by Dean Koontz
But Major Kelly was one of the few men who was unable to trick himself into sleeping better. Or at all. He lay in his tent, in the diffused orange light of a single, oily candle, and he worried about everything: the Germans, Hagendorf, the Germans, Lieutenant Beame, the Germans, the romance between Angelli and Pullit, the strike and the possibility that he would have to give away Dew's bulldozer, the Germans...
Suddenly, Private Tooley, breathing like a spent horse, poked his head through the unsecured tent flaps and cried, "Major!"
Kelly sat straight up, smacking his head into a tent pole.
"It's awful!" Tooley gasped.
"What? What?" Kelly rubbed his head and stumbled to his feet.
"Kowalski just made another prediction. It's horrible!"
"You broke in here to tell me about that bag of shit?" Kelly asked, incredulous.
"He's been right before," Tooley said. "In fact, he's never been wrong."
Major Kelly was worried in spite of himself. "What's he saying now?"
"Come quick and see!" Tooley said, dropping the flaps and disappearing.
"Tooley!" Kelly pushed out of the tent, looked around. The pacifist was twenty yards away, running towards the hospital bunker. "Damn!" Kelly said.
Two minutes later, he stumbled down the hospital's uneven, earthen steps, breathing like a horse that had been in the same race as Tooley. He struck his shoulder on the door frame, staggered inside. The lights were dimmer and the stench twice as bad as he remembered them. A veritable flock of centipedes scattered in front of him. He shivered, went down the aisle to the end of the bunker where Pullit, Lily, Liverwright, and Tooley stood by the mad Pole's bed.
Kowalski was rigid, eyes wide and tongue lolling. He had a fat, pale tongue, utterly disgusting. He was sitting in a steaming puddle of his own urine, and he looked curiously as if he belonged there.
"What's he saying?" Kelly asked, wheezily.
As if on cue, Kowalski said: "Too little time... no time... less than we need... never build town... never... too little time... less than we think..."
"He means the Panzers," Lily said. Her face was drawn and fearful-and sexy.
"If we don't have time to build the fake town," Tooley said, "there will be bloodshed." Despite his muscles, Tooley sounded like a frail spinster facing a gang of undiscrim-inating rapists. "What are you going to do about it, Major?"
"He means the strike will slow us down," Kelly said. "We already know that."
"He's talking about something else," Tooley said. "Something worse than the strike. Something that has not yet happened."
"Even if he is," Kelly said, "what can I do? He hasn't given me enough to go on. Why don't we have enough time? What terrible disaster is pending?"
Tooley looked at the zombie, patted his head. "Tell us more, Kowalski."
Kowalski was silent.
"He's already warned us," Lily said. "He hasn't anything more to say."
Refuting her, Kowalski leaned toward Lily and said, "Cu..."
"Yes?" she asked.
Everyone leaned closer, listening intently. The walls seemed to recede; the dreariness was replaced by a sense of the cosmic, a spiritual mood that was undeniable and hinted of forces beyond the ken of man. The lights were no longer dim, merely mysterious. The centipedes were forgotten. They listened to the wise man's words as if the fate of the world hinged on his pronouncements.
"Cu... cu..." Kowalski's eyes were fever-bright. His tongue moved obscenely between his cracked lips as he tried to finish what he wanted to say. "Cu..."
"He's got something big to say," the pacifist insisted. "I know he does."
"Cu... cu... cu..."
"He's almost got it!" Tooley fisted his hands, arms bulging as he pulled for Kowalski.
Major Kelly felt, all of a moment, in the midst of a miracle, some fundamental religious experience which he would treasure the memory of for the rest of his days. He had not been so choked up and teary since he had seen Margaret Sullavan in Back Street.
Watching Lily, Kowalski rocked back and forth. His tongue fluttered. His eyes blinked so rapidly it seemed the lashes would give him flight. "Cu... Cu..."
Lily held her hands out to him, encouraged him as one might encourage a baby who was walking toward his mother for the first time. "Don't give up, poor dear," she cooed. "Tell us. Try, Kowalski. Tell us, poor baby."
"Cu... cu... cunt!" Kowalski squealed, lunging for her. He ripped open her khaki shirt and pawed her bare breasts. He gibbered with delight.
Pullit screamed.
Liverwright was immobilized by the sight of Lily's jugs.
Still screaming, Pullit ran for the bunker door, red bandanna trailing behind. "Help! Help, someone!"
Going to Lily's rescue, Kelly stumbled on a cot brace, staggered, and fell heavily onto the makeshift bed. The cot collapsed.
Kowalski rolled into the major, and for an instant their faces touched nose-to-nose. Kowalski's eyes were wide and bloodshot, but possessed a certain lucidity which Kelly had not seen there for long days. "Cunt, cunt, cunt!" he screamed. Then, like a door closing, the semirationality left his eyes, and a bottomless stupidity returned. Drool ran out of the left corner of his mouth and down his chin.
Private Tooley grabbed the major by the scruff of the neck and hoisted him to his feet. "You okay, sir?"
Kelly nodded dumbly, brushing at his clothes.
"What do you think?" Tooley asked.
"About Kowalski? Shoot him. Put him out of his misery."
Tooley was hurt. "No! I think he's getting much better."
"Sure he is." Kelly said. "Sure he is."
Although he thought Kowalski should be put out of his misery, Major Kelly was worried about the zombie's prediction. They could not withstand another crisis. Even if they settled the labor strike, they had little chance of getting the village built in time. If one more problem arose...
"You don't look sleepy," Lily said, taking his arm as he reached the bunker door. "I'm not sleepy either. Why don't we take a walk together?"
They walked to the woods, then to the knoll where Beame had expected to meet Nathalie for lunch. And then, of course, they stopped walking and undressed and made love. Even as worried as he was, Kelly was ready for Lily Kain.
When they were finished, they lay side-by-side in the grass and stared at the clouds overhead. Stars popped out between bands of mist, then disappeared once more. "You're a gem," Kelly told her. "You're the only woman I've ever known who hasn't the slightest reservation about having it put to her."
"Nonsense," she said. "Every girl wants to have it put to her."
"You're wrong," he said, squeezing her hand.
"I can't believe that. Every woman wants to have it put to her. It's fun!"
"Well... most women probably do want to have it put to them, but they won't admit it," Kelly said.
"Then how do they ever get it put to them?"
"Reluctantly. They protest, repeatedly refuse-give in reluctantly."
"What a waste of time," Lily said.
"And when they've had it put to them, when it's over, they cry and say how ashamed they are. Or pretend they didn't enjoy it."
"I always enjoy it," Lily said.
"I know," Kelly said.
Before they had become lovers, when she masturbated at night, her moans and cries roused the camp. Every man in the unit was enthralled by her performance, listening intently to the symphony of garbled noises until, by her crescendo, she was leading an orchestra of self-abusers. And now, of course, there were the regular shows beneath the bridge...
Kelly put his arms around her. And though his terror did not go away, it dwindled for the next fifteen minutes and was almost forgotten as they moved together a second time.
Afterwards, he slept. And he dreamed. Usually, the dreams were about Petey Danielson: vivid, colorful replays of the man's guts falling out onto the dry earth...
When he woke, trying to scream, Lily was there beside him. She smoothed his
wet brow with one hand and cooed softly to him. "It's okay. It was just a bad dream, darling." Her warm flank was pressed against him, and the full weight of one large breast fell against his chest. She kept on smoothing his brow until his heartbeat slowed considerably and his dry mouth grew moist.
"How long was I asleep?"
"Maybe an hour," she said.
He started to sit up, but she pressed him back down. "We ought to be getting back," he said.
"Let's sleep out here tonight. The mosquitoes have gone. It's cool."
When he thought about getting dressed and walking back to his tent and undressing again for the night, he said, "Okay."
She snuggled up against him and kissed his ear. "I love you, Kelly."
"Don't say that."
"It's true."
"It's crazy. Love can be deadly. When you're in love, you go around in a daze. You stop being careful. You get killed. Don't be in love with me."
"You're in love with me, too," she said.
He closed his eyes, let the sounds of the forest settle over him like a fog: wind in branches, grasses rustling, crickets, toads, the scurrying sound of squirrels..,. "Forget the love part. Let's just fuck and forget the love part, huh? Otherwise, we're dead."
"Go to sleep." She smoothed his forehead like Florence Nightingale in an old textbook drawing he had once seen. Except Florence Nightingale had not been nude.
"Promise you won't love me," he insisted.
"Go to sleep."
"Promise."
"Okay, okay! I promise not to love you."
He sighed happily. "Good. I don't want to die yet." He drifted toward sleep for a few minutes, then stirred, suddenly worried. "The Panzers! We-"
"Go to sleep, darling," she said. "Tomorrow's time enough to worry about the Germans. Remember, I don't love you."
"Not at all?"
"Not at all."
He tumbled into sleep again, dreaming of bombs which exploded like pastel clouds of chalk dust: green, yellow, blue, and purple. Men fell down dead, gushing pastel blood. The cries of the dying were muted and soft like the calls of giant pastel jungle-birds.
Except for Lily who comforted him and kissed him each time he woke, everything about the night was horrible. And now there were only four days left in which to build the village.
* * *
7 / JULY 20
The French workers returned to the clearing at noon, six hours after they were scheduled to arrive.
"Why waste six hours?" Kelly asked Lyle Fark when the private brought the news. "Why not return when they were supposed to, so we could negotiate and get this damn strike over with?"
"Psychology," Fark said. "Maurice wants you desperate before he sits down to bargain with you."
Maurice entered Kelly's tent five minutes later, mopping at his face with the tail of his checkered shirt. His enormous, round stomach was exposed, pale as a large honey-dew melon, hairy as a coconut, the navel large and deep, "Your Private Fark met me at the bridge," he told Kelly. "He says you are prepared to negotiate."
The tent was large enough to contain a small table and two straight-backed chairs. Major Kelly was behind the table. He pointed to the chair in front of it. "Sit down. Let's talk business."
"Certainement, man ami," Maurice said, sitting where Kelly had pointed.
"You were supposed to be here at dawn," the major said, trying to be as reasonable as he could. He wanted to pick up the table and break it over the mayor's head. But he knew that would not facilitate an end to the labor strike.
"You have worked my people so hard," Maurice said, shrugging. "They were in need of a long night's sleep."
Kelly bit his lip until he thought blood would come, but he managed to keep his hands off Maurice's throat. "What do you want?"
Maurice frowned. "You have not yet thought of anything to offer?"
"The shortwave radio," Kelly said. "You want it?"
Maurice brightened, wiped sweat from his face. "It would be of great benefit to my community, cut off as we are from so much of France."
"It's yours," Kelly said.
"Merci. But it is not enough."
The major gritted his teeth and spoke through them, sounding like Humphrey Bogart. "What else? The D-7 dozer?"
"Ah," Maurice said. "That would be fine."
"This isn't easy, Maurice. You know the dozer is Danny Dew's virility symbol, his own way of hanging on in this chaos."
Maurice shrugged. "He will adapt."
Major Kelly had spent all morning wondering if Danny Dew would adapt. And he had been certain the black bastard would not. Danny depended on that big machine too much; he would not let it go without a fight.
"I need Dew," Kelly told Maurice. "I can't risk making an enemy of him. Without him, we'll never get the village done. There are jobs only the dozer can accomplish-and only under Danny's hand. So, we're going to have to keep this a secret. Not a word of this transaction can get back to Danny."
"One day, it must," Maurice said. "When the dozer leaves this clearing."
"That's my one condition," Kelly said. "You can't take possession of the dozer until we can con a new one out of General Blade-then, if Danny still won't give the old one up, you can have the replacement. It will be a better machine, anyway."
"And if you can't get another bulldozer from Blade?" Maurice asked.
"I will. I'll tell him this one's already been ruined."
Maurice thought about it awhile.
Kelly looked at his watch. The minute-hand seemed to sweep around the dial as if it were marking off seconds.
At last, Maurice said, "I am not an unreasonable man, Major."
Kelly gritted his teeth so hard he almost broke his jaws.
"I will be satisfied with this arrangement, if you write it out in the form of an ironclad contract which I have spent most of the night drafting." The Frog took a long sheet of paper out of his trousers and put it on the table.
"I'll sign anything," Kelly said.
"And what about the written guarantee from your Lieutenant Beame?" Maurice asked, leaning conspiratorially over the table.
Kelly felt that he owed Nathalie Jobert a favor. She had told him what her father would settle for, and she might give additional help in the future. "I am afraid that cannot be obtained," Kelly said. "He is adamant. And I can't rightly order him to sign. This thing between Beame and your daughter is a private affair and should not come between you and me."
Maurice scowled.
"You must compromise now," Kelly said. "I've come more than halfway."
"You are right," Maurice said. He struck the table with one hand. "I accept your offer. The strike is ended."
"And Danny must not learn about the dozer. It is essential we keep that a secret."
"We will try," Maurice said, drawing a tiny cross over his heart.
Kelly pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. His head brushed the canvas ceiling, and horseflies rose noisily from the outer surface. "In all honesty, I have to say that I am making this deal only because most of my men still think we can build the town in time to fool the krauts."
"And you don't believe we can, man ami?"
"There never was much of a chance," Kelly said, edging around the table. "And now that you've wasted nearly a whole working day with this strike of yours, there's no chance at all."
"You are quite wrong." Maurice rubbed his pudgy hands together. "C'est vrai," he added, seeing Kelly's skepticism. "I would not have called the strike without first finding some way to make up for the lost time. We will be done with your false town ahead of schedule, my friend. All thanks to the miracle of prefabrication."
"Prefabrication?" Kelly asked. He wrinkled his nose, partly in an expression of bewilderment and partly because Maurice Jobert was sweaty and smelly. "I don't understand."
"You will!" Maurice said. He went to the entranceway, and lifted a canvas flap. "Be at the bridge in one hour, and you will understand perfectly." He chuckled madly and w
inked at the major.
At 1:20 that afternoon, Maurice returned from Eisenhower with the first truckload of pieced-up barn walls. They were standing on edge in the back of a board-sided German cargo truck, each panel twelve feet high and twenty feet long-which was precisely the size of a wall of one of the single-story platform houses that comprised a sizable portion of the fake village.
The striking workers had not slept away the morning, after all. Instead, they had scouted barns, sheds, stables, and outbuildings which were firmly constructed, dismantling some of these and cutting them into maneuverable sections. They had taken only tightly joined panels that could pass as the walls of houses and churches. A passable exterior was all that mattered, for the insides of the fake houses would not be plastered or finished in any way. And after cutting up a barn, they had enough walls for seven or eight single-story platform buildings. A stable might build half a convent. A milk house could be sawed up and put back together as a two-story nuns' residence.
"It will save an incredible amount of time," Maurice told Kelly as the major inspected the walls stacked in the back of the truck. "One of the most time-consuming jobs is putting the siding on the buildings. Now, we can nail it up in huge pieces."
Kelly was not so sure. "No matter how well built a barn is, the wall is only a single thickness of wood. Some of the boards are not going to meet perfectly. Light will escape through them. Anyone looking at a fake house, made from these panels, will see light showing through the slats and know that it's a phony."
