they didn't _look_ changed, but they were--in strange and wonderful ways. It all depended on the intensity of the radiations that produced them, you see.

"You're one of those changed children, Fran--and so am I. Our ability to receive each other's thoughts proves that. But what you really should know is that there's serious danger in letting ordinary people find out you're different. Because, Fran, when the monsters started appearing they were done away with--killed. People were afraid of them. And they're more afraid now than ever."

The voice she had come to identify as Tom seemed saddened. "You see, Fran, the war was the product of a machine age. But men have gone back to the soil. They had to. There aren't many machines left any more, and there's no way to build them or keep them going. So they've been wearing out, breaking down. People used machines to communicate with each other and spread ideas and knowledge. Without the machines, their world has grown smaller. They're afraid of things that aren't part of it. And we aren't of their little world, Fran. We're ... different. And for that reason they'll try to destroy us if they learn what we are.

"That mustn't happen, Fran. They've had their chance--and they've failed. We have a right to ours, but it's a right we must fight for. We must stay hidden and keep from being found out until we're ready.... So be careful, Fran. Don't let those around you discover your new abilities. They'll keep growing, I think. In some of us there's no way of knowing what heights will be reached."

"But isn't there something we can do?" she asked in silent, voiceless protest. "Isn't there some place we can go? Isn't there any hope for us at all?"

* * * * *

Tom's answer was slow and grave. "There is hope, yes. But we must be patient. Mentally we're far beyond ordinary people, but physically most of us are still children. We need time to grow, time to attain our full powers. And we need time to find each other and plan for the future. We can afford to wait, Fran. But above all we must be careful.

"Right now, though, you'd better rest. You don't want to put too much of a strain on yourself the very first time."

Her mind leaped in dismay. "But, Tom--will I be able to reach you again?"

"You can reach me any time you send out your thoughts to me, Fran. Don't worry about that."

"All right, Tom." Sudden shyness made her falter. "I'm glad ... glad I'm not alone."

"I understand.... Good night, Fran."

"Good night, Tom."

She lay still for a long while. She found she _was_ tired, as though she had been under some exhausting nervous tension. But her pulse raced with excitement.

Carefully she went back over what Tom had told her, sifting the contents of his message for implications she might have missed. His warning became vivid in her mind, and abruptly, chillingly, she remembered the barking of dogs in the distance and men on horseback racing far-off across a field. She remembered a faint, triumphant baying and the muted thunder of guns. She remembered clutching in fright at her Mother's hand and seeing Big Luke ride back to them across the yard.

An echo of his voice reached her over the years.

"Got another monster, by God!"

She remembered that had happened several times. She had thought monsters were horrible animals of some sort, but now she knew they were people, new and different people--like herself....

* * * * *

Late summer sunshine lay over the porch in a flood of radiance as rich as melted butter. Fran stood very quietly for a moment, letting the warmth bathe her. She drew the fragrant morning air deep into her lungs and felt the breeze caress her face and arms. Her brown hair changed subtly in the light, became a gold-glinting auburn, and a faint golden flush spread through her skin.

She was dimly aware of the pigmentation adjustment, but she did not try to control it just then. The chameleon effect, Tom called it, one of several protective devices that nature had furnished her kind for survival against the members of a hostile race. She let the impressions drift like smoke through her mind, releasing herself wholly to the beauty of the morning.

She arched forward on the tips of her bare toes, her slender body straining against the threadbare fabric of her dress to outline the firm, gently rounded curves of growing maturity. She had a feeling of vibrant, singing strength, as though she could launch herself with the effortlessness of a bird into the gold-hazed, green distance and soar tirelessly to the very end of the world. She had a depth and clarity of perception that seemed to her capable of embracing green earth and blue sky in one vast, magnificent sweep.

She had a delighted sense of freedom, as though released from the cocoon of hiding and caution in which she had kept herself during the past months. For a superb instant she felt free and gloriously happy--and she wanted to tell Tom, to share her emotions with him. Her thoughts turned to him with increasing frequency. She felt a growing need for his invisible presence and the comfort it gave.