The big wireless transmitter was a malevolent, hulking monster that always intimidated Major Kelly. It hummed like a swarm of bees, singing some monotonous and evil melody that echoed ghostily behind every voice that came and went over its open channel. Perhaps, if he spoke to someone other than General Blade on the set, it would not seem so monstrous. If he could talk to Betty Grable or Veronica Lake or to his mom, it might seem, instead, like a big old shaggy dog of a radio. But there was only General Blade.
Once they had exchanged call signs, General Blade said, “Blade calling Slade for Kelly.” Then he laughed. Finished laughing, he said, “Slade? Blade. This is the Blade and Slade Show, and our first performer today is Major Walter Kelly.”
“I can't take it again,” Lieutenant Beame said, bolting for the door. It slammed noisily behind him.
“General Blade calling, sir,” Lieutenant Slade said. He looked quite serious. He never seemed to see anything odd in the General's insane patter.
Maybe Slade had syph too. Maybe he was already rotten in the center of his brain, crumbling and almost dead.
Kelly sat down in the single metal chair that decorated the radio room, looked around at the rough board walls, the dust, the spider webs, the board floor. The chair was cold against his bare behind, but it wasn't the sole cause of the shivers that coursed through him. He lifted the table mike and said, “They bombed the bridge again, General.”
“They bombed
In a number of ways, Kelly thought, Blade and Slade were similar. The lieutenant was always telling you what you already knew, while Blade was always asking you to repeat what he had already heard. Perhaps Lieutenant Slade was the bastard son of General Blade; perhaps both of them had contracted VD from the same woman: Blade's mistress and Slade's mother.
“They bombed the bridge, sir,” Kelly repeated.
“How?” Blade asked.
“With three airplanes and several bombs,” Major Kelly said.
“
Kelly said, “They appeared to be airplanes, sir, yes. They had wings and flew. I'm pretty certain they were airplanes, sir.”
“Was that sarcasm, Kelly?” the general croaked through the hulking monster on the table before Kelly.
“No, sir. They were all Stukas, sir.”
After a long silence, when Kelly was about to ask if he had died in the middle of the Blade and Slade Show, the general said, “If there were three planes, but none of them attacked your buildings, and all of them dropped on the bridge, doesn't that tell you something interesting?”
“Maybe they like us and don't want to hurt us, sir.”
The general was silent even longer this time. When he spoke, he spoke gently, as if to a child. “One of their own people is there with you — an informer.”
Kelly looked at Slade who smiled and vigorously nodded his thin, pointed head. Keep it up, Kelly thought. Keep shaking your head, and maybe it'll fall off. Maybe the syph will have rotted through your neck, and your head will fall off, so grin and shake your head.
To the microphone, Kelly said, “Informer?”
“How else do you explain their attacking only the bridge? How do you explain their not sending in a ground force to deal with you?” But the general really didn't want any military strategy from Kelly, or any cheap philosophy either. He went on before the major could answer: “Do you fully understand that the whole idea of keeping this bridge open is mine, Kelly? When it proves to have been a wise move, I'll be rewarded for it. But by God, until it does pay off, I have my neck stretched under the ax. Do you think it was easy for me to get you and your men, the construction equipment and materials, flown two hundred and fifty miles behind German lines?”
“No, sir,” Kelly said. He remembered that ordeal quite well, even these four long weeks later: the parachute drop, clearing the brush and marking the temporary runway for the first plane full of heavy equipment, the hard work, the tight schedule, the terror. Mostly the terror.
Blade said, “Do you think it's a simple matter to keep this whole maneuver hidden from the more petty officers back here at command, from men who would like nothing better than to pull me down into the mire and climb over me on their way to the top?”
“I can see that it isn't easy for you, sir.”
“Damn straight!” The general cleared his throat and paused to take a drink of something. Probably blood.
Choke on it, you pig, Kelly thought
The general didn't choke. He said, “I want a list of your requirements, to augment whatever's salvageable there. The stuff will be flown in after midnight tonight. I want the bridge back up, no matter what the cost!”
Kelly read off his hastily scribbled list, then said, “Sir, how's the front moving?”
“Gaining ground everywhere!” Blade said.
“Are we still two hundred and thirty miles behind enemy lines, sir?” The last time he had talked to Blade, the front had advanced about twenty miles in their direction.
“Only two hundred miles now,” Blade assured him. “In a couple of weeks, you'll be on the right side of the fence.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now, let me have Slade.”
The lieutenant took over the chair, pulling it close to the scarred table on which the radio stood. “Uh… Slade here, sir.”
“This is Blade, Slade.”
“Yes, sir!”
Major Kelly stood behind Slade, watching, hypnotized by the horrible routine he had witnessed countless times these past four weeks.
“Slade, Blade signing off. Another edition of the Blade and Slade Show is over.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Christ!” Major Kelly said, bolting for the door.
5
The hospital bunker was an abominable hospital in every respect, but the worst thing about it was the stink, the rich blanket of revolting odors that permeated the place and could not be chased out. The hospital had no windows, being a bunker, and no fresh air. Even with the door wide open, the place constantly stank of burnt flesh, decay, sweat, vomit, and antiseptics. Lily Kain, who nursed the sick and the wounded, said you got used to the smell after a while and didn't even notice it any more. But that notion had no appeal for Major Kelly; he wanted to be aware, always, of the smell of death and corruption. If the hospital ever started to smell nice to him, he knew, his number would be up.
Immediately inside the bunker, a battered table and two rickety chairs stood to one side, the nurses' station. Beyond, ten cots stood in shabby imitation of a genuine hospital ward, five along each wall, a thin gray blanket folded on each, meager comfort against the chill in the subterranean room which gave little evidence of the bright summer day aboveground.
Three low-wattage bulbs strung on a single frayed cord for the length of the rectangular room, powered by the small camp generator, did little to dispel the gloom. The walls seemed draped in a heavy purple fabric of shadows, and the corners were all pitch black. Kelly glanced quickly at those corners when he came in, and he felt as if inhuman creatures lurked there, waiting and licking their scaly lips, and watching with big, demonic eyes.
Cockroaches and fat centipedes scurried along the earthen floor and clung to the rough ceiling, moving in and out of pools of light, silent, cold, many-legged.
Only two patients resided in the hospital bunker when Major Kelly arrived there fresh from bolting the radio room. One of these was Liverwright, who had been wounded in one of the previous bombings, six days ago. He had
