Fifty-Fifty O'Brien Read Online Free Page A

dunno. O’Brien is a funny duck—Tough but touchy. See here, soldier, I’m not going to let O’Brien get you bumped. You trail along with us. No use crossing back the way you came. You’d never make it.”
    â€œO’Brien said to get back.”
    â€œAll right, all right. What did he do? Hypnotize you?” He motioned toward the galley and a crowd of dusky Guardia men. “Go get what chow and rest you can, you’ll need it.”
    S ilence.
    A mud-splattered shadow crept up a slippery trail inch by inch, stopping and lying still at intervals. The moonlight lay hazily over the world, painting blue shadows under the rocks and trees. Far over to the right a flicker of red indicated a bandit camp.
    For a day and almost two nights, Win Smith had dragged himself down the slopes and through the canyons toward Company K. His khaki was a patch of dirty Irish pennants , the knees of his pants were gone, one legging was absent and his tan tie was torn half in two where he had caught it on a rock.
    But it was not this that he minded. It was not that flicker of red. It was not the length of the way. It was the silence, the ringing, never-breaking silence of a brooding, sullen land.
    A dogged stubbornness alone drove him on, a wish to show O’Brien that he could get through, that he could follow orders.
    But, he thought bitterly, little good that would do him. They’d forget this effort in a day. They’d forget it and send him out again into more silence. And they probably wouldn’t even remove that farce deck court from the record.
    A hell of a life this was.
    How he ached for noise!
    Powder music would be sweet, but with it he wanted a merry-go-round going, and a coaster dip roaring, and a nasal voice barking. So this was excitement, was it? Heavy, brute silence that walled you in and thundered in your ears.
    Ruefully he remembered how he had stared at that corporal’s chevrons that night. He had been willing to give ten to one that he’d be wearing them soon himself—that night.
    How the hell did you get ahead in this outfit, anyway? He’d done the thing he thought would be a cinch. Not consciously, but he might as well have done it that way for all the good it did him. You save a guy’s life, so he sends you out and hopes you won’t come back. Wasn’t the bird human? Hadn’t he ever heard of a thing called gratitude?
    Fifty-Fifty O’Brien, humph. What had been eating him, anyway? Maybe he enjoyed being slung across a horse and carted off to a ceremony called the “ cut of the vest .”
    Win Smith went up the trail, groping in the blue whiteness of the night, hoping those goonies would stick to their fire. What if they had a guard along this trail?
    But he couldn’t leave the trail. Although he was only six or seven miles from Company K, he could not afford to get lost. And you didn’t walk straight through that tangle. You had to have machetes to do that.
    God, he wished those damned neguas would go lay their eggs in some goonie’s hide. It might even feel pleasant at first, but when the sores began to spread from the broken sacs …
    Something moved between him and the moon—a blurry shadow coming down the steep trail.
    Smith petrified. He could feel the blood go up to his throat and hammer at his windpipe. It was almost straight down from where he clung to the ravine side. He would have to pass through bright moonlight to go back.
    And the native came on, slipping skillfully and quietly over the loose rocks. Smith braced his feet and moved the muzzle of his Springfield up. But he did not quite dare fire. That flicker of red was too close and he was too weary to run far at any speed.
    Ten feet, eight feet—he could see the man’s eyes, his mouth, the shimmer of moonlight on the machete which banged the white-clad thigh. He could hear the man grunt as he lowered himself down the steep trail.
    Five feet, four feet.