Free Dark Victory - eARC by Brendan DuBois Page B

that?”
    I tie my helmet off at my utility belt. “I think Dunlap might think differently.”
    “Yeah? Why’s that?”
    I brush past him, to go back up to the top of he battlement. “Because I don’t think she—or you—will want me telling the lieutenant how you both ended up in our duty station wearing each other’s shorts. Hard to tell the right size and color in the dark, am I right?”
    That shuts up Staff Sergeant Muller pretty well as I get back to where I had started out, Dunlap on the other side of the battlement. Thor lays down and stretches out, and across the moat and field of fire, I see additional movement, and bring up my binoculars. A truck from our Quick Response Force is there, and I hear the tingling of bells. Two horse-drawn steam-powered fire pumpers roll in from the Concord Fire Department, red lanterns hanging from the side. Soldiers and dogs start moving up the road, and firefighters get to work, watering down the smoldering homes.
    I take my Colt, work the bolt and expel the 50 mm round, twisting the bottom back to safe.
    Muller finally comes up and stands in one corner, and it’s one quiet post until the field phone rings and sends us home, just as a series of horns blow across the fort, signaling an all clear.

    After turning in my Colt and ammunition at the Armory, I trudge back to my barracks, other soldiers from my squad and platoon eddying about me, but I’m too tired to join in the gossip and chatting that goes on, except a quick slap on my butt gives me a jerk.
    Corporal Abby Monroe joins me and I toss my left arm around her, give her a quick squeeze. “How was your alert, corporal?”
    “Pretty damn routine, glad to say,” she says, leaning into me as we walk a few yards, my arm still around her, feeling damn fine. “Went to the CP, trusty Trek at my side, and waited to bike out with dispatches in case the phone lines were cut. They weren’t, so I sat on my butt. How about you?”
    “Ticked off Staff Sergeant Muller,” I say.
    “Want to say any more?”
    “Not right now,” I say. “Try me later.”
    “’Kay,” she says. She moves to break away and I say, “Not so fast, Abby.”
    We’re in a shadowy part of the walkway, which works for me, and I give her another inappropriate kiss—this time to her sweet lips—and she squeezes my hand and heads off to her own barracks.

    I unlock the door and go in, Thor right behind me, and I’m not sure what time it is. I light off a candle and there’s a rap at the side of the door. It’s Corporal Manning, and he smiles at me. His small teeth are yellow and brown.
    “Glad to see you made it back, Sergeant.”
    “Glad to be here,” I say, stripping off my gear, putting it carefully back where it belongs. Thor jumps on my unmade bunk, moves in two circles, and then thumps himself down.
    “Hear you got in a pissing match with the staff sergeant.”
    I shake my head. “Jungle drums move quick.”
    He grins, taps a wrinkled finger at the side of his nose. “Us old-timers, we stick together, we pass little bits of news along. So good for you. Muller’s not a bad sergeant but sometimes gets too big for his pants, but you be careful.”
    “I will,” I say.
    The corporal leans out, like he’s looking up and down the hallway, to make sure he’s not being overheard, and then he says, “I know you don’t use it, but make sure you never think your family connection will save you if things hit the fan, Sergeant. Number of people out there would like to take you and your family and shove it up your butt at the right time.”
    I rub at the back of my head. “The only family I think about is my dad . . . if he ever gets my mail.”
    “True enough. Feel like a cold treat to cool you down?”
    I cock my head. “A what?”
    From his baggy fatigue pants, he reaches into a side pocket, pulls out an aluminum can, red and white. I stare at it. Coca-Cola. He pops the top open and passes it over. I take a long, satisfying cold and biting