Free Weird Detectives by Joe R. Lansdale, Caitlin R.Kiernan Simon R. Green Neil Gaiman

others.”
    Pop made a noise in his throat. “All right, then. When have you seen it?”
    “Guys have it at morning chow, mostly.”
    Now Pop opened his eyes. “That’s because my staff works all night to put it out before morning chow. Starting at about lunchtime yesterday, they were typing up shortwave reports from our man at the radio station, writing articles and reviews, cutting and pasting, and doing everything else that was necessary to produce and mimeograph six thousand six-page newspapers before sunup. So right now most of them have collapsed into their bunks for a few hours before starting on tomorrow’s edition. I don’t know what these three are still doing here.”
    At the drawing board, the Negro cartoonist spoke without looking up. “Those two brought in beer for breakfast, so they didn’t make it back out the door. As for me, I had an idea for tomorrow’s cartoon and decided to draw it before I forgot.”
    “What’s the idea?” Pop asked.
    “It’s about two guys who have beer for breakfast.”
    Pop grunted. “Very topical.”
    Then no one spoke. I assumed parade rest and waited. But as soon as I heard the pitch of the wind drop, I opened the door a few inches. The williwaw had diminished to a stiff breeze, no worse than a cow-tipping gust back home in Nebraska.
    “We have to go, Boss,” I said.
    Pop didn’t budge, but the cartoonist gave a whistle. “Hey, Pop! Wake up, you old Red.”
    Pop sat up and blinked. With his now-wild white hair, round eyeglasses, and sharp nose, he looked like an aggravated owl.
    “Stop calling me ‘Pop,’ ” he said.
    Outside, as Pop and I headed down the hill again, I said, “That’s something I’ve never seen before.”
    “What’s that?” Pop asked, raising his voice to be heard over the wind.
    “A Negro working an office detail with white soldiers.”
    Pop looked at me sidelong. “Does that bother you, Private? It certainly bothers the lieutenant colonel.”
    I thought about it. “No, it doesn’t bother me. I just wonder how it happened.”
    “It happened,” Pop said, “because I needed a damn good cartoonist, and he’s a damn good cartoonist.”
    I understood that. “I do like the cartoons,” I said.
    Pop made a noise in his throat again.
    “Would it be all right, Private,” he said, “if we don’t speak again until we absolutely have to?”
    That was fine with me. We were almost to the jeep, and once I fired that up, neither of us would be able to hear the other anyway. The muffler had a hole in it, so it was almost as loud as a williwaw.
    IV
    Halfway up the dormant volcano called Mount Moffett, about a mile after dealing with the two jerks in the shack at the Navy checkpoint, I stopped the jeep. The road was barely a muddy track here.
    “Now we have to walk,” I told Pop.
    Pop looked around. “Walk where? There’s nothing but rocks and tundra.”
    It was true. Even the ravens, ubiquitous in camp and around the airfield, were absent up here. The mountainside was desolate, and I happened to like that. Or at least I’d liked it before finding the eagle. But I could see that to a man who thrived on being with people, this might be the worst place on earth.
    “The Navy guys say it looks better when there’s snow,” I said. “They go skiing up here.”
    “I wondered what you were discussing with them,” Pop said. “I couldn’t hear a word after you stepped away from the jeep.”
    I decided not to repeat the Navy boys’ comments about the old coot I was chauffeuring. “Well, they said they were concerned we might leave ruts that would ruin the skiing when it snows. After that, we exchanged compliments about our mothers. Then they got on the horn and talked to some ensign or petty officer or something who said he didn’t care if they let the whole damn Army through.”
    Hunching my shoulders against the wind, I got out of the jeep and started cutting across the slope. The weather was gray, but at least it wasn’t too cold.