"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.