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

The air felt about like late autumn back home. And the tundra here wasn’t as spongy as it was down closer to camp. But the rocks and hidden mud still made it a little precarious.
    Pop followed me, and I guessed it had to be tough for him to keep his balance, being old and scrawny. But he didn’t complain about the footing. That would have been far down his list.
    “Tell me the truth, Private,” he said, wheezing. “This is a punishment, correct? The lieutenant colonel stopped me on Main Street a few months ago and asked me to come to dinner and read one of his stories. But my boys were with me, so I said, ‘Certainly, if I may bring these gentlemen along.’ At which point the invitation evaporated. That incident blistered his ass, and that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
    I turned to face him but kept moving, walking backward. “I don’t think so. When he sent me up here this morning, it didn’t have anything to do with you. I was supposed to look for an old Aleut lodge that’s around here somewhere. The colonel said it’s probably about three-quarters underground, and I’d have to look hard to find it.”
    Pop was still wheezing. “That’s called an ulax. Good protection from the elements. But I doubt there was ever one this far up the mountain, unless it was for some ceremonial reason. And even if there was an ulax up here, I can’t imagine why the lieutenant colonel would send you looking for it.”
    “He has a report of enlisted men using it to drink booze and have relations with some of the nurses from the 179th,” I said. “He wants to locate it so he can put a stop to such things.”
    Pop frowned. “Someone’s lying. The 179th has twenty nurses here at most. Any one of them who might be open to ‘such things’ will have a dozen officers after her from the moment she arrives. No enlisted man has a chance. Especially if the lady would also be required to climb a mountain and lower herself into a hole in the ground.”
    “Doesn’t matter if it’s true,” I said. “I didn’t find no lodge anyway.” I turned back around. We were almost there.
    “That still leaves the question of why we’re up here,” Pop said.
    This time I didn’t answer. Although he was a corporal, Pop didn’t seem to grasp the fact that an enlisted man isn’t supposed to have a mind of his own. If an officer asks you to dinner, or to a latrine-painting party, you just say “Yes, sir.” And if he tells you to go for a ride up a volcano, you say the same thing. There’s no point in asking why, because you’re going to have to do it anyway.
    “Are we walking all the way around the mountain?” Pop shouted, wheezing harder. “Or is there a picnic breakfast waiting behind the next rock? If so, it had better not be another Spam sandwich.”
    “You didn’t have to eat it,” I said.
    Pop started to retort, but whatever he was going to say became a coughing fit. I stopped and turned around to find him doubled over with his hands on his knees, hacking so hard that I thought he might pass out.
    I considered pounding him on the back, but was afraid that might kill him. So I just watched him heave and thought that if he died there, the colonel would ream my butt.
    Pop’s coughing became a long, sustained ratcheting noise, and then he spat a watery black goo onto the tundra. He paused for a few seconds, breathing heavily, then heaved again, hacking out a second black glob. A third heave produced a little less, and then a fourth was almost dry.
    Finally, he wiped his mouth with his sleeve and stood upright again. His face was pale, but his eyes were sharp.
    “Water,” he said in a rasping voice.
    I ran back to the jeep, stumbling and falling once on the way, and returned with a canteen. Pop took it without a word, drank, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
    “That’s better,” he said. He sounded almost like himself again. He capped the canteen and held it out without opening his eyes.
    I took the canteen