Hanging on

been bathing in the river when the Stukas made their first pass, and he had taken a three-inch sliver of steel deep in his right thigh. The second patient was Kowalski, the zombie.

Three people attended the patients, though none of them had medical training. General Blade had not been able to kidnap a doctor or a medic for them, as yet.

Lily Kain, the only woman with the unit, was cutting gauze into neat bandage squares when Kelly arrived, her scissors making crisp snipping sounds in the heavy air. Because of the heat aboveground, and because she apparently had reptilian blood, she was wearing one of her skimpy, sequined dancer's costumes, out of which her ass cheeks bulged. She had the kind of ass cheeks that bulged well: pale, firm, beautifully formed, without the hint of a droop. Indeed, everything about Lily Kain was perfectly formed, all five-feet-six of her. She had thick black hair and wide-set black eyes and a freckle-spotted face, little upturned nose, full lips — a wet-dream face. Her breasts were big and incredibly uptilted; they threatened to spill out of her dancer's costume. Her waist was tiny, and her hips almost fleshless, legs long and flawless. She gave Kelly a fierce hard-on.

“Watch your jugs,” Kelly said, grabbing her sequined backside. “Watch your jugs, or they'll fall out of your suit.”

“You watch them,” she said. Her voice was cool, almost a whisper, but with force enough to let a man know she had her own resources. “You're better at watching them than I am.”

“How are they?”

“My jugs?”

“No,” he said. “I know your jugs are fine. How are the men? Anybody hurt in today's raid?”

“Everyone made it to the bunkers in time,” she said. Her pretty face was dotted with sweat, but it hid no deception. She didn't know about Major Kelly's being caught with his pants down in the latrine, and he was not about to tell her. She stopped folding gauze and cocked her right eyebrow. Lily had a way of cocking her right eyebrow that made you think she was going to shoot you with her nose. “I'm worried about Liverwright. Six days, and he can't seem to heal. He may get blood poisoning yet.”

“No negativism,” Kelly ordered. “This is, after all, just a fairy tale, a fable. We're all figments of some Aesop's imagination, bound to his will.”

“I'd like to reduce Blade to a figment of my imagination, then cut his balls off,” Lily Kain said. Lily Kain, though freckled and pug-nosed and inordinately pretty, was not your average, reserved, quiet American girl.

“I just finished the Blade and Slade Show,” he told her. “Supplies will be coming in tonight.”

“Parachute — or a landing?” she asked. She looked pitiful, lost and delicate and needful of comforting. Major Kelly wanted to comfort her. He wanted to pat her hand and console her and say, “Now, now.” He also wanted to rip her skimpy sequined costume off and split her right there, but he managed to restrain himself.

“They'll land,” he said. “The shipment's too heavy for a parachute drop this time.”

This pleased Lily Kain. Every time a transport landed, she hoped she could persuade the pilot to take her back to Allied territory. After all, she didn't belong here. Everyone knew that. If anyone forgot it, even for a moment, Lily reminded him.

“I don't belong here,” she reminded Kelly.

And she didn't belong here, if the truth were known, the only woman in a unit of Army engineers, two hundred miles behind German lines, dressed in a sequined costume out of which her jugs might pop at any moment. General Blade was responsible, in part, for her being there. Though unable to supply the unit with a doctor or a medic, General Blade had managed to divert a USO troop across the front to the unit by the bridge. Certain air corridors were open, not well patrolled by the Germans, and such a thing could be done without too much risk. Still, there was the matter of diverting the troop from somewhere else, from a place where they were expected, and no one could understand how General Blade had managed that. When Major Kelly had observed that obtaining a medic ought to be a cinch after such a coup, the general had accused Kelly of a lack of appreciation for his hard work in getting the USO people there, and had pouted and refused to speak to the major for nearly a week. Anyway, the troop had given them a great show, as such shows went — a juggler, a bad comedian, two singing sisters with buck teeth who called themselves Irma and Imogene, a magician, a mimic whose every imitation sounded like Fred Allen (partly because the mimic himself sounded like Fred Allen), and a dancer — and they'd accepted the unit's invitation to supper and drinks afterward. They had not been aware that they were behind German lines, but they'd been nervous enough to drink heavily. Lily Kain boozed like a man and passed out like one, too. Singing “Over There,” the troop boarded the special plane from General Blade's headquarters, leaving much later than they had anticipated. Only after they had gone for an hour did Kelly, Danny Dew, and Lieutenant Beame bring Lily Kain out from the latrine stall where they had hidden her when she passed out.

“I don't belong here,” Lily Kain repeated.

“I know,” Kelly said. “But—”

“I gave Liverwright the morphine,” Nurse Pullit said, interrupting them, smiling and nodding at Kelly. “His hip looks worse than ever.”

Nurse Pullit was the second person assigned to the hospital bunker to tend the wounded. Nurse Pullit was actually Private Pullit in drag, and Private Pullit was not a nurse at all. No one could say where Private Pullit had gotten the white uniform he wore, but it looked good on him. He had hemmed the skirt so that it fell just above his dimpled knees, a somewhat daring fashion, and he kept the uniform well starched. He wore a bandanna over his head to conceal his still predominately male hairline, a cheerful scarlet cap that made him look a bit like a Negro mammy. Except he wasn't a Negro. Or a mammy.

When he had first volunteered for hospital duty and had shown up in his uniform, with his legs shaved and his face lightly powdered, the wounded men had attempted to get up and return to their duty stations. Even Private Stoltz, whose left leg had been broken in two places and only recently set, argued with Major Kelly that he was well enough to return to his post. Stoltz had actually made it up four of the six steps to the bunker's door before he screamed and passed out, bumping back down and badly cutting his forehead on the concrete edge of the last step.

Now, however, the men were grateful that Nurse Pullit had been assigned to their unit as a laborer, for Nurse Pullit proved to be adept at suturing wounds, applying bandages, lancing infections, and offering sympathy. Besides, Pullit's legs really weren't that bad.

“Everything all right, Nurse Pullit?” Major Kelly asked.

“Poor Liverwright,” Nurse Pullit said, quietly, casting a glance back at the man in the first cot against the far wall. Nurse Pullit's lips drew into a bow and made a tch-tch-tching noise.

Before he realized quite what he was doing, Major Kelly had put his hand on Nurse Pullit's ass. Rather than insult Nurse Pullit by drawing back, he kept his hand where he had inadvertently put it, though he certainly felt strange.

“Is there anything I can do, anything that you need?”

“We've got good supplies of medicine,” Nurse Pullit said, batting her thick lashes over her blue eyes. No. His lashes, over his eyes. “We could do with a doctor, but that's up to that nasty General Blade. However, there is something I wanted to ask you… ”

“Yes?”

“Well,” Nurse Pullit said, “Lily has a delightful pair of white pumps in her costume trunk. The heels aren't really that awfully high. I could manage them, even on this dirt floor, and they would add so much to my uniform if I had them.”

Major Kelly looked down at the combat boots on Nurse Pullit's feet. “I see your point,” he said.

“Then I can have them?”

“Of course.”

“Oh, thank you!” Nurse Pullit squealed. “I'm the happiest nurse in the world!”

6

The third person assigned to the hospital bunker was Private Tooley, the pacifist. Private Tooley was six feet tall, weighed a hundred and eighty-five pounds, and had once lifted weights. His arms were like knotted hemp