The Abomination Read Online Free

American banks, five restaurants serving everything from French fries to pulled pork, a Burger King . . . even an Italian gift shop, so that you could buy mementoes of your deployment abroad without actually leaving the post. Best of all, he enthused, was the proximity of the Alps – look, they were visible right now, if you looked high enough, with that great coating of snow – where the military maintained its own cadre of skiing instructors for their exclusive use.
    Holly had an idea that it was actually the Dolomites, not the Alps, that rose in the distance, but chose not to correct him. She was obliged to live on-post for six weeks – had in fact already been assigned a room in the rather unmilitary-sounding Ederle Inn Hotel – but after that she’d be free to move off-base, into private housing around Vicenza. Six weeks wasn’t so long to wait. Until then she would drink Miller and Budweiser in Joe Dugan’s, and probably even go on dates with, and accept flowers from, men like him, although not – if she could help it – after a visit to Burger King.
    She turned her head to the window, drinking in every Italian street sign and licence plate, every expressive gesture of the drivers and passers-by. A teenager on his way to school, steering his moped with ridiculously exaggerated panache through the crawling morning traffic, carried a raven-haired girl on his pillion. Neither was wearing a helmet: the girl was facing backwards, the better to eat the hot slice of pizza that was folded a fazzoletto , like a handkerchief, in her right hand. The boy shouted something back to her; she looked up, her brown eyes alive and dancing. With a pang of mingled yearning and exultation, Second Lieutenant Holly Boland recognised herself, a decade younger, speeding through Pisa on the back of her first boyfriend’s Vespa.
    â€œThis is it,” Private Lewtas said.
    She became aware that they were driving alongside a long, unmarked wall of bomb-resistant concrete. It was, however, hardly anonymous, being covered in long, looping scrawls of graffiti. “NO DAL MOLIN” she read, and “US ARMY GO HOME”. There were people milling by the roadside – civilians, some dressed in outlandish clown-like costumes, while others were holding placards with more slogans. When they saw the minibus they shook them fiercely.
    â€œWhat’s going on?” she asked.
    â€œOh, this is nothing. Weekends we get hundreds, sometimes thousands of these guys. Camp Ederle’s scheduled to double in size over the next few years, and some of the locals ain’t too happy.”
    â€œWhat’s Dal Molin?”
    â€œThe airfield we’re expanding onto.”
    The bus slowed briefly at the gate, Lewtas exchanging swift salutes with the guards as the barrier was raised. Most of the guards were carabinieri , she noticed, Italian military police, working alongside an American MP.
    â€œYou’d think the ginzos would be more grateful we’re here, protecting them,” he said as they pulled over inside the gate to have their IDs checked. “Welcome to Camp Ederle, ma’am.”
    In front of her was a town – or rather, a fortified town-within-a-town, its boundaries marked by that bomb-resistant wall that ran in either direction as far as the eye could see. Italian street signs were replaced by American ones; right now they were on the junction of Main Street and Eighth. Crosswalk poles in English instructed pedestrians to “Walk” or “Don’t Walk”. Most people wore army fatigues, and military vehicles alternated with Buicks and Fords.
    â€œHey, Inprocessing’s just about a hundred yards down. I can drop you right outside. They’ll give you a map, by the way – everyone gets lost to begin with. This place is huge.” He turned round a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes fluttered on a pole. “Do you want to give me your